How to write a CATCHY THEME like JOHN WILLIAMS
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video I do an in depth motivic analysis of four classic John Williams themes to show just how much he repeats his melodic ideas. Motivic repetition is a central part of his composition method and it comes up consistently across his decades of brilliant film scores.
We'll look at themes from Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Schindler's List and go into note by note detail to see how he does it.
The number one thing my students to do not do enough is repeat their ideas! Repetition is one of those aspects of composing music that is so simple yet ironically so elusive to musicians learning how to compose.
Hopefully after seeing how ridiculously often Williams repeats his motives you will be more repetitive in your own writing as well!
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Williams is a true master who understands how to create melodies that will stick with you long after you've walked out the theater.
The repetition with slight variations or different context (as was shown in this video) is what makes it stick. You learn things by repetition, so it is the same with remembering melodies.
This is motivic based development. Beethoven and Brahms were masters at this. Sure, it’s repetition, but it’s better understood as a motivic based melodic lines.
You'd probably enjoy the book "Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation" if you haven't read it, although it sounds like maybe you already have!
@@RyanLeach I have read it, or at least a couple of chapters of it many years ago. Another interesting read is the Beethoven biography by Jan Swafford where he shows how all of the Eroica symphony melodic lines stem from a single, short, simple melody which only really shows it's face in trhe last movement. Brahms 4 has similar musical integrity.
👍
Repetition legitimizes.
Repetition legitimizes.
I do repeat themes and usually have a change of themes on a bridge and bring things back to the original theme. I am always afraid I am boring but i know that if you are unfamiliar with a piece of music and it doesn't repeat you end up just feeling a bit lost so I repeat themes. An example of someone who tries so hard to not repeat is Frank Zappa guitar solos. It ends up he is a godo player but I have difficulty listening to his solos because there is nothing to grab on to to ride out the experience.
Ryan, you are an excellent didactician and moreover you treat exactly those topics, which are often not treated or only in designated university courses - although they are absolutely essential for the creative handling of music - as in this case. You do this concretely, extremely concisely and with all only desirable clarity. And totally sympathetic, without airs and graces or schoolmastership. Why do I discover you only now!
I’ve been getting your videos recommended to me recently and every video I’ve seen from you in the past few days has been great. I finally subscribed. Thanks.
This is brilliant, thanks a lot for showing us this. We know Beethoven’s fifth does this all the time, but still I feel that I have to avoid repetition as it could sound boring, exactly as you said at the beginning. You’ve convinced me that I have to have a big rethink! My composition teacher told me this the other day, but now I am totally convinced that these methods will make me a better composer. Excellent video. 😊
Thanks for doing this. I got sort of the extension of this lesson, use your theme to generate your materials.
I think it's musically satisfying for folks to hear repetition and most of a piece generated from those original thematic materials.
I always loved that perfect passage in Swan Lake when the theme contrasts and comes back home.
I like using repetition in my compositions. It does make the musical work more interesting, especially when you tweek the subsequent repetitions with a new note that is in sync with the melody. Of course, you always use your ears for the good sounds. Happy composing. Thank you, Ryan for this wonderful tutorial. I appreciate them. 🎵🎶🎵🎵🎶
Thank you Ryan, awesome content as always
Thanks for continuing to watch!
I hope your channel grows, these are excellent videos that help explain these ideas. Top tier production, thank you so much for sharing these.
I have been changed forever by this video explanation. Every time I play music now, I see this.
Thank you very much!
I'm just starting to get the courage to compose. This video has opened horizons for me. I'm understanding what memorable motifs, figures and rhythms are thanks to you. Thanks for the epiphany moment.
Incredible Ryan. I am blown away by your explanations. Capeau !!! 🎩🎩🎩
You are a great teacher! Such a clarity and straightforwardness.
This video of yours confirms my personal compositional ideas and practices. Thanks a lot for this! I hope to learn more from you. 🙂
Love Ryan's vids, I've been trying to get into music theory for a long time after starting my music career. Thanks!!
