J. Anthony Allen explains chromatic voice-leading, a technique that lets composers break diatonic rules. He covers chromatic sequences, the lament bass, and chromatic mediants, with examples from Led Zeppelin, Nine Inch Nails, and the Super Mario Brothers soundtrack.
Hey everyone. Welcome to MUSIC THEORY Part 16. There we go. In this class, we're going to talk about chromatic voice leading. So where we are right now is we're rapidly heading towards the 20th century and composers are getting more and more free with diatonicism, meaning in keys, right? So they're stretching the rules in all kinds of strange ways. And in this kind of music theory, we have to find interesting ways to talk about the things that they're doing to incorporate chromaticism into their music. So we're going to be looking at chromatic sequences. We're also going to be looking at this, one of my all time favorite things, the lament bass, also known as the saddest music in the world. Through doing that, we'll actually work our way into some pop music examples, including a couple jazz standards, some Led Zeppelin, even a Nine Inch Nails tune. Then we're going to work our way into chromatic mediants. And we'll even land on talking about some of the music from Super Mario Brothers, which incorporates a really pronounced chromatic media during the level level success music. So all kinds of fun chromatic things and making their way into pop music. Please join us. Let's dive. Sa. Okay, so composers are really pushing the envelope from diatonicism, meaning we have rules, we work in keys. And everything we know about music theory so far and they're pushing it towards we don't have rules and we don't work in keys. So what happens is, well, here's a really good way to I think maybe explain this idea. So if you go back to an opportunity to talk about one of my favorite chromatic sequences, and yes, I am a big enough dork to have a favorite chromatic sequence. And I think this will be your favorite chromatic sequence too, because it's really distinctive. You can hear this from a mile away and you've heard it a million times. It is a sound that, well, it's. It's so distinctive actually that it has its own name. We call this the lament bass. I've also seen it called the Death sequence in opera. In particular, it's used. So during this opening riff we have the same thing, right? We have a G sharp, G natural, F sharp, F natural, and then it kind of kind of breaks. So then you may be familiar with the video game series Super Mario Brothers from Nintendo. This little riff will be familiar to you. Now I've put it in here in the strings.
