hey welcome to 12tone!
Rage Against the Machine once shut down the New York Stock Exchange while filming a music
video illegally.
that has very little to do with the rest of this video, but it's an amazing story and
besides, intros are hard.
anyway let's talk about their first single, Killing In The Name.
it starts by playing this (bang) four times in a row, and while it looks a bit daunting,
it's actually just a big power chord.
power chords are chords with just two distinct notes: the root, in this case D, and the 5th,
A, and this is just those two notes played in three different octaves at once.
harmonically, then, this isn't doing much: it's just telling us that we're probably in
the key of D. but the harmony isn't the point.
using such a large voicing and letting it ring for such a long time sets the stage for
what's to come: it's big, dramatic, and in your face.
it's not trying to do anything complicated, it's just punching you in the face with sound.
next we get the bass playing this (bang) and the note choices here are interesting.
we've got a D and an Eb, but, well, this seems like a long way to go, doesn't it?
if we're already on this D then there's an Eb right next door.
if we'd used that one instead, we'd get this (bang) where the two notes are a half-step
apart, which is a really common technique for creating tension and fear.
you're probably most familiar with it from the soundtrack to Jaws, where it's the main
theme for the shark.
(bang)
but they don't do that.
instead the bass jumps up an octave to the next Eb, creating an interval called a minor
9th.
so… why?
well, large leaps are often associated with a sense of power and openness, and by using
a minor 9th they get to tap into some of that without losing the tension from the half-step
relationship.
you still feel the dissonance, but you also get a sense of strength to go along with it.
it's a really effective result from just two notes.
then the guitar comes in, playing this over the riff.
(bang) the first half is the same thing as before, but where things get really interesting
is when the bass goes to Eb.
these two notes are the 7th and 3rd degrees of an Eb minor 7 chord, while these two notes
are the 7th and 3rd of Eb major 7.
the 3rd and 7th degrees of a chord are called its guide tones, because they're the most
important notes in defining that chord's quality, so seeing two conflicting pairs of guide tones
here makes a strong statement that there really isn't any recognizable harmony, or at least
that whatever harmony there is is at war with itself.
that point is driven home by the rhythm, or rather, rhythms: the guitar is playing 4 evenly
spaced notes in the same time it takes the bass to play 3.
this is a little hard to hear on the original song because I'm pretty sure they recorded
it without a metronome so the rhythms aren't always perfectly synchronized, but the overall
effect is what's called a polyrhythm, where two different pulses are played at the same
time, and it creates an even stronger sense of conflict.
they also occasionally play this (bang) where the G is a bit more emphasized, but the same
basic analysis still applies.
after cycling through some variations on that theme, we wind up in the verse, which sounds
like this (bang) and the first thing to address is the tempo, because we've slowed down pretty
drastically.
this is what's called a metric modulation, where we shift from one tempo to another,
related one.
but tempos are just numbers, what does it mean for them to be related?
well, here's what a quarter note sounds like in the intro tempo, (bang) and here's what
a quarter note triplet sounds like in the new one.
(bang) it's the same pulse, we've just changed what that pulse represents.
anyway, to understand the notes here, we have to do what's called a reduction, which is
where you strip away all the bells and whistles to look at the riff's skeleton, and I think
that skeleton goes something like this: (bang) it doesn't sound nearly as cool, but it does
a good job showing us what's happening.
we're sitting on D for most of the bar, then stepping up to E and dropping back down.
this is a fairly common approach to riffs: you're building motion not from harmonic relationships,
but from simple proximity.
we get a sense of rising and falling because the notes are literally rising and falling.
so why do I think this is the right reduction?
well, let's look at our original riff.
the first three beats of the bar are mostly playing either a high or a low D, especially
in prominent rhythmic spots like beat 1 and beat 3.
and even when there's other notes, they're mostly C and F, the guide tones for D minor
7.
the only thing that stands out is this F#, which is a brief allusion to another tonality,
but given that nothing else supports it there, it mostly just sounds like a piece of dissonant
decoration.
