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Preface by Dan Hulsman, VGM Academy: Today’s guest post comes from writer/composer Hassan DuRant, who graciously offered to contribute his analysis of “Amalgam,” to the VGM Academy community. Hassan’s analysis digs into one of Undertale’s stranger tracks from an equally-strange encounter in the game. Not every piece of music you’re asked to create will be about sunshine and puppy dogs, and in this post Hassan highlights some of the techniques used by composer Toby Fox to invoke a sense of strangeness in this track. If you enjoyed this post, connect with Hassan on Twitter, or visit his website to listen to his work. -Dan

Any game composer worth his salt can write “creepy” or “scary” music. Just slap on an aleatoric string patch and bang on the keyboard, right?

I’ve rarely heard a good “unsettling” or “offputting” track, though. Something that sounds wrong but you can’t put your finger on why. I mean, it’s usually obvious when a game wants you to feel relaxed or stressed or sad—but how do you score a moment where something just doesn’t seem right?

To answer that question, let’s turn to one of my favorite tracks from Undertale: Amalgam.

(very minor spoilers ahead!)

Your Tonal Center

After the game’s halfway point, you encounter something very strange.



The ominous visuals and text do a good job of setting up the encounter’s unsettling atmosphere, but the music has a big part to play as well. The biggest thing to note is that the music is not in any particular key; it completely lacks a tonal center.

Here’s a clip of the chords so you can hear them more clearly:

If you grew up listening to Western music, you already have a good sense of a song’s tonal center. Haven’t you noticed you can often tell where a pop song is headed next? That’s your sense of tonal direction at play. It’s how you know this is pretty typical:

This is less common but normal:

And this is a little strange:

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Amalgam challenges your ear by doing a series of little weird things that destabilize the tonal center. Let’s find out how!

Major Major Major Major

Musical keys are made of different types of chords in a certain order. For example here’s what the Major scale looks and sounds like.

http://www.videogamemusicacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/5_Major-Mode.wav

Notice how it’s a mix of Major, minor (and diminished) chords? The lesson here is that most key signatures are made of different types of chords. That means any song you make using these keys is naturally going to use a mix of different chords.

But in Amalgam, the chords go Major, Major, Major, Major, Major…they’re all Major! (also that word is starting to look weird.)

Making every chord major accomplishes two things. First, it confuses your ear so you can’t discern the track’s key. Second, it does so in a way that sounds “nice” and “pleasant” to hear, if a little strange. Listen to the same chords, but all minor instead of Major.

Doesn’t that sound more…sinister? Less relaxing? Angrier, even? By keeping the chords a “happy” Major, the listener hears the song as incorrect, but not dark. Sickly-sweet, even. This subtlety is important when you want to come off as disconcerting without being downright creepy.

The Biting Seventh Chord

In the last section, I said all the chords in Amalgam are Major. That’s true enough, but it’s not the whole truth. They are major, but there are more notes here than in a typical major chord. One of these extra notes is the Major Seventh. It looks like this:

In the past, the Major Seventh was considered unpleasant and discordant. Today, most people would say a Major Seventh chord is relaxing or jazzy…at least, when the seventh is at the top of the chord. But when you move the 7th note to the bottom of the chord, it rubs right up against the root of the chord. And the two notes sound like this:

Inverting the 7th doesn’t make a chord sound bad…but your ear will notice the crunch as something a little weird.

Dressed to the Nines

So I lied again. The chords in this track aren’t just Major, or Major with an added seventh. There’s one more note to add: the ninth! Ninths are also used in jazz music, and can sound peaceful and relaxing…but much like the Sevenths in this track, the Ninth is inverted so that it’s the lowest note in the chord. We call this Fourth Inversion, because the four notes that are typically below the ninth are now above it.

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Fourth-inversion 9th chords are rarely encountered in the wild outside of jazz. They can really mess with your sense of tonal direction, because they destabilize the major chord hiding between the notes.

Parallel Harmony

Your sense of tonal direction is strongest when pitches move up and down in different directions and different intervals. That’s because there are patterns in these movements that let your ear know where the key is. But when everything note moves at the same time at the same rate, it makes navigating the key harder on your ear.

When notes move in the same exact way, we call that parallel harmony. And it sounds weird. It messes with your ear. It goes against centuries-old basic music theory traditions. It makes you question your sense of tonal direction—and Amalgam uses parallel harmony as the basis for the entire track!

A good example of chromatic planning can be found in Erik Satie’s Le Fils des Etoiles (Son of the Stars). Even if Satie’s work didn’t directly influence Amalgam, you can definitely hear the impact Satie made on the techniques used in the track.

Unresolved Tension

The western canon of music is filled with satisfying conclusions. But not this track. No, sir. Since the track has no key and uses only parallel harmony, it kind of goes without saying that it wouldn’t resolve nicely.

An unresolved track keeps you longing for something to give the piece a solid conclusion and structure. When you take that away, your ear can’t make sense of it. It’d be like ending a sentence mi

Conclusion

Amalgam teaches us that writing outside of a traditional key can make for some compelling music—so don’t be afraid to try it! The results may be a little bizarre, but it can add depth to the right track and improve your musical knowledge.

Just for kicks, I’ve re-written Amalgam so that it fits into a key. It sounds more natural this way, but it definitely loses something valuable.