I wish all of you guys who have dissected and analyzed Mr. Williams' music an equal amount of success. Great Video !
I just wanted to stop by and say I love your channel and your content is immensely helpful. Love it. Happy holidays!
I guess I'm not alone in that composing on an intstrument I tend to automatically reuse ideas and repeat rythm more than when composing more "intelectually" in a DAW or a note program. That's why I sometimes do both at the same time. I might start on the piano, go to a DAW/note program, return to the piano and so on.
Now, I think John Williams is a great movie composer, but movie music is to some degree not the same as a more challenging piece of music that need all your attension. Movie music often even downplays it self to not take too much attension. His music really works well in movies, and I can enjoy listening to a few bars in a headset, but after a while it might become a little boring. It's still a great tip to embrace repetition!
It would be nice to see an analysis of wich composers use lots of repetition like Williams and vica versa, and what elements they repeat. In all your examples it was rythmic repetition and reuse of themes, but you might repete chords or othervice be conservative vertically and let the rythm be the changing factor.
Some film composers compose more in a way where the music doesnt draw as much attention to itself. But Williams isnt one of them. His music is in my opinion, all while serving the film perfectly, always very listenable on its own. Its always very sophisticated, well crafted and creates Interest and Emotion. And his Motivic development and "repitition" is not something that makes the music more boring. It makes it more Interesting. Yes film music is most of the times more accesible as it doesnt have all the attention of the listener and needs to say what it wants to say relatively clearly. But that doesnt make it less Interesting per se.
An accessible piece of music with an easy to follow melody can be just as great and Interesting as a complicated hard to follow piece of music.
Otherwise you would have to say that Mozart and Haydn are just inherently worse and more boring than Strauss or Mahler.
Williams Concert music shows quite well the different aproach as it is much less accessible and harder to follow than his film work. But again, that doesnt make it any better or worse.
thank you for this, it's exactly what i needed to hear. i've been terrified of repeating ideas just like you said! i think because i'm so familiar with every phrase when i'm working on something. and then the result is when i listen back some time later, it's just chaos and the overall structure flies by too quickly to pick up
Wow! I learned a lot. Great job explaining how good music works.
Amazing info !
Thank you so much 💯✨
Fantastic video Ryan, was very enlightening!
Thanks Mark!
Just come across your channel and think it is great. Excellent point about the need for repetition.
Thanks, this was a helpful video. As a student brand new to music composition, I learned a lot. Just subscribed to your channel.
I think the Schindler’s List theme is meant to be unpredictable but extremely rhythmically simple, and that it’s also making use of the different … colours? Tones? Of the violin strings in a way that keeps me feeling a bit unsettled and sad when I listen to it. Given the subject matter, I imagine John Williams didn’t want to write a theme that ever let you feel sure about what was going to happen next
I have an extraordinary vocal range (albeit untrained); a piano performance major I had known at university told me from the fifth ledger line below the bass clef to the D above high C (and once an A). I have little understanding of the subtleties and nuances of such music and its composition. Even so, I so fervently love this music that I sing along as I listen to it.
Just discovered your channel. Excellent work. Thank you!
Great videos, efficients and clear, this the 5th i watch in a row..i suscribe ! Thanx ! :)
Thank you!
Keep it coming Ryan!
Will do, next up is some orchestration textures.
Hello Ryan, I think this was a very informative video explained in an easy to understand manner. I use this method at times, to brand the feeling of a scene or character. I think repetition is a good thing because a composer can build and build upon it. The following phrase whether it be a slight change of a note(s) or an entire counter melody is what I feel keeps it interesting. Sometimes I answer the repeating phrase with an answer, repeating phrase, answering with two phrases, and conclude with a counter melody (and so on). I am not as near as good as John Williams. Thank you for refreshing the idea of this approach.
Ryan I want to praise your great development in teaching methods. Illustrations with yellow underlying and the arrow that gives us what you talking about. Could you make the arrow more bigger more visible. That so much love your method. Ciao from Italy.
great stuff! would love to see you analyze some of the Howard Shore techniques from LOTR!
