making breakcore with late 90s nintendo energy

A few people asked me how I write and produce music. I wouldn't pretend to be an expert in anything, whether it's composition, arrangement, theory or production. I know enough to know I don't really know anything but maybe my attempt at analysing whatever it is that I'm doing (or whatever I think I'm doing) might stir some ideas or inspire somebody out there to try something new and if that's the case then I'll call this video a success.

The track is 'Skull Kid Rave' and it's heavily inspired by Zelda Majora's Mask and Zelda music generally as well as sound tracks for games like the Chrono Trigger series. It also draws inspiration from jungle and a lot of 90s rave music and those old club tunes that relied on sampled minor 7 chords that they just transposed around without thinking too much about the key of the track. Always loved that sound.

Anyways, I run through a few things in this, you'll notice I use FL Studio, most of the track is actually quite basic sounding, I really only use a few core ideas one of which is this idea I've taken from the 90s when artists would sample a minor 7 chord or some other embellished chord and then just sort of transpose it around without much thought, so you could end up with a track with 4 repeating minor chords and no major chords at all. This always sounded really ethereal and spacey to me and I think I've heard the same kinda sounds in Zelda and Chrono Trigger games as well as a lot of 90s and 00s rave music. The rest is really just arrangement to keep things interesting throughout and a lot of sampling. You can probably guess where the majority of the samples came from.

For anybody interested in what VSTs I use it's often just Vital. I keep the sound design super basic a lot of the time. I think you can do a lot with just a couple of detuned saw waves and some unison and effects chains.

When I started writing this track I was actually going for Ape Escape/Bomber Man vibes but it kinda just took a very Zelda direction with my decision to go for that ethereal spacey feel in the intro. I use a lot of sustained chords as well to add to that, which I think is something you'll hear a lot of in Breath of the Wild.

I kept the percussion super simple in this, I just used the Think Break and Sonic Break from the Blu Mar Ten Jungle Jungle sample pack. I think people think it's kinda overused and they're probably right but it's a good 'go to' if you're trying to get a 90s jungle/breakcore sound.

Once I had everything arranged I didn't do too much apart from sorting out the levels as best I could, I did a little sidechaining to have the bass duck when the kick and snares hit, I found a couple of annoying resonances then did some more EQing, a little stereo imaging and then I took a final pass on the levels and added some compression.

I feel like I could have done more to be honest, but I got over-excited and released it before it's time, oh well, shoulda coulda woulda, I'd like to have got some more 90s sounding piano sounds and arpeggiated runs in there, maybe I'll come back it and do an enhanced version at some point.

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LINKS:

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/4BGLG...

Bandcamp - https://kaioribreathe.bandcamp.com/

Soundcloud -   / kaiori-breathe  

iTunes -   / kaiori-breathe  

#flstudio #breakcore #fruityloops