[Intro music plays]
Winter is here, and to get into the spirit of it, I thought I'd do a video on EarthBound's "Snowman" theme.
It's a beautiful piece of music with a melody that is somehow
simultaneously emotional and catchy.
What makes it so good? What makes a melody good in general?
Let's find out.
Okay, first, let's take a listen to the whole piece:
Right away, we're introduced to our main motif: This 2-bar-long melodic figure.
This is already a great melody. To be interesting on its own, a melody needs drama, and drama
basically translates to big interval leaps.
In the first bar, we have an outlined leap of a minor sixth, with the C in between
decorating it. This by itself creates interest.
In the second bar, we have this 32nd note decoration.
This breaks up the rhythmic monotony of the "one and two and",
but also creates interest, because it's four times as fast as the eighth note subdivision,
which has always been exposed to up until this point.
Also, how often do you hear thirty-second notes in music in general?
Already, we have two things that make the melody memorable.
So what makes it so pretty?
Well, harmony plays a huge part in how a melody sounds. I like to think of it in movie terms:
The melody is like the characters and plot, while the harmony is like the setting.
A great story and characters can work in pretty much any setting,
but that doesn't mean the setting doesn't change a lot about a story.
Would Star Wars have been the cultural landmark it was if it was set in thirteenth-century Scotland?
It definitely would have been different.
Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because the harmony underneath
could completely change the tone of this piece.
The first two notes play as an accented dissonance on the seventh that resolves up to the one.
This is a pretty ballsy move and it instantly makes an impression on the listener.
If we put the same melody over the I chord instead of the IV chord,
it just turns into a 3 moving up to 4, which is decidedly not ballsy.
These sorts of accented dissonances are what make the melody sound emotional.
If you're interested to know more, look up "appoggiaturas".
These first four bars use a very specific compositional technique
that I like to call the "V/I".
Basically it takes a major seventh chord (usually the four),
and voices it as a major triad a fifth above the root.
You can call it a G/C or a Cmaj9. It doesn't really matter.
It creates a really specific bright, colorful sound that's often coupled
with the Lydian tinge of the ♯4, as in this case.
The inner voices switch between this G/C sound, a regular C sound, and a sort of half D/C sound,
highlighting the ♯4.
The way it ebbs and flows between these three colors really sets the mood of the piece.
Even though it's kind of floaty and ethereal,
the melody at its core has a very strong structure, which helps to make it so catchy.
After our initial 2-bar motif, we get another version of the motif that changes out the last note for a walk-up to G.
This sets up another big leap (this time of a fourth) down to D.
Ending a musical phrase on the fifth of the key feels just slightly unresolved
and gives the music momentum while setting up another repetition of the phrase.
The second time we hear the phrase, the ending note is traditionally a very stable chord tone such as the tonic.
This is called "antecedent consequent period", and it's been structuring melodies since forever.
Most music plays around with this formula a little bit, so instead of a nice strong tonic to finish,
we get an accented dissonance as the second resolves up to the third, which is also a very stable note.
Landing on the 2 before resolving up to the 3 really just makes the resolution a little bit more coy.
So! Our A section has iconic leaps and rhythms, emotional accented dissonances,
colorful harmony, and sturdy, tried-and-true structure holding it all up.
But where does it go? Sure, we have a great theme, but does it develop into something more?
Well, video game music, especially in this era, is slightly limited at how much it can develop a theme,
as the songs are all built to repeat for an indefinite amount of time
and fit a whole soundtrack on a cartridge.
We do, however, get a B section that serves to contrast the A section and develop some of the ideas introduced.
This B section melody is based off of the contour of the main motif.
By "contour", I just mean the direction and relative size of the intervals between notes.
These things define the shape of a melody, and it's really how we can identify melodies at all.
Before we get into it though, let's take a listen:
Look at the A section melody:
If you take out the decorations and just leave the strong beats,
you get a leap-up of a minor sixth, then a leap-down of a minor third.
The B section melody is a leap-up of a fifth, then down a second.
The intervals are shrunken by a half-step, but our ears still recognize this as related to the original motif.
It's also worth noting that the pick-up to this melody is also taken from the A section,
just moved down a seventh.
This new variation on the old motif has weaved into something entirely new:
Instead of playing the full motif and then pausing, the last note of the motif becomes the first note
of a new variation on this motif.
The intervals aren't always the same, but they all follow
the "big leap up, little leap down" structure that makes it fit with the rest of the song.
To build some more tension, the sixteenth note line runs us up to a high D:
But if we want to repeat this melody, we need to get back down somehow, so after this,
we just slowly walk down a D7(b9) arpeggio until we get back to where we need to be:
To contrast the brightness of the A section, this B section uses borrowed chords from
the parallel minor key to add some darkness to the music.
The whole section happens over a bVI to V7b9 vamp,
which really strongly sets up a resolution to a minor one which never comes.
In fact, towards the end we get this intense build on the V7b9 chord that just kind of fades away.
It doesn't even end on the major one chord. It just fades out to a lonely sleigh bell
before starting back again at the top at the IV chord:
This is probably to facilitate endless repetition, but honestly I find it kind of a clumsy way of doing that.
In closing, melodic development and contrasting sections are essential for creating depth
in a piece of music.
When we listen to music, we want it to take us somewhere,
and if we just hear the same thing over and over again, even if it is dramatic and interesting,
it can go from "good catchy" to "annoying catchy" really fast.
Well, that's the video. I hope you enjoyed it.
Let me know what your favorite wintry game music is in the comments below,
and if you have any questions, leave those too.
Or you can leave them on my Twitter @8bitMusicTheory.
Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you around.