Why The Shire Makes You Long For A Place You've Never Been

[00:00:00]How can a piece of music make you long for a place you've never been? This is one of the most recognizable and most widely loved themes in the entire Lord of the Rings franchise. It's the one that keeps you emotionally tied to the films decades after the fact. This theme is home, and it makes you want to go back, even if you've never been there.

[00:00:44]Man, what is it? What is it about this?

[00:00:46]Why is it so Oh, it just speaks to you so deeply. This is the first time in Fellowship of the Ring that we hear the Shire theme. And it's of course when we meet Fredo Baggins. And the visual we see here coupled with the theme tells us exactly what we're supposed to feel, especially in contrast to the introduction that we've just witnessed.

[00:01:05]This is home. It's safe. It's everything we envision when we think about our childhoods. Whether ours was exactly this or or if we're just idealizing the perfect childhood, this is the place we come back to. It's the the golden hour sunshine, the green of the trees and the plants, the birds in the background.

[00:01:25]Froto's just leaning against a tree reading a book. I mean, everything about this says there's nothing to worry about here. Nothing to fear, no cause for concern. You're home. How does such a simple melody give us this feeling?

[00:01:37]Let's check it out. We're in the key of D major.

[00:01:46]Now, right there, I think we have quite a lot of information despite it being so simple that kind of might give us a little bit of this sense of why it feels so nostalgic. Right? This is essentially a D pentatonic scale just missing one note.

[00:02:07]But that note, as you might as probably sounds familiar, is about to come into play. So really we have this D major pentatonic sound.

[00:02:16]Well, that pentatonic sound is very synonymous with a lot of Celtic folk music, which is as we know much of what Lord of the Rings is based on. And something about the simplicity of I mean that line right there is that not just a complete sentence. It's not necessarily like a question, right? So, so often we talk about call and response, and there's certainly a lot of call and response in much of Howard Short's soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings, but in this particular case, it's complete. It's comfortable. It's resolved. It lands right on the root.

[00:02:55]Everything about this is grounded, and it's not leaving anything up to question. It's like, "Nope, we know where we are and we know we're safe.

[00:03:02]Everything's good."

[00:03:06]Two things happen here. Number one, we get the fifth note of our D major pentatonic scale. But as we change the chord, we go from the one chord to the four chord.

[00:03:16]Now, there's something that is inherently hopeful about moving from the one to the four. It's not necessarily as bright as the five chord. And the five chord almost carries more of like a questioning type of nature to it because we typically associate the five chord with a dominant resolution where we would go back to the one. So that five chord is in a sense begging to go somewhere else which gives us this feeling that it's not fully resolved. However, the four chord it almost can sit there more comfortably. Do you know what I mean?

[00:03:58]It's a little bit I don't know if this is the right word, but darker of a of a move if we're purely talking about, you know, uh going around the key circle.

[00:04:07]Technically, the four chord is darker than the five chord. Five chord is very bright. Um but that four chord is just I don't know, something about the rising to that four chord. It's so beautiful and it's so hopeful. And that even the melody rises. The root rises from D to G. But also and that note there I think that man that note is so beautiful. C sharp over the G chord creates what we would consider to be like a sharp 11. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 sharp.

[00:04:47]Right?

[00:04:49]So when we when we place that note, now that note is inherently odd because against the root of this chord, it's a trionee away, which is that's not supposed to work. That's supposed to sound dissonant. And it does if you just take it out of context, but if you play it in context, this it's incredibly beautiful. What an interesting thing that is. I've always found that fascinating that that works that way. But context, of course, in music is everything. And that is absolutely gorgeous that we get a resolution back to the one. And there's our five chord which is begging us to go back to the one as we talked about before. So there's so many things happening just in this first couple moments of the theme that are dead simple. There's nothing to this.

[00:05:35]And that's part of why I think it just grounds us so well. In the last video, we talked about the insane dissonance of the ring theme and the Mordor theme. and the Sauron theme. Like there's so many things going on in those themes that are incredibly dissonant, that are incredibly unsettling. It's very dark, very minor with a lot of notes in there, right? There's so many things in there that are that are meant to be unsettling and unnerving, but this is the opposite.

