Analyzing "the EmpErroR Full ver" by sasakure.UK (maimai) | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Next up, we have the Emperor full version by Sasakure. UK This is featured in Maimai as my understanding. Once again, everybody, this is the Bastard Telefe, a layman-friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician composer, and my objective here is to explain things in a way so that you don't have to be one to understand what is happening here musically. So, if you like the sound of that, make sure you're following the channel, subscribe to the channel, whatever thing you do. Like the video, share the video, comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again, everybody, don't forget the Discord server. Join the Patreon, subscribe to the gaming channel. I forgot to scroll up. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other things later down this video, so stick around for that. Disclaimers showing on your screen right now, so go ahead and pause the video to read them in full. Otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and [ __ ] so please keep that in mind.

[00:00:51]All right. With that, let's do this. The Emp Error. Let's go.

[00:01:04]Okay, we start with three components.

[00:01:07]Number one, we have this synth over here that seems to be in multiple um layers going on. And still the Telefe? Yeah.

[00:01:18]Yeah, like we we we start usually around this time, yes. So, we start with this uh it has uh bass, it has middle, and it has high. It seems like a triple-layered uh synth giving us this initial really cool funky melody to it, which contains, of course, our initial motif. Motif being the smallest version of your musical idea, the seed, the essence from which everything else comes from. Then, we have a percussion at the start.

[00:01:42]Sounded like uh like a bell of some sort. And we have some whispering going around giving us a little bit of extra ten extra um texture to it. Let's see where this goes.

[00:01:54]All right, there's percussion, there's a snare there.

[00:01:59]And you can hear right now how even now that we added the drums, we are having quite a bit of a syncopated uh motif going on. Syncopation being when you play against your drums, against your beat, or against your metronome. The metronome being the click that establishes the steady beat behind anything that you do. So, even if this is very uneven, there is going to be a beat a a a click behind it. That will give us a 1 2 3 4 1. Very uniform, very straightforward, very much just the same. And syncopation means that you're playing against your drum beat, against um the beat all together, or against the metronome whether or not it's there to begin with. So, let me go back a second cuz I did hear something changing over here. Let's see where this goes.

[00:02:56]Okay, so we bring in a little bit of um of glitchiness to this. We uh play some samples, a lot of texture, and we now bring in the new version of the motif.

[00:03:09]We bring in the full-on drums. Now the drums are in full force along with the bass. And we are getting a doubling now.

[00:03:17]We have the original synth and a piano now doing a doubling. Doubling is when you have more than one instrument doing the same thing at the same time. We're having them both do that and I think we have a chime as well. We might have a chime uh maybe a glockenspiel.

[00:03:31]Um The glockenspiel, of course, being this very beautiful, really, really small mallet instrument. It sounds very divine. It sounds very, very innocent by itself. It's a very, very beautiful one.

[00:03:45]Um and we might be using that as well.

[00:03:47]Let me hear a bit more.

[00:03:53]Yep, we have a we have a glockenspiel.

[00:03:55]We have a glockenspiel. Uh we also have some um vocal samples. We're having some vocal samples as well, giving us a little bit of like extra texture. They're not there as lyrics, they're there as extra texture for the rhythm section. So, um going to texture, you'll hear in a two cuz that's good to have signature samples. Okay, so we are using uh samples uh some samples in general, right? Good good timing for your message.

[00:04:22]So, we are using several uh samples to an extent um to use them more like drums instead of using them like full-on vocals. Let's see where this goes.

[00:04:34]Little bit of shifting there. Oh.

[00:04:40]Okay, so we have a brief moment there of a break. We start bringing a variation of the motif, just part of the motif, and we immediately sequence it, right?

[00:04:49]So, sequencing is when you take a musical idea, usually a melody, and you repeat it from a new starting point. So, for example, if I have this melody over here, uh excuse me.

[00:05:01]That kind of thing. Uh I can just repeat it from a new starting point.

