Why Aphex Twin's "Rhubarb" Is So Evocative

i'm going to try and explain a little bit why aphx twins rhubarb is so evocative and uh it's it's a good question because it's it's this very very simple repeating loop of chords just five chords and it's actually four because the last chord and the first quarter the same which by the way comes into import later but uh just these simple chords repeated over and over and it just floors and brings about so many feelings and uh it's a good question of why so to break this down i think i want to focus on three areas three factors that make this work so well and the three very very important things it's harmonic progression voice leading and the production so let's start with the harmonic progression i'm gonna actually switch over to piano just so i can kind of work things out for you a little bit so you can see what's going on i'm also going to be speaking a little bit of kind of basic and maybe light intermediate theory if you don't know exactly what i'm talking about i'll do another video on basic theory or you can browse any of the three trillion videos on youtube on basic theory but here we are in f sharp minor [Music] uh and if we express these in scale degrees one two three four five uh we can very easily talk about the progression in terms of typical chord symbols uh based on the scale degree so this is actually a d major chord which is our one two three four five six so that's our six major um and that's enharmonic in the minor key this is actually a tonal work even though it's it sounds modal it sounds like it's a just a aeolian mode but it's actually a tonal work based on the cadences so there is our six major two one minor there's our first progression six major one minor [Music] here i am just playing that same chord two chords just in a triad block with the the scale degree in the root there's your six and then there's the one but this first one is an inversion which he does for a very important reason six one the next is there's our three major chord one two three okay that's our me doremi three major you see the relation there three major there's our e major chord which is the seven so three seven and then down to six again and so now it's six down here whereas up here is six so from the top very slowly six major one minor three major seven major and six major down here so from the top once again six major actually uh second inversion [Music] one minor three major seven major and six major the original root that's it there are the chords why is this progression so haunting and evocative and wonderful well there are a few reasons in tonal music the power of the music comes from a little interplay of of course that create tension and release the whole point of tonality is to start with some tonal center which is the root usually if you're in c major it's you know there's your root if you're an f sharp minor there's your root and we can call that root home and the whole point of tonal music is to move away from home go on a journey and while you're on that journey explore some other chords that take you further away from home and the further away from home you get the more tension you feel for various reasons which we won't get into too much but and then you know typically tone music is all about resolving that tension with a cadence and cadence brings it back home so if we were in f sharp minor and we went to there's our four we're a little bit far away from home now and it feels uncertain and then we go all the way to five which is a quite a strong chord that's why they call it the dominant um and now we're far away from home and then the sixth major and now we really are far from home but then or we can go [Music] you know this these resolutions these cadences resolve to one and that releases the tension and that's kind of what makes music kind of you know so evocative and satisfying so um once we get into contemporary music uh you know things start to get a little interesting because composers begin to explore with not resolving things to try and create more tension and not release it this can bring about a lot of different feelings that classical music in the classic and romantic areas couldn't really create because they felt somewhat bound by uh always finding a resolution in form so in any case uh not to get too far into a theory lesson but in aphex twins rhubarb we start on uh this six chord which is very interesting we go immediately to the one so he kind of establishes right away where we're at and that is a very sad lamenting sound i mean a one minor chord minor chords already sound sad um no one really knows why that minor third sounds sad compared to the major third a lot of people say it has to do with the you know the actual acoustics what's happening with the harmonics series and that it's creating dissonance but whatever the case mostly by now it's it's probably just psychological association so this is already a sad chord but coming to that sad chord from the sixth major to the one is really really sad and i think part of that reason is because the sixth major is just far enough away and just positive enough to feel like a bit hopeful it just creates a bit of hope and then you immediately take it away by going to one and because of that there's kind of a tragedy if this hope continued like in sydney lopper's time after time right then like it gets more hopeful and it starts to carry you on a ride and you feel a little bit of joy but if you have that six and it immediately goes to one it really just saps you of that hope psychologically so is very strong it's a very very strong uh emotion and that's what we start out with that is the basis of this whole piece is this six to one now the real hope then comes in moving to what's called the relative major if you're an f sharp minor the relative major of this key is a major the reason being is because a major [Music] shares the same keys the same notes and the same key signature as f sharp minor they're related to one another and every key has its relative okay every major