Over The Modal Rainbow

Music theory prankster Robert Komaniecki tried to ruin “Over The Rainbow” by singing it in C Phrygian mode:

@robertkomaniecki

Where are my Gregorian chant-heads at #musicmajor #musictheory #choir

♬ original sound – Robert Komaniecki

My son’s reaction to this: “Waaaaggghhh.”

Then another Tiktok user named Timberfins un-ruined Robert’s version by treating it as a harmony part in A-flat major.

@timberfins

#duet with @Robert Komaniecki #musicmajor

♬ original sound – Robert Komaniecki

I couldn’t get any work done today because I was too stressed out about how we, you know, broke the Earth’s atmosphere, so I transcribed all this.

“Over The Rainbow” is a paradigmatic major-key song. Robert “ruins” it by putting it in Phrygian mode, the second-darkest diatonic mode. He turns C major into C Phrygian by replacing D with D-flat, E with E-flat, A with A-flat, and B with B-flat. Timberfins takes advantage of the fact that C Phrygian mode contains the same pitches as the A-flat major scale. If you hear Robert’s version this way, then what he’s singing is the original melody, but in the key of A-flat and shifted up by a third (two slots in the scale.) In other words, he’s now singing a perfect harmony part for the melody sung in A-flat major. (Timberfins is singing above Robert, so he is really a sixth below her rather than a third above her, but potato potahto.)

You don’t need to know any of these details to experience the Escher-like weirdness of the shift from hearing Robert’s performance as ominous “C minor except darker” to hearing it as sunny A-flat major. It’s like one of those optical illusions where you see the drawing as a rabbit, and then suddenly it’s a duck, with the added twist that the rabbit is doomy and the duck is cheerful.

This could be a useful way to help music theory students understand the difference between relative modes and parallel modes. Robert took a song in C major and sang it in parallel C Phrygian. Timberfins took his C Phrygian and thought of it as relative A-flat major. Historically, medieval Europeans thought of the modes as all being part of the same diatonic necklace, just rotated to start on different pitches. In the image below, the diagram on the left shows how if you rotate the A-flat major scale to start on C, it becomes C Phrygian mode. However, I find that students understand better when they think of the modes in parallel. The diagram on the right shows C major being turned into C Phrygian by flattening its second, third, sixth and seventh scale degrees. This is more “work” mentally, but it gives you a clearer sense of how you would actually use Phrygian musically.

Anyway, thank you Robert for all your Tiktok memes, and thank you Timberfins for un-ruining the song.