What Makes Studio Ghibli Music SO GOOD??!!

whenever i hear soundtrack of a studio ghibli film i inevitably come across a feeling of nostalgia and a sweet sense of optimism i get a mixture of emotions such as feeling loneliness and communion innocence and coming of age feeling grounded to the earth and floating without gravity and feeling at peace while also feeling homesick to a place i can't even remember so i started to wonder how does the music of these films feel so wistfully nostalgic magical and personal in this video we're going to explore some of the elements behind the music of joe hisaishi the main composer behind some of the most recognized studio ghibli films including spirited away my neighbor totoro hal's moving castle and so many others i'm then going to take my notes to try creating a miniature soundtrack that i think fits into the studio ghibli sound hiseishi's scores complement the storyline by directing you to the emotional core of each scene and character way we feel the music is so immediate so it significantly impacts how we experience any visual and dialogue information hayao miyazaki the director behind these films uses dialogue quite sparingly and sets up the plot with plenty of gaps of information so the viewer is often left to fill in the blanks using context and imagination this is where i believe music plays a big role in shaping how we understand the characters and events as they unfold music is also used quite sparingly compared to many other mainstream animated films for example in hal's moving castle i noticed a span of five total minutes where no music was present this makes the moments where music is used that much more impactful and where it isn't that much more real each film is a world onto its own so he says he will build his musical themes in vastly different ways the score to my neighbor totoro for example uses a lot of synthesizers has a minimalist nature to parts of the score and has themes with hints of pentatonicism whereas a score from a movie like ponyo has a full orchestral sound has a full choir for a lot of the tracks takes influence from post-romantic and 20th century works and has some similarities to many classic disney animated films even with such differences there are general characteristics that are identifiably consistent throughout many of the movies i've served firstly here are some adjectives that come to mind sincere optimistic poetic nostalgic youthful eclectic theatrical and wistful among so many others many of the tracks embrace having space and are not excessive in nature the notes have room to breathe [Music] i think this really reflects the introspective and melancholic nature of the scene where our main character chihiro is bravely embarking on a sort of mysterious journey to face a witch in order to save her friend haku it is really hard to describe the harmony of hisaichi style as a whole because so many of these tracks are rooted in different styles cultures genres from all over the world that being said i would include western classical music as one of the primary influences that i hear so with this piece there's a clear tonal center in mind of e minor i also hear references to renaissance and baroque music especially in the original instrumentation we also have that minor five movement here instead of a 5'7 which gives it that medieval flavor and later on we have a textbook example of some circle of fifths there are also certain overlaps with jazz harmony especially with the use of modal language extended chords and non-functional harmony these are the famous chords with these nice chordal voicings and a very ambiguous sense of harmony so what are these chords the way i make sense of them is to start first from a potentially simplified version of them and then make comparisons now if you just add a few notes to this we will get hisaishi's chords so the first chord if we take that middle note take it on top and then add a ninth while reinforcing that f here we have a prettier voicing already for the next two chords we're going to add a fourth on top so it has this open sound but there's a little distance added now instead of going to the c in the same fashion we're going to divert our attention away from where we think we're going and we're going to play c-sharp g-sharp which is a chromatic step above and with this instead of playing the g-sharp stack of fourth on top so it's sort of like a deceptive cadence in that there are certain things in the first three chords that lead our ear somewhere so when we hear this it's slightly unexpected okay so there's literally a thunderstorm and hail outside this seriously happened and i think it's a perfect opportunity to mention something about sound effects and foley they're a crucial part of the oral experience a lot of times they're of sounds of nature they make things feel much more real and in this way it enhances your musical experience as you're watching the film as well now hisaishi's melodies are some of the most beautiful lyrical and memorable melodies i've ever heard the balance between the tension and release in some of these melodies are so beautifully peculiar almost because on one hand they're so full of harmonic tension there's a sense of direction and shape and on the other hand they feel like they don't really