Turning minor-key songs major | Hacker News Reader

Turning minor-key songs major

theweek.com

88 pointsrenaudg48 comments

Shameless plug for my own minor version of the Beatles' "Blackbird" — my own guitar playing mashed up with the original Paul McCartney vocal (which I extracted from the Beatles recording by abusing the stereo spectrum).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAb9V08zcBE

At first I didn't think I was going to like it, but it is strangely affecting. Also, very nice guitar playing on you channel.

This is great!

For those who don't know, Adrian is both an excellent jazz/acoustic guitarist AND the co-creator of Django :-)

Ah, that would explain the inspiration for the name.

Here is a politician apologizing profusely for stealing from the public... reharmonized. https://youtu.be/lno7Q-KLpl0

That is awesome

A classic of this sort is this Star Wars major/minor swap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ppoRHBtwCY

No editor magic, just some really good live Electone playing.

The Star Wars theme is in G Major in the first place, so I'm not sure what they're doing here except playing some of the minor chords as their relative major counterpart.

Everything is swapped from what it usually is. The main theme is swapped to minor, and the imperial march afterwards is swapped to major. Plus the 20th Century Fox theme in minor at the start!

It's like hearing the other side of the music. The majorized version of the Imperial March sounds the way the empire must think of themselves to justify their actions.

You'll like the soundtrack to Tie Fighter. It has plenty of heroic imperial music (and a Star Wars theme that would have been perfect for Rogue One!)

There are some interesting musical nerd breakdowns of the music that did make it into Rogue One on YouTube. Giacchino only had a couple weeks to put that soundtrack together, and did a remarkable job given the huge time crunch. Because Giacchino is himself a music nerd, there are some interesting major/minor swaps in it from well known Star Wars leitmotifs.

Similarly, with Metallica songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i98v54fPYxU

Makes them sound like punk.

It may be worth clarifying that these are not covers (which would be musically interesting, but not technically impressive like what we have here)

It's likely that most of these versions are not even reconstructed from the original multi-tracks : it's possible to get this result with nothing more than the original song audio + editing in Melodyne.

This is of course related to yesterday's story about Auto-Tune (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15483145), of which Melodyne is a more capable competitor these days.

Are there papers anywhere on how Melodyne works?

I found the Melodyne patents (translated from German into English): https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&q=ininvent...

I'm so conflicted on these at times. I mainly dislike the original title: "Sad songs made happy."

There is nothing that says a major key must be "happy" and there is nothing that says a minor key must be "sad." It's also interesting to note that google claims that Losing My Religion is in the key of C Major:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=key%20of%20losin...

The chords are, according to Wikipedia, Em, Am, D, G.

That doesn’t sound right, the ii chord of C major is Dm, not D. I’m guessing E minor or G major judging solely by the chords.

Ionian is not the only Major mode, and aeolian is not the only minor mode. For the former you also have Lydian and Mixolydian. For the latter there are Dorian, Phrygian and the rarely used Locrian.

Mixo is usually considered dominant instead of major. There's also Lydian #6 for those times when Lydian just isn't major enough.

How about no key?

https://youtu.be/4niz8TfY794?t=278

Can someone recommend a good tutorial for key shifts in Melodyne? I wish I could learn how to do this for other songs.

I'm also interested in chord progressions. I wish I could tag my iTunes library with the Roman numerals for each song. But I don't know of any automatic way to do that.

Read the SuspiciouslySimilarSongs list, or watch the 4 chord song by Axis of Awesome to know what I'm talking about. The pop-punk chord progression is famous, but there are other songs that sound similar.

(e.g. Hall & Oates - Maneater, and Stevie Wonder - Part Time Lover, or Linkin Park - New Divide and The Offspring - Gone Away).

You might want to check out HookTheory - https://www.hooktheory.com/trends

It's a big database of songs and their progressions, with a lot of other stuff (a snazzy composing app, a set of music theory ebooks which I've not read, etc).

Thanks! It's good, and is correctly showing some similar songs.

HookTheory doesn't use Roman Numeral analysis though. I like that language, because it's easy to compare songs that are modulated to different keys. For example, Forget December - Something Corporate (D F C1 G) and New Divide - Linkin Park (Em G D A) are both ii-IV-I-V.

http://vjmanzo.com/clicheprogressions/index.php?title=Catego...

HookTheory says that Fm Ab Eb Bb in the key of Eb is also like Closing Time - Semisonic. But vjmanzo's site correctly notes that it's shifted over 2 places: Closing Time is I-V-ii-IV instead of ii-IV-I-V.

