Analyzing "Against the Invisible Net" Genshin Impact OST | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:00]Next up, we have Against the Invisible Net from the Genshin Impact Realm of Tranquil Eternity soundtrack. Once again, everybody, this is a bastard Zelfe, 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 want 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, what I'm doing, like the video, share the comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again everybody, don't forget to join the Discord server, join the Patreon, subscribe to the gaming channel, how to request songs even on the live stream members getting early access to the content. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other things later down this video, so stick around for that.

[00:00:39]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. Also note that at the time of recording, we're still celebrating 1 year of LFAS as well as 1,000 LFAS. So, thank you so much everybody for being here. I really do appreciate it. I do not take this for granted. I am grateful every single day that I get to do this at all and that any of you like this to begin with. With that, let's go ahead and do this at against the invisible net and world 50 5-0. Yes, let's go against the invisible net. Let's go.

[00:01:19]Okay, so we start with a couple of elements. We have two shami sens going on over here. Uh shami sen being this beautiful Japanese traditional instrument. It is basically one of the precursors to the banjo. Uh cuz the American banjo is very much uh similar in the structure to this kind of thing.

[00:01:39]We're having two of them going at the same time which now that I remember the whole theme of um Inazuma and Genshin is that you have the shogun and she's got like the duality of her that kind of thing, right? So we're having that we're having some drums playing against it.

[00:01:54]We're having two shamisins. One of them giving us the first melody which contains our initial motif. Motif being the smallest version of your musical idea. The seed, the essence from which everything else comes from. And then the second shamisen giving us a counter melody engaging in some counterpoint.

[00:02:11]Counterpoint being the study the art the uh of melodies. How they are, how they develop, how they interact with one another, usually in the context of two or more at the same time. Somebody removed the pin message. Hang on. Let me just put it again. I don't know who did that, but just um keep in mind, be careful mods. Uh not to remove the pin message. Out of time. All right. So, we're having that um we're dealing with some odd time signatures. Let me hear a bit more and let's see where this goes.

[00:02:40]A bit. Oh, we'll see. Remington.

[00:02:50]Okay. So, then we bring in the flute. I forget the name of the Japanese traditional flute, but we're having that one over here. Very beautiful, very windy flute. Like the lung power you need for one of these is going to be incredible cuz that sounds like a lot of air displays, you know? Like it's one thing to um to sing a regular like oh and holding that out and it's something else to be able to do like a very sharp exhale like like that kind of exhale doing an exhale like that for a prolonged period of time that's impressive. I think this kind of flute reflects that like the tone of it has that very sharp exhale to it. So yeah we're having that and of course we are dealing with some odd time signatures. So time signatures is for your rhythm. When you have music, you have three components. Melody, harmony, uh harmony and and rhythm. Melody being your individual uh horizontal lines of music, counterpoint, that kind of stuff.

[00:03:47]Harmony by far the most complicated.

[00:03:49]What notes you have available, what scales you get out of that, what chords you get out of that, the relationship between them, relationship between sets, you can just keep extrapolating forever.

[00:03:57]And then you have rhythm. Rhythm being your use of time. how fast, how slow things happen, when they happen, beat, that kind of thing. These are the rhythm is then subdivided, time is then subdivided into bars or measures. Same concept just different word. Uh, which are then determined by a time signature um signature plus a tempo mark or BPM, which means beats per minute. All right, K, welcome today. How you doing? Uh, these are then determined by two numbers. Uh, the way it works, you have upper number, lower number. Upper number is the number of beats in the bar. Lower number is what kind of beats you're basing yourself for the count. So, in English, in American English, it's pretty easy to remember which is which. Whole notes is represented by number one, half notes by number two, quarter notes by number four, eighth notes by number eight, 16th notes by number 16, so on and so forth.

[00:04:53]One whole note contains two half notes.