[00:05:07]You're just sequencing it. And um ZuzikOnline, don't worry. Like, we reset the list every time, so you don't have to worry about it. Like, you have to be present for your song, but if you put the the song on the first list, it's not going to be there for the second one.

[00:05:19]You have to put it uh you have to put the request in every time. So, yeah, that's that's how I that's how we account for people that leave, and that's how uh without having to worry of, "Oh, please take my stuff out of the list." You don't have to worry about it.

[00:05:31]If you have to go, you have to go. Um you're good. You're good. There's nothing to worry about. I think it'll work. And welcome back. Welcome today.

[00:05:38]So, yeah, we're having the sequencing.

[00:05:39]We take a little bit of the motif. We sequence it downwards, and now we're bringing in this new section. Let me hear a bit more.

[00:05:55]Okay, so we now have a call and response section. Call and response being a musical conversation. Right now we're having the first part with the bass ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba that is a very nice syncopated bass with some chiptune in the background. Sometimes doing scales, sometimes doing arpeggios. An arpeggio is when you play a chord one note at a time. For example, here's E minor. Here's arpeggiated.

[00:06:23]So we can have some of them going up or down. Either way they are doing runs. A run is basically you're just doing something really fast in music. So we're having that as the call and then we are bringing a little bit of improv piano as a response. Improv, of course, improvisation, very jazzy.

[00:06:43]The piano playing sometimes the right notes, sometimes the wrong notes. Very much something observed in jazz.

[00:06:49]So yes.

[00:06:51]You don't know if you like it or you don't like it or not. Well, every round okay, so the way that we work on live queue.

[00:06:59]As you can see there are no requests anymore over here. Every time we take the requests for the live queue everyone puts in their request.

[00:07:07]We then spin the wheel and the winner of that wheel gets the round. The following round everyone has to put the requests in again.

[00:07:17]And we spin the wheel again for the following live round.

[00:07:20]And it's based on the winner. I figured that was the the closest we could get to a fair system.

[00:07:26]So yeah, like it could be how many times though?

[00:07:31]The will of the will.

[00:07:33]The will of the will. Some people have gotten it first try, some people have never gotten it. This is the closest we have.

[00:07:40]The only thing is the will is really the will has a will of its own. The wheel has a will of its own. Sometimes it grants people the the first try, sometimes it is just doesn't give you It's the will of the wheel.

[00:07:53]It I think that's the the the closest we can have to a fully uh fair system. The wheel of rig, yeah, and the more you complain about it, the more the wheel will take it personally. We have had it.

[00:08:03]Like we have had it. Like there's been people that complain about the wheel and then they're like one spot away like six times in a row.

[00:08:11]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, make sure that you treat the wheel properly. Make sure you're nice to the wheel because the wheel is not human and therefore it doesn't have to abide by human etiquette.

[00:08:23]All right, let's see where this goes. So yeah, we're having the back and forth.

[00:08:26]We're having a little bit of improv piano. Let's see where this goes.

[00:08:31]There have been people who complained that got picked right after to be proven wrong, but those have been less and less. So Maybe that's why you never won. Well, there you go, buddy. You know what I mean? Welcome to the hero.

[00:08:43]All right, build up section.

[00:08:47]Okay, so we have a build up section.

[00:08:49]We're having the drums being doubled by one of the samples. We have another set of samples in the back also being doubled by another synth and we are doing this part. We go from the call and response section to a polyrhythm section.

[00:09:05]Basically, polyrhythm is multiple rhythms, but usually the polyrhythm means rhythm against rhythm where you have multiple rhythms happening at the same time.

[00:09:15]Often these rhythms clashing against one another and the clash between these rhythms is what makes it sound cool. Uh usually, for example, the simplest polyrhythm to explain is a three versus two, right? Like you have one part doing twos, one, two, one, two, and the other one doing threes, one, two, three, one, two, [music] three. Both of them together.

