Jazz Pianist Breaks Down Pokémon 8-Bit Music

this video is made possible by curiosity stream hey everybody my name is charles and today we're going to talk about 8-bit music more specifically the music from some of the earlier pokemon games because i'm sure this is not a shock to anybody that has a lot of nostalgia for these games but the music is incredible but to somebody that maybe is not that familiar with with hearing harmonies and that type of thing you may almost not even realize it and that is because in a lot of ways it's sort of hidden inside of this 8-bit sound that we heard in early video games so i want to talk a little bit about because i've been i've been doing some research on what exactly was going on there and especially how interesting it is to see the difference between hearing such well-composed music in 8-bit form versus hearing it in more of a way that we might expect whether just played on the piano or with an orchestra so stay tuned for that by the way i just want to mention the white hoodies are back the 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description so go check that out if you get a chance okay let's dive into this [Music] you guys know this i love the one chord to the minor iv chord progression it is just one of my favorite transitions ever i i mean it's it's it's so useful and it has such a beautiful sound it's it's both sad and happy at the same time it's sentimental it's whatever you want to call it but it's used in so many different places for an incredible impact i mean we talk about all the time the bit from star wars [Music] the one chord to the minor iv chord is just it's just an incredibly beautiful sound no matter where you use it and so that's literally the first thing we hear [Music] this is really a very simple chord progression but it's it's beautiful so if you're considering this to be in the key of d flat major [Music] what we start on is the four chord [Music] and then we move that four chord to the minor four it's just oh man it's such a beautiful sound this you could look at in two different ways you could either look at it as the one chord [Music] with the third [Music] as the root instead of the instead of the root as the root or you could just look at it as like a three chord i'd have to maybe listen for a little more context to decide which one i think it is but i've sort of just been playing it kind of like a one chord over the third [Music] but you know either way and then finally we have a sixth chord which leads us back to the fourth so it's just this really simple four chord progression really really beautiful let's see where it goes so this is almost like a solo section in a way we bring in the percussion and we go back to that same four chord sequence i mean you could really just play over this if you wanted to so this is where the 8-bit thing comes into play okay and and we've been doing some research on it it's really fascinating because obviously as we all remember these games and many other games early video games all had this type of soundtrack this 8-bit soundtrack well what what does that even mean so at the time these games came out they were created using 8-bit processors and as you can imagine with earlier computers they didn't have a ton of power so rather than try to overload the cpu with needing to create all this music say the way we do it now which is pretty much just there's a mp3 file or some type of sound file in the game earlier games instead had a dedicated sound chip that was capable of producing different types of waveforms pulse waves sine waves triangles sawtooth noise waves they each made a different type of sound a different timbre of sound almost like different instruments and most commonly there would be four to six channels available to make sounds at the same time the game boy specifically used four channels which meant that you could only have four sounds playing at any given time and if you listen to these original soundtracks you can hear that the illusion of a larger group is created but they don't actually play at the same time you'll hear a lot of arpeggios you'll hear a lot of breaking up of the sound and that's so that there can be sort of the illusion created that there's a larger group playing even though only four sounds can be played at any given time now those sounds can be different waveforms but they have to occur on different channels so if you only have a four channel output you can only play four sounds at any given time so that's why we don't wind up hearing lush chords with lots of color and lots of uh moving voicings and everything instead we hear something almost more similar to maybe a baroque piece something bach might have written more singular lines moving and creating the illusion of a larger group creating all of this counter melody and motion that illustrates and outlines the harmony so that we clearly understand where we are and that's why we can listen to something that only has a couple of notes playing at any given time and still derive the harmonic function and the harmonic structure of the whole thing and that's because if you break it up and outline various harmonic devices they're much easier to hear because our ear sort of blends it all together and listens to it almost like one larger group i mean it was a brilliant way to take these amazingly beautiful compositions written by junichi masuda and find a way to include them in a game that had extremely limited storage space and ability to play the game and the music all at once and if we take the structure that was written here and we apply it to the piano and just play around with it you can see how in depth and how beautiful the harmony actually is here even though in some ways it might be hidden in in the midst of the 8-bit sound style which is beautiful in its own right but uh check out what happens when we actually apply these harmonic motions to the [Music] piano so [Music] i mean this music is beautifully written and to hear it converted from 8-bit to the piano and also then to bounce that back off of the 8-bit version i mean it's just amazing to hear how they navigated including these pieces in the soundtrack with the limited technology they had available to them at the time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what if we took it one