Jpop music theory videos
Click to viewFeaturing the progression to Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You", the melody which AKB blatantly plagiarised for "JK Nemurihime," and the progression Kara used to great effect in their "Honey."
Mouretsu's progression is so ridiculous even its songwriter Hyadain can't keep track of it without singing it. XD
And finally for now, the quintessential Jpop-music-theory excerpt I love shilling around, from here, minus some of the faffing around before and after on other subjects, and bikini pics. Well damn, maybe you should just read the original post, then. :3
But here’s what it is. You listen to the first verse of “RIVER.” It starts in the key of C# minor (SAD), a.k.a. the “Moonlight Sonata,” a.k.a. “Kanashimi Twilight,” which is pretty dark except without being forcibly emo about it. But in the space of just eight measures, it has moved to the chord of B major, which can mean a lot of things but in this particular situation implies most strongly the dominant of E major, meaning that it’s about to modulate to relative major (HAPPY) of C# minor. A glimmer of hope, right? SAD goes to HAPPY.
EXCEPT IT DOESN’T.
Instead, it drops the floor out from under you. You don’t get E major. The chorus of “RIVER” is in bloody E minor!!
The PARALLEL MINOR of the RELATIVE MAJOR of the original key!
Yabyaaaa~~~!!!
But so here comes the chorus. And it sounds a lot like Inoue’s other AKB48 choruses, I mean the bastard pretty much used the same progression in “Oogoe Diamond” and “10nenzakura” and did little to hide the fact, and again you’re getting the same thing here where you move via stepwise chord motion to get to the relative major of the key you’re in. Except “RIVER” is less obvious about it, although perceptive ears will still catch the hints in the tune: the lowest notes in each phrase of the first strain move downward from E to D to C to B. This song can’t help but move somewhere-moving where?-crossing the river, perhaps. And then, at the last line, you get … a glimmer of hope.
It moves to the most stable position in that key signature: the tonic major, G.
AND THEN IT DROPS THE FLOOR OUT FROM UNDER YOU AGAIN!
Because right after the last note of the chorus it jumps RIGHT BACK TO C# MINOR!! A frigging tritone interval! It is the most dramatic harmonic leap in all of Western music theory and “RIVER” fucking shoves it IN YOUR FACE!!!
And you start to realize what “RIVER” is totally about. It uses all these dark, minor tonalities to reflect the struggles of life but moves irrevocably toward the major key, always reaching toward the shining light of hope-only to have it ripped away at the last moment, at the end of the first verse, at the end of the first chorus, the end of the second verse, the end of the second chorus, even after the bridge (which is written in E major), because the struggles of life are never-ending. Only on that abrupt last chord does the song finally rest and say: “YOU CAN DO IT!!”
Oh, by the way, I finally figured out those damn retarded key changes in Everyday Kachuusha and the SNSD cover of No. 1.
Kachuusha's intro and verse are firmly in Cmaj. Prechorus switches to E for a moment before return to C, (or is it just a switch from Emaj to Emin?) and ends with the upward line of notes, (F-G-A-B, still in Cmaj) and then BAM DROP DOWN TO E-FLATMAJ. THE FUCKETTEY.
SNSD's cover of BoA's No. 1 starts in Emin, but where the original makes the logical change to Dmaj, this cover goes to Aflatmaj. THE FUCK.