I love when Bassists write music because they always pay a lot of attention to bottom end and either do some off the wall stuff and create something that uses the bass to harmonise instead of just copying the roots, or they make it orchestral and really use it to emphasise the flow of a piece

When you watch a complicated video and pretend to understand

Have you considered using the NSF/SPC/VGM files and players so that you can isolate individual sound channels for your demonstrations? It can be difficult for non-music majors to understand and follow the sheet notation and to differentiate which notes that correspond to, but highlighting the notes as they play like what MIDI players like Noteworthy Composer do and playing the specific chiptune channels in isolation would help make your point clear to even non-music theorists.

one of my fav channels right now! i'd suggest letting the music play a little longer before cutting away

5:35 Interestingly, the chromatically descending tonic is a progression I often hear on modern Japanese songs

top tier content again. Dude you have the potential to be one of the best and most interesting vgm channels on youtube

Yay a great video about Sonic Music Theory, it is unbelievable the lack of material about it even with the soundtrack having almost 30 years. Thanks for the video. Subscribed and hoping for more Sonic videos :P

What really sets Sonic music apart from the competition is the sheer variety found within each game. Additionally, Sonic music is significantly more complex, relying heavily on background/foreground melody switching, harmonies and counter-harmonies, broken and full chords, and a large variety of instrumentation. Finally, Sonic music is composed by multiple collaborating composers, especially Sonic 3 and Knuckles. In Sonic, musically, anything goes, provided it is of superior quality.

sonic has one of the most elaborated music in video games

As a music noob, I can't help but wonder if the composers were aware of all the technical tricks they did, or if they composed with their gut and it turned out like this. I'd love for you to talk a bit about this in a video if you have the chance!

dude, incredible analysis!! I loved that soundtrack as a kid. Some of the theory behind this is really complex and the general weirdness/unique quality of the soundtrack is down to that - it'd be interesting to find out how much the composer thought about the writing in terms of theory vs how much was just coming up with the ideas naturally!

Another excellent video!! Do you have plans for Sonic 2?

Hey, I just discovered this channel and I'm really digging this video. I've been writing arrangements of video game songs for the Gamer Symphony Orchestra at UMD, so just hearing more about the technical side of music (since music theory isn't my strongest suit) is very interesting. I think I might just subscribe. Now, if I could recommend a game, I know someone in the comments has already mentioned Earthbound and Undertale, but I'd actually like to recommend Mother 3. I'd love to see a video about how Mother 3's rhythm based battle system influences the musical compositions, and see some of the more music theory side to how those songs were constructed. Like, for instance, how the song Strong One is in 15/8, but in order to make the song more difficult and unsettling for the Masked Man boss fight, they threw out a 16th note and made it 29/16, completely throwing off the player's rhythm. Mother 3 does things like that to make the songs more difficult all the time, like adding additional beats in between measures (Piggy Guys vs Piggy Something), changing a song with a constant 4/4 meter into something with a meter I can't even really place consistently (Zombeat vs Tough Zombeat), and just making the song faster (Dry Guys vs Even Drier Guys). It really is just a fantastic and well crafted soundtrack. And that doesn't even mention it's fantastic motifs and compositions outside the field of battle. Just saying, it might be a fun episode to do.

Take a shot every time you hear him say the word "zone"

Spring Yard is my favorite. It’s so damned early 90’s it reeks of Steve Urkel and Laura.

Nakamura still goes in. Bring him back.

I didnt realize how catchy some Sonic tunes are. Thanks for the hit of knowledge!

Hi! Finally! A Videogame music channel that goes in! I have a single request (okay a first request) HYDROCITY ACT I and II ...but especially Act II. The way the main motif of Act I is taken and then ramped up in the A section (after the intro) of Act II is so hype and actually quite "cool"

Absolutely love your stuff! There's not enough good, fun music theory content out there... keep it up!

i like how he constantly dies in the background

This is so interesting even though I know absolutely zero of these terms

Really great job. Keep going with Sonic. Both 2 & 3 are worth the time as I'm sure you know.

this is the best youtube channel ive ever found. thank you for your work, dude. seriously, this is the best. i have always thought the sonic 2 soundtrack is one of the most genius things ever created. music theory and old videogames are like my 2 favourite things in the world. all of these old musical concepts have stuck with me, and all the stuff i create even today in bands, owes so much to this old game music. a prefect balance between harmony and dissonance, hooks and complexity, basic rhythms and crazy syncopation. also, 1:52 is my sonic experience in a nutshell. those awkard jumps on a 45 degree angle were a nightmare. a total physics anomoly

found this channel by accident and just want to say you deserve a lot more subscribers, happy you're showing video game composers the love they deserve they're often an unsung hero in video games.

