DAY 1800) Matthewās Dungeons of the Unforgotten - Deluged Depths
Composer: me (Chimeratio)
doing another one of my own tracks again! So recently, sergiocornaga, who did art for this game, sort of requested me to post another thing from this game. I said I was saving Deluged Depths for a day that ended in 00 since I knew it was going to be a big post where it took a while to explain everything going on, nowās as good a time as any!
This oneās very polymetric, almost every moment has more than one timesig happening at once, so this will take a bit to explain. Iāll count the timesigs out multiple different times for different layers here:
Layer 1 (the basis of it all, what youād actually write on sheet music):
(0:00 - 0:21) 10 bars of 4/4
(0:21 - 0:29) 3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 11/16
(0:29 - 0:34) 1 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 13/16
(0:34 - 0:42) 4/4, 4/4, 7/8, 17/16
(0:42 - 0:49) 4 bars of 13/16
These ābarlinesā are mostly enforced by chord change timings, but thereās usually at least one layer following them even if this is ambiguous/polymetric enough to avoid clarity of these barlines.
Layer 2 (main kalimba ostinato):
constant solid 13/16 from 0:00 - 0:30.
After that thereās a few lines it plays but theyāre not any more attached to the 13/16 before than any other layer of the song. Itās also worth noting that this whole layer has a delay echo...one where the echoās the same volume as the actual initial attack notes, so functionally this is the same 13/16 ostinato duplicated twice: In the left speaker starting on beat 1, but in the right speaker starting 3 16th beats later.
Layer 3 (the mixed meter funky chord stuff at the start):
(0:00 - 0:09) 4/4, 4/4, 5/16, 4/4, 4/4
(0:09 - 0:17) 4/16, 5/16, 4/4, 4/4, 5/16, 13/16
(0:17 - 0:21) 2 bars of 4/4
this layerās pretty much a solid 4/4 groove (like you hear at the bars that are ā4/4ā³ in this listing), but semi-randomly chopped up, sometimes starting/ending at different points in its loop in an ambiguous way (thereās other ways you could interpret the meter of this layer aside from what I wrote here). Itās also worth noting that thereās chord changes that happen in the middle of some of these bars, so the rhythm plays out in the patterns iām describing here, but the chords wonāt follow.
The organ at :42 also follows the same general musical idea for a short bit. I interpret the organ bit there as 4/4, 15/16, 2/4
Layer 4 (the saw wave constant 16ths starting at ~0:21):
From :21 - :33, this is all a loop of ā3/16ā³ (just 3 looping 16th notes). At first I thought it might make sense to describe an āinterruptionā after the 11/16 bar before :29, but in practice itās just a bit of a changeup in notes, the same way that pattern is already doing with chord changes.
From around :30-:33, the harsh low FM synth sound also follows this 3/16 pattern with a sharp hit every 3 16ths for a few seconds, always hitting on the middle note of the saw pattern. From what I remember, I think when I wrote this I didnāt really think about how it worked with the saw pattern...I just put it in because I wanted another polymetric layer, but it just happened to be another 3/16 aligned offset a 16th from the other 3/16 pattern haha
This mostly all follows Layer 1, but Iām listing this separately to note one major exception here: :42-:49. Mostly everything else thereās 13/16, but the drums are looping 5/16 for that whole section. It actually starts the becoming broken down into 5/16 in the middle of the last bar before this section. That last synth bell chord leads into the 5/16 with the start of something that sounds like the mostly 4/4 drum loop from prior to it, but after the first 4 16h beats it turns into a looping sequence of 5 16th beats in the drums as described.
This layerās pretty hard to hear in the mix in hindsight, but thatās what itās doing, even if it might only be possible for me to figure that out because i can mute channels in my own project file hahha
I THINK that is every significantly āodd timeā layer here, hopefully I didnāt miss anything. Thereās plenty of other aspects of the music I didnāt mention but theyāre all aligned with another pattern I described somewhere else in this post and not really āpolymetricā. I guess maybe the 5/16-ish feel of the guitar before :42ā²s worth mentioning but itās really just syncopation that happens to be pseudo-odd time feeling.
ANYWAYS hopefully I explained this in an easy enough to understand way. Also stuff like this as usual is pretty ambiguous and could be interpreted plenty of other ways! There was not really any hard āintended way to interpret the time signature(s)ā beyond āi want this toĀ āfeelā polymetric/odd timeā, deliberately avoiding thinking about how someone might pick it apart. And in software this was all just written in 4/4 and ignoring barlines (how I usually work). So because of all that this was a challenge to pick apart and figure out how to explain here despite being the one who wrote this!
I think iāve said some variant of the above paragraph any time Iāve posted one of my own songs in here haha but itās worth mentioning since itās important to note that even I donāt consider there to be a single correct way to interpret my stuff.
Always worry about coming across conceited posting my own music for the BIG āthis is where i post the most complex songsā days, but I mean I run a blog about vgm in odd time signatures of course the vgm i make goes hard on odd timesig stuff that takes a long time to talk about! From what I can tell, people who follow enjoy these songs/posts as much as any others, and Iām thankful for that! Thank you to everyone following me who enjoys my music!
