Analyzing "Press Start" by MDK (Geometry Dash) | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

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[00:00:00]Next up, we have Press Start by MDK.

[00:00:06]This is featured in Geometry Dash, licensed uh soundtrack for Geometry Dash is my understanding. Nice. Once again, everybody, this is a bastard Zelfe, a layman friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician, a composer, and my objective here is to explain things in a way so that you don't have to be one to understand what is happening here musically. So, if you like the sound of that, make sure you're following the channel, subscribe to the channel news, like the video, share, leave a comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again, everybody, don't forget to join the Discord server, join the Patreon, subscribe to the gaming channel, SUBSCRIBE TO THE REACTS CHANNEL, how to request songs, even the live stream members, getting early access to the content. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other things later than this video, so stick around for that. Disclaimers showing on your screen right now, so go ahead and pause the video to read it in full. Um, otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and guitared. So, please keep that in mind. All right, with that said, let's um clear out the air. This is not original soundtrack. This was not composed for Geometry Dash. This was licensed by Geometry Dash to be part of the official soundtrack. Uh that means it's not original soundtrack, but it is part of the official soundtrack.

[00:01:16]Therefore, it is licensed to be part of the soundtrack. That's usually how it works. With that, let's go ahead and do this. and press start MDK. Let's go.

[00:01:28][music] Okay, we start with two primary elements. We start with this uh we start with an uh a guitar. We start with an acoustic guitar actually giving us an initial riff. Uh a riff being a motif that is then put through an ostenato that is then played on a guitar. In this case, a guitar or a bass or a synth or a keyboard, whatever it is, right? In this case, we're having this really, really cool set of this motif being the smallest version of your musical idea, the seed, the essence from which everything else comes from. An ostenado, meaning when you repeat something over and over and over and over and over again with little to no repetition. We have that going on. Um, really, really cool sound for the guitar. Very, very hard picking in this case, almost slapping. And of course, the difference between a riff and a and a motif is that the motif um is a lot easier to develop into variations of itself, whereas riffs are a little bit more rigid, as in any change you do to your riff is going to result in most likely a new riff altogether, rather than it being just a variation of the riff. It's a little bit more difficult to create like smaller variations. However, riffs are a lot more uh understanding of the position that they're in. Meaning that you can put them in the accompaniment in the rhythm section or you can put them out up front, that kind of stuff, and it's not really going to matter. Whereas the motif, if you're not constantly giving it the spotlight and constantly developing the motif, it will break your music. So, it is a good balance to bring. Of course, we then bring some uh violin samples to uh just play the chords that we're having. We did have another synth coming in. So, let me go back a second or two. Let's see where this goes.

[00:03:22]>> Press start.

[00:03:25]>> All right. We bring in a synth there.

[00:03:27]The synth gives us that that um that melody over there that contains what I believe is our initial motif. Uh that then is developed immediately like we move it a little bit around. We um we end it then we have the the the audio sample press start and we bring in the drums and bass. Let me go back a second and see. [music] Okay. So we drop the first beat and we get a combined uh melody between the two. I think the mo the melody that we did get the motive itself was a variation of the riff um already. So we're getting now this over here and elongation a more rhythmically even sound for this because we have the drum and bass giving us that really really cool beat and in between we are getting the melody uh jumping back and forth between the different ones I guess still developing both at the same time or I'm going to you know what I'm just going to say I'm just going to chuck this all as the motif played by the synth is the motif in the guitar so same motif just the guitar was doing riff version of it.

[00:04:39]Now we're getting a motive version of it in the in in the in the in in the thing. So yeah, the guitar wasn't playing a riff.

[00:04:48]It was playing in the motif since it only played it once. Let's see where this goes.

[00:04:56]It's that that later part. Off the ramp.

[00:04:59][music] And then off the ramp we go. We land into the next repetition. Off the ramp being a colloquial term that I use.

[00:05:05]It's colloquial. By that I mean there is no official academic definition for this or at least I'm choosing not to use it for the sake of simplicity. And off the ramp is what I like to call a particular type of transation that makes your listener feel suspended up in the air at the mercy of inertia waiting to see where you land. Kind of like going off a ramp. How do you do this? Remove the drums made the bass as well in this case giving that last phrase from the melody allowing for the next iteration of the drums to come in. Let's see where this goes.

[00:05:29]Oh, those slides so good.

[00:05:37]Okay. So, another thing we're doing is that we do have another synth coming in and giving us some chords uh allowing us to bring this whole thing into a call and response structure. So, while the drums are doing their thing in between, we are getting two separate things. One, we are getting the first chords being played with the first part of the melody, the call, and then we are getting the sliding melody.

[00:06:04]uh giving us the response column response musical conversation as we are seeing it with this over here. Let's see where it goes. Really fun [music] little bit of extra variation of the ramp and okay so we bring here an elongation of the motif. So, um, and no, no, not not because it's a mod, because it's a member. Members are the ones that get double points. So, um, elongation being a way that you get another way that you can develop your material in which you play a slower version of something you've done before.

