Nonfunctional Harmony in Chrono Trigger

[Music] a younger less World wey 8bit music theory would often spend his time transcribing video game tracks and analyzing the harmony ah a minor 4 to one that's an example of primary mode mixture what a great Cadence he'd say once in a while he'd come across a progression that seemed rather strange ah yes he a minor to C minor to E flat minor that's well that's uh what what is that try as he might our young nerdy friend could not for the life of him figure out what these progressions were supposed to be where are all the dominants he'd cry where is this going what key are we even in some progressions would drive him to tears every single night how does this even function that's the thing it doesn't or it didn't but it still does look today I want to talk about nonfunctional Harmony and the perfect game soundtrack to use as an example is from one of the best video games of all time Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo so what is non-functional harmony well it's when a chord progression doesn't follow the laws of functional Harmony so what is functional Harmony the term functional Harmony describes music that exists in a key and has chords that have specific functions oh very helpful I know look a chords function describes where that chord feels like it wants to go next generally speaking chords fall into three main groups either they feel totally stable and don't want to move anywhere they feel unstable and want to move to another chord or they set up an unstable chord neither feeling particularly tense or particularly resolved when you talk about tonic dominant and predominant chords you're referring to the chords function functional Harmony generally keeps going through the cycle of setting up tension creating tension and releasing that tension now within this broad system there's basically an unlimited amount of room for experimentation but that's what functional Harmony actually entails any music that doesn't fit into the system of tension and resolution can be considered nonfunctional here for example let's look at Chrono trigger's secret of the forest the majority of the song happens over this two chord Vamp g flat major 13 sharp 11 to F minor [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] 9 at first glance this seems functional because G flat and F minor are both found in the key of D flat major being the four and three chords respectively the melody over the G flat major even emphasizes the sharp 11 scale degree giving us a l Ian sound that just screams for chord over the F minor chord however the ninth G natural is not found in the key of D flat and this extension is inescapable it's in every beat of the accompanyment and the melody is completely focused on it so what you might ask functional music almost never stays entirely in one key so what makes this song different well here's where we get a little bit more abstract the chords don't lead us from one place to the next the G flat chord doesn't push to resolve down to the F minor and the F minor doesn't pull back up towards the G flat but together they create this impressionistic color that you can just immerse yourself in they don't act like chords so much as two contrasting scales with almost every note in each scale appearing in the chords extensions and the contrasting g flat G natural relationship deliberately pushed to the Forefront of the music neither cord feels entirely resolved to and this creates an ethereal floaty feeling which is perfect for setting the atmosphere of an Ancient Forest here's another example a strange [Music] [Applause] [Music] happening again we get a two chord Vamp this time alternating between D Minor 7 and a flat minor 6 notice how the number of contrasting notes between the two chords directly affects how creepy the progression feels where secret of the forest's one note contrast gave the music a floaty mystical feeling a strange happenings three note contrast feels downright unsettling the trone relationship between the two chords Roots doesn't hurt this Vibe either you'll find a lot of nonfunctional chord progressions center around only two chords this is partially because two chords is enough to create a variety of different atmospheres and partially because throwing a lot of different chords at The Listener with no discernable function to guide them through can make it hard to follow and frustrating to listen to this is why jazz Fusion will never be mainstream [Music] again but any two chords no matter how out there they sound together can become normalized to anybody no matter how musically uneducated with enough repetition that's not to say you won't find any complete onslaughts of non-functional Harmony in the soundtrack yasunori mitsa the composer for Chrono Trigger loves to use parallel minor 7th chords to create dissonance like in boss battle theme two at first it seems a little all over the place but having the chords follow a very clear descent by semitone pattern helps anchor The Listener a little bit this descending minor chord idea is actually used quite a bit throughout the soundtrack like in undersea palace's B [Applause] section [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] it's still a non-functional progression of course try and think of what cord could