[classical piano music]

- It's a nice piano.

Hi, I'm Nicholas Britell, and I'm a composer and pianist

and I love writing music for film and television.

Today I'm excited to explore some of the building blocks

of music, looking at the idea of chords and keys.

Exploring what that is from a composer's toolkit

and thinking about perhaps some of the

potential misperceptions that people have

about what chords are and how they feel.

The goal is definitely not to oversimplify these ideas

but actually to revel in the unbelievable complexity

of what music is, and to think about the ways in which

people experience music.

So what are chords?

Chords are actually any time you play three or more

different notes at the same time, that's a chord.

So for example, this is a chord, this is a chord

this is a chord, this is a chord.

This is also a chord, this is also a chord.

These are all actually major chords.

There's another type of common chord people talk about

which is a minor chord, which sounds a little bit like this.

[minor chord piano music]

Some people like to say that a major chord

perhaps feels sturdy, feels resolute and strong, maybe.

People sometimes think a minor chord is perhaps

a little more uncertain, a little less strong.

A little less stable, possibly, but I would caution

from ever feeling like we're saying that major chords

are happy, and minor chords are sad.

In and of themselves, they have certain characteristic

sound, but a lot of our emotional understanding of music

is from the context of music, so that could be from

the way that chords interrelate with each other

it could be from the way that chords interrelate

with rhythms and melodies, and then how that music itself

relates to what you're seeing against a moving picture.

Music has this very, very complex set of emotions

that the context of the notes themselves changes that

and when you put it up against the picture

it changes it even further, and that there aren't any

simple answers and takeaways to particular chords and keys.

Now there's a piece that I directly related

major and minor chords together, and that's actually

"Little's Theme" from the film "Moonlight"

directed by Barry Jenkins.

[mellow gentle orchestral music]

So this is the first appearance of "Little's Theme"

in the film, and in context when you put it up

against the picture, there's a feeling of poetry

in the music, there's a tenderness, and there's also

a sense of contemplation for Little

trying to understand the world around him.

- All right, you're all right now.

- So looking at the actual notes in "Little's Theme"

the piece is basically structured around

two types of chords.

Where hearing D Major and shifting to G Minor

just this kind of a chord that we heard earlier

and then shifting right back again to D Major.

So right away, There's actually this musical context

that's been created, the chords aren't by themselves

anymore, they're related to each other

and all of a sudden, although it seems like

a simple initial idea, there's actually this complex

set of feelings that comes from these chords

played together in this kind of a rhythm.

Now as a film composer, this is just step one

of the process, actually thinking of a piece of music

and how it might feel on its own, but ultimately

the key question is, does it work with the movie?

[mellow, gentle piano music]

When I took that piece and put it up against

this particular scene, it immediately felt like

it was connected to the picture.

Does not happen that way often. [laughing]

I can totally say that, there's many times

I write a piece of music, imagining things

and then you see the footage, and you're like

I'm totally wrong, this has no relationship

to what I'm looking at.

If a piece of music doesn't feel like it's connected

to the movie, then it doesn't matter how beautiful

the piece of music is, it's not right for the film

and this process of trying to figure out what works

for a particular scene, what works for a film

it's a very abstract and experimental one.

There's this alchemy of not knowing, and attempting

and experimenting, and that's the process

of writing film music with a director.

The next idea that evolves out of the chords

is the idea of keys.

Keys are essentially groups of notes that have a tendency

towards a certain type of chord.

So for example the C Major scale

[C major scale piano music]

has a tendency towards playing a C major chord.

The C minor scale

[C minor scale piano music]

has a tendency towards a C minor chord.

Keys are a way of thinking about many different chords

and understanding the ways in which chords

can actually relate to each other.

It's not overly complicated, it's just a tendency.

It's like a gravitational pull that certain notes have

towards certain chords.

There's an example that I'd like to explore

from the film "Battle of the Sexes"

a piece of music which is featured throughout the film

but comes in most specifically during the match.

At the moment where Billie Jean King

is beginning to completely beat Bobby Riggs

that piece of music comes in very specifically

in a certain form.

- [Announcer] Second came of the second set

has just began, Bobby Riggs serving, having broken through

Billie Jean King, one game to none in favor of Bobby Riggs.

And Billie Jean is taking a strike back.

[tennis rackets striking]

- This is the music which really signals

to the audience that the tide has turned.

It's a combination of many different elements

musically, it's the fact that the rhythm

is very forceful but it's this minor key

that gives it the feeling of determination.

[dramatic suspenseful music]

[crowd cheering]

- [Announcer] Billie Jean King has just won.

- This piece is in E minor.

[minor key piano music]

to dispel the idea that a minor chord is sad

or anything like that, to me, when I hear this piece

it actually has a feeling of persistence

in the face of obstacles, it has a feeling

of pushing towards something, of struggle and success

and actually has nothing to do with a feeling of sadness.

[minor key uptempo piano music]

So to further demonstrate this idea of musical context

and of shifting between different kinds of chords

as a story evolves in a film what do you do with the themes?

Sometimes the themes evolve and shift and develop and change

and sometimes it's actually even more important

that they stay the same.

I'm gonna play the theme I wrote, which revolves around

the relationship between Hal and Falstaff

in the movie "The King".

This piece is called "Him".

[slow serious piano music]

Now what's happening in this piece of music is

we're shifting between groupings of

major and minor chords again.

It's different from "Little's Theme" in the sense

that "Little's Theme" directly goes back and forth

between a D major chord and a G minor chord.

In this case, it's actually a bit more circular

in how things are moving.

We're at a C minor chord, at a C minor chord

this is a B flat major chord in an inversion

with a suspension, it's a little bit more complicated

but it's basically still a major chord.

And then we're back at a minor chord, minor chord

a major chord, major chord, and a minor chord.

So you can see that there's actually a circle

that's happening here, sort of a recurring cycle

in a sense, and that creates a set of different emotions.

When we first see Hal and Falstaff we're hearing

this theme around their relationship.

And towards the end of the film, Falstaff is killed

on the field of battle, the Battle of Agincourt

and it raises an important question.

How do you approach that moment?

Should one write a piece of music which is

particularly sad and directly speaks

to that moment in the film, or is it actually

hopefully or potentially more powerful

to have the same piece of music that you heard

come back, and that's how David and I approached it.

[slow solemn orchestral music]

When you see Hal looking at the body of Falstaff

you're hearing the same chords which we first heard

and which defined that heart at the center

of their relationship, of their friendship.

And one thing that I always feel is so important

in working on a film, is this idea of the architecture

of the score, and the fact that over the course of a film

you're actually creating in a certain way a set of

memories from early in the film that come back

and by keeping that theme and those ideas the same

at a later part of the film, to me it creates

an emotional response where you remember that moment

of friendship, and of earlier life.

I hope over the course of these different examples

of chords and keys and context, you can see how

things depend on their context, how different kinds

of chords depend on the relationship with other chords

and how there is this essential deep mystery

at the heart of this film scoring process.

[slow solemn piano music]

Well, thank you to Vanity Fair for making this

all possible, and thank you for watching.