The Severance Theme Is SO Perfectly Written, It's Insane

sav's main title theme is perhaps one of the greatest main titles ever written for a show anybody that has watched the show will tell you that it fits so insanely well I make these statements freely the first time I heard it I thought that it was simpler than it actually ended up being and once I figured out how it actually was written it kind of made the whole thing even more perfect nothing is's what they say now in this video you're safe no spoilers ahead I won't be revealing anything that you can't get from the

trailer itself [Music] oh man this is so interesting visually it's just [Applause] [Music] okay okay okay we got to stop it's very difficult to stop because of the incredible animation done here which was done by a super talented artist Oliver L and actually won an Emmy for best I think it was best main title sequence outstanding main title design and I mean we're only halfway through but this is just so fascinating to look at but it's also fascinating to listen to now the first time I heard this I thought that I had immediately identified what

it was that's what I expected it to be but of course the second I played this chord I was like that's not right and then the rest of it was maybe not quite as clear but here what I was referring to in my own mind is something that any jazz musician is likely going to be familiar with and that is of course the chords to Green Dolphin Street [Music] now had it been that simple it would have been super easy to explain it's like okay there's a root that stays a there's a pedal tone we've

talked about pedal tones before on this channel but in case you're new pedal tone is very simply when we keep a root note going no matter what happens to the harmony above just keeping a note underneath and we can change chords and do all kinds of stuff and it just gives us that same that same root note that we continue to use through a section of a piece now in the case of Dolphin Street it's just it's just a c chord an E flat chord A D chord a d flat chord back to the C

chord so it goes up a minor third and then it climbs down chromatically back to the home base very simple and when I first heard this at just at first glance I kind of sounded similar to that I was like well maybe that's what it is I mean the top note is certainly doing that it's follow following the exact same thing but it's in the other notes that everything changes and that's where I think it just becomes even more perfect for this show right let's take a look at what it actually [Music] is let's just

talk about those chords first because that is going to be the basis for this whole thing we start on C minor but we do not go to E flat major instead we get G flat major now this is really important because by taking a g flat major chord and of course we're using it in second inversion here's root position here's first inversion here's second inversion over a c now what does that create we have a c as our pedal as our root but we're building a chord off of g flat that is a trone now

a trone is very commonly thought of as one of the most dissonant intervals that you can play so when we play a note in the base like C and play a g flat major chord over it we're getting that really interesting rub now because we've turned this into a Triad we have even more components of this chord that create rub not only do we have the trone in here but the fifth of this this g flat chord is d flat that is super dissonant so we have dissonance there we have dissonance there and then the

only other note is B flat right and that creates a dominant 7th or a minor 7th interval so we have all these dissonant intervals in building a g flat major Triad and putting it over a c that's our first indication that something is horribly wrong here H see seems like a pretty good fit for the show now we drop it a a half step down to an F major chord now this one is much more consonant almost like uh we're coming back to the part that makes sense okay well and then what do we get

before we finally wrap this thing up do we get a d flat major chord like I originally thought no it is a check that out this is a flat minor over C notice what we're doing here this is a minor chord but it's pretty consonant I wouldn't call this particularly dissonant it's just dark in the way that minor chords tend to be right but then massive amount of dissonance but we resolve we let that dissonance go by dropping it down to Simply F major which is we can put that over a c just fine because

it's just the fifth of the chord right so if we put that in the base no problem right but then once we drop it down to this a flat minor chord oh boy now we've got some serious dissonance going on again and it's in a totally different way than the G flat major chord the a flat minor chord creates it's a major 7th right with our root that's dissonant in and of itself and up here it creates a minor second interval super dissonant okay then we get that which is a minor third of our root

okay so we already have this that's weird but then we to compound upon that we add the a flat I wouldn't call this the most dissonant interval ever but when we combine it with all of the other stuff going on this is almost like playing a flat and a flat major together cuz we have the the major third of a flat which is C we are using as our root note but then the minor thir of a flat which is B is creating our Minor triad we're playing a both together it's almost it's almost like

playing a minor and a major chord at the same time so what we have here is consonants dissonance consonants dissonance we're just back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and do you see why this is already incredibly written for this show I mean it just makes so much sense and those are just oh oh I screwed it up sorry it's not e it's a flat minor let's listen [Music] again now let's talk about that melody or I don't even know if you necessarily call it a Melody it's just kind of an

[Music] interjection very simple B B flat G B flat G but when we put that against everything that we're playing we can see how it is even weirder it creates even more [Music] dissonance if we're purely just looking at this as C minor then we have a major 7th to a minor 7th fifth minor 7th fifth [Music] right it's a very very mysterious sound it certainly adds dissonance but it's just more like what's going on than anything else I mean people who know this show are I'm sure you know write your comments below I mean

be careful with spoilers cuz some people have yet to watch it but like people who know the show are going yes it's because this and this and this and this and the more you know it the more you see all these connections and why this is so incredibly written and why you just get the feeling you're supposed to get for the show just by watching the title sequence let's keep going this animation is just so incredible so fascinating [Applause] all right that that's super cool [Applause] [Applause] [Music] okay take a look at how that line

interacts with the chord changes we [Music] have right so we're following the chords we're playing notes that work with [Music] them right it all works it all fits right in to the Harmony and it adds some motion it's super cool and we're watching this insane title sequence going what is going on WOW [Music] and now we just develop the whole thing wow that is so cool we develop the whole thing by just adding more layers now we have [Music] strings ah which one was that oh yeah yeah yeah yeah [Music] so that was still an

A flat minor chord it's just voiced differently in the strings but because of that our piano line starts in before going into this [Music] [Music] wow oh that is so so cool the glitch at the end to tell you that yeah no everything's wrong here everything is screwed up and you're not sure what that means but you can can feel what that means and that's where this theme is just so spoton this Theme by the way was written by Theodore Shapiro who did an incredible job at painting the perfect picture I don't know I don't

know how I don't know if the music came first and then Oliver lat did these these animations but like regardless it I mean the way that the two things work together is just wild and the way that it just kind of makes you go I have no idea what I'm supposed to expect here but I feel very uneasy and like there's a lot of push pull going on and a lot of things that seem wrong they feel wrong there's a lot of dissonance here and the move back and forth in the Harmony from dissonance to

consonant to dissonance to con I mean it's it's just fascinating how perfectly it just pulls your emotions together from the main title sequence I mean this puts you right in the mood that you're supposed to be in as the show begins I mean think about watching this for the first time you get to the end of that title sequence and you're just like what highly recommend if you haven't checked it out definitely do so but yeah I just wanted to talk a little bit about that theme because I think it's incredibly unique and obviously incredibly

well written and boy is it one of the most perfect fit themes I think I've ever heard for a show but I want to know your comments down below so let me know your thoughts thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video I really appreciate it and we will see you in the next one