Hi, everybody. My name is Xixi. Welcome back to my channel. In the series, I am breaking down the composition of Mayor Denom. This is part three where I'm going to be looking at Arrestis and three Libras, one of the most beautiful songs ever written. So we're going to start with Arrestis. This is one of the tracks on the album that I'm not quite as familiar with as I am with others, but the thing that's really struck me about it now that I've spent a lot more time with it is the vocal harmonies, which I've learned are thanks to Billy Howard out. It's a song with a lot of slow changes, slow drum grooves, slow chords, slow melody. So it's not really a flashy song, so to speak, but I just really love the harmonies so much. So that's kind of what I'm going to focus on in the analysis. So the first thing we hear is a C-sharp in the bass followed by a D and it kind of alternates or vamps. I've learned this word recently and then these chords in the other guitars, but to say right hand, but for me it's the right hand. Already I feel there's some magic and there's something pulling me in, right? It's very intriguing. It's really beautiful. It's kind of a serious sounding. A lot of delay on the guitar again, that really helps. When I play it like that, it sounds kind of jazzy, doesn't it? So these chords themselves are kind of dreamy, right? And neither of them feel particularly resolved or stable, so there's always this feeling of like what's going to happen next, whereas the answer to my questions, but also the relationship between the chords is sort of surprising. I'm not going to go too far into it, although I could. But they are, the root of the chord is only half step away and it's kind of a surprise sound. They're not particularly related. It's just really beautiful, but then once the song kicks in, the bass line changes from this pattern and starts doing something a little bit more conventional. And right out the gate, Maynard and Billy are harmonizing. Which is interesting, because I think sometimes we reserve vocal harmonies for moments that have a little bit more energy, or we want people to focus on. It's kind of a way of differentiating, concreting contrast. But they're just going for it. They're not really worrying about saving the vocal harmonies, so to speak. The song is the harmonies. So Maynard starts by himself, but just one line. But Billy comes in harmonizing with Maynard. It creates a perfect force with each other. Vocal harmonies in music that's more popular, more mainstream, probably would shy away from harmonies like this. Probably stick to mostly thirds and octaves and sixths. These are a little bit different, and I really really like the sound. And the sound of fourths and fifths is going to be a kind of a hallmark sound of the harmonies in the song. I'm trying to think if there's any other artist what I was listening to at this time that did harmonies like this. And I don't think that I knew of any. This is imprinted in my mind as the sound of a perfect circle. Also, any bands that sort of were inspired by perfect circle tended to adopt these kind of vocal harmonies too. So why does that so cool? First of all, starting with a fourth is already interesting to me. Billy goes down and creates this really kind of clashing major second with Maynard, which is great. It's just so unexpected. And you have two voices singing that close to each other. Interesting things happen acoustically even. It's just really cool. And it's also, oh, those harmonies are so great. Usually vocal harmonies are helping outline a really obvious chord, like a major reminder triad, especially in contrast to what happens next, which is major sixths. So if you're curious about how to do harmonies like this, one of the things that Billy may be doing is he's, he picked a note that made a lot of sense. The root. Maynard singing the fifth. Billy singing the root. It's a pretty sensitive choice. But then it's actually a really beautiful melody in its own right. But I imagine what he might have been doing and we won't know unless we ask him. Billy is sort of finding a pitch, trying to move step wise. So maybe he tried going up to maybe he for some reason didn't like the sound of the tri tone in this case, or maybe he wanted something different. So instead he went down and was like, oh, cool, right? Then he went up to his original note while Maynard goes down further and then he decided to just go up parallel, thought that sounded cool. And then he just repeats those two notes again while Maynard continues to go down, right? And he's kind of keeping himself sort of stationary so to speak while Maynard moves below him. It's a, he's singing very softly here or at least he's really far back in the mix. That's not totally clear exactly what he's doing. But the general gist here is cut away, that's Maynard clear away. Maynard's kind of just staying in this very minor sound. He's sharp minor sound. So first Billy is singing parallel force with Maynard. Then he goes up to parallel sixths. And they sound very, very different if you really pay attention. Quick departure from the talk about the vocal harmony is just to point out the melisma. So not only do we have the hemiola of the tuck, tucked into that melisma as a flat six to five, which is such a sound. The chord progression here has now changed to just C sharp B and A. And the A is the flat six. That's my favorite note to have in the bass. So we have good away. You can tell that's tense, right? It's very dissonant. It's a major seventh. It's so pretty because you have fifth and it becomes sixth, which is kind of lost sounding in it than it's emotional. Especially because then he resolves that tension the second time around and takes it away. My favorite part in the song is one more medicated peaceful moment, which is only eight measures long. And I wish it would go on forever. So I've made a whole breakdown of the harmonies in this section because I thought they were so cool. So I'm going to sing each line separately while the song plays to reinforce the individual lines.Give me one more medicated piece for more. Maynard stays on this note, he doesn't go up, and Billy stays on his high note, but underneath the flat six saves the day, he's singing in parallel fists with him as far as I can tell, which is just a really cool sound. It doesn't really sound peaceful to me, actually. He, instead of kind of falling Maynard