Analyzing "Badland" by Boom Kitty (Geometry Dash) | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Next up, we have Badland by Boom Kitty featured in Geometry Dash is my understanding. Once again, everybody, this is a bastard's LFA, a layman-friendly analysis. I'm a professionally trained musician 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 hear use, like the video, share the video, 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 if you're not a livestream member getting early access to the access to the content. I have a spiel for this and a bunch of other things later down this video, so stick around for that. Disclaimers showing on your screen right now, so go ahead and pause the video to read them in full.

[00:00:46]Otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and guitar-ded, so please keep that in mind. With that, let's go ahead and do this. Badland, let's go.

[00:01:02]>> [music] >> Okay, we start with the single bass synth giving us that first chord.

[00:01:13]The bass giving us a partial bassline mostly doing arpeggio. Arpeggio being when you play a chord one note at a time. We held down the first note, then we finished arpeggiating the rest of the chord. For example, here is C minor.

[00:01:26]Here's arpeggiated.

[00:01:28]And then, if we do something like that. So, we get the arpeggio going. Let's see where this goes.

[00:01:44]>> [music] >> Okay, so we did we changed the melody around and I think this melody would qualify as the motif.

[00:01:55]I think this melody could qualify as a motif. Motif being the smallest version of your musical idea, the seed, the essence from which everything else comes from potentially.

[00:02:03]Usually, it is a melody. Right now, we are getting a full-on melody.

[00:02:06]Could be, or it could just be the bassline.

[00:02:11]It can be a question.

[00:02:13]I mean, you can I can't guarantee that I will reply.

[00:02:17]Um Yeah, yeah, I I can't guarantee that I that I that I would reply.

[00:02:21]Not because I'm busy or anything, it's just because I'm a bastard, so yeah.

[00:02:25]Anyway, let's see where this goes.

[00:02:27]>> [music] >> Higher synth with some texture.

[00:02:33]Mhm.

[00:02:35]>> [music] >> Playing the same melody again.

[00:02:40]>> [music] >> Okay, we bring in this new melody inversion of the motif.

[00:02:49]Um inversion and Let's say inverted retrograde. So, inversion, retrograde, and retrograde inversion, and it is a reduction as well. SO, QUITE A FEW THINGS. Inversion being when you play a upside-down reflection of something you've done before. So, if I have this over here, if I then invert it in melody, it means that I'm playing an upside-down reflection of it.

[00:03:25]Then, we have the concept of the retrograde. Retrograde means that you play something backwards. So, for example, the same material we had before, if we retrograde it, and then we have the retrograde inversion, which is we take the inversion and we play it backwards.

[00:03:47]So, we do that. I think we're doing a retrograde inversion of some sort of the motif, and then we are doing a reduction of it. Reduction in in this sense, another way that I can develop your material in which you play a faster version of something you've done before.

[00:04:00]So, we are having what by all means seems to be the the original version of the motif, or if you want to get into pure into pure terminology, the prime version of the motif, and then we are getting a reduction of the retrograde inversion above it, giving us a little bit of counterpoint as a result. 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 as you are hearing right now. Let's see where this goes.

[00:04:40]So, yeah, I know, right?

[00:04:49]Okay, so we bring in the percussion and the we bring a percussion variation of the melody over here. Not so much variation. We're doing an an extension of the melody, taking a little bit of the melody, a bit of a moment of the melody that we already had, and including the oi kind of sound in what is called a call and response. Call and response being a musical conversation where you can hear one part, in this case the the percussion giving the call, and then the response being the other the other part that sounds as if they are having a back and forth call and response. Let's see where this goes.

[00:05:30]Oh, so it's the percussion with the melody, the ois being the response.

[00:05:35]Okay, I had it wrong. So, let's see where this goes.

[00:05:42]>> [music] >> All right, we build up. We bring in we bring in a a build up. Ooh, boy. Oh, boy, let's see where this goes.

[00:05:55]>> [music] >> All right, we have a synth in the back building up.

[00:05:58]How are you going to How are you going to go about this? And >> [music] >> Okay, so we use a little bit of rhythmic displacement there to get a hook. Right?

[00:06:12]So, rhythmic displacement, as the name suggests, is when you displace something in the rhythm so that you're either pushing something down so that it sounds later, some rushing something up so that it sounds earlier, or you use silence, or in this case some sort of replacement so that you achieve either of these two.