Although it's very simple, it's one of the most importants lessons in music.
I think it would have been good if you gave us an example of writing a catchy theme employing the melodic ideas others have used and then showing us how to write one aswell. I appreciated you showing us stuff from others though, just not sure how to apply it to my own composing without copying someone
This was very helpful! I’m a Religious Studies major but I taught myself how to read and write music some years ago and have continued to compose dedicatedly ever since . In some ways my music has improved but I’m still working on trying to create more memorable themes. If I send you links to some of my scores/recordings would you be willing to give feedback?
Great video!👌👍✨
Great video again! The quality was already on a great level but you managed to make it even better! Keep them coming :)
Thanks, will do!
Another fun detail about the indiana jones theme is how the B theme starts.
It's pretty much the same notes as the A theme but in different order.
If you look at those ascending groups of three notes E F G, D E F (ommiting the high C) in the A theme, The B theme starts E G F, C E D.
It's brilliant how just arranging the exact same notes differently creates an entirely new melody.
Lovely video! What sample sounds are you using? Especially the trumpet? Sounds good!
Subtle gold.
this is so universally applicable. Think of a story, a book, a film, a series. Something with fictional characters. It is very difficult to be invested in an action-packed story, when no time was taken to establish, familiarize with the character.
I guess we like something in between static & predictable and random. I guess the greatest piece of music of all time is somewhere in betweeen a continuous, unchanging sinewave, and white noise. And, I guess both of the extremes are closer than you thing. I mean the greatest song already is in the white noise. You just have to remove some off the excess frequencies. And from the other end, a sine wave is all you need to stack a bunch of em on top of one another, balance their respective amplitudes and phases. as to recreate the frequency response. Of course you need to fake and evolution in the tinmbre
Actually Harry Potter's Theme has the Dotted eight sixteen rhythm too! If you transcribe it in 3/8 you will see it. The dotted quarter and the eight is just the same rhythm but longer.
As a student in the complex world of composing I thought the content and style of presentation was excellent. No stuffy nonsense just a tear down into component parts.
Thank you, I appreciate you uploading this. A new sub.
And I appreciate the comment, thanks!
You have an awesome channel
Structure and repetition is nice & all, but the real question is: how can one come up with a motif that would match a particular character, place, thing or idea?
I would love to know which Orchestral Library you use for this? It sounds really great!
Nice! 🤘
Thanks!
The way I see it is the rhythm and the counter is representing the character....the choice of intervals and therefore the harmonic information in which the motif goes through is representative of the emotional shifts the character is put through as a result of the plot...ie the story
a very good example is the 5th symphony from Beethoven .
Yeah, would really want one of The Phantom menace. Lots of beautiful scores
So what you're saying is... Repetition legitimizes 😀
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Hi!
Thank you for these examples. A little point about the last one, I could not verify straight by ear: is there actually a two-bar theme with variations?
It seems as if the first phrase actually introduces a more varied theme, but there's a clear anacrusis-A-B-A structure, in the following section we have 3xAB, and the AB then repeats twice. Further, the basic form seems to come in the second section, not in the intro.
Other than that, your analysis seems spot on for the individual notes, I just seemed to note this higher level variation.
Nice walkthroughs, very educational :)
Thanks Tuomas, those are some interesting ideas. I think the intro to the piece actually starts before this, and what we have in the sheet music here is the first full presentation of the theme. It wouldn't start with a two-bar "theme" but a two-bar "basic idea". The whole melody is the theme.
This video is about repeating motives, not the form, but I'd actually consider this a sentence form without the repeat of the basic idea. Bars 1-2 are the basic idea, 3-6 have a very strong "continuation" feel with the constant eighth notes and harmonic movement, and then 7-8 are cadence with deceptive resolution, 9-10 cadence again with expected resolution.
En olis uskonut että tältä puolelta youtubea löytyis suomalaisia. Kaikkihan sitä kai ollaan täälä oppimassa.