Your video has been very useful for my composing. Thanks!

new favorite channel. Learning so much about music theory for games!!

I love what you're doing with these. Can't wait for the next video!

Great! I'm loving your videos and the way you pay attention to details and patterns. Don't go lazy, please x)

I'm really a sucker for the Sonic 3 soundtrack

Great work! Love the videos and you do an awesome job keeping it clear and concise.

Love the content, man! Keeps getting better and better! My favorite sonic song is definitely the Toxic Cave Theme from Sonic Spinball.

I've been really enjoying these videos. It's honestly making me want to go back and actually study music theory just so I can understand what you're talking about.

Really enjoy your videos man, entertaining AND educational delivered in a fairly straight forward decent length format ^^ More pls haha

Hey man I love your videos! I'm a composer myself and I've been enjoying these since you posted on /r/musictheory. Keep it up!

Man this is awesome man! It just makes me appreciate the music even more, you can see the genius behind it! I'm a musician myself so I can definitely see how great this is.!

Awesome analysis. So nice of you to include clips and pictures of the sheets too. The best sonic songs IMO are all in Sonic 3 though. And angel Island, hydrocity, ice cap, and flying battery zones are the best of the best.

This is very interesting and engaging, and I've always wanted to know how video game music sounds the way they do, so this is really good!

really enjoying your channel. Thanks for the great content

As a music major, I find this fascinating. Recommendations did good this time. Subscribed!

This channel was an incredible discovery! Simply thanks :)

hope to see more videos on sonic music in the future, love your videos

Sonic's games have varied in quality over the years, but one things stays consistent: amazing music.

So, I watched your video on Mario Kart's Rainbow Road and watched this and I learned a thing or two about motifs and structure in music. I'm making an RPG for the Nintendo Switch and was struggling with writing music for it and instead I just took different actions in different music and just improvised. Now I still may be struggling but I think I got a better understanding when it comes to how music is controlled. Thanks for these videos on music theory in gaming, man.

Your explanations about video game music on KZfaq could easily be turned into an academic musicology work.

Hey man, I just wanted to say as a musician/composer/nerd, I really dig all of your stuff! I really love the work you do, and I could honestly listen to you analyze these things for hours. I'd love to see analyses of things like Dark Souls and its use of motifs, or just the feelings it creates (although that gets some into music cognition). Brilliant work! I look forward to following it!

dude i just found your stuff, and its awesome. i'm a musician and a huge fan of video game music, its cool seeing someone break it all down like this, especially when I can understand it all lol. Love this stuff man!!!! Subbed.

Discovered your channel today, LOVE IT! Watched almost all your videos, and have learned quite a bit! Please continue making videos!!! :D

Ramblings I've had about classic Sonic OST's Sonic soundtracks benefit very well from zone theme variations. The best example in Sonic 3 and Knuckles is probably Angel Island Zone, where Act 1's melody line (the one heard midway through the song) is this cheery quip in C Mixolydian (strangely enough), and Act 2's is identical to Act 1, only changing every E to an Eb, changing the mode to Dorian. This mode change from major to minor adds urgency to the song, giving plenty of reasons to keep Sonic's pace up. In Sonic CD's JPN OST, Palmtree Panic's Present theme is kind of a troll version of Green Hill Zone's theme, since it basically cuts out the IV and iii and continuously loops the iim7 and the Imaj7 for about a minute. Then, it cheekily brings back the IV and iii, but removes the I (IVmaj7 iiim7 iim7 iiim7, IVmaj7 iiim7 iim7 iim7) to prick-tease the listener, before going to a V chord with no mediant (and no sus4 as far as I can hear) and THEN resolving itself to I and making more progressions I don't feel like analyzing here. Then PP's Bad Future theme ends up being even more trolly by running almost the whole song in C's iim7 chord, to the point where the song could be interpreted as Dm. The song is sort of cursed with emptiness as no real focal point can be found until the iconic sax solo from the Present theme comes in... heavily distorted and looping on itself like a broken record, keeping the focal point obfuscated. Not to mention the Ab (serving to add a blues interest) in the bass line, or the distorted/reversed voice clips used from the "good" counterpart to add more unease. Then, in the most intense part of the song, the iim7 Imaj7 progression returns, but is overlapped with the established accompaniments from earlier, kind of turning the Imaj7 into a Imaj9 due to the prevalence of D's. (Tidal Tempest Zone's JPN present theme's intro does an almost identical 9 chord progression to Spring Yard zone, right down to the 9-7-5 arpeggiating melody, with the only difference being it goes DOWN from A9 to G9, and there is no extra V to be found.) ^ this doesn't relate to anything, I just like the parallel. And let's not even DELVE into Sonic Mania's brilliance with Act 1 and Act 2 themes. The way Tee adds color to Act 2 themes (especially in Green Hill, Studiopolis, Press Garden, Mirage Saloon, Metallic Madness, and Titanic Monarch) is nothing short of ingenious.

