I listen to a playlist of video game music at work or when I’m writing. Like film scores, most of it is designed to be unobtrusive enough to help someone maintain focus on something else. There are two songs in my playlist that intruded into my attention the other day though, through tiny idiosyncrasies like pinpricks onto a balloon.
The first is the “super arrange” version of a song that’s appeared in all of the Wanderers from Ys games. It’s normally called “The Trading Town of Redmont” but this particular version was ambitious enough for the producers to give it the title “Prelude ~Prelude to the Adventure~ Town of Redmont.”
At around 1:30, the main melody begins, and about halfway through there’s what sounds to be a time change from 4/4 to 7/8, for one measure. You can hear it a little more clearly at 2:10 when the “orchestra” is a little more con fuoco and there’s an accompanying tambourine. The tambourine, playing syncopated or “on the and” in between beats, does the “7/8 stutter” with an accompanying cymbal crash, and ends up playing on the actual beat after the time change. Later on in the melody there’s another cymbal crash on the beat, so I had assumed somewhere there was another measure of 7/8 to bring the tambourine back into syncopation.
I spent a dedicated 20 minutes on the bus, in between chapters of Madame Bovary, trying to figure where the other darn 7/8 measure was, even wondering if the strings and brass sections kept in 4/4 the whole time, producing a polymeter. I pretty much abandoned hope until I listened to some of the different versions of the song from other Ys games, in particular this one, from Ys III. You can tell from the more straightforward rock drumming that there’s no one-measure change to 7/8—the music simply starts “early” on the and beat of the 4 count. Without the drums in there it’s easy (for me) to think it was something more complicated.
The other song in question—”Quatera Woods” from another Ys game, Ark of the Nepishtim—wasn’t nearly so maddening. I just had noticed the main melody (starting at 1:07 and ends at around 1:30) never joins in the resolution, instead it just leaves off the last note. I think I had mentally filled in the last note because I was expecting it.