ESB 4: Snowspeeder Macroharmony (Minutes 16-20 with Jenn Harding)

2022-12-05

Music theorist Dr. Jenn Harding joins Xanthe for an analysis of minutes 16-20 of The Empire Strikes Back. We talk about textural shifts, snowspeeder sound design, macroharmony, musical structure, spectrograms, math, intonation, the Leia-Han-Luke love triangle (and what the music has to say about it), and more! This episode is also on YouTube (with spectogram visuals): https://youtu.be/nnflnU9iecM Timestamps: 00:00 - Hello there! 04:15 - Interaction between music and sound design. 06:54 - How Ben Burtt crafted the s...

Music theorist Dr. Jenn Harding joins Xanthe for an analysis of minutes 16-20 of The Empire Strikes Back. We talk about textural shifts, snowspeeder sound design, macroharmony, musical structure, spectrograms, math, intonation, the Leia-Han-Luke love triangle (and what the music has to say about it), and more!

This episode is also on YouTube (with spectogram visuals): https://youtu.be/nnflnU9iecM

Timestamps:

00:00 - Hello there!
04:15 - Interaction between music and sound design.
06:54 - How Ben Burtt crafted the snowspeeder and snow sounds.
14:07 - Mechanical-sounding perpetual motion with triumphant trumpet flourishes on top.
22:58 - Weird, angular oboe melody and a massive texture shift.
27:54 - No music during the impassionate kiss.
32:10 - Fuzzball, nerfherder.
35:10 - How Ben Burtt made the Imperial Probe Droid explosion sound.
37:38 - Using math to analyze harmony, intro to macroharmony.
45:16 - How would you define harmony? Harmony (abstract) and sonority
48:15 - Spectograms and discrete Fourier transform (DFT). (Visual demonstration of these Star Wars minutes viewed through the spectogram)
1:02:38 - Quick Tip: Orchestral listening challenge.
1:06:54 - Why does knowing the harmonic landscape of something matter?
1:12:45 - 12-tone scale, interval ratios, imperfect reality of intonation.
1:21:20 - Dialogue causing changes in the structure of the speeder music.
1:27:40 - Imperial March sounds steady but doesn't have the same motor. Accents. Why does the Imperial March sound almost... human?
1:45:59 - SWMM Questionnaire

Things Mentioned:

Jenn's Visual Pitch Class Vector Calculator: https://www.jenndharding.com/vectorcalculator
Jenn's DFT Panorama Generator: http://www.jenndharding.com/panorama
Complete Catalogue of the Musical Themes of Star Wars (by Frank Lehman): https://franklehman.com/starwars/.

Check out Dominic Sewell's analysis of these cues!