8-Bit Music Theory: Anyone else found this YouTube channel?

rlh

I have no clue where my wife found this, but she sent to me this YouTube channel the other day:



https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeZLO2VgbZHeDcongKzzfOw



TL;DW: This is a channel started by some guy who seems to be considerably knowledgable in music theory, and he deconstructs old video game tunes and marvels at the the genius of most compositions.



I'm the typical, american person who who had a couple years of piano lessons as a kid, I was in band (well, orchestra...) or a while but I never was taught theory.  His videos aren't really accessible to the novice, but for someone whose had a little bit of musical experience, it's both impressive to see how much this guy knows but still see just how complex game music, even tunes that were 20+ years old, had considerable depth and consideration put into their composition.



Anyway, my favorite video so far was his video on the ChronoTrigger sound track (linked below for the lazy) where he discusses that most of the tunes are nonfunctional but work in such a way as to not annoy the player/listener.  After watching the video, I both learned about nonfunctional chord progression AND could then hear it in the soundtrack!  It's actually made the ChronoTrigger soundtrack a little more enjoyable.



Anyway, I was wondering if any of you guys have yet to stumble upon this guys channel and had any thoughts.  I'm mutually impressed, confused and hooked.



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guitarzombie

As a music teacher I find this pretty interesting. Im gonna take a look and see if there are any vids for games I care about and see what he says.



EDIT, gah its all for games I think are lame haha (rpgs and stuff) but ill check out the chrono trigger one.

guitarzombie

Ok well the music in Chrono Trigger is pretty good! Video was done very well, everything was correct. The only problem I had was it was too 'stuffy' and almost old school with harmony, which is more of the way a classical musician would look at it instead of a jazz musician.



For example he talked about a part that went from an Am7 chord to an F#m7 chord and how that harmony isnt functional cuz it doesnt go anywhere, which is true. But you can also think of it as borrowing from its parallel key. You can think of Am7 as being in the key of A minor and F#m7 being in the key of A major, so its borrowing from A minor and A major, which is still common, or anytime you have minor chord a minor 3rd away.



All in all, I think the video was pretty good.





BTW For what its worth, IMO at least, functional (or diatonic) music is incredibly boring.  Music that borrows from other keys, or keeps switching keys is much more exciting and harmonically interesting, so those progressions in Chrono Trigger are awesome (altho not super complicated).  You can find that kind of harmony a lot in bands like Opeth, or even the Beatles.  Most regular music doesnt stray too far from conventional chords but it sounds very boring and stale.  Its much more enjoyable, beautiful and pleasing once you start borrowing chords from other keys and stringing them together with a common melody thats much more refreshing. 



I say it all the time to students, music is like magic, but once you know the magic tricks, its not that exciting.  So you might like certain bands, but once your learn a bit of what goes behind it and you see how simple it is and can hear it, theres a good chance you'll grow and want to hear something a bit more exciting harmonically and chord progressions/melodies start to sound the same that you couldn't tell were similar before.