Spring Yard Zone
August 23, 2010
A year and a half ago I wrote a post highlighting some favorite bass parts from Sonic games. One of the pieces, the Spring Yard Zone theme, had a bizarre harmonic quirk that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Since I just wanted to write about cool bass lines, though, I didn’t try to figure it out; I made some handwave about “harmonic ambiguity” and moved on without so much as determining the key.
Well, it’s time I tried to give the Spring Yard Zone theme its due.
Here’s a transcription, pieced together one voice at a time using Audio Overload (click for a larger image):
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Ignoring the intro for the moment, our form is a repeating AB with two eight-bar sections: bars 2-9 are in D minor, and bars 10-17 are in F, its relative major. (As with all Sonic songs, the intro does not recur.)
There is nothing harmonically unusual about the B section; it begins after an unresolved dominant chord in measure 9 and remains staunchly diatonic until it cadences back to D minor in measure 16. Piece of cake!
Let’s look closer at the A section. The lack of coincident, easily analyzed chords in measures 2-3 forces us to collapse the arpeggios to suss out the harmony. Doing so gives us the pitches D, F, A, C, and E, which spells out Dm9. It’s slightly messy, but not a huge theoretical stretch.
Measure 4 is where things get interesting. The melody here is a sequence of measure 2, but it is a real sequence: it maintains the same intervallic relationships and therefore does not respect the key signature. Since the sequence brings up all of the pitches by a major second, we get a raised third (F♯) and a raised sixth (B♮).
Wait, what?
The sixth and seventh scale degrees in a minor key are flexible thanks to the variations between natural, harmonic, and melodic minor, but the third is usually sacrosanct; it is the scale degree which makes the key identifiably minor. How do we justify an F♯ in the key of D minor?
I have an idea. Collapsing measure 4′s arpeggios gives us the pitches E, B, D, and F♯, which is a ninth chord minus the third; I’m going to assume it’s Em9, since the alternative forces us to infer a tritone (G♯) as well. Measure 5 is unmistakably a dominant chord, with a bit of augmented flavor thanks to an F — enharmonically E♯ — in the melody.
That “analysis,” if you’ll buy it, yields the progression im9 | iim9 V7, which looks far less unfamiliar. It’s unusual for minor keys to borrow from their parallel majors (outside of Picardy endings), but I think that’s exactly what’s happening here — the turnaround is borrowed wholesale from the key of D.
Why does this work? I suspect that years of jazz and pop harmony have trained our ears to accept all kinds of modifications to ii-V-I chords: sevenths, tritone substitutions, altered chords, and so on. Given that context, using m9 in place of m7♭5 doesn’t seem like such a big deal. The Spring Yard Zone theme does push its luck, as it were, by prominently featuring the F♯ in the melody, but I found that to be a pleasant dissonance and not an ugly one.
(And if one crackpot harmonic theory isn’t enough, here’s another: though it only uses two voices in contrary motion, I hear the one-bar intro as a quick Andalusian cadence (general form i ♭VII ♭VI V; think “Hit the Road Jack” or “Anji”) that gets averted at the last moment. If we let A-A stand in for A minor, G-B for G major, and F-C for F major, we get the first three chords of the progression in the key of A minor. We would then expect to see E-D to imply E7, but instead we get E-C♯ — which acts as the dominant for the true key of D minor.)
That’s all I’ve got on this one. If anyone has a cleaner analysis, I’m all ears.
7 comments
(second try at submission after a timeout; please delete if it’s a dupe)
Yeah, I pretty much agree, although I think I see it as being a little less subtle. Measure 3 (the Em9) is simply measure 1 (Dm9) crudely transposed up a whole tone without any preparation or alteration; the thing that actually sticks out the most to me here is that the tenor voice isn’t transposed at all, so its support of the ninth turns into a doubling of the root, followed by that F natural that both undermines the weird F# that the soprano just shifted to and anticipates its return to F natural/E#.
Anyway, once that crude shift from Dm9 to Em9 has been accomplished, the rest of it seems like a pretty natural unwinding of the tension that’s just been established. The bass goes II-V-I just like it’s supposed to, and the soprano uses F natural as a passing tone on its way back to E.
Man, I love the Sonic music.
by dfan on August 23, 2010 at 8:03 pm #
“Crude” is a good word for it, yeah. I probably didn’t really need to look for a deeper theoretical underpinning, but I figured there had to be some reason I didn’t recoil at hearing that F♯. It looks so wrong, and I wanted to make it fit!
