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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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! 😁

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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!!

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

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

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

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

The great value blueberries had me in tears

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

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 !

This video is actually amazing. The amount of hard-work that must've gone into this is insane. Thank you so much for creating it! I'm definitely going to use this to help my music students

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!

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.

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 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

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.

Criminally underrated channel

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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

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

I actually love this video! Great job!

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

Oh man, this video is so awesome. I'm a music student, so I really appreciate you breaking down these more intimidating time signatures into something I can understand, especially while using examples. So yeah, great video!

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.

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

this video is so fun and interesting! as someone who finds music theory super cool but has never been able to understand it, i LOVE your editing style and how you highlight the tempo/notes when playing a song

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.

Thanks for explaining this in a great way! It's very interesting how it's mainly boss battle music too that uses weird time signatures.

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!

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.

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.

It must have taken forever to search for these, transcribe them, find video for each of the games, then put it all together coherently. This is an amazing and really interesting video, thanks for taking the time to create it Cadence!

Great video, really gave me a better understanding of time signatures than i had before

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.

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.

Girl, the amount of work you put in this video is insane! Its highly appreaciated and im going to bother any of my music friends w this

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

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.

2 years in music school and this video about Nintendo actually got me to understand more about time signatures than I ever got out of school. Great job!

So happy to see you talking about Splatoon :) The music in Splatoon especially means so much to me

Fantastic video man keep up the amazing work

Hi! First of, I really enjoy how you presented everything, with a nice touch of good humor and a very well structured flow of information. Very interesting with good examples. One thing I'd personally like to hear more, is the parts in which you actually line the piece up with "your" drums. You usually display, like, 1-2 bars and just as one is able to grasp the concept of the time signature, it stops. I understand that this would make the video longer, but I think it could help to get into the groove of it a bit better. Overall, that's probably just a minor thing, but in terms of understand the time signatures, I assume it would be helpfull. That being said, this was a great and well put together informational video and I'm glad it got recommended. Well done! Keep up the good work!

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

This was uploaded at a perfect timing. Thank you

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.

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

as soon as I saw 31/16 I knew it was going to be fishing frenzy HAHAHAH awesome video. love the attention to detail subscribed

Wow. I admit the higher you went the more lost and confused I got. But I learned a ton from this video. I do most of my compositions in 3/4 or 4/4 because they're easy enough to understand. I actually thought One Winged Angel was in 4/4. Certainly will be saving this for later. Using an audible metronome was incredibly helpful and I wish there'd been a little bit more of that. Thanks for making this.

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!

This is so wonderfully nerdy, and such a specific venn diagram of my interests. Well done on the whole thing! I have liked, commented, and smashed that bell icon.

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

This was a delightful watch. Thank you for uploading.

I feel like it took me for forever but alas... This video has explained time signatures perfectly to me! Thank you so much!

i used to hate the idea of time signatures before this, I just couldn't figure it out in my head, but I think I understand now, great video! Subbed

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.

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.

This was awesome! And I love that 23 is an "evil" prime. I still think 12/8 is my favorite overall time sig!

Outstanding! Deserves much more attention

YESS 29:00 I was hoping you would cover this theme!! It’s so cool and quirky and a wonderful shrine theme in my opinion. I loved this groove more than the BotW one!

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