I dabble in composing music and your videos are very informative and inspiring!

... oh man, this explains so many of my progression habits. :| As with all you do, very nicely done. :D

Great work on these! Keep it up. Awesome idea for a channel

Love these videos! Keep 'em coming!

Sonic has always been my favorite video game series, and I've long appreciated the soundtracks. One personal favorite is the Final (not Extra) Boss theme from Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The song manages to break most conventions of form, phrasing, and melody, and yet I still find it incredibly engaging. Great analysis.

god this channel has improved a LOT, these old videos are hard as fuck to follow

I would love to see a video on the Sonic Rush, Adventure series, and/or Unleashed series. Most of the sonic games carry tunes that I LOVE but these, in particular, have such special moments and Id love to hear why that could be. Excellent video!

Best channel on the internet at the moment! Keep going.

I am a musician and I also have a youtube channel (where I talk mostly about development of emulators like MAME). I decided I should create a video about music theory applied to the Sonic 1 sound track. Found your video. My video is not needed anymore. Thanks!

This is such a great video! I would love a sequel to this some day, covering Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. (Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Spinball also have some great tunes, if we want to get a bit more obscure.) Also, all of these clips of Sonic dying are giving me major flashbacks.

Great series of videos. I just subscribed. I'm also a musician, so it's interesting to see these pieces of music analyzed like this. I played in a woodwind trio and I was actually arranging the music of Mega Man 2 into a suite for woodwind trio, but the trio ended up disbanding before I could finish it. At any rate, my favorite Sonic tune comes from Sonic 2. It's the Mystic Cave Zone music.

always love to find a new cool channel on youtube

These vids are wonderful.

As a music major who contributes most of his fascination with music to video games, I have to say thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. This is going to be a fun channel to watch.

This channel is pure gold✨✨

Just found you through Reddit. Awesome video and channel. You've got a new sub!

Love the content, but I also love how he's tracking every time he died ingame too XD

A friend of mine just linked me this. I gotta say man. I'm floored. This shit is amazing. Like... as a fellow musician and composer, who likes analysing music as well, its really cool to see someone go so in-depth with this. I've not looked in depth at your channel yet but may I make the suggestion you do some virt or tim follin games. That stuff is amazing, both from a technical and compositional perspective.

0:04 oh. So that's why the bass lines of sonic music are so good.

New subscriber here, totally in love with your channel! I find really interesting how the compositions of Koji Kondo and Masato Nakamura generally contrast each other in a way similar to how the franchises they worked on did: the Mario games showcase Kondo's old fashioned composition skills by basing his pieces on fast harmonic movements of simple chords (like in classical music) alongside with a great feel for jazz and swing (chromatic notes, syncopated rhythms, etc); Nakamura goes in a totally opposite way with Sonic by creating slower progressions with richer, extended chords and simpler melodies to emphasize specific sonorities (almost with a modal approach), kinda like many contemporary music acts in the 80's/90's.

Oh, so the composer is a bassist! No wonder those tracks are so fun to play with an electric bass :) As for my favorites, pretty simple: Green Hill Zone and Emerald Hill Zone. Simple, punchy and unforgettable :3

I just clicked just to hear the my childhood music. Sonic was my 1st game I ever played. I didn't get into game music until my teens. When I heard sonic music I felt numb and sad that my best life was during playing this game.

I failed music thoery 2 in college. You make thoery fun. Good job. You have earned a subscription.

