Sudden phrase-initial beat-long cutoffs
2025-01-02I have literally no idea how to describe this in words, but here's a short list of a bunch of songs that do a cool musical thing.
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A Cruel Angel's Thesis (theme song of Neon Genesis Evangelion)
First listen to this pre-chorus bit (this is not the cool musical thing), and in particular listen for the electronic brassy thing at about the midpoint, on the first syllable of "moshimo":
Now keep that little sound effect in mind, and listen for it at the beginning of the chorus (around 0:04):
That's the cool thing! The electronic brassy thing doesn't happen on beat 1, like expected; it stops abruptly and comes in on beat 2 instead. The surprise effect is further amplified by the three notes on the same instrument strongly leading up to beat 1, which makes you really anticipate hearing:
Compare this to the second time that musical phrase happens in the chorus, at around 0:10-0:11. There, the same instrument has a similar run that actually lands on beat 1 this time. This makes sense, since it'd feel overdone / cheesy / lose its impact if it happened every time. (There is still a small remnant of the beat 2 landing, in the form of a cymbal crash.)
This is the song that originally inspired me to make this list, which is interesting, because it sort of leaves out the "cutoff" part of the title of this post. So the next example is the most dramatic one in that regard.
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Flowers (unreasonably catchy song by Miley Cyrus)
This song does the thing into each chorus, and it sounds a little different each time:
Hopefully this one is striking enough that I don't need to say anything more! I like how each time gets progressively more dramatic -- the first has an audible breath on beat 1, but the second and third are completely silent, and the third changes up the rhythm of the drums leading into it.
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The Middle (the only song by Jimmy Eat World that anyone's ever heard)
This song has a cool variation where instead of everything cutting out, all the instrumentals cut out, leaving just the solo vocals on beat 1. It's a really neat effect:
Kind of like the Evangelion song, this one accentuates the same beat 2 in every other measure with a cymbal crash (and the same sixteenths on the drums leading up to the preceding 1).
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Believer (by Imagine Dragons, of Murder on the Orient Express-movie-trailer fame)
This one is quite in-your-face about it.
Like the last one, it's not "complete silence on 1" but rather "all parts except one drop out on 1"; in this case, it's the low bass rumble. It's also maybe two beats, I dunno, you could count this song in 4 or 2 or 12, but it's the same idea.
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Mor Ardain - Roaming the Wastes (from the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 OST)
The first time this particular melody appears, followed by the one where it does the thing:
While some of these examples have had all but one part doing the cutoff (The Middle, Believer) and some of these have had only one part doing the cutoff (Evangelion), this one is kind of in the middle -- half of the band is playing the pickups and continues into the melody as normal, and the other half comes crashing in on beat 2 echoing the main melody's beat 1. There's also a nice piano gliss on the 1 of that measure to accentuate the whole effect.
I've edited this example in 9 months after the original post because it actually came up "in the wild" -- in the MIT Video Game Orchestra we're playing an arrangement of this piece, and one of our conductors (who made the arrangement) specifically stopped to point this out (to which I was mentally screaming "yes!!! it's the thing!!").
Can you think of any other songs that do this? I would be interested to know!
comments
Xavier P 2025-04-28 23:24
There's an analysis of the Evangelion song made by a Spanish youtuber https://youtu.be/Qn1Ikv6emyw in which he talks about it starting from minute 10, and he gives some other examples (the same Imagine Dragons one too).
tckmn 2025-04-30 20:39
woah! that's so cool that we independently came up with two of the same examples :D
for reference for future readers, the video doesn't even talk about the exact same thing -- it more generally talks about songs that do something "unexpected" into the chorus. one of the two other songs cited is Despacito:
this one lands neatly on beat 1, but the tempo slows way down for the two beats right before the chorus. (i'm sure many people reading already know this, but "despacito" is the diminutive of the Spanish word for "slowly", making this an example of word painting)
the other song the video cites is the opening to Sword Art Online, called Crossing Field by LiSA. here's the first chorus (the normal, expected one):
and the last chorus (the unexpected one):
here there's an entire extra bar of 2 before the chorus, and in that space they stick in not one, but two fake entrances:
(sidenote: it's very funny to me that the video makes the joke of "shounen" in Japanese being cognate with "joven" in Spanish, as someone not exposed to much cross-linguistic Japanese-Spanish humor in my daily life)
Matthew G 2025-08-12 17:03
Found another one: https://youtu.be/M-l3mNWB7W8
The apothecary diaries intro, live, at 3:33, totally cuts out for the first beat of the chorus. The intro that made it onto the actual anime, https://youtu.be/EQ-DKvLQlyQ at around 1:00, does not do this!
tckmn 2025-09-16 12:06
that one is also cool :o here is the normal chorus followed by the modified chorus (which also has an extra 2 bars of leadin):
when i was listening to this one, i decided to just listen to the whole song in the background instead of jumping to the timestamp, and during the buildup my brain went "oh they're definitely about to do the thing" lol
this song also does a bunch of other neat things btw, i really like how at 4:07 the piano plays a riff and then the erhu repeats it and it's slightly out of tune which makes it sound much cooler than the digital piano. there's also this thing they do in the chorus (2:06, 3:44, 3:54) and one of the verses (2:19), where the vocals are grouped in 3 eighths over the 4/4 instrumental, which is kind of reminiscent of the tresillo thing that's the most common rhythm in all of western pop music (left) or the extended one that's the second most common rhythm in all of western pop music (right):
...except the one in the chorus starts on the 3 (which makes it land on beat 1 a measure and a half later), and in that one verse at 2:19 it just keeps going, making the song briefly feel almost polymetric
anyway, i think the reason the anime intro version doesn't have the thing is just that it's shortened and only includes the first chorus