Video game composers use musical motifs—recognizable musical ideas that can be notes, rhythms, or chord progressions—to create narrative connections between different game elements. In the Mass Effect Trilogy, composers like Jack Wall use specific motifs (such as the main theme's 'one-two-flat-three-four' progression) and their variations to establish continuity between characters, locations, and story arcs. For example, the flat five note in a character's motif often signals untrustworthiness, while rhythmic displacement creates tension. These techniques allow composers to create musical universes where themes from one game (Mass Effect 1) connect to and evolve in subsequent games (Mass Effect 2 and 3), demonstrating how musical motifs serve as storytelling tools that enhance player immersion and narrative coherence.
Mass Effect Trilogy Soundtrack Reaction & Music Theory Breakdown
Added:[Music] [Music] well hey there my name's Dan I'm a music teacher about to listen to the Mass Effect Trilogy OST for the very first time in my life yes I have never ever heard this before so join me as we well find hidden connections uh you'll learn a little bit about music and hopefully we're also going to have some fun along the way as we do it so type a three in the chat if you're ready to go if you're watching this on demand type a three in the comments so I can see you see did I change everything over yes I did make sure I'm up to date on where my stream is all right sweet we're ready to go let's do this thing buckle up my buttercups because we're about to go on a journey here we go with Mass Effect [Music] [Music] theme [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so here's what's pretty interesting about the main theme we're actually gonna keep this on the Whiteboard so I can keep track of what the main theme is as we go through this OSD so the main theme basically is that's basically it now that's I'm not saying that is like bad that's basically but that is basically what it is and we're going to go back and maybe go through that one more time just so I can grab every single detail of it but here we had basically one two flat three four one two flat three four that is the main theme so here we go theme main okay now within that there were some interesting things where you know it starts off with this sort [Music] of this flat 7 to one type thing so we're going to go back and listen to that one more time I'm going to grab the chords so we can put them up here too and that way we can keep track of things and paare to them as we go all right here we go one more time briefly through [Music] this so right here it's going back and forth between a d over e e minor so I'm assuming just based on how many times you're getting that that we will likely hear that again so we have essentially a flat 7even over one one two one minor [Music] okay we have that a couple times and then we go to and by I'm not going to do this for every piece I just want to do this for the main theme because it is the main theme and I've done reactions before where I haven't done this and then I'm like what was the main theme so this way I'm going to know exactly what the main theme was okay so we repeat this a bunch of times and then we go to two flat three to [Music] six [Music] ah yeah but it's like it's six sharp 11 kind of sort of and then and then it comes back so it acts kind of like a s four okay we have six with th times a sharp 11 which then goes just six six [Music] then ah we'll probably have it [Music] again [Music] all right so we have that two and if we are in the key of A minor which we are now is called the second part of the main theme we have okay the main one them main two we have flat three [Music] one six [Music] five all right there we go that's main theme part [Music] two okay for chords well okay there's a little bit more to the main theme than what I originally said that's okay so we have uh so this is going to be just like a little idea [Music] G [Music] G first ending and then second ending is E minor then it goes to the B section D [Music] minor [Music] demon [Music] sorry all right f [Music] that [Music] was something over [Music] f c over e then okay see first [Music] inversion okay and then two four five1 [Music] [Music] all right I'm not going to make you sit through the rested me figuring that out we'll get it as we go I think enough enough was enough okay so let's keep this thing rocking and rolling so so far we have and we heard it a lot right [Music] there whatever I just say third one wrong we get the idea we have this as a first part this is a second part if we get to a song that's a little slower that I don't need to think about too much I'm going to rewrite these as Roman numerals so we can start tracking them too and yeah I think we're good to go all right let's start with the [Music] [Music] Normandy [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so something interesting these chords right here that we're hearing every time if there's like a spooky house on a hill Disney movie like haunted mansion that's what we're hearing and so what's funny to me is if you told me that this was about an abandoned spaceship I would have believed you maybe even haunted or there was like you know in movies where it's like the crew gets no one's heard from the crew in six months so we have to send our new crew out to see what happened and they find the spaceship like like little electrical fires and it like floating in space if you told me that that what was that's what was happening to the Normy I would have believed you cool the reason being for the music right there and so we have like a one going to a essentially what is we're think of it as the six of the one uh depending on which one we start whatever we're just going to think of this as being one and this is being flat six but minor no now flat six excuse me regular six [Music] minor apologize for that all right let's keep this rocking with Eden Prime normally I'm eating a [Music] steak [Music] [Music] [Music] is [Music] all right we get it look [Music] here so in the back of [Music] this I just Sayang that a little bit wrong but you get the idea that it's D g [Music] g so we can actually hear that the Rhythm Of The Motif that we heard in the Normandy brought into Eden Prime so even though we don't hear the notes we still hear the same Rhythm as in Normandy and so that is still I mean I suppose we could call that well it's not motivic development but it certainly is taking the motif the Rhythm the rhythmic Motif which is a thing by the way we can 100% separate melodic motifs from rhythmic motifs you know so talking to Chris Christo dulu who did risk of rain he had a couple well he had one rhythmic Motif that regardless of the notes it was going to be present right so really thinking about taking the idea of motif and splitting it into a couple of different parts one's going to be melodic where we have a Melody one's going to be rhythmic where it's just the rhythm another could be that there's a series of chords or chord changes that creates a motif and then sometimes there's like yeah I think I think I think that's about it we could say there's a Groove Motif fundamentally but that that would typically be made up of other motifs I don't think we've ever heard a Groove Motif but we certainly have heard harmonic motifs we've heard rhythmic motifs and melodic motifs all right let's keep this thing going battle at Eden Prime exciting [Music] now we had a question in the chat from danar 249 danar 249 I hope you're doing well danar 249 says are we doing Mass Effect one today and two next time Etc I guess you're just gonna have to hang out and see who knows let's check out [Music] sarin [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] so finally what we're hearing here in sarin is one flat six five now we're actually in the same key here as we heard in the main theme so yeah also keys can kind of be motifs in and of themselves in a way you know it's like sometimes Keys represent places person people places and things too now what's interesting about this is that in the main theme it never went to an E major it never went to a five it went to a five minor but here we're going to an E major which is a five major that's pretty cool and then at the very end too [Music] that seems pretty dramatic One Flat 32 now to say that that's motivic development from the main theme idea of one two flat 3 technically speaking is correct but you know maybe that's a little tenuous but we're going to say that sounded pretty important to me put a four in the chat if I'm reading that right that that that music right there indicated something important seemed rather dramatic so we also had see flat 3 two which might not have been one flat 32 but it might have [Music] been yeah on flat 3 2 okay let's keep this going with the [Music] Citadel [Music] [Music] I was say Harry Potter like Lord of the Rings a little a little bit yes but definitely more Harry Potter [Music] than [Music] well carebear it is Riven Del Vibes and I'll explain why I'll show I'll show you why you got Rivendell vibes from it and that's when I said Lord of the Rings I meant Rivendell specifically oh [Music] so what we had right there is we actually had uh motivic development from main theme part two there is we had one note two notes repeated and then two more notes we didn't have the third here here but we had these two notes repeated and it was a descending minor arpeggio so whereas here the minor arpeggio was flat 311 Flat 6 5 to Flat 3 and again use Flat 6 arpeggio whatever get basically is an arpeggio with um a non- chord tone in it here we have we have a G sharp minor where it's going one five five flat three oh no we hit the flat three twice yeah and then go to one cool so it's 1 2 3 four five it's five notes in a row descending minor arpeggio with these two notes repeated the exception this time is that it was two flat 3es here cool stuff all right sorry got I got distracted by an interesting Motif now let's go to actually answer the question about the Rivendell [Music] thing [Music] right here [Music] so why that sounds like rivendel to is because that is actually the chords from Rivendell in rivendel well it's actually not rivendel it's really the High Elves it's that change between having a major chord than having a effectively a yeah that type of a thing there so that's a major Triad to augment it back to Major which is approximately what rivendel is it's not exactly exactly exactly but that is the basic ideas you have this [Music] alternating back and forth okay let's go to the presidium [Music] okay so what we just heard in there is we heard that rivendel cord again so I'm going to go ahead and say that we're going to be on the lookout it's an odd chord because if we consider it really stacked all all on top of itself then we have something approximately like this hang on hang on like like uh this is we have the the major Triad with what we're going to call an added flat six in [Music] there that's that rivendel sound it's it's like you have a major Triad with an added flat six cool we've heard that two pieces in a row so we're going to keep that on the board because it we might come back to it okay let's check out criminal elements I did miss the Ws thank [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you Chris love you buddy ending in D Minor we've heard quite a bit of D Minor so far we heard D Minor oh no not D Minor E minor in the main thing then we heard a minor we also did hear D Minor once or twice one thing I want to point out to you here which is two things actually I want to point out well one that this guitar might be a sco Out Of Tune sorry what I find interesting about this idea is that it's outlining a a well what we can assume to be a major seven