[clearing throat]
[classical piano music]
- It's a nice piano.
Hi, I'm Nicholas Britell, and I'm a composer and pianist
and I love writing music for film and television.
Today I'm excited to explore some of the building blocks
of music, looking at the idea of chords and keys.
Exploring what that is from a composer's toolkit
and thinking about perhaps some of the
potential misperceptions that people have
about what chords are and how they feel.
The goal is definitely not to oversimplify these ideas
but actually to revel in the unbelievable complexity
of what music is, and to think about the ways in which
people experience music.
So what are chords?
Chords are actually any time you play three or more
different notes at the same time, that's a chord.
So for example, this is a chord, this is a chord
this is a chord, this is a chord.
This is also a chord, this is also a chord.
These are all actually major chords.
There's another type of common chord people talk about
which is a minor chord, which sounds a little bit like this.
[minor chord piano music]
Some people like to say that a major chord
perhaps feels sturdy, feels resolute and strong, maybe.
People sometimes think a minor chord is perhaps
a little more uncertain, a little less strong.
A little less stable, possibly, but I would caution
from ever feeling like we're saying that major chords
are happy, and minor chords are sad.
In and of themselves, they have certain characteristic
sound, but a lot of our emotional understanding of music
is from the context of music, so that could be from
the way that chords interrelate with each other
it could be from the way that chords interrelate
with rhythms and melodies, and then how that music itself
relates to what you're seeing against a moving picture.
Music has this very, very complex set of emotions
that the context of the notes themselves changes that
and when you put it up against the picture
it changes it even further, and that there aren't any
simple answers and takeaways to particular chords and keys.
Now there's a piece that I directly related
major and minor chords together, and that's actually
"Little's Theme" from the film "Moonlight"
directed by Barry Jenkins.
[mellow gentle orchestral music]
So this is the first appearance of "Little's Theme"
in the film, and in context when you put it up
against the picture, there's a feeling of poetry
in the music, there's a tenderness, and there's also
a sense of contemplation for Little
trying to understand the world around him.
- All right, you're all right now.
- So looking at the actual notes in "Little's Theme"
the piece is basically structured around
two types of chords.
Where hearing D Major and shifting to G Minor
just this kind of a chord that we heard earlier
and then shifting right back again to D Major.
So right away, There's actually this musical context
that's been created, the chords aren't by themselves
anymore, they're related to each other
and all of a sudden, although it seems like
a simple initial idea, there's actually this complex
set of feelings that comes from these chords
played together in this kind of a rhythm.
Now as a film composer, this is just step one
of the process, actually thinking of a piece of music
and how it might feel on its own, but ultimately
the key question is, does it work with the movie?
[mellow, gentle piano music]
When I took that piece and put it up against
this particular scene, it immediately felt like
it was connected to the picture.
Does not happen that way often. [laughing]
I can totally say that, there's many times
I write a piece of music, imagining things
and then you see the footage, and you're like
I'm totally wrong, this has no relationship
to what I'm looking at.
If a piece of music doesn't feel like it's connected
to the movie, then it doesn't matter how beautiful
the piece of music is, it's not right for the film
and this process of trying to figure out what works
for a particular scene, what works for a film
it's a very abstract and experimental one.
There's this alchemy of not knowing, and attempting
and experimenting, and that's the process
of writing film music with a director.
The next idea that evolves out of the chords
is the idea of keys.
Keys are essentially groups of notes that have a tendency
towards a certain type of chord.
So for example the C Major scale
[C major scale piano music]
has a tendency towards playing a C major chord.
The C minor scale
[C minor scale piano music]
has a tendency towards a C minor chord.
Keys are a way of thinking about many different chords
and understanding the ways in which chords
can actually relate to each other.
It's not overly complicated, it's just a tendency.
It's like a gravitational pull that certain notes have
towards certain chords.
There's an example that I'd like to explore
from the film "Battle of the Sexes"
a piece of music which is featured throughout the film
but comes in most specifically during the match.
At the moment where Billie Jean King
is beginning to completely beat Bobby Riggs
that piece of music comes in very specifically
in a certain form.
- [Announcer] Second came of the second set
has just began, Bobby Riggs serving, having broken through
Billie Jean King, one game to none in favor of Bobby Riggs.
And Billie Jean is taking a strike back.
[tennis rackets striking]
- This is the music which really signals
to the audience that the tide has turned.
It's a combination of many different elements
musically, it's the fact that the rhythm
is very forceful but it's this minor key
that gives it the feeling of determination.
[dramatic suspenseful music]
[crowd cheering]
- [Announcer] Billie Jean King has just won.
- This piece is in E minor.
[minor key piano music]
to dispel the idea that a minor chord is sad
or anything like that, to me, when I hear this piece
it actually has a feeling of persistence
in the face of obstacles, it has a feeling
of pushing towards something, of struggle and success
and actually has nothing to do with a feeling of sadness.
[minor key uptempo piano music]
So to further demonstrate this idea of musical context
and of shifting between different kinds of chords
as a story evolves in a film what do you do with the themes?
Sometimes the themes evolve and shift and develop and change
and sometimes it's actually even more important
that they stay the same.
I'm gonna play the theme I wrote, which revolves around
the relationship between Hal and Falstaff
in the movie "The King".
This piece is called "Him".
[slow serious piano music]
Now what's happening in this piece of music is
we're shifting between groupings of
major and minor chords again.
It's different from "Little's Theme" in the sense
that "Little's Theme" directly goes back and forth
between a D major chord and a G minor chord.
In this case, it's actually a bit more circular
in how things are moving.
We're at a C minor chord, at a C minor chord
this is a B flat major chord in an inversion
with a suspension, it's a little bit more complicated
but it's basically still a major chord.
And then we're back at a minor chord, minor chord
a major chord, major chord, and a minor chord.
So you can see that there's actually a circle
that's happening here, sort of a recurring cycle
in a sense, and that creates a set of different emotions.
When we first see Hal and Falstaff we're hearing
this theme around their relationship.
And towards the end of the film, Falstaff is killed
on the field of battle, the Battle of Agincourt
and it raises an important question.
How do you approach that moment?
Should one write a piece of music which is
particularly sad and directly speaks
to that moment in the film, or is it actually
hopefully or potentially more powerful
to have the same piece of music that you heard
come back, and that's how David and I approached it.
[slow solemn orchestral music]
When you see Hal looking at the body of Falstaff
you're hearing the same chords which we first heard
and which defined that heart at the center
of their relationship, of their friendship.
And one thing that I always feel is so important
in working on a film, is this idea of the architecture
of the score, and the fact that over the course of a film
you're actually creating in a certain way a set of
memories from early in the film that come back
and by keeping that theme and those ideas the same
at a later part of the film, to me it creates
an emotional response where you remember that moment
of friendship, and of earlier life.
I hope over the course of these different examples
of chords and keys and context, you can see how
things depend on their context, how different kinds
of chords depend on the relationship with other chords
and how there is this essential deep mystery
at the heart of this film scoring process.
[slow solemn piano music]
Well, thank you to Vanity Fair for making this
all possible, and thank you for watching.