down to moment, he goes moment, and he goes up to the fourth. So, he's going up the minor scale, but ending on the fourth, and that's such a great place to leave us, because it leaves us wanting more. It's not like going, one moment again, that's complete, because you end on the fifth stable. Fourth is kind of an in-between. So, he's holding down the fifth, which is the next stop, so to speak, on the ladder. While Maynard encroaches upon him slowly, and each time the interval changes, fifth, fourth, third, second. It feels like there's an urgency, right? Like, something is coming for him. In order to write vocal harmonies like this, you have to be comfortable with the harmony of tension. You could have easily gone, it's really pretty, no doubt. But something about that just didn't work for him. And it kind of balances that with hostility. Another sort of just bend up to the half-step right above it. It sounds like he's wrestling with himself, right? Doesn't want to feel his hostility, but he does feel it. Then we get a beautiful guitar line from Billy. Flaps six every time. So, that's the ninth. So, that's another tense place to start. And this guitar is playing the same melody that Maynard was just singing. When he was singing, I don't want to feel his overwhelming hostility. Hey there, costume change. When I filmed this video, I wasn't going to go into the bridge all that much, but a subscriber messaged me asking me about what on earth was going on with the bass in the bridge. So, after listening to it a few more times, I realized something really, really weird is going on. And that does invite some kind of commentary. So, Billy is credited as playing the bass on all the tracks on this album, except for Sleeping Beauty and Renholder. So, this is Billy's bass part. Just playing this by itself, it sounds like a minor. And it sounds really nice. However, this song isn't C sharp minor or C sharp frigian. And you can really hear it in the guitar. Flaps six sounds cool. Love that, but then this. Flat five, pretty weird, but also kind of cool. Then it goes to the Rays 7th, and that's also kind of strange. Then it goes down to the third instead of the flat three. Pretty strange. And then it repeats. Then it goes to flat seven, and that sounds more like what we're expecting. But then he takes that away from you really quickly and goes. Avoiding C sharp, the tonic, completely. During the last chorus, there's some different harmonies. Well, thirds. And then the second time, Billy harmonizes an octave below Bainert. So, they're in parallel octaves the whole time. This is pretty intense sounding. Got it made from killing you. And then that melisma now is an octave higher, and it's so beautiful, especially on that U vowel. Yo. Let's know what the drummer is doing at the end here. He kind of shifts the meter. He does a little rhythmic displacement thing. It's kind of a mind trick. And now three Libros. And I think there's a lot of things that make this song sound the way it does. But harmonically, one of the things is the ninth. There are ninths all over this song, not just in the guitar, but in Maynard's voice, in the violins and the viola, everything is just leaning on this tense note. And that creates, I think, a feeling that nothing is ever really okay. You know, something's always a little off. It's not what you expected. It's not what it seems.it was such a joy to figure out these chords. All of these chords are sus-2 chords. And all that means is that you're gonna play basically a power chord, which is root, fifth, octave, and then take the top note, move it up a whole step, and do that with every single chord. All three of these chords are very much related. If I make these into regular triad chords that you're used to hearing, we'd have, this chord would be A major, this one would be C sharp minor, and this would be E major, and you can see that they share, each chord shares two notes with the one before it, so. So they have like a relationship that we're used to hearing, but then it's voiced with the sus-2 chords, so it really throws us, but that's part of why they sound so good together. In fact, I could try to play a super chord of the actual sus-2 voicing, and that's what makes the D chord at the end so surprising, is because it's not related to those chords the way they're related to each other. First thing we hear is a violin, I just realized that, or viola, probably viola. So, so beautiful. This is Paz Lan Chantine, she was the bassist during this album, and she's playing violin, and then they had a guest playing viola, I believe, and she is playing, here's the tumbling sound of that. But of course, what makes that even more beautiful is what's happening underneath. How did she make a third sound as if it were a suspension? Somehow, like I want her to resolve to the tense note, that's so cool, tritone. And then the strings are just playing with this, so the strings are playing the sus-9 as well, the fifth and the ninth, which it's just, it's so good. Now in the verse, the chords actually change. A sus-2, like we did before. But then, quickly moving to E5. There's kind of a power chord, OK? So, then we have a B sus-2, followed by a G sus-2. Now G is not in the key of E major, or C sharp minor. So they sound, that sounds pretty interesting. That chord was a cool choice. You hear that that G chord almost has the same feeling as that D chord had when we were going like this, right? Same feeling because neither one of those chords belong in the key, so they're borrowed, and they have a special drama to them. That G, natural versus the G sharp in the key, is about to come back as we start to talk about Maynard's vocal melody. G natural. You would think he's singing the G natural because he's got the G chord underneath, but actually he sings a G natural before he even gets to the G chord, so it's just creative. It's just a really cool sound to have him kind of going back and forth. Now, in the scope of the scale, if we imagine we're in E major, just for now. The G is the third, so he's kind of going between the minor third and the major third. This is indicating some kind of mode mixture because we have a dramatic flat three chord probably. This is a case where I feel like Maynard's vocal melody sounds so much like a stringed instrument. I mean, you could just hear it, right? It's like he's bowing his voice on your back up. Drums here are