Everyone was wrong about the Strong One (Masked Man) Time Signature

in the discussion of wacky time signatures in video games strong one from Mother 3 specifically the masked man version is frequently brought up as an example of 2916 I've known about this tune for a while but finally got around to transcribing it for a future video but after looking at it something is a Miss it's actually not in 201916 and after doing some digging the actual time signature is somehow even more interesting so I figured since there's a lot of things to talk about with this tune it warrants its own video as a side note there would be mother 3 footage in the background but when I tried downloading the fan translated ROM from Reddit I got the dolphin [Music] virus I'll Briefly summarize the context behind strong one masked man for those who haven't played Mother 3 strong one Mas command is a remix of another track heard earlier in the game which is just called strong one [Music] strong one is allegedly in the more Uncommon time signature of 158 so 158 notes per measure it's more or less decently intuitive to count split up into what feels like six beats Six Beats three [Music] beats but there is another layer on how to count this tune the battle system of Mother 3 is super unique in that in order to hit combos you have to attack according to the rhythm of a so-called heartbeat that aderes to rhythms of the battle music in many of the battle themes the heartbeat is a consistent quarter note pulse such as an audacious March but in strong one the heartbeat is a bit more complicated let's take a listen to strong one one more time with the heartbeat track playing [Music] it's a really interesting battle system the difficulty of the battle apart from damage and health pools is also dependent on how cracked you are at Rhythm games the game imposes a second layer of difficulty in the form of the countability of the music and how easy the heartbeat is to follow even though the heartbeat here is contained within the more or less intuitive 6 beats Six Beats 3 beats division of the measure the hits kind of loosely follow the melody which is kind of cool from a game design perspective these kinds of wacky time signatures aren't super intuitive to count but the game doesn't require you to be able to feel the 158 note pulse necessarily because the hits you're supposed to land kind of break away from that and follow more intuitive Melody notes but at the same time it's also advantageous to have a grasp of the measure in the cycle because the hits don't follow the melody exactly at the end of the measure you have a 28 note rest until the pattern begins again which requires at least either conscious counting at this part of the measure or an intuitive sense of the loop the degrees to which the heartbeat aderes to the time signature versus melodic hits varies per track which also gives a nice variation in what to feel or listen to but anyways before I get too sidetracked let's talk about the masked man variant of strong one it's commonly transcribed in The elusive 2916 time [Music] signature strong one masked man's placement in the game is interesting for two reasons it's a variation of strong one which as the name would imply plays when you're fighting a strong enemy it's a battle theme that's not specific to any one enemy type so you hear it every so often the relative familiarity of strong one and its Associated heartbeat is neat because masked man takes advantage of that and turns the otherwise familiar tune into a counterintuitive Abomination and this tune plays exactly once in the entire game in the first battle against the eponymous strong one masked man it's pretty cool because an already difficult to count battle theme is now even more difficult to count which adds another dimension of both Intrigue and also fear to this character who at this point you really don't know much about but while this tune is difficult to count it's actually not in 201916 2916 is a close approximation but you'll notice that if you line up the track with a 2916 grid it starts to desync no matter which consistent Tempo the grid is at the closest I could get was 126. n BPM but even still not even accounting for sync issues within the measure the track starts to push slightly faster than the grid [Music] various Solutions have been proposed to fix this discrepancy such as the time signature 4316 instead or the disgusting and mimetic 7197 over 40 120 time signature that supposedly lines up testing the latter time signature in M score ended up voiding my Apple care but anyways the point is any one consistent time signature and Tempo isn't going to get us what we need one comment on my time signature video by numy GD suggests a mixed meter of sorts with a 34 measure at 1 24 BPM 24 measure at 132 1 14 measure at 121 and 38 measure at [Music] 161 at first glance it looks pretty convincing as apparently this Tempo cycle was Data mined from the actual game files even being verified by the official Earthbound Wiki but after testing this against the grid it still desyncs pushing ever so slightly faster than than the [Music] grid I'm not going to lie by this point in the research I was pretty stumped all of the other Tempo Cycles or approximations either didn't completely sink or weren't practical in application but of all places the correct Tempo cycle appears on the strong one masked man page in the sea Gunner Wiki which if you're unfamiliar is a channel in the Zeitgeist of yester year that uploads bait and switch video game music like you're trying to listen to the Mario pinball soundtrack but they secretly changed the melody to Flintstones [Music] hey wait a second but the Haven of highquality rips did it after plugging in this Tempo cycle into the grid It lines