Why The Jaws Theme Feels Like Impending DOOM

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I have something kind of embarrassing to admit to you all and that is that I have never seen Jaws. That is until last night. Now, obviously, it is one of the most famous film scores of all time by the great John Williams. And I've always hesitated to cover that score on this channel because in my mind when I listen or think about the Jaws theme that everybody knows, it's obviously I don't know. I just always thought of it like what are we going to say about that? Like I I don't even understand the har the harmonic what is going on harmonically, right? But that's because I just never really took the time to take a closer look. So I want you to check this out with me because I think there are some really really nuts incredible things going on as one would expect with John Williams. But can we just take a second to appreciate how Two Notes literally became one of the most famous film scores of all time. How does that work? Why does that work? And why do those two notes create this incredible tension and like impending doom sound?

[00:01:04]Especially when two notes in literally the other direction can be one of the sweetest, most heart-wrenching, beautiful sounds ever.

[00:01:20]I actually made a video about this a while ago. It was about like the the the crying interval. Why does this why does this descending half step just make you feel all kinds of things, right? But an ascending half step can also make you feel all kinds of things kind of in the opposite direction. What is going on there? Why is that? Well, of course, the answer is tension. Both reactions are due to tension, but context is everything. In Jaws, we have this incredibly low usage of the strings. And I actually love how if we actually if we listen to the theme, there's some really cool things going on in that theme. Amongst the strings down below, we actually get the piano.

[00:02:08]There's the piano.

[00:02:16]Ah. All right. Yeah. So at first listen, you could easily hear this and go, I don't understand. Is this a tonal? Like what's actually happening here? Because everything is dissonance. That that is ultimately what gives this its impending doom feel. There is no reprieve. There's no there's no chance for us to relax as the listener because every aspect of this theme is just totally totally dissonant and bizarre and weird and shouldn't go together, but it does. And the fact that it does kind of gives us that feeling. and especially the chugging along as we get into the actual like tempo, right? But the first thing we hear other than this, and by the way, it's funny because I feel like we also always picture Jaws as just the two notes, but it's not. It's a measure of the two notes in four four and then it's starts over again. So, we get that that extra bar in there, which is really cool. And it's also going to change.

[00:03:16]It's going to move around. It's going to go to So, it's going to almost like change key, I guess. But I want to take a look at what's going The first thing we hear in the horns there absolutely gives us no no information at all other than confusion. Listen to this.

[00:03:35]E flat, G, D flat. It's outlining kind of like an E flat dominant seventh chord here. while we're going E F, right? And then every other measure we we go we use the D as well. So let's let's take a look at the dissonance that's going on there.

[00:03:56]How about that for you? Right, we have the strings and the piano in the very very bottom playing E and our horn comes in with a E flat. Great.

[00:04:06]There is our half step. Okay, so we get a G in the horn and then there's an F.

[00:04:11]That's That's whatever.

[00:04:17]Then we have a D flat. We're just kind of mixing all these notes up, right?

[00:04:26]So E flat dominant 7th, a shell over E with a half with our with our classic half step sound to F and then sometimes throwing in the D. But every single aspect of that is awful, you know, in the sense of just like looking for like harmony that goes together really well. But what do we hear there?

[00:04:53]Was that sort of like an E flat major chord?

[00:04:57]There's pro there's got to be some other stuff. It's it's it's the stab is almost it's a little hard to hear.

[00:05:10]I'm sure there's a mix of things in there. Um if I could find like a full score, you could actually see what everything is playing. But there's definitely a bunch of dissonance in there as well.

[00:05:25]We're taking that same shape, the E flat dominant shell, and we're moving it up a whole step to F. F, A, E flat.

[00:05:35]Again, with E as sort of our like root.

[00:05:43]Oh man, there's so much just pure dissonance there. So, we have a couple of things going on. We have that building the chugging sort I don't know that's the word that's coming to mind is like it's just that sort of chugging along right almost like the the the shark swimming through the water. Yeah.

[00:05:58]You just get the feel of this like something is coming and especially with the underwater scenes from the shark's perspective. I it's just so cool. And then we So the dissonance is just already insane and and that's just going to keep on going throughout this entire thing.

[00:06:14]I'm really hearing that. I'm hearing like that.

