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Saturday, November 1, 2014

Song of the Week! 1 November 2014


I talked about this song shortly before this, in a guide. Remember it? Been wanting to feature that song for some time now!

Dokadoka (弩蚊怒夏)
Version
Taiko 3DS 2x5 (206)x7 (309)x8 (544)x10 (1000)
Taiko 0 Kx5 (206)x7 (309)x7 (544)x10 (1000)
Taiko 0 K, Taiko 3DS 2, Taiko PS Vita
50-200
none
 clssum


Yup, the brand-new Classic genre nightmare I covered a week or so back! Though it's been remixed almost beyond recognition, this song derives from one part of Antonio Vivaldi's most famous composition, The Four Seasons.

The piece was composed and published in 1725, originally titled The Contest Between Harmony and Invention, and dedicated by Vivaldi to Count Václav Morzin. Each season in The Four Seasons has three movements, and embodies the atmosphere of each by using different instruments. The Summer concerto's final movement uses heavy tones to bring up the feeling of a thunderstorm. It is this famous movement which is borrowed by Dokadoka.

The title is made up of four kanji characters, and is pronounced as Dokadoka (the sounds of Taiko's red and blue notes) through some really clever wordplay. What does it mean though? Japanese players interpret the title as being a shortened form of "超級の", or "The Summer of the Super Mosquitoes' Fury". Mosquitoes are a common annoyance during the summer season, when the weather is warm and humid, creating perfect breeding conditions for the pests, hence you can see why they were chosen to represent the title!

This creative name was thought up by Kawagen Collagen, a new notecharter/song composer for Namco. You might have heard his name before: he composed several new Namco Originals including Sotsu Omeshiki (そつおめしき) ad Jikuu Chou Jikuu 1-Ka (時空庁時空1課). The composer of the song? That's not known yet so far, but it has rock guitar riffs reminiscent of Masubuchi Yuuji's various classic song remixes, so it might be him.

Kawagen Collagen did not create Dokadoka's notechart though; that duty was given to Kaan (カーン). And a good job he did too. Dokadoka first appeared in Taiko 3DS2's default songlist and then brought over to the Kimidori arcade as the final Don Point unlockable. Its Oni chart is a 'final' song worthy of its status, unseating Etude Op.10-4 (Ura) as the Classic genre song with the highest note total, and is the 3rd song overall to have exactly 1000 notes.

It's not an easy chart both to pass or to Full Combo. Dokadoka speeds through at a consistent BPM190 and the entire thing is filled to the brim with intensely long streams. The streams are slightly on the technical side involving a lot of handswitch and ability to count Don notes. Even if you do know how to read Dokadoka's streams, it is an extremely tiring song, containing the trinity of long streams, high BPM, and great song length, which takes its toll on players very easily, even veterans. Be sure to warm up properly before tackling this!

Do check out our notechart guide for Dokadoka if you need some help reading its streams too.