Cadence - Music as Puzzles
In Western music tradition, cadences resolve, whereas Cadence generates loops. A deep music analysis.
Cadence was recommended to me during a conversation about interesting game music systems, and its title was immediately engaging. I love all kinds of cadence. In speech, the word describes flow, rhythm, and tone, and is associated with culture, tradition, and identity. In Western music genres, cadences are like punctuation marks that satisfy or address the listener’s expectations for phrasing in different ways.
I imagine most people wouldn’t overthink the game’s title. But I did. And so, I am ready to share deeper ideas about the game’s clever intersections, where design and music meet. Also, there’s a pleasant, overall arc to the experience, much like participating in a good conversation, as loopy little puzzles later frame large, creative visualisations of whole pieces of music. This is a game for musicians, puzzle fans, and especially for those who are both.
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I was reflecting on cadences as I first began playing Cadence which, beyond music, is also immediately ‘a neat puzzle game’. You observe the level, connect tiles to make paths, learn how to manage special objects, and wake the cat. Puzzles start simple, then require some experimentation, like with objects that require multiple musical pulses to enter them at the same moment, or that ‘teleport’ pulses to new locations. The experience is of managing time, sound, and space. Simply, each tile generates a sound, so most levels result in looping music, due to the required, recursive manipulation of tiles.
Let’s continue with a short music lesson to provide context. In Western music tradition, the clearest example of a cadence is when Chord V leads neatly back to Chord I, and your phrase, or piece, sounds finished. Game music structures built on loops are usually not composed of resolving cadences. So, if your loop reflects some kind of classical, popular, or song music genre, it may have ‘imperfect’ movement at its end and ‘perfect’ movement as the loop is re-triggered, but no clear resolution.
Listen to the perfect cadence (V-I)
Listen to the imperfect cadence (ii-V)
Listen to the imperfect-to-perfect cadential movement over a hypothetical loop point.
(Thanks to my husband, Ken, for performing and recording this.)
The first time I got stuck was on level 1-12. Like all great puzzles, the solution initially looked simple, but was not, so I found myself experimenting with music theory. Tiles were creating a very stable E Major 9 chord on loop, and in any order. So, I searched for the strongest suggestion of cadential movement (B -> E, V -> I), then puzzled my pathing backwards to cause this movement to occur at the loop point. It worked.
Listen to Ken play the level on piano.
I am guessing that this was a fluke, because there are levels on which solutions do not meet similar expectations for cadence, structurally. For example, many early levels sound harmonically algorithmic, minimalist or, because of metallic timbres, a bit suggestive of Balinese gamelan technique, oddly enough. Level 3-3 is a great example of all of these, because of the interlocking textures, melodies, and rhythms that emerge from observable, defined patterns. (Note: This video shows the level’s solution.)
Do levels need to be structured to reflect Western cadential movement? Nah. Cadence can certainly be played literally just as a puzzle game. For example, I needed a few hints and got them from a video playthrough with musical tracks overlaid from a royalty-free site instead of the game’s music. I’m assuming the YouTube creator was trying to avoid copyright issues, because this makes no sense in the context of music embedded into every aspect of design.
In fact, a coherent aural identity for the game eventually sort of … compiles from component parts. Levels become vehicles for the delivery of sequential structural sections, and full musical tracks emerge, beyond loops. There are still puzzles to solve; it’s just that there are also parts to the level that you don’t interact with; they serve to deliver music. Interestingly, however, you can still use ‘musician skills’, like noticing that an interaction has to occur on an offbeat, then creating the context for that.
Consider the following example. I can see that this level will generate a piece, or long loop, with sections AAAB, where As are the same, and B is different. Each will be the same length, and there will be two pieces of additional musical content added when the level is solved, by C, likely percussion. The challenge is to create paths so that the B button is pushed at the right moment to neutralise the ‘validator’, thus situating this section in its correct musical place. I didn’t need to solve the level to know all of this, but solving it provided my reward; hearing the intended piece, and the percussive drop as I woke the cat.
The closest comparison to Cadence that comes to mind is Resynth, which is a block-pushing puzzle game set on a tenori-on-inspired canvas, where the vertical axis is F pentatonic scale (F, G, A, C, D) and the horizontal is time. (To quickly understand how a tenori-on works, experiment with this.) As you solve aspects of Resynth’s levels, filters are removed from melodic and percussive content, which makes individual sounds pop out of the composition, and rewards incremental completion. Thanks to some time spent with Resynth’s level editor, I was able to appreciate how difficult it is to design a good block-pushing puzzle that is also an engaging musical loop.
Similarly, Cadence’s level editor is intense. Certainly, you can make something that probably works, with no special skills or knowledge, but I found it very difficult to ‘control’ more precisely. One thing I never figured out was how to change the colour of tiles, thus binding them to different tracks, and choice of timbre and composition. But, not one to shy from a creative limitation, I started making funk bass and experimenting with overlaying one sample (when tiles are triggered together) to create articulation.
I should definitely have created the puzzle first, rather than the musical loop, however. Each little chunk of music is connected to a tile, so moving tiles around is like ripping out the guts of your carefully planned composition. The other way of approaching this would be to not plan a linear composition at all. And, as such, I ended up with the beginnings of an infinite funk machine. This video first shows my intended composition, then a weird half-backwards, nonetheless valid puzzle solution version. I absolutely love this, and the potential to make this massive. But I have a job. And my kids need dinner.
Cadence left me with the immense feeling of having witnessed something incredibly clever, and being one of the fortunate few to understand and appreciate about 80% of it. I have a great unfulfilled longing to know why the developer named the game as they did, in a way that feels exactly like my harmony teacher, Lewis Cornwell, playing an imperfect cadence on the piano, then cheekily leaving the room to make his point, circa 1998. Yet, don’t resolve me. I am satisfied in this moment, forever.
