Reharmonizing "thank u, next"

[Music] but in snow [Applause] reharmonization is the process of coming up with new chords for a melody and today we're gonna be doing that with ariana grande's thank you next if you think of chords as color it's kind of like applying a musical hue shift to the melody same music but slightly different perspective so a warning before we begin we're going to be doing some harmonic analysis so if you're lost don't worry this is all in the service of a higher compositional goal and that is storytelling keep that in mind as we go through this anyway the original harmonic progression of thank you next is actually fairly colorful to begin with it's in the key of b-flat minor we start with a g flat major seven the flat six in the key of B flat minor then we go to F seven the dominant five chord which points us to B flat minor seven the tonic one chord finally we go to D flat seven the secondary dominant or a five chord that doesn't point us back to the one in this case it is the five chord in the key of G flat which just so happens to begin the whole loop so approaching this what other colors from our harmonic palette can we use to paint the melody of thank you next how can we apply this musical hues shift well the original is in the key of B flat minor so let's try something in its relative major D flat same notes different tonic what might that sound like [Music] the loop starts on d-flat major 7 the tonic 1 chord and thumbnail to this video then goes to D flat 7 that secondary dominant chord that points to G flat or in this case G flat 6 9 nice the 4 chord in the key of G flat and then G flat minor 6 9 nice a modal interchange chord from the parallel minor we're going to 4 minor has a sort of wistful almost bittersweet quality to it already the melody and by extension the lyrics has a much different implication with this reharmonization now if the melody allows it we could repeat this progression to create a cyclical chord progression one that literally loops over and over again to create a sense of unity over the course of a composition but I always felt that you could tell more of a nuanced story through harmony by breaking out of that loop for me it can be a fun exercise to think of notes in a melody as characters and the chords that go with them their character traits for example the verse melody if thank you next goes back frequently to a flat so I think in the context of the key of D flat what is a flat mean with an a flat 7 chord well to me it's fairly regal but in a way that's kind of boring and obvious like this character is a one-dimensional throw away which doesn't make a lot of sense here we keep returning to the a-flat so in my mind the a-flat is a central character of the story well what about against a D 7 sharp 9 chord a flat 7s tritone substitution voiced in a fairly Ilyn tawny in sort of way now a flat is more interesting and nuanced it's veiled it's promoting its past shrouded in a kind of ominous aura but maybe you still sense its regal power when you resolve d7 to the tonic you learn more about the eight flats past like turns out the a-flat wasn't it was foreshadowed to be this is such a fun creative exercise for me so with that in mind let's see what else we can do with the verse melody [Music] here we go to F minor seven the three in the key of D flat then descend a fifth to B flat seven the five seven of two and finally descend a fifth again to E flat seven the five seven of five which is a fairly bright color in the key this E flat seven chord comes about as a sort of punctuation like we're emphasizing the lyric thankful it sounds mildly sarcastic for Pete I'm so thankful but like like heartedly sarcastic there's not a lot of spite in the color of the chord but that can change if we change the chord to something like a G flat minor major seven now there is a fair amount of bitterness malice and the lyric and I'm not sure if that's the story that I want to tell here this is the power of harmony by the way it's the power to tease out different shades of meaning from melodies and lyrics and express them through sound now knowing that how should we approach harmonizing the pre-chorus [Music] [Music] here we start with a b-flat minor the six minor in D flat but also the tonic of the relative minor B flat the next chord is a major 7 which is strange but we can justify this by saying that is the flat 6 major 7 in the key of D flat a modal interchange chord borrowed from the parallel minor the move from 6 minor to flat 6 major is actually fairly common in older styles of songwriting you can hear it in what a wonderful world by Louis Armstrong but it sounds particularly piquant here it's somewhat rare for flat 6 major 7 to return to 6 minor it then sounds well kind of alien and too mysterious the pre-chorus is ariana grande talking about her past experiences and how they've made her the person that she is today the present is made by the past and that's kind of what we're doing here with the Harmony a little bit of a stretch I know but it's a new sound that's deeply indebted to older sounds and then there's this strange chord B flat 7 over G flat the harmonic justification of this chord is that B flat 7 is the dominant 7th chord in the key of E flat and G flat is the minor 3rd in the key of E flat minor so in the common practice G flat is treated as sort of an accented passing tone and resolves like this [Music] the melodic justification of this chord is that it comes with the highest point in the melody otherwise known as the apex melodic apices are points of high drama the highest point of tension which is reflected in the very tense b-flat 7 over G flat the emotional justification of this chord is that it occurs on the lyric I've loved and I've lost and I've always felt that this particular chord feels like a pang of emotion like a sudden sharp feeling of regret or worry but ultimately the musical justification of the chord is it just kind of sounded good to me at the time I want to make it clear when we write music and make any musical decision anything can be justified after the fact really we could have just put any chord there and come up with a list of emotional and harmonic justifications for it to quote Vincent Percy Ketty and twentieth-century harmony any chord can go after any chord and ultimately it's just up to a person's taste in deciding what to choose but it still helps to be aware of these things when making these decisions because harmony has a real effect that's widely culturally understood for example when recording this thank you next re harm the drummer Josh Bailey made a four minor major seven motion at the end of a tape you can basically see the emotional core of the harmony in his body this feeling of bitter sweetness and the story that I wanted to tell is it related to the lyrics can be expressed in different ways other than just in harmony like for example through orchestration I had my friend make our record violin strings are always nostalgia inducing we tracked multiple versions of several violin parts so it kind of gives the impression of a full orchestra I also had my friend Haven come in and sing and do her best ariana grande impression [Music] next you want to do yeah one more yeah so we're recording multiple versions of the same line over and over again and we're gonna pan it hard left and right which makes it sound really big I know I know you know I'm telling the nice people on the camera here we go the sound of a clean jazz guitar solo has always felt fairly nostalgic to me so I had my friend wrote to them come in and play some jazz guitar harmony is one way that musicians tell musical stories I enjoy a good jazz chord because in the right context that can add a surprising amount of nuance to a melody and shade it in a meaningful and expressive way knowing this I hope that you enjoy this little reharmonization of ariana grande's thank you next [Music] but he wasn't a match about Reiki even metals got married and folk green I'm so painful wish I could say thank you he was an angel [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm [Music] we have a discussion Dunham is all me [Music] No phone [Applause] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] so this video will definitely be demonetised because I used a copyrighted work in the pursuit of teaching harmony my own harm me but a copyrighted work nonetheless it's kind of awkward because music is both a cultural expression a language as well as a product which can be owned by individuals which puts me in the position as an educator where it's hard for me to talk about a cultural expression and talk about the musical language because of the intellectual property laws I would love to have the opportunity to purchase an educational license so I can do this sort of video more often but no such license exists yet until that happens though I just want to say thank you to everybody who has supported me on this channel over at patreon because they are the people that make this content possible if you enjoyed the cover in this video of thank you next go over to Spotify and Apple music because there are cover licenses that I can purchase and I have purchased them but no educational license is strange anyway guys thank you for watching and thank you next [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Adam Neely

Views: 1,052,600

Rating: 4.9751225 out of 5

Keywords: adam, neely, jazz, fusion, bass, guitar, lesson, theory, music

Id: ZGKvGd9Bg4Y

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/glynnjamin]

Idk what the fuck this was but you should re-title it "enunciating pop songs pleasantly" for those of us who wish we could understand the lyrics when ari sings. Also it was amaz

[u/Dammit-Hannah]

Adam Neely is awesome