[00:09:36]>> [music] >> So we're having, of course, something far more complicated going on right now with multiple polyrhythms happening at the same time, but because all of them are are doing their own thing, but that weird clash between them is what makes it sound cool, we get these kinds of results. Let's see where this goes.

[00:09:57]And of course, the syncopation we're getting from from this and the snow and the snares Oh, nice. Let's see where this goes.

[00:10:06]Speeding up, building up.

[00:10:11]And >> [music] >> All right, we take over and we do a little bit of rhythmic displacement. We do a run of a of part of the motif. We do a we do a run basically of the motif itself, and we now bring the new section. So, uh rhythmic displacement, as the name suggests, is when you displace something in your rhythm so that you're either pushing something down so that it sounds later, rushing something up so that it sounds earlier, or you're using silence or some interruption to achieve either of the two results. So, what we're doing over here is we are taking the concept of cadence. So, when you're making music, you're doing one of two things.

[00:10:49]You're building tension or you're resolving that tension. That point in between we call the cadence.

[00:10:54]Now, uh cadence resolution, uh this principle applies to electronic music the same way as building a building up and dropping a beat, where you build up the tension and then you release. So, the resolution, when it comes to rhythmic displacement, is you're taking this moment of resolution or dropping the beat, and you push it back um so that it sounds later. You do that type of rhythmic displacement, and then you might use silence, you might replace it with something. In this case, we had a a brief run of the motif. And what this does is that it gets you an additional set uh additional extra phantom tension that makes your resolution or your drop that much more pronounced. In electronic music, they call this a hook uh because you know, once you look at this shape, kind of looks like one.

[00:11:38]In general, this is just general rhythmic displacement. It sounds really cool, and now of course we drop the beat. We bring in this new beat. We are using vocal samples to emulate singing.

[00:11:48]Let me hear a bit more.

[00:11:54]>> [music] >> Okay, so we're having the vocal samples being pitch shifted.

[00:12:00]Pitch shifting of course, that's like pitch shifting. That's like an auto-tune kind of thing where you have a sample, like for example a sample of me talking right now, and you were to change the pitch of each of the moments so that it sounds like you are playing notes, like it's singing a note, that kind of stuff.

[00:12:20]So we're having that top hat. Welcome to the how you doing? So we're having that and we're we're fulfilling an elongation of the motif that way. So elongation is another way that you can develop develop your material in which you play a slower version of something you've done before.

[00:12:34]So we bring in the vocal sample, we put it through a pitch shift so that the melody starts fitting the motif, and we slow down the motif so that it sounds more like singing, giving us this over here. We have of course then the drums doing their thing. We have the one of the synths just holding down the chords.

[00:12:52]So yeah, let's see where it goes.

[00:13:01]Nice.

[00:13:03]Off the ramp and a brief moment of off the ramp right there. Off the ramp being a colloquial term that I use. Colloquial, by that I mean there's no official academic definition for this or at least I'm choosing not to use it for the sake of simplicity. And off the ramp is what I like to call a particular type of pronunciation that makes the listener feel suspended up in the air at the mercy of inertia waiting to see where you land. How do you do this? Remove the drums, maybe the the bass as well. In this case we remove almost everything so that we can drop right into this next part um over here.

[00:13:34]And speaking of dropping I dropped the ball on the page.

[00:13:40]>> [laughter] >> patreon.com/jamesrbastard uh if you want to support this channel more than you already are consider joining the patreon today. Uh >> [laughter] >> That was a bad segue. Um yes, uh even if you're not going to pledge any money consider joining the free tier because this is where the non-gaming LFAs will be going to or are going to. What are those? Anime, um film, TV, uh label music, that kind of stuff, the stuff that we usually don't do live on the main channel. Why? What we do on uh YouTube is inherently fair use. That does not stop bad actors uh from abusing the copyright system on YouTube. So, in order to just not deal with that and not risk it, we are putting those over here. Free for everyone to watch and and what's it called? With uh members getting early access, uh paid members getting early access to it. Uh there's other stuff for members, early access to the content, behind the scenes, that kind of stuff. So, yeah, let me just double-check. It seems like the uh stream health is uh not great for YouTube. So, let me just um reset the the feed. 1 second.

