hey, welcome to 12tone! in 1968, the British
psychedelic band The Pretty Things released their fourth album, S.F. Sorrow, and yes, this does have something
to do with the Black Parade, I promise, just hold on a minute, we'll get there. S.F. Sorrow was an ambitious project, telling the
story of an entire life in a little over 40 minutes. the band was looking for a new way to craft
an album, and to do that, they looked back to the song cycles of the Romantic period. that effort led them to create what is generally
considered to be the first real rock opera, blending the power and energy of rock music
with the dramatic narratives of the operatic tradition. S.F. Sorrow was a flop on release, but its vision
lived on, and in the years that followed, the rock opera format became a favorite challenge
for many of the 70s' most legendary rock bands. albums like Tommy, The Wall, Ziggy Stardust,
Joe's Garage, and The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway all followed The Pretty Things' lead, crafting
albums that were more than albums, with complex, human stories woven into the very fabric of
their music. but by 2006, the world of rock had changed. there were new artists with new stories, and
it was time for the next great rock opera to be told. enter My Chemical Romance. coming off the success of their second album,
Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, the band was looking to make something timeless, and to
do that, they looked back to the rock operas of the past. they completely reinvented their stage show
and their sound, designing new personas to embody their new vision. out of all that came one of the greatest rock
albums of the last 20 years, and at the heart of that album sits perhaps the most iconic
song of the entire emo movement: Welcome To The Black Parade. let's take it apart. (tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) the song starts like this: (bang) and I'll
give the emo kids in the audience a moment to recover from that G-note. we good? alright. this simple piano line serves as
the backbone for the entire song. it's what I like to call a minimum riff, a
riff that exists in that beautiful space where it's almost too simple but still somehow magical. a minimum riff is a delicate balancing act,
and even the smallest change can take it from brilliant to boring, so even though it seems
pretty straightforward, I'd like to take a closer look. in order to make things a little easier, I'm
gonna start by removing every other beat. don't worry, I'll put them back, but for now
that gives us this: (bang) and suddenly the shape comes into focus: it's a walk down the
G major scale. descending lines tend to carry a sense of
weight and seriousness to them, falling from the lighter, higher notes down into the heavier
lower register, and at heart, that's basically what's happening here. or, well, almost: we never quite make it down
to the bottom. we get to A, but then, instead of continuing
down to G, we turn around and jump back up to D. this ending is super important, but
before I get into why, I need to put those extra beats back in. once we do that, the melody gets a lot more
angular. at the heart of all that motion, though, is a simple, repeated three-note motif:
(bang) where we start on one of our walk-down notes, then jump up high before falling down
even further. after that, we take another step down the
scale and do the whole thing over again. but we're not just jumping around randomly:
in each statement, we go up a perfect fourth, then down a perfect fifth, and the thing about
perfect intervals is that, while they're extremely strong, they also lack emotional character. they're neutral sounds, too consonant to really
convey much nuance, so filling the melody with them makes it feel… blank. that's not a criticism, of course: the strong
resolutions help point you along the walkdown, emphasizing that weight and depth, and the
hollowness of the intervals gives it an open, distant quality that enhances the sense of
isolation. and that brings us back to the ending. remember how I said that, instead of going
down to a low G, the line jumps from A up to D? well, that's a perfect fourth. we're going up a perfect 4th again. the rhythm's slower this time, but the implication
is clear: we're about to drop down a perfect 5th. the D isn't actually interrupting the
walkdown, it's accentuating it, setting up a big, final resolution to a low G: (bang)
but that's not what happens. instead we get this: (bang) which… ok, so, yes, that's still a G, but it's not
the G we expected. it's tempting to assume that all versions
of a note are functionally equivalent, and in many cases that's fine, but when your melodic
journey is so clearly tied to such a big, powerful walkdown, a high G just isn't the