then we get to beat 4, and see this (bang) which is a classic device called a trill,
where we start on one note, step away, then quickly step back.
trills are mostly just decoration too, so we can pretty safely reduce this beat to just
one sustained E.
next comes the prechorus (bang) which should sound fairly familiar: the start of this riff
(bang) is borrowed directly from the verse.
it's the exact same thing, it's just instead of completing the whole riff, they jump up
to this high B. then they do it again with a Bb, and finally an A. this gives us that
same foundation on D that we saw earlier, but with an added descending line on top to
create another bit of motion.
then we end on this (bang) which feels to me like an elaborated version of the trill
we saw earlier, and again I think this can be boiled down to just an E. this gives us
the same D, D, D, E structure we had in the verse, just spread out over twice as long.
then we hear this (bang) which is the same thing but we end on C instead.
much like E is the note above D, C is the note below, so this creates a pretty similar
sense of motion, just in the opposite direction.
that leads us into the chorus (bang) which, as you can hear, is pretty simple.
it's just D. the guitar starts scratching after a bit, which is where you mute the strings
with your hand so all you get is a short, percussive hit, but beyond that, it's just
the one note.
there's still something interesting going on here, though: the rhythm.
again.
they've switched to what's called swung 16ths, where each pair of 16th notes gets stretched
a bit, with the first one becoming longer and the second becoming shorter so they resemble
16th-note triplets.
this gives it a slightly more bouncy feel, which lets the vocals carry a bit more interest
during the long silences from the rest of the band.
then we go to this (bang) which is an elaborated version of that chorus line, featuring a cool
walk-up at the end.
this seems to be drawn from D minor pentatonic (bang) which is a simplified version of the
D minor scale that drops a couple of the more complex notes.
it skips the A, though, giving us a larger leap from G to C, which helps propel us back
to the start of the riff.
then we get to the solo.
I'm gonna be brief here 'cause understanding a Tom Morello solo requires a lot of talk
about guitar tones and, honestly, that's not my area of expertise, but I can talk about
the note choices. he starts by playing a descending line, again, in D minor pentatonic.
(bang) he uses what's called a whammy pedal, which shifts the notes he's playing up by
two octaves, giving them a shrill, squealing sound that he switches on and off throughout
the line to give it more motion.
the first time through, he ends by jumping up to A, the 5th degree of the scale, while
the second time he just steps up to D. as we mentioned, these two notes are the most
stable notes in the key, so ending on them helps ground the solo before moving forward.
after that he starts playing some trills, first on a high C, then dropping down to a
low A. C is one of the more colorful notes in D minor pentatonic, and then A is, again,
very stable, so the two give a bit of contrast without leaving the confines of the scale.
then we end with this (bang) where we have D, the root, which steps up to E, the second.
this breaks from the minor pentatonic sound, reintroducing us to the full minor scale before
going to Ab, the tritone.
this is especially interesting because it's at the very end of the solo, where we'd expect
resolution, but instead we get probably the most dissonant available note, which denies
us a chance to rest before moving into the next section.
speaking of which, that section is a really long, slow build that sounds incredibly busy,
but at its heart, it's really just playing this: (bang) yeah, it's a walk up the D minor
scale.
again, though, harmonic complexity isn't what they're trying to do here.
the rising line, coupled with the frantic strumming on the guitar, the chaotic, almost
random drum fills, and the lyrics I'm not gonna repeat because 12tone is a family show,
create a constantly building sense of tension in a way that's immediately recognizable.
and that's pretty much it.
the rest of it is just that embellished chorus riff again, then we end with this (bang) which
calls back to the intro.
I think this song is a great example of how writing with riffs can be a completely different
animal than traditional harmonic models, and I had a lot of fun trying to wrestle with
it, so hopefully you learned something too.
anyway, thanks for watching, and thanks to Patreon patron Skylar J Eckdahl for suggesting
this song!
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