[00:06:45]In this case, we bring this off the ram section. We remove the drums. We have this more air like up in the air texture from this whole thing. And now we are getting a slower version of the melody as well. Let's see where this goes.

[00:07:00]Slowly building up. Oh, come on.

[00:07:03]All right, building up. It's going to blow up. And >> yeah, we bring in a freaking creeper in the video. So, we drop the beat. Really nice. We continue the same structure we did before, but this time we're adding more adornments to the melodies. So, we're just adding more flare, adding these like up and down going scales, extra notes, but the motif itself is in essence still the same. Really cool way of um doing the same but different. Cuz when it comes to music, there are two phrases, the same but different, different but the same.

[00:07:51]In every other media, especially in like video games and that kind of stuff, these two phrases are basically the same. Like there's no difference between them. In music, however, this is one of the lessons when it comes to music. Not only are these two phrases different, they are essential for musicians to understand how to develop material.

[00:08:11]Doing the same but different is taking the material we've already used and doing something slightly different with it. some some uh variation of it. Doing something different but the same is bringing contrasting material that sounds new but still utilizes what we already have. Those two things are the bread and butter of musicians and go to show how music doesn't always follow sound logic or like logic logic, but it has an internal logic that you just have to accept is what it is. And this is just one of the examples of it.

[00:08:52]Right now, we're doing the same but different. Let's see where this goes.

[00:08:58][music] Yeah, music follows. Adding more sounds in between. Nice. And continuing the variations. Nice. Oh, so good.

[00:09:12]And another run. We do have another synth that is jumping in and adding a little bit of extra um extra to the melodies to all of this thing. This is awesome. This is awesome. And basically we are building up like we do have the the texture uh since over here giving us those upward running scales. The arpeggios to this by the way an arpeggio um is when you play a chord one note at a time. So for example here's a major here is arpeggiated.

[00:09:44]So yeah we're bringing in arpeggios.

[00:09:45]We're having this kind of stuff. And then we are having a little bit more doublings happening over here. Uh doubling is when you have more than one instrument more than one layer doing the same thing at the same time. So, the chords synth that we were getting doing the rhythm, uh, it's it's getting a couple of extra layers above, adding a little bit more texture to what is already happening. Let's see where this goes.

[00:10:10]Nice. Off the ramp. And off the ramp we go once again and we change things around to bring in a chip tune version of this. We shift things around to um to bring in the the old school drums to this. We are now bringing a harmonized melody to the mix.

[00:10:36]Harmonization and we are continuing developing that beautiful motif. Harmonization being counterpoint parallel motion in thirds or sixths. So let me break down this concept. Counterpoint being the study the art of melodies. How they are, how they develop, how they interact with one another, usually in the context of having two or more at the same time.

[00:11:01]Counterpoint can be measured in many ways. One of which is parallel motion.

[00:11:05]Parallel motion means that you have multiple melodies, usually two or more, going on at the same time, doing the same overall melodic shape from a different starting point or from a separate interval. An interval is the distance between notes, two of which can be thirds of or sixths. There's a few ways to count um intervals. The simplest one is you take a scale, let's say C major, C, D, E, F, uh, F, G, A, and B, and you then take a point of reference.

[00:11:34]In this case, let's use C. And that is going to be your root or your first.

[00:11:38]Then you can count up or down in degrees. So first C, a second up D, a third up E, a fourth up F, a fifth up G, a sixth up A, seventh up B, and then octave above is C. Again, octave is um the same note repeated up or down the range of the instrument. And then as you can count up, you can also count down. So from C, a second down is B. A third down is A. A fourth down is G. A fifth down, F, A sixth down, E, A7th down, D, and then an octave down C.

[00:12:15]Harmonization is going to be thirds or sixths up or down, whichever one the composer prefers. So, if we have a melodic shape that starts in C and we then add some harmonization, that means the other one is going to play the same uh shape just starting on E [music] or A.

[00:12:40]And that's it. Up or down? Up to the composer because a third up from C is the same as a sixth down from C. A sixth up from C is the same as a third down from C. They're both going to be E or A.

[00:12:52]So we can get third up, third down, [music] sixth up, sixth down.

[00:13:01]And basically you can get anyone any of these combinations that you want to build things around, evolve the material and taking things further. And you know WHAT ELSE WE ARE TAKING FURTHER?

[00:13:15]The Patreon. [laughter] patreon.com/jamesrarbastard.

[00:13:18]If you want to support this channel more than you already are, consider joining the Patreon today. a link down below.

[00:13:23]Even if you're not pay paying any money, do consider joining the free version of it because this is where the non-gaming LFAS are going. What are those? Anime, film, TV, label music, the kind of stuff that we usually don't do on the main uh YouTube channel. Why? What we do on YouTube is inherently fair use. that does not stop bad actors from uh labels or film studios, that kind of stuff, from uh abusing the copyright system on YouTube. So, in order to just not deal with that, we're putting him up on the play uh Patreon free for everyone to watch with members, paid members getting early access to the content. So, if you want to support this channel more than you already are, consider joining the Patreon today uh link down below. Thank you to those who are already members, particularly Real Nemesis, um, French guy and your your support means the world to me. Thank you once again. So, join the Patreon today if you want to support this channel more than you already. Consider becoming a paid member. patreon.com/jamesrarbastard linked in the description. Join today.