[00:06:29]In this case, we're using it for what is called a hook in electronic music. Now, a hook is just the way that people call the cadence.

[00:06:39]A postponed cadence. So, in music, you're doing one of two things. You're building tension or you're resolving tension. That point in between we usually call the cadence.

[00:06:49]With resolution. Cadence resolution, this is usually building expectation and meeting that expectation. In electronic music, dropping the beat has the same dynamic.

[00:06:59]So, in this case, when you are doing a hook or you're doing this kind of rhythmic displacement, you are taking this moment of resolution or the dropping of the beat, and you replace it with either silence or in this case a little bit more of that melody that we were doing, which gives you extra phantom tension that then makes your resolution that much more pronounced. So, we bring that going on over here, and yeah, we're doing that.

[00:07:27]We're bringing that We're bringing that in, and then the drop. Not only does it have the very nice bassy sound to it, but it is also doing an inversion of the build up that we just had. So, we take that melody that we have bam bam bam.

[00:07:42]Now we have bam bam bam.

[00:07:44]So, yeah, let's see where this goes.

[00:07:48]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:07:52]Nice. And it's immediately going for another drop.

[00:07:56]Nice.

[00:07:58]There we go.

[00:08:01]>> [music] >> PC requests are not open. Don't spam like that.

[00:08:05]Oh, nice.

[00:08:06]>> [music] >> Oh, this is really good.

[00:08:13]And yeah, we're just dropping like we're just letting the the the beat drop do its thing, and because this material is is still partially part of that initial motif, we can get away with doing this again.

[00:08:28]Really good sound design. So, let's see where this goes.

[00:08:32]>> [music] >> Like you have to do this, yeah.

[00:08:35]Okay, we're building up to something else. We can hear that synth in the back building up.

[00:08:40]And one more run.

[00:08:43]And Okay, we bring back the inverted the retrograde inversion of the motif. So, we welcome today, and we are now doing some uh sequencing to this. Sequencing being another way that I can develop your material in which you repeat a musical idea, usually a melody, from a new starting point. A simple version of this could be that we have this melody over here.

[00:09:14]And if we then sequence it, if we do it going up, we're just repeating the same melodic shape just from a different starting point. It can be basically any direction, right?

[00:09:25]>> [music] >> It can even doesn't even have to be stepwise motion like that.

[00:09:31]>> [music] >> But you can really really take this whenever and wherever you want. In this case, we have it just going down a little bit to fit more the the shape that we have of the existing melody. Let's see where this goes.

[00:09:47]Cuz now we have both the drop and the melody happening [music] at the same time, doing together, and Yeah, we play [music] it a few times just to see it's good cuz if it's good and it sounds good, you just repeat it a few times cuz repetition is indeed a friend in music.

[00:10:06]However, you don't want to repeat things way too much because if you repeat things too many things in a row you repeat the same thing too many too many times in a row, you start running the risk of boring your listener. But in the case of Boom Kitty here, the sound is just so nice that that alone accounts for a good chunk of this and helps prevent any sort of excessive repetition.

[00:10:32]And you know what else I'M EXCESSIVELY REPEATING? THAT THE PATREON IS [laughter] ONCE patreon.com/jamesrbastard link in the description. Once again, if you want to support the work what that we do here, consider joining the Patreon today. Even if you're not pledging any money, do join the free um the free tier because this is where the non-gaming elephants are going to. Uh what are those? Anime, TV, film, label music, the kind of stuff that we usually can't do or that we don't do on the main YouTube channel. Why? What we do on YouTube is inherently fair use. That does not stop bad actors on YouTube from abusing the copyright system. Uh so in order to just not deal with that from YouTube's end, these are going to be going here on the Patreon free for everyone to watch with members paid members getting early access to it as it is tradition now in this channel along with other benefits that members get like behind the scenes content, more voting power for polling, that kind of stuff. So if you want to support this channel more than you already are by watching and subscribe and all that good stuff, consider joining the Patreon today. Thank you to those who are already patrons, particularly the real Nemesis, French Guy, and Amaya. Your support means the world to me.

[00:11:42]patreon.com/jamesrbastard link in the description. Make sure you have joined today.