step further well that's exactly what braxton burks and a group of super talented musicians did by taking this music and writing orchestral arrangements out of it check this out okay right there that was cool there was a note in there they added a chord change that i think is really really effective and sounds super great okay so we have the one chord [Music] they added the backdoor five chord which if we start to treat this for the minor four like a two chord [Music] that becomes a backdoor two five really really clever addition there and that's the other cool thing about such a chord progression like this is is that it's extremely flexible right i mean this the four chord could easily be a two chord like they're they're pretty interchangeable in that sense and there's a lot of stuff you can add to kind of make this just incredibly beautiful even more so than it already is [Music] yeah something like that [Music] okay this is a really great example of that arpeggio usage now in this particular case it seems like the arpeggio's really just to kind of like be an arpeggio because it sounds cool however it can really help to kind of give that feeling of like here's the whole chord even though we don't have enough channels to play the whole chord we can arpeggiate it and your ear will hear it and if we hold that top note you'll kind of hear the whole thing as it's intended to be heard as the full chord even though there's only one note at a time really really [Music] brilliant wow there's just there's so much going on here and it sounds so simple because it's using this 8-bit system but like there's a lot here this is really really well written does that sound familiar yet another example of when you start learning things about music theory and basic song form you'll start recognizing things in all types of different music and you won't necessarily have to break things down individually you'll just hear oh that chunk is this to this to this to this and i know because i've heard it before so many times that's what allows musicians who are fluent in improvisation to be able to sit down and hear something and just start playing along with it because we know so many different bits and pieces of music song form and different chord progressions that we've just heard throughout so many different types of music then once we hear something we're like okay i i kind of i know where this is going that's an example two so different forms of music we're talking about modern neo soul pop r b and then in the 90s video game music like what different worlds yet we're still even using similar musical devices that's the secret that music theory unlocks kids more about that very very soon [Applause] [Music] these songs are so beautiful and and it's just cool to hear them in the context that we heard them originally in the games and then also to go wait a second but what's happening here musically because there's so much to get this result out of what they had to work with it's just it's unbelievable and let me know in the comments what some of your favorite 8-bit original tracks were from games that you grew up playing i love looking at some of the harmony that's hidden inside of this 8-bit world so let me know in the comments below and over on nebula i'm going to be putting not only a full run-through of like just you know my version of these but as well as i'm going to put some of the the harmonic structure and maybe like a chart a little lead sheet or something of how these tunes are actually written be sure to go and check that out over on nebula using the link in the description and if you don't know yet about nebula or what nebula is it is a streaming platform that a bunch of like-minded creators including myself came together to create where we are unbounded by the limitations of youtube as a platform and as many of you know this is made possible through our partnership with the sponsor of today's video curiosity stream curiosity stream of course is the home the internet's best documentaries there is an incredible range of things to choose from you could find documentaries on pretty much anything you can think of it's absolutely an incredible educational platform and being an educational platform curiosity stream loves educational content creators which is why we've teamed up to offer you this incredible bundle and right now when you use the link in the description you're going to get 26 off an annual subscription to curiosity stream which literally works out to be like less than 15 a year it's an incredible value and you get access to nebula for free so sign up for curiosity stream you get nebula for free and you get to check out all of the exclusive extended content that i put up on my nebula channel including lengthier performances of a couple of these songs that are currently up right now i'm constantly blown away by the titles available on curiosity stream i mean even in music there's just so many things to choose from 8 21 6th avenue this wonderful building down in the flower district whenever the word went out that there was a place to play we would all go there it was like a little nirvana [Music] check that out and and so much more over at curiositystream by using the link in the description and you're also going to get access to nebula for free you guys it is such a cool thing for us to be able to do and thank you to all of you who have gone over to check it out so far every time you click the link in the description it helps the channel out a ton so i really appreciate it and thank you guys and thank you to curiositystream for sponsoring today's video you guys thank you so much for watching make sure to hit the like button because that actually does a ton to help out with the algorithm and uh subscribe if you enjoy the content and you haven't already i appreciate your time thank you for watching and we will see you in the next video you

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 658,754

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, pokemon, ost, soundtrack, pokemon music, pokemon game, pokemon blue, pokemon red, pokemon gold, gameboy, 8-bit, 8 bit music, pokemon 8 bit, pokemon music piano, pokemon game music, pokemon game soundtrack, pokemon soundtrack

Id: Dq8Ufh8OCzU

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 30 2021