Yay! He’s back!

Glad to see I’m not alone on that. :)

“The Brawl rhythm is literally and figuratively more upbeat than the original.”

Heh, nice. I never get a chance to break out our house Wii, but it’s cool to hear how Kondo is evolving the music over time.

Interestingly, I find the new version to be groovier, but perhaps less hip? I think it’s because, if you’re counting in 4 (easier to look at than sixteenths, though that’s how I feel it), the old version ends the phrase on the and of three, while the updated version ends nicely right on the downbeat of 4. Upbeats notwithstanding, that’s much more palatable place to end a phrase.

The original version almost sounds like it’s implying seven, like the phrase ends a bit too early, which breaks the flow in a neat way and gives it that jarring quality.

And if you look at the original in sixteenths, it ends with two sixteenths on beat 4, which is also a weird/cool place to end a phrase. Anyway, dancing about architecture and all that, but the end of that first phrase is really what makes that original version so hip, at least to me. Interesting that Kondo changed it.

Daniel: Very nice analysis! I’m curious what you make of the All-Stars arrangement in Rafi’s link — it keeps the swung hi-hat and snare on beat 3 from the original, but it also moves those notes in the main riff as in the Brawl arrangement. Do you think it works?

Rafi: Nice catch! I didn’t even think to look at the intermediate arrangements. Scanning YouTube quickly, I noticed that the Tetris DS remix has a four-on-the-floor beat and no added syncopation.

dfan: I think I hear the original as less syncopated because that D you mention lands on a strong beat (3); that’s stressed enough for me to hear the offbeat leading tone as an afterthought and not an accent. Granted, landing on 4 is nothing special, but it still sounds less “square” to me than hitting 3 — especially since he’s already hit notes on 1 and 3 in the previous bar. (I’m with you on preferring the original rhythm, though.)

I actually feel a lot more syncopation in the first version (and like it a lot more too). The phrase aims for a nice goal of D on beat 3 (you could totally imagine it just ending there with a half note), then throws in that off-beat leading tone (THIS is the most conspicuous offbeat to me!) to act as a big syncopated upbeat and keep you off balance until you hit the next downbeat.

The second version moves all of the syncopation inside the normal boundaries of the phrase, and lands smack dab on 4 just as you’d expect. Much more smooth, and (in my opinion) much more boring.

Glad to see the return of the music-centric posts.

This is really interesting, but I think the change in syncopation actually reflects a change in genre-style from Kondo.

What we hear in the first one is, as you note, an emphasis on the off beat. Many people have called it calypso, and I don’t think that’s quite right, but it’s definitely a rock-reggae inspired beat behind it. The emphasis of the ‘snare’ is on the three, with the swung hats indicating an unplayed skank of reggae that might have made it in if he had more voices available. It might not have, the other arrangements indicate that he probably left it out as a choice; it’s implicitly there, though, I think.

The second version has changed genres to more of an afrobeat feel, I think. What we have here is the emphasis of the whole rhythm on the bass drum coming in on the one. The change in syncopation allows Kondo to stretch the melody out just a little bit more and make that one-emphasis feel more natural. If you think it through in your head, without that change the fourth beat of the fourth bar of the main melody line would be a little sparse. It doesn’t flow as easily as it does with the added syncopation. The key here is that the original has the offbeat skank to fill in that gap whereas the new arrangement doesn’t; it’s dead space.

Thanks for noticing this and posting! Very interesting…