five

          I've been rather busy this past week and haven't really gotten a chance to listen to music until earlier today. After turning up some Mars Volta ("Cassandra Gemini"), I remembered listening to some  8-bit versions of their songs. (For those not in the know, 8-bit or chiptune is a style of music in which pieces are electronically arranged using vintage computer sounds; these computers generally had 8-bit processors. The sounds from older Mario games are 8-bit.) 8-bit arrangements can often lend a playful or whimsical sound to music, as the timbres used for this instrumentation are more commonly associated with older video games. There is also generally a limit to the amount of instruments that can be played at once; once this limit is crossed a song can sound confusing or harsh due to the clashing of similar timbres. This forces 8-bit writers to be creative in their arrangements, as certain elements are often omitted for greater clarity of a piece.

          After I finished listening to the song, I decided to search for an 8-bit version. Lucky for me, someone had already spent countless hours arranging the 30-minute song in 8-bit form. The first noticeable difference is with the guitar during the introduction. In the original recording, the guitar plays a dissonant and frantic-sounding 16th-note pattern behind the melody. In the 8-bit version, the frantic effect is lost as the sound used plays the part with a staccato style, rather than connecting the notes. Due to the limitations of 8-bit music, the drums are also not able to fill as much space as the original. The introduction alternates between a disorienting drum groove and one that strongly establishes the meter (alternating 7/8 and 4/4), and the weak "performance" of the 8-bit drums lessens this effect, especially when considering the contrast of this section to the one that immediately follows. Immediately after the introduction the song becomes more stable, both metrically (4/4) and harmonically. This change isn't as prominent in the 8-bit version.

          Another unmistakable difference is the lack of vocals in the computerized arrangement. Vocal inflections accounts for much of the melodic expressiveness of the piece, and without it the powerful melodies suffer.

          The point in the 8-bit song that completely disgusts my aural sensitivities is 2 minutes 20 seconds into the song, in which the guitar and drum set introduce a new section by hammering in a static-pitched 16th-note motif. The computerized catastrophe not only does not provide any dynamic contrast, but does not even include the snare drum in this important and recurring motif. As I listened to more and more of the song, it became apparent that this arrangement lacks dynamic contrast, blending between voices, and was not able to highlight important/recurring themes/motifs. As much as I appreciate the time and effort taken to compute such a work, I think I'll confine my 8-bit adventures to less ambitious works.