chord we don't actually hear the Third which would be right there but we hear 1 5 7 back to one what I find interesting about that is that it's almost like not almost like it is it's it's taking the same pattern of arpeggiation starting a different place but it's taking the same pattern of arpeggiation from that sort of we'll call it the Rivendell our pedu that we heard before and bringing it into a different chord that's interesting and also not just a different chord but into different chord tones because before it was like 1 3 5 Flat 6 5 3 1 whereas this is 7 1 751 57 1 751 so that's interesting now on top of that this is the first time I believe we've heard the famous celebrated uh-oh something bad's going to happen either there's going to be combat combat related something bad's going to happen because we have a one a flat two and a flat seven anytime we hear those notes and combinations doesn't matter what combination we hear them in doesn't matter what combination we hear them in usually something bad is going to happen in a video game so you might ask well why well it's because typically like you'll see here this two doesn't have a flat next to it this two by the way and the flat is this B it kind of looks like a b it's not quite a b and what flat does is flat equals we bring the note down a bit down by one half step to be precise but if you don't know too much about music just know that anytime we have the flat it means the note's coming down and so if we f think about the sort of highest level of good guys and bad guys on a sort of mythological level and we think about heaven versus hell right heaven we Ascend to Heaven hell we go down so and again I'm not use this in a religious context just think about it in in a mythological context so if we think about that in terms of notes anytime we put a flat next to a note it's bringing us down it's like talking about bad guys and anytime we have a note that's not brought down it's usually not talking about bad guys now this is not universally true but this this is a somewhat decent framework to operate from at a sort of basic level of Music Theory it's like okay we could have a bunch of notes all right so I'm I'm G to I'm prove this to you real quick one two three four five six seven okay so I'm G to play 1 2 3 4 5 six seven okay like does that sound like a bad guy typee it two in the chat if you think or type two in the comments if you think this sounds like a bad guy like does that sound really bad doesn't sound very threatening to me but you tell me type type a two if you feel like that is a bad guy no okay type of four if you feel like that does not sound like a bad guy type of four feel like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7even doesn't sound like a a bad guy right okay now here's what we're going to do we're going to bring three six and seven down check out what [Music] happens type a three if that's sounding a little closer to being a bad guy might not be super super bad but like yeah getting closer to be a bad guy so and again we didn't change all of these to Flats we just brought some of them down so it doesn't have to be every note is brought down but if you have a group of notes and you bring a couple of them down chances are it's going to sound more like a bad guy again this that's a very simple way of thinking of it but it's also kind of true all right let's keep this thing going with criminal hels [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] okay so what's pretty cool is that we can actually hear some of the chords from main theme part one this first part here it goes flat 7 to one minor you kind of hear that [Music] here j j j now in addition to that there's an interesting thing Chris actually picked up on it in the chat which is something called rhythmic displacement now rhythmic displacement is effectively a form of syncopation because syncopation is anytime we break the expected pattern a rhythm and so what we have is folded into criminal elements there is an interesting thing of but here's what happens when it changes chords that pattern doesn't stay in the same place let's break down and figure out what's going [Music] on well there it actually is staying but here here it Chang [Music] also something too is that it's actually playing around so the the actual thing that's being played around here is not necessarily that there's one m but it's really a movement from Flat 7 to one and then the quality of both the flat 7 and the one are changing back and forth between major and minor if I've got that correct maybe it's just the seven yeah changing back and forth so this right here is something we've heard a couple of times in different video games where it's representing the duplicity of a bad guy so it's changing between major and minor so it's like I show you that I'm one thing but really I'm another so criminal elements maybe this is talking about someone who's actually committing a crime or we're chasing someone who's committing a crime and we've heard yeah I can think back to fire emblem for sure we had major going back to minor I believe to represent the bad guy with gray skin I think or maybe I'm just getting confused with modern Ganondorf but anyway they there was a bad guy know he like he had like gray skin like dark gray skin okay so that change between the major and the minor that could represent the duplicity of being a criminal element I think I got sidetracked on the oops and we lost the cap cap down oh found the cap cap streets Cap all right yeah I wish the cap would actually stay on the back of this thing but it doesn't okay no I'm not writing a happy face we're doing music theory today we're going to learn things we're going to discover things you can smile while we do it and that'll be the happy face all [Music] right on today you will not be happy you will be learning the music Ser tff anyway [Music] right so what it is is we can think about we have the same little Motif which is [Music] what happens that was actually German put in on 11 which means I had to try because I can't speak German very well at all like zero German okay so essentially we can think of this as being which yeah one flat three5 pretty cool stuff [Music] sorry sorry four which actually brings us back to our main theme one a bit in a way without the two so it's let's get some [Music] volume and what's happening is is that the one is on the Down Beat sorry excuse me the three and then when it changes to the second chord the three is not on the down beat the one is when it changes back so chord one Starts Here chord two starts here and that's what I mean by the displacement so not necessarily actually rhythmic displacement I think that's actually I use that incorrectly so I'd walk that back and I wouldn't say that was rhythmic displacement rather that is actually looks like it's the same Rhythm we're just changing the placement of the notes within the Rhythm so basically the Rhythm if we to write it out in let's say 44 well let's call it one and two well ah yeah there we go okay so we in four four that's should be one and two and three and four one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four one and two and three and four and so what's happening is this Rhythm stays the same but the first time through in the first chord it's flat three 4 one and then in the second chord it's one flat three four there we go so [Music] there you go okay we sorted that out let's check out the next one which is called Spectre induction being main two right [Music] [Music] here and we're getting main them [Music] here main [Music] team oh changing [Music] now [Music] right and so we have again this motivic idea not with these same notes but same Rhythm and also descending minor arpeggio we also had chords from main theme part two as well present there we had one the flat three the flat 7 flat 7 One Flat 3 flat 7 and then it went somewhere different and evolved and changed a bit but there you go so you can see how the composer let's see about the artist Jack wall looks to be Dak wall is taking Jack's taking this idea and oops well and pulling it out and putting it in different places and then reworking it to keep it interesting but then also keeping the same keep a bit of the information in there so that it actually feels like there's continuity so whenever so I I've written quite a few songs in my time I've not composed video game music so I can talk about this from songwriting because it's similar it's not the same but it's similar whenever you're writing songs you're always trying to walk the balance between too much repetition and too little repetition so if you have too much repetition it sounds cheesy if you have too little repetition it sounds incoherent so one of the amazing things we can hear from composers like this is where they walk that beautiful line right between having not so much repetition that it sounds cheesy but just enough that it doesn't sound incoherent and sitting in that sort of gray area between the two let's check out Lyra's world or liara's world [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] o magc modulation [Music] [Music] well interestingly enough the next track is called the dangerous place and if you told me that this track was a dangerous place I'd believe you because the amount of sort of dissonance and the amount of not incoherent as in like implying that there's a stupidity behind the incoherent like because sometimes people will use incoherent as an insult to mean that you're being stupid and you're not making sense so it's like you're not smart enough to make sense I don't mean that in this sense what I mean is that there's purposeful dissonance there's purposeful amounts of incoherence here to really kind of shake you up and give you a different vibe and [Music] feel let's grab this idea [Music] here yeah yeah I got [Music] that I think that's right let's put it to the test [Music] oh for some reason it's totally twisting my brain [Music] around all right whatever point is that's using notes similar to our main theme part too we're going to move on I want I don't want you to just sit here and watch me have an absolute just brain melt as I try and figure out that exact part there suffice it to say yeah okay and by the way it's not confusing when I'm confused it's like there's a balance where it's like if I sit here and if imagine you sat somewhere and focused on something for an hour straight your brain like the level of response you get from your brain would start to go down and so as I start to get hours into these things it's like my capacity to think of something and hold it in my brain like I get T I get dopaminergically depleted if you don't know what that is there's folk there's basically there's brains in your that see I can't even talk there's chemicals in your brain that power your focus and as you use them up they don't replenish right away you can do things like drink coffee and things like that to try and prop yourself up but I don't do those things so here we go we're just going to rock with my brain as I'm able to go all right let's go to a very dangerous [Music] place oh and here it comes back again dang [Music] it [Music] a oh main theme [Music] [Music] [Music] five there [Music] [Music] now as we go through this if you have questions about the OST please ask them right there what we heard was a bunch of main theme part one melt well yeah [Music] the B we heard that a bunch of times then we heard it go to four and then we heard it Go 1 2 3 4 5 six not flat six but six seven me two [Music] one so one two three flat three four five six flat seven one and this is Dorian so remember before we had the flat six and the flat 7even when we take take away the flat six we call this group of notes right here Doran my name's Dan this is Dorian pleasure