TEARS OF THE KINGDOM SPOILERS ON 23/8. SKIP TO 28:58 TO AVOID That is completely my bad, ironically I have no perception of time and thought the game was out long enough. Also Final Fantasy VII spoiler from 4:20-4:27 but cmon now the game has been out for almost 30 years and is THE most video game spoiler spoiler.

Ahh, finally. A good video explaining time signatures in a clear, concise way. If there are any Great Value Blueberry jumpscares, I’m going to scream.

Splatoon’s Frothy waters has a time signature that increases every bar, making it use 10:8, 11:8, 12:8, 13:8, 14:8, 15:8, 16:8, 17:8, 18:8, 19:8, 20:8, 21:8, 22:8, 23:8, 24:8, and 25:8 all in one song.

Awesome music theory knowledge, and then... "Prime example" "This fusion" "Feeling of dread" 3 Metroid puns in one sentence, you hooked me. Subscribed

The reason why you get such strange time signatures almost exclusively for final boss themes is to in contrast with the rest of the games music, put you off balance and enhance the drama by being so different from the more comfortable time signatures you find in house settings, protagonist themes etc. It enhances the direness of the situation

I think my favourite weird time signature is Frothy Waters from Splatoon 3. After the intro, it goes into a 10/8, then 11/8 for the next bar, then 12/8 for the bar after that, then 13/8, 14/8 etc. It just loops a melody adding another repeating eigth note every bar and it's is just... beautiful

Time signatures is a way for your band teacher to torture you without getting arrested.

it's incredible that music theory has managed to break down and categorize something that for the most part comes down to Vibes

4:12 I think the only way to truly have “1/4” is to have a completely consistent quarter note pulse with no emphasis given to any beat. So in reality that would basically just be a metronome count with no emphasis, just constant, homogenous clicks 😊😅 great video by the way!!

I had no idea Moon was in 15/16. It sounds so clean and pure that I just assumed it was 4/4

Okay, so during the 11/8 section she brings up sagat's theme from SFII a peak game. What she doesn't mention is the cool as hell reason the composer decided to use 11/8 it was more than just a choice to make the song sound awesome (even though it does) in the original street fighter 2 hyper fighting, there are only 8 playable characters, however there are 4 final boss fights that are unplayable but still definitely feel like fighters, sagat is the third of these fighters, making him the 11th of eight fighters, aka 11/8 fighters. This is so awesome and I really wish she mentioned this, but now you know

every single thing that has ever bothered me about time signatures was instantly remedied when you said it's, in practice, typically added retrospectively based on what feels right. that explains why i couldn't actually math the math and make it math right.

i have an example of 8/8! In a concert band i was in a few years back we played a piece called Bulgarian Dances and I think it was the third movement that was written in 8/8 with subdivison of 3/3/2 which gave it a similar feel to 5/4 with that last beat rushing a little bit more than the others. Actually 8/8 is really interesting because of this structure built into it and the feel can change a lot depending on where you place the shorter beat in relation to the longer ones.

00:00 Intro 03:37 1/4 04:12 2/4 (Advent: One Winged Angel - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) 05:56 3/4 (Rosalina in the Observatory - Super Mario Galaxy) 07:13 4/4 (Main Menu - Wii Sports Resort) 08:51 5/4 (Gear Getaway - Super Smash Bros WiiU/3DS) 10:41 6/8 (Flipside - Super Paper Mario) 11:57 7/4 (Mother Brain - Super Metroid) 13:36 8/8 13:51 9/8 (Title Theme - The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker) 15:01 10/8 (Trainers' Eyes Meet (Psychic) - Pokemon X/Y) 16:22 11/8 (Forgotten Isle - Super Mario Odyssey) 18:28 12/8 (Remix 3 - Rhythm Heaven) 20:16 13/8 (Shrine Battle - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild) 21:55 14/16 (Yuga-Ganon Battle - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds) 23:22 15/16 (The Moon - DuckTales (NES)) 25:28 Intermission 25:45 "21/16" (Pokémon Mansion - Pokemon Fire Red/Leaf Green) 27:32 23/8 (Demon King Ganondorf (Phase 2) - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom) 28:58 24/8 (Shrine Battle - The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom) 29:57 31/16 (Fishing Frenzy - Splatoon 2) 31:24 Outro mightve did something wrong but i think this is right

I know this isn't what the video is about, but at 10:10, you brought up the Mission Impossible theme, which is comprised of two "long notes" and two "short notes". If interpreted as dashes and dots respectively, the simple 4 note loop is morse code for M.I. -- Mission Impossible.

as a musician, that cut at 20:16 to that combination of music and 13/8 staring me in the soul legit made me jump!