pretty different, right? So we've got, you got the cross stick. He's really emphasizing the eighth notes here, so that just automatically makes the song sound a little bit different than the others. One of my favorite parts is when it goes down. Just for a moment, they go back to the C sharp, Suss-2 to get us ready for this. So we could, we remember, it's like a little memory. Oh yeah. Now, is on the ninth. Something I didn't explain. When I say the ninth, I'm talking about the thing that makes the chord a Suss-2. I know that I'm saying two and nine, but they are actually the same thing. This art resolution. If you want to think of this part of the song as being in C sharp minor, I would not blame you because that's kind of how it feels to me. That this is all centering around the C sharp minor chord. That's what the song would sound like if we were just playing major minor chords, right? That's not the sound of the song though. Do you feel good not to feel it? All Suss's. So this kind of Suss-2 sound, very empty sounding in some ways, to the point where when I've listened to people's covers of this song, they will often fill in the third in some way. Especially here with the B chord. Really, people want to hear the major minor quality. There's something incomplete and unsatisfying sounding about only having these big wide open chords. That just goes to show you how powerful our conditioning is and how powerful these more simple mathematical relationships are in acoustics. We like this sound. This feels somehow right. And this, something's off about it. This is another reason why I think major sounds so much as like a stringed instrument is because it sounds like when he's singing, he's got a melody in his head that may not fit with all of his words. It's almost like he has more notes in his head than he has words for. So he will swell into things before he even says anything. When I look right through, we didn't go look right through.That's what most people would do, look right through, see your naked but oblivious. There's our D chord again. Now he's singing, guess what, he's singing the ninth down here. That's such a cool choice. So close to just singing the D, which is what the bass is doing, that's what the chord was. See me, that's if it were resolved but you don't see. By the way, if this part is in C sharp minor like I was singing kind of feels like it is then this would be a flat six, flat seven and one chord which is my favorite and I'm telling you it's not for no reason, it's just really, really effective. The second verse, there's so many melisma, he's just really decorating his melody. And why that's significant is because it creates contrast and he's like eyes of a makes you pay attention. It gives significance to that particular note and word in that moment. You can really hear the strings in the second pre-chorus, right, here I am just expecting just a little bit too much from the wounded and the violin is playing the ninth. And what's so great about his melody here is that instead of going all the way down to you don't see me. Now he's way higher going C, so beautiful, God. That's because it's making the chord, he's singing the third of the chord now. So now he's, ooh, here he's actually singing the root of the chord. Interesting. So he's not singing this one anymore, and then here he goes up to the ninth and that's that sound. So it includes a passing note on the way up, and now he's higher in his range so he can sing his chorus melody an octave higher, which is so beautiful and obviously a lot more plaintive, right? It's a desperate, more wanting to be seen. Interestingly enough, this is just a repeat of the verse melody, so I don't even know, is this a chord? I actually don't know what the chorus and the verse isn't a song, I just realized that. I don't know. It's possible it starts with a chorus or it doesn't really have a refrain that repeats the same way twice. It's beautiful, doesn't matter. But yes, this part is just an octave higher of, though, the obvious. Now it's true the obvious. Right, but underneath things have really changed. So to make this more impactful, they went away from the首 two chords and the chord progressions that they've been playing and opt for something a lot more dramatic. And this is just such a gorgeous climax to this whole story. don't see me. You don't see me at all. Beautiful. That is hard to sing, I think. He's jumping down a fourth. A third is a lot easier for our brain to calculate as well as for our voice to jump. It's just a shorter distance. So the fact that he goes past the third to the fourth is pretty cool. It's kind of impressive. And it almost sounds as if he really did just kind of, he went to the third and then just like kept going because he like fell off the step. That's maybe what I would try. I would probably go, see, see, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me, see me. It's a lot harder. Oh, it's so beautiful. So he repeats, see me again. Same interval way up here. Speed of sharp. And over the C chord, it's exquisite. It's one of the greatest things about music. Take a melody, change the context underneath it, see what new things happen. So he went from now he hits the third. So these are just variations on a theme and he's creating different tensions in his harmony every time he makes a change. And also different points of resolution, like see me, feels a lot more resolved. Same chord that the violin plays right off the bat. Going down this really pretty pattern. Now he's just kind of leaning on these notes, right? Instead of you don't, you don't. Now he's you don't. So it's like almost like half time, but always ending on something tense. You don't. That's where he leaves you. Not here. Don't where everything makes sense. So the last chord is that kind of surprise decord. And he sings the ninth of that chord. So it ends there. That is the sound of the song. The incomplete, empty, almost confused, ambiguous feeling. Maybe the way that this person feels about him. That's the end of this video.Thank you so so much for watching. Next week, we'll be the next three tracks on the album. I'm really excited to dig into some of those. They're a little bit unusual sounding. If you like this video I invite you to subscribe and hit the notification bell so you know right when I release one of these videos in the series And I have more series coming up. Until next time