7 Teorias Musicais do Tema Principal De "Final Fantasy VII" - Parte III

7 Music Theory Lessons from the Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII - Part III

Lesson V: Borrowed Chords

Why this lesson is important:

 As stated earlier, a standard piece of music will be composed almost entirely of the same 7 chords made of the same 7 pitches.  While you can build an entire career within those constraints, with a little extra sophistication you can bring a little more color to your music by using Borrowed Chords.  Basically, this gives you more chords to choose from when harmonizing a melody.

The Lesson:

A Borrowed Chord is a chord borrowed from the key parallel to the one you’re writing in.  Parallel keys are major and minor keys that share the same root note.  E Major and E minor are two different keys that use two different scales, but they both use E as their root note.  Because they use different scales, they use different pitches and – since chords are built with the pitches of the scale – they contain different chords as a result.  The parallel key to E Major is E minor,  which contains the chords E minor, F# diminished, G major, A minor, B minor, C major, and D major.  Why not ask your good neighbor, E minor, if you can borrow a cup of sugar and a C Major chord for a little while?  That’s what neighbors are for.

Remember in the last lesson when I said that Uematsu uses chords in E Major for the main sections of the piece with the exception of 1 bar?  In that single bar, he adds a little magic by harmonizing the melody with chords borrowed from E minor.  Boom.  Magic.  Give it a listen again and pay close attention to the chords underneath the melody:

So, why is this so special?  There are a couple of reasons that this particular usage of borrowed chords is a fantastic example.  Assuming that the melody was composed before the chord progression, Uematsu – whether he noticed or not – could’ve easily found himself painted into a corner if he didn’t know that borrowing chords was possible.  If you follow through a textbook lesson for learning to harmonize a melody, you’ll first be taught to harmonize with chords that contain the melody’s pitch at any given time.  If the melody is playing a C, the triad chord you choose has to contain a C.  In the example below, if Uematsu’s knowledge of harmony didn’t reach any further than that lesson, FFVII’s theme may have sounded like this…

Or this…

Bleh.  Thank goodness for those borrowed chords, right?  If Uematsu chose to harmonize his existing melody with chords containing the melody’s pitches, he would’ve been limited to a small handful of options – none of which produce a particularly strong or remarkable chord progression.  Happily, a lot of the rock music that likely influenced him used this technique and other similar tricks to keep things interesting.

How you can use this lesson:

Take a look at a piece – either an old one, a new one, or the next one you haven’t even started yet.  Figure out which key it’s in, and then look up what chords are available from the parallel key.  Remember – if you’re writing in C Major, the parallel key is in C minor.  A quick Google search will help you find a list of the chords available in that parallel key.  Next, figure out which chords you’ve been using behind your melodies and experiment with substituting chords from the parallel key – especially when you feel like the chord progression could stand to be a little stronger.

Lesson VI: Common-tone Modulation

Why this is important:

You could write music for years without ever using modulation, but adding a modulation – or key change – to a piece of music creates a very dramatic effect.  You can use a modulation to create an epic, rising effect (see Lesson VII).  Alternatively, you can use a modulation to go from a major (happy-sounding) key to a minor (sad/ominous-sounding key) as Uematsu did in Lesson III, where he uses a deceptive cadence to pivot us into a minor key.  Regardless, the use of modulations in music is not only common amongst great composers and song writers – it’s fun and interesting!  A very easy-to-use technique for modulation is called common-tone modulation, and so we’ll start there.

The Lesson:

Imagine that your favorite TV show has just aired its series finale, and the network has decided to produce a spin-off show that – while belonging to the same genre as the original show – is very different than what you’re used to.  How do they pull off these new shows without losing the entire audience from the original series, thus avoiding the need to start over from scratch?  By leveraging a character who existed in the first series and will continue on in the second series.  This character provides an anchor of familiarity and a point of reference for the new series, and a common-tone modulationworks in a similar fashion.

Modulation, as I stated earlier, occurs when the tonal center of a piece of music changes.  This results in the use of a new root note, scale, and set of chords as per Lesson II above.  While this effect can be totally awesome to use in your music, you shouldn’t just dump your listeners into a new key without an anchor or some sense of familiarity.  That would be very jarring and unpleasant to listen to, even if the average listener can’t articulate why it’s unpleasant.  If you don’t want your modulation to sound like you accidentally played a wrong chord and decided to run with it, you need to use an anchor to pivot your piece into the new key.

In a common-tone modulation, you leverage a repeated or sustained note from the original key as a bridge to carry the music into a new key which also contains that note.  For example, if you’re in the key of C major and ending a section with a C major chord, you may modulate into G major by way of the G note, which is found in both the C major chord and the G major chord.  In OST version of Final Fantasy VII’s theme, a commom-tone modulation is used to raise the piece from Emajor into Gmajor, by using B as the common-tone.  You can listen to a simplified version of this modulation in the following video, in which I emphasise the common tone by playing quarter notes right before the modulation occurs:

Did you hear how the natural this transition sounded?  It’s subtle, but it’s enough of an anchor to make the modulation enjoyable to your ear.

