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hi everybody my name is ixi and welcome
back to my channel where i analyze 9
inch nails music and today we're going
to be looking at the music theory behind
lemaire and the lemare theme which kind
of weaves through the fragile and even
extends into other
albums it's such a strangely confusing
but beautiful piece of music and so
we're going to talk about why that is
this video is going to get really really
nerdy so you have been warned
so i want to start by analyzing the
rhythms this theme
has a 3 4 time signature three quarter
notes per measure
otherwise known as a waltz one two three
one two three for the piano up here we
have one
two and three and one two and three and
one
meaning we have one quarter note and
then eighth notes the bass line which is
a stand-up bass
being plucked it's just hitting the
downbeats one two
three one two three so you could say
well the whole song is in three four and
you could
up until the part where the drums come
in the drums are in a four four time
signature
four quarter notes per measure so
there's one more beat in each measure
so is the song in three four or is in
four four it's both in three four
and in four four the harmony is moving
in three and the drums are moving in
four
so that's really disconcerting when you
listen you might be
kind of feeling it in three and then you
feel it in four and then you kind of go
back and forth
can be difficult to really feel them
both at the same time but it's possible
and that's sort of a strange experience
but that's going to translate really
nicely into our discussion of the
harmony now the drums come in at a
really unexpected time the phrase
meaning this whole sequence that i just
played is eight measures long
the drums come in on measure four they
just sort of barge their way in
in fact it doesn't even just start on
the fourth measure
there's kind of a pickup on the last
beat sort of a drum fill leading us in
so not only does it feel like the dream
was interrupted but the drums themselves
feel interrupted
they're not even coming in on the
beginning of their phrase
does that make sense it's the last thing
i would have expected
i didn't particularly enjoy being jolted
out of this beautiful dream so there are
four things that we're going to be
analyzing the thirds
the plucked bass line
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the bass guitar
and the melody
[Applause]
lemare is the most confusing nine-inch
nails song that i've analyzed so far to
the point where
answering the question what key is this
in was much more challenging
than i expected if you're not too
familiar with the word key
what i mean is the tonal center it's
where things feel the most at home where
they feel the most stable and settled
and all of the notes and chords and
intervals are in relationship to that
tonal center
it's where all the notes eventually
really want to return
to so that's why i call it home it
anchors us but it also gives
context for all of the harmony that's
happening so what happens when a song
doesn't have a key when it doesn't have
a tonal center when it doesn't have home
it feels
unhinged like you're floating like you
literally have left the planet
so starting with the thirds
so there are three different thirds here
the lowest one is a major third
the middle one is a major third and the
uppermost one is a minor third and
they're moving in a stepwise motion
meaning they're one note apart if i just
take out the top note
it sounds like i'm going up a scale
right
now there's something kind of unusual
about these thirds next to each other if
i just play them
and leave the sustained pedal on so i
can kind of hear all the harmonies
together
i get this feeling like it's really open
and almost like floaty and dreamy and
usually what that indicates is that
there are lots of whole steps
whole steps sound like this
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that is the whole tone scale that's been
used in film scores to describe
outer space before because it just feels
completely like i said before
unhinged are we going
i hear this
so that's giving that sort of floaty
feeling but there's another thing that's
giving it a little bit of a unusual
quality and that's this tritone
tritones are the most unstable interval
that exists in western tuning
some would call it ugly but trent makes
them very very beautiful
so i just kind of hear this ringing out
even though we're just playing thirds
there's sort of this ghost
of the tritone if i just play this
we would have no idea what key i was in
i think
now those thirds don't really have any
meaning unless they have context
if i put this note underneath them
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they mean something different than when
i put this note underneath them
i've got some clues that this is in c
mixolydian c
mixolydian is like c major but with one
note changed for c major
and see mixolydian
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the note that changed is the second to
last note the seventh degree
so in a major scale it's raised in
mixolydian it's flat
and this adds a completely different
quality to it
versus
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so these thirds would fit into the c
mixolydian scale