Well now I've learned from you that the main content comes from the 1st 2 bars that just got integrated into my current composition!
I just poked around a little with this in my own funny ways for two minutes on an electric guitar that wasn't even plugged in and ... huuuuuuuu??? o_0
I should have recorded it! But ... I can try again tomorrow as it's Surely a small step for mankind but a giant leap for me!!!
Thanks, man! :D
Glad to hear it's actually usable!
I'm sure this is old info to everyone else, but never having seen Schindler's List, the first thing that struck me was the how much the shape of the melody has in common with the one in Hedwig's Theme. It's almost like the same musical idea eminating from two different frames of mind.
Have you or will you ever go over Undertale music? I really love the style and jazzy feel of Undertale soundtrack and would love to write similar music.
I suggest studying the two part inventions. Every principle of composition are there.
The first thing I noticed when transcribing my compositions was the repetition of small phrases. It's like discovering the magic ingredient.
Question regarding the Schindler's List theme: Would you consider it to fit period or sentence form? I personally interpret bar 4 as a moment of motion that moves towards a half cadence in bars 5 and 6, which later get resolved by a full cadence in the later bars. Is Williams doing something else here?
I love this question! (Keeping in mind that we're just making things up, ultimately the music flows beautifully and that's what matters) I feel this as a sentence form with three attempts to cadence! But unlike textbook sentence form we only get the Basic Idea once before moving into continuation. The sequenced melody and the circle-of-fifths chord progression makes bars 3 and 4 feel like such a clear cut continuation. And then he takes three tries to cadence until he lands back home (The first time he lands too high on the E, the second time he makes it to the right melody pitch but the wrong chord, the third time and final time he gets the right melody and the right chord)
@@RyanLeach I appreciate your reply! That makes much more sense to me. Three attempts at cadence captures that feeling I think
This may have been stated already, but is there a specific sound library you are using for your music notation software? I'm ready for non-Sibelius sounds : )
Noteperformer, and since making this I switched to Dorico but Noteperformer works for both
reminds of overture: La Forza del destino where in the beginning 2 main phrases it gives you the general idea of the entire piece cause its mostly repeating with new beautiful styles after that
Loved being able to make such connections
11:30 I think it would be more accurate to describe this "5th motive" as an "open voicing arpeggio". That explains why it is sometimes a 5th and sometimes a 6th - it's just following the harmony.
Do you think it is necessary to preserve the intonation of the main idea to maintain an artistic image? And it would be interesting to see a lesson on intonation and how important it is at all or not.
Ryan, what are your thoughts on BBC Symphony Orchestra?
I'm a self-taught pianist who fell hard into writing themes and cinematic pieces. I finally for the first time ever bought recording equipment and taught myself some DAW/recording so I can finally get my ideas down once and for all.
What I am finding myself lacking is some actual orchestral sounds such as strings/woodwinds etc to play with. What if any are your opinion of BBC Symphony Orchestra? I bought Omnisphere and was a bit disappointed. I also have good piano sounds from Addictive Keys.
No specific thoughts on BBC because I've never used it. People like it from what I hear. I'm a big fan of the Cinematic Studio libraries which sound great but are also very playable and easy to work with.
Well when you take another’s composition from just far enough back in history that the present generation is unaware of you can guarantee it will be a success because it was gone at one time and this is what John Williams did dig a little deeper.
All these sounds are from synthesizer or are Pc soundbanks connected through midi? And where from could get those sounds? Thank you
Yea these are just MIDI sounds, Noteperformer plugin and in this video I was using Sibelius
@@RyanLeach Perfect! Thank you, it sounds so real !
Compare the pitch names in bar 2 with the pitch names in bar 9. I would say that the first part of bar 9 is a variation of bar 2 that slides into the descending 4 note motif to cadence.
How would I go about adding chords to these melodies?
are these methods applicable to making hip/hop beats?
