When I play this song, Resonance by Home, chances are you're feeling one of two things
one an introductory experience with the song because you've never heard it,
or two, a longing for a deep purple 80's utopia surrounded by neon beaches and cool synth grooves
But why?
The second feeling seems to be the majority opinion when it comes to this song,
not only because 9 out of 10 comments on it seem to deal with its nostalgia,
but because on Youtube at least it's always accompanied by visuals that evoke that similar nostalgic feeling.
But the nostalgia that many people feel when it comes to this song is no mistake,
Because the very composition of it was actually built to evoke these emotions.
The music theory behind this song is pretty simple because there's actually only three simple chords that make up the entirety of the song
an A-flat, an E-flat, and a B-flat
Chords are pretty much what makes up the baseline of the song
that juicy synth you hear in the beginning and later on as more pieces are layered on top.
However, this baseline is only really made up of the A-flat and the E-flat; the B-flat only making appearance twice in the song.
Musically this makes for a simple yet effective Technique of making a song that's generally happier
as the A-flat and the E-flat are both major within the song,
the A-flat Being the 1 chord as the song is written in A-flat major,
and the E-flat Being the 5 chord as its 5 intervals away from the A-flat.
B-Flat is Minor within the key so those sprinklings of B-flat
create musical tension that ultimately resolves back to the one chord each time It's played,
the A-flat, but if I just play these chords back and Forth the occasional B-flat, the song sounds distinctly
boring, but not only that it doesn't sound like home at all. It's too happy; too upbeat.
Here's what the genius of the song comes into play; while the progression is simple a flat sandy flats often being played multiple times over
These basic A-flat and E- flat and even B-flat chords are not what is used throughout the song.
What Home did when he composed it was add different notes to these chords,
usually G's, F's, and C's to create what are referred to as major 6, 7, 9, and 13 Chords.
These are really the stars of the show when it comes to Resonance because they have a really unique tendency to them.
In the case of an additional F note and a 1 chord, our A-flat, adding that extra 6 creates what are really
two three-note chords, or triads, being shared across a total of four notes. Though when Home lays these chords out
He'll typically add another note on the top, meaning, there's actually five notes being shared.
The first chord that is being created is that basic A-Flat major triad
But what's also created is an F-minor triad
composed of A-flat, C, and F. This happens with every single chord in the song.
Adding a G, C, and B-flat to the a flat major creates an A-flat major 9
composed of an A-flat major, E-flat major, and C-minor
while adding just a C and a G creates an a flat major seven
composed of just the A-flat major and another C-minor. It's this tandem playing of both a major
and minor chord at the same time across a single set of notes that blurs the lines between the brightness of the first
and the darkness of the second to create that signature Melancholic sound
that's so integral to the song. So it ends up happening is you get this continued
Melancholic Aura with each chord as two progressions play out, one that's major, and one that's minor
But now if I play all these chords in the same position, that is, in the same octave,
everything sounds kind of muddy. There isn't really much movement.
So that doesn't make for much of the quality sound either. What Home does to compensate is change up the ordering of the notes that
make up each of the chords, or, in musical jargon, invert them
to create what are referred to as chord inversions. Doing this creates that rising and falling feeling of each chord as it passes.
[Home-Resonance is played on a traditional piano]
[Home-Resonance album version plays]
While only eight unique chords are being played these chords are struck a total of 44 times
With different chord inversions being used that either have the majority of their notes clustered higher or lower than the previous chord
creating the idea of a more complex progression.
When you remember that these chords are really only built on just three simplified chords,
you start to get an understanding of how simple this song really is.
The simplicity lends itself really well to that Melancholic Tone,
as it makes it both adaptable and accessible to the audience. The song doesn't utilize something really complex like classical music
Chopins' Fantasie-Impromptu for example, and while it itself sounds great
It's audio is unique, and, because of that, distant from us, primarily because of things like cross rhythms, tempo changes,
and Key Transpositions
Which you typically don't see very often in contemporary music. On the flip side when you look at pieces from the childhoods
Of people that may be feeling
Nostalgia for this song, music from the seventies into the 90s you see the same simplicity that's embodied in Resonance. if you look at Billy
Joel's "Piano Man" for instance it's really easy to take note of the fact that the song is written with a simple 1 through 6
progression using a Backbone of chords that continually resonate as the song progresses
Joel utilizing a major 1, 4, and 5
Alongside on minor 2 and 6 as he lays out a melody over top with the use of his voice
It's 9 o'clock
on a Saturday
regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin
Home, likewise,
utilizes the familiar 1 through 6 structure, but limits themselves specifically to the 1 and 5 with varying points of a 2 chord, the B-Flat
to create tension that would usually be created with the minor 6th chord. The use of the major 6th note in Resonance however
Integrates the familiar Minor 6 into the A-flat major chord as the F-minor, the minor 6th chord of the A-flat, is
Integrated directly into the A-flat or one chord.
