Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) While I was working on this, Middle 8 released a video about Random Access Memories. I haven't watched it yet, to avoid accidentally copying his analysis, but it's probably good if you want more Daft Punk content: th-cam.com/video/Qzs5cVA5goo/w-d-xo.html 2) If you don't believe me that Hakim could absolutely have played a much more complicated part if he wanted to, just look up any number of interviews and performances he's done. The dude was chair of the percussion department at Berklee for a while, he knows how to play drums. Playing simple here was a choice. 3) Honestly, 90% of the stuff I said about the drums is absolutely not unique to this particular song, but I feel like in music theory circles we often don't spend enough time appreciating the importance of a good, foundational drum beat so I wanted to talk about some of those techniques. 4) One thing I noticed while syncing the animations was that the clap actually seems to sound a fraction of a second _before_ the snare, giving it a bit of microrhythmic push and a sense of increased energy and urgency. It's extremely subtle, and would have been very difficult to demonstrate in the video even if I'd noticed it in time, but it's still pretty cool. 5) I'm playing fast and loose with the definition of "cross-rhythm" here, but whatever, it's my video, I can use words however I want. 6) Apologies for the bass tone, I couldn't find a stem so I had to isolate it myself. That means I'm stuck with whatever frequencies made it into the final track, which tends to be heavier on the low end than what was actually recorded. I did my best, but it's not perfect. (That's also why the bass tone changes between clips: More of the high end gets cut out when there's vocals.)
When you said “drums by Omar Hakim”, that was all you needed to say. He’s got the chops to play anything (when you’ve been hired by both Sting and Peter Gabriel, you know your stuff), but this song doesn’t need complexity. Serve the song.
I had a rather big fight with my best friend, my brother from another mother, back in 2019. We didn't have contact for over a year, until Daft Punk uploaded their epilogue on 21/02/2021, which I used to reach out by simply sharing the link. Two bros walking side by side, end of an era, etc. Either way, he jumped onto the opportunity, and we started gradually healing our trust and friendship. Exactly one year later on the 21st, a mutual friend reached out to tell me that he had suddenly passed away. Not quite as explosive as in the epilogue video, but infinitely more abrupt. The song used in their Epilogue was from the same album, Random Access Memories, which has helped me a tremendous amount with giving it all a place.
Sorry for your loss. What a heartbreaking story. It sounds like you’re already on top of it but focus on how nice it is to have remedied you and your friends division before his untimely passing. All the best brother
I think it’s impossible, or at least incomplete, to analyze Get Lucky without looking at it in the context of the full album. Get Lucky plays right after Touch, an incredibly complex and earnest song about deep human connections that has a somber, almost tragic ending. Immediately, it then hard cuts to Get Lucky, a simple, groovy dance tune about sex and partying and not much else. (Which is not a bad thing; this song is still a banger). Because of this sharp contrast, I’ve always felt that Get Lucky is meant to be satirical. Touch is an emotional roller coaster that makes Get Lucky seem incredibly shallow by comparison, which I think functions as a statement on the importance of deeper human connections. But Get Lucky is a simple groovy dance tune, so it’s only natural that that’s the one that exploded in popularity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, the final moments of Touch bring in Rodgers on guitar. This almost sets up the transition to Get Lucky. It's a subtle thing, but it works so well. The whole album is really a masterclass in production. So many little details. I swear Daft Punk played the long game with their albums. Alive 2007 is basically a demonstration that they wrote songs to work in combinable pairs, but each song in each pair may have come from a different album.
Funnily enough, I actually drew the exact opposite conclusion from juxtaposing those two songs, at least for Get Lucky. Yes, Touch is earnest and about human connection and ends sadly, as if the "protagonist" of the song was in a relationship that didn't work out. But with that in mind, Get Lucky feels to me like the "protagonist" picking themselves up, putting themselves out there, and finding someone new - hence the opening lyrics of "Like the legend of the phoenix / All ends with beginnings". And I do feel like there's some genuine connection in Get Lucky as well, for instance in the refrain. It starts with two people wanting different things - "She's up all night till the sun, I'm up all night to get some, she's up all night for good fun, I'm up all night to get lucky" - and ends up with their desires aligning - "We're up all night till the sun, we're up all night to get some" and so on. In short, I don't think Touch makes Get Lucky feel hollow - on the contrary, I think Touch elevates Get Lucky to be about not only sex and partying, but also about finding a new connection after the old one didn't work out. But all that being said, I do agree that it's important to analyze Get Lucky within the context of the album, or at least as the follow-up to "Touch", which is a frankly gorgeous song.
I kind of agree with you. I think get lucky and loose yourself to dance we're meant to be groovy and dance songs. Touch, within and beyond are more introspective songs, emotional and thoughtful. They balanced really well the songs and meanings in the album. Its like they made an homage to all their work so far, mixing everything they've learned and were inspired from (like giorgio moroder and paul williams feats)
I'm really fond of Nile Rodgers' go-to story on the topic of "shallow" songs... Basically a music teacher of his made the case that some bit of pop music, while trite and structurally simplistic, should be regarded as a "great composition" because it had succeeded in connecting with and emotionally moving a lot of people. The story concludes with Rodgers in Chic making songs about dancing and clapping your hands. Along those lines, I'm not sure I'd share your view of Get Lucky.
i - III - v - IV is the "Get Lucky" progression for me. 2013 was getting right around the time I stopped listening to the radio fairly often, but this song continues to stick around in my mind space because it's just that great. It feels so good to dance to, it's fun to sing, and even more fun to harmonize on the pre-choruses with friends. Long live this incredible song. (:
@@TheSummoner ew, you gotta use flats or it's just wrong, man, whoever came up with this system is weird. If i-III is Bm-D, then what would you call Bm-D#? Bm-D is i-bIII, or even better, to avoid using unnecessary flats, vi-I.
I feel like the drums and bass on this album were so underappreciated because they were "simple" but they were MASTERFULLY executed. If you listen to when the drums and bass come in on Beyond, listen to how in-sync the kick is with the bass. Absolutely perfect
its just because the vocals are so memorable and niles guitar is so ridiculously funky, the drums and bass are why the others work but they arent standout because of it. Also you realise you can just... quantize the kick and the bass like they most likely did on beyond.
