Analyzing "Battleplan Extinguished Sins" Arknights OST | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Next up, we have Battle Plan Extinguished Sins from the Arknights soundtrack by Martin Gonzalez and Elizabeth Hall, the lyric video. Once again, everybody, this is Bastard Elephay, a layman-friendly analysis by a professionally trained musician composer. 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, or whatever you're doing here on YouTube. Like the video, share it, leave a comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again, everybody, don't join the Discord server. Join the Patreon, subscribe to the gaming channel. How to request songs if you're not on the livestream. Members getting early access to the content. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other things later than 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.

[00:00:47]Otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and guitar-ed, so please keep that in mind. With that, let's go ahead and do this. Battle Plan Extinguished Sins. Let's go.

[00:01:06]Okay, so we start with here some synth {slash} guitar doing what is called a doubling.

[00:01:13]Um, doing our our initial riff, potentially a motif, right? Um, Supergirl wasn't that bad. Notice how you said it wasn't that bad instead of saying that it was good. So, um, we start with an initial riff. I think this will be a riff. So, a riff is a motif that is then put through an ostinato that is then played on a guitar {slash} bass {slash} keyboard or synth or whatever it is, right? Um, usually these are these are done like this. So, a motif being the smallest version of a musical idea, the seed, the essence which everything else comes from. Then you put it through an ostinato. Ostinato means that you're repeating something over and over and over and over and over again with little to no repetition. And then, of course, you play it on the guitar or bass or one of these, and you then get um a riff out of it. Uh, riffs are a lot more flexible. In this case, it seems like we're going to be dealing with an actual song. I know that we call everything a song, but there is a categorical distinction between songs and instrumental music. Instrumental music, also known as pieces or tracks, uh, there's other names for it, but these are the more commonly ones uh commonly used ones, um, is that songs are going to have lyrics, they're going to have vocals, and these vocals and lyrics are going to be the focal driving force of the music. So, we're having this, and considering that this is a lyric video means that we're going to have some lyrics, which means right now we are going through the introduction of the song or the intro for it. Let's see where this goes.

[00:02:55]We bring in Oh my god, this riff. So, what we bring now the guitars doing the melody part of the riff, while we now have the other guitar giving us these really, really cool chords, uh, very much synchronized, uh, doing basically a rhythmic doubling along with the drums.

[00:03:11]Doubling is when you have more than one instrument doing the same thing at the same time. And basically, we have the bass drum of the drums very much in lockstep with the bass and the second guitar, the rhythm guitar, there giving us those really, really cool chords, while the other guitar goes ahead and does this over here. Uh, this is a song in the jam and shred. I knew it sounded familiar. I knew it sounded familiar. Okay, so this is a double spin. Yeah, when we do a um when we have a song that is done in both the jam and shred and the Elephay, we call it a double spin. Why?

[00:03:41]It's just a name we came up for it. So, we now switch over to the first bit of the lyrics. Chances are this is going to be your first verse.

[00:03:48]Uh, when it comes to song, we have two primary uh sections or building blocks that we base everything off of, verse and chorus. The verse is going to be your baseline level of intensity.

[00:04:01]Whereas your chorus is going to be your high level of intensity. Um, the way I put it is that verse is usually the floor level of intensity, uh, giving you the baseline that you're working with, and then the chorus is going to be your ceiling level of intensity, the high point that you're going to aim for. Then everything around your song is going to be aimed towards making these two work together. Now, verses, during a verse, usually you're going to hold back your melodies, you're going to go through a lot more text usually, and it's going to be overall a little bit more contained.

[00:04:34]Like you will feel that you could unleash far more than you are, but you are holding back so that when you actually go ahead and unleash, it has that much more of a dramatic effect.

[00:04:46]Let's see where this goes.

[00:04:52]>> [music] >> Okay, so we bring in um very nice and genty uh introduction to this. We bring the first uh iteration of the verse, while the other instruments while we have the vocalist here singing uh similar to the melody that we just heard from the guitar, we are having the rest of the instruments engaging in a polyrhythm or in several polyrhythms with the vocals. Polyrhythm meaning multiple rhythms, but usually we use it to refer to rhythm against rhythm, where you have multiple rhythms, usually different clashing rhythms, where the clash of these rhythms is what makes things sound cool.