The four chord of the A-flat, D-flat major, is likewise integrated into a B-flat minor seven, that two chord I mentioned earlier
Progressions utilizing these four chords are actually everywhere and while the overt progression of Resonance is one in five those familiar
Sixes and fours are still in there.
Likewise when you look at the melodies in the song what's done is also reminiscent of Modern Media
Well the melody that plays throughout the song, the one that begins around the 23rd second mark, may sound unique
It's just a series of notes that make up those same chords that are now in the background.
This technique, called Arpeggiation, is used by almost all contemporary popular music.
Look at something as recent as Despacito by Luis Fonsi and Justin Bieber. The chorus in the song is composed of what may
Seem like a more complex progression as the song is written in B-minor
but understood as D-major because each key can be interpreted as either major, or
Corresponding minor, depending on the location of the first note. The composition remains to be made up of the one six four and five
Albeit in a different order. In the same way the melody that sung over these is almost
entirely created by notes within these chords, with some passing tones thrown in for tension. About 20 years ago "Train" did the same thing and
Drops of Jupiter, and the Beatles of the same thing fifty years ago
in "Let It Be". 40 years ago and a japanese composer by the name of Koji
Kondo was doing the exact same thing, but in the video games industry.
Hardware limitations of his company's flagship product, the Nintendo Entertainment System, would force Kondo into creating
Compositions that couldn't play more than three notes at any one beat in the music. As a result, chord triads weren't really a possibility,
And at most only two notes would be played together at a certain cleft
Kondo typically relegating this to the treble. In the base, an arpeggiation of chords that would accompany the trebles melody would then be used,
Creating that distinct sound that anyone who's ever played older video games knows all too well.
[Mario theme is played on a traditional piano]
Known as polyphony and more specifically counterpoint,
the use of multiple harmonic rhythms against each other was the hallmark of this music as it is for many melodies of Resonance.
these compositions were always pretty keen on utilizing those one, four, five, and six chords too, alongside major six and seven chords as
also with resonance. But all of this being said if I lay out all these melodies and chords on top of each other, I get this.
[Home-Resonance on a traditional piano with melody]
and not this
[Home-Resonance album version plays]
Resonance is clearly a synth piece, as was a lot of popular music throughout the 70s and 80s
commonly referred to collectively as "Synthpop". The composition generally includes two things. One, a bass synth melody, and
two, a counter melody
[Toto-Africa plays]
Because this is modern music though. There's often multiple countermelodies including a voice and the bass. Enter Resonance,
And there's a synth bass and multiple counter melodies of varying pitch. Resonance organizes a lot of its synthesizer
Composition in ways that link it to some of the most popular songs of the 1980s, not only in its melodic polyphony
But in the way that the synthesizers themselves are configured. There's a haziness to its sound, something
That's somewhat different from simply pressing sustain on your keyboard and playing a melody
moderations to the original Waveform of the audio like a low cutoff
frequency and audio contour give the notes a smooth sound while those to the audio envelope, how the audio rises and falls,
allow notes to continue on as new ones are being struck and gradually bleed into each other. Adding further effects to each song like wetness
And rate creates a perceived echo as each note and chord is struck further allowing each note to ring out even as the next few
are hit
alterations to these vary from track to track
Giving each a distinct sound and feel to them. The bass chords are going to utilize them very heavily, the main arpeggiation only slightly so,
and the lead and Bells moderately. But even more than those effects
Resonance also utilizes waveforms identical to those of a lot of synthesized music which typically come in four varieties.
Sine, Square, Triangle, and Sawtooth synth music however for the most part only makes use of
Three of these when creating initial sounds, with scientifically requiring certain
Configurations to achieve due to the core oscillator that generates each sound being sawtooth.
Thus, Triangle, Square,
Sawtooth, and in the case of the Moog Synthesiser used to generate Resonance, Shark-tooth
Waveforms were all used heavily in the 1980s giving sense that distinctive
Computer-generated sound to it, as opposed to the smoothness of audio generated by traditional instrumentation.
Square and Sawtooth do sound the most dissonant however
and that's not really utilized much in the bass chords allowing them to sound akin to Toto's Africa, while the
Arpeggiations tend to make heavier use of them creating a sound closer to, say, Take On Me, or Little Red Corvette
these more biting sounds are also what give 8-bit music its same signature feel, and is the reason those bells towards the end of the
Song sound like something straight out of Nintendo's Metroid
Add in those hazy effects and that melancholic feeling and it's pretty easy to understand why Resonance is so nostalgic
This is MisterAmazing. Thanks for watching
An Incredible overwhelming thank you to Robert Mieta
Whose transcriptions of the song into MIDI have not only been playing throughout the entirety of the video
But were the very means that allowed me to analyze the music theory and synthesizer composition as heavily as I was able to
Please subscribe to him and show him some love for his incredible work
Transcribing the song