The ONE Chord That Made The Batman A Masterpiece

so i saw the batman last night it was great just go see it that's that's all i can say but in listening to the film and listening to michael jacquino's phenomenal score it got me thinking what is it about superhero films that just makes them sound so epic or ominous even especially in the case of batman and there's a device that gets used that pops up so frequently in so many of these films and of course as you may be able to tell from the thumbnail of this video i'm talking about the flat 6. quick reminder you can get 30 off everything on the corner music academy use code music theory 30. there's a link in the description all right let's go let's go ahead and remind ourselves what we mean by flat 6. let's take a c major scale and all we're going to do is assign numbers to each of those notes one two three four five six seven and that brings us back to one so the six one two three four five six is a in the key of c the six is a so for the flat six we're literally just gonna take that a and make it flat okay now we have a flat six so in the key of c we have a flat now here's what i mean by the flat six it can happen in two different ways and the very first way that we're going to talk about is simply the usage of the note as maybe a melody or a root motion and this is what we see in michael jacquino's soundtrack to the batman [Music] what a fantastic ominous sound for batman this is probably one of my favorite openings in any superhero film ever right away we've established this one to flat six motion okay and then that is further backed up when the harmony introduces itself and we define that this first chord is indeed minor right so this motion it's it's so good it's so simple but yet the way that michael jacquino used it and orchestrated it it gives you that perfect feeling that matches the tone every time it's used it's just it's so perfect and it really just gives you that feeling of like oh god because you know batman is it's fascinating it's uh he's almost like a horror figure in a way especially from the perspective of the villains of course right so like this whole lurking in the shadows thing you're never quite sure like where he's gonna come out or pop up and it's just like this is the perfect setting for that but these chords what is it about these two chords b flat minor and g flat major okay in this particular case what is it about these two chords that really just kind of gives us that ominous feeling a hint of epicness in it right that movement right there it's very much an epic saga kind of feel and in the case of batman the particular orchestrations give it more of an ominous feel but it still has that kind of power that we associate especially with superhero films so here's the question that i want to pose is this nature or nurture in other words is there something about the relationship between these two chords that really just inherently makes us feel a certain emotion or maybe it's the nurture over a long period of time of being conditioned to see superhero films using this type of harmony another example we sometimes turn to is the spy theme that was in many ways associated originally with james bond the sort of dark and mysterious big band sound that's in many ways influenced by jazz harmonies well that became associated with spy movies we've seen that echoed many times in the past with things like the incredible soundtrack which we've covered another michael jacquino masterpiece and we asked the same question in that video as well is this something that is just naturally gives us that sort of mysterious sneaking feeling or is it just the conditioning of seeing this used time and time again in various films you guys know on this channel we always love to point out whenever something sounds like the avengers theme well the avengers team literally uses those two chords to start out now the difference here is that we move on and include a third chord which i think is really interesting check this out [Music] now it uses that same one to the flat six that we see used in batman what i think is really cool about this is how do we always typically think of the dc versus marvel thing now for me personally i love them both i don't think you can really compare them because to me they just feel completely different but i think one thing you could say is that dc is typically much darker and this isn't a 100 all the time truth of course but i mean the batman films the dark knight trilogy all this stuff is like much darker than what we think of when we think of a marvel superhero film they're funny oftentimes they're much brighter literally just in the visuals they're brighter more things taking place in daylight or in nice weather where it's like i think the entire film the batman was raining the entire time then the vast majority of it took place at night so the fact that you might say that that's a comparison between dc and marvel is really interesting when you look at both of these themes because the batman theme it stays in this very dark place whereas the marvel theme [Music] as soon as we bring in this this e flat major sound now the whole thing is brightened up quite a bit so definitely when comparing those two themes i mean the batman theme is much darker the marvel theme including this e major sound has a much brighter development but they both derive a lot of that feeling from this one to flat six movement let's look at another example [Music] wow g minor is our base point here this is our home base go to the major four five back to the one now check this out there it is that is the thing that makes this theme open up and makes it feel so epic right binary sunset the scene where we're just all of a sudden we're panning it's this emotional moment that then pans to this insane landscape that is obviously so foreign to us and just gives this otherworldly feel as it literally