TheLegendofRenegade

[bison2winquote]

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- When Mike Haggar does certain attacks, Ring of Destruction: SlamMasters II (Capcom)

[oldgamemags]

[sonichedgeblog]

Hyper Magazine, January 1994 cover – Sonic The Hedgehog! Showing off ‘Sonic Spinball’ and ‘Sonic CD’. 

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 1515) Emerald Dragon - Dungeon Battle

Composer: Yasuhiko Fukuda

(0:01 - 0:21) 16 bars of 4/4

(0:21 - 0:38) 18 bars of ¾

(0:38 - 0:46) 4 bars of 5/4, 1 bar of 6/4

[loop]

just your standard cool “tense proggy jrpg battle theme” haha

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 1212) Castlevania: Lament of Innocence - Castlevania Reincarnation

Composer: Michiru Yamane

(0:07 - 1:01) 29 bars of 5/4

(1:01 - 1:52) 34 bars of 4/4

(1:52 - 2:15) 12 bars of 5/4

(2:15 - 2:23) 2 bars of 7/4, 2 bars of 4/4

[loop from :07]

Closing out the Halloween block of odd time VGM with this! I hope you’ve enjoyed it and all of the music I picked for it this time around!

This is mostly straightforward to follow fast 5/4 and 4/4, but there’s some pretty wacky rhythmic groupings later on that are hard to count if you don’t know the timesig beforehand.

1:52 - 2:23 is all extremely challenging to work out the meter imo, but in the end it pretty clearly is just really erratic 5/4 with a short burst of 7/4 and 4/4 to close it off. Once you know what it is, it it feels obvious, but before that it’s pretty hard to follow I think.

Also pretty sure a lot of elements of this are intended to be a callback to this song: http://vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day.tumblr.com/post/166857566518/day-843-castlevania-symphony-of-the-night

…in which I counted the what I claimed was “definitely 2 bars of 7/4 and then 2 bars of 4/4″ here as “[5/8 + 4/8 + 5/8] + [5/8 + 4/8 + 4/8] + 4/8 + 4/8 +4/8 + 3/8“, which i guess works too!!! but I’d say the way I wrote it out today is much more elegant.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 747) Kirby’s Dream Land 2 - World 6: Cloudy Park

Composer: Hirokazu Ando, Tadashi Ikegami

Cute happy 5/8 through the whole short thing. 3+3+2+2 for all of it, uhhh not much else to say it is short and cute and kirby music is good.

I have no idea which of the two composers this is, but I’ve never heard Ando use odd time, as much as I love him (it’s almost always Ishikawa who does that), so…if this is him and not Ikegami, maybe this is his only one in odd time (unless I’m missing something)?! I know nothing about Ikegami but this isn’t hard to imagine being written by Ando.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 141) Kirby’s Epic Yarn - VS. Meta Knight

Composer: Tomoya Tomita (Original by Jun Ishikawa, Dan Miyakawa)

Here’s the original for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3zVA4zX8g

I’m 99% sure that the original is Jun Ishikawa but the confirmation on composer info for that soundtrack isn’t as solid as it should be.

Anyways this is just in 5/4 throughout, with the exception of the meterless intro, and the 6/4 bars at :39 - :41 and 1:03 - 1:05.

I really love this arrangement, because when translated to piano it just…feels much weirder and tenser somehow. Normally I will almost always prefer synthier and more artificial sounding music, this arrangement is a major exception I guess. In fact as a whole I personally don’t like this soundtrack as much as most Kirby soundtracks, but something about this arrangement just makes it more appealing to me.

I think I just like this version more because those tense chords are able to really shine through when it’s more actively pronounced as it is in this version (and without polyphony limits) and make it feel a lot darker I think. I love that slap bass too. I love how the synth effects from the original like the quartal thing at :48 are played live.

I guess depending on my mood I’d say I prefer the original, maybe I should just layer these on top of each other to get the best of both worlds sometime.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 139) Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha - Heat Wind (Dhalsim’s Theme)

Composer: Ayako Saso

So given that this soundtrack is composed by the composers it’s composed by, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s a fair amount of odd time in it, most of them love odd time signatures, Ayako Saso and Shinji Hosoe especially so it seems. This one’s a cool (or should I say hot) harmonic minor tune.