key has a relative minor and every minor key has a relative major and they're always a minor third apart always so if you're an f sharp minor your relative major is a if you're in c sharp minor your relative major is e if you're an f major your relative minor is [Music] d the relative keys to one another always share some interesting qualities when you put them in music because of the way that they share the notes they feel a little bit comforting because it uses the same notes in the scale as the original miner and yet it sounds a little bit different so it's it's kind of familiar [Music] you can actually start an f sharp minor and end up in a major yeah so going here to a major is kind of familiar and then this is a very interesting thing we're in a and it almost sounds like we've modulated to a major now modulating to your relative key is really common in uh tonal music it's something that in the old classical era the form would almost dictate it sometimes you would just redo a theme except in the relative major or if you were in major doing the relative minor here we're going up to here and now we are outlining a one five four progression which is really really common in this new major key of a sounds really hopeful [Music] and it sounds very happy little dick about jack two american kids living you see what i mean it's just really fun and really hopeful [Music] in a way this piece does the opposite of the trajectory instead of starting at home creating tension and releasing it it starts with tension and then gives you a little bit of hope and then takes it away which is really something so here we are playing around an egg and it sounds like it's gonna go somewhere hopeful and it feels really nice but the horrible trick of it is that this little this little video about jack and diane ends on that d major which if you recall is the six chord of f sharp minor so by doing this he's tricked us into getting right back to this tragic sort of lamenting cadence of six one so all told [Music] before we can even have a moment to feel some hope we're already looping back to the sixth one and the fact that it ends on the chord it starts creates kind of a mobius loop from which you will never escape and the sort of hypnotic repetitive minimalist nature of this track gives you that exact experience because there's never another progression there's never another melody you are stuck there you are stuck losing this hope over and over and over [Music] there we are and you'll never get away from it and somehow ending on the six every time every time the progression ends you don't end with a resolution you end with it hanging on that tragic chord which always brings you to the sadness that is evocative so it's a great progression and uh very very strong and if in fact he got all his selected ambient works both one and two from dreams this was a heck of a dream to have brought out this progression it's fantastic okay that's harmonic progression let's move to something a little more sophisticated but even more fun which is voice leading which has the potential to create even more uh evocative elements and do so in a way that is almost subconscious where you're not even aware that you're hearing things but you are hearing them and this is brilliant so when you have just straight block chords pounding out a progression if you hear that over and over for seven minutes like you do every time you listen to rhubarb you do kind of pick out the top note because top notes tend to just kind of stand out by virtue of them being on top so if someone just came up to you and you're an aphex twin fan and they whistle [Music] you know exactly what song there even though the whistle is monophonic and they can't you know do the harmony you know that song so that is sort of a melody and you know it and that's rhubarb but there's way more going on in here and it's utilizing the concept of voice leading and especially making use of leading tones in progressions the fact is is that every note in a chord if you remember chords are made up of notes from the uh scale and sometimes there are notes from outside the scale but you know usually in very simple tonal music like this the notes are all what are called n-harmonic which means they're part of the scale they're in and if you remember we counted the scale degrees we could refer to the notes that way there's our one two three four five so one three five is our one chord and then sorry but every note in a chord has a function this is the most important thing about music is the function of a note every note every time you hear something it has a purpose and that purpose is its function and its function will change based on what else is happening around it i'll give you an example from this track so here this because we're in a second inversion six chord there's our second inversion um this top note here is the third of the sixth chord and then this melody which is a perfect fourth going downward this note is the fifth of a one three five chord right of this minor triad so we're going from a third to a fifth and then these these are all fifths because these are all strict triads that's pretty cool but notice the other melodies buried inside this progression and they're buried with some really fantastic voice leading using leading tones that are buried within the chords so if you're starting again with this first chord which is that sixth major chord in its second inversion this middle note d and that is actually the root the one of the d major sigma the sixth chord in this progression okay but the closest note to it and in classical music and in most tonal music the leading tone is the idea is that it moves smoothly to its closest neighbor or the closest neighbor for the next chord that's going to be end harmonically and harmonic to that chord meaning that you want to create smooth motion so that a singer doesn't have to make leaps or odd you know jarring kind of breaks or leaps or things so the closest note from this that's going to be in the next chord is that note right