to meet you okay let's keep this going with [Music] feros pleasure [Music] [Music] pleasure [Music] come on ponos let's [Music] [Music] go [Music] so there's a couple common sounds so and the reason I'm bringing this up is because someone in the chat Chris was like Hey Dorian m you've heard that a bunch of times okay the most common sounds that we will hear in all osts this doesn't mean this applies to every OST but these are the most common sounds we've heard in osts Ard Dorian a major minor mixian uh Fran we've heard quite a bit a fridge p r y Fran uh We've also heard a bunch of harmonic minor uh major minor pentatonic plus Blues that's about it now it's interesting if if you look at pop music really what what's the most common sound we're going to hear is Dorian major minor mixo and then Penta so in pop music we really just have and and popular and that's going to be across a lot of in fact most modern genres we're going to hear Dorian major minor mixian and then major minor pentatonic so really what we're seeing with video games is like the willingness to go to frian the willingness to go to harmonic minor yeah huh interesting things what's Dorian mode Dorian mode is when we take a natural minor scale and we raise the sixth degree well raise it we return it to its original state now unfortunately I do not have a couple of hours to go and explain to you everything well an hour to explain everything so you understand what a major scale is because there's whole steps and half steps for you to really do it justice would require quite a bit of explaining so word from our sponsor check out the best music theory book for beginners from best music coach on Amazon everywhere you get it it's been a bestseller it's hit bestseller twice it hit number one new release twice or three times um it sold over 5,000 copies it's in its Third Edition there's so much consumer feedback that's gone into getting it to where it is and it's incredible it's full color it's got so many cool things in it uh check that out because in this book I really guide you through everything you need to understand for the basics of Music Theory and that way you just get one book you know you don't have to take like if you took private lessons with someone for everything that's in this book I it would take we're talking hundreds maybe thousands of dollars right did go with that private lesson you just read the book and understand the stuff there's also a workbook that goes with it too you can get to and yeah workbook looks like this find that on Amazon too in all countries where Amazon exists okay let's keep this going with the thorian H we talked about Dorian now we're on to the thorian a no on to protecting the colony excuse me oh that all right sorry guys I'm going to pause I'm going to go back you remember that arpeggiated thing I was like this is twisting my brain and hurting me this is now two pieces in a row after that we've heard it so I'm going to go back and grab this so I can actually talk about it sorry guys here we [Music] go okay [Music] oh [Music] oh my gosh I don't know why is this twisting my brain all right we're just going to write it out sorry but this will be worth it because now I'll be able to talk about it for all the other things absolutely hurting my brain we have all two flat three five Lord have [Music] mercy five five one two [Music] [Music] three then I repeats the first part ending [Music] I just do it again oh my brain all right guys I'm I'm try this one more time and if I don't get it it's just going to be what it is and I'll talk about other things Chase Louise tell you I don't know why this is just twisting my brain oh whatever I give up all right thori [Music] in [Music] [Music] [Music] back [Music] that's [Music] ah [Music] [Music] oh [Music] okay so here we have which is going back and forth by a trone minor and then we also had the one to Flat three so all around dissonant chords here the thorian I'm going to guess the thori's trouble I'm going to guess that the thoran is either bad guys haunted haunted bad guys perhaps zombie haunted bad guys perhaps the ghost of the zombie haunted bad guys any way you slice it any way you Dice it the the thoran bad news I'm going to go out on a limb and say please let me know if I got that right in the chat they are bugs are they bad news bugs they're not they're not bad ah historically evil bugs yeah sounds sounds sounds evil but maybe we learn that they're not evil maybe we learn acceptance and to accept people who they are now in their present State not who they used to be okay let's check out [Music] novaria come on drums please [Music] drums [Music] [Music] [Music] okay well what's interesting about this is the the secret Labs actually sounds to me like it might be connected to the criminal element and I'll tell you why in the criminal element there was there was uh one flat three and four we hear one flat three and four here as well sort of in a different context and in a different way can you guys confirm to me if there is a connection between the criminal element and the secret labs in the game because in the music I I mean it's I wouldn't say it's a tenuous connection but it's it's not direct direct direct I listening to novaria thank you can you confirm if there's novaria novaria is connected to the criminal element okay so novaria novaria has the criminal the criminal is on novaria and that's the big corp Corporation type thing type of one for yes type do for no wondering what the connection is there yes they are connected all right cool sweet so that's actually shown in the music cool thank you guys it's not the same as the CD underground but it's sort of like it is the criminal okay interesting all right let's check out the secret Labs [Music] yeah one flat three and four again same key as the criminal element too secret Labs is directly connected to criminal El now changing but at the start of it the the secret lab starts off with the same chords well some of the same chords similar riff idea s similar melodic idea to the criminal element [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] he [Music] so secet Labs interestingly enough starts off with the criminal element but then moves on into this idea of well different different key than what the [Music] record and that one two flat three was all over the main theme and so this we can actually call this motivic development because it's taking one two flat three from the main theme and then taking it somewhere else so if you're hearing this and you say ah yeah this doesn't sound like anything we've heard before but it still feels connected to this same universe of sound that's why it's because we have the one two and the flat three still in this before the main thing [Music] was but here it doesn't go to just it's just the first part of the main theme over and over again and then yes there was some development and went to some other places but there you go all right let's check out the alien [Music] queen [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] y so we're hearing some parts of the main theme here and [Music] then I not [Music] mistaken [Music] yeah it's one flat two flat seven back to one and so we can hear this is actually come back we're actually going to put this over here on our idea side because this is now the second or third time we've heard it so it's combinations of [Music] two okay cool let's keep this going with fatal confrontation fatal confrontation [Music] n [Music] [Music] [Music] h all right this entire piece of music is literally bangag gong by the band T-Rex go listen I believe that's a band name I know the song is definitely Bang a Gong if you go listen to bang go listen to siren s um what does it sarin Bas go listen to sarin base then go listen to the song bangag gong by T-Rex it's literally it's the space version of bangag gang by T-Rex Rex is is what that is right there that's hilarious oh yeah Come on Barbie let's go party it's like that works stupid it's like that that's not it wasn't Come on Barbie let's go party it's 100% bangag gong by T-Rex so go this to S base go this to the bangag gong you will see all right let's get this in going with reading [Music] [Music] [Music] ground [Music] sorry I think I skipped one right so sorry to be clear fatal confrontation is the same as bangag gong sorry it gone on to the next song I was looking at the wrong piece all right sarin Bas I apologize so to be clear bangag gong T-Rex fatal confrontation s base here we [Music] [Music] go [Music] he [Music] [Music] [Music] it's 5 sorry a couple times I pointed at four that was it's five I was being stupid [Music] [Music] so you'll forgive me my Hunger Games movie reference there but one flat 2 three one flat 3 two one one flat 3 2 one one 3 two so it's taking the main theme and it's changing up the order of the notes but it's taking direct inspiration from the main them what I consider these light motifs I don't know a light Motif is associated with a person place or thing and because I've not played the game I don't know if these pieces of music are in fact associated with people places or things I'm assuming based on sarin bass we could say the that we could call that a light Motif for sarin bass right where the was from the main theme we just switched around these two notes to get sarin base let's check out breeding ground [Music] [Music] 27 [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] how very dramatic yeah we can hear that SAR and this is this this is not the whole sarin theme but [Music] oh which one was [Music] it [Music] [Music] wow yeah first time to four second time to five yeah it's is not the whole SAR theme but you can see how the idea of one flat two flat 7 going down to the flat 7 here is connected to our sort of bad things are happening then you can see that this is also connected to the main theme number one and we also I kept this purple thing here because in this piece we were hearing the main theme one we and then it did a whole bunch of other stuff but it stayed in the main theme one sarin directly related to main theme one and also this so we can see that there's a particular set of ideas yeah and it's kind of also related to this idea down here [Music] too yeah not really leave that one alone but I stand by everything else all right let's check out this next one called verm ride verm [Music] ride [Music] no [Music] down [Music] [Music] [Music] Happ [Music] yeah it's a pretty sweet riff it's a lot of fun just hanging out in D Minor which we have heard now a couple times but also hitting the from sarin so I'm goingon to go ahead and guess that verir ride is in sarin type of three if I'm right in the chat let's keep this going with [Music] exit [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah again again hinting at the main theme once and then taking it the second time and kind of distorting it a bit but hey I did not get confirmation is verir ride is that in or around sarin because we were hearing the from sarin please type a one in the chat if it is connected or if it is not connected i' say Dan why do you need that confirmation CU I want to know if I'm doing it right I want to know if I'm winning or not it's on the way to sarin got it cool all right let's check out Love Theme will you play a Love Theme Love Theme do you want love or do you want theme play The Love Theme [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] okay so love theme is fundamentally two chords it's going to be one minor to Flat six now let me grab this arpeggio thing here at the beginning no let's call it a riff shall [Music] we that might be it [Music] [Music] all okay so we're I'm going to not this down too because this might come back again three two seven four four five one okay cool by if I'm not I'm not putting carrots over