LogFAQs > #963248325

55rd
Game: Occultic;Nine
Title: BEGINNING
Composer: Takeshi Abo
Nominator: @kaonashi1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIlnR30ttvM

More work from Takeshi Abo for science;adventure!!! very different mood from the steins;gate 0 pick. This one's a lot more the energetic side and also a lot more dissonant and chaotic. It has an initially conventional exterior but it ramps up its energetic intensity pretty quickly into mind bending insanity!

one thing i like about this is how even though the timesig is all 4/4, there's lots of over-the-barline layers, something i've noticed about my [very top favorite] music (examples "coming soon"), is that unlike songs that instantly scream "mycro" to most people, what i actually get most instantly excited about rhythmically is subversions of common time that take place within a common time container. most of my favorite stuff is 4/4, and not even necessarily syncopated (in fact, a very common theme in my absolute favorites is looping streams of constant 8th or 16th notes, or even very rigid all on beats 1/2/3/4 type elements). the factor making the rhythmic challenge in the stuff i like most: instead just being that it is full of stretched polyrhythms streching things outside a 16th grid into the container, or polymeter or anything really that has elements that escape the barline divisions. THis song is the latter, it excels at being COMPUTER SONG because of the insistent 16ths feeling of it all, but those 16ths don't feel restricted to barlines (even when they actually Are, the feeling is more important than the technicality behind what's happening). here that 16ths in that analog-ish bouncy synth are going mostly in groups of 3, only resetting to align with the barlines after a 4 bar phrase. Although that is pretty 'normal', it's hard for me to actually hear the loop resetting without going my way to actually look for the polymeter reset point, so it does a great job creating a variety in possible grids to latch onto, which i appreciate!

the Real Instrument layers i'm suddenly realizing are actually kinda like Umineko Spooky Mansion which, unlike when i started this topic, is something i actually like! so i'm glad to hear that element here actually, it's a good emotional counterpart to the pretty much opposite cyberspace world that the rest of the song lives in. in a way actually feels like it could be an umineko song i'm nostalgaic for liking in 2009 from board 8 but forgot about until now and suddenly i appreciate it more than i did then

the dissonances in this song fascinate me but i don't think it's just because the chords or scales used are ones are unfamiliar, but it actually has to do with the interaction of timbre with the composition itself. those dissonant bell clusters: i think it's something about how i associate tuned percussion with overtones. a steel drum or gong or chime is going to produce "extra notes" quietly on top of a given hit in real life. So when Takeshi Abo takes out (some old 80s fm synth sound module probably like a "yamaha tg33" or whatever) and starts making wacky fm bell sounds: these dissonant clusters actually feel natural! when the strings do it it doesn't feel like this, but that feels almost like a compliment to the "real" overtones, like it's imitating them. It reminds me of how much I liked the interplay between the piano in Tin Soldiers immitating the 'notes' of the glitchy synths that were obviously not supposed to be exactly musical or tonal. this song has the cool transformation of [knowing what real tuned percussion overtones in real life sound like] -> [intentional dissonance notes on the fake bells here that feel sorta like real often-dissonant overtones] -> [strings playing those exact dissonant notes]. It opens this track up in a way i didn't expect. it feels like the clarity of seafoam green water i associate with "bermuda", or even the image of shiny tuned perc instruments like a gold vibraphone or steel steel drum, which is much more colorful and shiny than if the same notes were played by any other timbre

basically once again, takeshi abo has one of the best senses of which timbres sound so cool...

oh man fake rhythm game piano that cuts its release off immediately to make it sound even more fake doing atonal stuff...so good. i love this song : )