End your songs like a boss: the bombastic sound of Broadway cadences
Hi Visitor,
You may love Broadway musicals (note: all Disney movies are Broadway musicals...), you may hate them, you may even sincerely say: "I have not thought about Broadway musicals in all the years of my life before this email"...
... but you can not deny that the composers of these musicals know their music theory thoroughly and they can apply it to the songs they write like nobody else.
Every little choice in harmony, instrumentation, dynamic, tempo, etc. is made in service of the story they are telling.
And especially, they really know how to end their songs (more on this below)
How do I know all this? Because I played in several musical theater productions (hey, they pay well, and the end-of-show parties are out of this world...) and so I learned quite a lot about:
How professional composers use music theory to create emotions and expectations in their audience (you would notice too after learning a few hundred songs... a single show can contain up to 50 musical numbers...)
How to adapt your guitar playing to any style, make things up in real time, being able to play in any situation and condition, and still have a good time.
Today I'm going to talk about the first of these two points (*).
I am going to take 3 songs from Hazbin Hotel, a musical TV series that recently debuted on Amazon Prime, and I'm going to analyze them no, I'm going to do something way more radical.
I'm going to take just the last few chords of each song... yes, just the bombastic ending... and I'm going to show you:
how these last few ending chords use crazy music theory tricks that sound amazing, and
how these last few ending chords express exactly the situation that the protagonist is in, and her feelings about it
Best of all: after you see this in-depth analysis, you can do something similar with your songs. You too will be able to end your songs like a boss.
Imagine how good it will feel when you are writing a song, and go "wait, I know the perfect way to end this"...
Watch the video here:
https://musictheoryforguitar.com/broadway-cadences-hazbin-hotel.html
(*) The second point is covered in my course Complete Chord Mastery for guitar.
P.S. This video is a bit longer than usual (lots of information!) and the lyrics of the songs are not PG-13. But if you have the time and can tolerate a few f-bombs (sung by a choir, no less), you will be rewarded with harmonic secrets that are not explained in any music theory book.
P.P.S. This email is not a recommendation to watch the show. It's also not a recommendation to not watch the show. Do your research before viewing it, it may or may not be your cup of tea. I am in it for the songs.
Enjoy!
Tommaso Zillio
Music Theory Education Expert
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