Woah I just realized the Ostinato from duel of the fates is a piece of Princess Leia’s theme. 🤔 which adds so much more depth to the music now.
I think that’s a stretch. They’re different scale degrees, one in a major key and one in a minor key, and rhythmically shifted by an eighth. A shared pitch class set that small isn’t enough, I think.
@@Sebanovic5 Your mom's a stretch 😮💨
I like the story of how the Indiana Jones theme is made up out of two different ideas, that then got combined in this great way because JW couldn't decide between the two.
To me he's one of the greatest. Im convinced that star wars could have been a b series without his imperial march.
Step 1 - realize that you can't write anything as well as John Williams, and that's OK
Step 2 - try anyway because learning from him will make you better
Step 3 - watch a film he scored again and just sit and marvel at the maestro
Step 4 - enjoy the increased joy and professional success that comes from greater understanding
You know you're onto something with your base melody if a repeated idea somehow doesn't sound like itself the 2nd time.
VERY WELL SAID! It's why John Williams is one of the greatest composers alive today.
you can heat main star wars theme in princess lea theme
nice
so, is a lick the same as a motif, or a motive or both?....I am learning how to teach Amazing Grace on the black keys and wonder what to call the pattern..I have used the word phrase but maybe that is wrong...
Motive and motif are synonymous
@@RyanLeach thanks...I sent your video to a friend who knew George Greeley...she liked it!!
I think this video will be very helpful for me. Thanks. I’ve actually been struggling with the worry that I’m repeating things too often.
Also, your example of the movie where the lead actor changes constantly is basically a perfect description of the Atlas Shrugged movie trilogy, which-despite being among the worst movies ever and having a completely new cast every time-is still leagues better than the rubbish book it’s based on.
In case anyone’s wondering, the book is basically the amphetamine-fuelled ravings of a deranged cult leader and contains a scene where the hero delivers a shockingly idiotic speech that goes on for LITERALLY FIVE HOURS!!!
It's my job to be repetitive. My job. My job. Repetitiveness is my job! I am going to write tonight the best melody of my life.
Hmm. If the first theme was three notes, with the fourth being a leading tone to the second theme, the first theme repetitions might be more obvious copies.
I got an advert for the game Hogwarts Legacy at 4:50, and of course the music in the advert was hedwigs theme! 😂
Schindlers List: Bar 2 foreshadows bar 4, bar 5 ends with some inverted variant of the beginning of bar 4.
I'm all over the place.
Want to learn more fundamental things.
Could someone explain the term "climax" in music theory?
It's usually a triumphant or intense moment in the music. Usually characterised with forte playing or intense counterpoint. Climax is almost subjective in this sense.
@@FrostDirt Thank you ☺️
Repetition legitimazes
2:31 technically it is a diminished third, not a second.
How to layer a theme like John Murphy would be a good video idea.
👍
8:36 it's the same actor doing a different accent
Do you give lessons?
Yes, more info here: ryanleach.com/lessons/
TH-cam copyright department really needs a better algorithm. So dumb that it flagged a clearly educational use of a melody.
My grandmother used to be my biggest naysayer. She would always tell me my music was repetitive.
1
D# to F is not a 2nd. It is a minor 3rd. They are enharmonically equivalent, but the way it is spelled (pun intended) it is indeed a 3rd
Repetition is fine, just don’t repeat the exact same thing. If your melody for example is 4 quarter notes going CEGC, you don’t want to repeat that over and over and over unless it’s an arpeggio.
gut
D# - F is NOT a 2nd. That's a diminished 3rd. :)
fabulous...It's his love of Haydn at work here I suspect.
Which is interesting, between Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven I'd say I connect with Haydn the least.
@@RyanLeach me too !...rather bland TBH...yet very very good at using a simple motif
@@edbuller4435 you and your clickbait spams are bland, not Haydn. Look at you both, two nobodies, egotistical guys trying to analyze Haydn and Williams. So much fail! Cringy at best.
Hey Ed, I’m so sorry, but we’re not famous enough to enjoy Mozart.