PMD: GtI's Time Signatures

Don't even get me started on the GTI music; in my opinion, the composers had a bit too much fun with unusual rhythms, and on top of that it's a lot harder to transcribe than earlier ones because of the sound quality and effects and blending of instruments and whatnot. <_<

(Actually, I've got Telluric Path on a back burner at the moment myself, and even though it's not tremendously hard overall, the beginning part was a bit odd between the snare accents all over the place and the mallet rhythm not being intuitive.)

So I appreciate how challenging it is, but I also very much appreciate someone taking on said challenge to put some of this difficult but otherwise great music out there!

However (and this is coming from someone whose primary instrument is a drum set), most of the songs are consistently in 1 or 2 time signatures and even though it gives the aural impression of changing time signatures, it's just... a really hard-to-count rhythm in the existing signature, more often than not.


Anyways, Kilionea Road just has the two changes: from 4/4 to 3/4 at the time you indicated, and back from 3/4 to 4/4 around 1:42. It's just that the emphasis isn't always on the downbeat until it gets to the section that you pointed out "stays to 3/4 again".


Forest of Shadows is just regular 4/4 the whole way through, although can be really hard to pick out the downbeat for that middle section. It's easier when you notice that the same rhythm actually repeats every two bars in that section (with bold/underlined note being a hit, and brackets part of the previous note's sustain):

1 (+) 2 + (3) + 4 (+) 1 + (2) + (3) + 4 +


Daybreak Ridge is 5/4 for the whole song, other than (at 1:22) the last four bars before the loop, which are in 3/4. At 0:51 it sounds like a 6/4 and a 4/4 bar or something, but of course that just adds up to 10/4, a.k.a. two 5/4 bars, still, so it's just the composer having fun with the downbeat again.


Ochre Quarry is also in 4/4 time the whole time until the switch to 3/4 at the obvious point (0:52), and back to 4/4 at 1:14. The cymbal pattern at 0:28 is as follows:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +    1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

and that pattern repeats every 4 bars for that whole section.


The beginning part of Holehills has a pickup beat, the 1/8 snare roll (four 32nd-notes), and goes from there into 5/8. It switches into 6/8 around 0:28 (starting when the oboe-type instrument comes in), and has a single 8/8 (or 4/4 if you prefer) bar at 1:01 where the weird sliding note comes in, and back at 1:04 to 5/8 for the rest of it. (For that change at 1:01, I'd probably divide it as one more 6/8 bar and a 2/8 bar where the percussion is by itself, as it's a more natural-sounding split. But in terms of sound, it all adds up to the same thing anyways.)


The common denominator seems to be the use of a rhythmic style that a lot of people have trouble with: repeating a triplet-sounding rhythmic "foot" over two measures rather than just one, which means the downbeat of every second bar doesn't have the emphasis it sounds like it should have.