[00:06:18]And in our introduction to the Shire, there's another version of this theme that is maybe even more recognizable than the first one that we hear, and that of course is concerning hobbits.

[00:06:30]It's the exact same theme, but now played on Tin whistle. Is this tin whistle? Sorry, I got distracted for a second.

[00:06:55]That's how we turn it around. So beautiful. We use that minor 6 chord, then to the five, and that sets us up to go right back to the one. Now, this is yet another Celtic instrument that is it just I don't know something about these instruments just it just feels nostalgic, you know, and that's that's I think it's that Celtic folk music that influence that is all over the place in this score. And now we get the second part So, what's going on here is that there there's so much diietonic harmony in the key of D. Now, we've talked about that before, but just a quick refresher, that just means that we're going to derive the chords that we use from the notes of our home keys major scale. In this case, we're using D major.

[00:08:04]So that means we have this bank of notes to work with. Think about think of it like all the white keys just with an F sharp and a C sharp. Okay, that's the key of D. So if we have that pallet to work with, if we start building triads, well, we if we start on the on the root of the chord and build up, we get a D major chord. And what we can do is we can run this shape, this triad shape, stacked thirds, all the way up the scale only using the notes of D major. And we will wind up with what we call the diietonic, the naturally occurring diietonic chords in D major. They are as follows. D major, E minor, F sharp minor, G major, A major, B minor, C diminished. It's the only one that's a little weird. And that brings us back to D. Now, you'll notice that because of the fact that we're using only the notes of the D major scale, some of the chords that we play are going to be major and some of the chords that we play are going to be minor.

[00:09:00]Right? The root is always major. The four is always major. The five is always major. But the two is always minor. The three is always minor. The six is always minor. Right? Like we said, the seven is that one that kind of uh is the only one that is diminished. Right? But what we're going to be doing here, and you can already see this just in the first part of the melody, the one chord is major, the four chord is major.

[00:09:28]One chord is major. Five chord is major.

[00:09:31]1 4 6 which is minor to the five which is major. So we're only using the chords that naturally occur within the key of D major. We're going to continue that here. If you've ever watched any of my videos and thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to be able to to play the piano and to listen to music and just kind of know how it's constructed, which is a lot of what I try to help you learn on this channel." I wanted to put together basically everything I know about music and playing the piano and put it into one comprehensive program that you can use to learn how to play anything you want. It's the better piano system and it'll take you whether you've ever started ever playing the piano before or not. It'll take you from the very beginning and it'll build a skill set without overwhelming you with a bunch of theory and all kinds of stuff that you don't want to tackle. My philosophy with the better piano system is I want to get you playing the piano as fast as humanly possible. That's why in the very first video, you're already playing and then within 30 minutes, we're piecing together your first full song. All without any reading sheet music or any music theory. Those are important skills, but they're ones that I believe in adding later on naturally as we go, not overwhelming you as a prerequisite to being able to play the music you want to play. I just find that that's a reason that so many people quit before they've ever really even started. And so with the better piano system, I wanted to fix that problem. I wanted to create something that makes sense to you, that keeps you coming back because you actually feel like you're making progress. So, if you are finally ready to take your music journey to the next level, then be sure to use the link in the description down below and check out the Better Piano System. When you do, it's the best way that you can support this channel. If you enjoy the content that I make here on YouTube, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. So, thank you so much. Let's keep going.

[00:11:41]So an interesting thing about this, Peter Jackson actually only gave Howard Shore the direction of make it hobby.

[00:11:49]That was sort of the instruction that Howard Shaw had to go off of. And uh part of the thought process and I think this is why sort of the you know the Celtic folk tradition kind of really works well here is because the way that Howard Shaw thought of some of this stuff was like what would this sound like if the hobbits themselves were performing? What if this was the music that they were actually performing in the Shire? You were if you know, you go walking around and you hear people playing instruments and playing some of this stuff. That's where we get some of this uh kind of I think the the word that comes to mind is innocent, right?

[00:12:22]And that's when we when we're introduced to the hobbits, that's like the first thing that it feels like. We we have this this beautiful scenery. We have this incredible depiction of home and the music is telling us that you're grounded. You're safe. Everything's complete. Everything is just it. You don't have to go anywhere. There's no questions. There's no fear. There's there's no impending doom. And and along with that, we get this sort of kind of I don't know, lumbering is not the right word, but it's this sort of, you know, innocent kind of dancy. Yeah.