@@noahleach7690 it's tough to play "in the pocket" as tightly as on here. simplicity sometimes disguises complexity, and I agree that the rhythm section don't stand out but I personally still get the backbeat of get lucky stuck in my head sometimes
@@CoingamerFL yeah, but you can find the acapella and instrumentals. If you're mainly analyzing the vocals I don't see why you'd need the instrumental split by stems
As a bass player, I'd say it's pretty much spot on that going un-syncopated is to leave room. It's "hiding" within the drum beat, letting go of the rhythmic tension and acting solely as support.
I could barely pay attention to the analysis because every time you played a bit of the song I was taken over by the groove. Really appreciated you taking apart this great song, I've gained a new appreciation for it! I'm probably the younger new audience that this song reached - I definitely knew who Daft Punk was before this but this song is the one of theirs I heard the most.
By 2013 it didn't seem like they were pretty much done, riding a wave of nostalgia, and waiting to become irrelevant, contrary to your intro. No, their work for the Tron Legacy soundtrack, a movie which came out in 2010, was pretty amazing, a unique and maybe innovative blend of electronic and symphonic instruments, and clearly took time to make. Feels like this was overlooked either on purpose to give a more dire and impactful intro, or by accident. If on purpose, it seems somewhat disengenuous to at least not mention? Unless you talk about it later in the video (but if so, it should have been in the intro part, imo)
I came and made a comment about this, but I'm glad others noticed, too. Daft Punk _also_ made their own movie in that time. But Tron Legacy's SOUND was phenomenal, and tragically you only truly got to experience it in IMAX theaters, which we're all 3D. If you didn't see it in 3D, you didn't see it, just because the audio mix on 2D sucked! Before I moved out of my last place into this new one where I have neighbors, I watched the Blu-Ray at a truly antisocial volume. I've got 15s in my fronts and 8s in my rears, and that BASS is just suffusive!
100% on point ^^ ... this video is a really out of touch bad take. People have also never stopped remixing Daft Punk, some of the most prolific producers in the world did remixes of Daft Punk between 2010 and 2013, which definitely weren't pretty much done and waiting to become irrelevant. If anything, Get Lucky really had the opposite effect and cooled down Daft Punk's hype a little bit. Sure, suburbanites might have discovered a newfound love for one single Daft Punk song but tbh Get Lucky made Daft Punk lose a lot of their indie hype / hipster appeal by having a little too much straightforward disco nostalgia and going boring radio mainstream.
i never really noticed, but the beat section of "Get Lucky" sounds incredibly similar (to me, at least) to the beat of "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll", notoriously sampled by Daft Punk in their breakout single "Da Funk" (and also "Daftendirekt" and "WDPK 83.7", off of Homework). reminds me of what Bangalter said, about Random Access Memories being both a love letter to the disco and funk that inspired the duo and a hope that future electronic artists, breaking the mold in their own ways, would be inspired by and sample from RAM as they did from their Superhero(es).
Him starting the bass out with a basic pattern sets up an expectation and when he goes into improvising for the rest of the song, it makes it feel “spicier” imo.
I can elaborate on why the bass part starts out simply, I think. Starting the bass groove simple and then embellishing it is a sure-fire way to make sure your bandmates don't notice you're running away with the part until it's too late. If you start going Bootsy on them from the start they can still go "wait that's not what we wrote down", but after the first few bars, you're into it.
interesting analysis. to me it kind of sounds like a delayed ii - V in the key of A. the fact that the chord progression never actually goes "home" helps maintain that forward sense of momentum. this also helps the verse's emphasis on the minor tonic (F#) and the chorus's emphasis on the major tonic (A) make more sense in my mind
What jumped out to me: - on the key. In terms of relationship of the key to the chords in the loop, I was reminded of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" - both have a four-chord loop (the "Axis" chords in Sexual Healing), and both are sung in the key of the third chord in the loop. I feel this kind of thing, where the strong chord is in the third bar, as an almost backbeat-like thing in its effect. You've got the stress from the metric form landing on bar 1, with a non-tonic chord - we get some tension from that, then the harmonic tension gets resolved in bar 3, but not the metric tension, which is midway through building. Taking these two pieces apart from each other makes for a loop that naturally turns over, rather than coming to a firm resolution every turn. - on the bass part. To me, the first few bars *are* the part - it's real simple, it sets up the expectations. Once the intro's done, there's no reason to come back and play it unornamented again. The rest of the piece is a variation on that simple pattern.
That’s a great way of explaining what I’ve been feeling. Your phrase “naturally turns over” made me think of a wheel with two smaller weights on it, instead of just one big one.
A bit random, but when Get Lucky was popular, I didn't have a very good car stereo, and my kids (10, 8, and 5 at the time) thought they were saying "we're up on Mexican monkey." Sounds crazy, but whenever it comes on at work, I tell people about it and they can't unhear it. I don't know what "Mexican monkey" is, but it sounds like a good time.
This is what everybody were talking about when referring to that part, back when the song was new.. So does not sound crazy at all or special at all. And probably doesn't have anything to do with the stereo of your car, since most people had the same reference.
I did not know the drums were by Omar Hakim. I first knew of him from Weather Report, where he replaced Peter Erskine, and he was truly amazing. I know the song is basically just four bars, but what a four bars!
"Feels like they were just waiting to become irrelevant..." The 10,000 times I listened to the Tron Legacy soundtrack between 2010 and the release of Random Access Memories begs to differ 😉
I would say B is the root, since the song feels very, very dorian (because of the 4th chord in the loop). That also explains the resolution of the chorus' melody to the A, since that is the parallel Major to that, and again I feel like it is stable and doesnt want to resolve to F#
That is so weird for me to hear, as I hear the song as incredibly insistently in F#, with the 3rd bar feeling (momentarily) resolved, and I've never even considered it being in B until watching this video. (and I still can't hear it)
Amazing work in analyzing the music. Can't believe you drew all those animations on top of the musical breakdown. Props for all the work you put into it!
This video is great. If there's any song I would want to see you analyse, I would say "birdhouse in your soul" by they might be giants, because that song is all over the place.
