Ff7 barret's theme – Nobuo Uematsu (Solo Piano) by jamescoyle198
FF7 was one of the first console games I ever owned. My cousin heard that me and my brothers were getting a PS1 for Christmas, and immediately asked his dad to get it for us. While I was truly terrible at playing the game as a kid, I developed such strong memories of it, particularly exploring Midgar, which childhood me never managed to get beyond. So, when I wanted a piece to practice my ear training, the novel, often folksy pieces that Nobuo Uematsu composed for the game jumped to mind.
Despite most of your exploration of Midgar taking place in run down slums, they still somehow feel so nice and welcoming, and I think Tifa's 7th Heaven is the absolute epitome of this. A nice, homely bar where Cloud reunites and reminisces with his childhood friend, then follows the others downstairs to plan the sabotage of the next reactor.
The next morning, it's time to put the plan into action. Cloud wakes up in the basement, with this piece blasting full of optimism. I'd now like to take some time to analyse the structure and harmony of it.
Structure
What really strikes me about the piece is that as it starts, it appears to be very straightforward. There's a 4 bar intro that comes straight in with an optimistic, verging on silly sounding melody. And underneath, we have the main chord vamp, which will be continued throughout the rest of the piece, playing a simple 2 bar rhythm with a strong sense of forward momentum, dipping down to the chord a tone below, before returning back. That, plus the bright (almost silly) melody playing over the top sets up a real drive of optimism, with a somewhat marching feel coming from the chords that immediately says "this is a day to get things done!".
Once we're out of the intro, the melody settles down into something a little more calm sounding, doing call and response between 2 voices, one high and one low. That call and response, plus the jump to the sub-dominant chord in bar 11, then back to the tonic 4 bars later, gives the impression that this might be some sort of marching band take on the 24 bar blues.
However, in bar 19, at the point where we would go to the dominant chord, the harmony instead departs wildly from what's expected. I'll cover exactly what it does in the harmony section, but suddenly it feels like we're being taken on a wild journey of a chord progression, with the chords on bars 19 and 23 especially giving a real sense of forward momentum. The minor chords that follow these seem to then give a little moment of relaxationg before we again get taken on a sudden turn. These minor chords prepare us for the climax at bar 26, which as soon as its reached, seems to just crumple in on itself with a series of descending notes that feel tragic and defeated, but also line us up nicely to launch right back into the brashness of the start of the piece all over again.
I think the structure of the piece does a great job of reflecting who Barret is as a character. On the surface, he appears incredibly gruff and arrogant, marching full steam into each new mission, constantly giving the image of a strong, unbreakable leader of the Avalanche resistance movement. Yet as we get further on in the game, we do realise that Barret is a very layered character, who in fact has a huge amount of sadness in his life. He was betrayed by Shinra, which led to his hometown being destroyed, his wife dying, his friends wanting nothing to do with him, and he blames himself for all of it. Yet he can never dwell on this sadness for too long, because he's got to keep picking himself back up and continuing on with his mission.
Harmony
As I mentioned, the piece starts out appearing to follow the 24 bar blues. Yet suddenly takes a swift turn away from that...
| 24 bar blues in F | Barret's Theme |
|---|---|
| F (4 bar intro) | |
| F (8 bars) | F (8 bars) |
| B♭ (4 bars) | B♭ (4 bars) |
| F (4 bars) | F (4 bars) |
| C (2 bars) | A♭ (2 bars) |
| B♭ (2 bars) | Gm (2 bars) |
| F (4 bars) | D♭ (1 bar) |
| B♭m (2 bars) | |
| Am (2 bars) |
The piece is in F mixolydian, which the melody makes very clear with its recurring use of the flattened E, and the chords also support this, with the vamp's repeated stepping down to E♭ also fitting within the mode.
At the point where we reach the 4 bars of B♭, it feels like more than just a move to the sub-dominant chord, since we now have A♭ introduced, suggesting this is more like a move to B♭ mixolydian for those bars before we return back to F. Indeed, when transcribing the piece, I found that for those 4 bars, the tonal center did feel like it was now on B♭.
At the point where we might expect the harmony to move to the fifth (C), we get the sudden change where A♭ becomes the new tonal center, and A♭ lydian being implied as the mode. Interestingly, A♭ lydian ≈ B♭ mixolydian, both sharing the same set of pitch classes, and both being one step anti-clockwise around the circle of fifths. So it's really not much of a radical modulation, but the fact there's no build up to it, puts us on an unexpected new tonal center, and goes against our expectations of what we expect might come next all contribute to it feeling like a bit of a surprise shift.
After 2 bars of A♭, we shift down semi-tonally to Gm, the first minor chord of the piece, which feels like a welcome moment of pensiveness to reflect on this new change.
The moment of pensiveness on Gm doesn't last though, as we then launch straight into D♭, being our new tonal center, a tritone away from where we were, and using a repeated partial scale run to make clear that we are now in D♭ lydian. It again feels like quite a lurch. The scale run happens first over D♭, then B♭m (its relative minor), which again feels like a moment of reflection after the previous chord's sudden change in harmonic direction.
Again though, the modulation that happened here is nothing too wild, with D♭ lydian being enharmonic with A♭ major, meaning that we've again really only moved one step anti-clockwise around the circle of fifths again. This table hopefully demonstrates clearly the harmonic changes that have happened so far...
| Bar number | Key / Mode | Pitch Classes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | F mixolydian | F, G, A, B♭, C, D, E♭ |
| 11 | B♭ mixolydian | A → A♭ |
| 15 | F mixolydian | A♭ → A |
| 19 | A♭ lydian | A → A♭ |
| 23 | D♭ lydian | D → D♭ |
Once we get to the B♭m chord, we get an extra bar of it, which is the first really noticeable time that we've heard a departure from the rhythmic vamp that's been playing underneath, and clearly acts as a build up to the climax of the piece. On this climax, we then shift down semi-tonally from B♭m to Am, which I find such an interesting choice. Playing chromatically descending chords is a classic approach for achieving a sinking sort of effect, which combined with the contrary motion of the rising melody I think does a great job of achieving a tragic sounding climax.
More important than that though, since this is video game music it has to loop, and Am gets us nicely back to F. Since Am is the relative minor of C, the dominant of F, it too has dominant functionality. It's nowhere near as strong as C → F, but still works nicely as a smooth transition back to the top of the piece. As the Am lingers, it's decorated a little with a suspension, leading into a small chromatic descent, but it does little to change the harmonic function of the chord.
And that's my analysis of the piece. Hopefully you found it interesting or useful. If you disagree with anything then I'd love to hear why. Other than amateur study of music theory, I'm not well trained in it and would love to learn more and continue to grow. Thanks for reading my thoughts.