everything just remember if I'm if I'm putting numerals down if I'm putting Arabic numerals down it's scale degrees if I'm putting Roman numerals down of course okay Uncharted worlds [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well that actually that had part of the sarin in it that was cool and then that main riff let's grab that [Music] too [Music] [Music] [Music] I want to leave that alone all right I also learned we we just found a serious weak point in my music game today and that is slightly altered repeating arpeggiated things with delay in them is are giving me a really hard time so that's something I'm going to get to work on for my practice time but Dan aren't you a music teacher shouldn't you know how everything in Music Works no no one knows everything in Music Works we're all learning and growing at the same time music teachers are just music students who've learned more than their music students that's it we're all students of music all right let's keep this going with elos [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] y [Music] [Music] [Music] well I've never heard sounds like that before Raves the New York Times alien flatulence who knows it's here to stay says the New York Post let's check out [Music] vigil [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] sick [Music] that's beautiful so one of the things that makes that sounds so exotic and so beautiful is four and sharp four in the same song and then also having a flat seven same piece I'm sorry I use the word song incorrectly There song would have lyrics so like I'm not doing it justice I'm absolutely butchering compared to how beautiful it [Music] was not doing that at all well here [Music] sorry I messed that up I failed that I'm not going to try that again something El Dan could work on doing holding pitch while he plays other pitches on guitar okay so I'm sorry about that that was pretty awful so I apologize all right let's check out sovereign's theme one day I'm gonna learn how to tube and throat sing but today it's not that day all right sovereign's [Music] theme [Music] yes [Music] [Music] so real interesting thing in there we had the main theme we also had some of the main theme chords even but then it got totally transformed and made a little bit more Regal a bit more aestic indeed feeling like the theme of a sovereign but the thing I want to point out to you and this is not the same for all osts or indeed all film music or anything but in in this Mass Effect at least the first one we're hearing the main themes show up in a lot of the secondary themes as well so even that with Sovereign theme Sovereign theme pulls heavily from main theme all right let's check out [Music] uplink [Music] [Music] so many things [Music] happening all right so many so many so many themes were it was like themes on top of themes here let me RND this back [Music] is that what it [Music] is all right so that's pretty interesting there too so we have one flat two three just like the main theme starts but then it goes to five 3 2 1 which kind of feels like this idea over here we had the arpeggiation of the minor even though this is not indeed a straight up minor arpeggiation I'm write that down because I feel like we've heard oh no we've heard this before which also we heard in this theme as well which is a variation on the main theme where it starts off like the main theme [Music] goes um that's I think the second or third time we've heard that so it's a variation on the main theme where we take the first four notes then we add a fifth note on there and it's a flat five and the flat five is one of the most well dissonant notes that you could have it's not the most but it is one of the most dissonant notes that exists so it's really creating a moment of dissonance a moment of tension in there in the variation of the main theme let's check out battling sarin [Music] I [Music] [Music] so it was pretty cool here is we actually heard an example of diminution what diminution is it's when we take a theme and we make it last no excuse me augmentation where uh example of augmentation is when we take a theme we make it last twice as long so we heard sarin's theme in the like the strings which is definitely we could call it even instead of SAR we'll call it sar's [Music] Motif and underneath it we heard which is the first three notes of sarin's theme but played at a significantly longer duration underneath the shorter durations and iterations of sar's theme so that's a cool example of augmentation so augmentation let's say we had well this actually pretty easy so let's say yeah two two is the is the Rhythm we have and then we [Music] you yeah and then it's like 4X 2x 4X X 16x 16x augmentation because underneath it it's like Bo so we get two times through each shorter duration and this is this is approximate but we get two times through the shorter duration for every one time for every one note of the longer [Music] duration which means actually get yeah two four two four six eight so we go eight times through the shorter uh shorter version of sarin's motif for the longer version of Sarah's Motif that's augmentation and so what's really cool is when composers use the same Motif but they use it over different time scales to create really interesting things like what we just heard cool let's keep it going with in pursuit of [Music] sarin [Music] [Music] okay so there again we're hearing main theme we're hearing sarin and there's oh yes someone asked in the chat what a motif is a motif is the smallest recognizable musical idea so whatever you can consider to be recognizable as an idea musically that's what a motif is now motifs don't have to be notes motifs can be a rhythm like we talked about at the beginning of the stream motifs can be groups of chords motifs don't have to just be notes yeah cool now if you're saying well Dan that sounds kind of like an open-ended definition what do you mean smallest recognizable musical idea exactly it's an open-ended definition and it's not precise and it it is it do not serve as a watertight container for understanding what a motif is it's like like that's a recognizable musical idea three notes in this in this case sometimes two notes is a recognizable sometimes one note is a recognizable musical idea but in this case that's like sar's Motif final [Music] assault [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so we heard a a version of the main theme the development of the main theme here which you have actually heard a couple times so far in this OST I'm going to point it out now which is whatever I'm just going to play [Music] it and so what this is is taking the first three notes of the main theme do you one two flat three and then going to Flat six and you remember like we talked about at the beginning whenever we put Flats in type in front of things it's going to feel darker it's going to feel more dangerous and sure enough this version of the theme sure does sound very foring very threatening goes One Flat two flat three flat five so we had a flat six then flat five both of which have that flat thing which really brings things down it brings the it brings the energy down well not the energy down but it makes it feel more he feels like a bad guy so it's like this specific version surely final assault I mean you could say well Dan you're guessing yeah but flat six flat five again starting off the same way the main theme has we're going to say this is a bad guy so please please go ahead and let me know in the chat if this is indeed for a bad guy or if this is more just for like combat or you know contending against something so please go ahead and type in the chat let me know if that is for like specifically for bad guys for evil or if it's just for contending against something and it's a fight please let me know so I can label it appropriately for us moving forward contending okay okay contending with adversity can't read that but that's fine okay contending with ad I'm going to write that again so I can actually read it [Music] all right contending with adversity and again to be clear this contending with adversity is directly related to our main theme number one all right let's check out [Music] Victor [Music] [Music] all right cool so taking pieces from the main theme reworking it to sound Victorious cool hey by the way this is the first time we've ever done the Whiteboard at this level of detail type a five in the chat if you're enjoying this level of detail on the Whiteboard and the level of clarity it's bringing to my explanations and your understanding and type a four in the chat if you prefer yeah that we go back to the old way and that we not break things down so clearly all right from the wreckage here we go and I'll be looking at what you vote [Music] all [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ow [Music] beautiful stuff from the wreckage rising up like a phoenix hearing this all right now uh real quick question when I move the mic like this does it make a lot of sound on your end like type a three if this is making sound in the mic if I move this because I can move this as I'm writing and then move it back but I didn't want to move it because I didn't want to oh no sound oh sweet in which case I'm going to bring this mic with me as I go cuz if I turn oops if I turn to the Whiteboard and I talk and the mic's right here you can still hear me yeah all right sweet beautiful all right we'll work on this all right the [Music] end there we are back at Main theme part one [Music] [Music] here [Music] [Music] all right M4 part two let's do this thing oh yeah [Music] I'll be here I know place where the grass always green my for what tell your with [Music] seent [Music] [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] I need [Music] to [Music] [Music] again [Music] [Music] [Music] my [Music] [Music] I [Music] to [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] W what a beautiful way to end part one of the Mass Effect Trilogy school we actually heard the main theme come back into play in addition to it being like pretty much a straight up pop song that was really cool hey we're going to take a quick break then we're going to come back and we're going to do part two we're going to take a break for about 5 minutes I'm going to reset I'm going to get some more water I'm going to come back and we're going to hammer out part two and if you're wondering Dan how are you going to eat I ordered delivery before I started this Stream So I've got food coming in about an hour which I'll then run up and go grab we should be able to knock this out cool y'all let's do five minutes and I'll see y'all back here in a [Music] moment [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this [Music] hey guys I'm just switching over the what's what here oh what a mess yeah you know what we just GNA keep rocking with the Spotify because that is that's a mess all right sorry Pikachu looks like changing over from Spotify to YouTube that is not happening today all right all right sorry for the waight there folks apologize all right The elusive man let's rock it okay here we go [Music] wait I've heard this before Oh you heard before no dum [Music] [Music] wow that was really cool and also beautiful what we're going to do now is we're going to listen on YouTube just got to figur it out Lord have mercy all right we did The elusive man next up we have oh now I just scrolled and messed it all up all right I'll figure it out humans are [Music] disappearing [Music] [Music] okay so we're hearing a new Motif here in Mass Effect two whereas in Mass Effect one went one two three four we go five 4 32 so it's it's totally different in the sense this was ascending it was going from low to high this is now descending go from going from high to low 5 4 3 2 but still using the