DAY 1200) Charge Cycles - No One Cares About the Letter L
Composer: me (Chimeratio)
DAY 1200!!!! To celebrate, posting music to a soundtrack I wrote myself AGAIN of course. As I’ve said before it’s to a quirky puzzle game by my cool friend CHz (who has helped out a ton with this blog! thank you CHz!) You can play it here!: https://chz.itch.io/charge-cycles
As I’ve stated every time, I write music without actually paying attention to or writing in the time signature changes, just writing in 4/4 or 1/4 or whatever and ignoring barlines (though definitely consciously making sure my writing is free enough for odd time/polyrhythms/polymeter to form itself). So these timesig changes I had to spend a lot of time figuring out on my own just now as much as I would with any other song pretty much.
This soundtrack has music where the drums are only playing when triggered by your actions in the game, so for these soundtrack uploads I just played one version first and the other version second. In this case the version without drums plays first and then the version with drums plays second, but the loop point is still 1:49 really.
This song is ridiculously polymetric to the point I’m going to have to write the timesig chart out multiple times for different layers and in general am going to have to talk about a bunch of parts separately. Here I go!
1) Focusing mainly on whatever I personally consider the ‘base’ groove at a given moment (ie what i’d actually write on sheet music):
(0:00 - 0:15) 6 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 7/8
(0:15 - 0:24) 3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 5/4
(0:24 - 0:33) 4 bars of 4/4
(0:33 - 1:05) [4/4, 4/4, 11/8, 4 bars of 4/4]x2
(1:05 - 1:12) 4/4, 4/4, 24/20*
(1:12 - 1:21) 3 bars of 4/4, 2 bars of 5/8
(1:21 - 1:26) 2 bars of 9/8
(1:26 - 1:44) [3 bars of 4/4, 1 bar of 17/16]x2
(1:44 - 1:49) 4/4, 4/4, 2/4
(1:49 - end) [same as 0:00 - 1:49 except with drums]
*Yes that is a bar of 24/20, it’s very concretely interpreted as irrational time to me personally, rather than a sudden tempo shift with metric modulation. The bass is doing constant quintuplets, but it does 24 in one bar instead of an even group of 5 so you can’t count it as 5/4 or 4/4 or anything. Some might argue this would be easier to read as a tempo change where the quintuplet becomes the 16th note temporarily, but I feel it’s best thought of as just quintuplets at the same tempo as everything else. If someone wrote it out as metric modulation where the quintuplets become the 16th note though it would still be a perfectly valid way to write it!
As another note, the drums from 3:11 to the end are all just a constant quarter note pulse, but I still wrote x/8 and x/16 time signatures over it because I felt those were a more dominant feel at those points, and instead interpret that hi-hat click as beat displacement layered on top of non-4/4 timesig changes until it finally lines up toward the end.
Also yeah the 4/4 at the VERY start here for the first 15 seconds mostly only makes sense in the with-drums version of the tune. Otherwise your only real feel to go by is the part I have listed below. If you were writing an arrangement for people to play this where you didn’t have drums come in the first time, the way this does, you’d be better off writing the first 15 seconds the way I have it below.
2) Focusing on the main mixed meter synth figure
(0:00 - 0:15) 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 11/16, 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 6/8, 5/16
(0:15 - 0:33) 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 11/16, [the rest of this section is random notes from the 7/8 + 13/16 + 7/8 + 11/16 groove being randomly chosen (based on the random hard L vs hard R panning) and the L layer and R layer going out of phase with each other at different rates. This is barely audible in the final mix but here’s :15 - :33 with this layer isolated to make it easier to hear. https://instaud.io/2P1Y ]
(0:33 - 1:05) [7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 11/16, 6/8]x2 (note: this section has two layers of that bass synth, one offset to play 1 16th note later and 1 octave higher. Both layers have completely different random panning as well, so this makes it challenging to feel this mixed meter pattern clearly because more likely you’ll be paying attention to the high note that’s a 16th note late, or accidentally alternate what part you’re hearing)
(1:05 - 1:37) [same as the version 1 of the timesig chart since that synth line isn’t present here]
(1:37 - 1:44) 7/8, 13/16, 7/8, 11/16
(1:44 - 1:49) 7/8, 13/16, 13/16
Additionally at :20 there’s a layer that’s playing this same figure added on top except it’s playing in dotted 16th notes relative to everything else. It’s a solid loop of 7/8 played at the tempo of “if those dotted 16ths were 8th notes”, rather than the tempo of everything else (this was inspired heavily by Fez - Knowledge, which does a similar thing). I guess you could interpret them as being played in 21/32 time too, but that’s a weird way to think of it since it’s all groups of 3 32 note beats.
