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Odd time signatures in video game music?

Most music with some kind of rhythmic pulse has an underlying pattern of stresses that the melody and harmony are aligned with. What we're doing here is counting how many "beats" it takes for that pattern of stresses to repeat itself.

This is actually a really good way to describe meter. As part of my job I often find myself attempting to explain meter to people who don't have musical backgrounds and this is a better explanation than I've been using. Found on GAF of all places.
 
people love to post the Marx Theme from Kirby in these kind of threads so I'll do the same.

It's very tough to figure out!
Never heard this before. It's neat.

Start off with two bars of 6, then the theme does a bar of 7, bar of 6, bar of 9, bar of 6. The rest of the piece alternates between 5 and 6. I didn't double check, but I'm pretty sure this is right:
5 | 5 | 6 | 6

6 | 6 | 5 | 5

6 | 6 | 5 | 5

6 | 5 | 6 | 6

6 | 6

And then back to the beginning.

EDIT: I listened to it again and I forgot to mention that the 7 6 9 6 melody repeats after a four bar interlude of 5 5 6 6.

Weapons Factory from Super Mario RPG. 13/8 (?)
That's 13 alright. Interesting snare stuff.

The first two sections are in 5, the third one is in four. There's a bit of an interlude that I can't count without writing it down but I don't think you're supposed to.

This is actually a really good way to describe meter. As part of my job I often find myself attempting to explain meter to people who don't have musical backgrounds and this is a better explanation than I've been using. Found on GAF of all places.
I teach theory and often to people who don't really want to learn it, so I've gotten used to saying it in ways that avoid any of the terms with actual concrete theoretical meaning.
 
Labyrinth IV from EOIV is in 7 (2+2+3). It's probably to the quarter but just at a fast tempo than the eighth.

I once wrote a wind ensemble piece in 13/4.
 
I-have-no-idea-what-I-am-doing.gif


Me in this thread.
 
3/4 and 4/4 are the only ones I can actually recognize. I'm clueless when it comes to anything else.

I'd be really impressed if anyone could pick some kind of time signature out of Crazy Bus.
 
3/4 and 4/4 are the only ones I can actually recognize. I'm clueless when it comes to anything else.

I'd be really impressed if anyone could pick some kind of time signature out of Crazy Bus.
There's not much to go on but I'm going to call it 3/8 based on the placement of the register change. Honestly though you'd have to do some sort of real analysis to get anything out of that.
 
I wish I understood what most of you were talking about. Seems like a neat discussion.

I never did learn music mechanics.
Count the beat in the first 30s of Sonic CD (JP/PAL) Little Planet theme.
1-2-3-4-5...?
After those 30s it is 4-4 so you should only be counting to four.

I don't have any formal music education, but a good introduction for me was a simple tracker with a 4x4 grid. That gave a 4-4 time signature where the tracker would play what was in each square from left to right and moving down to the next line when it was done.
resized.png

It would start the next 4x4 block or repeat when it was done.
Each line was a beat so if you wanted to make dance music where the kick drum sounded every beat you made a vertical line on the left. If you wanted something right in the middle of each beat you put it at the third line. If you place a kick drum on the first line and a high hat on the third line you would get something like this.
Kickdrums on 1,5,9,13 and hi-hats on 3,7,11,15.

4-4 is super common so if you get the chance to play with it you'll find a ton of rhythms you've heard of. With a fast beat and kick drum at 1,11 with snare at 5,13 you get that DnB rhythm.
 
Can't tell if the Pikmin theme has an odd time signature, or if it's merely a ton of rubato that makes the meter sound odd. In any case, the song is clearly polyrhythmic:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IyWj9lC7-5s

Edit: listening again, it sounds like 12 beats per measure, but simple meter in the rhythm/bass. So 12/4 or 12/8?? Meanwhile, the melody is not played on the beat.
 
Okay, so a couple of my favorite games are the Bust-a-Groove (Move) duo on the PS1, and I understand the general concept of the beats used in the music of the games in order to play them. Which do spectacularly, I might add.

But there was always one song that just screwed me up and I have to admit I don't know enough about time signatures to determine if it's because there's an odd signature or not. It's Comet's theme from Bust-a-Groove 2, Magic Tower. I suspect it is, because damn this song throws me off something fierce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-Uejx9DQ8Y

Can I get some clarification?
 
Okay, so a couple of my favorite games are the Bust-a-Groove (Move) duo on the PS1, and I understand the general concept of the beats used in the music of the games in order to play them. Which do spectacularly, I might add.

