#Paradise Marsh#code#postmortem#music video#Music Morsels#rhythm#production#talk#sound design#implementation#procgen#Hyper Light Drifter#career#harmony#education#FAQ#interview#chipmusic#pulse masking#metric modulation#MIT Gamelab#In Depth#business#January#polymeter#lifestyle#youth#philosophy#dlab#tools#sheet music#Backtrack#MIDI#technique#influences#Atebite and the Warring Nations#Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar#feature#FEZ#album#collaboration#trailer#Midnight Orphans#music theory#college#Limeade Grin#It Follows#Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake#Level#FAMAZE#Somewhere#Mini Metro#minimalism#film#Under the Silver Lake#workshop#Massive#synthesis#Shoot Many Robots#guitar#The Floor is Jelly#demonstration#Logic Pro#Adventure Time#podcast#Gunhouse#Beasts of Balance#ergonomics#playlist#opportunity#mix#failure#analysis#Noon Kids#performance

Music Morsel: Misty Mountain Hop

iSpotify

Like the morsel before it, this clip is another example of a common rhythm trick heard at the beginning of songs. If you’ve never heard this song before, or you haven’t heard it in a while, you may be tricked by the opening phrase, which innocently sounds like the count starts on the very first note. What’s not clear until the drums drop into the groove is that the downbeat actually starts an 8th note late, deceiving your expectations in the process. Many of us have been fooled by this kind of thing many times, and will continue to be fooled by it. It’s so effective, that sometimes you can re-listen to the same introduction repeatedly, and hear it the “wrong way” every time. One interesting question worth posing is whether Led Zeppelin did this intentionally or not. It’s entirely possible that they didn’t.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

Music Morsel: Charteroak Foundation

iSpotify

This is a neat little trick that you hear from time to time at the beginning of songs. The song starts out in 6/8, with an eighth note pulse implied by the only parts you can hear. However, when the drums come, they imply a different pulse and a new tempo, and that changes your whole rhythmic perception of the song. The drums play out in 4/4, but the original rhythm section continues on at its original speed, which creates a metric modulation. The former pulse of the song (the rhythm of the guitar), now sounds off as sextuplets in relationship to the drums.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

Music Morsel: Concerning the UFO Sighting in Highland, Illinois

iSpotify

The intro to this track has some of the most seemingly arbitrary time signature lengths I can think of, but it works to great effect and has a certain charm. There is some rubato but I couldn’t say whether it was intentional or not. If you count 8th notes, starting a new count whenever the chord changes, you get the following sequence: 4, 14, 17, 17, 13. Assuming this section has 4 bars, the first two numbers can be combined, which would then yield the following 4 bar idea: 18/8, 17/8, 17/8, 13/8. When trying to figure out time signatures, I’ve found that it helps to start with an easy signature like 4/4, and then figure out how many extra beats it takes to get to the end of the bars.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.