Robo roll
Today, a bit of wanton silliness.
Take a look at Robo’s theme from Chrono Trigger:
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I want to draw your attention to two things: the IV-V-V-vi harmonic progression, and the rising melodic contour using scale degrees 1-2-2-3.
Now listen to number-one hit and internet sensation “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley:
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As you can see (and hear), both feature the same progression and melodic contour. The only significant difference is that Robo’s theme resolves to a tonic or tonic substitute in bars 4 and 8, while “Never Gonna Give You Up” continues to cycle through the IV-V-V-vi progression. (As such, it never resolves to I; my Roman numeral analysis is in the relative major for the sake of comparison.)
So in effect, you’ve all been getting rickrolled for years longer than you thought — for certain values of rickroll, anyway.
(And yes, I know I’m not the first person to make the connection. But I suspect I am the first to do a comparative harmonic analysis!)
Perhaps next you’d like to tackle the Michael Jackson / Sonic 3 rumour ;)
Classic!
Wow… just… wow.
I think it lends credence to the idea that certain harmonic combinations are innately appealing to the average human being. If there’s anyone in the video game world who would be able to zoom in on those specific combinations, it’d be Mitsuda and Uematsu. Legends also abound when you also look at the song “Say Hello” off of Jay-Z’s American Gangster Album that it’s earily close to the forest theme from CT. I’m not a musician, so I can’t speak for myself on that matter. However, I do find the connections between that soundtrack and mainstream popular songs to be very interesting.
Amazing.
Maybe they can work Rick Astley into the recently teased Chrono Trigger DS. Robo travels back to 1987 A.D. and gets inspired?
Then there’s the Elecman / Journey’s Faithfully mystery
Another one: the “At Dawn” theme from Speed Highway in Sonic Adventure sounds like a mix of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and Toni Braxton’s “Un-Break My Heart.” Maybe that’s just me.
One level in Mega Man 3 — I think it was Hard Man’s — had music that sounded a lot like the “Zestfully clean” jingle.
I am loving these comments. I’ll have to look into some of these purported similarities, and maybe do more comparisons in a later post.
I do want to address your comment, Renaissance Man, regarding “the idea that certain harmonic combinations are innately appealing to the average human being.”
I think that’s a pretty serious overstatement. Many non-Western musical traditions either have very different concepts of how harmony works, or eschew functional harmony altogether. Even when that’s not the case, the music is often distinct enough to make such generalizations impossible; Indian classical music, for example, uses scales that don’t fit our system of equal-tempered semitones, so it’s not possible for us to use the same chords in the first place.
At best, one could argue for the universality of certain harmonic progressions in the Western tradition, but even that would be difficult to prove. There are tons of people who don’t care for rickrolling or roborolling music, I’m sad to say. :-)