Anime Songs with Odd Time Signatures

0:00 odd time signatures are always a gem that music enthusiasts are happy to find especially in places where we don't expect them most popular music you hear nowadays tends to be written in 4 4 or 3 4 or one of their triplet variants 6 8 9 8 12 8 etc and while there's nothing wrong with these time signatures it makes the non-standard ones that much more noticeable and enticing to the trained ear especially if it's done well of course for composers who write background music odd time signatures are just a part of the job and while the average person might not be aware of it they've probably heard hundreds of music tracks and odd time signatures across every movie or series they've watched but since all of this music is meant to build an atmosphere and support what's

0:45 on screen we often don't even notice it or at the very least we aren't counting out how many beats are in each measure and when you have an entire industry of composers that work in background music and pop music well you're bound to get some experimental songs from time to time so let's have a look and listen to how a handful of japanese composers have written songs that you'll never be able to tap your foot to the same way again [Music] starting on the simpler side of things we have akamega kale's second opening track liar mask composed by odskagoki and tomo with period the track begins simply

1:32 enough starting with a fairly quick 4-4 rhythm while maya marika sings a simple quarter note melody following a fermata at the end of the introductory chorus the tempo kicks it up a notch but keeps to the same 4 4 meter grouping the vocal line becomes a bit more complex than its rhythms hinting at the meter change we'll come across later this rhythm emphasizes the first and third beats with most of the syllables falling on one of these while she occasionally leads into them with an offbeat descent [Music] contrary to the backing rhythms coming from the band instruments the vocal line's offbeats are actually in triplets instead of pairs which gives the music a sort of swingy feel

2:17 this swing feeling is important in lessening the impact from the sudden shift in both timbral and metric sounds as we move into the 3-4 pre-chorus [Music] as you can hear this 3-4 section sounds completely different from the 4 4 sections surrounding it the instrumentation and accompanying harmonies give the music a sort of dizzying carnivalesque quality matching the lyrics describing how the tragic play will repeat she also mentions a face hidden behind an ominous smile yet another reference to the drama metaphor in the form of a mask as she states that she will draw her sword to make sure nothing more is lost the band section swells back in so that we can return to 4 4

3:05 and enter the chorus [Music] what's so interesting in this 3-4 section is the way the style of music changes to match the actual lyrics themselves i've only seen one japanese play in person and all my other knowledge comes from how anime portrays it but the dramatic nature of these lines makes them feel like lines out of a play more than song lyrics the sudden odd waltz reflects these dramatic words while also following them nicely into the chorus where the more edgy angst-infused lyrics can re-adopt its rock opera stylization it might not be the most complex change but it's appropriate and fitting for a song that honestly reads a lot like angsty lyrics

4:00 of an edgy teenager's private song here we have the opening for the first season of honzo ki no gekokujo a sentence of a bookworm and honestly the most metrically complex section of this whole track is the very beginning with the piano solo we start off with a few simple chords in the right hand playing a consistent pulse that immediately makes us assume a fairly slow and straightforward pulse in 4-4 this first measure of 4 follows with a confusing secondary pulse playing in groups of 5 for every two higher ticks this unfolds a bit more until the first verse begins where we realized that the opening pulse was all a lie and that we had actually been in 5 8 the whole time with the higher pulse being in a lesser but still confusing pulse of two and a half eighth beats over the regular five

4:53 [Music] five eight and seven eight are compound time signatures which are pretty tricky to write in because if the piece isn't composed well enough to support the rhythm it'll sound like it's sort of tripping over itself because the beat is coming in slightly too early you'll know it's well written if you can listen to the track without immediately noticing something sounds slightly off from the norm and admittedly it's quite obvious in this track however in the context of what the song was made for this musical tripping is actually relevant to the show though i have no idea if this was an intentional decision made by composer shirato yusuke the main character mine is a sickly young girl whose body was taken over by an isakai japanese woman after both of them died despite having the soul and mind of a modern day woman

5:40 she still possesses the body of a girl too sickly and frail to even walk to the market with her mother as you can see and here the stumbling 5 8 pattern significance lies in the fact that mine is too weak to do much on her own yet her adult mind craves the comfort of books something a commoner like herself would never have the luxury of possessing let alone understand in this new world despite this the song's lyrics and melodies sung by moro boshi sumide are filled with hope that somehow mine will be able to make her dreams come true in this new world and the 5 8 melody gets interspersed with smoother sections of [Music] 6'8 [Music]

6:26 these more standard sections show how she is making progress while still showing that the task of reaching her goals is not without troubles again referenced by the switches back into 5 8. by constantly switching between these two meters the 5 8 sections always have a stumbling feeling yet because of the rising hopefulness in every other aspect we feel that everything will turn out all right as reinforced by the occasional steady 68 sections while liar mask had a clever way of tying the rhythm to the song's lyrics masuro is much more creative in how it ties the song to the show without being so out there that the song can't be listened to on its own [Music]

7:16 holy crap there are so many aspects of this song to talk about that i'm glad this video is strictly about the metric modulation the song opens as a basic slow 4-4 ballad with moriyama nautaro singing out simple lyrics to match the slow tempo as he wonders what the fuzzy feeling in his chest is the strings fill out the harmony with some warm lush cords the lyrics can be seen both from somali's perspective as the lone human girl ignorant of the world around her and from the golems with the strings touching on their relationship as daughter and surrogate father following a sweeping cadence on the strings the music suddenly picks up in tempo and plucks away in 6 8 threatening to leave us behind if we aren't quick enough to adapt [Music]