is but the whole thing pivots around this movement to the flat six in g let's take our g major scale one two three four five six flat e flat so g minor [Music] oh wow it feels like it's emerging this super minor thing that's kind of developing developing and then it just expands and it opens up and says ah there's our release almost in a sense you know but it gives it that really epic feel and again it begs the question what's going on there is it the simple fact that that movement from one to flat six somehow inherently gives us that emotional feel or is it because we've just been conditioned for so long to see movies use this in such a way that evokes that emotion now if we take a look at the harmonic structure of both of those chords the minor one chord to the major flat 6 chord we can make some interesting observations about their shape staying in g minor since that's where our ears are familiar with right now that's a g natural minor scale now watch what happens this is interesting okay so right there all i did was play the exact same notes g natural minor but i started it on the flat six i started it from e flat and what we ended up creating was an e flat lydian an e flat lydian scale so as we remember our lydian mode consists of a sharp four if we're comparing it to the major scale so what's interesting is that we've managed to now keep the exact same notes in terms of what creates the sound of g minor and e flat but all we did is change the root note now when we did that we flipped the whole thing from being a minor sound to a major sound that is what i feel is a big part of why this works so well you see this whole time we're establishing a very dark home base of this g minor right or in the case of the batman we have this b-flat minor right this whole thing is dark maybe ominous maybe sad maybe all the things that we can associate with minor and then for a brief moment when we introduce that flat 6 sound we are changing that to be a major release in a sense right because we're going but the fact that that major chord is not our home base it makes it feel almost like it's a glimmer of hope in a world that's otherwise clouded in this minor sound [Music] now the usage in the batman is a little more ominous so it actually doesn't as much release that minor sound but it does give it a brief moment [Music] of inserting some of that epicness into what is otherwise really ominous we're essentially taking one scale and changing the root note to change its functionality from minor to major but it's the same group of notes are these all things that kind of aid in naturally giving us that emotional sense and could you say that in some ways yeah it is nature like these these relationships between harmonic devices are simply laid out in a way that are gonna that's gonna evoke that emotion for us i think there's definitely some truth to that now i do think that there's also some conditioning that's gone on over years and years of seeing this type of harmony used in this context and there's a lot of things that we can attribute to that but the fact of the matter is we see this used all the time especially in films like this whether they're superhero films or just epic sagas in general even in the previews for the batman i saw a really interesting usage of this and i had to write it down right there in the theater because i was like this is exactly what i've been talking about [Music] there's nothing you can do to stop me [Laughter] [Music] i mean they literally took the harry potter theme and made it the chords from the avengers [Music] it's exactly verbatim you can see what they're trying to do like they're trying to take a theme that was not written that way i mean john williams wrote [Music] and they're trying to make it epic they go to this one flat six and then they made the addition of the major four right five one this occurs everywhere i couldn't believe that because i literally was thinking about making this video as we were going to see batman because i i'd heard the theme and i was like oh that's really really cool that they do that and then in the process of waiting for the movie to start we see this trailer and there it is i love the sound i mean every time i hear it i'm like yeah that's epic i think the usage of that same harmonic shape with a different root that switches the functionality from minor to major that really helps give us that sort of epic emergence kind of feeling but then at the same time we've seen it used so many places that it becomes associated with the epic movies that it's from it's one of my favorite devices in cinema and it gets used a ton and you know what i'm kind of here for it it makes for some incredible film moments but i want to know about your opinions about kind of what this device is and how often it's used like do you like it are you a fan of it do you think it's overused and if you want to learn more about how all this stuff works and how we kind of build these chords especially playing them on the piano be sure to check out the intro to piano course it's 30 off right now with code music theory 30. there's a link down in the description below also we have the intro to improvisation course and a making sense of modes course with many more on the way you can get them all right now for 30 off link in the description down below that's the best way you can support the channel and i really appreciate it so thank you so yeah i'm really curious to see your opinions on this in the comments below and thanks so much for watching this video we will see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 240,168

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, the batman, batman, michael giacchino, batman soundtrack, avengers, the avengers, avengers soundtrack, harry potter, harry potter soundtrack, movie scores, cinematic

Id: 3aDIoryP1-I

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2022