How you can use this lesson:

This technique isn’t rocket surgery, but it’s very effective so long as you’re using it very deliberately.  To begin using this technique, I would recommend choosing (or writing) a piece of music with a strong melody or a very catchy ostinato (think Jenova).  This technique works well with both looping- and scored/cued music that may accompany a scene, trailer, or event in the game.  Because video game music is short-form music by nature, the modulation point should be chosen very carefully and would best be used to transition to a new section or to repeat an existing section of music as Uematsu did with the above excerpt.  By modulating and repeating the exact same musical material in a new key, an emotionally lifting effect is achieved while content is recycled in an interesting way.

Finally, keep in mind that – because most video game music loops – if you modulate to a new key you will ultimately have to modulate back to the original key at some point.  Make sure to plan/write accordingly!

Lesson VII: Common-chord Modulation

 Why this lesson is important:

As discussed in Lesson VI, modulation creates variety in your music – which is especially important in music that will be heard repeatedly throughout gameplay.  The more tools you have at your disposal to keep it interesting for the player, the better.  Common-chord modulation is another method for changing keys in your music, and if you’ve become comfortable with the other lessons in this post you have all of the knowledge you need to execute this technique effectively.

The Lesson:

A common-chord modulation is achieved by transitioning from the original key to the new key through a chord that occurs in both keys.  Just as a common-tone modulation uses a shared tone to anchor the listener through the modulation, a common-chord modulation uses a shared chord – called the pivot chord – to make the transition between keys.

For example, you’ll remember from Lesson II the key of E Major contains the following chords: E Major, F# minor, G# minor, A Major, B Major, C# Minor, and D# diminished.  If I wanted to modulate to the key of D major, I could use any chord that occurs in both keys as my pivot chord.  The key of D major contains the following chords: D major, E minor, F# minor, G major, A major, B minor,and  C# diminished.  This gives us two possible options for our pivot chord – F# minor and A major – because these chords exist in both keys.

For this example, we’ll actually be looking at the same exact place in the music as we did in Lesson VI – but not the version found on the original soundtrack.  This time, we’re going to look at how that modulation occurs in the orchestral version.  Recall that in Lesson VI above, Uematsu uses a common-tone modulation to make the jump from E Major to G major on the OST version of the track.  On the Final Fantasy VII: Reunion Tracks album released in 1997, Uematsu collaborated with Shiro Hamaguchi to arrange this theme for a full orchestral performance.  It’s a gorgeous arrangement with some additional ear-candy built into it, including the new common-chord modulation from E Major to G major.

BUT, that’s not all.  The real magic is which chords they used as the pivot chords.  Remember the borrowed chord example from Lesson V, when Uematsu borrows a bVI and a bVII chord from the parallel minor key to spice things up a bit?  I’m not sure if this was by original design or a happy coincidence that was allowed to happen because of the keys Uematsu chose to use in the original soundtrack, but they were able to use the borrowed bVI and bVII chords as the pivot chords!  It’s a little easier to digest if you see the Roman numeral analysis and hear the modulation in the video below:

See what they did there?  In E Major, that same bVI-bVII chord trick we’ve been hearing uses C major and D major chords.  The destination key of G major contains both of those chords (IV and V chords, respectively), and as a result they use the bVI – bVII chord progression in E major AND as a IV – V – I progression in the new G major key (an authentic cadence, as per Lesson III).  Mind.  Blown.  Effectively, they combine Lessons II, III, and V in order to pull off the common-chord modulation.  See accompanying illustration:

How to use this lesson:

Choose a piece you’re working on, or one that you’ve already finished.  Decide where you’d like to place a modulation (perhaps repeat a section that already exists?), and use this Wikipedia page to identify the relative minor and closely-related keys.  Choosing from these closely-related keys will be easier to modulate to, as they already share several common tones/chords.  While using borrowed chords to modulate to a new key is a neat trick, it’s not necessary to try until you’re comfortable with a basic common-chord modulation.

Next, all you have to do is pick a key you’d like to end up in.  Experiment by playing your melody/ostinatos in the original key followed immediately by the destination key.  Remember that each modulation will have to return to the original key if your music is looping, so you’ll have to modulate twice.

 Conclusion and Next Steps:

Phew!  Still with me?  That was a lot of information, and you should not try to implement all of these at once.  Get comfortable with one new technique until you’ve internalized it before moving on to the next one.  Just like in an RPG, it’s all about gradual progress and accumulating new skills, abilities, and Materia along the way.  Take your time, and have some fun with it.

Special thanks to: DJ Cutman, who noticed that the volume on the videos was pretty low and took it upon himself to boost the audio and send me the new versions to update the post.  You can listen to his epic remixes and be jealous of his website by clicking here.  Thanks, DJ Cutman!