same as a low G. it's the same note, but the impact couldn't be more different. by setting up a clear melodic trajectory,
emphasizing it with a strong, repeated motif, and then subverting it at the last second
by resolving in the wrong direction, the line is left feeling incomplete, cut off in the
middle before it gets to fulfill its true potential, which is extremely thematically
appropriate for reasons I'll get into in a little bit. before that, though, these perfect leaps do
one more thing: they draw attention away from some of the notes in the walkdown and onto
others. half the notes get interrupted by the motif,
while the other half get resolved to, so those wind up feeling more important by comparison. if we extract only the notes that wind up
emphasized: (bang) we see another pattern emerging. it's all moving by 3rds. 3rds are like the
opposite of perfect intervals: they're fairly weak, but in exchange they carry a lot more
emotional resonance. this makes the whole line feel softer and
more vulnerable as we drift down through the scale. taken together, this gives us three distinct
melodic layers. on the surface, it's jagged and hollow, full of perfect-interval leaps. underneath, there's stepwise motion, marching
us down the scale before missing the landing at the bottom, and at the center there's this
pattern of 3rds that gives the whole thing a soft, emotional quality. the careful interaction of these layers gives
us the best of all three worlds, and we wind up with a melody that's bold but sensitive,
dramatic but subdued. it's a line that's drowning and it's not quite
sure if it knows how to swim. but there's one last question you might be
wondering here: why G major? I mean, it's a sad song, and everyone knows
major keys are happy. wouldn't G minor be more appropriate? (bang) eh, I mean, that sounds good too, but
no, I don't think it works better, and that's the problem with these sorts of cheat sheet-style
approaches to music theory. they can be a useful shorthand, but it's too
easy to start thinking of them as absolute rules, and they're not. music is complicated, and the impact of any
musical device, including keys and scales, is always going to be contextual. that's why I prefer to describe major not
as happy, but as bright. bright things can be warm and inviting, but
they don't have to be. imagine looking out on a field of freshly
fallen snow. it's bright, sure, possibly even blinding,
but it's also cold, and empty. there's a sense of distance and scale that
makes you feel small and alone, and that's the sort of major I'm hearing in this intro. there's a lot of reasons for that: the perfect
intervals, the downward march, and the slow, ponderous tempo, to name a few. but one factor that's easy to overlook is
the sound of the instrument itself. the piano is a polyphonic instrument, which
means it makes beautiful video essays and co-hosts a podcast with me. wait, sorry, no, what I meant to say is that
it means it's designed to play multiple notes at once. even the simplest piano pieces tend to take
advantage of that, accompanying the melody with bass notes, chords, or some sort of counterline,
and you, as a person who's probably heard hundreds if not thousands of songs with pianos
in them, know this. maybe not consciously, but your ears know,
and given that context, hearing a single-note line played high on a piano is... disconcerting. you keep waiting for the left hand to do something,
and it just won't. to demonstrate what I mean, here's the same line on an instrument you're
more used to hearing play single notes: the banjo. (bang) and yeah, it still sounds sad, but
it's not nearly as devastating, because you have different associations with the instrument. beyond the piano, this intro is built using
my favorite arranging trick, a thing called progressive layering. the idea here is that you play the same thing
over and over again, but every time, you add something new. in the first statement, the
piano is by itself, to establish it as the primary line that everything else should be
heard against. the second statement adds Gerard Way's vocals. I'd break this melody into two halves. in
the first: (bang) he sings short bursts of notes with very little motion. technically, each burst is slightly different,
but the overall impact is the same: it's basically a leap from G down to D, a perfect 4th, and
again, perfect 4ths are a fairly neutral sound. the line is moving, but it mostly feels like
we're sitting on G, the root, in stark contrast to the falling piano. in the second half: (bang) that all changes,
and we get a mini walk-down from G to C. this obviously evokes the shape of the underlying
piano part, but the interesting thing to me is how much lower that C sounds than the D
from the first half. I mean, it's only a whole step down, but it