[00:04:55]One half note contains two quarter notes. One quarter note two eighth notes etc etc. So a four four bar is going to be a far a bar of four quarter notes or equivalent duration from any other notes but the count is going to be based on four quarter notes. So that means 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4. If you include eighth notes then you're going to have different combinations for like that. Can it be like like four over five? Once you start dealing with not this denomination, you have to do a lot more math. Like this is that's a more advanced thing that is it is the kind of things of can 2 + 2 equal 5 kind of thing that yes if you intellectualize it to an extent and you start bringing in a bunch of extra factors and you start making a bunch of stuff up um instead of just using three plus two or some equivalent to that right it's one of those things that you can do it but it just makes it extremely complicated and One of the points of writing down your music is that you're trying to communicate. So, keeping things simple is usually a very, very good way to put it. You have never seen a piece that does that. No, because it's more of a contemporary conservatory kind of thing so that the ivory tower uh can feel like they still have something on top of the the like non conservatory plebs, which doesn't really matter, right? So odd time signatures is when we start using well odd numbers outside of the norm and western music. The only exceptions to these are 14 34 18 and 38. Uh the rest of these usually will fall under the category of uh odd time signature. So what are these? We could say a five over four. 54. We're going to be counting to five instead of four. 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 Otherwise, we can have some of the more popular ones which are based on eighth notes. As you can see, I drew here a little divide.

[00:07:02]When you're counting count uh quarter notes or slower, usually you want to count them based on the numbers 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 that kind of stuff. Usually, because these kinds of bars are slower to count. However, once you start going to eighth notes, 16th note based bars, these become a little bit more difficult uh because they are faster. So, in order to do that, you start subdividing the different groups. So, if we take for example a bar of 78, which is the most popular odd time signature in the west, you are going to have seven eighth notes. But if you're counting these free um if you're counting these f fast, it's going to be pretty difficult, especially if you're just doing the regular count.

[00:07:43]1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. Why?

[00:07:46]because the final one seven has two syllables. So in order to avoid this, you just start subdividing them into groups of two and groups of three. So the most popular the most common combination is that you have two groups of two followed by a group of three eighth notes on a seven eight bar and you just count them as groups of 1 2 1 2 1 2 3. So instead of going 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, you start going 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 1 2 3 1. It's a lot easier. It's a lot smoother and it is a lot simpler. So find the groove versus counting. That's a different That's a different thing. That's a very very different thing. So yeah, we're using some uh odd time signatures over here to keep that very uneven ground going.

[00:08:36]Let's see where this goes.

[00:08:40]1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 Okay, so we have um Okay, so over here we are getting a what appears to be an odd time signature, but we are doing a 68 plus 34 count. Basically, both of these have the same number of notes, but it's how you count them. 68 is going to be counted as two groups of three. So, 3 + 3, where 3 4 is going to be counted as three groups of two. 2 + 2 + 2. So, we're getting 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3, which is the same number.

[00:09:27]It's just we're changing the accentuation of this and we're going back and forth between these two. Really cool. Let's see where this goes. One, two, three. One, one, two, three. One, two, three. 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3. So yeah, moving this forward.

[00:09:45]Moving the melody forward. 2 3 second flute coming in.

[00:09:51]Three flute. Secute as well. Third flute. And now we're going back to the similar uh concept that we were doing with the shamisens. The shamisens are now doing an ostenato. They have done the same thing over and over with minimal to no change. That is an ostenado as well as the drums. Usually the drums are going to use ostenados to keep the drum beat right. So we're having this going on. Uh we're having now the flutes now coming in with two new flutes. These are western uh transversal flutes. um which as opposed to the Japanese traditional flute, these ones are metal and you play to um to the side, the um the Japanese one is played more like a recorder flute, which is the one from from the front. Right? So, we're having transversal flutes, two of them, and they are now doing a similar dynamic to what the Shami Sins are doing. We're having one doing the whole melody while the other one is providing a counter melody. Let's hear this goes.

[00:10:44]It's really cool.

[00:10:50]2.

[00:10:56]Really cool. Now we're having some doublings. So now we're having some doublings happening. The the Now the flutes are playing the same thing at the same time. They're unified in their flute in their flute melodies. Let's see where this goes.

[00:11:11]Forward.

[00:11:15]Continue the melody. Some trails there.

[00:11:17]Very nice. Switching back to the Japanese flute.

[00:11:22]We switch slightly the drums. We switch the tambber of the drums to be a little bit lighter. Uh we are continuing the same exact count of the 68 + 34. Um and this is how you would see it written in the sheet music. It would be 68 plus 34.

[00:11:42]This is how it would be seen because we're doing one bar of 68 then one bar of 34. This would be the simplest way of writing this. Or you could just say 68 and then just change the accentuations but that would be a little bit more complicated. So we're just counting them as two groups of three plus three groups of two 6 8 + 3 4 and we're getting this.

