Full transcript of “The Attack on Titan Theme Did NOT Need to Go THIS Hard”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 the music in Attack on Titan is chaotic and glorious check it out [Music] this is super cool we have this little intro line [Music] and then we have what is honestly a pretty simple Melody [Music] but we use some really simple chord changes and an incredible key change to make this sound absolutely iconic check it out oh our first chord very simply C sharp
0:47 minor and when we look at the notes in this melody those are pulled straight out of the C sharp minor scale now I want you to notice something very interesting about these notes from this scale paired with this chord so we have those are just out of that scale but watch what happens when we play it again we go to our second chord which is a major seven it's a beautiful sound it gives that epic kind of remember we've talked about that motion flat six flat seven one being very commonly used in a lot of different anime so functionally that's basically
1:32 what this is so we have this melody line and then when we change our chord we just play it again look at what it means for the scale right so we said that's just coming straight out of the C sharp natural minor scale now when we move to our a Major Seventh chord if we keep the exact same notes that we just played but start it from a now we wind up with a Lydia and so the natural minor in C sharp is the exact same thing as lydian in a which is why when we have this line
2:18 [Music] we can just play it again [Music] because all those notes work for both chords now that is cool in and of itself but watch what happens when we change key here we go [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] check that out we literally do the exact same thing again only instead of C sharp minor to a major we're going to keep that same relationship right which is a major third down right and we're gonna do that now but we're gonna do it up a minor third stay with me here so the next place we're gonna go is
3:04 E minor it's the exact same Melody we haven't changed anything and we use the same relationship go down a major third to C Major seven play the same line again and again we have the same relationship with the scales as well E minor e natural minor if we start that exact same scale from C we wind up with C lydian right one two three sharp four so we're doing the same thing again right and I think it changes a little bit there because what winds up bringing us back to a different place yet again [Music]
3:59 whoa hold on [Music] where are we going there whoa wow that's where we ended up okay so we went a little different here [Music] so we've moved now to a flat a flat minor which we're trading back and forth with E Major seven now this again is the same relationship that we
4:47 started with C sharp minor to a major and then we changed to E minor down to Z major seven and now we're just on a flat minor to E minor I guess technically would that be G sharp minor I guess it's G sharp minor right but here's the thing about these relationships when you move a minor chord down a major third right so e to C or C sharp to a or G sharp to e those are major thirds down right when we make that movement and we keep the first chord is minor and the second chord is Major it's interesting because it's like almost the exact same chord watch what happens if I just play G sharp minor I'm not going to change anything in my
5:33 right hand and in right now when we're on G sharp we have one minor three five and I'm just playing one again right now watch what happens I'm gonna change the root to E Major seven doesn't that sound so sick now look at what my notes have become in my right hand I haven't changed them at all but now when we're on E major they have a different function this G sharp rather than being the root is now the third the B is now the fifth the D sharp is now the major seventh [Music] and then we repeat the third again up top so we've gone from it in G sharping
6:22 one minor three five one and now it's three five major seven three and that's how we basically have the exact same chord but when we change the root all the notes change their functionality that's one of the beautiful Parts about Harmony like this and one of the reasons why the scales can be the same The Melodies can be the same if we get this epic sounding Saga thing where it's like [Music] that is such a cool little interlude line and now here we are in G sharp minor [Music] wow that's cool so we've just been
7:09 sitting on G sharp minor to E Major seven right and then we have this finally we move out of it we're gonna stay here on E Major seven we get D sharp which is kind of like a five chord like if we were we were going back here it's a five five one right so we have that's kind of what we'd expect to hear that's super cool check this out so we have our E Major seven our five chord it resolves to the minor one to G sharp minor but we're gonna do this really cool walk-up thing watch this G sharp
7:57 minor F sharp major over it's third we're gonna come back to this B major and then we have G sharp major over its third bringing us to C sharp minor let's talk about what all that means our main goal with this line we 've a consistent Baseline that's what we're designing all of our chords around for this little section so we so we start here and now we want to have certain chord movements those chord movements are essentially going to be as follows G sharp minor F sharp major this is functioning as a five chord right now because we're gonna go like a 5-1
8:44 so it's functioning as this setup for the upcoming B major chord and now we're going to do the same thing again with G sharp major which is going to function as a five chord for C sharp minor here how each of those five one resolutions is very compelling we have that sounds like a completion that sounds like we're done and then again we have the same thing here they lead together very well but here's the thing if I play all of those chords in their root positions look at where our bass note is going I'm going to play the the roots in octaves in my left hand so you can see the Direction all right watch this [Music]
9:30 split the octaves up however you want I could play it like um you know and so theoretically that's a pattern that we could imagine continuing we go like this we could just keep on going foreign it's all just five one five one five one five one but if we want to make our Baseline move in One Direction and move consistently we have to change the notes that we're actually playing so we start here and we know we want to end up here we want to get there but we're starting here so what can we use how can we get there well based on the number of chords that we know we have we can go
10:16 that's the perfect number of notes to get us from one place to the next and the question is how does each of those notes work into the chords that we decided we're going to play these chords those are the five chords and these are the five notes and so very simply we just say okay well that's the root and then we have this chord but we want that on the bottom well that works out fine because it's just the major third so that's okay and then we have that's works because it's just the root of B and then the C is the major third of G sharp and
11:03 that brings us to our root on the bottom of our C sharp minor that's how we wind up with this nice motion and you can hear how it perfectly Works into the theme check that out if I play just the chords without worrying about that ascending bass line just playing with their Roots it's still gonna sound like it fits perfectly fine listen [Music] once we hit our C sharp minor we're kind of we've kind of entered ourselves into a new key because now we're working with the a major seven again that final key change is the same
11:52 same exact thing we've just now taken our pattern where we started C sharp minor to a whoops to a and then we go up a minor third now now we do the same thing up a minor third and all we're going to do now is we're gonna go up another minor third there we go there we go and here's the cool part with a pattern like this you can literally just keep it going like watch this foreign ah
12:38 and then we go one more [Music] and we're back where we started we're back on C sharp minor but the cool thing about Minor thirds is like when we got back there did it sound like the beginning again it kind of didn't right because by moving in minor thirds it just creates this our ears almost get used to the new place right we're like oh yeah that sounds like it works then we go again and we're like whoa and then for a second we're like yeah that works and then we do it again [Music] and our ears are like I don't know where we are now but I can okay I'm making
13:23 sense of it and then when we go again it feels like just the next progression and it almost doesn't even feel like we're back to the beginning that is so much harmonic content packed into a minute and 30 seconds it's just outrageous there's so much great music in Attack on Titan I could easily make like four more videos just going through different parts of the soundtrack but I want to know what your favorite parts are in the comments down below don't forget to pick up the completely free instant piano guide in the description down below it's a mini course I made teaches you how to play some really cool beautiful things without knowing any piano any reading music anything else it's just meant to get you started and it has some really insanely cool backing tracks that are pretty epic so check that out at the link in the description down below it's totally free start playing some epic stuff for yourself that's it for this video thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one foreign
14:11 [Music]
