[PIANO MUSIC]
Composers have always been searching for new sounds and colors.
Around the time of late Beethoven-- so about 1830s--
and then, Brahms after that, composers started searching for new ways
to use harmony that weren't within the regular tonal system
and weren't as easily analyzable.
And one of the colors that they came up with
is something that we call thirds-related harmony,
or chromatic thirds-related harmony.
And I'll explain why.
I like to call it chromatic third, because it really
says what's happening.
So if I'm in C major, our favorite key, and I go up a third to E minor--
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
There's no chromaticism.
It's all still white keys.
I can go up another third from E to G, and it's still all white keys.
But if I go up a third, and then add a chromatic-- so let's say,
from C to E major--
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
--a new sound and color.
And in tonal harmony, we'd expect that probably--
let's say, how are you going to analyze an E major chord in C?
Probably, you would analyze it as a secondary dominant, expected to go--
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
--to a minor.
But what if it doesn't?
What if it doesn't function that way?
What if it just is a color by itself?
Theorists were trying to think, well, what do we call it?
So they started calling it just thirds-related harmony,
because it didn't fulfill the expectations
of the regular tonal harmony.
So it might be a progression that just went--
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
--just between the two of them.
Or if you continued that cycle and went up another major third to A flat,
you might have a sound like--
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
Doesn't fit within the regular harmonic scheme, especially
if it doesn't go where we think it's going to go
or where it was expected to go in more functional harmony.
The E doesn't go to an A. It doesn't resolve really deceptively.
It just exists as a sound color and A flat,
which we might think of as a borrowed chord from the parallel minor.
It doesn't really function that way.
It's not substituting for anything.
It's just a color.
So composers started to enjoy doing this.
They might even end the piece on a cadence that was--
imagine big brass going all--
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Has a different sound.
It's a new sound and so composers toyed around with that.
And the theorists said, well, what's going on here?
Because that's what theorists do.
They try to explain what composers do and what sounds are going on.
It was called thirds-related harmony or chromatic thirds harmony.
It became popular around the mid-1800s and has continued on ever since.
If you follow through the same thinking--
OK, if you can do that with major thirds, what about minor thirds?
And clearly, if I'm in the key of C and I go up a minor third,
say, a major chord there to E flat major,
one might say, OK, that's a borrowed chord.
But if I continue that and go--
and then, up another minor third, F sharp major,
we're not in Kansas anymore.
We're way gone.
We're at F sharp major in the key of C. Really,
it's as far distant as you can get.
But we can, kind of, hear that there's something going on there.
There's some relationship going on here.
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
Our ears hear, somehow, that those are connected.
And so that's another way of doing major chromatic thirds.
And of course, we can fit in three minor thirds in a major key or in any key--
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--which are, again, the roots of a diminished chord.
So we could continue that pattern from C to E flat to F sharp major to A.
[PLAYING PROGRESSION]
And that, again, was, I think, some of the 20th Century Fox news
reels and others.
You might hear them close that as a cadence.
Like the other one I did before, with the major thirds, you hear the--
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So that's with major chords.
But what if I do it with minor chords?
We get an even different sound effect.
Perhaps Danny Elfman and some others--
it's almost a cliche now--
well, it is a cliche--
to use this chromatic thirds minor harmony, especially in horror films.
Because it's a very unsettling sound, and I'll demonstrate what I mean.
So instead of those roots, now, the A, E flat, F sharp--
or the C, E flat, F sharp, and A, being major chords, if they're minor,
you start hearing this sound I'm sure you're familiar with.
[PLAYING MUSICAL EXAMPLE]
You can almost imagine that's perfect stuff for TV episodes, movies,
when it's something creepy.
So it's a very useful kind of harmony to use, especially
if you're trying to set a mood like a very dark, sinister, creepy mood.
So experiment around with those.
Again, if there are a lot of chromatic notes when you go from--
[PLAYING CHORD]
--even in C minor, if you go to an E flat minor--
[PLAYING CHORD]
I have this G flat and on to it.
So it's very chromatic.
If I go to the F sharp minor, we have a C sharp in the key of C minor--
[PLAYING CHORD] --and the F sharp.
And again-- the C sharp if I have the A, which is
the law, if it's in the key of C minor.
So again, distant but related harmony.
So experiment around with the chromatic thirds, both in major, major thirds,
major harmony, minor thirds, both major minor harmony, and I
think you'll come up with some really interesting new sounds that will
be very useful in your compositions.