Behind the Scenes - Rude Buster

God Tier Piano - ‪@MoisesNieto‬
Background Music -    • UNDERTAPE  

I like discussing my approach since I spend so long making these dang videos. But.... I know a lot of people don't want talking or silence at the end of the main video since they put it in playlists. Hopefully a separate video is a good solution here 😄

Also here is more detail about the process of recording Rude Buster:

Originally I had intended Moises and me to cover this in 2023. But when I started transcribing it I said HELL to the NO!! I felt so overwhelmed even just trying to figure out what the heck was going on in the piano alone. We ended up recording My Castle Town instead lol.

Cut to 2025, after 2 years of videos I feel a lot more confident in approaching something with a high difficulty like this. And honestly I'm glad we waited because the EQing and Mixing on this track was ridiculous. It's written literally at the bottom end of the piano but when you EQ it you have to remove all of the low end so that the Electric Bass and Kick drum have somewhere to sit. Based on how it's written the track has a heavy pull towards being muddy. It was a nightmare puzzle to figure out how to make it seem like a nimble but impactful dance track. I nearly tore all my hair out just getting it to a workable starting place!

I have no idea if the original piano on the track is live but getting the video file from Moisés and seeing the speed and accuracy of him playing those passages... I nearly passed out! One thing I love about our version is you can really hear the live piano in those low notes. It has a certain kinda reedy discordant quality that makes it sound so gritty and badass.

For the rest of the instrumentation I tried so many things. My original versions had violin/viola/clarinet/english horn/trumpet/ etc. But the combinations just weren't working out and just sounded odd together. I landed on saxes in octaves + flute/picc because it gave that 70s movie/tv show theme but also weirdly latin fusion...? I have no idea what genre things are anymore 😂

I had been practicing recording those really fast solos on sax, piccolo, & flute but they just sounded kinda weird being played live. Maybe someone that's an expert at woodwinds could have nailed it but even then I felt like it missed that choppy abruptness that you get when something is sampled. I like that the computer-ish sound of the choppy live instrument samples kind of tied it back to the 8-bit sounding original.

ANYWAYS enough yappin' from me... enjoy listening to this one!
(and I pray to never have to play this song again)

#deltarune

#deltarune