Whenever you get to a “what key is this actually in?” part, you should copy Sideways’ gag of “If you haven’t heard of [topic], hi welcome to the channel.” He does it with leitmotiffs; you can do it with mixed keys.
I have minimal formal music theory training, but your argument of keys not being the right way to look at it makes sense. In this case, the harmony is in B Dorian, while the melody is in F# Aeolian. The song as a whole isn’t in one key; it’s in the 3-# key signature.
Huh. Lots of interesting discussion on the tonal center. To me, the whole song is in A, and the whole point is that it hardly ever resolves. The music is literally dancing around the fact that it wants to climax... just like a night out on the town... which is fun, but isn't REALLY satisfying unless you "get lucky" (the only phrase in the song that resolves). Then the A discussed at 14:34 becomes an important clue to the direction the song is heading, rather than just a random variation for no particular reason.
2013 was "12 years since their last commercially successful" album? Human After All went gold. It wasn't as huge as their first two albums, but it's not like it was a failure. Technologic was constantly being played as well.
I agree! Kinda irked when I read the title. Just because Daft Punk wasnt in the mainstream for Human After All doesnt mean they werent still commercially successful! And the rest of the album is a banger too, considering it won best album, not just Get Lucky
We don't need those complications, common! It's just B Dorian, there's no fight between Bm and F#m. We just have a habit to stick to aeolian sound, so sometimes it sounds kinda F#m for us, but it's ordinary I - iii - v - IV movement
I think the key signature thing is a red herring. I think it's in F#m, making the progression iv7-VI-i7-II. The 4-6-1 voice leading makes this really jive. I also love the use of the i7-II, which is a common in cinematic music. I also believe the II is a substitute for the IV. For me, the general resolution feels very plagal.
I just had an idea. You and someone like Todd in the Shadows could do some sort of crossover. He does videos where he analyzes the stuff around the music, while you could analyze the music itself. Granted, he tends to go for One Hit Wonders, new pop hits, and albums that ended a career.
@@satiric_ actually no this is a vocoder. Specifically the Digitech Talker. More often than not they do use a vocoder with the exception being on Around the World and one solo on Fragments of Time.
@@Prefesuersheen the other part might be correct but there's no way Something About Us is a talkbox. It's way to breathy. Sounds like either a Harmonizer or even just auto tune and a filter
I'd say the progression is more similar to the plagal cascade rather than the doo-wop changes, it's exactly the same but replacing A with it's relative minor F#-
Gonna die on the hill of Bm for this one, but that may be my vocals-secondary approach to music. With this genre though, the downbeat is so defining it's hard to ignore as far as musical intent goes.
My high school marching band marched get lucky in a parade last year. I still think it's and awesome song and it was a lot of fun to perform. Great video!
I would love to see a video on Tally Hall's Ruler of Everything and it's sudden breakout due to social media, despite it having existed for a while prior to its sudden spike in popularity.
I heard the chord progression as also being centered on F#, making it more truly in the key of F#. To me it sounds like a chord progression that ends on one, maybe just because I’m used to hearing the melody over it but I’m not sure.
I'm not sure if it's purposeful or subconscious, but the bass groove really reminds me of We Are Family by Sister Sledge - famously written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (the GOAT of funky bass playing)
Great video. Just want to say that Hakim played some grooves and fills and then the robots sampled the parts they wanted. I have no doubt that he can do that, but in this case the reality is that it sounds rock solid because it is a loop.
re: @12:30 I'd argue that it's less about space, but about aligning with the kick drum to square up heavy pulse. It's hip to be square when you're surrounded by squiggly rhythmic funk
I always love your videos. One thing that I thought you were going to point out is that the “Get Lucky” chord progression is the exact same thing as the Plagal Cascade that you mentioned, except the bass note of the 3rd chord is an F# instead of an A, making it the relative minor. All the best from Belize 🇧🇿
Your videos always go over my head, and that's okay. I watch them to get a sense of how many things are going on in a piece of music, which to me sounds like a single Gestalt. The main thing I take away from your videos is a sense of awe at the interplay between musicians. I would love to know to what degree that interplay is planned and to what degree it is intuitive and how that varies between musicians.
Personally I hear music in two parts: the timbre and the melody. Instrumentation is a function of timbre, and chords inform the melody. But I’m an ambient musician so not much is happening at any one moment in my songs.
I hear the harmony specifically the Guitar as the main key of the song. To me Pharrell seems to be playing around with that key in a lower/warmer register to 1. Keep the song feeling light and fun. 2. Experiment with different notes and chods.
This is a great analysis, and only partly because the song is such a groove. Another thing that makes it great analysis is something I'm going to call analytic tension. It's a Daft Punk song, and for the first 17 minutes or more (I'm paused at 16:59) we're looking at what everyone other than the two principal daft punkers are doing. So far in the analysis, it's a Pharrell/ Nile Rodgers/ Omar Hakim/Nathan East song. What are Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo doing all this time? Aha, suspense! That question throbs in my mind for the whole 17 (or so) minutes like a four-on-the-floor kick with a backbeat. But I know that this tension will make the analytic resolution all that much more satisfying. This is why I love what you're doing here. The way you analyze music feels musical to me. Even when it gets complicated, I stay engaged because I know it's going to suspend and resolve and have great rhythm throughout.
I think the baseline in the beginning is like that so it can have space to evolve. It starts with the basic 3 notes as usual, but makes the second half as simple as possible so it can become gradually more complicated afterwards.
If you analyze the chord progression and the melodic pattern of Pharrell, you will be able to see that the two elements are playing in the A MAJOR, it is just that they are in different modes. Pharrell is in relative minor then the rhythm section is in B Dorian.
i love your channel and after the spoken word video you are definetely invited to the cookout but man did you have me laughing at the "styles based off african american dance music," part
I really enjoy this analysis of this great tune! I still think Daft Punk hired Rogers to give them a hit. I suspect they had little to do with the song except a talk box interlude near the end. The rest of the record has much more Daft Punk influence.When you get Omar Hakeem, Nathan East, Pharrell Williams and Nile Rogers (not forgetting T.I.)on a track, magic happens!
