a young girl s world where you 8-bit
music theory would often spend his time
transcribing videogame tracks and
analyzing the harmony ah a minor four to
one that's an example of primary mode
mixture
what a great cadence he'd say once in a
while he'd come across a progression
that seemed rather strange ah yes in a
minor to C minor to E flat minor that's
well that's uh what what is that try as
he might our young nerdy friend could
not for the life of him figure out what
these progressions were supposed to be
where are all the dominance he'd cry
where is this going what key are we even
in some progressions would drive him to
tears every single night how does this
even function that's the thing it
doesn't or it didn't but it still does
look today I want to talk about non
functional harmony and the perfect game
soundtrack to use as an example is from
one of the best video games of all time
Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo so
what is non-functional harmony well it's
when a chord progression doesn't follow
the laws of functional harmony so what
is functional harmony the term
functional harmony describes music that
exists in a key and has chords that have
specific functions
oh very helpful I know look a chords
function describes where that chord
feels like it wants to go next
generally speaking chords fall into
three main groups either they feel
totally stable and don't want to move
anywhere they feel unstable and want to
move to another chord or they setup an
unstable chord neither feeling
particularly tense or particularly
resolved when you talk about tonic
dominant and predominant chords you're
referring to the chords function
functional harmony generally keeps going
through the cycle of setting up tension
creating tension and releasing that
tension now within this broad system
there's basically an unlimited amount of
room for experimentation
but that's what functional harmony
actually entails any music that doesn't
fit into the system of tension and
resolution can be considered
non-functional here for example let's
look at chrono triggers secret of the
forest the majority of the song happens
over this - cord vamp G flat major 13
sharp 11 - F minor 9
at first glance this seems functional
because G flat and F minor are both
found in the key of D flat major being
the four and three chords respectively
the melody over the G flat major even
emphasizes the sharp 11th scale degree
giving us a Lydian sound that just
screams four chord over the F minor
chord however the ninth G natural is not
found in the key of D flat and this
extension is inescapable it's in every
beat of the accompaniment and the melody
is completely focused on it so what you
might ask functional music almost never
stays entirely in one key so what makes
this song different well here's where we
get a little bit more abstract the
chords don't lead us from one place to
the next the G flat chord doesn't push
to resolve down to the F minor and the F
minor doesn't pull back up towards the G
flat but together they create this
impressionistic color that you can just
immerse yourself in they don't act like
chords so much as two contrasting scales
with almost every note in each scale
appearing in the chords extensions and
the contrasting G flat G natural
relationship deliberately pushed to the
forefront of the music
neither chord feels entirely resolves -
and this creates an ethereal floaty
feeling which is perfect for setting the
atmosphere of an ancient forest here's
another example a strange happening
[Music]
again we get a two cord vamp this time
alternating between D minor seven and a
flat minor six notice how the number of
contrasting notes between the two cords
directly affects how creepy the
progression feels we're secret of the
forests one note contrast give the music
a floatie mystical feeling a strange
happenings three note contrasts feels
downright unsettling the tritone
relationship between the two chords
roots doesn't hurt this vibe either
you'll find a lot of non functional
chord progressions Center around only
two chords this is partially because two
chords is enough to create a variety of
different atmospheres and partially
because throwing a lot of different
chords at the listener with no
discernible function to guide them
through can make it hard to follow and
frustrating to listen to this is why
jazz fusion will never be mainstream
again
[Music]
but any two cords no matter how out
there they sound together can become
normalized to anybody no matter how
musically uneducated with enough
repetition that's not to say you won't
find any complete aunts lots of
non-functional harmony in the soundtrack
Yasunori Mitsuda the composer for Chrono
Trigger loves to use parallel minor
seventh chords to create dissonance like
in boss battle theme to
[Music]
at first it seems a little all over the
place but having the cords follow a very
clear descent by semitone pattern helps
anchor the listener a little bit this
descending minor chord idea is actually
used quite a bit throughout the
soundtrack like in undersea palaces B
section
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
you
[Applause]
it's still a non-functional progression
of course try and think of what cord
could come next after either of these
sections that would sound resolved in
functional harmony this is usually very
easy to do even if a song never actually
lets us hear the tonic it's almost
always easy enough to hear in our mind
what the tonic would be in
non-functional harmony this isn't really
the case
notice also the way that the minor
chords jump up by minor thirds in the
first bar this is another very common
chordal relationship in the Chrono
Trigger soundtrack for example check out
the B section to black omen
this is cool and all but the really
impressive thing about the soundtrack is
the way Matsuda mixes the functional
with the non-functional the game's title
track is the perfect example of this
take a look at this opening progression
[Music]
if you take a bird's-eye view of the
Harmony it's easy enough to dismiss that
minor six chord it's weird sure but it's
just chromatically approaching the flat
six five cadence which is very normal
even if the five chord is usually a
dominant when listening to it though
these chords move very slowly and if you
don't know where the piece is going to
end up the first two chords will
definitely disorient you it's such a
genius composition we get this bold
impressionistic color with the a minor
to F sharp minor then the chromatic move
down to F disorients us even further
before the E minor sets our feet back on
the ground again with the E minor moving
to the a minor for the a section we're
more aware of what's going on and we're
clearly in the key of a minor now when
we hear that f-sharp minor will know to
expect to descent down to F Nick's so
what does meatza da do he repeats the a
minor F sharp minor move playing with
our expectations
[Applause]
[Music]
you
playing with the listeners expectations
is one of the key components of writing
functional harmony and it's what makes a
lot of music so fun to listen to
but in isolation an a minor to F sharp
minor to a minor would not be considered
functional in any sense so meet Siddhas
creating harmony that functions but out
of non functional parts another great
example of this is in the B section two
wings that cross time again from a
bird's eye view it looks like an easy
write off as a chromatic approach to a
normal cadence but the amount of time we
sit on each chord and the deliberate
accenting of the cross relations between
our F minor and B Lydian scales
definitely gives this progression a
touch of non-functional color
[Music]
compare and contrast this move to some
of our previous examples like a strange
happening these two chords are a tritone
apart which sounds a little jarring but
the mere two note contrasts between
these two chords or rather the scales
that these chords are based on makes the
transition smoother more like what we
saw in secret of the forest a lot of the
time in progressions like these the
melody will specifically target common
tones found between the two chords to
even out the sound this is where
pentatonic scales can come in extremely
useful as they're already a powerful
melodic tool in one key but the limited
number of notes allows one to fit into
multiple contrasting keys or modes let's
take our first example secret of the
forest compare the two chords the first
as we've already discussed is based off
of the G flat Lydian scale and the
second is based off of the F minor scale
now let's take out the notes that don't
fit into both scales in this case the G
flat and G natural now we never actually
hear a D or D flat over an F minor chord
in this tune so let's take that out to
what we're left with is an A flat
pentatonic scale writing a melody using
the scale would likely result in a great
single bow melody that seamlessly
smooths over the transition from one to
an Aldi to the next great
except Matsuda deliberately doesn't do
this in fact the majority of his
melodies in the soundtrack emphasized
the contrast between his non-functional
chords by accenting the notes that don't
fit nicely into both parent scales
[Music]
you
[Music]
you
this really makes the harmony stand out
and it definitely gives the soundtrack a
unique flavor but it can sound a little
jarring at times so it's not something I
would always recommend doing for Chrono
Trigger though it definitely works and
it's a powerful mood setting tool well
that's the video thanks for watching if
you have any questions about
non-functional harmony or anything else
please feel free to leave a comment
below or tweet me at 8-bit music theory
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next one
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