[00:12:01]We're now bringing back the flute. The shamisins I think have also gone down a little bit here.

[00:12:13]We also bring in a we have a triangle there. Very nice chimy triangle. Uh yes, we got rid of the shamisins and now we have brought in a Cotto. Uh we're now doing a Cotto. The Cotto is bringing us some arpeggios here and there. The Cotto being basically the Japanese version of um basically a sitting guitar plus a harp. It's such a cool instrument and it's such a complicated one at that as well. But we're getting some really really cool sound out of it. And that is being giving us the accompaniment with some arpeggios.

[00:12:46]And arpeggio, let me just go ahead and bring this arpeggio. When you play a chord, one note at a time. Um, never distinguish the sound between the two of them. It takes a bit to um to recognize the sound. Like the the traditional Japanese flute is made out of wood and the traditional transversal flute is made of metal. So yeah, even though ironically the flute is considered a woodwind. These are supposed to be made out of wood, but the flute is made out of metal. So sometimes thing just things just don't make sense in music. So an arpeggio, you play a chord one at a time. Here's C minor arpeggiated.

[00:13:21]So uh don't they have a similar um way of playing? uh the way that the flute like when it comes to the the mechanisms, it's a little bit different uh between a transversal flute because you can see the transversal flute has a series of um of buttons up and down. The Japanese flute is more like a piccolo uh not a piccolo um not a piccolo flute, a recorder flute. a recorder flute being this one over here that as you can see over here the recorder flute is played from the top down whereas the other one so lip technique I don't think so I think the Japanese flute is played more along the lines of a recorder which the recorder would be similar to that of an obo or a clarinet where you have the read at the fl at the front and you um blow air from within that similar Similar to how the other flute, most flutes throughout history have had this kind of structure where it's just a wooden stick with a hollow wooden stick with holes and you move the different ones around. The transversal flute has a more complicated mechanism than that, which does give it a bigger uh range of that, but it is also a more complicated u mechanism for that. So, yeah. Uh even though they're technically both the same, uh there are some flutes, like for example, this is I think it's um yeah, there are some flutes that are made out of wood that have a similar like an in between kind of thing, but the Japanese flute is a recorder style transversals.

[00:15:01]So instrumental family, the violas, always think of them as violins. I mean, they're all the viol.

[00:15:07]Anyway, let's see where this goes.

[00:15:09]continuing and we bring in we bring in a clarinet.

[00:15:18]Yeah, we bring in a clarinet now with the new percussions over here evolving the material further a little bit more classy this time around. more dance-like that we're getting this switching away from the very uh battlelike uh tambber of the Japanese traditional instruments and going over to the clarinet. A bit more of a um a warmer sound to this really cool way of switching things around. And speaking of switching things around, we have switched things up and brought back the Patreon.

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[00:15:51]If you want to support this channel more than you already are by watching the videos, consider joining the Patreon today linked in the description. join the free tier even if you're not going to join the um the paid ones because this is where the non-gaming LFAS will be going to. What are going to be those?

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[00:16:32]Yeah, I had the Patreon for a while.

[00:16:34]It's just that uh I revamped it for the floor time experiment like it used to be for something completely different. So yeah, there you have it. Um there there it is. patreon.com/jamesbaster.

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[00:17:02]Back to the music. Let's continue here.

[00:17:05]We brought in the clarinet. Beautiful, beautiful instrument. Let's see where it goes.

[00:17:15]Fairly improvised melody.

[00:17:18]All right, we bring it back.

[00:17:25]So we now bring um two flutes. I think it's the two flutes now doing a harmonized melody. You can hear them both uh playing in parallel motion in counterpoint over here. Very very beautiful. Let me just see where this goes with these arpeggios. So basically they're both they start as arpeggios.

[00:17:46]both of them building up the arpeggio and then moving the melody. Let's use this glitch. I hope you're okay. We switch it back to the flute.

[00:18:00]We now bring in the background. We have a harp and the violins giving us a very cool combination of just basically taking both of the 68 and 34 and missing the last note, the last eighth note of it. 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 because we have 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5.

[00:18:23]But we know we don't have that final note giving us that last bit of like leaping note over here. Very beautiful ascending. Let's see where this goes.