3) The organ and piano stabs
These are basically RANDOM, there’s not really a convenient way to write a time signature chart around them even if they exist in a “polymetric” state to everything else, it’s really just random rhythmic stabs to convolute this even more hahaha. I just picked a random feeling rhythmic feeling that I thought sounded cool. There is methodology to their layering against each other however:
In the first use of them from :06 - :15 though the piano rhythm is exactly the same as the organ rhythm except delayed to play 15 16th note beats later.
The 2nd instance from :28 - :33 is just hocketing (one instrument playing in the gaps of the other).
In final instance at 1:30 - 1:44 the piano rhythm’s exactly the same as the organ rhythm except the piano rhythm is delayed to play exactly 7 quarter note beats later.
4) The polyrhythms in the drums!!
Starting at 2:56 the drum loops start stretching/squashing an amount of beats into one bar that isn’t the same tempo as everything else.
2:56 - 2:59 is 6/4 squashed to the space of 4/4
2:59 - 3:01 I already addressed far above, it’s an irrational time bar where there’s 24 quintuplets, but you could interpret the drums there as 5+5+5+9 6/4 squashed into the space of 24/20 but that obviously makes little sense.
3:01 - 3:04 is “10.6666.../16″ stretched to the space of 4/4 (this is really just dotted 16th notes in 4/4 except since that doesn’t line up nicely with 4/4 evenly the last beat has 1/3 cut off of it)
3:04 - 3:05 is just normal 16ths/32nds in 2/4
3:05 - 3:06 is 11/16 stretched to the space of 2/4
3:06 - 3:08 is just normal 16ths in 4/4
3:08 - 3:09 is 4/4 stretched to the length of a 5/8 bar
Then after that it’s back to normal 16ths in 4/4 for the rest
In sheet music you’d most likely just write these as tuplets, but I’m describing them the way I am here because they’re drum loops originally at different tempos, so this should make the sound easier to understand exactly how I stretch/squashed their speed.
I really thought it would be fun to play with the feel being entirely different with drums vs. without drums so that’s why I did a ton of playing around with that. In the drumless version of that section obviously it all just feels like normal 16ths in 4/4 (or 5/8 for 2 bars) but once the drums come in that feeling entirely changes.
HOPEFULLY THAT ADDresses everything and hopefully I explained it all articulately enough for it to all make sense! This track has possibly the most rhythmic eccentricity going on in this entire soundtrack, despite arguably being the most conventionally pleasant one to listen to and technically being mostly written in 4/4 in typical sheet music. You wouldn’t think it’s this difficult to write out but it definitely is.
Oh yeah also this has my voice from when I was like 15 years old in it hahaha.
This tune is in general a tribute to what my taste in music (and life) was like when I was that age so it borrows a lot of traits from it.
That was when I first got into steve reich and that sort of polymetric minimalist music (it is probably very obvious that this is inspired by steve reich and similar minimalism stuff haha).
Was also when I first got interested in tracker music (some patches from this are the same as ones in tracker module files I was really into at the time and stylistically this is vaguely similar to some of the tracker musicians I listened to a ton back then).
I also was just very enamored by electronic music with this type of sound to it.
It’s also when I first started using fl studio so i intentionally used a few fairly blunt fl studio sytrus/etc presets here haha.
Among various other reasons I could list, this tune is a pretty personal tribute to my life and interests in 2007, a time I consider one of the best in my life. Just felt like adding that info in right now!