# Interesting Paper On John Williams Modal Interchange and Fav Harmonic Tricks



## ed buller (Oct 27, 2016)

https://www.academia.edu/9865115/Modal_Interchange_and_Semantic_Resonance_in_Themes_by_John_Williams


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## TGV (Oct 28, 2016)

Here's a link where you can download with registering yet another account: https://www.researchgate.net/public...Semantic_Resonance_in_Themes_by_John_Williams


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## FriFlo (Oct 28, 2016)

TGV said:


> Here's a link where you can download with registering yet another account: https://www.researchgate.net/public...Semantic_Resonance_in_Themes_by_John_Williams


Thank you! Much appreciated! I really hate it, when you try to sign in with google and have to accept all my email contacts to be forwarded ...


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## JohnG (Oct 28, 2016)

thanks Ed!


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## danielb (Oct 31, 2016)

Interesting thanks !


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## NoamL (Oct 31, 2016)

Cool paper!

Quoting what I see as the main points:

"Many Williams themes have a sturdy diatonic framework that is enriched by one or more chromatic surprise chords."
"In major keys, Williams frequently replaces diatonic minor and diminished chords with borrowed major triads."
"The elimination of minor and diminished sonorities through modal interchange results in a major key on steroids."
I reached the same observations through score study, I called it the Mega-Major Mode.

You can theoretically justify nearly all 12 major triads in the same key, if you just mix enough modes together:

*I* major
*♮II* Lydian
♭*III* minor
*IV *major
♯*IV* octatonic
*V* major
♭*VI* minor
♮*VI* octatonic
♭*VII* minor
♮*VII* Inception? 

While some of these might seem outlandish, the seven main chords I II bIII IV V bVI bVII are all over film music today:







Often V is omitted entirely to avoid sounding "too functional" so the progression terminates at bVI, IV or bVII.


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## erica-grace (Oct 31, 2016)

Thank you Ed, and thank you TGV for the repost.

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Are they serious????


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## ed buller (Oct 31, 2016)

they are a university !!!...of course they are serious 

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## prodigalson (Nov 16, 2016)

NoamL said:


> Cool paper!
> 
> Quoting what I see as the main points:
> 
> ...



I had a harmony teacher in college who, at the end of our final class in our final semester wrote on the board, "Any chord can follow any chord". And that was it.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 28, 2016)

I really appreciated the modal interchange paper on John Williams, thanks for sharing that! Modal interchange can be very useful in particular when you are trying to stay tied to a diatonic key center and yet have some interesting chords that add some emotional bang. The beatles did this kind of stuff all over the place. When you stay in a diatonic key center, then the music sounds a bit more traditional, it wants to resolve. But this leads to a feeling of familiarity to many listeners and gives very strong thematic material that is easy to remember, to hum, to feel very "song-like" in its own way. 

The interesting thing about modal interchange is that it can take a song/theme that is based on a major scale and momentarily make it sound minor for a few chords, providing a touch of melancholy to an overall major sounding theme, etc.. The beatles would even use this trick to reflect emotionally in the music what was happening in the lyrics... When I say momentarily sound minor, I mean its more then just going to a minor chord. An A minor chord in the key of C does not sound minor. but a D diminished chord in the key of C introduces an Ab scale tone, which sounds more minor then the base Key... That is the point...it takes the music to someplace else momentarily and....MAKES A POINT... while still remaining tied fairly strongly to the underlying base diatonic key. Thanks for sharing the paper on William's work with modal interchange.


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