Id go as far as to say RAM didn't just save Daft Punk's careers but also the course of music production to this day. It came out at a time when pop music was either extremely digital Ala Skrillex, or completely acoustic Ala Mumford and Sons. This album paved the way for the use of live instruments in pop production we see today with artists like Lizzo, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran.
It's in B Dorian I'd say. That F#m7 chord in the loop definitely doesn't feel like the I-chord, even if Pharrell resolves to that F# when you hear the I-chord. That F# is a perfect 5th for B anyways.
Thanks for the video , great work. Omar Hakim - i know him from sting, didn’t know he played here. The groove reminds me a bit of billy Jean. As to the key, I dont think there is one right answer, but the chords circling around the Bm chord and the scale being that of A / F#m, for me I stick stick with B as root, making this a B Dorian. Much like for example Chris isaaks wicked game.
The song's key is obviously B, as it is the only note you can hit almost consistenly throghout the song without it feeling odd or off key. The melody not resolving or not being structured around B isn't much of an issue, and thankfully so even, as it might have been boring otherwise.
I'm going to correct you on RAM reinvigoratting their career by introducing them to the next generation. I'd argue the Tron movie did that. I'd maybe heard their music before, but I didn't know who they were until the Tron movie and Daft Punk doing the sound track. Honestly, I think the extended Tron Legacy sound track may be one of my favorite albums of all time. It was then that I learned about Daft Punk, and when they released RAM, I was there and ready for it. I'm sad they never released anything since, and have broken up the band. But I'll just be sitting here, accessing to random memories, listening and enjoying myself.
I know you don't like to discuss lyrics, but I feel you're missing something big with the chord center/key discussion: this song is about the singer going out looking for sex. Not having sex, looking for sex; being out all night to get lucky, not being out all night getting lucky. The fact the singer strikes out and lands around the key center but never arrives at Bm (with the exception of the very near miss at the end of the chorus where he swerves to land at A) is note painting a map of this guy's hunt for sex running into dead ends all throughout the song. He never releases the sexual tension he's feeling, so the singer never fully releases the musical tension we're feeling.
I disagree. It's not about sex. It's literally about how Daft Punk feels like theres artists as good or better than them, but we're overlooked. Daft Punk just got lucky.
I didn't much like this song before because of the repetitivity of its structure (to me the beat wasn't strong enough to hold the song for 4 minutes without a B section, let alone 6), but while I still won't listen to it every day, I can appreciate its qualities more now and if I happen across it I'll hold on to those and manage to enjoy it without having to sing the pre-chorus of Nothing More's "Don't Stop" on top of it to make it bearable.
Both the harmony and melody often hit a G#, which would make the key B dorian if B was the center. To me it's always felt like it was pretty unequivocally in F#m.
@12tone Can you analyze the sound of British rock from the 2000s? It’s unique and I hear a lot of those same rifs occurring in music made today after a 20 year gap
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Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) While I was working on this, Middle 8 released a video about Random Access Memories. I haven't watched it yet, to avoid accidentally copying his analysis, but it's probably good if you want more Daft Punk content: th-cam.com/video/Qzs5cVA5goo/w-d-xo.html
2) If you don't believe me that Hakim could absolutely have played a much more complicated part if he wanted to, just look up any number of interviews and performances he's done. The dude was chair of the percussion department at Berklee for a while, he knows how to play drums. Playing simple here was a choice.
3) Honestly, 90% of the stuff I said about the drums is absolutely not unique to this particular song, but I feel like in music theory circles we often don't spend enough time appreciating the importance of a good, foundational drum beat so I wanted to talk about some of those techniques.
4) One thing I noticed while syncing the animations was that the clap actually seems to sound a fraction of a second _before_ the snare, giving it a bit of microrhythmic push and a sense of increased energy and urgency. It's extremely subtle, and would have been very difficult to demonstrate in the video even if I'd noticed it in time, but it's still pretty cool.
5) I'm playing fast and loose with the definition of "cross-rhythm" here, but whatever, it's my video, I can use words however I want.
6) Apologies for the bass tone, I couldn't find a stem so I had to isolate it myself. That means I'm stuck with whatever frequencies made it into the final track, which tends to be heavier on the low end than what was actually recorded. I did my best, but it's not perfect. (That's also why the bass tone changes between clips: More of the high end gets cut out when there's vocals.)
Idk if you know about it, but demucs, I've found, is the best for DIY stems these days.
When you said “drums by Omar Hakim”, that was all you needed to say. He’s got the chops to play anything (when you’ve been hired by both Sting and Peter Gabriel, you know your stuff), but this song doesn’t need complexity. Serve the song.
For a more flashy showcase of Omar Hakim's drumming, Giorgio by Moroder (which is also off of Random Access Memories) features a fantastic drum solo!
The clap not being in perfect rhythm might also be imitating a realistic clap from the audience, that often isn't metronome-accurate
7) Most of the gummy bears missed the page on the end card lol
I had a rather big fight with my best friend, my brother from another mother, back in 2019. We didn't have contact for over a year, until Daft Punk uploaded their epilogue on 21/02/2021, which I used to reach out by simply sharing the link. Two bros walking side by side, end of an era, etc.
Either way, he jumped onto the opportunity, and we started gradually healing our trust and friendship. Exactly one year later on the 21st, a mutual friend reached out to tell me that he had suddenly passed away. Not quite as explosive as in the epilogue video, but infinitely more abrupt.
The song used in their Epilogue was from the same album, Random Access Memories, which has helped me a tremendous amount with giving it all a place.
Sorry for your loss. What a heartbreaking story. It sounds like you’re already on top of it but focus on how nice it is to have remedied you and your friends division before his untimely passing. All the best brother
Sad but music brings healing in sometimes straightforward ways and sometimes mysterious ways. Hope you are on the road to peace now
"Touch" is the song if i'm not mistaken, one of the most powerful songs ever written in my opinion. Sorry for your loss.
I think it’s impossible, or at least incomplete, to analyze Get Lucky without looking at it in the context of the full album.
Get Lucky plays right after Touch, an incredibly complex and earnest song about deep human connections that has a somber, almost tragic ending. Immediately, it then hard cuts to Get Lucky, a simple, groovy dance tune about sex and partying and not much else. (Which is not a bad thing; this song is still a banger).