I also love the Sonic music. I can think of a couple other pieces that deserve a post, actually…
by Dan Bruno on August 23, 2010 at 8:39 pm #
Dude, I totally heart Sonic music! I remember this jungle level on the Game Gear version had the same melody as this one Janet Jackson tune… it get stuck in my head to this day. I’m convinced that Janet stole it from Sonic.
Well here’s what I hear, lifted mostly from my increasingly rusty modal harmony chops. So A) take it with a grain of salt and B) you might already be aware of or way past all of this.
(I have replaced some of said chops over recent years with more pertinent information, like the details of my character builds in Dragon Age. And honestly, given how many modal tunes I play these days, it seems like a worthwhile trade. :P )
The Em9 (ish) chord you describe sounds and looks like a deviation to major to me, a moment of implied D major. if I had to do anything there as a pianist, I’d call it a Bm/E, subtly different (more open) than an Em9 since I don’t really hear or see a G in there.
Jazz tangent – I’ve always been thrown by the fact that in jazz, a minor [ ii9(b5) | V7alt | i7 ] has a major ninth on the ii half-diminished chord.
It’s odd, but there ya go. The chord’s based on the sixth mode of melodic minor – for example, the parent scale to Gm7(b5) is Bb melodic minor. So, if that chord were the ii in F-minor, there would actually an A natural in it.
It’s a weird sound that it took me a long time to get used to. Check out Wayne Shorter’s stuff, or really any modal writing from the late 50′s or 60′s – most tunes that spend a lot of time on half-diminished wind up reveling in that natural 9.
My sax prof from U Miami, Gary Keller, was a NUT for this stuff – his book, The Jazz Chord/Scale Handbook is indispensable. Truly, the modal-theory nerd’s bible. Ronnie Miller, our comp professor, also does a lot of cool writing with modal composition and rule-breaking geometric (as opposed to harmonic) melody writing. Which sounds ridiculously wordy, but is about as good a way to describe it as any.
But anyway. In this case, it doesn’t sound that “proper,” just deliberate and bright, an implied moment of D major via B minor. But not uncommon in modal playing – playing a vi/ii is kind of a neat sound, and gives it a nice, ringing, suspended quality that’s seems fitting for a bright blue ball, bounding over the hills.
I love these posts, man!
by Kirk Hamilton on August 23, 2010 at 9:21 pm #
Hey Kirk,
You’re definitely right that there is no G in that chord I want to call Em9 — I based this transcription on a .vgz file, so I was able to separate out the voices and transcribe each separately. Unless I made any typos, the sheet music above should be completely pitch-accurate.
Anyway, “a moment of implied D major” is consistent with what I hear; whatever we call it, the chord in question has a D and an F# so I figure it has to be borrowed from there one way or another. I had considered using Bm/E, but I chose Em9 for two reasons: first, since measure 4 is largely a sequence of the Dm9-based measure 2 changing the chord quality felt wrong, and second, it fit better contextually with the “borrowed ii-V-i” idea that I was proposing.
So, yeah, I invented a third out of whole cloth, which is maybe a little bit BS. But I’m standing by it! :-)
by Dan Bruno on August 23, 2010 at 9:43 pm #
Some thoughts:
- I agree that jazz and pop harmony keep us from calling the chordal scheme into question. I also
appreciate the nod to the Andalusian cadence analysis =)
- Though it’s more typical for major to borrow from minor, I don’t think it’s so uncommon to do the opposite. No specific excerpts come to mind, but in pop music, that sort of move tends to happen during a chorus — that glorious “major” moment following minor.
- For that reason alone, one of my contemporary theory professors back in school urged us to stop thinking of a key as “D minor” or “D major” but rather simply “D”, given the free range of modal shifts used.
- Oh, that same professor also discouraged us from trying to take songs and “forcing the theory upon it”, as much as we want to (I don’t mean to offend! His words, not mine!). Pshh, supposedly theory follows the practice, not the other way around ; ) [Note: But he always encouragd us to start with the simple chordal framework and go from there, just like you did]
- That said, with everything going on, it’s hard not to hear it as one chord over an additional (non-chordal) bass. To me, the framework begs this, especially if the alternative is to take a m9 and remove the critical third. The upper triad dominates too much of the sound final, especially when divorced from the bass.
- Supporting that idea, I can’t help but hear m.2 as Am/D. I want to hear some sense of D minor but I just don’t (I’d assert the F and G are two nonchord tones.
- That strong arpeggiated bass in m.3 has me hear that measure as Amin, with the D and F as nonchord tones, “reminding” us of D minor. The F on beat 4 seems to change the chord quality (much like a delayed introduction of scale degree 6 under a tonic chord would) to an embellishing Fmaj7.