But there was always one song that just screwed me up and I have to admit I don't know enough about time signatures to determine if it's because there's an odd signature or not. It's Comet's theme from Bust-a-Groove 2, Magic Tower. I suspect it is, because damn this song throws me off something fierce.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-Uejx9DQ8Y

Can I get some clarification?

It sounds like standard 4/4 time to me
 
I've always wondered what the time signature was for Contra (NES) - Alien Lair. I have trouble counting it out. Do any of you know?

Great thread idea, btw
The intro is four bars of 6/4.

The next part is two bars of 4/4 followed by one bar of 3/4 repeated twice. Then you get three bars of 5/4. After that is eight bars of 6/8. The last part is two bars of 7/4.

Where Is The Target- Rolling Thunder 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pos_MPX4d4

From what I can tell 13/8 or something weird like that.

I recommend this soundtrack, BTW. Especially the Genesis version. "View of Dynamism" is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBTFz5mplAU
Bit simpler than that. It's a straight 7/4 that switches to 4/4 for a few bars before the loop.

You're probably hearing it as 13 because the bass pre-empts the 1 by playing on the + of 7.
 
I've tried to get better at this as I get better with music, but whoever said Sakuraba knows their shit. Star Ocean 2 was a freaking treasure trove of stuff like this, full of 7/4, 13/8, 2/4(?), and other madness. Sucks he gets put on a leash so damn often.

Gale from Chrono Cross has a weird time signature (9/8), I enjoy it, though.

You're good people.

The Mother 3 battle themes constantly switch up their time signatures to mess with you, the player, to make the rhythm combo battle system more challenging for harder enemies.

Here's one now! YouTube says that this is technically 29/16:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdEF9FlXNno

Neat! Somewhere Animals As Leaders are grinning and they don't know why. Like how it's used in narrative harmony with the battle system too.
 
The intro is four bars of 6/4.

The next part is two bars of 4/4 followed by one bar of 3/4 repeated twice. Then you get three bars of 5/4. After that is eight bars of 6/8. The last part is two bars of 7/4.
I ended up digging up some sheet music for it, and it turns out you're pretty much right.
Contra_-_NES_-_Alien%27s_Lair_-_Sheet.png

Bars 5+6 and 7+8 could (should?) be united in a 11/8 time sig, which your theory of 4/4 + 4/4 + 3/4 would also add up to, albeit with a beat unit of 8. The rest was the same as you described. Good stuff!
 
I wish I understood what most of you were talking about. Seems like a neat discussion.

I never did learn music mechanics.

I can't believe (including the OP) that the first 31 posts all are in on it and I'm like WTF? I though maybe they're all talking about how "Ya know, in last 99 'seconds' of Super Mario Bros, the music really speeds up?"
 

Meter, being relatively abstract, is somewhat easier to understand than the aspects of music theory that require a knowledge of pitch and pitch-related listening.

Most music with some kind of rhythmic pulse has an underlying pattern of stresses that the melody and harmony are aligned with. What we're doing here is counting how many "beats" it takes for that pattern of stresses to repeat itself.

By far the most common meter is 4/4. You don't really need to understand what the denominator in this fraction means; the important part is the numerator, which indicates the amount of beats it takes for a rhythmic pattern to repeat, in this case four.

Far more complicated and harder to differentiate examples exist in this thread so I wouldn't get hung up trying to understand how people are figuring them out just yet.
Wow, this is all so interesting. It's like a whole new world's been opened up for me. I've always loved listening to music, but never paid much attention to stuff outside of it sounding good to me. Obviously there's intricacies to creating it, but I never thought on them much because I'm just an ignorant appreciator.

Thanks a lot for the info. I'll definitely try to listen to stuff with a different ear from now on, though I found it hard to even in that video Red Blaster posted.

I'm curious what people in this thread think of Nobuyoshi Sano and Takayuki Aihara's work on Drakengard. It's certainly unique. I'll post some examples for the curious:

Route C Staff Roll

Inuart battle

Third Chapter Above Ground

Thirteenth Chapter - Closing

Palate cleansers from one of the guys if you need it:

"Exhausted" ~ On the Holy Land

"Exhausted" ~ The Broken Past
 
I have a love/hate relationship with the battle theme to Ni No Kuni. I'm pretty sure it's plain 4/4 time but the intro I think has some weird 3/16 mixed in that I never spent any real time trying to figure out.
 
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