John Williams's simple but brilliant trick for great harmony

In this video, I'm going to break down the opening chord to E.T. by John Williams. This is Keith Horne's Chord of the Week. Here's the first chord from the first cue of E.T. called Far From Home by John Williams. It's an A major triad over a C natural pedal, which is an example of a triad over borrowed bass. In this case, the bass is the minor third of a major triad. A major, the third is a C sharp, the minor third would be a C, and that's our chord. Amazing. I love how the film opens with the solo piccolo playing the lydian line, which gives this sense of innocence and wonder. But the introduction of the low C, when it plays again... This low C is a note that is quite alien to the key of A. The music tells us that something is awry. Something unexpected is coming in this story. The voicing is interesting because you'll notice the absence of the fifth right here. That's because John Williams left that space open so the horn could play that same melody. And that melody makes it so that at one point, we have A major adenine, the B makes it an adenine over the C natural, which is a very dissonant sound. But because the voicing is so spread out, it gives us two separate entities that each have their own integrity because they're staying away from each other. When voicings are opened up and spread out like this, it has the effect of diluting the dissonance of a chord and even bringing a sense of order to something that would otherwise have been much more chaotic sounding if it were close voiced. So although the overall sound of this is A Lydian over C, I want to focus just on the A major triad over its own minor third, C natural. So let's take the Far From Home chord through some exercises. Now unlike most musical exercises, the purpose of these harmonic exercises is not necessarily to improve your technical proficiency at the piano or to be able to perform them. It's really more to... the purpose is to give you a framework to conceive of the chord, first of all, and through repetition of playing them in all possible key centers, hopefully you'll be able to train your ear to recognize them, and this can help train your hands to execute them. The first exercise is to plane the voicing through the plagal cycle. By planing I mean keep it exactly intact as it is, and move it around the circle of fifths clockwise and descending fourths, or the inverse, ascending fifths. And that's the plagal cycle, and that sounds like this. A over C, E over G, B over D, F sharp over A, C sharp over E, A flat over B, E flat over F sharp, B flat over C sharp, F over A flat. The next exercise is to use voice leading, moving through the authentic cycle, which is counterclockwise along the circle of fifths, and we'll start in C, and that sounds like this. C over E flat, F over A flat, B flat over D flat, E flat over F sharp, A flat over B, D flat over E, F sharp over A, B over D, E over G, A over C. And the last exercise is to use voice leading again, but we'll take this through the descending augmented cycle, which is this. Descending augmented from C, just major thirds, again a fourth lower from G, from D a fourth lower, and a fourth lower again from A. So that's this one more time. That gets us through all 12 key centers. With triads, it's this. C, A flat, E, G, E flat, B, D, B flat, F sharp, A, F, and C sharp. And with our opening E-T chord, we'll put minor thirds under all of those in that descending augmented cycle, and that sounds like this. C over E flat, A flat over B, E over G, G over B flat, E flat over G flat, B over D, D over F, B flat over C sharp, F sharp over A, and finally A over C, F over A flat, and C sharp over E. That was brilliant. So that's one tiny snippet of the brilliant, classic John Williams score to E-T. One of the greatest movies of all time. So thanks for listening, thanks for watching, and happy practicing. Yeah. Who this? This beat. Yo, who this? Who this?