Because of this sharp contrast, I’ve always felt that Get Lucky is meant to be satirical. Touch is an emotional roller coaster that makes Get Lucky seem incredibly shallow by comparison, which I think functions as a statement on the importance of deeper human connections. But Get Lucky is a simple groovy dance tune, so it’s only natural that that’s the one that exploded in popularity. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also, the final moments of Touch bring in Rodgers on guitar. This almost sets up the transition to Get Lucky. It's a subtle thing, but it works so well. The whole album is really a masterclass in production. So many little details. I swear Daft Punk played the long game with their albums. Alive 2007 is basically a demonstration that they wrote songs to work in combinable pairs, but each song in each pair may have come from a different album.
Funnily enough, I actually drew the exact opposite conclusion from juxtaposing those two songs, at least for Get Lucky. Yes, Touch is earnest and about human connection and ends sadly, as if the "protagonist" of the song was in a relationship that didn't work out. But with that in mind, Get Lucky feels to me like the "protagonist" picking themselves up, putting themselves out there, and finding someone new - hence the opening lyrics of "Like the legend of the phoenix / All ends with beginnings". And I do feel like there's some genuine connection in Get Lucky as well, for instance in the refrain. It starts with two people wanting different things - "She's up all night till the sun, I'm up all night to get some, she's up all night for good fun, I'm up all night to get lucky" - and ends up with their desires aligning - "We're up all night till the sun, we're up all night to get some" and so on.
In short, I don't think Touch makes Get Lucky feel hollow - on the contrary, I think Touch elevates Get Lucky to be about not only sex and partying, but also about finding a new connection after the old one didn't work out.
But all that being said, I do agree that it's important to analyze Get Lucky within the context of the album, or at least as the follow-up to "Touch", which is a frankly gorgeous song.
I kind of agree with you. I think get lucky and loose yourself to dance we're meant to be groovy and dance songs. Touch, within and beyond are more introspective songs, emotional and thoughtful. They balanced really well the songs and meanings in the album.
Its like they made an homage to all their work so far, mixing everything they've learned and were inspired from (like giorgio moroder and paul williams feats)
Also the fact that beyond immediately follows get lucky, bringing back a more meaningful/introspective tone.
I'm really fond of Nile Rodgers' go-to story on the topic of "shallow" songs...
Basically a music teacher of his made the case that some bit of pop music, while trite and structurally simplistic, should be regarded as a "great composition" because it had succeeded in connecting with and emotionally moving a lot of people. The story concludes with Rodgers in Chic making songs about dancing and clapping your hands.
Along those lines, I'm not sure I'd share your view of Get Lucky.
i - III - v - IV is the "Get Lucky" progression for me. 2013 was getting right around the time I stopped listening to the radio fairly often, but this song continues to stick around in my mind space because it's just that great. It feels so good to dance to, it's fun to sing, and even more fun to harmonize on the pre-choruses with friends. Long live this incredible song. (:
For me it's ii - IV - vi -V .
I always transpose to Ionian mode.
iv - bVI - i - bVII , if we treat the minor tonic as the I ...
@@jankremencz Exactly how I've always parsed this tune.
@@jankremencz I hear it as a i - III - v - IV dorian progression instead.
@@TheSummoner ew, you gotta use flats or it's just wrong, man, whoever came up with this system is weird.
If i-III is Bm-D, then what would you call Bm-D#? Bm-D is i-bIII, or even better, to avoid using unnecessary flats, vi-I.
I feel like the drums and bass on this album were so underappreciated because they were "simple" but they were MASTERFULLY executed. If you listen to when the drums and bass come in on Beyond, listen to how in-sync the kick is with the bass. Absolutely perfect
its just because the vocals are so memorable and niles guitar is so ridiculously funky, the drums and bass are why the others work but they arent standout because of it. Also you realise you can just... quantize the kick and the bass like they most likely did on beyond.
@@noahleach7690 it's tough to play "in the pocket" as tightly as on here. simplicity sometimes disguises complexity, and I agree that the rhythm section don't stand out but I personally still get the backbeat of get lucky stuck in my head sometimes
I’d love to see a video dissecting the vocals of Harder Better Faster Stronger breaking it down the same way you would analyze a solo in Jazz
The problem is that there's no standalone instrument tracks for almost every song in Discovery, since there's so many samples
@@CoingamerFL yeah, but you can find the acapella and instrumentals. If you're mainly analyzing the vocals I don't see why you'd need the instrumental split by stems
I'm up all night for 12tone!
I'm up all night to get 12toned!
As a bass player, I'd say it's pretty much spot on that going un-syncopated is to leave room. It's "hiding" within the drum beat, letting go of the rhythmic tension and acting solely as support.
I'm not a bassist and I think that too.
2:00: “The high hat isn’t actually constant eighth notes. I lied to you.”
Me, having looked at the transcription: “Oh, I must have misheard him.”
I could barely pay attention to the analysis because every time you played a bit of the song I was taken over by the groove. Really appreciated you taking apart this great song, I've gained a new appreciation for it! I'm probably the younger new audience that this song reached - I definitely knew who Daft Punk was before this but this song is the one of theirs I heard the most.
"...taking the world by storm one more time."
No, that's a different Daft Punk song. 😁
*Just to celebraAaAte*
pee issstorr dintheball sintheballs
pee issstorr dintheball sintheballs
Glad I'm not the only one who caught the reference, lol
Check it out if you get the chance. Sound of the summer.
By 2013 it didn't seem like they were pretty much done, riding a wave of nostalgia, and waiting to become irrelevant, contrary to your intro. No, their work for the Tron Legacy soundtrack, a movie which came out in 2010, was pretty amazing, a unique and maybe innovative blend of electronic and symphonic instruments, and clearly took time to make. Feels like this was overlooked either on purpose to give a more dire and impactful intro, or by accident. If on purpose, it seems somewhat disengenuous to at least not mention? Unless you talk about it later in the video (but if so, it should have been in the intro part, imo)
I came and made a comment about this, but I'm glad others noticed, too. Daft Punk _also_ made their own movie in that time. But Tron Legacy's SOUND was phenomenal, and tragically you only truly got to experience it in IMAX theaters, which we're all 3D. If you didn't see it in 3D, you didn't see it, just because the audio mix on 2D sucked!
