DAY 843) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - Black Banquet
Composer: Michiru Yamane
Hmm...surprised that out of all of the Halloween-y games I could’ve picked music from the past week or so, that I somehow haven’t picked something from a Castlevania game yet, so here you go!
The production on this one is really weird and kind of clouds the actual meter, at first at least for me. It’s 2+2+1 5/8 all the way from 0:07 - 2:36, but because of the sidechain-yness and the way the slow attacks are on the instrumentation, I hear it as “3+3+2″ 4/4 until the drums come in at :20ish. I don’t know if that ambiguity is intentional but I love how it makes the rigid 5/8 slowly form itself out of something more amorphous feeling at first.
1:11 does a great job deconstructing the 5/8 and making it sound like it’s not just 5/8 also, it’s so intricately syncopated/hocketed that it took me a while to ascertain that it’s not actually mixed meter.
At 2:36 though it does change timesig. I count the mixed meter there as [5/8 + 4/8 + 5/8] + [5/8 + 4/8 + 4/8] + 4/8 + 4/8 +4/8 + 3/8. Then it goes back into 5/8 and loops from there. The mixed meter here is a pretty free run of constant 8th notes with only accents to go on, so there’s other ways to divide that up as well of course. Really love how the first group repeats twice, but the 2nd time the last 8th note kind of acts as the downbeat for the repeating rhythm for the next few seconds as kind of a rhythmic turnaround, at least with how I interpret it!!
Really cool piece!