come next after either of these sections that would sound resolved in functional Harmony this is usually very easy to do even if a song never actually lets us hear the tonic it's almost always easy enough to hear in our mind what the tonic would be in non functional Harmony this isn't really the case notice also the way that the minor chords jump up by minor thirds in the first bar this is another very common cordal relationship in the Chrono Trigger soundtrack for example check out the b section to Black [Music] [Music] Omen this is cool and all but the really impressive thing about the soundtrack is the way me mixes the functional with the non-functional the game's title track is the perfect example of this take a look at this opening [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] progression if you take a bird's eye view of the harmony it's easy enough to dismiss that minor six chord it's weird sure but it's just chrom ically approaching the flat 65 Cadence which is very normal even if the five chord is usually a dominant when listening to it though these chords move very slowly and if you don't know where the piece is going to end up the first two chords will definitely disorient you it's such a genius composition we get this bold impressionistic color with the a minor to F minor then the chromatic move down to F disorients us even further before the E minor sets our feet back on the ground again with the E minor moving to the a minor for the a section we're more more aware of what's going on and we're clearly in the key of A minor now when we hear that F minor we'll know to expect a descent down to F next so what does mitsa do he repeats the a minor F minor move playing with our [Music] expectations playing with the listener's expectations is one of the key components of writing functional Harmony and it's what makes a lot of music so fun to listen to but in isolation an A Minor to F minor to a minor would not be considered functional in any sense so mea is creating Harmony that functions but out of nonfunctional Parts another great example of this is in the B section to wings that cross time again from a bird's eye view it looks like an easy write off as a chromatic approach to a normal Cadence but the amount of time we sit on each chord and the deliberate accenting of the Cross relations between our F minor and beyan scales definitely gives this progression a touch of non-functional [Music] color compare and contrast this move to some of our previous examples like a strange happening these two chords are a trone apart which sounds a little jarring but the mere two note contrast between these two chords or rather the scales that these chords are based on makes the transition smoother more like what we saw in secret of the forest a lot of the time in progressions like these the melody will specifically Target common tones found between the two chords to even out the sound this is where pentatonic scales can come in extremely useful as they're already a powerful melodic tool in one key but the limited number of notes allows one to fit into multiple cont contrasting keys or modes let's take our first example secret of the forest compare the two chords the first as we've already discussed is based off of the G flat lydian scale and the second is based off of the F minor scale now let's take out the notes that don't fit into both scales in this case the G flat and G natural now we never actually hear a D or D flat over an F minor chord in this tune so let's take that out too what we're left with is an A flat pentatonic scale writing a Melody using the scale would likely result in a great singable Melody that seamlessly Smooths over the transition from one tonality to the next [Applause] great except mea deliberately doesn't do this in fact the majority of his Melodies In the soundtrack emphasize the contrast between his non-functional chords by accenting the notes that don't fit nicely into both parent [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] scales [Music] [Applause] [Music] this really makes the harmony stand out and it definitely gives the soundtrack a unique flavor but it can sound a little jarring at times so it's not something I would always recommend doing for Chrono Trigger though it definitely works and it's a powerful mood setting tool well that's the video thanks for watching if you have any questions about non-functional Harmony or anything else please feel free to leave a comment below or tweet me at 8bit Music Theory special thanks to my gracious and patient patrons for supporting me in this endeavor and thank you thank you to everyone who's been liking and sharing and subscribing to my videos so far it's really amazing to read all the ridiculously nice comments you guys leave and it really inspires me to make the best videos I can make so I just wanted to say thanks anyway thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 575,129

Keywords: Chrono Trigger, Game music, OST, Music Theory, Musical Analysis, 8 Bit Music Theory, 8-bit Music Theory, Yasunori Mitsuda, Nonfunctional Harmony, Wings that cross time, Secret of the Forest, Undersea Palace, A Strange Happening, Black Omen, Brink of Time, Sealed Door, Boss Battle 2

Id: 5zGqN1ZOEJQ

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 21 2017