Before I moved out of my last place into this new one where I have neighbors, I watched the Blu-Ray at a truly antisocial volume. I've got 15s in my fronts and 8s in my rears, and that BASS is just suffusive!
Also Alive 2007 was a huge hit
100% on point ^^ ... this video is a really out of touch bad take. People have also never stopped remixing Daft Punk, some of the most prolific producers in the world did remixes of Daft Punk between 2010 and 2013, which definitely weren't pretty much done and waiting to become irrelevant.
If anything, Get Lucky really had the opposite effect and cooled down Daft Punk's hype a little bit. Sure, suburbanites might have discovered a newfound love for one single Daft Punk song but tbh Get Lucky made Daft Punk lose a lot of their indie hype / hipster appeal by having a little too much straightforward disco nostalgia and going boring radio mainstream.
100% agree
He needs to stick to theory cuz his takes on Daft Punk were terrible
i never really noticed, but the beat section of "Get Lucky" sounds incredibly similar (to me, at least) to the beat of "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll", notoriously sampled by Daft Punk in their breakout single "Da Funk" (and also "Daftendirekt" and "WDPK 83.7", off of Homework). reminds me of what Bangalter said, about Random Access Memories being both a love letter to the disco and funk that inspired the duo and a hope that future electronic artists, breaking the mold in their own ways, would be inspired by and sample from RAM as they did from their Superhero(es).
Perfect comment
Him starting the bass out with a basic pattern sets up an expectation and when he goes into improvising for the rest of the song, it makes it feel “spicier” imo.
I can elaborate on why the bass part starts out simply, I think.
Starting the bass groove simple and then embellishing it is a sure-fire way to make sure your bandmates don't notice you're running away with the part until it's too late. If you start going Bootsy on them from the start they can still go "wait that's not what we wrote down", but after the first few bars, you're into it.
"Going Bootsy" 😂😂😂
interesting analysis. to me it kind of sounds like a delayed ii - V in the key of A. the fact that the chord progression never actually goes "home" helps maintain that forward sense of momentum. this also helps the verse's emphasis on the minor tonic (F#) and the chorus's emphasis on the major tonic (A) make more sense in my mind
It’s B dorian? 🤷♂️
Yes, I agree, I also read this as B Dorian. Makes also more sense when we look at the melody
What jumped out to me:
- on the key. In terms of relationship of the key to the chords in the loop, I was reminded of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" - both have a four-chord loop (the "Axis" chords in Sexual Healing), and both are sung in the key of the third chord in the loop. I feel this kind of thing, where the strong chord is in the third bar, as an almost backbeat-like thing in its effect. You've got the stress from the metric form landing on bar 1, with a non-tonic chord - we get some tension from that, then the harmonic tension gets resolved in bar 3, but not the metric tension, which is midway through building. Taking these two pieces apart from each other makes for a loop that naturally turns over, rather than coming to a firm resolution every turn.
- on the bass part. To me, the first few bars *are* the part - it's real simple, it sets up the expectations. Once the intro's done, there's no reason to come back and play it unornamented again. The rest of the piece is a variation on that simple pattern.
That’s a great way of explaining what I’ve been feeling. Your phrase “naturally turns over” made me think of a wheel with two smaller weights on it, instead of just one big one.
As many people have said, dance music doesn’t work with keys. It works with loops.
A bit random, but when Get Lucky was popular, I didn't have a very good car stereo, and my kids (10, 8, and 5 at the time) thought they were saying "we're up on Mexican monkey." Sounds crazy, but whenever it comes on at work, I tell people about it and they can't unhear it. I don't know what "Mexican monkey" is, but it sounds like a good time.
"We'll rob a Mexican someday" is what i always heard until i actually read the lyrics
...”We’re up in Mexican Monkey” 100% sounds like a drug reference
This is what everybody were talking about when referring to that part, back when the song was new.. So does not sound crazy at all or special at all. And probably doesn't have anything to do with the stereo of your car, since most people had the same reference.
I did not know the drums were by Omar Hakim. I first knew of him from Weather Report, where he replaced Peter Erskine, and he was truly amazing. I know the song is basically just four bars, but what a four bars!
"Feels like they were just waiting to become irrelevant..."
The 10,000 times I listened to the Tron Legacy soundtrack between 2010 and the release of Random Access Memories begs to differ 😉
And all those tracks they produced for Kanye West? Totally irrelevant 😂😂😂
@@zerosozha and their collab with The Weekend recently
@@kalebaquinomileib8605 That was after Random Access Memories, though.
Not to mention how many tracks from that album were used in adverts, albeit Outlands was most common.
That was a gripping analysis, incredible narration and visuals. Thanks for a great video! Adds a whole new layer of appreciation for the song
Can I just freak about how good that Discord doodle was???
I just noticed it! 20% Cooler!
..."let them go out on a high note, [taking the world by storm] **one more time** " Clever. ☺
I would say B is the root, since the song feels very, very dorian (because of the 4th chord in the loop). That also explains the resolution of the chorus' melody to the A, since that is the parallel Major to that, and again I feel like it is stable and doesnt want to resolve to F#
That is so weird for me to hear, as I hear the song as incredibly insistently in F#, with the 3rd bar feeling (momentarily) resolved, and I've never even considered it being in B until watching this video. (and I still can't hear it)
So you say it’s in B Dorian because of the D major chord?
@@AtomizedSound because of the E major chord
I'd never even considered what "home" was in this song but now that it's being discussed I'm definitely with you man, B dorian feels right to me
I'm on team B dorian.
Amazing work in analyzing the music. Can't believe you drew all those animations on top of the musical breakdown. Props for all the work you put into it!
This video is great. If there's any song I would want to see you analyse, I would say "birdhouse in your soul" by they might be giants, because that song is all over the place.
Whenever you get to a “what key is this actually in?” part, you should copy Sideways’ gag of “If you haven’t heard of [topic], hi welcome to the channel.” He does it with leitmotiffs; you can do it with mixed keys.