[00:18:36]1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 So we're entirely in six now. Slowly bringing more violins now. Oh, take care of that. Take good care of that. Swing it. Oh, we bring some vocals.

[00:18:58]Oh, poly rhythm.

[00:19:00]polyw rhythm from the percussion. You can hear it right there. A polyw rhythm of course being rhythm against rhythm.

[00:19:07]We are having these two separate rhythms happening at the same time. Usually the clash between rhythms is what makes it sound cool. Uh the easiest polar rhythm to remember the three versus two, of course, where you have one rhythm doing twos. One, two, one, two, and the other one doing threes. 1 2 3 1 2 3 both together.

[00:19:25]So yeah, we're having that. Of course, we're doing a different poly rhythm over here after this is going to be live. So, yes, uh Glitch, do take care because losing the hearing is no uh no laughing matter. So, do be careful. Whatever the doctor orders, you follow to the letter to the letter. So, yes, let's see where this goes.

[00:19:45]We're having those Japanese Oh, violins doing some of those flutes going back. Oh, with those extra adorment notes.

[00:19:57]Now the flutes are going different combinations of the different combinations of Oh my god. poly rhythms on top of poly rhythms.

[00:20:05]All right, back we go. 2 4 5 6 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 2 We have now French horns in the back. Violins bringing this. So now we have percussion. We have the snare drum. We have now switched over to a fully orchestral ensemble over here. We have the uh trombones in the back giving us some of that rhythm along with the violins. The violins giving us that first melody. French horn giving us the counter melody. Oh, it's beautiful.

[00:20:36]Bring it up. Trombones down below with the French horns.

[00:20:43]Flutes and violins. Flutes and violins doing a doubling again. Doubling again being when you have multiple instruments doing the same thing at the same time.

[00:20:50]Beautifully done. Basically rehashing the different melodies we've done in different start point starting points in the rhythm. And it's just it's so good. Let's see where this goes.

[00:21:07]Next one.

[00:21:09]And now we bring it for the big final ending. Everything we bring everything back. So, now we bring in the climax.

[00:21:17]The climax, of course, going to be within the last one to two minutes of your piece. And you're going to want to bring as much back as you possibly can.

[00:21:23]And my god, is it just tight? Let's see where it goes.

[00:21:35]Poly rhythms. Bringing those French horns back. Now we're building in for with a bang.

[00:21:44]building up crescendos. Crescendos.

[00:21:49]Come on. Let's go for the melody.

[00:21:53]What is tight? The rhythms are really tight over here. Like everything is doing a slightly like everything that is happening is so well fine-tuned that is just on the dot as perfectly done as it could be. Let's see how this sounds.

[00:22:14]All right, we bring it bring it down to just the flutes. One last percussion.

[00:22:20]One last run of them we have. So, we bring back the orchestra. The ending probably could have done a little bit more um more work with that because with a with an orchestra this size of an ensemble, you want to make the ending feel just as heavy. Like a train doesn't just come to a a sudden stop unless it's a toy train. So, you want to make that inertia being felt. So, I probably would have would have dragged out this a little bit more uh for the ending.

[00:22:54]Minor criticism compared to how everything else went. And with that, we do one last run of the flute. And there you have it. against the invisible net from the Genshin Impact realm of tranquil eternity soundtrack. Beautiful stuff, man. Once again everybody, this has been a bastard Zelfe, a layman friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician, a composer, and my objective here has been to explain things in a way so that you don't have to be want to understand what's happened here musically. So if you're like, if you're watching this on the YouTube video archive thing, thank you for watching. Make sure to follow me the channel, subscribe to the channel, whatever you use. Like the video, sh Like the video, share the video, comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again, everybody, don't forget to join the Discord server.

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[00:25:27]Recorded live during the main channels after show. We play some video games on the later part of the stream. And then the VODs go here. Uh we we've been playing through Limbus Company, Just Shapes and Beats, Hollow Knight, Ultrakill. Every game we play eventually ends up in this channel. So subscribe to the channel today linked in the description or search on YouTube. Same username as James our bastard. Just with the J for a G and you got it. And uh yeah, there you have it against the Invisible Net Genshin Impact. That was awesome, dude. Really good stuff. Minor criticism at the end, but who cares?

[00:25:58]Really good stuff, man. Really good stuff. But uh yeah, let's move on.

[00:26:02]There's one.