I wrote this on 2025-01-29.

My friend Alex Irpan has inspired me that it’s possible to mix serious and meme content on the same blog. So I’m returning to blogging with a serious take on a stupid topic.

“Objection Funk” by iteachvader is a trolling, fan piece of Internet content. At the same time, it has great relistening / rewatching value. The background funk track definitely plays a role in its appeal. At the same time, leaving aside the ridiculous concept, I contend that there is deep musicality in the piece’s structure that delivers surprise through its 2-minute runtime and draws listeners back.

An initial few listens reveals the big moments of the track: its beginning, midpoint, and end. The beginning is an “Objection!” followed by some pump-up headbanging. The midpoint, at the precise 1-minute mark, is the electric piano solo, with some more vibing from the characters. The end is a return to familiarity that then leads to the surprising “Take That!” sharp cut. The moment of surprise to me makes me feel I’ve missed something, that I didn’t see it coming, which then invites me to reloop the video.

We can break the piece down further by noticing a fundamental unit: when repeats occur, they revolve around groups of 4 measures of 4/4 time. We’ll call this a phrase, so that each phrase contains 16 counts, and there are 16 phrases in the piece, which I’ll loosely group into 4 groups of 4:

1: Intro and vibing 2: I’ll call this the Base Variation. (“Objection!” - “Hold It!” - click x4 - “Hold It!” - “Objection!” - “Hold It!” + click x3 - “Objection!!!!") 3: A repeat of the Base Variation. The audio is exactly the same, and the only change is visual, with more of the elderly character as well as the red character one-hand-slapping the table. 4: Another Base Variation, identical to 3 in both audio and visual.

5: Now we get our first “development” – introduction of quite a bit of novel material. The development continues into … 6: … over the course of which we get 3 (or 4?) new characters, ending with angry guy with ruffly collar. 7-8: We get a first “recapitulation” of a sort, reprising the main 3 voices of the Base Variation but with different lines, including “Take That!”

9: So we’ve seen a lot of what’s possible in this piece, and now we get a bit of a break. The change to a musical solo cuts away the complexity and gives us a breather for what is to come. 10: The piano solo intensifies and builds to a nice climax, reminding me of guitar solos. 11-12: Right when we might get bored again, we get a new change in mood. Angry guy with ruffly collar has taken over the judge’s stand, and the gavel is a new sound effect that gets mixed in as well. We get a sense of how much the creator is willing to stretch the animations. The synth backtrack has also slightly changed.

13-14: I would say 9-12 can be thought of as a second or larger-scale “development”, and now we return home, signaled by a beautifully animated “Objection!” that’s perfectly synced to the music. In this “second recapitulation”, there’s some further density of the Base Variation voices, another change in the synth backtrack, as well as the extreme limits in the animation. 15: Now, in excellent writing, we calm the temperature down. In fact, this phrase is identical to 3 and 4 in both audio and video (and identical to 2’s audio). 16: And in this phrase, we mostly repeat the Base Variation (2, 3, 4, 15), except at the end we get two extra “Hold It!“s sprinkled in, followed by the surprise of “Take That!” leading to a sharp cut.

I think there’s a marvelously precise quality to the lengths of these sections and the timing of the transitions. The danger with a piece like this is that it gets boring, either in the audio or visual or both, but iteachvader manages to construct an incredibly tight final product, with layering of concepts onto the Base Variation interspersed with “modulations” to new material. For instance, repeating the Base Variation 3 times (2-4) seems like a lot, but it doesn’t feel that way as your mind needs a lot of repetitions to get initiated into the piece. When you’re ready to get whisked away to something new, that happens at 5, 9, 11, and even in some sense with the bang effect at 13. The reprising musical moments get paired with exciting new visuals. Then, the one moment of both visual and audio plainness at 15 and 16 is perfectly set up to misdirect from the final surprise.

One of my favorite pieces lately has been Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. It’s highly regarded in critical circles, and writing on this piece, Ashish Xiangyi Kumar observes:

“Also of interest is the exquisite organisation of the work: each variation gains meaning not only from the theme, but from its exact placement in the set. Often consecutive variations are paired, or groups will share a common variational idea. Brahms pays careful attention to the dramatic arc of the set: he maintains a state of flux in the first half, allowing the music to reach a peak in V.13-15. After that he keeps the temperature perceptibly low, until a massive drama swarms out of blackness starting in V.23. And then that incredible fugue caps it all off.”

I see this sort of structural awareness, from the macro to the micro level, at play in “Objection Funk” as well, with its 16 phrases of insanity and musicality.

After writing this, I was worried that iteachvader might have just taken reused a musical track from somewhere else. But it seems from here that it’s likely an original instrumental.

I first stumbled upon Objection Funk in 2021 when solving an awesome Teammate Hunt puzzle – thanks to Alex Irpan, Ivan Wang, and Teammate!

I was reminded to look up Objection Funk again while listening to the Pokemon Goldenrod City Game Corner track, which shares some similarities.