Cole Cuchna

I'm your host, Cole Kushner.

Digital Love was the third single from Discovery and frankly there's not a ton of information about its creation.

But that's okay because there's more than enough to talk about in the music itself.

The song is centered around a love story that occurs inside a dream.

And as such, the introduction begins cinematically.

A warm, airy synthesizer plays a single shimmering chord that slowly swells in volume.

So I want to take a moment to unpack this opening chord a bit.

The primary notes in the chord are A and E, which together sound like this.

This is what we call an interval of a fifth, meaning they are five scale degrees away from each other.

In most western music there are seven notes and a key,

and we label each of these notes with a number or scale degree.

So a fifth simply means two notes that are five scale degrees apart.

Fifths are known for their neutral sound, not bright, not dark, just kind of open.

This neutral but stoic quality is why fifths are the foundation for traditional chords, giving them a solid supporting bass.

What gives a chord its emotional character is the third, the note in between the fifth.

So here's our fifth.

And now let's add a third right in the middle.

Hear how that instantly changes the emotional character?

This is what's called a major chord, the most basic chord in music.

There's also what's called a minor chord, where the third is a single step lower.