I was working on a "group" project in a group ful of people who act like they are doing work, but aren't doing anything. The assignment is to create a soundscape that 'captures the essence' of an emotion. I was assigned the emotion surprise. I need to know what kinds of rhythms do this, and possibly a song that gives a great example.

Hmm, the only thing that comes to mind is "Subject Name Here" from the Portal soundtrack. Have a listen.

Antikythera Mechanism by BT. Fast forward to about the 6 minute mark, the song starts to get some tension and then at 6:30 it releases. I liken this to tension but it could also reflect well on a surprise, a change of rhythm and tone.

The whole song in itself is a pretty good example too, since it starts out mellow and as it progresses the tones shift back and forth as if there was a war or something. At the 6:30 mark, the tone of the song shifts entirely from being mostly calm with harsh undertones to being erratic and strong with undertones of a calm symphony.

I remember there being a music video to this song but can't find it. I'm pretty sure it was on the CD, surprised no one has ripped them onto YouTube yet.

A fun thing about this sort of task (that is, art with a defined theme) is you can make things up and as long as you can make a convincing-sounding case (or a sufficiently pretentious-sounding one) nobody can reasonably claim you're wrong.

For instance, I like some of the playing with tempo in Emergent One (starting around 01:48) and you could make a case that a structure like that is surprising in some fashion. From the artist's mouth:


Those who know my taste in music well will recognize that I'm quite fond of Comaduster, which I think supports my point here- I started at "this seems relevant" and made up a (admittedly bare-bones) case for "this is surprising as requested."