feels like a completely different register, and I think that's because he had to walk
so much further to get there. the D is just a drop, so it doesn't really
sound like a big move, whereas for the C we stop at every note along the way, forcing
you to really engage with the distance. but these two walk-downs aren't exactly the
same: in the first one, after the D, he turns around for a moment, going back up to E: (bang)
whereas in the second, he continues straight down to C. (bang) the E adds a major-3rd leap,
softening the first line, while the direct walk down makes the second one feel more conclusive
and severe. it's a small touch, but without it: (bang)
you lose a lot of that nostalgic sadness. on the third statement, the rest of the band
starts to join. the first part I want to highlight is Ray
Toro's guitar: (bang) which adds another countermelody. unlike the piano, which is all descending,
and the vocals, which are largely static, this one starts by rising up, adding some
contrasting motion, and then it does its own sort of walkdown? like, it mostly just centers on B, but there
does seem to be something of a downward trajectory. there's this E-D-C thing in the high accents,
and B-A-G in the low ones. but mostly, once it's done walking up, it's
sitting on B, the major 3rd. this is the primary modal note, the thing that tells us we're
really, definitely in G major. the piano kinda hides that note in the motif,
and the vocals avoid it altogether, so adding a line that's actually built on the 3rd calls
your attention to that bright, cold sense of tonality I was talking about earlier. it's also operating on a new rhythmic level:
the piano is dividing in quarter notes and the vocals are singing 16ths, so the guitar
fits comfortably in between them with some nice 8th-note syncopation. it provides balance, which is essential for
good progressive layering. the more important layer, though, is Bob Bryar's
drums: (bang) and this is where I'd usually explain the subtle musical imagery at work
here, but, like, come on. it's a marching snare in a song about a parade. the imagery is obvious. not even I could spin this into a multi-minute
digression about extended musical metaphor, right? ...right? ok, so here's the thing. The Black Parade is a rock opera. it tells the story of the Patient, an unnamed
character in the late stages of a terminal illness, and this song is the album's thesis
statement. so yes, the parade is a memory, but it's also
a metaphor. specifically, it's a metaphor for death. but that's a bit of a cop-out. the whole album is about death. every song is a different aspect of the Patient's
experience of dying. Mama is him wrestling with the idea that he
deserves it. I Don't Love You is him becoming a burden
to the people he cares about. and, of course, the final song on the album,
Famous Last Words, is him making the decision to fight, and to live. to not go gentle into that good night. so it's not enough to say the parade represents
death. what part of death does it represent? well, I'd argue this song is about legacy.
it's not a coincidence that the lyrics start with a memory of time spent with his father,
who has presumably passed away. I don't know if that's ever explicitly stated
but, like, come on. in that memory, his father gives him a set
of cryptic instructions on how to live a good life, a life that's now being cut tragically
short. it's implied elsewhere that the Patient is
quite young, probably still a teenager, so when his father asks what he'll do when he
grows up, it turns out the answer is nothing. he'll never get the chance. and that's why the parade image is so important. parades are all about legacy and tradition. they carry things forward into the future,
both literally and metaphorically. parades are often recurring events, celebrating
major holidays like Thanksgiving, New Years, and Pride the same way each year, so they
become focal points for cultural memories. but they're also literally forward-moving
objects: the parade marches on, and everyone who joins it does too. as Way sings in the chorus, "though you're
dead and gone, believe me, your memory will carry on." and the parade is an inviting image:
parades are fun. joining them isn't scary, it's something to
celebrate. in that sense, the parade can also represent
the temptation to just let go. it's reassuring the Patient that everything
will be alright without him, like a siren's call that he ultimately rejects at the end
of the album. but let's bring this back to Bryar. the marching snare is the most obvious parade
element in the song, so it winds up serving as a leitmotif for that image and all the
ideas that come with it. we'll see it a couple times as the song progresses,