[00:14:50]Oh, there we go. There we go. All right, so um yeah, we're good. We're good.

[00:14:53]We're good. So, yeah, if you want to support this channel more than you already are consider joining the patreon today linked in the description. Become a member today. Thank you to those who are already become members, particularly Real Nemesis, French Guy, and Amaya.

[00:15:05]Your support means the world to me.

[00:15:06]Thank you so much. For everybody else, consider joining today.

[00:15:08]patreon.com/jamesrbastard linked in the description.

[00:15:11]patreon.com/jamesrbastard.

[00:15:14]All right, so back we go. We drop the beat. Let's see where this goes.

[00:15:25]>> Okay, so we bring back so for this dropping off the beat, we bring back the the original motif. We run it we run it all the way through as it was originally done and we have that and name 343 the requests are not open yet.

[00:15:42]Welcome to the naughty list. All right, name 343.

[00:15:47]All right.

[00:15:49]There we go.

[00:15:51]All right, not yet. Your requests are not open yet. Welcome to the naughty list. So, um yeah, we're having we're having this going on and I'm just making sure.

[00:16:03]Okay, there was a moment just now that we did lose a little bit of of frames but we're we're good we're good we're good. So, let's see where this goes.

[00:16:13]Continuing that syncopated keyword in the back.

[00:16:19]Chainsaws.

[00:16:26]Okay, we switch over to now having the vocal samples again. We switch to another section of mainly polyrhythms.

[00:16:34]We're having the the synths continuing those those chords right there. The vocals giving us that polyrhythm. Really cool.

[00:16:44]Let's see where this goes.

[00:16:48]Nice.

[00:16:52]Build up again and sequence downwards and call and response section again. There you go.

[00:17:06]Call and response section. There we go.

[00:17:12]Nice.

[00:17:14]We continue now with the polyrhythms.

[00:17:19]Nice. Nice. Nice.

[00:17:23]Ah, so we drop So we drive from the corner response drop to another build-up over here, focusing primarily on those really, really nice polyrhythms.

[00:17:33]How long is this track? I don't know.

[00:17:34]Not that long that much longer. Let's see.

[00:17:37]Nice. Building up again with the polyrhythms, the drums background and extending that off the ramp.

[00:17:51]There we go. Similar drop to what we did back last time.

[00:17:55]Nice.

[00:17:57]Slowly rebuilding the Okay, so we go back to the singing elongation of the motif. And I just realized in the background the synth and xylophone are doing an a reduction of the motif. A reduction being the opposite of elongation where you do a faster version of something you've done before. So, >> [clears throat] >> excuse me.

[00:18:20]So yeah, we're having a a reduction of the motif while we're having the elongation at the same time. Both of them are superimposed over one another while we're having the drums.

[00:18:29]Very fun stuff. Let's see where it goes.

[00:18:36]Off the ramp again and we bring back the previous version of just the elongation not with the superimposed reduction to it.

[00:18:51]Fun stuff. This sounds like a one-to-one repetition or a recapitulation.

[00:18:57]Recapitulation basically just means you are repeating something you've done before one-to-one with minimal to no change because if it worked once, might as well do it again. Let's see where this goes.

[00:19:08]>> [music] >> All right, this time the drums are a little bit more active and Okay, we switch over to a like seems like we're in the outro territory now.

[00:19:25]We're about to finish the song. We are now having the vocals doing a new elongation of the material. We're bringing back the bell and we are having a bunch of more polyrhythms. Like it seems like this piece is very focused on polyrhythms. I mean, my my my understanding is that this is a rhythm game.

[00:19:44]Um For rhythm games, having polyrhythms it gives the developers so much room for so many shenanigans that they can add that.

[00:19:53]It makes sense. That's where this goes.