Love the channel, but especially the Sonic stuff - it's been a huge part of my life. Would love an analysis of either Sonic 3 & Knuckles - not by Nakamura, but by a mix of Sega musicians and Michael Jacksons team - or Jun Senoue/Tomoya Ohtani's work in the most recent Sonic games, as both are very interesting musically. Keep up the great work, mate

Spring Yard Zone is pure new jack swing.

Great video! Love the sheet music

Great as always. Might I suggest a video on Earthbound or Undertale at some point in the future? I'm sure there'd be plenty to look at in either. Keep up the good work.

10.000 Subscribers! Congratulations! :)

I have a lot to say but unfortunately its hard for me this not being my language. First of all, I just subscribed to yoyr channel and that makes me feel bad because I've been watching your videos almost since you started this. And let me tell you that they have taught me a lot even if I still don't get much of the words and terms you use. This video in particular didn't caught my attention at first, cause I've never interested in Sonic games; but the music is another thing. I've been a fan of DCT for a few years now, and the things that you explained here made me understand and realize my inicial reaction to their songs back when I started listening the their earlier music. I remember, while playing some of the 80s and early 90s songs, feeling a little weirded out by their sound. Like, when the intro of a song started, it made think that the melody would take certain direction and taking a surprising turn. This made it difficult for me to understand their compositions, to adapt to the transitions, the only thing that glued me to DCT from the begining was Miwa's voice. One thing I knew for sure is that this music is unconventional in a sense, but I didn't why or where that thought came from. Now you helped me understand why (and confirm that it wasn't just me). And can't see Nakamura's work as anything other than genius.

That was so awesome! Would you consider doing a video like this about Megaman music? It would be so wonderful! Thank you, this video was so great! Keep it up :)

So good! You just know me, bro. My faves have got to be Flying Battery Zone from Sonic & Knuckles, or Metropolis Zone from Sonic 2. I'd love to see this same exploration for 2 & Sonic & Knuckles, but you knew that already!

just started watching these videos and I'm almost out of them I'm still in classes for music theory, I can uderstand this more then my class .lol thank you

Really cool work once again. Anything from Kirby and the Amazing Mirror would be really cool.

Awesome analysis! I've based my own compositions on the structures of Sonic themes in the past.

awesome content, instant subscribed to the channel ^^ it's very interesting but a bit hard to follow since I dont know the lingo :( but it's my fault for not having started by the tutorial video ^^

One thing that would help music readers and non music readers is a scan line of the part of the notation that are actually playing when you give examples. When you suddenly start playing a section of notation but there are 8 bars on screen and your staring on bar 4, it's often hard to get your eyes and ears ready in time to take the example in. I ended up having to rewind quite a few of them once I'd had a second to get my eyes and ears ready, once I knew where the audio was going to suddenly start from.

Interesting ! Favorite sonic tune : Spring Yard Zone I'm trying the 7th in VOPM

being composer just starting out, I really enjoy these videos.

Nice work dude!

I've never been so excited about music theory until this video.

Dude I love you vids xD

You're awesome man. Love your channel. You should do a video about Hideki Naganuma's work!!!

Sonic music is always great

Amazing content! ♥

I really want to understand what you're saying but my brain just doesn't get any of it. Struggles of being a simple-minded man, I suppose.

I'm am avid video game music fan but I wish I was more of a music theory junkie to follow along better. Still really interesting and definitely subbing for future videos! Thanks for the episode one of my favorite childhood OSTs :)

this channel is insanely good

Star Light Zone is my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog song and Metropolis Zone is my favorite Sonic the Hedgehog 2 song, but both soundtracks are amazing.

Is it just me, or does the Scrap Brain Zone sound like it was heavily inspired by a part of the Blade Runner soundtrack?

Great video. You left out what I think is the best chord progression in Sonic 1, the "chorus" of Scrap Brain Zone. From memory, it goes something like C F#maj7 F6 G9. That progression (especially the C to F#maj7) had a huge effect on me at that time (I was 10), as I confusingly felt that it musically embodied the sheer madness of Dr Robotnik. Ah, fond memories.

Sonic music is impregnated in my heart ♥. I would love to hear your thoughts on Sonic 2, 3 or sonic&knucles. Those are my favs :)

that was awesome. You should do the other sonics too, like sonic 2 and 3!