in the first chord this is the one in the next chord it's the five [Music] but then we go to the next chord and that same note hasn't changed the note hasn't changed but the function has because in this chord it's functioning as 5 1 3 5 but in this chord it's functioning as the third so one little leap and this note has changed its function changing functions while keeping notes is part of what makes melodies great always remember that so now we have and if you heard it uh if you haven't i'll play it out for you there's this descending line like three blind mice [Music] and it comes from that third and then the fifth of this chord this is the seventh chord and then the fifth of the six chord so [Music] so if we take this little voice leading with all these chords in this middle note starting with this d we have this melody [Music] so these four descending notes it's descending it's falling it's kind of lilting and it's kind of resigned almost it's like it's resigned to falling which of course is tragic [Music] that's really beautiful but there's more because there's another hidden melody which is coming from the bottom note so here we have the bottom note which is our a that is the fifth in the sixth major chord one two three four five except it's down here because we're in second inversion [Music] i'll play it again and i'll kind of bring this note out in volume so you can hear it so we have [Music] the other melody is [Music] so if you put them together [Music] it's really outlining the f minor scale except going downward so even though you've got all these other chords you're going to the relative major you're moving to the sixth you have these all these little hopeful moments buried into that is the fact that you are stuck right there in f sharp minor in this falling motion which is very resigned and lamenting and quite frankly it's a little bit like arvopar in terms of its quality and its meaning [Music] all of that is happening while these chords are playing over and over you don't hear it but your brain does see so that's the magic of voice leading you can in the middle of chords very little melodies inside that the brain will hear and begin to register the king of this in classical music is probably brahms you could listen to brahms all day and be hearing about 10 times the music that you think you're hearing because of his mastery of that sort of inner in sort of inter-harmonic voice leading okay so the final thing we need to talk about is the production because the production utilizes the principles that has been laid out in the writing and uses it to maximum effect because harmonically and melodically we're evoking resignation and falling and tragedy you know just from the psychological quality of these chords and these harmonies um what are we going to do with production to you know kind of embody that and james knows what he's doing so by putting in this very warm kind of rolled off pad that has almost no high end [Music] with a lot of reverb of course number one it sounds really isolated it sounds very cold because it's in a very large space so there's all this space that the reverb is implying and there's nothing else around it because it's by itself well if you're in a huge space and there's no one else around you by yourself that sounds like isolation rolling off the high ends so you have sounds that are very warm without a lot of highs also makes it feel uh very alone because you don't have as much of the frequency band you know to to move in so two choices right off the bat help the entire track uh in the original in his version he's actually using kind of a pitch down almost like uh samples like low bit samples of a flute or an alto flute or something that are being played in chords and they're layered with some kind of glassy pad that's very very subtle later in the piece there's sort of a cello patch that's playing some stuff in the bass and then you have another counter melody that comes up later which is playing [Music] and that's usually put against something like uh let's see or something like that or um and that's all apart from those that's it and you just have this warm pad um and that just helps with the isolation so the feeling you get from the music makes you feel kind of sad makes you feel a little bit like there is no way out of it and that contributes to that resignation because if there's no way out of the progression you're in you are resigned to it and then the sound of the production and the reverb the space that it puts it in and the isolation that it puts it in the tempo of it which is so slow without a supporting beat to kind of give it any propelling motion is very lamenting the great thing about music is that everything about the music from the production to the mixing choices to the writing to the you know the voice thing we're talking about everything they all work together to create an overall feeling they all work together to express the artistic intent and that's what's happening here this is great symbiosis because the production is doing what the writing is trying to convey and it's just giving that to you audibly and the writing is giving it to you psychologically and they're working together and when they work together you get the feeling that you get when you hear [Music] rhubarb i hope you enjoyed this little mini lesson and i hope it wasn't as annoying as every other music analysis video on youtube and uh we will meet again someday i hope to discuss something else

Channel: Peter Zachos

Views: 9,075

Rating: 4.9772081 out of 5

Keywords: Aphex Twin, Rhubarb, Richard D. James, Ambient, Music Theory, Selected Ambient Works

Id: pu1OK-X0cP8

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LibRAWRian]

26 minutes on ultimately a 4 chord progression. He’s one of us! I watched the whole thing.

[u/JRSZ99]

The best thing about SAW2, is that majority of the songs is just a couple of chords repeated over and over for 7 minutes

[u/SymbolicForm]

There’s a lot of neat stuff in here!

[u/dropthebassboi]

this was super interesting! :)