[00:19:59]Building up again. Nice.

[00:20:03]Building up. Building up and One more run of the of the sequence now.

[00:20:10]Piano.

[00:20:18]Okay, we finished that last run of the piano. We resolve it. We interrupt with a glitchy um with with glitchy kind of thing and then there you have it one more time. Uh if the stream is lagging to for you try refreshing or try one of the other ones.

[00:20:37]It's fine from my end. So, with that, there you have it. That was the Emp Error full version by sasakure.uk featured in maimai is my understanding.

[00:20:53]That was very That was very fun. Very very fun. No real sections of like heavy drops, but the polyrhythms just kept me entertained just enough in Snazzy.

[00:21:02]Welcome to the area you're doing. So, there you have it. Once again, everybody, this has been the Bastard Zela Faye, a layman-friendly analysis.

[00:21:09]I'm a professionally trained musician and composer, and my objective here has been to explain things in a way so that you don't have to be one to understand what's happened here musically. So, if you're watching this on the YouTube video archive thing, thank you for watching. Make sure you're following the channel. Subscribe to the channel.

[00:21:20]Whatever you want to do. Like the video.

[00:21:22]Share the video. Comment. Turn on the notifications. Become a member. Once again, everybody, don't forget to join the Discord server. That's where everything gets announced first, whether it's the streams going live, the videos going up on the channels, updates, projects, giveaways, everything is announced there first. Of course, we have the community there. We hang out.

[00:21:36]We chat. We steal memes from other people's servers and claim them as our own. And where I host the Vintage Story Vintage Story community community server. It used to be a Minecraft mod.

[00:21:45]Now it's its own standalone game. It focuses more on the nitty-gritty aspects of survival, hands-on crafting, mechanical engineering, that kind of stuff. It's cheaper than Minecraft. I love it. I prefer it. I'm not sponsored by them or anything. I just really love the game to the point that I built a PC just to host the server for this game, which is available to join via our Discord community server. So, join the Discord today, linked in the description, and become a member today.

[00:22:10]Also, share these videos with everybody that you know. Use the hype function on YouTube. We have a group on the Discord that coordinates for that. So, link in the description. Help the channel grow.

[00:22:18]Members get early access to the content.

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[00:22:29]If you want to listen to this without me interrupting you every minute and a half seconds, I'll be linking a description down below. If you want to request a song and you're not on the live stream, check the pinned comment on this video.

[00:22:36]It has the instructions on what to do.

[00:22:38]If you want to catch the streams when they happen live, we aim for Monday through Friday, 4:00 p.m. Central European Time during the full-time experiment. If you don't know what that is, go to the main page of my YouTube channel. The video the pinned video there should have the the it has the instruction not the instruction the explanation video during the duration of the experiment. We stream live on Twitch, YouTube, and Kick, so that you can tune in from whichever platform you prefer. Again, 4:00 p.m. Central Europe. If you're not in Europe, do not worry. We have the full up-to-date streaming schedule showing in your local time zone in both Discord and Twitch. So, if you live in Chungungo and you're like, "Yeah, but what time is 4:00 p.m. in Hungary? I don't live there." Do not worry, just go to Discord or Twitch, both linked in the description, and they're going to show the streaming schedule up-to-date in your local time zone accounting for daylight savings if necessary. And subscribe to the gaming channel, follow the gaming channel cuz of course I have a gaming channel. I'm on YouTube, what else could I possibly have? Games are bastard. This is where I put the gaming aftershow recordings when they happen, recorded live during the main channel's aftershow replay video games on the later part of the stream, and then the VODs of every game we play eventually end up over here. Uh so, make sure you subscribe to the channel, linked in the description, or search on YouTube, same username as James R bastard. Just swap the J for a G and you got it. And uh yeah, there you have it. The emp error full version sasa kuryu came I my. That was a lot of fun, man. Good stuff, man.

[00:23:52]Good stuff, but uh yeah, let's move on.

[00:23:55]Let's move on.