and each time it's worth keeping in mind all the baggage it's carrying. but I also think it's worth noting that we
don't hear it right away. the drums don't join until the third statement,
after Way has already started describing the memory. instead of being this ever-present threat
lurking at the back of his mind, we get to see the parade come into view as the Patient
does, slowly rising up in him as he reflects on the future he's going to lose. it's a gut-wrenchingly beautiful effect. fortunately for the length of this video,
the fourth and fifth statements don't add all that much that we really need to talk
about. in the fourth one, the main change is the
addition of Mikey Way's bass, which adds some extra weight, but in terms of notes it's just
playing the walkdown: (bang) and we already covered that. there's also a quiet string section, and Way's
vocals get more intense, but the sixth statement is where everything changes. here, the piano disappears and the guitar
line takes center stage. (bang) the bass drops down an octave, the
drums switch from the marching pattern to a series of fills and crashes, and everything
gets a whole lot louder. they play one statement without the vocals,
then Way comes in to repeat the first two stanzas, but this time in an all-out scream. (bang) this is our climax, the thing the whole
intro has been building toward, and it is… intense. and that's the power of progressive layering:
it lets you build indefinitely, adding new and exciting ideas slowly enough that when
it all finally comes together, it feels like a revelation. at the end of that, they hit this big G chord,
hang on it to let all that energy dissipate, and then everything changes again as we start
the actual song. the first thing to mention here is the tempo:
things get a whole lot faster. I initially assumed it was double time, but
it's actually even faster than that. we're going from around 75 BPM (bang) to 200. (bang) 200 beats per minute is largely the
domain of punk, so the sudden, drastic acceleration turns this from a sad reflection on the past
to a desperate, angry plea for the future. they start this faster part by playing the
chorus progression, so I'm gonna skip ahead and talk about the chorus first. fortunately, this is actually pretty easy. if we look at the chorus progression: (bang)
it's another walkdown. it's a little hard to hear because of the
guitar voicings, but for the first five bars, the bass is playing the exact same notes as
the intro. instead of continuing down, though, they sit
on C for two bars, then steps back up to D, so instead of that incomplete ending, we get
a big, clear signpost pointing us toward a resolution. over that D, though, the guitar does something
really interesting. (bang) it sounds like a cadential 6/4, which… ok, yeah, gonna have to talk about classical
harmony I guess. wasn't expecting that, but here we are. in a normal triad, you have a root, a 3rd,
and a 5th. in a 6/4 chord, as the name implies, you instead have a root, and then a 4th and
6th. this could be read as an inversion: that is, we could say this is G major with a D
in the bass, and it is, but for our purposes, it helps to think of it as a kind of D chord. traditionally, the 6/4 has a couple specific
uses, but the one we're interested in is the cadential 6/4. here, it serves as like a double
suspension, with G and B sliding down to F# and A to more fully set up the V chord before
it resolves to I. now, in this case, I'm not actually hearing the G to F# line: I think
what's happening is Frank Iero, the rhythm guitarist, is sitting on a D power chord while
Ray Toro, the lead, plays B to A, so it's not really a full cadential 6/4. but it has a similar effect, creating a beautiful
3-2-1 walkdown to deliver a really strong landing on that G, and hey, when else am I
gonna get a chance to talk about this stuff in a rock song? anyway, if we turn our attention to the melody,
Way keeps hitting this high B: (bang) but unlike the intro, this time it doesn't feel
cold. the tonality is the same, but the mood has
shifted. I don't know that I'd call it happy, but it's…
hopeful? like, I'm not sure I'm supposed to believe
what he's saying, but I'm supposed to want to. again, context matters. back to the verse, though, they do something
a little different. (bang) it's still the walkdown, but it's kinda
falling apart. instead of the E, we get an F natural. technically this is the b7, which could be
borrowed from G minor, but because we're so used to the walkdown and we just heard the
major 7th, I think it reads more like a #6, which is eerie and unsettling. from there, we skip the D chord entirely,
jumping straight to C. we play that for two bars, just like the chorus, but because of
the missing D, those bars are shifted forward and we're left with a gap. they fill it with a return to G, disrupting