flat three in both using the two in both and using the four in both so you know three out of four cats or notes are the same let's check out the attack [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] I okay so we have some new motifs going on in here by the way every all the writing in black is going to be for Mass Effect one writing and blue is going to be for Mass Effect 2 and that is with the stipulation that I don't lose my blue marker in the in the [Music] fry [Music] [Music] [Music] oh okay so what we have now is in keeping with the idea of going for a descending Movement we have one lat five lat two back to one this now this is if you're thinking wow that's a lot of flats yeah is a lot of flats and it also makes it sound like it has a lot of flats and then we actually heard this simplified a couple times in the Attack Just Between the one and the flat 2 one so yeah we had the flat two over here in Mass Effect one but in Mass Effect two we can hear now adding in the flat five for really taking it to the next level of dissonance let's keep this going with the LA actually we're going to jump back to the elusive man real quick uh actually before we do that let me ask you a question is does The elusive man sort of serve as our main theme one for this OST type a one for yes type a two for no because if yes I want to go back and grab all those core progressions and throw them up on the board so we can keep track of what's going on so if elusive man serves as a theme that we're going to hear over and over again and things going to be based off of please type a one in the chat all right j2o says yes all we're going to go back and we're going to grab it yeah okay thank you Joseph as well all right we're going to we're going to go back and we're going to grab [Music] [Music] this [Music] well let's grab that so that there we're going to call that we call this elusive okay we're going to call this theme one we're going to call this Bad theme and we're going to call elusive lucive [Music] ISAT flat six [Music] five one so we can see too that even in theme one Elusive and bad theme that we've had so far they're all descending whereas in Mass Effect one things were a setting that's even [Music] more [Music] I'm playing that wrong every other time but here we also have and call this an idea as well there's OT for to hang on to which is going to be again descending here one five s five five s five right I'm not forgetting how to play [Music] that four five cool one five I'm call this Motif H proba we should call this Motif one is what this is this not a theme it's a motif Motif one Motif two elusive Motif and then bad Motif this one is bad Motif I was calling them themes before that's not right they're motifs they're small things okay get this [Music] going [Music] let's grab those cords real [Music] quick [Music] all right so we have so for mo one the chords are one minor the flat seven the flat six to five minor to four [Music] minor that sounds like flat three with a no maybe I'm reading that [Music] [Music] wrong yeah we'll call out a flat do a flat three five their first inversion then back to Flat six then to Flat seven woo all right great [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] so that's calling back to our theme one from Mass Effect our main thing oh main theme for Mass [Music] Effect except here it's going so we're going to call this Lazarus is one two flat three four flat three four flat [Music] seven there we go that's going to be our Lazarus Motif right there so it's pulling directly from theme one in Mass Effect 1 2 3 4 but then it's going three four an extra time then jumping down to Flat 7even which we heard a bunch we heard it with sarin we heard it in the sort of danger theme or danger contention you know contending with something in Mass Effect one cool let's keep this going a rude awakening special shout out and thank you to dead domain Jer Super Chat at the end [Music] [Music] so we heard there it's pretty interesting so we're in the key of C minor and we hear a I'm paraphrasing now what's cool about that is that is relative from the starting note that's a a one flat two flat three type thing so that's looking like one flat 2 except here's the thing because we're starting on a g and the chord is actually a c it's not a one it's a five and then we have a flat 7even flat six so we have five flat seven flat six which is the same it's the same number of whole and half steps as one flat two flat three so we get the one flat two flat 3 feeling from this even though it's not actually one flat 2 flat 3 it's one oops I wrote this backwards it's five flat six flat 7even but because there's a half step here and a whole step here and there's also between one and flat two there's a half step and between flat two and flat three there's also a whole step it's it's the gets you the same feeling but a different sound well it's not exactly the same feeling but you know similar effect right same idea I check out the Normandy reborn sorry technical glitch there know if this ever happens keeps like your count and you somewhere else like no it ain't yes Lazarus [Music] Lazarus well it would make sense then in a piece of music where it literally says reborn that we would have Lazarus because the whole story of Lazarus is that he was basically brought from the dead by Jesus in the Bible now I'm write that down because I feel like that idea might be back to haunt us hey what key were we in all we're [Music] okay that's what it was right [Music] for [Music] excuse me one caught me by surprise okay so we have flat three [Music] oh six [Music] six now it's real interesting that this what we just heard right here in the high strings is directly related to this idea from yeah that that should be a flat six it's directly related to this idea that we heard back in metal uh not Metal Gear um Mass Effect one we heard 311 flat 65 flat 3 here we're hearing 311 so it starts the same way except now the five and the six are reversed and then we go to four instead of to three but it's literally this idea right here is this idea by another name it's like it's the same idea so it starts out exactly the same then instead of right type of three if you see if you see the connection between the numbers 311 it starts also 311 then 56 instead of six fives that's reverse and then instead of going to three it goes to four cool stuff let's keep this going with HQ music yeah aha aha young Dan [Music] [Music] h [Music] it's like the baites Lazarus [Music] simplifi [Music] you hear it I'm playing lad just over [Music] it [Music] you [Music] [Music] n [Music] w [Music] [Music] and we hanging [Music] [Music] look that was just chilling that was just a one to four that was B basically just D Minor to G major here [Music] [Music] [Music] oh not quite let me go back and grab that real quick something was throwing me for a loop there no no no we go back I was just going to turn my other computer off this is getting [Music] annoy [Music] [Music] right so it's not going down to Flat six it's staying it's staying on the flat three so it's one two flat three flat three down an octave was like one two flat three and then flat three again but a little lower cool all right let's keep this going with Miranda [Music] [Music] well that was cool that that oh it's not over not even close to over [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so what one thing we heard quite a bit here was one sharp four five we call it we call [Music] it the Simpsons that's how we can remember that that sharp four The Simpsons so if we hear the Simpsons again I'll be sure to point it out to you but we sure heard it quite a few times in there we heard it in different Keys too all right cool let check out Jacob [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] you know if you ask me I'm not trusting Jacob and the reason why I'm not trusting Jacob because Jacob has a flat five in his Motif and anytime any character has a flat five in their Motif they are generally not to be trusted and even once in this here piece we [Music] heard and anytime you literally hear something from The Imperial March that's a clue not to be trusted so Jacob we [Music] heard and anytime you got that flat five in your Motif and it's a prominent note not just like a note that we're going between to like if this was a note that served as a bridge between two other notes that were more prominent sure fine but the fact fact that the flat five is so prominent I'm not trusting Jacob with anything I wouldn't trust Jacob as far as I could throw him and I can't throw very many things very far please feel free to comment with your questions about the OST as we go through let's keep this thing rocking and rolling with Freedom's progress let's check it out let's also see where my food might be [Music] oh his father's not trustworthy well then who's the bad guy hold on someone around Jacob near to Jacob is seriously untrustworthy there's something really bad around Jacob something's bad maybe Jacob's not bad but something is bad around Jacob you recruit him to your party so what's bad about him uh Joseph says his father is untrustworthy interesting okay all right guys we're going to take a 30 second break I'm going to go grab my food that my delivery person just brought so I can eat it in in an hour and we don't have to stop so 5 Seconds now and then my food is safe because right now it's outside so I'm going to bring it in said someone steal a chair anyway 30 seconds I'll be right back G keep this [Music] going [Music] [Music] [Music] let's figure out this business with uh with Jacob here because the way I was saying it is surely okay let's going to be doing his loyalty Mission okay Jake is also with sebus maybe have that his theme so dark so he's not actually a bad guy uh but he's part he's not a bad guy himself but he's connected to some bad stuff right you may know someone like that in your life who's not a bad person but they get connected to bad stuff and you're like what are you doing okay yeah sorry I'm going to work on the levels for that intermission music okay okay here we go let's keep rocking with Freedom's progress [Music] progress [Applause] oh 5 432 Motif one Motif one showing [Music] up again [Music] 5432 [Music] [Music] [Music] oh yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so was really cool about Freedom's progress is we heard Motif one over and over again this 5432 over and over again and not always is 5432 but we always heard it in terms of whole whole hole just whole steps descending [Music] yeah and then half step yeah F that's really cool so we heard Motif one we also heard the sort of bad Motif with some of the flat fives but not that much A lot of it was Motif one and again descending totally flipped around and contrary to where we were in Mass Effect one I let's check out hq2 music Darkstar Lounge [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Music] pap [Music] [Music] a [Music] o still two more minutes of this I'll play some [Music] more [Music] [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] w [Music] [Music] w [Music] dude these pieces are long compared to the first one [Music] e [Music] okay [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] huh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] so about as far as I can tell if we were to sum up thing into a motif it would be yeah that brings us to Flat three flat three two flat three flat five [Music] seven a pretty interesting Motif we got there see how many flats there are there again I know I know I I was burnt by Jacob by saying I wouldn't trust a character with flat five I I would never trust a character with a flat five and also a natural seven like there's no way that there's some duplicitous nature about this person they have a duplicitous