I have minimal formal music theory training, but your argument of keys not being the right way to look at it makes sense. In this case, the harmony is in B Dorian, while the melody is in F# Aeolian. The song as a whole isn’t in one key; it’s in the 3-# key signature.
I LOL'ed at the collapsing metaphor. Perfect execution!
9:34 - Music is more fun with Discord!
Huh. Lots of interesting discussion on the tonal center. To me, the whole song is in A, and the whole point is that it hardly ever resolves. The music is literally dancing around the fact that it wants to climax... just like a night out on the town... which is fun, but isn't REALLY satisfying unless you "get lucky" (the only phrase in the song that resolves). Then the A discussed at 14:34 becomes an important clue to the direction the song is heading, rather than just a random variation for no particular reason.
Just what I was thinking. Nice summary.
It made me happy to hear a song by a boleved band of mine in the office, at the gym, on tv, etc. after so many years.
2013 was "12 years since their last commercially successful" album? Human After All went gold. It wasn't as huge as their first two albums, but it's not like it was a failure. Technologic was constantly being played as well.
I agree! Kinda irked when I read the title. Just because Daft Punk wasnt in the mainstream for Human After All doesnt mean they werent still commercially successful! And the rest of the album is a banger too, considering it won best album, not just Get Lucky
The whole random access memories overwhelms me in music, such a masterpiece
We don't need those complications, common! It's just B Dorian, there's no fight between Bm and F#m. We just have a habit to stick to aeolian sound, so sometimes it sounds kinda F#m for us, but it's ordinary I - iii - v - IV movement
"Touch" from RAM had a modern dance blackout stage play in my head.
I think the key signature thing is a red herring. I think it's in F#m, making the progression iv7-VI-i7-II. The 4-6-1 voice leading makes this really jive. I also love the use of the i7-II, which is a common in cinematic music. I also believe the II is a substitute for the IV. For me, the general resolution feels very plagal.
I just had an idea. You and someone like Todd in the Shadows could do some sort of crossover. He does videos where he analyzes the stuff around the music, while you could analyze the music itself.
Granted, he tends to go for One Hit Wonders, new pop hits, and albums that ended a career.
This is the only song I've ever heard played back to back on the radio.
Small nitpick: the effect Daft Punk uses for their vocals is a talkbox rather than a vocoder
@ghost mall Yes but in this song it's a talk box
@@satiric_ actually no this is a vocoder. Specifically the Digitech Talker. More often than not they do use a vocoder with the exception being on Around the World and one solo on Fragments of Time.
Extremely wrong they used a sennheiser vsm 201 on RAM at the least. Digitech talker for discovery, but something about us is a talkbox
@@Prefesuersheen the other part might be correct but there's no way Something About Us is a talkbox. It's way to breathy. Sounds like either a Harmonizer or even just auto tune and a filter
@@rct3isepic you’re right I was thinking of digital love, I get those two mixed up in my head all the time
I'd say the progression is more similar to the plagal cascade rather than the doo-wop changes, it's exactly the same but replacing A with it's relative minor F#-
Great video! Maybe look into some city pop in the future? It's very nostalgic music and a mix of different genres.
Even though I don't get all of them, buts I love the visual puns.
Gonna die on the hill of Bm for this one, but that may be my vocals-secondary approach to music. With this genre though, the downbeat is so defining it's hard to ignore as far as musical intent goes.
My high school marching band marched get lucky in a parade last year. I still think it's and awesome song and it was a lot of fun to perform. Great video!
I love you drew an andolite when talking about the voice giving the song form.
The "Get Lucky" progression is also used by VNV Nation in their excellent "When Is The Future" song
It was also used in Girls’ Generation’s “Genie”.
I would love to see a video on Tally Hall's Ruler of Everything and it's sudden breakout due to social media, despite it having existed for a while prior to its sudden spike in popularity.
"To borrow a term from my friend 8-bit music theory". I need this collab in my life please.
I heard the chord progression as also being centered on F#, making it more truly in the key of F#. To me it sounds like a chord progression that ends on one, maybe just because I’m used to hearing the melody over it but I’m not sure.
I hear it like that too, F#mi or A Major (relative major).
I'm not sure if it's purposeful or subconscious, but the bass groove really reminds me of We Are Family by Sister Sledge - famously written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (the GOAT of funky bass playing)
Great video. Just want to say that Hakim played some grooves and fills and then the robots sampled the parts they wanted. I have no doubt that he can do that, but in this case the reality is that it sounds rock solid because it is a loop.
though it came out before my time, this song holds a special place in my heart, nostalgia is powerful, even if you didnt really experience it
re: @12:30 I'd argue that it's less about space, but about aligning with the kick drum to square up heavy pulse. It's hip to be square when you're surrounded by squiggly rhythmic funk
I always love your videos. One thing that I thought you were going to point out is that the “Get Lucky” chord progression is the exact same thing as the Plagal Cascade that you mentioned, except the bass note of the 3rd chord is an F# instead of an A, making it the relative minor.
All the best from Belize 🇧🇿
Your videos always go over my head, and that's okay. I watch them to get a sense of how many things are going on in a piece of music, which to me sounds like a single Gestalt. The main thing I take away from your videos is a sense of awe at the interplay between musicians. I would love to know to what degree that interplay is planned and to what degree it is intuitive and how that varies between musicians.
P.S. Maybe my hearing is messed up. I had a choice between blasting your narration or not hearing the bass.
Personally I hear music in two parts: the timbre and the melody. Instrumentation is a function of timbre, and chords inform the melody. But I’m an ambient musician so not much is happening at any one moment in my songs.
I hear the harmony specifically the Guitar as the main key of the song. To me Pharrell seems to be playing around with that key in a lower/warmer register to 1. Keep the song feeling light and fun. 2. Experiment with different notes and chods.
I love all your videos, but this one is outstanding even for your channel. Thanks so much for doing all of this!
This is a great analysis, and only partly because the song is such a groove. Another thing that makes it great analysis is something I'm going to call analytic tension. It's a Daft Punk song, and for the first 17 minutes or more (I'm paused at 16:59) we're looking at what everyone other than the two principal daft punkers are doing. So far in the analysis, it's a Pharrell/ Nile Rodgers/ Omar Hakim/Nathan East song. What are Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo doing all this time?