the powerful IV-V motion with a preemptive resolution to I. and I think that's why we started with the
chorus progression: the two sections have the same harmonic skeleton, but in the verse,
it's broken. the chords are there but they're not quite
right. everything's a little off balance, and that
ties in really well with the story. the chorus reassures us that everything will
carry on, but the lyrics in the verses are full of anxiety and doubt, and in those moments,
when the Patient is doubting his legacy, the parade starts to break down. they play through those a couple times, then
we wind up in the bridge: (bang) where we take a brief visit to the relative minor,
E. the progression is dead simple, going back and forth between V and I, which helps establish
the new key quickly in the short amount of time available. I also want to highlight the drums here. underneath the B chord, Bryar's playing a
standard rock beat full of splashy cymbals: (bang) but whenever we go to E minor, he drops
the cymbals entirely, replacing them with some runs on the toms. (bang) replacing the
bright, shiny cymbal sounds with deep, resonant toms further emphasizes the darkness of the
relative minor. these changes add a cruel twist to the bright
facade of the parade. it paints his desire for a legacy as selfish
and self-serving, betraying a fear that he doesn't deserve to be remembered. the section ends by bridging the gap between
the tonalities with a walk-down in G minor: (bang) which returns us to our initial major
key just in time for the breakdown. this is over the chorus progression, or, at
least, almost. the first half is the same, but instead of
two bars each of C and D, we get this: (bang) where we go from C straight back to G like
the verse, but then we go back to C. we still get our full IV-V-I, so instead of an interruption,
this G provides, like, a bonus resolution. it's even stronger than before, and while
the lyrics are defiant, it's clear the Patient is being tempted by the promise of the parade. how do we know that? well, let's check in with Bryar. (bang) see? told you this marching snare would matter. but there's something interesting happening
in the melody. he's mostly sitting in that same G to B range:
(bang) but sometimes he drops down to C at the end of a line. (bang) so what's that about? well, I think it's doing two things. first, in the drum part, you may have noticed
that Bryar plays a kick at the start of every other bar. this creates a half-time feel,
making the section seem slower and more deliberate than the rest of the song, and these low Cs
appear on every other kick, reinforcing that pattern. but they also reinforce the lyrics. we're
used to songwriters using high notes to emphasize important words or phrases, but when everything's
already high, a sudden low note can do the same thing. it adds a little extra punch to the lines
it appears on. "the world will never take my heart". "I'm unashamed, I'm gonna show my scars." these are the most defiant lines, and they're
the ones you're supposed to remember, so Way punctuates them with these sudden melodic
breaks. the third time through the progression, we
suddenly hear this: (bang) which is a classic direct modulation. that's where you change keys by taking the
thing you were already playing and just, like, playing it a bit higher. we've switched from G major to A major, and
it feels both triumphant and desperate. lyrically, the Patient is questioning his
importance, which you can hear in the increased strain the new key places on Way's voice,
(bang) and in response the parade is pushing back, promising even greater glory, represented
the by soaring, Brian May-style guitar solos that set up the key change. (bang) it perfectly captures both sides of
the exchange in one musical gesture. and that's pretty much it. we get one last chorus in the new key as the
Patient concedes to the parade, then an extended outro over the chorus progression that layers
the vocals from both the breakdown and the chorus, showing complete acceptance of the
parade's enticing message. at the end, they hang on another A chord for
a while, and then… (bang) yeah. symbolism. and hey, thanks for watching. as always, this song was chosen by my patrons
on Patreon: the poll to pick the next one goes up over there next week. oh, and don't forget to to like, share, comment,
subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.
I watched this yesterday, if you have the time I 100% recommend it. The video dives into some music theory of why WTTBP is so impactful/such an amazing song.
I just watched this and loved it
This is an amazing video. I usually don’t care about music theory but this video is worth your time.
I like how the banjo makes it sound almost Asain