For another week in a row, today's piece is brought you by the promise of a certain returning music contest and its its latest iteration's contents bounding in Taiko games pretty soon!
Synthesis.
tn-shi from "Cosmic Radio 2024"
| Game | Genre |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Nijiiro (Y5) |  | ★4 197 | ★6 301 | ★7 425 | ★9 750 | ★10 999 |
180
???With this soon-ending week in larger music game talk starring the reveal of software house DreamEngineGames of its latest Rotaeno song pack delivery being about the chosen songs from the cross-rhythm-gaming-affiliation Cosmic Radio music contest, it's only fair to assume that the time is also coming for all other contributing parties... including Taiko no Tatsujin! With today's SotW entry, it's also the second time we get to hear of former Taiko contest winner tn-shi, after earning a Namco Original slot with his own Mood Swing, one year prior.
The period in this song's title is not a mere stylistic choice, as scouring the original YT upload of Synthesis. can attest: this pure 4.3 polyrhythm tune, in fact, has been divided by its author in sections spelled out as a function in the "Synthesis.*****()" format, a reference that lives on with the Nijiiro Version unlockable title for playing the song as "Synthesis.tatsujin()". As revealed by the same tn-shi over Twitter/X (link), Synthesis. was a remake of a song idea that he had started in early January 2023 and left behind halfaway, only to return to the concept with something that sounded distinctly different from the original effort. The final result of the early-2023-born ideas was ultimately released in late October 2023, to the critical acclaim of many a prominent personality in the -core music gaming scene, digital word-of-mouth and actual music gaming cameos over the years. Top it off with scoring one of the most bountiful victory seats for the 2024 edition of Cosmic Radio and those 7+ million views on YT make all of the sense in the world now, do they?!
Always on SNS channels, tn-shi has never been shy to state across the years how his music style in general wasn't born out of extensive music studies as a background, but rather as a trial-and-error process fueled by its own ingenuity and imagination at work. Across the years, this also came out in form of a fistful of personal impressions about the making of select portions of Synthesis. being posted on X, such as how the piano-lead 'irrationality()' song part being in part named that way due to its author not fully understanding half of its chords (link), or even how sticking to a "set method" to place chords was seen as a contrasting method from the tendency of his "subconscious" composing side taking the reins on music creation, such as for the 'transcendence()' portion (link).
The 2024 edition of the PeroPero Games-lead Cosmic Road contest had its evaluation rounds last from late February to late April of the same year; despite Synthesis. being posted the year prior and well beyond the contest's reveal, it was an eligible candidate for it the same due to being publicly posted after the upper-limit publishing start date of February 20th, 2023 set in the rules. The unique position gained by the starting relevance of the song and the renewed audience found in the digital public contest made it so that the track in question became ported far and wide in music gaming, both before AND after Cosmic Radio as a "Variety"-genre tune, with no credit/mention of it whatsoever! This was the case for Sega's ongoing Geki-CHU-mai arcade trio, Taito's MUSIC DIVER, the mobile game Paradigm: Reboot and even SOUND VOLTEX, for the very tail end of 2025. Of particular note are also the song ports for Noxy Games' Lanota for being the first playable outing of the complete song and the PC-friendly vivid/stasis, for the distinction of its custom jacket art landing a jab to the original MV starring AI art by sneaking inside a hidden morse message saying... "____ AI". Feel free to delve deeper into said jacket art and fill those blanks by yourself!
When the awarding ceremony has landed, Synthesis. was revealed to be one of two songs to earn the 2nd-place-award "The Sound that Penetrates the Universe", alongside the song Analyst. This also meant way more places for the tune to travel to, alongside Taiko no Tatsujin: PeroPero's own Muse Dash, Cytus II and Deemo II from developer Rayark and also A Dance of Fire and Ice, one of the two parties not to return as a commercial partner for the Cosmic Radio contest's 2025 edition. The Taiko cut of Synthesis -the same one that's also on the Cytus and Deemo sequels- falls on the shortest-side, not only with abridged portions from the originals [paging 'chroma()' and the aforementioned 'irrationality()'], but also a couple of portions outright skipped: 'genesis()' at the very beginning and 'diffraction()' near the end. Despite the cuts, the song proves itself to be fertile soil to be stretched in top-difficulty chart form not once but twice, both within the 3-digit Max Combo limit. Experience the Kat-leading pressure of 1/16 charting of the regular Oni or revel in the despair heralded by the commonplace 1/24 spikes in its Ura, the fith on Nijiiro (20th overall) to hit the 999 magic note number. Your choice!