up perfectly [Music] so here is the sheet music with the new Tempo cycle the tempo changes are 126 for three beats 180 for two beats 236 for 1 beat 126 for 1 beat and 102 for 1 beat which means the time signature for strong one masked man is literally 44 which even though it's kind of cheating is super hilarious and also has some cool things going on for instance this disgustingly notated drum part which I've [Music] isolated what's even funnier though is the heartbeat of strong one masked man here's the track with the heartbeat even though the heartbeat is super weird and kind of hard to follow according to the time signature and Tempo changes it's Cordon notes all the way through I was able to find the game files and midi data online to confirm these Tempo changes in heartbeat tracks and it all checks out from what I checked funny enough every single heartbeat in the game is actually consistent quarter notes what this means is that the tracks that seemingly mix quarter notes and non- quarter notes always handle this by changing the tempo every time the note value sounds like it changes it's kind of hard to explain this without showing an example so let's take a listen to dry guys which has a kind of two dotted quarter note 3 quarter note [Music] feel the notation here is what it sounds like but the the music is actually programmed in game looks like this even though this looks kind of cursed these two notations sound exactly the same because the tempos of the bottom notation follow the same ratios as the perceived note values in the top notation the heartbeat in the top flip-flops between dotted quarters and quarters which have a ratio of 3:2 respectively and the tempo markings on the bottom version 144 and 96 BPM also have a ratio of 3:2 I imagine this was done because of some sort of limitations with the integration of the combo programming like the game is only able to detect hits on what it considers quarter notes rather than smaller divisions I'm honestly unsure if that's the reason so if any mother three data miners know the actual answer to this please post it in the comments so the question then is what if the tempo changes in strong one masked man are just the ratio equivalents of the 2916 notation doing the math it doesn't quite work for instance the ratio of the quarter notes to dotted e is 4 to 3 but 180 over 126 comes out to about 4.29 to3 meaning the 180 BPM is too fast for the quarters to be equivalent to dotted eights rather than 180 it would instead have to be at 168 BPM these problems persist throughout the loop it's just slightly off from actual 2916 or anytime signature really which explains the discrepancy another mind melter I discovered when I was doing the math was that regular strong one also isn't in its assumed time signature rather than 158 it's actually just strong one mask man midi data with different Tempo markings similarly the ratios don't quite add up to the 158 equivalent either so technically the most correct way to notate this is 44 with these Tempo changes honestly this sucks it's always kind of disappointing to find something that looks really cool on paper and then it's just one big sham 2916 and 158 are not only interesting but very uncommon especially if you're only looking at video game music I think especially when transcribing it's important to think about intent versus what's actually heard even though the numbers don't add up it's very possible that composer shogo sakay intended for masked man and strong one to be in a kind of 2916 and 158 respectively but was either limited by the game engine of the early 2000s or otherwise just didn't feel it was necessary to have the exact Tempo ratios I think the close approximations of 201916 and 158 work very well for understanding the feel of these tunes and for the sake of Life performance or covers ain't nobody thinking about drastic Tempo changes every other beat in real life over the more intuitive weird time signature albe it with a consistent Tempo but since shogo sakai's intentions are unknown as of now 44 with these exact Tempo markings is technically the most Accurate Way of notating these Tunes as they are heard in game and though it's disappointing that do be how it is at least that's what I would say but these tempos are still not correct because when you take the music directly from gameplay and put it up against the Grid it's still slightly too slow [Music] [Music] after doing some research this can be attributed to the way the GBA handles audio it treats the midi data like it's running at 60 FPS but the Game Boy Advance actually runs at 59.7 27556 9606 5539 frames per second which means the music in engine actually runs approximately 45% slower than what is intended or what you'll otherwise find on YouTube but something is still weird because after checking this against my grid I found that the in engine music actually runs approximately 58% slower ultimately very insignificant but a large enough discrepancy that something is definitely a Miss if I'm being honest I actually have no idea what's happening and I'm super stumped if anyone has any idea what's Happening Here post it in the comments I guess that's pretty much it then for the time being stay tuned for time signatures part two and special thanks to numy GD and the PK hack Discord I listened to strong one masked man probably over 500 times this last week and all I see now in my VIs is the Rhythm hell version of the drum part 1 2 3 go [Music] [Music] n [Music]

Channel: Cadence Hira

Views: 170,450

Keywords: mother 3, video game, music theory, cadence hira, 8 bit music theory, adam neely, Strong One Masked Man, Strong One, 29/16, time signature, every time signature

Id: Qp9PL4EbWi4

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024