#9 | Still Alive — Portal (PC/X360, 2007)

(Except the ones who are dead)

Composer: Jonathan Coulton
Developer: Valve
Track Type: 1-Shot
Placement: Credits
Key: D, F
Chord progression: ǁ:D|Bm:ǁEm|%|A7|%|:D|Bm:ǁ:D|Bm:ǁEm|%|A7|%ǁBb|%ǁ
ǁ:F|C|Bb|F:ǁBb|C|F C/E|DmǁBb|A7ǁ:D|Bm:ǁ
Functional map: ǁ:I|vi:ǁii|%|V7|%|:I|vi:ǁ:I|vi:ǁii|%|V7|%ǁIV>|%ǁ
ǁ:I|V|IV|I:ǁIV|V|I V⁶|viǁIV|V7>ǁ:I|vi:ǁ
Time Signature: 2/4
Tempo: 120BPM (Allegro)
Scale: D Major, F Major
Instrumentation: Folk Pop/Rock
Lenght (Main structure before iterating): 0:51 (53 bars)
Structure: A Verse, B Verse, A Verse, B' Verse, Bridge, Chorus, Turnaround, Intro

¹The lyrics iterations contain minor melody/rhythm variations to make them fit--just like any regular popular song usually does.

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In the medium's humble beginnings proper "songs" (music put together in order to support human voices singing lyrics--even if gibberish ones, like the Splatoon 3's theme covered last week) were a long way off any feverish dream since even cramming some noisy "HAHA" sample into a game by then would eat up a good chunk of memory--often to not-so-good results anyway, rendering the effort unworthy the trouble. After CDs came to be the way to go for most videogame consoles though, the feature would evolve from just "doable" to fairly common--on occasion even pitched as a selling point--as the memory boost allowed for such recordings to become part of the so called vgm catalogue. "HAHA" and beyond, Still Alive is the perfect icing on Portal's cake.

Despite bearing several layers of sci-fi (both in content and form) it's actually built upon the framework of a simple folk song: short progressions, few consonant chords, solid rhythm patterns. But then again, maybe it worked so well because it's much more Bowie-ish (quite fittingly, for his caustic humor and the thematics the material needed to borrow from) than Dylan-ish; style and presentation aside, what's most interesting--from a strict composition standpoint--in Bowie (and this) is the quirky use of common chords. It can be relatively easy to spice up a theme/arrangement's harmony values by employing fancy extended chords, jazzy tetrads and so on; but creating something unique only with regular chords that every boy learning to play already have in their pockets can be much trickier than it firstly appears--and this is the case.

Jonathan Coulton set up a trap for himself here with the tough chorus modulation (from D--two ♯s--to F--one ♭), but the clever "two birds with one stone" solution is what makes the song in the end: voice leading A7 (D's V) to Bb (F's IV) and back again through the same route when needed creates a safe path that also doubles down as an efficient "euphory" emotional trigger device.

It could also be said Still Alive doesn't stray that far from more modern gothic references as well (even if it's some post-apocalyptic "cyber-gothic") since the style's main aesthetic trope--contrasting "happiness" with dark content--is here from the ground up with the cynical lyrics (magnified by Ellen McLain's fantastic delivery) being laid over two different Major keys.

Take a listen to the original theme. Pro users will be able to access sheet music for this theme plus a link for its interactive sheet at Soundslice. See ya next week!