another clue is that into the void is in
c and it uses the same exact intervals
in the same part of the
octave
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so there's another context for this
where it's definitely
in c so you could say okay well then
case close xe it's in c mixolydian
what's the deal
even if it's in c can we really argue
that it's in c mixolydian when this is
the baseline
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let me go ahead and play the c
mixolydian scale again and then i'm
going to play that bass line in the same
register meaning the same octave so you
can really hear the differences
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those do not sound the same this plucked
bass line has a flat 3
whereas mixolydian has a raised three
and this baseline has a flat six
while mixolydian has a raised sixth
another thing that makes me question the
c mixolydian designation
is that this baseline starts on b flat
and ends on b
flat
it only briefly touches c for just one
measure
but trent resner is not afraid of minor
sevenths
this b flat being a minor seventh he
writes melodies around them
he leans into them he emphasizes them he
builds
chords off of them he starts melodies on
them he starts chord progressions on
them so this is really not that unusual
for him
it might be for another musician but not
trent he likes to start us off
in this really sort of unresolved way
he makes us anticipate the resolution
when you play kind of fast
it almost sounds like a pentatonic scale
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the f minor pentatonic scale to be exact
forget what i said about the f minor
pentatonic for a second let's just
assume we're still in c
baseline doesn't necessarily have to
follow the scale degrees you can borrow
chords from other scales and it adds a
lot of drama and that's something that
trent does all the time so i'm going to
go ahead and
build a chord on top of all of these
bass line notes to give us more context
for the harmony and they're going to be
triads a major or minor triad a triad is
two-thirds stacked on top of each other
one-third another third
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now let me play these triads for you
with my left hand while i play
the thirds with my right
to me that sounds like a very strange
melody
in a strange bass line but it does sound
like it's in c
and this chord and this chord
would just be borrowed from a different
scale now you might have noticed some
dissonance
and what i mean by that is notes that
are just they don't
sound great they sound really abrasive
like take this chord
in fact there's dissonance in just the
bass line alone let me play it for you
again
right there
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so this e flat which is one of the notes
that doesn't belong
in c mixolydian one of the borrowed
chords is clashing
with every single one of these thirds
now it's not being played like with
every third it's just the beginning
and it's down here so with all that
space it's a lot more easy to hear them
on top of each other because they're
literally not
on top of each other he is not changing
this pattern in any way to accommodate
the chords he's borrowing from other
scales he's very aware
of the dissonance and the tension and
the ugliness and the anxiety that this
creates for his listeners
so this was not an accident he could
have
changed it to match the chords for
example
probably not gonna like this
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that little motif would have fit better
over the baseline better
meaning less distance makes more sense
with western tonal harmony etc but i
really admire how bold he is he's just
like
i know that this is ugly but it's
beautiful you get clashing with
with this as well
once again we've got this minor third
this little chromatic motion
but essentially what's happening is
which fits very nicely and with the
plucked bass line
but doesn't fit so well with this okay
but remember
there's a whole other world up here
being played by what i think is a
dulcetone
something that's been sort of detuned or
maybe it's broken
and one way you can tell for sure is if
you try to play along with a piano or a
perfectly tuned guitar or whatever
instrument you have
you will hear that you are not in tune
with it that instrument is introducing
micro tones into the whole mixture so
i'm not going to go into that much
further i know that jacob collier likes
to talk about microtones and i think
he's gonna help kind of bring them more
into the forefront because normally
microtones are sort of reserved for
uh completely different tuning systems
different parts of the world
our ears are not used to those intervals
anything microtunnel is gonna sound out
of tune to us
and trent knows that it's out of tune
this is another way that he's making us
uncomfortable but he's also lulling us
with the beautiful
tinkliness
so let's check this out against c
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that sounds very pretty it sounds fine
but do you feel like you're home
because i don't if i were just to hear
the melody by itself with
no context at all nothing else
i might guess that it's an f major
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okay so this is starting to get even
more confusing now because the baseline