past or they have an evil past or something and you can tell me F's the good guy yeah don't buy it all right let's check out HQ music eternity [Music] okay so f is an assassin someone who kills people for a living there you go regardless of what he does for us free of charge or not I think we can agree killing people for living is well they're soldiers that's [Music] different [Music] is [Music] for h [Music] you [Music] for [Music] [Music] well that was a really chill HQ tun and I also did very much enjoy the sound effects let's check out GIS [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so interestingly enough for Garis we heard well here instead of singing it one two three three 2 over and over again one 2 33 which is going all the way back to main theme one of Mass Effect one and sure we heard some other things in there but that's definitely Motif that was repeated over and over again so interesting to hear how even this one two flat three thing we heard all the way back all the way back in Max Effect one is still coming back in character themes now I think it's also interesting to talk about how different this Mass Effect 2 soundtrack is from Mass Effect one like Mass Effect one we basically summarize the entire soundtrack with like a couple of characters of writing whereas Mass Effect 2 it's like each character gets their own theme there's different motifs in the theme and it's like the character themes like six minutes long it's like a totally different vibe from Mass Effect one pretty cool stuff let's check out Gunship [Music] Battle [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hold oh so we heard here was indeed some contending going on but not in the same way we heard in one we actually heard [Music] this we heard this flat two flat 71 here in Gunship Battle that we heard back in Mass Effect one so we're hearing yeah something's happening we're contending you know bad things whatever whatever drama drama we're hearing plot to two flat Sev and one let's check out an unknown [Music] enemy [Music] for [Music] [Music] well speaking of unknown enemies that sounds pretty unknown to anything we've heard before I might have missed something in [Music] there h [Music] yeah well we don't have that up on the board let's put that up on the board if we if we count the first note as being one but it is that's one PL two flat six excuse me five cool let's keep it going with Samara Samara Samara I love you Samara you're only a grunt away yeah yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] better [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] she [Music] [Applause] [Music] my [Music] [Music] me [Music] so Samar a beautiful piece of music we heard so many intricate things in there one thing I want to point out to you is this this it's we're going to call this in interval Motif because it is in and of itself an interval Motif so it's like I put the yellow up here because one well here we in sending order so flat seven one excuse me flat two we have whole step half step between one and flat two so look we have in this piece we heard flat 71 flat two right so that hole in half step right there so the whole step between flat 7 to one and half between one flat two then we heard a whole step between four five and flat six same idea and then also in this OST we've heard you know by a different name half and then whole but it's still still the same idea we're still contending with an interval of a minor third with a half step and a whole step but then really thinking about all going all the way back to Mass Effect one and that one flat two flat 7 thing we're hearing it here as well pretty cool in addition here we also heard the major third thrown in for what I can only describe as a quasi Middle Eastern sound excellent let's keep this going with Grunt and if you can hear me chewing now [Music] [Music] St [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] well in Grant we heard a lot of main theme one or Motif one all the way from Mass Effect one that's pretty cool hey uh they put cheese on mine I'm going to go grab one of my Nifty Nifty lactose enzymes cuz otherwise I can't really digest it back in two shakes I'm not going to make you listen to super loud pause music two shakes ta all right keep this going with horizon horizon Kentucky Fried Chicken in a Pizza Hut horizon [Music] horizon [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Motif one here but made minor [Music] it's so interesting to hear this 5432 and again not necessarily thinking of it as 5432 but thinking it more as whole step whole step half step and that being Motif one and that showing up there again the reason why we're thinking of it is whole step P step half step instead of 5432 because it's not always 5432 you know sometimes it's different scale degrees but really think of it whole step whole step half step hearing that here in Horizon let's check out collector fever [Music] [Music] [Music] so we heard right there is the just one flat two one flat seven this same idea we've also heard as four to five to Flat 6 and five to Flat 6 to Flat 7 which we also heard back in Mass Effect one let's keep this going with t come on YouTube play it for me pretty please that [Music] [Music] man [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] 3 [Music] e [Music] so for Tali we hear a couple things we could hear some some One Flat two flat sevens in there at the end really we heard a one flat 651 arpeggio type of type of a deal and then a core progression of essentially and I'm simplifying here and it was this several times through through excuse me it was one minor four minor five minor back to one Minor A 1 14 five minor cor progression which did get a little bit more complex it seems it seems to me that in a lot of these what I would assume are character themes there's sort of like what could just be the character theme and then there's this whole extra thing and I'm not really grocking what the connection is it's like it could have been half as long like a lot of these character themes literally have a theme and then it stops and then there's this whole second thing of music and I'm not really understanding what that's for perhaps you could explain it to me in the chat I'd be very appreciative let's check out Mor [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you know I've got an interesting what I think is interesting observation which you might find interesting too and that is if we look at every single one of these themes they're either minor frian diminished yeah they're minor frian or diminished diminished in the sense that they would have the flat five not that they would fit within the you know like diminished arpeggia so in two well one and a half osts now not a single character has had like a major Motif that's been consistent you know we had moments of major but like if you think about like for example Final Fantasy 6 or seven or eight it's like every once in a while you'll have a character whose them's like a little silly like a little campy you know like it's like a clown falling over themselves you know and this OST like there's none of that like none and so tonally H it's kind of amazing tonally it all sits in one place and I'm going to guess it stays there for the rest of Mass Effect 2 I'm excited to see what happens happens for Mass Effect three let's keep it going with the Normandy attacked oh [Music] no e [Music] [Music] sorry so on the Normandy attack I'd like to take it one step further and say so we heard in Mass Effect one we read that one piece that was basically Bang a Gong by T-Rex that was like the one like humorous thing we heard in the music and so what I'd really love I'm very curious please please go ahead and tell me in the chat like one to five five being like Doom what is the intensity of the game play and the Mass Effect games so one is Animal Crossing five is doom on a scale of one to five how intense is the game play in the Mass Effect games excuse me sorry this is what I get for trying to eat and do like a marathon stream like a four cool that yeah four to four yeah combat about a four that makes sense so the level intensity of the music is matching up to the intensity of the gamepl and that tracks like imagine putting this music to Animal Crossing or like Super Mario World like the first two levels of Super Mario World the whole point of rating on a scale of one to five is you have to use whole numbers anyway all right let's check out [Music] Legion [Music] [Music] I'm sorry I think I got Twisted at the beginning of this stream [Music] that is the haunted house and it is flat six it's not natural six it's flat six I said it right at the beginning of the stream and then I walked it back and that was my mistake I meant flat six said what I meant and I meant what I said a Dan said 100% [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] wow yeah Flat 6 [Music] minor now I do believe we've actually heard that a couple times in this year I'm actually going to pop it up on the board as one minor goes to Flat six minor I don't think that's up there right and interestingly enough we haven't heard love yet you know we heard love back and Mass Effect one we won the Flat 6 major but I don't think we've heard anything approximating that so far and this here Mass Effect 2 let's keep this going with jump [Music] drive come on YouTube no I'm not using my account in another location I'll turn my phone off too how about that how about that turn everything off [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] very exciting weard some ones some flat sixes in there now what's interesting too is we're starting to hear pieces that I'm not really able to immediately map like the way this OSD started I was able to map a lot of what was happening onto Mass Effect one but now it seems like we kind of turned a corner and gone into a new act where it's like we really are in a new place maybe a different Universe maybe new ship new crew something where there really isn't right at least right now too much related to what I can parse through and again I could be missing something but from what I could par there's really not too much connecting us to Mass Effect one anymore which is very different from how this started let's keep this going and see what happens with crash landing [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so we have here is essentially a reworking of the sort of bad Motif we heard at the beginning which used a one flat five flat 2 one whereas here it's one flat 5 flat 2 one one oh no it is like ah he's losing it people I'm like it's all one flat five flat 2 one is almost exactly like one flat five flat 2 One news flash here we go okay yeah so we're back to our sort of bad Motif we heard at the very beginning of this OS here with crash landing and indeed I would assume a crash landing is well not exactly good let's check out the collector's [Music] base [Music] [Music] I [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] wow so the collector base is just I mean bad news on top of bad news on on top of bad news musically speaking so I'm assuming this is like maybe the boss place we go to at least a mid boss or perhaps the person who we thought was the boss all along but really wasn't the boss you you you've seen those movies and played those games with those The Twist let's check out the long walk [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so in this piece we heard gestures at main theme one we also heard flat 71 and flat two that we've been hearing throughout this OST but again I I'm gonna say this again and sorry if this is getting boring but this is still kind of blowing my mind like Mass Effect 1 was almost like super well planned out in terms of how all the motifs and themes were going to go and it feels to me