Analyzing "Viking Arena" by F-777 (Geometry Dash) | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

[00:00:00]Next up, we have Viking Arena, Viking Dance Machine by F-777 featured in Geometry Dash. My understanding is that it's licensed for Geometry Dash. Once again, everybody, this is the Bastards LFA, a layman-friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician and 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, whatever you want to do, news, like the video, share it, 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 3X channel. How to request songs if you're not on the live stream. Members getting early access to the content. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other stuff later on. This video is the ground for that.

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[00:00:52]With that, let's do this. Viking Arena, let's go.

[00:00:56]>> [music] >> Okay, so we start with a very, very slow type of stinger, very Hans Zimmer. So, when it comes to to music, there is, of course, Hans Zimmer. Hans Zimmer, composer, he's done a bunch of movies and a bunch of things, but Hans Zimmer has a very special place in the history of music. Many composers strive. Every composer strives to be somebody that revolutionizes music one way or another.

[00:01:38]Hans Zimmer is the first composer in music history since John Williams to bring a complete revolution. And what Hans Zimmer did what Hans Hans Zimmer Hans Zimmer did is that he brought the kind of thing. This combination we are hearing, a bass drum or timpani and a trombone. Boom.

[00:02:02]That we're getting this kind of hit.

[00:02:04]This is something he composed for the trailer music or I think it's the soundtrack of uh the film Inception.

[00:02:11]He made this for the film Inception and ever since every action almost every action film or every trailer we've heard and in this case this track over here is using this. It became such a musical revolution that everyone wants to do this, which means we start the piece with a music cliche.

[00:02:35]Cliches in music is stuff that works.

[00:02:40]That almost 99.99% of the time works. It's not tired, it's not it's tried and tested kind of thing.

[00:02:48]So, we are doing um don't forget that very deep male uh voice. Yeah, I know, but that is more for production value.

[00:02:54]I'm talking musically speaking. Uh every composer like right now if you go to the conservatories and academia, the composers there are they have intellectualized music so much they have stopped making it and they think that if they just put another sponge in the piano between the piano strings or if they ask the violin players to smash the violin one more time or if they ask the clarinet player to use the clarinet as a drumstick one more time that they will be the chosen ones that get remembered for um in music where at the end of the day um Hans Zimmer was the one who actually did it by Boom. And that was it. So, it's basically it's basically that. Uh so, yeah, let's see where this goes.

[00:03:44]Drums.

[00:03:45]>> [music] >> Sounds a little stupid, not going to lie. It is.

[00:03:48]It's unorthodox ways of playing uh the instrument and the idea I understand the idea. The idea is to explore the instrument cuz I've done this. I've shown on I've shown before the um sheet music that I made using Microsoft Paint um for one of my classes. It was a lot of fun to make, but it was music that it wasn't It's not music you're supposed to listen to. It's music you're supposed to experience as one of the musicians. But then, the people in these conservatories one of the things I think it was Galsart who said it best, "Outside of universities, you have the self-corrective uh mechanism of reality. When you try something, the self-corrective mechanism of reality will kick in and determine whether or not it works. However, in academia, because this is not unique to music, you don't have that. You can fail as many times as you want, and you can still move forward. You can fail upwards in these kinds of systems. So, what that results in is in a bunch of ideas that are never really tested in real-world environments. They the mechanism of the self-correcting mechanism of reality is missing, and therefore these ideas are embraced. There was the whole saying, "There are things so stupid only an academic could hope to understand or come up with them."

[00:05:10]And this is where uh conservatory music is at sadly nowadays, where you're going to get a bunch of snobs that are going to tell you, "Well, if you don't like this, it just just means you don't have the cognitive capacity to understand the complexities of it." And that kind of stuff. Whereas um so so uh Gideons table, yes.

[00:05:32]So, yeah, we're having um that. Whereas uh Hans Zimmer decided to not go through that, and we have this.

[00:05:39]Like the simplest thing is, how many composers have come out in the last 20 years?

[00:05:47]Major composers and how many of those were from conservatories?

[00:05:52]Like the most famous composers of the last 20 years, how many of those did we hear from in conservatories? Most of them? Film, TV, video games. Those are the three main mediums from which people have become famous as composers. I'm not talking about like a singer-songwriter.

[00:06:13]I'm not talking about a band. I am talking about composers. Somebody who makes music and who arranges everything and that kind of thing. Just you, but So, yeah, no, like it's like for example, right now 2026, the latest most famous music composer that just came out, Lorne Balfe. The guy was on SoundCloud and then he made the soundtrack of Expedition 33 and it's one of the greatest It's one of the greatest music ever written, full stop.

[00:06:49]And it's just the guy and he became famous because of a video game. You look at conservatories and it's a bunch of it's a bunch of people circle jerking each other pretending that they like each other's music in hopes that they are the ones that are going to get the fellowship money next.