A lot of other people have brought it up, but Mother 3’s "Strong One (Masked Man)" has an absolutely insane time signature, even more than Fishing Frenzy, and unlike that song it doesn’t give any good musical hints on how to count it. The game has a mechanic where if you time button presses to the music you get extra damage in, so the songs get progressively weirder throughout the game. This is the peak of that.

I actually really appreciate this video. I've watched plenty of music theory time signature videos going "Oh I see!(I don't.)", so actually hearing songs I'm more familiar with their beats, makes this much MUCH more clearer.

14:37 correction! This is not like a jig, but like a slipjig! you can tell because you can say the words “eggs, rashers and sausages” to the rhythm. A jig would be just “rashers and sausages”, and a reel is “black and decker” or “double decker”. I have not yet found a helpful mnemonic for identifying hornpipes. Probably you already knew this, you know more about time signatures than I ever will, but on the off chance it’s helpful, thought I’d comment!

as a musician this has actually helped me learn how to compose in unusual time signatures. i would never have figured out the ‘dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter-quarter’ tactic for 5/4, or the triplet/duplet difference between 3/4 and 6/8

Cool, I've noticed most of these examples when playing the games. I love odd time signatures and hope this video encourages people to experiment more with their compositions! 😁

The great value blueberries had me in tears

There are some great orchestra examples of the fact that 5/4 is more commonly felt as 2/4 + 3/4 as well. Cajun Folk Songs (Movement 2) is a great example. The entire song revolves around the same melody, however there are many, MANY time signature changes that alternate between 2/4, 3/4, and 5/4. Slightly less stable time signatures like 5/4 often have songs with the occasional measure that switches time signature to one of it's more stable counterparts (2/4 or 3/4) before returning to the original melody in 5/4. Some also use the time signature switches to spin counterparts of the melody.

24:31 YES, I love how she explained music analysis. I've tried to explain to people that sometimes you might like music that seems odd or weird to you if you give it more listens because you need to know ahead of time how all the pieces fit together so you can start detecting the patterns and movements in a song.

Really big fan of Marx’s theme in Kirby Super Star, with the absolutely insane switch ups in signature making it feel nearly impossible to play in real time which adds to the cosmic horror of the fight

UGHH this is so great. it really scratches the brain the right ways, because every in time signature. you're trying to make sense of it - but then the use of nintendo music refreshes and calms you, with vibe you kinda know and feel! Good visuals aswell! wish you did the clapping with your hands aswell well and counting with your voice haha

holy crap the explanation you give at 24:41 is one of the smartest things I think I've ever heard someone say about music theory! a concept with such depth explained so succinctly. amazing work on this video!!

Big Splatoon fan here, so happy to see Splatoon salmon run music represented in this video. ω-3 music is so beautifully chaotic, and as a lover of odd time signatures, some of my favorite vgm of all time. Plenty of other SR songs have irregular time signatures as well, such as Deluge Dirge in 7/8, and Frantic Aspic in 5/4, perfectly encapsulating SR’s intense, dramatic, zombie-apocalypse-like environment.

Thank you so much for including Fishing Frenzy !!! Splatoon's Salmon Run osts have crazy time signatures that keep changing all the time, it's really interesting to hear

Best explanation of time signatures I've ever seen. Not just because you show examples, but the base explanation you give at the start is also way better then anything I've seen

I know you didn’t do 11/4, but a great example of that is the eastern province theme from Pokémon Scarlet and Violet! It can also be read as a repeating 5/4 and 6/4 pattern and it’s so wonderful to listen to.

I just wanted to say thank you for using the eighth note tied to the quarter note ( 9:48 ) for dotted-quarter notes that start on the offbeat...it's such an often overlooked convention in notation that is really helpful for seeing where the beat is while reading.

I forget the exact time signatures, but my favorite use of strange time signatures is Marx's theme from Kirby! How it manages to keep a comprehensible and catchy melody amidst all those changes is magic to me.

Hey Cadence, great video! I’m new here, however, I’m a professional musician and piano performance major in college. One of my theory professors changed my understanding of beat for the better. One of common phrases we hear is “sub-divide” the beat, which is implying that you cut the beat into one or two subsets. However, that is a very loose term for what it is. The prefix “Sub” implies underneath or secondary function. If this was true, a quarter note’s (QN) “second division” would be a 16th note, as you’ll have to split the QN twice to get there. I would argue saying you need to “Divide” a beat and then “sub-divide” is better. If I divide a quarter note, I get an 8th note, then if I sub-divide the QN, I’ll get my 16th. I would love to hear what you or others will think about this!

i love the way you explain music theory!!! talking about the feel and intuition of making music while discussing theory is really helpful perspective.

