Cole Cuchna

From the Ringer Podcast Network, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes.

Today, we continue our multi-episode deep dive into Daft Punk's final album, Random Access Memories.

I'm your host, Cole Kushner.

Last time on Dissect we began our exploration of Random Access Memories, Daft Punk's love letter to music and the humans who made it.

The opening track Give Life Back to Music established the album's thesis, a call to restore humanity and life to music in an increasingly technological world.

The album's second track, The Game of Love, introduced one of the album's central characters, a robot voice yearning for humanity, expressing heartbreak over the fact that it cannot experience emotions fully.

Next, track three, Giorgio by Moroder, expanded the album's scope into music history, using Giorgio Moroder's life story to honor the innovators who push music forward, while at the same time, dissolving the boundaries between genres into one shared human impulse to create.

At the end of Giorgio by Moroder, we actually hear the fusion of music and humanity coalesce into a single entity.

As the synthesizer rings out the song's final note, it morphs into a steady, thumping pulse, evoking both a heartbeat and the beat of music, a single rhythm connecting human life and the expression of human life through sound.

Now the tempo of this pulse that ends the track is 110 beats per minute, which just so happens to be the same tempo as Random Access Memory's next track, Within.

Within starts with a beautiful solo piano composition written and performed by renowned pianist and composer Chili Gonzales.

And according to Gonzales, Daft Punk gave him specific instructions for this introduction.

They wanted him to start the piece in A minor and then at some point modulate to the key of Bb minor.

Why?

Well, if we look back at the first three songs on the album, we realize that they're all in the same key.

Give Life Back to Music, The Game of Love, and Giorgio by Moroder are all in A minor.

And if we look ahead to the next three songs, Within, Instant Crush, and Lose Yourself to Dance, they are all in the key of B flat minor.

Gonzales said Daft Punk grouped these songs together deliberately and wanted to create a seamless harmonic bridge between the two groups.

Here's Chilly himself breaking down exactly how he did it.

And just to make it clear, I'll call out the common chord and the modulation as they occur.