[00:07:06]It's a massive pyramid scheme and that's where we are. And thankfully, that's not what we're getting over here.

[00:07:11]Right now, we are using the cliche from um from Zimmer. So, yeah, let's see where it goes.

[00:07:18]>> [music] >> Building.

[00:07:23]Some chords after that.

[00:07:28]And there we go.

[00:07:36]So, we finally, after 30 seconds of building this cliche and building the drums, we finally get that little credential melody. Off the ramp we went, right? Off the ramp being a colloquial term that I use. 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.

[00:07:56]And off the ramp is what I like to call any type of transition 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, maybe the bass as well. As we are here we heard over there, and now we bring in our first proper melody, giving us our initial motive. Motive being the smallest version of a musical idea, the seed, the essence from which everything else comes from. So we are having um we're having this going on, and this is really really cool. The tourists go Mhm, repeating the motive there.

[00:08:36]>> [music] >> Little drums over there.

[00:08:39]One more layer.

[00:08:40]So now we are reintroducing the material one layer at a time. So the reason why this works is that because we had the cliche going on for so long that it was kind of like neutral content. It was it it it fit the timbre and the tone that we were doing, but we're having this.

[00:08:56]Let's hear this.

[00:09:01]Nice.

[00:09:06]And >> [music] >> so we are establishing also a call and response between these mus- these bits.

[00:09:11]Uh call and response being a musical conversation. We're having the trombone part giving us this really really cool melody, and then every once in a while we're getting a second melody after that, back and forth call and response kind of situation. We're keeping it very very nice and simple, very straightforward, and it works. Why?

[00:09:30]Because F77, like many of the of the other um Geometry Dash associated artists we've heard, has really good sound design.

[00:09:39]Like the trombone hits just right every single time. It just every single note is just that satisfying and it yeah.

[00:09:51]And it just it just does it.

[00:09:54]It just does it. And yeah, Hans Zimmer, what he did is the intro that we had, you know, the whenever you hear a trailer like a music like a video game trailer or a film trailer or something like that and you hear that kind of music when you hear the trombone doing that, Hans Zimmer made that.

[00:10:17]On top of being an incredible composer with a bunch of other music to his name, like he's a massive film composer, he revolutionized music with that. That was my point. So yeah, we're having we're having that happen this year with one of those.

[00:10:34]So much stuff.

[00:10:36]How did he make that? The way that this works is that you have a trombone playing really really loud. It's a trombone playing really loud, really low, maybe a tuba as well doing what is called a sforzando or a sforzato. You you make basically he told them, "Play this note as loud as you can."

[00:10:54]And then he just had a percussion playing with that and that's how you get the sound.

[00:10:59]Yeah. It was that simple.

[00:11:01]It was that simple. It was there all along. And the way he used it is that usually you would hear that and it would be like in the background of something else. When he used it, it was the music itself as we heard in the start of this piece.

[00:11:16]So we're using that cliche for it and everything.

[00:11:19]And there you go. Counterpoint between trombone and synth bass. Yep.

[00:11:29]Adding more elements in between and we got the cliché one more time.

[00:11:35]Off the ramp.

[00:11:40]And we are slowly reintroducing the um we reintroduce the cliché, and yeah, this kind of thing is basically just make a trombone play as loud as possible, maybe a tuba as well. You put the drums with it, and you get yourself the Inception boom that you have that you hear nowadays.

[00:12:01]Like this is what Inception came out in like 2011? Um Inception film 2010.

[00:12:10]This is 16 years ago.

[00:12:12]And still to this day, it's still used in a bunch of film because it works.

[00:12:19]Because it works. So, we introduce the cliché, and we just use the cliché. And you know what else has a bunch of clichés?

[00:12:28]The Patreon.

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[00:13:36]Anyway, Interstellar was fire. Both of them were really good soundtracks, Megami.

[00:13:41]Both of them, I think both of them were by Hans Zimmer.

[00:13:45]Um Interstellar sound composer who composed the Yeah, it was Hans Zimmer. Yeah, Hans Zimmer made the the soundtrack for both Interstellar and um and and uh Inception. Same composer, same director. So, yeah, there is no dichotomy here, HONEY. SO >> [laughter] >> UM ARE MY lyrics copyrighted for my songs? I don't know.

[00:14:11]I mean, technically I do own the copyright. It's just Yeah. Anyway, let's continue. Let's go.

[00:14:18]Anyway, well then.

[00:14:20]We have some voices buzzing in the background.

[00:14:23]Continuing the cliche.

[00:14:26]I do have to say, the Interstellar soundtrack is a lot more dramatic than the Inception soundtrack. Cuz the Inception soundtrack doesn't use as many synths, and the theme of Inception is a lot more like kooky kind of thing. Um so, yes. Let's work this.