(0:00 - 0:51) 20 bars of 4/4

(0:51 - 1:09) 4 bars of 7/4

(1:09 - 1:30) 8 bars of 4/4

(1:30 - 1:50) 4 bars of 7/4, 1 bar of 4/4

(1:50 - 2:33) 16 bars of 4/4

(2:33 - end) 8 bars of 7/4

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 41) Street Fighter EX3 - Great Stronger

Composer: Shinji Hosoe

So for “17/8 time day” I’m going with this one! One of my favorite vgm tracks or just pieces of music period, ever of all time!

This starts with a very strong 5+5+7 feel, probably broken down as 5/8 + 5/8 + 7/8 as opposed to written in 17/8. Honestly I usually hear it as “5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 2/8.” That all lasts until :27

At :28 it’s 5/8 until :42

At :42 it goes back into that angular “17/8″ (5+5+7) feel from the beginning again until 1:05

1:05 - 1:21 is the same as :28 - :42, all 5/8

1:21 - 1:48 I’d call 5/4 rather than 5/8, the feel is less jagged and 3 quarter beats plus 2 quarter beats, rather than an intense repetition of 5+5+5+5+5+and on and on.

1:48 - 2:04 is what some super subtle 11/8 (5+6), that last beat sneaking in there after the 5 stuff prior.

All of this of course is done with some awesome crazy synth patch choices, the audio production style of Shinji Hosoe that I love. All of this track is an extremely crazy alternately styled version of this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk1re4nwXcQ

I love how he took his own relatively basic 4/4 theme and just mathematically destroyed it, surgically broke it apart into THIS masterpiece~!

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 520) Atelier Firis - Rabbit & Crow

Composer: Kazuki Yanagawa

GUST sound team is at it again! With their soundtracks that randomly have high abundances of odd time, like this one!

(0:00 - 0:11) 10 bars of 6/8

(0:11 - 0:31) [6/8 + 2/4 + 5/8 + ¾] x6

(0:31 - 0:46) 16 bars of 6/8

(0:46 - 0:54) 6 bars of 4/4

(0:54 - 0:57) 4 bars of 6/8

(0:57 - 1:29) 32 bars of ¾, [hold]

(1:29 - end) [6/8 + 2/4 + 5/8 + ¾] x8

I’m counting this at superfast tempo, and also counting every chord change as a separate bar basically. Some people might want to combine some of the bars together to make the 6/8 into 12/8 (happy 12/8 time day!!), or count the 6/8 as ¾ instead.

I also can imagine many would also count the [6/8 + 2/4 + 5/8 + ¾] sections as [5/4 + 11/8] instead. You could also group it in plenty of other ways too though, I just did it based on when the chord changes are to be consistent with the 6/8 and ¾ sections of the rest of the music where there’s a chord change per bar. I also counted the first of the 4 chords in that loop as 6/8 and the last as ¾ to differentiate between 3+3 vs. 2+2+2. The whole section is [3+3]+[2+2]+[3+2]+[2+2+2], but I can imagine someone easily putting the brackets in different places if they aren’t directly hearing separations where the chords change.

Anyways the fast constant mixed meter of the :11 and 1:29 sections of this are absolutely wonderful to me, one of my favorite sections of anything on this soundtrack, which I loved as a whole. It’s really cool to see a fairly typical heroic emotional chord progression/melody be so bluntly rhythmically chopped up and destroyed like that, while retaining the same basic form otherwise. At this tempo it’s hard to follow if you don’t know it and I love that about it.

There is also this cool “electro version” of this that track I really like in terms of having more electronic audio production, but it’s far less metrically complex unfortunately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRlqxyR2MQc

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 395) Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Blood Relations

Composer: Michiru Yamane

This is my favorite version of one of my favorite reused themes in the series. Why? …well because it puts it in 5/8 instead of 4/4 and that’s COOL.