[00:05:35]The most famous uh simplest example is the three versus two polyrhythm. Uh, where you have one part doing twos, one, two, one, two, and the other one doing threes, one, two, three, one, two, three. And when you put them at the same time, >> [music] >> you have this really, really cool sound that you can get in polyrhythms. Right now, we're doing that a little bit more um complicated. We're doing a more complex version of this because we are dealing with the genre of djent.

[00:06:03]Djent is a subset of metal. It is a subgenre of metal. And uh No, no, Glitch, we have we have plenty more. We have plenty more. We're going until 9:00 p.m. It's 6:30. Um, so it's 6:35, we're going until 9:00 p.m. So, uh djent is a very hit-or-miss genre for me.

[00:06:23]Reason being that djent is as far prog as it goes. Prog, of course, referring to progressive metal, which is constantly changing, there's constant shifts, that kind of stuff. We're constantly exploring material. But one of the issues that usually happens with djent is the issue of familiarity. There's none of it. Very, very, very um very few of it. It's very rare to dominate that.

[00:06:52]Because when you're making music, you want to keep a careful balance between what is familiar and what is new. Too much familiarity, too much repetition, too much of the same thing, you risk boring the listener, they tune out. Too much new material too quickly, you risk overwhelming the listener, they tune out. And djent often leans on the latter, meaning that usually when you're going to when you're dealing with with these kinds of things, when we have these sections, right? Like usually the ideal or a uh proven uh tried and tested method of of structuring your music is that you're going to have your section A followed by section B, something different, then you might go back to section A, then you might go either to section B or section C, and then usually to get a year to go back to section A. Sometimes you might want to go to section D and explore a little bit further before going back to section A or continuing forward. The problem with djent is that you we tend to use section A to then section B to then section C to then section E D to then section A to then section F to then section G, and it just continues going nonstop until the album is over. So, there one of the traps that djent artists tend to fall into is that there's nothing to fall back to. And if there's one thing you need to give your listener is something to hold on to. There has to be something consistent, something that overlaps, and something that allows you to refer back to where you are or to where you have been. Uh, this is also of course um not not it's not really a too much of a generality nowadays, but it is an issue that many djent artists and bands tend to fall into. I don't think this one did. Um, so yeah, just bringing it up. That is a personal pet peeve of mine. So, let's see where this goes. We're having the first verse. Let's see where this goes.

[00:08:46]Naturally, more active guitars there.

[00:08:49]>> [music] >> So, every once in a while, we are getting So, we're going back and forth between the accompaniment instruments, but the overall idea has stayed pretty consistent. We have the the guitars and the drums doing their thing, and every once in a while, we are getting uh the voices being harmonized. Harmonization being counterpoint parallel motion in thirds or sixths, which is the second layer of uh vocals that we're hearing every once in a while. Counterpoint being the study, the art of melodies.

[00:09:22]How they are, how they develop, how they interact with one another, usually in the in the context of having two or more at the same time. Uh, counterpoint can be measured in many ways, one of which is parallel motion. Parallel motion means that you have more than one melody doing the same thing at the same time from a different starting point or an interval. Two of the types of intervals being thirds or sixths, as we are hearing right now. That second vocal, I think it's third above that we're having over here. Let's see where this goes.

[00:09:52]>> [music] >> Okay, so we switch things around. You can hear now that we are doing a slightly different melody than what we were doing before. The drums have now stabilized. The guitars have stabilized, but we haven't quite fully unleashed the melodies as much as they could. Like the music still feels like we're building up to something. We have gone from the verse to the pre-chorus.

[00:10:18]Uh the pre-chorus, so if verse is your floor, chorus your ceiling, your pre-chorus is going to be a connective tissue between the two. Be it a ladder, a wall, stairs, whatever you want to put it, it is what connects the two, makes the transition from verse to chorus that much smoother. We're having that going on. Let's see where this goes.

[00:10:39]>> [music] >> That little syncopation there is a lot of fun.

[00:10:49]Nice and There we go.

[00:10:59]So the chorus So yeah, we have the pre-chorus that very quickly blends into the chorus. It could have been the chorus.

[00:11:08]Um and I'm going to say just it was a quick chorus.