need to go anywhere part of this may be in how he combines certain scales and modes with certain harmonic movements [Music] this part of the melody is combined with these chords [Music] instead of having the c as the root which sounds more static now here's a small detail that i notice moments like this in the melody these anticipatory notes instead of landing on the downbeat or here too instead of doing this these are sort of chatty [Music] now just as an experiment i'm going to try applying some of these observations to a very famous piece pachelbel's canon in d and see if i can transform it into something that is close to this studio ghibli sound so this piece has a very classic chord progression and a straightforward melody and now i've turned it into the following the first thing i did was to alter the chords in the beginning so that the tonality is not so clear i fragmented the melody so that there's more space in between the notes and room for rhythmic variety and also the general pace is slower and if you didn't already notice i was definitely inspired by one summer day for this so here i'm going to transition into hisaishi's actual music [Music] now in the following section i'm going to just list out as many potential influences that i hear in hisaishi's soundtracks i hear a lot of post-romantic russian composers like tchaikovsky rimsky-korsakov all the way to stravinsky prokofiev even shasikovic a ton of german and austrian traditions from bach beethoven wagner mahler strauss [Music] some chopin especially in terms of lyricism i hear american composers like copeland and gershwin also english composers like britain and percy granger and how they embrace jazz and folk songs a ton of french and italian food traditions [Music] wc and ravel especially in terms of colorful orchestration and harmony [Music] all kinds of electronic music especially experimental genres from the 70s and 80s and even though pop music is constantly evolving a lot of vocal pop minimalist composers like steve reich terry riley phillip class [Music] intercultural rhythms and instruments a bunch of latin rhythms and latin traditions and of course japanese folk traditions and scales obviously this list is incomplete so let me know in the comments what you think is missing also i would so appreciate it if you drop me a like on this video and consider subscribing if you're interested in deep dives like this one on various musical topics it's becoming clear to me that it's almost impossible to truly define the studio ghibli sound while there are so many insights to uncover by mapping out the influences analyzing the music theory and the arrangements these things don't give us the full picture it's the combination of all of these elements especially in relation to the picture and context in which we as viewers are experiencing the films so in many of my deep dives i like to reassemble my notes to create something original for this one it may be tricky but i'm still going to give it a try i'm going to create a mini soundtrack of sorts using footage from existing ghibli movies and i'm just going to remash them up a little bit and create demos for them favorite ghibli movie spirited away i'm then going to ask my brother who i just found out is a massive studio ghibli fan while making this video to rate my tracks on a scale of one to ten second favorite ponyo third favorite totoro you said a different one five minutes ago while writing this my strategy was to think of a new made-up storyline in my head and i tried to add in as much contrast between the scenes as possible in terms of the emotional textural and instrumental qualities and now here are my three demos [Music] yeah this is definitely [Music] ten [Music] one two one two one two that's it stamp that dirt out girls that's it [Music] okay that's all the chores you're done it sounds like disney but it could be something else [Music] seven and a half [Music] but this is definitely ten this is from spirited away is it no that first part was it seemed like it [Music] this kind of sounds like it is it's a ghibli i give it like eight eight eight and a half [Music] so [Music] i think my biggest takeaway from all of this is to realize that music does not need to be overly complex in order to support a complex emotion like nostalgia and innocence loss for example also in order to have your sound you don't need to just do one thing hiseishi makes music in so many different ways yet he still has his sound which is a large part of what the studio ghibli sound is i hope you found this equally interesting thank you to my patrons on patreon for your continued support and if you're interested in checking out another video where i'm commenting on media compositions you may want to check out my video where i'm commenting on the music from squid game

Channel: Nahre Sol

Views: 241,912

Keywords: piano, music composition, harmony, music theory, nahre sol, classical music, improvisation, pianist, film scoring, jazz, modern music, studio ghibli, joe hisaishi, spirited away, ponyo, my neighbor totoro, kikis delivery service, nausicaa of the valley of the wind, japanese music, anime music, howls moving castle, merry go round, one summer day

Id: pbmwn-k-8ME

Length: 14min 6sec (846 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 26 2022