Also happy 5/8 time day in the countries with a D/M date system! This is the month where you basically have an “odd time signature day” every other day! So expect me to bring that up a lot this month…

Starting at :10 it’s all in 5/8 with the exception of the 4/4 section at :44 - :49 (which is ironically the most rhythmically complex part of the track probably) and the mixed meter at 1:26 that could be interpreted a number of ways but I interpret as “7/8, 5/8, 5/8, 4/4, 2/4″ (though I guess you could easily think of that like the “4/4″ section and call that all 4/4 except for the 2/4 bar at the end)

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 1147) Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Guardian Battle

Composer: Manaka Kataoka

This one might seem like it’s all ¾ (counting at ~185) at a glance but it has a number of little things that don’t follow that.

First is the start, where I feel it as ¾ + 5/8 + ¾ + ¾. it’s likely not thought of as that and was probably improvised tbh but it’s I think the best way to feel this if you were to write out the beginning.

Then there’s the mixed meter section at 1:13 that does a [3+2+2+3] + [2+2+1+2] thing before going back into the consistent 3 of the rest of the tune. There’s a number of ways to break it down. If counting at ~185 I’d just write it as ¾ + 2/4 + 2/4 + ¾ + 5/4 + 2/4. Writing at half tempo you’d probably combine some of those bars together, or you could even at this tempo, I guess, it’s pretty ambiguous and subjective as usual.

At 1:30 you have a single 3/8 bar (or 9/8 bar if you want to append those last 3 8th beats to the previous bar). The section without the drums leading up to it might also be better written as 6/8 because the feel is 3+3 rather than 2+2+2 at that point.

Then at 1:58 you have 2 bars of 5/8 before a crazy ending back in ¾ (or maybe better thought of as 6/8 at that point)

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 1063) Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild -  Hyrule Castle

Composer: Manaka Kataoka

(0:00 - 0:21) 8 bars of 5/4

(0:21 - 0:52) [5/4, 5/4, 6/4, 5/4]x2, 3 bars of 5/4

(0:52 - 1:24) [5/4, 5/4, 6/4, 5/4]x2, 3 bars of 5/4

(1:24 - 1:52) 8 bars of 6/4, 1 bar of 5/4

(1:52 - 2:23) [5/4, 5/4, 6/4, 5/4]x2, 3 bars of 5/4 

[loop from :21]

Mostly 5/4 with a few occasional bars of 6/4 and a small full 6/4 section (happy 6/4 time day in month/day date systems!?!?!)

This should be pretty straightforward to follow. The coolest thing is the phrasing I think, where the 5/4 bar that ends the 2nd/4th/6th 5/4-6/4-5/4-5/4 phrase is ALSO the same bar a the bar that starts the 4-bars-of-5/4 phrase that caps those sections. Really smooth and subtle phrase overlapping and not something I noticed until I started writing this post.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 165) Bloody Roar 2 (Arcade) - Dome

Composer: Jin Watanabe

While I don’t know the specific composer for this track, I’m guessing that Manabu Namiki was the one from the team to do this one.

EDIT: Individual track composer credits for this are now known and this one is apparently Jin Watanabe!

The time signature on this is 7/8 the whole time.

It’s certainly an interesting style to make 7/8 though, it’s very “90s dance music” influenced, which I like the sound of, but doesn’t normally appease my interest in odd time signatures, except in cases like this, obviously!

Pretty much all of the Bloody Roar games have a fair amount of odd time signatures in their soundtracks for some reason, even if completely different composers were involved. Bloody Roar 3 in particular is basically just flat out prog most of the time.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 452) Metroid Prime - Meta Ridley Battle

Composer: Minako Hamano

The original is “Super Metroid - Big Boss Confrontation BGM (Ridley, Draigon)“

I chose this version for the video link because I think the sound design is really cool and it’s the one I’m most familiar with. The Prime version is probably arranged by either Kenji Yamamoto or Kouichi Kyuma, but the original from Super Metroid is by Minako Hamano and SHE DESERVES THE BIG CREDIT because she is very underrated and my favorite Metroid composer and it makes me sad that she doesn’t get the credit for the music she composed for the series that she deserves.