- Echoing dfan, I also hear the held 9th in m.2 as “resolving” to the “root” in the bass in m.4. But as a sequence following the idea of m.2, it’s still Bmin/E to me since it lacks a strong presence of the note G.
- You called it on the following measure — it’s hard to deny the dominant sound of the chord, even without the leading tone. Though in echoing the opening measure (same stepwise bass) where we did hear that C#, all the more reason to assert A7.
- With that last thought, it probably seems like I contradicted myself, since earlier I wrote of a “lack of a third” (though I’d like to think unlike the first case, we’ve actually *heard* the third in context).
- Going back to the sequence for a moment, I feel it’s more of a transposition to a chord outside of the diatonic key rather than a nod to D major. Sure, the coincidence of F# belonging to the relative is nice, as is its chromatic “resolution” to the F of “D minor”. But I think that’s just convenient (yet probably painstakingly selected by the composer).
- It all seems so reminiscent of 20th century composers and their knack for giving the audience something they want, only to take another element away. But it does keep the tension and the interest.
Though I’d like to rework the harmonic analysis, it’s tough to fit functionally. We’ve got a hodgepodge of elements in motion — many of which you’ve touched upon — and I think they’re purposely working against a unified, consonant sound (well, until m.9). I’d even assert that this intentional dissonance (augmented chords included) are what make the more consonant part B so charming.
Sonic music is a lot of fun. But in the same way that Sega purposefully contrasted their mascot with Nintendo’s, I think they intentionally took a radically different approach with their music, not just in texture but in its harmonic scheme.
by Rafi on August 24, 2010 at 7:17 am #
Hey Rafi,
Thanks for your comment! No offense taken — I’ve heard similar things from a couple of my professors.
What struck me about this piece is that it sounds like it’s still governed by functional harmony even though at first glance it’s hard to figure out why. Generally speaking, what I was up to here was trying to force — as gently as possible — a functional harmonic interpretation. Your professors and mine probably wouldn’t like it, but to me that’s half the fun; we could analyze the B section here, but what good does that do for anyone? :-)
I think Bm/E is totally reasonable for m.4. This what Kirk argued for above — I defended my interpretation in the comment above yours, but I agree that it’s on somewhat shaky ground since, well, I made up a third…
I have a harder time hearing Am/D. There’s that strong V-i pull coming out of the B section, and it doesn’t feel like there’s a chord change to me as the song repeats. Also, there are Fs on three staves in mm. 2-3 — which, again, I heard as one continuous harmony — so D _ A C E with the F as a non-chord tone is a tough sell for me.
While modulating to the parallel major is certainly a common move, I haven’t seen very much of the borrowed usage. Because melodic and harmonic minor already contain the raised sixth and seventh scale degrees, borrowing definitively from the parallel major would require a raised third scale degree. I can think of tons of major-key songs with a major chord built on ♭III or ♭VI (using ♭3 in the process), but the opposite case seems very unusual by comparison. I’d love to hear examples though!
Whatever our interpretation is, I think your last point is the one crystal-clear functional takeaway — all this is to set up a greater contrast with the consonant B section.
Thanks for humoring me in this slightly ridiculous idea!
by Dan Bruno on August 24, 2010 at 11:40 am #
Hi Dan! I think your analysis is spot-on: i-ii-V with added 7ths and 9ths. I agree with you and Rafi that the F♯ makes much more sense as a 9th over E than as a 3rd over D, but dfan’s answer has the seed of the most convincing answer of all: the chromatic slide F♯–F♮–E in mm. 4–6 inverts the opening bar’s C–C♯–D, so maybe it’s best understood in linear rather than harmonic terms.
As for modal mixture, I think you’re right that modal mixture goes from major to minor more often than the reverse (not counting the Picardy 3rd), but ♯3 isn’t the only possibility for minor←major borrowing. The raised 6 can also signal mixture if it gets sufficient harmonic support; this is distinct from the “melodic minor” case, where it’s a passing tone between 5 and 7. (See the first Dvořák example on this page, Ex. q: http://musictheoryexamples.com/mixture.html) Still, it’s pretty rare.
As for the “Andalusian cadence”… not sure I agree, although it’s a clever suggestion. To my ear, it sounds more like a minor version of a stock opening gesture, like the one that opens “Ocean Race” from Super Mario Galaxy: http://www.mariomayhem.com/downloads/sound_tracks/VA-Super_Mario_Galaxy_Platinum_Version-%28OST%29-2CD-2008-FNTx/215-mahito_yokota-ocean_race.mp3
Thanks for this excellent post and discussion!
by Peter on August 27, 2010 at 4:26 pm #