I've figured out how to get the real notes out of an MP3 using Melodyne, which is how I found the notes for Forget December. But I had to search online for the key, and then look up the Roman Numerals in a table. I wish I could just throw in an MP3 and get a Roman Numeral chord progression out of the other side.

Hey, sorry for the late reply. HookTheory most definitely uses Roman Numeral notation. In the link I posted, change the "Key" pulldown to "Rel", and then you can choose each numeral in sequence.

Or, for example, to see all the songs HookTheory thinks use ii-IV-I-V, the link would be:

https://www.hooktheory.com/trends#node=2.4.1.5&key=rel

> HookTheory says that Fm Ab Eb Bb in the key of Eb is also like Closing Time - Semisonic. But vjmanzo's site correctly notes that it's shifted over 2 places: Closing Time is I-V-ii-IV instead of ii-IV-I-V.

I don't know what you're referring to here, but it sounds like HookTheory was just suggesting similarities. HT's actual entry for the song you're referring to is here, and has the same progression you mentioned.

https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/semisonic/closing-...

How this relates to your link I have no idea, it shows 404 for me.

Maybe check out http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/capo/ (Mac, iOS only)

These pieces make me viscerally angry. It's grating like Neil Cicierega but without the glee in doing it. Jeeeez.

I guess I'm not very good with music. These all sound basically the same as the originals to me.

Yes, you are either tone-deaf or a troll. Or just didn't know what minor vs major keys sound like, I suppose.

I don't know why anyone would accuse you of trolling, but you are certainly tone deaf if you can't hear the difference. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing that music isn't a big part of your life and wasn't really a part of your childhood.

As a musician, the difference is glaring, but my ear (or brain, to be more accurate) has been trained by 2 decades of playing and composing music.

I don't think he is tone deaf. I have a good ear for pitch, but I'm not a trained musician. I could hear minor differences in most of those songs, but the difference was minor, not dramatic.

When I'm listening to music, and it shifts between minor and major modes, I can tell right away.

I suspect the cause is that there are emotional cues in the human voice, and even changing from minor to major doesn't alter those emotional cues. Also, prior expectations can dull the perception of difference.

TBH, I was surprised at how similar the major mode versions of those pieces sounded to the originals.

You'd probably hear the differences played side-by-side. There are few truly 'tone-deaf' people. Music is much like anything else -- capabilities (including memory for a song's tonality & chords) are increased by interest, exposure to a wider range, close study, etc.

Given the nature of the work here, you could even put the original in one browser tab and the transposition in another tab and play them both at the same time. That will definitely highlight the differences.

The one that really did make a dramatic difference is notable because it didn't have the human voice involved. I'm talking about the Star Wars theme. In that one, the difference between major and minor was dramatic. But for vocal music, the emotional cues seem to override the major/minor distinction.

To me all of them sounded dramatically different. Then again I'm a musician of sorts. I'm sure there are all sorts of variables, including what sort of music(s) a person typically listens to.

Wikipedia says about 4% of people have it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deaf

Are you very familiar with the originals? I can't tell the difference between versions on songs where I have only heard the original once either, but if you're familiar it should be easier.

In any given (Western) key, the major and minor scales have most of their notes in common. So, transposition between major and minor does not result in a 'night and day' difference - depending on the melody, there may be only a few points at which different notes are used. These changes, however, are enough to alter the overall mood of the music for a typical listener - e.g. in the case of the Imperial March, from menacing to upbeat.

my favorite is the happy version of "careless whisper":

https://soundcloud.com/majorvsminor/careless-whisper-george

It's a pretty standard classical music trick to switch from minor key to major (or vice-versa), just for variation purposes, and repeat the theme in the major key. So this is what this sounds like to me, like Beethoven got a hold of REM.

I have done this manually on guitar for years, playing around. I would play major key 'Bad' somewhat differently than that.

When you change early 80s thrash metal from minor key to major key, you get something that's pretty close to punk rock. Metallica's Kill 'Em All in major key is a fun listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i98v54fPYxU

One other interesting example: Mahler's first symphony, third movement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5A5tFyXQio) which incorporates a minor-ized version of the classic (major) Frere Jacques tune as a motif.

Giant Steps in C. Jazz musos will appreciate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTYzYpb1MY0

The Nirvana sounds so utterly bizarre to me - I suppose because I don't hear the original as tonal to begin with.

There’s no love song finer but how strange the change from major to minor every time we say goodbye.

This is so 2013.

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