Criminally underrated channel

8/8 definitely exists, but generally as a complex time signature rather than duple or compound. I usually see it used to reflect tresillo (3+3+2) rhythms, but of course these can also be written and heard as syncopations in 4/4. As with a lot of time signatures, it's kinda arbitrary and is more the choice of the composer than anything that can be definitively transcribed

its very cool that you transcribed all the music you showed as examples of the time signatures, it also helped me a bit to understand more of how music theory works

This is amazing. If I had this 5-6 years ago when I was doing Musicology this would’ve helped so much. Love it!

Music has always been so alien to me, at least in its construction. Like, yeah I love jamming out to songs, but all of the terminology just racked my brain to think about, and nobody has explained it in a way that made sense to me. But now I really feel like I understand time signatures and how they can evoke a variety of feelings tones within music, and I've even been a bit inspired to think of making my own music trying out different time signatures to see what happens. thanks a ton!

Wind Waker theme is what you'd call in Irish music, a slip jig. It's a really good one, you could slip it into a set of Irish slip jigs and no one would complain.

Great explanation of time sigs. It's all about what beats you want at rest and which ones you want to rush for effect. I've never been into games but the music in them is awesome! Thanks for the video.

This is really well explained! I'm a drummer and I tend to find myself drawn to the down beat as my reference for counting, and try and figure out the time signature from that. So I often would first hear an example you give and think, that's a weird way to count that its just 4/4 or 5/4. But then you did a great job of showing me why I was wrong haha. But I like that, time signatures are a bit weird and deciphering them is tricky. I'm honestly not that good at it and usually just "feel" it and play what seems appropriate.

I love the breakdown you gave for each time signature. It really helped make it clear what I was trying to feel especially in the later sections ^^ Been here since the Andrew Huang chordstory challenge so it’s insanely cool to see you evolve your channel in this way ^^

I really like the 13/4 groove in the theme for cryogenic hopetown in splatoon 3 its just splendid. I did a transcription for it for piano and its fun to play too.

Love this video, your style and humour and pedagogic approach to teaching theory. The Duck Tales part in particular was wonderfully written

This video was absolutely amazing Im so thankful for this

I'm sure someone else has brought it up, but Mother 3 is pretty iconic for its use of funky time signatures, names 15/8 in Strong One and 29/16 in Strong One (Masked Man). Also, on the topic of Splatoon's Salmon Run mode, the tune Frothy Waters from Splatoon 3 has some really interesting shifting time signature biz going on, it's REALLY fun to try to keep up with imo.

7:28 this is the exaxt moment this video went from good to great. im glad i found this channel, cuz i have a feeling this vid is gonna blow up

Super charming video, subbed instantly, gonna binge everything you've ever made thanks bye

If you're counting the 11/8 + 12/8 from the TotK Ganondorf theme as 23/8, then I have another (Nintendo-adjacent) example: Oh No! WASPS!! from Bug Fables. I think that one might be an even clearer example, because it plays each beat (particularly with the percussion), and the base line clearly indicates the divisions of 2-2-2-2-3 2-2-2-3-3.

No surprise that you would have perfect comedic timing too. Comes through in the vido editing. Great stuff

This video is overwhelmingly high quality. I don't usually post comments, but I just have to say, “Wow.” You break down these complex themes in such digestible ways. You deeply understand these topics and can break down years’ worth of knowledge into a 30 minute video. Incredible. You also exemplify it with Nintendo music, making it further compelling and palatable. You clearly put a bunch of effort into each of your videos by choosing *the best* examples of whatever you're describing. Love the quality ❤️

My favorite example of 13/8 has always been, and will always be, "Weapons Factory" from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Also, I always love that any video or discussion of this type of stuff always elicits people sharing their favorite examples, I've found so many wonderful pieces from games I've missed that way.

as someone who isn't very educated in music theory, this really helped explain why rhythms can make me feel a certain way! great video!

So this is how I discover your channel. Amazing vid and I'm hella curious what other stuff you got

I love how you brought up Remix 3! You really hit the points of why I liked the groove so much. I loved It so much that it is the song that got me into music arranging and became my first ever arrangement I made back in middle school!

