Bond music analysis

PaulBHartzog

I would love to know if anyone knows anything about some musical analysis of the structure of various Bond themes.

What are the chord relationships? Why do they work? etc.

It's easy to find this stuff for classical music or even jazz, but does anyone know if it has been done for Bond?

Barbel

I've written a series of articles covering all the released pieces of music in all the Bond films, and they're awaiting publication on this site. Some of your questions may be answered there, although I've tried to avoid going too deeply into musicspeak (although sometimes it's hard to avoid such words as coda, vamp, etc).

As to why they work, it's IMHO very simple: John Barry is a musician of genius. Books are available on his career- the Geoff Leonard et al works are highly recommended- and there's a wealth of information on the Net.

Briefly on chord relationships: one typical of the Bond "sound" is changing from major to minor at initially unexpected points (a non-Barry example would be McCartney's LALD, in which the vocal parts are in G and the instrumentals in Gm). Em and Fm are common keys for the non-vocal pieces (the Bond Theme itself was written in Em, so much of the incidental music which often incorporates the Theme ends up there too- though not always, of course). Some maj7 chords crop up frequently (eg MR).

The Cat

There's a book which apparently has too much information on the music, so it hasn't been released.

Yet.