Aha, suspense! That question throbs in my mind for the whole 17 (or so) minutes like a four-on-the-floor kick with a backbeat.
But I know that this tension will make the analytic resolution all that much more satisfying.
This is why I love what you're doing here. The way you analyze music feels musical to me. Even when it gets complicated, I stay engaged because I know it's going to suspend and resolve and have great rhythm throughout.
this was either the best one of these or the one i understood the best. props.
Goddamn, I had no idea how intricate everything in music can be. Wow!
If you asked me to analyze this song.... 'this is a great song' THE end!
I love this song and Daft Punk, thanks for sharing your own awesome perspective on their work :)
I think the baseline in the beginning is like that so it can have space to evolve. It starts with the basic 3 notes as usual, but makes the second half as simple as possible so it can become gradually more complicated afterwards.
i dunno if it's a referance but at the end you said '...one more time' and i liked that
If you analyze the chord progression and the melodic pattern of Pharrell, you will be able to see that the two elements are playing in the A MAJOR, it is just that they are in different modes. Pharrell is in relative minor then the rhythm section is in B Dorian.
I would say the key of the song is B dorian. B is the root, but it uses the notes from A major/F# minor
so glad that I have a way to explain why my favorite song ever is so good other than saying "the groove is just that good, man"
i love your channel and after the spoken word video you are definetely invited to the cookout but man did you have me laughing at the "styles based off african american dance music," part
But it’s true…so how is that funny?
I really enjoy this analysis of this great tune! I still think Daft Punk hired Rogers to give them a hit. I suspect they had little to do with the song except a talk box interlude near the end. The rest of the record has much more Daft Punk influence.When you get Omar Hakeem, Nathan East, Pharrell Williams and Nile Rogers (not forgetting T.I.)on a track, magic happens!
This is so much truth. Nile Rogers brought this home for them.
some of you may notice that the first demonstrated Doo-Wop change, B, G#min, E, F#, has a pedal point
Id go as far as to say RAM didn't just save Daft Punk's careers but also the course of music production to this day. It came out at a time when pop music was either extremely digital Ala Skrillex, or completely acoustic Ala Mumford and Sons. This album paved the way for the use of live instruments in pop production we see today with artists like Lizzo, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran.
This is the first vid of yours I’ve seen and I’m really enjoying it. Got a sub from me! Keep it up!
1:11 Old Man of the Mountain, RIP. GRANITE STATE!
Your musical lingo is so verbose and definitive! Wow! Great review!
funny how the pokemon nods just keep EVOLVING throughout the video
@19:56 “take the world by storm … One More Time”
I see what you did there! 😜
you absolutely have to analyze Snarky Puppy's Trinity!
It's in B Dorian I'd say.
That F#m7 chord in the loop definitely doesn't feel like the I-chord, even if Pharrell resolves to that F# when you hear the I-chord.
That F# is a perfect 5th for B anyways.
Biggest takeaway from this was honestly, "Wait, Nathan East was on this? Badass."
Thanks for the video , great work. Omar Hakim - i know him from sting, didn’t know he played here. The groove reminds me a bit of billy Jean. As to the key, I dont think there is one right answer, but the chords circling around the Bm chord and the scale being that of A / F#m, for me I stick stick with B as root, making this a B Dorian. Much like for example Chris isaaks wicked game.
Sound of the summer
To me, I think it’s my nostalgia for 2007-2017.
Regarding the key: I play this song in B Dorian and think of it as modal.
The song's key is obviously B, as it is the only note you can hit almost consistenly throghout the song without it feeling odd or off key.
The melody not resolving or not being structured around B isn't much of an issue, and thankfully so even, as it might have been boring otherwise.
'The song evolves' *draws Charizard* genius 😂😂😂
I'm going to correct you on RAM reinvigoratting their career by introducing them to the next generation. I'd argue the Tron movie did that. I'd maybe heard their music before, but I didn't know who they were until the Tron movie and Daft Punk doing the sound track. Honestly, I think the extended Tron Legacy sound track may be one of my favorite albums of all time. It was then that I learned about Daft Punk, and when they released RAM, I was there and ready for it. I'm sad they never released anything since, and have broken up the band. But I'll just be sitting here, accessing to random memories, listening and enjoying myself.
Feel good hit of the summer
Great analysis. Even graphical.
thanks for this
Daft Punk was busy making a movie and an amazing soundscape for another movie.
It would be great if you did a video about Entre Dos Aguas, by Paco de Lucía. Definitely would make for an interesting video.
I know you don't like to discuss lyrics, but I feel you're missing something big with the chord center/key discussion: this song is about the singer going out looking for sex. Not having sex, looking for sex; being out all night to get lucky, not being out all night getting lucky. The fact the singer strikes out and lands around the key center but never arrives at Bm (with the exception of the very near miss at the end of the chorus where he swerves to land at A) is note painting a map of this guy's hunt for sex running into dead ends all throughout the song. He never releases the sexual tension he's feeling, so the singer never fully releases the musical tension we're feeling.
I disagree. It's not about sex. It's literally about how Daft Punk feels like theres artists as good or better than them, but we're overlooked. Daft Punk just got lucky.
ok freud
@@doomstar2040 eh could go both ways
Another great video! Could you please do one about Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) by Kate Bush?
I didn't much like this song before because of the repetitivity of its structure (to me the beat wasn't strong enough to hold the song for 4 minutes without a B section, let alone 6), but while I still won't listen to it every day, I can appreciate its qualities more now and if I happen across it I'll hold on to those and manage to enjoy it without having to sing the pre-chorus of Nothing More's "Don't Stop" on top of it to make it bearable.
Both the harmony and melody often hit a G#, which would make the key B dorian if B was the center. To me it's always felt like it was pretty unequivocally in F#m.
Check out Daft Punk's new single "Get Lucky" if you have the chance. Sound of the summer.
Holy cow! This guy is an amazing artist!! That drawing of Pinocchio isn’t just good, it’s photo realistic!!!! 😲👍🥇
I know right!
@12tone Can you analyze the sound of British rock from the 2000s? It’s unique and I hear a lot of those same rifs occurring in music made today after a 20 year gap
That Andalite head caught me off guard, not gonna lie.