[00:14:22]patreon.com/jamesrarbastard down below. All right, back we go. We have the chip tune. Let's see where it goes.

[00:14:31]Little bit of more extended melody now.

[00:14:36]evolving the melody further. And continue.

[00:14:50]Nice. Nice. Okay. So, we bring back uh the same drop that we've already done twice, but it's so good that it doesn't matter. And we're not doing it the exact same way. Every time there's going to be something different. Right now we are um repeating the first drop that we did more or less. But because it was after the chip tune, doesn't really matter now, does it? Let's see where this goes.

[00:15:13]Really good. Yeah. Simple but good.

[00:15:16]Yeah. Like sometimes doing simple melodies really goes a long way because having less material allows you to build so much more around it. Uh Beethoven is the prime example of this. Like, don't forget the melody for the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

[00:15:42]I kid you not, that's the melody. That's what's supposed to be the melody. Yeah.

[00:15:56]And then we have the the that's F.

[00:16:03]Yeah, I don't have the full keyboard here. I don't remember how it was.

[00:16:06]Anyway, so we have that. Uh we have like other melodies.

[00:16:13]Very very simple melodies, but you add everything else to it.

[00:16:18][music] That kind of stuff. So, it's really really cool to see this kind that you have something simple to work off of on and then you just build everything else.

[00:16:30]So, uh let's see. Let's see where where this goes. We're continuing the similar drop to what we did before. Let's see where this goes.

[00:16:42]It's extremely hard to sound a simple melody that still sounds interesting only if you don't, and this is where the skill and the craft comes in. If you don't know how to take advantage of a simple melody, then that means you need to you need to explore a bit more. Cuz I tell you, one of my the fir one of the melodies for um like for example uh down to ash that that that is the first um song that I release, right?

[00:17:13]Oh, it's uh sorry from a minor.

[00:17:28]That's the melody. It's nothing too complicated. It's a very, very simple melody and I just build around it. Is it the best composition ever? No. But it takes a simple melody and it builds around it.

[00:17:43]So yeah. No, it's um it's what happens.

[00:17:46]Yeah. Anyway, back we go. Let's continue with the drop. Let's see where it goes.

[00:17:53]Adding more to the nice [music] turn. I pass down. Yes. Off the ramp.

[00:18:00]And okay, so we switch things around. We bring a um chip tune bass. We have uh two syns. One of them is doing the motif fairly faded out and the other one giving us a little bit of extra beat. Uh so yeah, let's see where this goes.

[00:18:26]All right, another build up. Beethone in general has a principle. Yes. And >> this is fire.

[00:18:36]So, now we are reaching the climax of the piece. The climax is usually going to be the last one to two minutes of your piece. In this case, seems to be the last minute of your piece. And you're going to want to bring as much of what you've already done as possible.

[00:18:51]So, in this case, what are we doing? We are bringing every element that we've had, still going with that in between beats. So between the drum beats, we are doing the call and response and we're just adding more and more to it. We're adding arpeggios. We're adding runs.

[00:19:07]We're adding everything. So let's go.

[00:19:11]Nice run. Nice.

[00:19:15]And we're mixing the woo bass on top of that and other samples. There you go.

[00:19:20]And [music] yeah, we revisiting everything. Nice.

[00:19:28]Nice. So yeah, taking everything including the sound effects that we have been using. We just bring everything back in a single final drop. Making things kind of var uh with some a little bit of variation. Torts, thank you for the gifted subs. Appreciate it. So yeah, bringing things over with this kind of variation, but not entirely because we are we are reusing all the material that we did just not in the same order, giving it this sense of um unpredictability while bringing all of this new stuff. So yeah, let's see where this goes.

[00:20:15]So good, man.

[00:20:18]One last run from the [music] color ball style of the motif.

[00:20:26]See?

[00:20:28]Nice. Basically without the big drums and and the sound just breaks down. The computer crashes.

[00:20:39]And with that, there you have it. That was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun.

[00:20:46]I loved it. Epic finish. The computer just breaks. The sound just breaks with basically just the the sound going down.

[00:20:55]There you have it. With that, we have uh there you have it. Press start by MDK featured in Geometry Dash as an as official licensed soundtrack. That was awesome, man. Once again, everybody, this has been a bastard Zelfe, a layman friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician, composer. My objective here has been to explain things in a way so that you don't have to be one to understand what's happened here musically. So if you're watching this on the YouTube video archive thing, thank you for watching. Make sure you're following the channel, subscribe to the channel news, like the video, share, leave a comment, turn on notifications, become a member. Once again everybody, don't forget to join the Discord server.

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[00:24:00]Same username as James R. Bastard. Just swap the R for reacts and you got it.

[00:24:07]And with that, there you have it. Press start MDK geometry dash. That was a lot of fun, dude. Really good stuff, man. Really good stuff. But uh yeah, let's move on.

[00:24:19]There's one.