This was looong overdue, I don’t know how I did all the other odd time Super Metroid boss themes before this one despite this being like the most “iconic” one that’s reused in the most other games.

(0:00 - 0:38) 32 bars of 5/8

(0:38 - 0:42) 3 bars of 2/4, 1 bar of 3/8

(0:42 - 0:58) 14 bars of 5/8

(0:58 - 1:05) 4 bars of 6/8, 1 bar of 2/4

[loop from :10]

The Super Metroid version is much more compact, with a lot less metric repetition between sections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXIdLLc8s-E

(0:00 - 0:05) 4 bars of 5/8

(0:05 - 0:09) 3 bars of 2/4, 1 bar of 3/8

(0:09 - 0:19) 8 bars of 5/8

(0:19 - 0:26) 4 bars of 6/8, 1 bar of 2/4

(0:26 - 0:32) 4 bars of 5/8

[loop]

Also I guess arguably you could count this at double the tempo and make all the /8′s /4′s and stuff as an alternate way to write it out, that would be pretty fast though.

This track has been remixed plenty of places throughout the franchise though, including a version that RUINS it by putting it in 4/4…

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 33) Metroid Prime 3: Corruption - Skytown

Composer: Kenji Yamamoto, Minako Hamano, Masaru Tajima

Metroid Prime 1-2 have almost nothing in odd meter, but 3 is full of it all over the soundtrack. I suspect that the addition of Minako Hamano to the composing team is responsible (she did all of the odd time music in Super Metroid, which is most of what she did for the game), I’m not saying she composed this track, but it’s just a guess.

This one actually mostly has a 3+3+3 feel the whole time, so a lot of people might not even consider this odd time, but I do anyways, even if it’s quite simple. It’s 9/8 time day in most of the world anyways! It’s really not disginguishable at first by anything but the harp arpeggio.

It’s a shame I’m not as much a fan of this game as the first two, because it has my favorite music of the 3, though it’s also less well placed contextually than the first two. This track though, it _really_ nails the atmosphere of the cool floating steampunk-ish mechanical concoction in the sky that this plays.

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 849) Splatoon 2 - Don’t Slip!

Composer: Toru Minegishi, Ryo Nagamatsu, Shiho Fujii

(0:00 - 0:02) 2 bars of 4/4

(0:02 - 0:30) 11 bars of 7/4, 2 bars of 4/4

(0:30 - 1:16) 36 bars of 4/4

(1:16 - 1:21) 2 bars of 7/4

[loop from 0:02]

Fun Splatoon 2 music, this soundtrack has a decent number of really unusual tracks, rhythmically or otherwise.

The first 16 4/4 bars at the section at :30 really SLIPPED me up for a long time. It wasn’t until I watched a video of the official rhythm game chart of this that it made it clear to me how that part worked and understand that that section was just extremely syncopated 4/4. Like I knew it was syncopated to some degree, but it was so ambiguous where the actual downbeat was for me for so long that I actually delayed posting this until now hahaha. Almost no element of the track is on the downbeat there, so that part’s actually more rhythmically complex than all the 7/4 sections because of that!

[vgm-in-irregular-time-of-the-day]

DAY 143) Hole of Heroes Sublevel 6 (Near an Enemy)

Composer: Hajime Wakai

A good friend of mine just showed me this track knowing I’d like it, but I’m not familiar with this soundtrack in general, I’ll have to take a listen soon! (Skimming through, I already know this isn’t the only track I’ll be posting on this blog from it)

I love this minimalist polymetric style so much. The drums are in 4/4, but that vibraphone is in 5/4 layered over it. There’s also that obvious more synth ostinato in 3/8. On top of all of those 3 polymetric layers, there’s also a sort of droning synth melody that strings it all together too. Both because of the instrumentation and minimalist polymetric style, I really wonder if this was inspired by minimalist composers like Steve Reich, it easily could be!

Such a cool groove(s).