kind of reminds me of f minor pentatonic
this melody
seems to fit really well over f major
so is it in some kind of f actually to
test that theory i'm going to play those
same triads that i built off of those
bass notes
with this melody on top
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i could make an argument for this being
an f so i'm going to do a little
experiment i'm going to rearrange this
chord progression to sort of
emphasize and anchor us in f more and
we're going to see if this sounds homey
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that kind of makes sense but if you add
all the other things back
in
then this feels like home let's go look
at what happens in we're in this
together
at the end of wearing this together you
get a theme very similar to lemare
in a different key different rhythm but
still hearkening back to lemare
it's really more premonition
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if we transpose these thirds
down to here
then what would the baseline be
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that would put us in g so we can't
really use
we're in this together as any indication
about what key it's in
because the context for these thirds and
we're in this together
is completely different
these thirds sound like they're borrowed
from the end of we're in this together
so what key is this in well i'll tell
you something it's not straightforward
okay so after all that what is my
conclusion what key is this in just like
it's in 3
4 and in 4 4 i think it's both in c
and in f at least that's how i
experience it that's part of why it
sounds so
weird to me because we've got
under here with
and this on top which sounds like it's
an f to me
academically though you would probably
make an argument that it's in c
c question mark dot dot dot
wink but at least now we have a better
understanding of why
it feels like we're floating in the
ocean
quick side note the name of this track
was inspired by the wc piece
also called lemare i did listen to it a
little bit and i couldn't really hear
any resemblance
harmonically but i know that that's
something that trent was thinking about
and i read in an interview that trent
was at a beach house i think and he was
trying to write music
and the only song he was able to write
was lemaire but what was really
happening for him personally was that he
was contemplating suicide
and maybe if someone had never heard
this song before they might say
this doesn't sound like any kind of
suicidal song it's so so pretty but it's
not just so so pretty
there's so much dissonance there's so
much that doesn't fit it doesn't make
sense
and then you have these kind of
assaulting drums just come in the middle
of nowhere that is not
pleasant you might groove to it you
might like it you might be like this is
cool but when it comes down to it this
has been a ballad
that has been abruptly interrupted and
there are lyrics it's spoken in creole
french and this is what she's saying and
when the day arrives
i'll return to the sky and i'll return
to the sea
and the sea will embrace me and deliver
me home
nothing can stop me now there are a
couple other harmonic elements that come
in to lemare after the drum beat starts
there's an ebo on the guitar which is a
really cool
magical little device that sustains the
note and it's mostly playing
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d
wow what i went up like that
it sounded just like just like you
imagined
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it's just leaning on the d which is the
second degree feels very suspended and
very unresolved
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and it doesn't resolve but it does go up
to g kind of
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trent resner's sense of harmony is so
unique and the very end he kind of adds
in
a third just like in just like you
imagined with the very
ending where he saves the third or the
tenth for last
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which is just another gentle way of
giving us a sense of satisfaction
at the very very end no real chords have
been played remember i was playing these
chords
he's not playing those chords just
playing a bass line which is a signature
trent move
in some ways these thirds this is kind
of unusual for him like i haven't really
heard anything like this
when i first heard lemaire i didn't know
it was nice nails and i would never have
guessed it was
i didn't know what it was up until that
point all i had heard was the downward
spiral and the hits from pretty hate
machine on the radio so i hadn't really
heard a whole lot of his piano stuff
anyway
but also i just never heard something
like this
so i want to do a full analysis of
wearing this together
and into the void but i will say that in
we're in this together
it really sounds like an afterthought
into the void however
it's a foundational part of that song to
the point where it sounds like
he took this one idea he took it one
direction and then he took it a
completely different direction
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that is the baseline of into the void
that's the end of this video
if you watch the whole thing you're a
hero bye
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you