DAY 1000) Charge Cycles - Transformer Robot Sing Wheels on the Bus
So to simultaneously celebrate april fools day one day late (slightly funny song), my birthday one day late (my song), easter one day late (uh I don’t know just pretend this has to do with easter), and SOMEHOW DOING THIS BLOG FOR 1000 DAYS WITHOUT MISSING A DAY here is THIS.
...so I’ve never really talked about it on here...but yeah most of my time lately is spent composing music, often for games (though most games I’m writing for won’t be out for a while) so...yeah! In case you did not know this (you probably didn’t unless you personally know me) I write music under the name Chimeratio!
I wasn’t originally planning on revealing the person behind this blog publicly, but it feels silly to pretend that I didn’t write this music that I have obvious reason to be talking about on here. I’ll gradually be posting any other odd time vgm I've made on here of course too.
Anyways this game was made by my cool friend CHz and you can play it here if you’d like!: https://chz.itch.io/charge-cycles
The soundtrack in game is ‘dynamic’ and seamlessly transitions between a drumless and full version of the track at any time. So I thought it’d be fun to play with a drum part that’s at a different tempo from (but still rhythmically related to) most of the rest of the music, so that the rhythms feel entirely different with vs. without drums.
Here’s how I’d actually break down the timesig changes. This is a weird enough piece of music that there are DEFINITELY a ton of other ways to interpret this, debatably better ones, but because it’s as weird as it is, pretty much no matter what you do you make it hard to read in some way.
(0:00 - 0:29) [7/4, 6/4, 7/4, 7/4]x3
(0:29 - 0:40) 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 4/4, 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 6/4
(0:40 - 0:59) [7/4, 6/4, 7/4, 6/4]x2
(0:59 - 1:06) 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 1/4, 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 4/12
(1:06 - 1:14) 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 1/4, 6/8, 6/8, 6/8, 7/12
(1:14 - 1:24) 4/4, 4/4, 6/4, 4/4, 5/4, 5/4
Metric modulation: quarter -> dotted eighth
(1:24 - 1:44) 1 bar of 3/4, 9 bars of 4/4
(1:44 - 1:56) 3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 5/4, 2 bars of 7/8
(1:56 - 2:20) 12 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 3/16
Metric modulation dotted eighth -> quarter
(2:20 - 2:22) 1 bar of 7/4
(2:22 - end) same as 0:00 - 2:22 except with [72 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 2/4] @ 122bpm layered polymetrically over the entire thing
So despite being the one who wrote this, I still had to figure out the meter changes here on my own while making this post. In software it was really just written in 4/4 at 122bpm the whole way through...I just ignored the barlines and was writing in shuffle at the wrong tempo essentially. I also usually do not think about time signatures when writing music, and just try to mentally normalize the concept of mixed meter/strange timesigs/etc so they naturally form themselves (and I usually don’t write time signature changes in (mostly because most of the software I prefer to use doesn’t support it), I just ignore barlines). It produces cool results but it also means I have no more idea how to transcribe my own stuff than anyone else hahahaha.
Also...yes, those are bars of irrational time in there just before 1:06 and 1:14. Since everything is very triplet-based shuffle up to that point, but that section is so mechanical feeling about the triplets, it was very easy to stick non-multiple-of-3 numbers of triplets in there. That means you can no longer write it with a typical 4 or 8 or 16 at the bottom of the timesig unless you write it as something like “2.3333.../8″ or write in a metric modulation for just those single bars. All 3 of those options could be considered very confusing to read for different reasons but I felt x/12 irrational time best conveys the intent of the feel there, just casual extra triplet beats.
The section with "6/8 + 6/8 + 6/8 + 1/4″ and stuff was not really thought of as such, but it’s probably a better way to write it at that tempo than how it was grouped in my head (long phrases were ‘single bars’ to me like 10/4, 31/12, etc). Also another way to write the version of that section that shows up at :59 would be to write the whole section at 122bpm I guess, that way you could avoid irrational time altogether, and it’s enough of a fusion of the shuffle-at-~163 and straight-eighths-at-122 feel at that point that it’s not too farfetch’d to write it as 122 there.
Honestly the argument could be made that the entire thing should be written at 122, and just using 3+3+3+3+3+3+3 21/16 in place of 7/4 and whatever, but I feel like it’d make the more normal parts far more confusing to read than necessary, just for the sake of making a few weird parts marginally easier to understand.
Most of the sections with 4/4 are weirder than depicted as well. An example of that is 1:34 - 1:42, where it has the same ~163bpm shuffle feel from earlier imposed on top of it, but chopped up in a random feeling way at the triplet level, so becomes very difficult to follow if it’s the layer you’re paying attention to.
I can imagine 1:56 - 2:20 might have an offset feeling effect to some people, since there’s not anything indicating that beat 1 is where it is when there’s no drums going on there, but when the drums come in it makes it clear that that first fake mallet perc sound hit is actually a 16th note after the downbeat.
I could endlessly list rhythmic weirdness in this but I think I’ve tackled most of the highlights. Hopefully I explained everything well enough!
Also for the record, the title is a reference to this strange video because I just can’t get over how unintentionally proggy this drum part is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EU-ZyVdVCOA