[00:12:55]you know, um, and that that I just think paints the perfect picture of what the hobbits really are. And we get an incredibly simple harmonic sequence that's still is just sitting in that dietonic space.

[00:13:09]D to A to B minor 4 51. That's it.

[00:13:20]You know what this sounds a lot like?

[00:13:32]Sounds like Paco Bell's Cannon a little bit. It doesn't it doesn't completely follow it because we go to the the one five minor 6 and then we simply turn it around and go back four five back to the one minor 6.

[00:13:58]H that that the the Celtic fiddle I guess. It's so beautiful. Notice how it's just playing little stabbing notes.

[00:14:09]There's almost nothing to it. And that's sort of that innocent kind of playful almost like it could be being performed by hobbits in the Shire. And that's that kind of make it hobodyy reaction that Howard Shaw wrote with.

[00:14:26]And this is the theme for the Shire that a lot of people still remember. It feels so familiar. It feels so much like home.

[00:14:39]If you listen closely, there's a drum going on underneath. It's very subtle, but it's there. I think that has a I believe that's like a Celtic drum. I forget the name of it.

[00:14:52]Four, five, one. We haven't left that dietonic space. This is all just D major.

[00:15:07]Oh, there we go.

[00:15:09]That's the only time we leave it. Check that out. That's it. That's the only time we ever leave that. Let's look at what that is.

[00:15:22]That's it. We leave D and we go up a whole step to E and up a whole step to F sharp. And what does that do? It kind of just boy I feel like it just opens up makes it even brighter still despite the fact that we've spent the whole time in this very major space that just feels so grounded. I mean, if you want to take that and how can you make it even more like ah yes, everything about this is good.

[00:15:57]Tell me that's not moving in the right direction. As if that were even possible. It makes you feel like everything's okay. One thing I want to point out that is in the Shire theme, it doesn't quite match the film itself, but I still think the inclusion of this in the theme u the official recording is so cool cuz check this out. So after we first meet Frodo, we go and we hear this. So he realizes Gandalf is coming.

[00:16:23]He goes to greet him and we see this.

[00:16:25]This the visuals are just so incredibly beautiful. Check this out.

[00:16:40]Wow.

[00:16:51]And that right there is kind of the only time that we do also leave this dietonic space.

[00:16:58]And we're not going to dig into that theme because that is for a later episode. So yeah, the Shire theme, I don't know, it's almost like it's so close to being like a four chord pop song, like an innocent twist on it and obviously an orchestral version. And in this particular instance, I don't want to underell the importance of everything else going on in the film at that time because at its basis, this harmony, it's not that unusual. It's very simple, incredibly simple harmony. It's very consonant harmony and like we said, it barely ever leaves the diietonic D major space. So, how is it that this can just make you feel such a connection to a place you've never been to? And that I think is a combination of all the things that we're seeing and hearing, right?

[00:17:42]Because, as I mentioned in the beginning, the visual depictions of the Shire are stunningly beautiful. And it's a very idyllic place where it's like, man, can you imagine living there? It would probably feel so much like home.

[00:17:53]And I do think that when we comb like when we really look at the reasons as to like why this feels so much like home, I think that's a very important part of it. There are sometimes when the harmony itself can do more heavy lifting than you think. And I think the harmony absolutely is doing a lot of lifting.

[00:18:09]But I do think in this particular case, just because of how simple the harmony is, it is a combination of all the factors that we're looking at that really drive this so deeply into our emotional existence that we've hung on to it for 25 years, you know, and I think that's just a testament to the depiction of the Shire. It's so incredibly beautiful that it has ingrained itself in our very beings for so long. And obviously, Howard Shore gave it the perfect accompanying theme.

[00:18:37]Four notes can make you feel like you're home.

[00:18:42]Those are the four and then we just repeat.

[00:18:46]It's absolutely brilliant thematic writing and it's one of the most impactful themes from the entire franchise. But in the next episode, we're going to talk about a theme that I hinted at a little bit earlier, but we're going to dive deep. So, be sure to stay tuned next time for that. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you then.