like Mass Effect 2 was sort of like either the composer was like wanted to do something that was technically more complex and so they just started doing way more different themes and not tying everything together quite so closely which if if right my first if this was my first soundrack and I did it and then I was like all right I want to grow I likely would do something like this so I wonder about that too like how many soundtracks did Jack wall do for video games before Mass Effect one and maybe that's not even the relevant question maybe the relevant question is like how much did he want to grow and push himself in mass mass effect to I think it's an interesting question too let's got the human Reaper [Music] [Music] well an interesting intro for this boss a lot of ones and flat fives creating a lot of well dissonance so we had okay human Reaper we had a lot of ones and flat fives in addition to touching on and gesturing towards Motif from the Mass Effect one main theme let's check out the Swarms the volume just dro [Music] [Music] so in the Swarms we heard the bad Motif a whole bunch over and over again it was just hammering on the bad Motif telling us that sure enough whatever's happening here these swarms certainly don't seem to be good news at all let's check out the final Reckoning and then we're on to Suicide [Music] Mission oh there's our opening thing for the beginning [Music] e [Music] Lazarus so the final Reckoning took us all the way from the very first very first uh um sound we heard I think yeah yeah 5432 right there so we had 5432 in the Reckoning we had Motif one which was 5432 and at the very end we had just a taste of Lazarus in there as well suicide mission [Music] oh oh we've heard that before don't ask me [Music] where [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] ah oh [Music] [Music] sorry I mean that was beautiful that that was almost like a celebration of what we've heard in this OST so far we heard elements from Main the the main theme part two for Mass Effect one we heard stuff from the main theme part one Mass Effect one we heard yeah I mean this this pink is connected to this blue it's it's two versions of the same thing there and that was actually headed towards major that whole thing it wasn't but it was headed that way so that wasn't pran that was beautiful let's check out the end [Music] run [Music] [Music] la [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] la oh my gosh that was so Victorious I loved that that was amazing again we heard elements from the main theme both both parts of the main theme and Mass Effect one but just coming back in this really triumphant way that was just delightful and just the the contrapuntal element okay what do I mean by Contra I mean there was contrapuntal means there's so many different parts so many many different sort of like Melodies and counter Melodies going at the same time it was so cool that was delicious let's check out new worlds come on it's sry guys here we go come [Music] well as we could hear from the mix of minor frian diminished Etc once we hear Dorian which is what that was right there it almost feels major feels so so soft and so kind and so warm compared to like the sort of violence of frian let's check out [Music] reflections ah 5 43 2 [Music] [Music] 1 [Music] well what a beautiful way to wrap up this main game from Mass Effect two we're going to do now is as we've been live for over five hours we're going to go and jump on over to Mass Effect three as the requested vote for this was the trilogy and I think that it's more than fair that we're doing the trilogy in one stream so here we go we going to go hop on over to Mass Effect 3 don't go anywhere all I've got to do is just pop this window in here x this window out there and press play and we're going to start with the fate of the Galaxy for Mass Effect 3 the color will be red as we go through this here we go I'm also going to bring this whiteboard down just a sco all right let's do this thing fade of the [Music] [Music] Galaxy [Music] all right so we had right there of the Galaxy we had touches of main theme idea the did that show up I'm G to rewind it too because there was some other things in here as well I want to [Music] grab okay and we also had interestingly oh what did I do with the r okay there we go had one we had one five flat six flat seven for fate of the Galaxy I don't know if that's going to come back again that might have just been some storytelling here but we shall see what we shall see let's check out leaving Earth [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so is this the main theme for this one or are we going to get to a different main theme type thing for this year Mass Effect let me give a quick look like it I'm just checking is leaving Earth or leaving Earth just uh by the way the graphics upgrade on these album covers M Effect 3 compared to one is like I love technology okay so what we're going to do is we're going to move forward from here and chat let me know if this is a theme type thing all right let's check out Mars Mars it isn't a kind of place to raise your kids and is there life on come on sorry guys YouTube thinks I'm using my account multiple places which I'm not let's go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so I think something that's interesting is that in both leaving Earth and now Mars the chord progression of one flat six has been present now the last time we heard that heavily featured again to my recollection in the Mass Effect series was all the way back in Mass Effect one in the Love Theme that's what was going on there so pretty interesting that both leing Earth and Mars have this love element to it what that represents I'm not exactly sure but that's pretty interesting let's check out a Cerberus agent [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay well interestingly enough in Cerberus agent we're starting to get a little bit more complex with chord progressions [Music] herey actually bringing in some mode mixture outside of the dreaded frian and diminish sounds we've been having in as Effect one and two let's check out a view of pen palavan [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so some interesting things with P palivan P pen sorry I spelled it wrong is it starts off with the one two flat the that we heard all the way back in the main theme Mass Effect one and then it goes four flat 7 flat 65 now here's the thing that doesn't even really feel like the pen theme maybe that's like the entrance to pen theme because afterwards uh Motif even because here what [Music] happens right one [Music] two [Music] not one do the whole thing so it's GNA be one three five flat six [Music] [Music] right so that's the pen theme right there is going to [Music] be let's put a little J on it shall [Music] we [Music] sorry sorry I'm not used to reading whiteboard okay let's check out the future of Krogan [Music] oh [Music] oh [Music] e oh sorry [Music] well the theme the actual Melody for the Krogan was more than I want to actually take and write down on this year whiteboard but the chord progression that summed up with the Krogan were all about was one minor flat three major five minor four minor so we've got that we're going to keep rocking and rolling with sir [Music] KES we got our one m and a flat six I don't know if you can see this down here one minor to Plat six minor [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay we're going to pull that back real quick right ah which is kind of like Mars so ciresh starts off like Mars One Flat three [Music] [Music] two and then let's put a repeat just going we're just going to put a repeat around this and then for the second part of the theme it's going five flat three five flat six six all right cool so my question for you chat is what is the connection if if any between ciresh and Mars because they both start with the same first three notes pivan also we have one flat three too so I'm wondering maybe the one okay so we have one flat 32 in Mars we have one flat 32 in palivan palivan and then we have one flat 32 also in ciresh so either there's a connection with like maybe a governing body between these or maybe it's us maybe the character is the one flat 32 and the one flat 32 is in all these places or maybe it's the ship the one flat the2 represents something not quite sure what that let's check out the ardat Yaki sorry guys again YouTube saying getting grumpy [Music] [Music] minor one minor flat [Music] [Music] six [Music] [Music] well not [Music] changing [Music] [Music] well some some beautiful things going on there in the yard uh the art at Yaki now in the beginning of that we heard a lot of strings like horror strings now as we discussed in Elden ring there are four count them four let's see if I can remember them elements that you can do with strings to create horror sounds one is modulation going up so the second is tremolo which is kind of what we heard there the third is ah dissonance between two closely related notes going in and out of tune and the fourth is just sort of like the madness that we heard right there if I'm not mistaken those are the four the four levers that we have to pull to make horror horror strings I could be wrong but I think that's it if if you think I missed something let me know in the comments and let me know in the chat cool but other than that then the yard art at Yaki went into just kind of some pleasant chord progressions which I don't think I'm going to write down because they felt sort of Storytelling and not very like they're going to come back so we're going to keep going with rof [Music] [Music] [Applause] you know it's interesting is I I wasn't really pulling up any any motifs out of that that might have just been sort of like atmospheric I'm not sure chat I'd love to understand what was happening there so it didn't feel like there was a strong Motif there or maybe I just spaced out because I've been doing this for six hours I don't know who's to tell either way I'm sorry [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so one thing that we heard and I'm sorry and I think we also did here in R was 1 5 Flat 6 45 flat 3 42 which sounds something like [Music] this cool stuff let's keep it going with the Cerberus plot a we got the one flat 32 again here in Cerberus [Music] [Music] [Music] okay wild theory for you guys here's my theory my theory is that one flat 3 flat 2 that's the seberus light Motif so let's let's prove that out type a one in the chat if this is correct is seberus on Mars is seus on palivan is seberus on ciresh and then the cus plot is that where we realize that cus was on Mars on palivan and ciresh let me know the chat type a one if that's correct and if it's not correct alexand serus is in pal is not on palivan there there might not be an Easter egg that you might have missed you guys like okay so maybe then that and that theory might not hold tight does the plot of seberus play out on palivan yes no or maybe this one flat 32 again is representing us in our fight against curus that's also a possibility interesting not really okay so maybe the one flat 32 is us maybe we're the one flat 32 let's check out the scientists [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] going to grab that Motif there real quick because that escaped [Music] me all right the scientists we're going to call [Music] [Music] them one are the scientists on palivan type of one of the scientists are on palivan let's see because we had scientists before do we have this anywhere else this looks like a new Motif this is a new new motif and typ of one the scientists were on palivan Palin is a war zone okay no scientist there thank you Joseph so what's happening now is I'm getting I'm getting correlation bias with how similar all of these motifs are because