#Hats off to Mike & Junior for creating such an iconic soundtrack

[kenora-pizza]

Musical musings - TTTE edition

One of the things that got me back into TTTE was the banger soundtrack and character themes. Music has always been a huge part of my life, I have classical training for the piano and an in-depth knowledge of musical theory and harmonic practices for classical music. So here are some of the things I noticed about various character themes and some of the engines' whistles.

Gordon is considered to be the biggest engine out of the main 12, and this could be reflected in his whistle, as it has the greatest interval between the two notes which make it up, that being a minor seventh between C and Bb.

James' whistle (G - C#/Db) is a tritone/Augmented 4th/Diminished 5th. In medieval times, this interval was considered to be a representation of conflict, discord (no, not THAT Discord) instability and danger. You can hear it in pieces like the iconic opening to Camille Saint-Seans' Danse Macabre, and in Hector Berlioz's La damnation de Faust to represent the titular character's arrival in Hell. James, I've noticed, is pretty damn insecure. He clings to his red paint like a lifeline and hides behind a veneer of arrogance and vanity. He can be quite boastful, to the detriment of his relationships with other engines, with him usually being the aggressor in conflicts with them. So I suppose the use of a tritone for his whistle is appropriate.

Percy appears to (mentally) be the youngest of the main 12, and this could be represented by having the highest whistle out of all of them.

Thomas' character theme and Edward's Series 2 theme both feature modulations to the parallel major of the initial key's relative minor, with Thomas' theme starting in F major and ending in D major, and Edward's theme starting in C major and ending in A major. The "relative minor" of a major key is the minor key which shares its key signature (ex. the relative minor of F major is D minor since they share the same key signature of one flat, likewise with C major, A minor and a key signature of no accidentals). The "parallel major" of a minor key is the major key which shares its 1st note (AKA, the tonic). So....like mentor, like mentee. Or like Father, like Son, in terms of musical themes.

Henry's theme is in a quadruple meter (following an 8-measure phrasing pattern, likely 12/8 time), meaning that there are 4 beats to a measure. However, each one of these "beats" consists of a triplet(If you were to count out a measure, it'd be 1-2-3 4-5-6 7-8-9 10-11-12, and you'd conduct it like 4 beats instead of each of the 12 individual notes) And Henry is the number 3 engine. Hmm.......

If I think of any more, I'll post 'em. If anyone even reads this lol

P.S: One of my favourite OSTs is Kingdom Dance from Tangled, and every time I listen it, I think of the twins. Probably because it uses the E Dorian mode (with a dash of E Mixolydian) which is common in Scottish music. Just in case anyone's confused, the "Dorian" mode is an 8-note scale which starts on the second note of a given major scale. (e.g, E is the 2nd note of a D major scale, so its Dorian mode uses the same signature of 2 sharps). The Mixolydian mode is an 8-note scale which starts on the 5th note of a given major scale. (e.g, E is the 5th note of an A major scale and thus, its Mixolydian mode uses the same key signature of 3 sharps).

#music #classical music #music theory #musical analysis #ttte #thomas and friends #Hats off to Mike & Junior for creating such an iconic soundtrack #Youtube #dang this really just turned into a music lesson huh

[kenora-pizza]

Musical Musings - TTTE edition, Part 2

ALRIGHT!

My first musical analysis post has been getting a LOT of attention in the past few days or so. So first off, thank you for the love everyone, that was one of my favourite posts to make (besides the crackhead Gordon and Henry shitpost and my "Emily in the middle" rant). Second, since it appears that people like this sorta thing, I figured I'd share a couple more things that I've noticed, one of which I didn't put in the first post cause I figured people had already  noticed it so it didn't need to be said. But I think I'll put it in anyways, just because. So let's get into it!

In pt. 1, I talked about the fact that Henry's theme has an occurrence of "3," in that each of the 4 beats in a bar was a triplet, and how Henry is the number 3 engine. Well, I was listening to his theme again and found two more occurrences of "3" in the introductory bars of the theme. For reference, I am talking about this part:

 Each bar has the following rhythm:

Now, the first occurrence of 3 comes from the fact that the first 3 beats have the same rhythm, as shown in the above image. The second occurrence of 3 comes from the fact that the last beat of the bar is a triplet. 3 notes. Tack on the first occurrence of 3 from the first post, and you're 3 for 3 for NWR no. 3. HMMM........

2. Continuing with the subject of Henry's theme, this observation has probably already been made several times over, but I figured I'd put it in to continue the "Henry's theme" trend. If you take a listen to Henry's sad theme, you'll notice that its repeating motif is part of Henry's main theme in a different, minor, key with a different rhythm and at a slower tempo.

Take a listen.

The opening fragment of Henry's main theme:

The main motif of Henry's sad theme:

And in sheet music:

Henry's theme (Eb major):

Henry's sad theme (B minor):

The numbers indicate the note's position within its scale. As you can see, both themes share the same note pattern. To get Henry's sad theme, you'd transpose the theme down a diminished 4th (i.e, move the notes down by this interval) to B major, and then adjust the D# and G# in the resulting melody to D natural and G natural to fit within the B minor scale so that it sounds sad. Nice job, Mike & Junior, very clever.

Just in case anyone is confused, the notes for the B major & minor scales are shown below:

3. Donald and Douglas' CGI whistles are the notes of C and A respectively. These notes are related in a couple of ways. The first/lowest note on a standard 88-key piano is an A, and the last/highest note is a C. Given the twins' original BR numbers (57646 & 57647 respectively), it appears that Douglas is the younger of the two, so their whistle notes make sense in this context. Additionally, as mentioned in pt. 1, the keys of C major and A minor are related in that they share a key signature of no accidentals (ie, no sharps, flats, double sharps or double flats, yes those last two exist and they gave me hell as a kid). Thus, the whistle notes would make sense in this context.

You'll often see modulation from either C major to A minor or vice versa in classical music. Two contrasting, yet complimentary keys with their own characters and personalities which work well together. Just like Donald and Douglas.

4. I was rewatching some of the season 7 episodes which have Arthur in them. And I think I kinda forgot how fucking huge this guy is. I also noticed just how low his whistle is in comparison to the other tank engines, perhaps emphasizing his bigger size and his more serious attitude in comparison to them.

Whew, this was a long post. I hope you guys enjoy this post as much as you did the last one.

#ttte #thomas and friends #thomas the tank engine #ttte musical analysis #ttte whistles #ttte themes #Hats off to Mike and Junior for creating such an iconic soundtrack