[00:14:45]All right, there we go. Reintroducing some of that bass synth. Build up.

[00:14:52]See.

[00:14:53]Interstellar parity is it? Nice.

[00:14:56]And we drop the beat, continuing the motif, and doing this is really good.

[00:15:03]Some Interstellar is probably yeah.

[00:15:05]>> [music] >> Like Hans Zimmer, along with John Williams, is one of the two greatest composers for film.

[00:15:13]Like if you watch like some of the greatest films, it's going to have either John Williams or Hans Zimmer.

[00:15:18]Like those are the two big guys of um like those are the two titans. Like Han John Williams Hans Zimmer those are like the Mozart and Beethoven of film music. Like they are they they have defined so much so it is not surprising that they have worked on so many things. We have a lot of other incredible composers out there absolutely but those two are basically who everyone strives to be. So yeah, let's hear how this goes.

[00:15:47]>> [music] >> Innocent demon I know right.

[00:15:52]Off the rail we bring the full So we we drop the beat and this whole thing is syncopation.

[00:16:01]Syncopation is when you play against your drums against your beat or against your metronome. In this case you can hear the the bass synth just going in between beats every once in a while and that gives it such a fun momentum to it is just great. Let's hear how this goes.

[00:16:18]>> [music] >> And then it builds up the scale and everything for the motif. So good.

[00:16:23]Continuing the tremolos in the back and cliche back to another build up.

[00:16:29]>> [music] >> Synth in the back to holding down the chords.

[00:16:33]All right.

[00:16:36]Building everything up quickly and >> [music] >> same motif again.

[00:16:41]We bring back the motif WITH A DROP.

[00:16:43]HELL YEAH.

[00:16:47]AH, THE CALL AND RESPONSE SO GOOD.

[00:16:53]>> [music] >> Again more of it. If it worked once it can work twice IT WORKED FOUR TIMES so far. Head banging head bobbing is really good.

[00:17:02]And the entire reason this is working is the sound design. So far we have not done anything too harmonically complex.

[00:17:10]The melodies are not that complex. The melodies themselves are not that interesting. We barely have harmony over here. We've barely used chords so far, but it is the sound design that is so good. Every single note hits just right, and it is fun.

[00:17:29]Every single Every single note is so much fun. Again, when you're making electronic music, your number one priority is sound design. Danny Elfman, that's another big one. Yeah. But, I would say out of the composer like maybe Howard Shore. Like, there is There are levels to this. You know, like there's Mozart, Beethoven, then we have like, you know, Chopin, Debussy, um uh Ferenz Liszt, uh Schumann, Schubert, Haydn, Handel, who are like you know, we have like the trinity of music Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Those are the three big composers of all time. They are the big ones. Then, we have everybody else.

[00:18:13]We have after that. It's, you know, the difference between S tier and A tier kind of thing. We have a lot of incredible composers out there.

[00:18:22]John Williams, Hans Zimmer, S tier, double S tier, whatever you want to say. So, composer series win.

[00:18:30]>> [laughter] >> Good one. It is what it is, guys.

[00:18:37]Shout out [music] to Hans Zimmer, do you? Good for you.

[00:18:39]Good for you. He is great.

[00:18:43]Nice. Can see.

[00:18:45]Waiting on him? Yeah, [music] one day he's going to One day he's going to happen, yes.

[00:18:48]Continuing this.

[00:18:50]So, now we are interrupting the motif with a little bit of wob-wobness over there. Again, we are not doing anything too harmonically complex. We are not bringing super revolutionary melodies over here. We are just making something that sounds really good.

[00:19:06]And that's it.

[00:19:10]Let's see.

[00:19:10]>> [music] >> Bringing the outro. More more rhythmic more rhythmic interruptions, but it works just as well.

[00:19:19]Build up since in the background.

[00:19:23]And And we resolve the note to one last boom of the trombone. And there you have it.

[00:19:36]And there you have it. This was so simple.

[00:19:43]Musically extremely simple.

[00:19:47]And it was so well executed.

[00:19:50]Entirely by the sound design. This was so well made, dude. There you go. There you have it. It was simply fun. Thematically on point. Again, electronic music the number one priority sound design. If it sounds good. Okay, it sounds good. It sounds good. Duh. But if you design it to sound good, there you go. There you have it. Viking Arena Viking dance music by F-777 featured in Geometry Dash. I think this one is licensed for the soundtrack. So, there you go. Once again, everybody, this has been a bastard Zelfa, a layman friendly analysis of a professionally trained musician and 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. Leave a like to the video. Like the video.

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[00:22:31]Viking Arena F777 Geometry Dash, that was a lot of fun. So much fun, dude.

[00:22:36]That was so much fun. Really good stuff, man. Really good stuff. But uh yeah, let's move on. That's what I do.