This is the most thoroughly i’ve ever understood time signatures and general music sheet stuff. That being said, I still don’t understand a single thing about time signatures and general music sheet stuff. It’s a me problem though. You did a great job regardless

I once played Celebration Tribalesque by Randall D. Standridge in band, and for a short segment, it instructs the conductor to “conduct in one”. I always felt that it was, in fact, in 1/4.

Amazing job! Kudos for the transcriptions!

This is an excellent explanation, very clear and easy to follow. The point about feel and breaking it down into friendlier numbers and downbeats is very intuitive.

the section about 11/8 and Indonesian Gamelan was so fascinating! Huge props to Koji Kondo for incorporating that into such a huge game. great video !

As a musician thats not too familiar with music theory, I feel like this video somehow gave me a worse understanding of time signatures than before. Maybe it's like a Dunning-Kruger effect, where I am now more aware of how much I didn't know beforehand.

13:53 Gerudo Valley from Ocarina of Time is 8/8! 3+3+2. I have hears versions played in 4/4 (2+2+2+2) but 8/8 sounds much more in character.

I actually love this video! Great job!

definitely have some new tracks to add to my weird time signatures playlist. Mother 3 has quite a few battle themes that add a beat to the original one to throw you off since you can time your button presses to the music during battle, which is a super cool aspect of the game. I’m probably remembering wrong, but the track “Strong One” technically has a time signature in the hundreds. I have no clue how to divide it so I brute forced my way through that boss.

I really like that you trasformed the outro theme to 31/8. Great videooo

I love this kind of videos. You’re amazing, I know you’ll reach a huge audience if you continue creating content like this

Thank you so much for this video. I've struggled a lot with trying to understand time signatures for as long as I've thought about how music is made.

13:35 Dread, prime, fusion.... incredible arrangement of puns

Amazing video as always. As far as the 1/4 goes, I feel like when a relentless repeated downbeat pattern appears, without any variation in emphasis, that could be considered 1/4. Maybe something like the opening of the famous shower cue from “Psycho.” Now, it wouldn’t be the most sight-readable thing in the world; it’s a lot easier for rehearsal purposes to just expand the beats into 2/4 or something. But if the emphasis really doesn’t vary - like, if there are no weak or strong beats - then purely in terms of musical feel, there’s no justification for anything other than 1/4.

I cannot put into words how helpful this video is. I've been learning music theory for the past couple of years, so I know the basic 4/4, 2/4, 3/4, but I wasn't so sure about others. And as a huge video game fan, especially nintendo, my heart practically skipped a beat seeing this on my recommended. Thanks.

Great explanation of time signatures! I’m starting to comprehend it because of the great examples you use!

This isn't a Nintendo tune but Good Morning Good Morning by The Beatles I think would be a good example of 1/4 because there's no other consistent way to subdivide the measures for most of the song. There are also parts of it that are 4/4 and 12/8

13:23 When I heard "this fusion" I was so hoping you were going to sneak dread into that sentence too

This video made me want to revisit learning music theory, which is probably the highest compliment a video like this can receive. I especially enjoyed the part that you described as you "manifesto" - your enthusiasm was contagious

This was more useful than most videos on the topic that I have watched and I have been interested and confused by timesigs for near on a decade now.

Super Paper Mario has quite a bit of musical oddities. The track 'Hammer Whacker' uses 7/4 to sound playful and chaotic. The mini boss battle theme 'A Powerful Enemy Emerges' starts off with a 4 to 3 polyrythm.

A use case for stuff like 8/8 or 16/16 would be if you're scoring something proggy that changes time signatures every other bar, but is felt with the same bottom meter throughout. So if you have this fast 16th-note instrumental run going 15/16, 16/16, 15/16, 17/16 or something like that, it might look neater and more consistent to hold the 16/16 than to suddenly consolidate it to 4/4. Just a little thing I remember running into in Guitar Pro back in the day lol.

20:25 Don’t tell me I’m the only one who noticed the bwee bwee bwee bwee.

Awesome video keep up the good work 🔥🔥💯 this video reminds me of the channel 8 bit music theory 🔥

I love how there's gaps in time sigs like there's gaps in stability on the periodic table. Very cool!