8:06 this is accompanied by somewhat random lyrics first comparing the fuzzy feeling to pressing one's face into a freshly washed towel and then immediately mentioning how a baby bird is chirping out a morning melody the instrumentation and musical ornamentations are very childlike and convey a lack of focus akin to how somali is always quick to run off and do things because she's a rambunctious child excited about experiencing the world while the tempo doesn't actually slow down on the final phrase about the morning melody the musical ensemble suddenly shifts back into the more balladesque style it was in before removing the sense of childlike wonder [Music] as a pickup leading into the next

8:54 section a transitional bar of 9 8 gets added in on doko ma with the words final syllable de landing on the downbeat of our new 4-4 marching section to match the lyrics no matter where we walk the path will continue on [Music] notably this 4 4 section technically isn't any faster than the 6 8 and 9 8 section that preceded it as the eighth notes are still at the same value rather this now feels quicker because the beats are being divided into every two eighth beats rather than every three not to mention the snare drum and piano pushing us along at a march the rest of the song continues in 4

9:39 4 from here though the tempo rhythms harmony and melody change constantly which gives the song a journey-like feel to mirror the journey somali and the golem are on to find other humans much like liar mask arigatou or kotinokotoba focuses its meter changes to match the lyrics unlike how masido and the next track use them to create an atmosphere that mirrors the show they were made for unlike liar mask however this song style of music is much more reflective of the show whereas liar mask's 3-4 section did not match akamego kill's atmosphere the way the 4-4 sections did and thus it manages to paint a picture of the show in a different way this song works similarly to how a parent and young child's day might with a slow waking start followed by a slightly rushing rhythm that throws the

10:24 opening out of sync before things can march along steadily this analogy works even better when you hear how the track continues on from here but i'll save that for a full analysis of the song in the future and finally a video on odd time signatures and anime openings just wouldn't be complete without a mida dune track and you know we had to save the best for last i've actually talked about tokyo kizamu uta's time signature changes a little bit before but this time we're going to go a little more in depth and see if we can figure out why maida made the decisions he did the song

11:09 opens with an intricate piano line playing out an extended 3-3-2 eighth note pattern to give us three three three three two two over two bars this itself doesn't indicate much aside from the fact that the listener might be able to infer that the rhythms of this song won't be quite as straightforward as your average j-pop song and then suddenly the meter changes with the first verse coming in with a single bar of 3 4 followed by 2 bars of 5 4 then another 3 4 then another 5 4 before finally landing on two more bars of 3 4 to close out the phrase leading into a section of only 3 4. taking a look at where the melody and

11:56 phrases fall this produces musical phrases that are 13 beats long which if you weren't already aware isn't exactly the most intuitive number to count to in music here we have leah singing about how she or rather tomoya spent so much time watching the beads in an hourglass trickle down restarting it when it reached the end and wondering when time will truly advance i won't get into the metaphorical breakdowns in this video but if you've seen clonada read the visual novel you know this first verse section is actually omitted from the anime opening version but it felt weird to leave out from the analysis coming out of the 3 4 section there's one bar of 5 4 before we repeat the pattern from before this time the lyrics were counting how there are so many sunny spots on the hill where you referring to nagisa were the only person

12:43 these back and forth three and five sections can be seen to represent a shortening and lengthening of the passage at irregular intervals sort of how tomoya's life takes a turn following his graduation leading into the after story arc from a more musical perspective maida almost seems to have composed the music to fit the lyrics he wrote as opposed to creating them concurrently this allows them to flow more organically than fitting them into a single time signature as we can hear a little bit during the three four sections [Music] following a build-up in the second 3-4 section the chorus comes bursting in in 4-4 suddenly taking advantage of a new time signature for a much more

13:29 expressive lyrical performance if the sections of 3 and 5 represent the period immediately after graduation and the strict 3-4 sections represent tomoya's spiraling regret then the 4-4 sections are an expression of why he feels such regret both recounting the good things that have disappeared as well as the hardships he faces currently the straight metering feels like a callback to when times were more straightforward even if they didn't feel like it at the time while the expressive lyricism is both a longing and cursing of those simpler times coming out of the chorus we get a bridge like post chorus in the unusual time signature of 5 8 ornamented with a single bar of 6 8 in the middle to suspend the music for a brief moment and allow both leah and the

14:16 listeners to catch our breath [Music] unlike how mashido utilized five to represent a stumbling pattern this post chorus is represented as a rapid fire onslaught of single syllables which makes the group of five notes feel like a single measure each rather than a split grouping of three and two this gives them a rhythmic chanting feeling like some kind of spell or sutra is being recited sort of mirroring the way the subtle magic of clanad's world works through the use of wishes and lights tokyo kizamuda is the only pop song i can think of that mixes common and odd simple and compound meters making it one of the most unique tracks in the world of not just j-pop but all popular music these kinds

15:01 of things aren't exactly new in the musical world but it's the manner in which it's also so accessible to non-musically trained ears that makes it such a fascinating piece of work as it lacks the pretentiousness of a higher form of music all the way down to its title which translates to a song to pass the time metering isn't something that gets explored much in lyrical music especially not in something as common as most anime song genres tend to be but while these are the only ones i'm consciously aware of they stick out in my mind precisely because they stray from the norm and while they'd probably be just as memorable in a single simple meter with top quality writing and mixing these metric modulations allow them to reach these same heights regardless of the other aspects anyway what did you guys think of these annie songs with odd time signatures and

15:46 metric modulations if you know of any others please let me know down in the comments below because i would love to listen to them and dig into how they're used and for what purpose and as always don't forget to like subscribe support me over on patreon and follow my other social media accounts thanks as always for watching and i will see you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]