(upbeat music)
- When "Gangnam Style"
went viral back in 2012,
♪ Oppa Gangnam style ♪
(upbeat music)
the world got a glimpse of
the flashy, heavily produced
and entertaining nature of K-pop.
Since then, we've seen a
lot, such as witnessing
K-pop group BTS continuously
breaking records since 2017
(sings in a foreign language)
Blackpink being the first K-pop girl group
to perform at Coachella
♪ Blackpink ♪
and SuperM being the second
K-pop group to reach number one
on the Billboard 200 albums chart.
(upbeat music)
With all of that, there's
no doubt that K-pop
has become a global phenomenon.
While K-pop songs seemed like
standard flashy pop songs,
they're actually a lot more complex.
So what makes K-pop different?
(techno music)
K-pop songs feature genre
twists, mood changes,
and unexpected musical turns.
Most of them have at least
three songs built into one.
This started back in 1992
when one of the earliest K-pop
groups, Seo Taiji and Boys,
experimented by combining
heavy metal, jazz
and ballad genres in one song.
("I Know"
This helped reshape and
modernize South Korea's
contemporary music scene.
One of the most popular
examples of genre switching
is Girls Generation's 2013
release, "I Got a Boy."
("I Got a Boy")
- My name's David Amber.
I'm a music producer and songwriter
and I've done a lot of
work in the K-pop world.
♪ Shaker, shaker (singing
in a foreign language) ♪
♪ La, la love bomb ♪
♪ Mystery ♪
- Could you break down
some of the elements
that you see are crucial in K-pop?
- From a, like a writing
perspective, I mean track-wise,
there's just generally
a lot more going on.
- Hm.
- Traditionally, there's more sections.
There's more interesting chord
colors that are being used.
There's a lot of people in the groups,
you can be like nine, 10, 11, 12, people,
so there has to be a
lot of different parts.
Those are some of the things
that are just standard
when we write songs in the genre.
- K-pop also changes things
up by using chord progressions
influenced by jazz and classical music
which feature thicker, more
harmonically dense chords.
In a typical recent pop
song, the chord progressions
resolve neatly, like in Rihanna's "Stay."
One, two, six,
four, two, six.
Four, two, five.
But K-pop progressions often
create harmonic instability
by using suspensions.
This creates tension.
A suspension is when we
have an unstable chord,
such as this sus4 chord
and we resolve downwards.
Apply that to the chords
to "Stay," for example,
(piano music)
it might sounds like that.
K-pop's progressions also
use secondary dominance,
also know as applied chords,
as part of their chord structure.
Just like how each key has a five chord,
or a dominant chord, each
of the diatonic chords
within the key have their own five chords.
So for example, if
we're going from C major
to A minor, one to six,
we may insert in between those
two chords the five of six,
which is E major in this case
and it'll sound like this.
(gentle piano music)
An example of secondary
dominance and jazz harmonies
used in K-pop is in Red
Velvet's "One of These Nights."
("One of These Nights")
Suspensions and secondary
dominant chords help add
complexity to K-pop melodies.
This allows them to convey
the emotions and story
of the song to listeners who
may not understand the lyrics.
K-pop melodies also do this
by using modal mixture,
which is when chords are
borrowed from the parallel key.
Here we have C major
and C natural minor,
its parallel minor key.
As you can hear, there
are some differences.
C major goes one, two,
three, four, five six, seven,
whereas C natural minor
goes one, two, flat three,
four, five, flat six, flat seven.
When we go from C major
and instead of going
to the major four, F major,
we're going to F minor,
which is borrowed from
the parallel minor key.
It sounds like this.
(piano chords)
And that's what Day6 does
in their song "Cover."
(upbeat electric piano music)
("Cover")
What about lyrics because it's in Korean?
- Most of the time we'll
write the song in English.
- In English, okay.
- Yeah, and once the label decides
that they wanna cut the song,
then a lot of times what
happens is they'll give the song
to a bunch of different Korean lyricists.
- And you're dealing with a
set of lyrics that takes you
from point A to point B but
you're having to accommodate
multiple singers with
different characteristics.
I would imagine that's very challenging.
- We do, we demo these songs
- Okay.
- and we try to make them sound as close
to what we imagine the finished song
would sound like with
the groups singing on it,
so really, that comes down to top-liners
that I work with or if
we hire a demo singer.
So they know this is the
guy with the high range.
This rapper's got a deep,
husky tone, so like,
you know, like,
- That is so cool.
- It is cool.
- They get into character, basically.
- They get into character,
yeah, yeah, yeah.
- That is so cool.
Another common musical technique
in K-pop is key changes.
Just like Disney soundtracks and musicals,
the K-pop industry loves its modulations.
Mamamoo's funky upbeat
song, "You're the Best,"
is in the key of F major for its verses,
and then changes to
the key of A flat major
at the chorus.
("You're the Best")
Another way K-pop songs
add color to their melodies
is by utilizing chromaticism.
Chromaticism refers to notes
that are a semi-tone above
or below their adjacent diatonic pitches.
Here's a plain C major scale.
(piano music)
And now with the chromatic
pitches in between
the diatonic pitches added.
(piano music)
And you hear this type of
chromaticism in melodies,
maybe something like this.
(piano music)
will sound like this.
(piano music)
And you can hear it in
this song's catchy hook,
which makes the song
sound bright and playful.
("Fun")
The use of the Phrygian mode
in pop music has increased
in popularity and K-pop is no exception.
In fact, the Phrygian
mode is currently one
of the most commonly used modes in K-pop.
The main characteristic
of the Phrygian mode
is the half step between the
first and second degrees,
which creates a Middle Eastern,
edgy, badass type of vibe.
("Mic Drop")
The major variant of the Phrygian mode,
known as Phrygian dominant,
appears most often in K-pop songs.
("Boombayah")
("Love Cherry")
("Windy Day")
K-pop also rarely sticks
to the typical pop form
of intro, verse, pre-chorus,
chorus, first pre-chorus,
chorus, bridge, chorus, and outro.
Sometimes it's difficult to
know what section is what.
In Red Velvet's "Zimzalabim,"
what is used as a pre-chorus
in the beginning,
♪ Nah, nah, nah, nah, ha, zimzalabim ♪
is later used as a post-chorus.
♪ Zim, zim, zim, nah, nah,
nah, nah, nah, hey, na ♪
Do you think over the last
few years, K-pop has really
influenced Western pop
or the other way around?
- I think that you know
Western pop generally,
the music and the image is
aimed a little bit older
and it leaves this
opening for maybe like a
One Direction used to be.
So K-pop, I think, does that
better than any other genre.
So I think in that way,
it's really influenced worldwide culture.
- I can recognize certain
sonic elements of K-pop
but the specifics of it, not quite.
So if you have any suggestion for me to,
you know, hey include this, and you'll be,
you'll be closer.
- There's a lot more going on,
melodically and also trackwise.
- What about the types of
sounds that I should use?
- It can be anything, but
I'd just say that like,
there's never a moment where
there's not anything happening.
- Okay, always engaging.
- Yeah, more is more in K-pop.
- Okay.
More is more, okay.
What's so fun about K-pop is
that on the surface level,
something may seem quite
mainstream and typical,
but if you look closer
at specific elements,
there's so much more to be seen and heard.
K-pop is written so that listeners
will be consistently entertained
by the changing styles
or unexpected pop form
and now that we've gone over
what makes K-pop music sound
like K-pop, I'm going to create
my own original instrumental track
using some of K-pop's musical elements.
(upbeat keyboard music)
