Analysis of The Star Spangled Banner (Our Nation's National Anthem)

Hello everyone! In honor of all of the chances that we as a marching band get to perform the national anthem, we have decided to upload a harmonic analysis (done by Hive account@cmp2020) of it. Please keep in mind that this analysis is not going to be as in depth as yesterday's was because this piece is not as complex (music theory wise) as yesterday's piece was. But, none the less, let's analyze this

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Form

I am fairly confident that this piece is in binary form (with a coda if you include the little piano thing that the composer or arranger added). It consists of an intro (which is the A section) an A section (which repeats). It then incorporates a B section (the second half of which repeats in this case). That is my loose analysis of the form.

Harmonics

The harmonics in this piece are fairly straight forward. The composer used several secondary dominant chords (which spiced things up). I will say that there were areas where I just connected the dots and labled the chord by what it functioned as. For example, on the fourth through sixth beat in measure 18 we are given an E-flat and a G. I went ahead and assumed that this is functioning as IV (rather than ii) because the root (E-flat) is in the chord, and the very next chord is a ii. I had to connect the dots a lot in this arrangement because it is almost always only two parts (bass and soprano). So, I did my best. Here is my harmonic analysis of The Star Spangled Banner:

Previous Analyses

Closing

Thanks for reading this! As always, feedback is appreciated. Please let us know what you think of the analysis. We plan to upload more analyses of pieces related to the band. Have a nice day!

Appendix

Here is an embedded video of our marching band's performance of Jay Bocook's arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner, which we performed at a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game two years ago.

My dad says "sorry" for the quality of the cell phone audio recording.

The Hive account@rgkmb-unofficial account is an experimental account that is operated by Steve Palmer (@remlaps). The account's purpose is to demonstrate the viability of a fund-raising model that is based on use of the Steem block chain in the community. The account's goal for 2018 is to raise enough money to send one student on the Rustin Golden Knight Marching Band's trip from Pennsylvania to Florida in December for performances in the Citrus Parade and in Disney. For more information, see our introductory post: Introducing Steem to the Rustin Golden Knights Marching Band