[00:11:11]Um I mean it didn't feel as clima- as much of a climax as it could have been, but it it it does fill up the Yeah, we went straight to the chorus. So there was no pre-chorus. We just had the chorus. And now we are having an instrumental break.

[00:11:30]We're having an instrumental break. So yeah, uh that was the chorus. I just thought it was going to build up a little bit more. And now we're having an instrumental break. We're bringing back the guitar with the original uh riff.

[00:11:39]Let's see where this goes.

[00:11:43]Nice. Basically like the intro. We're recapitulating the intro.

[00:11:49]Nice and Okay, so we take things back. We now bring of course the harmonized uh vocals back and we are back into verse number two. This time around we're taking a different approach to this. We're going to approach from above instead of below when it when it comes to the melody. The drums are a little bit more uh are a little bit different right now, a little bit more um steady than they were last time around, at least for the start of the vocals.

[00:12:23]Building up and stabilizing things a little bit more. It's a good way of revisiting the idea of the verse cuz you can that's one of the advantages that the songs have that you can re- bring back things you've done before and just do them in a completely different approach. And as long as the vocals stay more or less the same, even if they have different lyrics, you can get away with changing a lot of things around them uh while still making things feel the same.

[00:12:52]It's one of those things very unique to songs. It's very difficult to pull off outside like an instrumental music, but hey, if it works, it works. And you know what else works?

[00:13:04]The [laughter] Patreon.

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[00:13:58]Thank you to those who are already members, particularly Real Nemesis, uh French Guy, and Amaya. Your support me means the world to me. Thank you so much for your continued support. So if you want to if you want to support this channel more than you already are by watching and subscribing and all that good stuff, consider becoming a Patreon today. patreon.com/jamesrbastard linked in the description. Become a member today. patreon.com/jamesrbastard linked in the description. All right, back we go. Let's see how the second verse fares.

[00:14:31]>> [music] >> Okay, so right now the guitars Another difference right now is that the guitars are also bouncing bouncing back and forth between playing along with the drums and doubling a little bit of the melodies that the vocals are doing. So as I said, doubling is when you have more than one instrument more than more than one layer doing the same thing at the same time. And in this case we're doing temporary doublings that are more like accents to what the vocals are doing to highlight those specific points in the rhythm. Let's see where this goes.

[00:15:01]>> [music] >> Now pre-chorus.

[00:15:08]I would say this pre-chorus >> [music] >> or pre-chorus number one.

[00:15:13]Nice.

[00:15:15]And here we go. Chorus number two.

[00:15:19]Nice. Nice. Nice.

[00:15:22]There we go. Yes.

[00:15:25]Oh, that little syncopation there. So good. So yeah, that little bit where they where the drums and the guitar missed the beat and and land late, that is rhythmic displacement in action. So rhythmic displacement, as the name suggests, is when you displace something in the rhythm so that you're either pushing something down so it sounds later, rushing something up so it sounds earlier, or you're using silence to achieve either of these two effects.

[00:15:49]Right now, we are pushing down the landing of the start of the new repetition just one beat getting this really really cool sound out of the guitars and the drums. Let's see where this goes.

[00:16:04]Really cool.

[00:16:08]Harmonizes very nicely.

[00:16:12]Up to you.

[00:16:19]We bring in a polyrhythm after the chorus.

[00:16:23]And we bring in a breakdown. So when you're making music, going to keep a careful balance as I said between what is familiar and what is new. There is one universal exception, no matter the style or genre, which is solos. And then heavy metal, metal, djent, all of its subgenres has one additional exception, which is breakdowns.

[00:16:47]Breakdown you are seeing over here.

[00:16:49]Solos. No matter what it is um or solos regardless of style or breakdowns, you can do almost anything and get away with it meaning the standard of um new material the familiarity and new material become a little bit more relaxed. Breakdown in metal is to what electronic music is dropping the beat.

[00:17:09]And right now of course we're bringing this very very rhythmic, very much focused on drums and guitar. Really cool. And um that is later. Welcome to today. How you doing? Seriously, I remember back in college hearing one of my rock and roll history professors explaining things to me and a biochem major that made me care about um and want to understand. Toys, welcome to today. How you doing? I am glad that you consider me to be that young. So with that, let's see where this goes.