they're all like using minor scales or frigi and things and because they're all so very close in notes I'm now starting to jump and make connections that are not there because of how close all these notes are and how close all these motifs are they're not close close as in like they're exact the same thing but yeah that's an interesting thing all right so I'm going to try and mind my bias as we move forward into our Lock Company sorry guys here we go [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so arlock com company we heard flat 645 flat 3 also heard a couple of core progressions one of which was one minor flat three flat seven [Music] yeah a common chord progression I might have just been missad thing it misidentifying a song there but that is a very common core prog question check out prothean [Music] Beacon it's allor right [Music] [Music] e [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] right there at the end the music started getting detuned perhaps hinting at something terrible about to go wrong the minor Motif because seems like every piece has a minor Motif every piece has a minor to it excuse me for prothean Beacon was 1 15 flat 32 and indeed if you look at this entire board I don't think we have a one five flat 32 anywhere PR previously in the series which is nuts wild stuff man this is literally like this is literally like a a master class in permutations creativity let's check out defeat but first let's look at the hands [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] horror horror drama [Music] drama [Music] [Music] so some interesting things there hey I just had an idea you know there's a couple people on this channel at least on YouTube who sometimes do heroic level up votes you know they they drop like a on getting one of these videos made and I think it would be really nice for those people that instead of doing this on the Whiteboard i' do it on some paper and then for the person who uploaded I could just send you the paper and then you'd have like a little momento of the stream that'd be a really nice thing to do I think I'll do that so unfortunately not today but I think in the future we'll pop some paper up there I've got some papers and then we'll actually turn that into like a little Keepsake that I'll send out to you if you like so if any of you out there want to like do heroic level up votes there's a little bonus for you cool all right let's check out Reaper Chase yeah pictures aren't the [Music] same [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow we're actually getting to some it seems like non- Motif driven pieces here which is like a lovely change of pace feel like I've been in an eating challenge and all of a sudden someone was like would you like some fresh lime it's like yes I would you know the eating challenges are never fresh limes it's always like you know a pizza the size of your house or whatever oh well that was beautiful that was a lot of fun hey I'd love to hear from you let me know in the chat on Twitch in YouTube on Kick I don't see anyone on Kick I don't know I've been streaming a kick is like anyone's watching but that's okay we we got people on YouTube and twitch I don't know if I even have kick set up right so whatever um anyway sorry if I'm a little ADHD here I'll uh where was I right let me know in the comments or in the chat what your favorite piece from these three osts are I'd love to hear I'd love to understand where you're coming from from and what you think about this let's check out stand strong Stand Together come on come here [Music] [Music] [Music] feel like Ace Combat [Music] s all right Ty before in the chat if that felt like Star [Music] Wars stand strong sound together felt very sort of you know comrade and arm arms type thing going on here if I'm starting to sound less coherent it's because we've been streaming for nearly seven hours this is officially the longest live stream I've ever done in my life we've done compilations of streams but I've never gone this long before so Groove with me here we're going to get through to the end and I'm going to pull it together and give you a fantastic phenomenal reaction instruction explanation as we go here we are I was lost without you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah how many times Shadow to always turn the car [Music] around oh I misread the vibe [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so what's really interesting about Mass Effect 3 and we've heard this with a couple of these pieces is that like this this was really it just felt like it was cutscene music it was the the music was not necessarily trying to hit a motif it was not trying to carry part of the story it was just trying to be a background an emotional context for something else that was happening so I'd love to hear if I've got a solid read on that is I was lost without you happening in a cut scene because that sure sure is what it feels like please please tell me I would love to know please tell me I W to know while chat's working on that one let's check out The Fleets Arrive [Music] [Music] that was [Music] Lazarus chat what connection does this have to [Music] Lazarus [Music] so I'd love to know why the Lazarus Motif from Mass effect two just showed up in the fleet's arrives yeah you could say Lazarus and this are both reprisals the main theme but that was Lazarus other than it being connected to okay other than being connected to Mass Effect nothing much got it that was interesting though that was the actual Lazarus motif so interesting bringing it back there and also interesting for it not to be connected to anything let's check we Face our enemy Together We Will Never Surrender [Music] so again I'm Not Gon I I don't feel like this is a motif I feel like in Mass Effect one Mass Effect two it was important to write like everything was a like scale Motif type thing and she was a well that was a motif who am I kidding he's losing it [Music] people [Music] we're going to call [Music] that five oops dizzy right face five [Music] four Pikachu says it sounded like emot from leaving [Music] Earth darn it I didn't write leaving Earth Motif down dang it [Music] good ears Pikachu [Music] yeah in part great ears Pikachu well done well done Pikachu I gotta say something very honestly I'm proud of you this is very [Music] Hobbit [Music] [Music] interesting okay so I'm proud of you if any of you have seen the Hobbit movie Peter Jackson's The Hobbit you will notice that that theme is very similar to one of the themes in The Hobbit Joseph Cortez brings an interesting an interesting proposal for the one flat 32 so we had one flat 32 in Mars we had one flat 32 palivan we had one flat 32 in ciresh we had one flat 32 in Cerberus and Joseph proposes that perhaps the one flat 32 is in fact the motif of Victory against almost insurmountable odds sounds about as reasonable as anything a lot of times you're bring T it's either related to the main character or his Tri that's what I was saying it might be the main character itself or like The Strife of the main character or perhap it's the motif of like striving right interesting thanks for that Insight Joseph wake up [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] wake up we had flat 71 flat 32 keep it going an end once and for all extended [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh gesturing at the main theme Here destriant [Music] Lazarus oh [Music] gorgeous [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Music] [Music] wow we could almost like that that's such a that's such a period punctuation point on the end of this Trilogy we could almost end it there but we're not going we got a couple more to listen to but wow did that just summarize the just the the feels deep energy deep emotion bringing the thing home gorgeous a future that many will never see [Music] so what we can think about is every time we hear this [Music] um that last notes [Music] wrong I'm almost singing the like uh Return of the King theme there but the point is what holds those all those themes the underpinning of all those themes is a minor one to a major for you've heard throughout this series so far thank you Joseph Cortez for your generous Super Chat okay let's uh check this next one which is I will watch over the ones who live on there we go [Music] [Music] he changing [Music] there [Music] [Music] so what we could hear there was both simplification and we could say truncation of [Music] the by the end it was just BM just the first note of the motif to simplify it and then BM or bum whatever it was the second point is each time the motif was presented the first time we actually had multiple notes by the end it was just one note simplifying the whole thing but indeed playing around with our main Motif one I'm alive and I'm not [Music] alone [Music] [Music] we're going to straight to we fought as a United [Music] Galaxy [Music] oh life gives you [Music] lemons [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay it took officially how long have we been live for 7 hours and 22 minutes for one piece of music from the Mass Effect Trilogy to end on a major [Laughter] chord ah there you go resolution gave us a major [Music] cord [Music] [Music] 5 4 [Music] 32 well not quite [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you to Chris Regin for your super sticker thank you to Joseph corz 3 months as is your upload schedule going to be more random Christmas special baby let's do it yes for today tomorrow maybe it's a Friday man says wow you're rap the list of aren't you shout out to the guy who literally donated one one k have to do the entire Mass Effect series talk abouts N64 Paper Mario Coen says so glad C live really appreciate your work since you're not reacting but digging into the matter as well the SC is haes you got it Ariel Martinez says hi spry last Super chat for a while I wanted to reinstate my hero T reaction tit the list here my requests for the list are got Loa says hey Dan say thanks for your work and effort was guilty your strive let's WRA d d man thank you for your general Super Chat de demain says excellent game Choice Dan Mass Effect is one of if not my favorite space plays turn into video games at an early Christmas I'm spreading the holiday chair today thank you toss us towards Sky children another the light big guy and Happy Holidays happy holidays to you that don't mean wandering slacker says happy to see you enjoying Mass Effect put this towards yoku's Island Express a brief little Pacific island dayour you got it danv bar 249 says hey Dan I really like your final fantasy streams so this goes to one I played the most Final Fantasy 14 you thought matu was good wait till you hear so it I'm excited Joseph Cortez says this was definitely a great holiday gift man definitely don't expect you to do these all nights often but man this was a great lesson put this towards Hades got it to thank you for your supporting this channel longair bullying 00 says indeed thank you for the long stream happy holiday get some rest when able shout out final fans tactics you got [Music] it [Music] oh my Hero's anime kindly select something else dear super chatter that out who said my hero I [Music] know [Music] was Ariel yeah Ariel please select something different fig that out oh we did it Channel record to support this channel you will find a link if you are on YouTube in the video description I'll take you to streamlabs says donate donate and upvote your favorite OST you get it reacted to next and broken down like this thank you all very much for joining me if you're on Twitch you can find the upvote link on my profile Channel record we just did 7 hours 29 minutes y'all take care I fantast fantastic phenomenal rest of your days and goodbye [Music] by
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