[00:06:22]But now the higher strings come in and they're playing they're not playing E to F. They're playing E flat to E. Right. So, are we keeping the E to F? Because I know we do change at one point.

[00:06:44]There's wow, there's so much going on in there. But this is this is what John Williams really took advantage of to give you this sense of impending doom and you instantly know what it's supposed to represent. But John Williams obviously had a lot of influences to draw from even though we think of him as like one of the pioneers of great film music and he certainly is. But we can actually go all the way back to the early 1900s and start to hear some of this influence. And that's just one of the great things about film scores. I feel like it's been a minute since I've dug into one on the channel. And by the way, I I got to say, you guys really really surprised me. I put out a survey a while back and I was just asking like how many of you are actively musicians and like and like where where do you where would you put your skill level and things like that? And thousands of you responded to the survey, which was super helpful. So, thank you for that. But your answers really surprised me. I was surprised by how few of you actually responded and said, "Yeah, I'm a total beginner." Now, not because I don't think that you guys are great musicians, but I just thought more people were just like generally music interested. Maybe not so much musicians, but apparently that's not the case. I don't know why. I should be surprised. Here's the only issue with that. So, I the whole model of this channel, I wanted to be like I want to do this without taking sponsorships. I I've just never felt that they're like super useful or relevant or like anybody really cares that much. And if I'm going to ask to take up a little bit of your time in this video to talk about anything that helps me support the channel, I'm like, well, why don't I just why don't I make something? But here's the thing. A lot of you were like, yeah, I'm not a beginner pianist. And I sort of built a whole course made for made to start people from the very beginning. It goes way beyond beginners, but you guys told me that you would be way more interested in something that wasn't necessarily a full-blown uh uh piano course, which of course it's available. I think it's fantastic. I'm I'm super proud of it.

[00:08:26]And if it's anything that's interesting to you, there is a link in the description. But I want to share something with you guys uh that I just made that I'm actually like really really stoked about. So ju take a please just just take a second and I don't know, watch this.

[00:09:44]What do you think? This I I I've been so stoked about. I've been working on this so hard. I'm super stoked about it. I'm like, I want to create something that when I was in school that I would have been so stoked to find where I'm like, I just give me this. Let me take it into the practice room or let me take it to my computer and just start imagining all the things I can do with it. That's what And initially this started as I was just going to write sheet music and write these, you know, write these these ideas as like examples of things that you can learn how to play. And then I was like, well, wait a second. if I'm including audio so you can hear it, well, isn't that audio just a useful tool if you want to create with it? And that gave birth to the whole idea of, well, how about I throw the MIDI file in there?

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[00:10:42]I wanted them to be super affordable, just absolutely packed with value. Each volume comes with 1,200 audio files because I just went nuts. Made everything in all 12 keys, multiple different sounds. I am so stoked as to how this thing came out and I'm super super excited for you to try it. So, if that is something that interests you, then please click on that link in the description, go check it out, you know, and I just I really hope that this is something that maybe you guys are interested in in using to create.

[00:11:09]Hopefully, it can inspire you to create some awesome things. And I have so many if this is something that that you guys like. I I'm I'm I have so many ideas as to how to expand on this concept. So, go check it out. Try it out. I I would I would love nothing more than to see the things that you guys come up with that you make with it. That's the whole point of it. So, yeah, I'm just I'm super excited about it. Go check it out.

[00:11:31]Cinematic Piano Volume 1 and two. It's out now and it's the best way that you can support the channel if you enjoy the content I make here. It does a ton to help me out. Like I said, it's how I've chosen to support the channel without taking sponsorships. That's the goal.

[00:11:44]That's what I want to do. I want to make awesome things for you guys that are actually useful. And I thought, what better way than to do something cinematic, you know, because I love talking about movie scores. Speaking of which, we need to go back to 1913 because this is where John Williams stole his idea. I know he didn't steal his ideas, but he gets a lot of a lot of of inspiration from things like Stravinsky and the right of spring. I want you to check this out. Tell me this isn't absolutely insane. You a lot of you probably know what I'm about to show you. Ready?

[00:12:22]What are we for real right now?

[00:12:31]This is literally the Jaws theme.

[00:12:41]Woo!

[00:12:50]Wow. Okay. Anyways, we could go through the That would be That'd be a crazy video going through the entire right of spring. Would you guys want to do that sometime? That would be like a I bet that would be like a three-hour video.