[00:17:36]Why are there so many different names for basically the same thing?

[00:17:41]Okay.

[00:17:43]In general, usually it is because people different people discovered it at the same time and they gave it different names. Uh but because this is music and because of the internal logic of music, the answer usually is [ __ ] you, that's why. Um there's no clear answer for me for many of these.

[00:18:01]There just isn't a clear answer for many of these things. Some things in music simply do not make sense like this and it's just one of the realities we have.

[00:18:10]Uh it's just one of the realities we have in music. Some things so- sometimes things just do not make sense. Why? [ __ ] you, that's why. That's that's usually just And it's not coming from me. It's not coming from the teacher. It's coming from the concept of music itself.

[00:18:23]We just We just have that.

[00:18:24]>> [laughter] >> It's just something that happens, okay?

[00:18:27]Um so yeah, um this music is just believe me and don't ask why. Yeah, like a lot of concepts in music are just trust me, bro.

[00:18:36]And that's the internal logic. Trust me, bro. That's just how it is. Yeah, a lot of the times. A lot of the times, yeah.

[00:18:42]So let's see [snorts] where this goes.

[00:18:47]Oh, a little bit of chopping the audio there. Muting the audio temporarily.

[00:18:51]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:18:54]Bringing the melody bringing an elongated version of the original motif that we had at the very very start.

[00:19:01]Elongation, of course, being another way that you can develop new material in which you do a slower version of something you've done before. So um it's a similar reason for words that have synonyms. Yeah, like sometimes they're not entirely the same thing.

[00:19:15]Like they have their own category for things, but they're just there as for extra options kind of thing. Anyway, let's see where this goes.

[00:19:23]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:19:26]Continuing that breakdown.

[00:19:32]And we switch over. We finish the breakdown and now we go to our bridge.

[00:19:37]So a bridge, if I said verse floor level, chorus ceiling level, bridge is going to be basement level. An absolute contrast as far a contrast as you can go uh intensity wise so that then when you jump back into the chorus, the distance the distance covered is greater even though it's at the same time. So, the contrast is heavier, making the going back to the climax a lot more pronounced. Let's see where this goes.

[00:20:04]With acoustic guitars and everything.

[00:20:07]Acoustic guitars they're arpeggiating the chords very beautifully.

[00:20:11]Yep, there it's coming in.

[00:20:14]Nice.

[00:20:16]Nice. Awesome, dude.

[00:20:18]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:20:22]And Second. Bam!

[00:20:31]So, we then start with rhythmic displacement, but we then bring the final chorus in. We start with just the vocals and we bring the rest of the band over there hitting as hard as it goes.

[00:20:43]We can now feel that contrast from the very nice chill acoustic guitars and clean singing alone to now this, right?

[00:20:51]Like we've gone from the basement to the ceiling, straight line, we bee-lined the two, and now we have this. Let's see how this ends.

[00:21:02]That's really good. [music] Little variation here and there from the guitars.

[00:21:09]Extra details. Little growling there in the background.

[00:21:14]Arknights only cooking 100%.

[00:21:20]Nice. Reached that high note.

[00:21:22]One last outro.

[00:21:26]We go for the for a variation of the breakdown there as an outro. One last growl and there you have it. Oh, that was awesome. That was all like this is this is how you do djent right. You have your verses, you have your chorus, and you have something to fall back into.

[00:21:44]Even though everything happened differently every time, there was something that we were able to hold on to, allowing us to enjoy this song and being able to hold on to things and keep a point of reference. And with that, there you have it. Battle Plan Extinguished Sins from the Arknights soundtrack by Martin Gonzalez and Elizabeth Hall. That was awesome, dude.

[00:22:11]Once again, everybody, this has been the Bastard Zelafay, a layman-friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician 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, thank you for watching. Make sure to follow me on the channel, subscribe to the channel, whatever it is you want to do. Like the video, share it with a 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, the channels updates, projects, giveaways, everything gets announced there first. Of course, we have the community there. We hang out, we chat, we steal memes from other people sort of claim them as our own, and where I host the Vintage Story Vintage Story community server.

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[00:25:04]Really cool stuff by Martin, man. Mad respect, dude. Really good stuff, man.

[00:25:08]Really good stuff. But yeah, let's move on. Let's move on.