There's this chiptune "Earth's Assault on the Central AI" whose harmonic motion in the chorus I really, really like, and it turns out (see
https://www.youtab.me/music/8ufqu61GXKw/tettix/earths-assault-on-the-central-ai) that it's not actually that exotic.
It's
E B D# F#
E G#m D# F#/A#which, assuming we live in B, which I feel confident saying that we do here, comes out to
IV I III V
IV vi III VWhat to make of this? The IV leading into the I is perfectly normal, and the I to the III is slightly jarring, but it's a dissonance I've learned to like a lot. What really blows my mind is the transition from the III to the V; I'm used to the the III either leading to the IV (Pixies, "Wave of Mutilation") or something like the vi with a nice walking bass-line (like: C, E7/B, Am).
Then again, it's sensible for the V to connect to the IV that's coming up in a nice 9th-through-11th-bars-of-the-bluesy V-IV-I motion, but my ear doesn't know that yet. So, Idunno, I'm impressed by how well it all hangs together. It feels harmonically... I don't know how to describe it except as wtf-but-wow-okay-I-guess-so. In some inexplicable way the two repetitions of the III-V seem very different-sounding in their different contexts following the I or vi.
Anyway, also, the intro of the song appears to be
ii I III iiiwhich is just the chorus with the relative minor substitutions applied to the IV and V. Which still on the face of it seems pretty out-there. I never expect to see a III and iii in the same song, much less right next to each other.