[00:13:00]Probably be super fun. Um, let me know in the comments if you want to do that.

[00:13:03]But that's the Jaws. That's the literally just the Jaws theme, is it not?

[00:13:10]It's even like the same key. Oh, I love it. You know, it's funny because we obviously looked at the Star Wars score and and saw how John Williams jacked Gustav Hol's entire planet suite. Um, you know, and everybody has influences from somewhere. And I think it's actually insanely brilliant the way that John Williams incorporated all these influences. But Stravinsky isn't the only one. I mean, let's look at somebody who doesn't get talked about enough, but is one of the absolute pioneers of film scoring, Bernard Harmon. Listen to this from Psycho. You probably already know it.

[00:13:50]Oh man. Okay, let's take Wait, listen to that.

[00:13:57]We got E flat E E flat E down here. And then E E F. We get all this like we get what what?

[00:14:17]But notice what we're doing. What What are all these? Half step. Half step.

[00:14:22]Even this half step, right?

[00:14:26]Half steps are I mean they're so universally applicable to tension because they're inherently dissonant. I mean it's actually interesting that we even ended up in a situation where that half step could be so beautiful and sentimental, right? And it just shows you the flexibility of intervals, man. I mean, come on.

[00:14:48]Well, there's some good John Williams language.

[00:14:56]We have a tritone.

[00:14:58]Uh, so we're playing triads, right?

[00:15:01]Major chords, regular ma major chords, and we're moving in trone. So, a trionee away from E flat is A. So, we play E flat major, A major. And that's how we get that sound.

[00:15:16]You can do that all over the place. And then once the the bass comes in, it's on D flat.

[00:15:24]Woo!

[00:15:34]Oh, what a beautiful string line.

[00:15:50]Oh, I love this is John Williams is the goat at this stuff. So, we actually shifted instead of going E to F, now we're going D to E flat.

[00:16:06]Okay. Now, while we're doing that, we bring in another theme from the film. a theme in E major while we're playing D to E flat, C, and sometimes C to D. Even more insane dissonance. It's amazing how we can get like a major beautiful theme and layer that just over absolute chaos.

[00:16:38]Oh, you know that the the the ascending half step the tension and you can play all kinds of them in the same way that Bernard Harmon wrote all these different all these different half steps happening at once. We have multiple ascending half steps happening.

[00:17:00]I you know I don't even know where they all are but like they're certainly dissonant with each other. The half step on its own is insanely dissonant. And then it's happening all over the place.

[00:17:12]I hear something like that. All over.

[00:17:21]We have the root going D E flat and then the trumpets E flat E flat E.

[00:17:30]Like come on.

[00:17:34]Back to the original.

[00:17:37]There's our E flat dominant over the E F and I think it's we're gonna So, it's now like the shark has attacked and now it's going away.

[00:17:49]Yeah. I mean, it's no wonder why this is literally just one of the greatest film themes of all time. And I hesitated to cover it for so long because I was just like, I don't even know how to talk about the harmony going on here. But I think the answer is yeah, that's kind of the point. It is so dissonant. It's so all over the place and yet still two notes in an ascending half step kind of anywhere created one of the most iconic movie themes of all time. It really just goes to show that, you know, as incredibly complex as John Williams music can get, sometimes it is the simplest things that stick in our minds that become the things we remember for decades, over 50 years at this point, which is insane. I get it. Now that I've actually seen the film, it it it fits into the context just so incredibly well. And would I say it's my favorite John Williams theme of all time? No. But I'm more drawn to the beauty of things that we find in some of his other works, personally. But I have nothing but appreciation for the influences that go into this. The absolute just insanity of writing such incredibly dis like how do you capture an impending shark attack?

[00:18:56]That's a difficult thing. And in fact, the first time that John Williams showed Stephen Spielberg his idea for Spielberg thought he was joking. Like he thought it was a joke, you know, and it turned into this. Absolutely incredible.

[00:19:10]Anyways, if you want to sound cinematic on the piano, be sure to check out the brand new cinematic piano riffs volume one and two are out now. You can get one of them or pick up both for over 20% off. Link in the description. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you so much for watching this video. It really I really appreciate it. We'll see you in the next one.

[00:20:09]Heat. Heat.