My favourite example of a time signature change is in the game Rhythm Doctor. The gameplay is primarily pressing the spacebar on the 7th beat (with all the distractions/speed changes etc to expect from a rhythm game). Basically all the songs are in 4/4, except for the boss level for act 4. The song itself starts in the same 4/4, but the second half switches to 7/8. It's just such a clever way of adding a new gimmick and taking the basic rule of pressing on the 7th beat to its absolute limit. Well worth a play

i love the language around rhythms, its subjectivity and malleability. i laud your nuance and repeated acknowledgement of subjectivity in how rhythms are felt and thus perceived / counted/ subdivided. for instance, i usually feel quintuple time (5/4, 5/8) to feel more linger-y, while septuple meters (7/4, 7/8) evoke more a rush or haste, on account of 5 being one more than 4, and 7 being just shy of 8. But i recognize that’s just a generalization and i don’t hold it as “law,” the feel further depends on the rhythmic content within the bar (subdivisions or syncopations), it’s just fun to know how many ways we can think about and internalize rhythm. i’ve so many thoughts about this great topic but will just say, great video thank you for the awesome showcase of fun game grooves.

My favorite odd time signature in video game music is the cross-examination theme from “Ace Attorney: Justice For All” Every Ace Attorney game has two cross examination themes, “moderato” and “allegro”, with the allegro version being faster, having different instrumentation, adding another section, and usually being higher pitched. In AA:JFA, the moderato version is entirely in 27/8, which alternates between 14/8 and 13/8 every measure. The allegro version starts off the same way, in 27/8, but it goes into a second section that is in 25/8, alternating between 13/8 and 12/8 every measure.

Excellent video! New subscriber. I like to think of 8/8 as a better option for the typical "3/8 + 3/8 + 2/8", but I know that by convention we use 4/4 for that (one example could be Mt. Moon from Pokemon games)

This is so cool!! I don’t know much music theory despite playing violin for ten years and counting, this has inspired me to learn more! Thank you for all the work you out into this video, it’s such a great entertaining but knowledgeable explanation:D

I'm only 2 and a half minutes in and I already love this video. You're explaining things in a way that makes sense to me when music theory type things have always been so difficult for me to grasp.

I've been playing the trombone for 15 years and trumpet for 5 years and I love rythm so much I plan on learning drums next year. Time signatures can be tricky, but it feels like a puzzle and once you've understand the piece you're working on it feels so great! Great video, very understandable and it's super clever tu use famous game pieces to explain all that! 👌🏼✨

Cadence: The perfect 4/4 song doesn't exi- NOSTALGA JUMPSCARE

I actually have the perfect example of 8/4 (or 8/8? Maybe 8/2 i dunno) that I thought of after watching this video! Splattack from Splatoon, _but specifically_ the Dedf1sh cover of it from octo expansion. There's a version of this theme in both Splatoon 1 and 3 that are in 4/4, but the cover in octo expansion (appropriately named "octo") is explicitly remixed to be 8 beats per measure instead of 4, and it's so explicit that even I can't help but hear it.

One of the funnest videos I’ve watched, great stuff!

Very good video. You did a great job describing the feel of some unique time signatures. My only critique is that the volume of the sound you used for the first beat is dramatically louder than the rest of the audio. I had some trouble finding a balance between being able to hear what you're saying and not getting pop scared by that sound, lol.

And thus, she truly completed her quest to EARN the name of Cadence, forever. (Seriously, I love your name. It's musical without sounding snooty or silly. And it makes me think of Cadence of Hyrule. Also, this video was excellent.)

I know this ain't video game music, but if some of y'all wanna hear a funky time signature, check out Björk's song "Moon", which is mostly 17/8, in a way to supposedly mimic the lunar cycles!

this video is SO awesome i love it sm

I've never really fully understood what time signatures mean even though I've been playing and making music for years, and this video has immediately clarified something that I've always found incredibly unapproachable! Thanks for making it!

Just wanted to say how helpful this video is! I’ve always wanted to explain time signatures and other music stuff to my non-musical friends, but it’s really hard to explain with just words alone. Including examples with all of them as well as explainations is SO useful! Not to mention, it doesn’t have that ‘stuffy, classist’ feeling that classical music has. I’ll be showing this to my friends and maybe next time they’ll understand me when I start gushing about time signatures again.

The wind temple in Wind Waker (the one where you throw Makar around and fight Molgera) has background music in 17/4 (or 34/8 I guess). I arranged it as one bar of 8/4 then one bar of 9/4 and people were a little mad at me but I don't know how to make it any easier for them haha.

I really like your description of 5 rushing and 7 dragging - I always thought of them the other way round, because in 5 the 1 arrives 1 beat later than you’d expect, in 7 it’s one beat earlier. Really cool how they both work both ways!