[00:11:46]patreon.com/jamesrbastard link in the description down below. All right.

[00:11:52]With that love blatant shilling, yes. I want to I want to be able to make money out of what we do here.

[00:12:00]Yes.

[00:12:01]Let's continue. Let's go.

[00:12:04]Continuing the melody, nice.

[00:12:09]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:12:12]Another difference over here with the melody with this version of the melody in the very original is that this one is using the repeated notes principle. So in basically what we're doing is instead of playing a longer note, we play repeated notes um repeated notes of one of the notes. So let's say we have this phrase over here.

[00:12:32]What we can do is that first note being very very long, we can then subdivide it into smaller notes.

[00:12:40]Roughly the same amount of time, but we are now getting a little bit more rhythm out of it. So we're doing something like that to fit the very very cool rhythm that we're getting with this melody.

[00:12:52]So let's see where this goes.

[00:12:57]And off the ramp we go. Off the ramp being a colloquial term that I use.

[00:13:02]Colloquial by that I mean there's 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 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.

[00:13:14]How do you do this? Remove the drums, maybe the bass as well. In this case, we remove the main electronic drums. We bring back the orchestral epic drums that we were having. We bring the melody that we were doing the um the little like beat drop motif um and we have it as a melody like that.

[00:13:35]And um let's see. Oh deary me, deary me.

[00:13:39]Requests are not open.

[00:13:42]Um name three four three three four three requests are not open. It's your second stream in a row on the naughty list. Um all right, let's see where this goes.

[00:13:51]>> [music] >> Talking fast, I'm just used to it.

[00:13:55]I'm doing one song per stream. Uh what do you mean?

[00:13:57]All right, a little bit of variation there in the little variation there in the percussion. Slowly building up another rhythm to it.

[00:14:07]>> [music] >> Let's see.

[00:14:16]Slowly building up. Yeah, not much to say. We're just building up to another drop.

[00:14:20]Nice.

[00:14:22]>> [music] >> And one more, two more.

[00:14:27]Come on.

[00:14:28]Off the ramp, the hook, and >> [music] >> we do the hook. We extend the hook one last beat with one extra beat with that very very cool like almost tribal sound like kind of sound. We drop the beat. Same drop that we did before, but this drop is like the sound design is so good.

[00:14:55]It's so good. It hits so nicely. Doesn't really matter. Let's see where this goes.

[00:15:01]>> [music] >> And that does There you go then. We're going to do it again.

[00:15:06]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:15:10]And it's kind of a >> [music] >> Yeah, we do the exact same thing we did before. But it is good enough that you can just get away with it doing it twice.

[00:15:27]That's That's the the level of attention that you need to have to sound design because if this bass and this drum didn't hit just right the way they are over here, Boom Kitty would not be getting away with this.

[00:15:42]This would be sounding way too repetitive otherwise, but because each individual time these happen, the sound is just so good, you get away with it.

[00:15:52]Electronic music number one priority is sound design. And there is a variation in the in the repetitions.

[00:16:00]Yes, there is a variation in the repetition where just when you're when you're starting to um just when you're starting to reach that that that border of risking um what's it called? Doing boring the listener, you bring something new. Like you bring one of the changes. Even if you've done it before, it's done. And what song request is it like you're not taking any others after this one? Oh no, no. We have we have seven more today. All right, let's see where this goes.

[00:16:32]>> [music] >> It's really good. Yeah, it's really good.

[00:16:39]>> [music] >> Yeah, like in the back there's a couple of differences as well.

[00:16:42]There we go. We bring back the the melody. It kind of sounds like a trumpet synth.

[00:16:48]>> [music] >> Nice. It's a lot of fun.

[00:16:51]It's a lot of fun. Let's see where this goes.

[00:16:54]Mhm.

[00:17:00]Yeah, a little bit of extra variation there in the melody.

[00:17:03]Couple of extra notes.

[00:17:06]Mhm.

[00:17:08]>> [music] >> And uh we bring back the drop. [music] That's surprisingly straightforward, dude. Really good. Very straightforward.

[00:17:20]All right.

[00:17:22]Build up synths in the back.

[00:17:24]>> [music] >> Come on.

[00:17:27]We're going to build and I think we're going to leave it at that last drop. How are you going to end this?

[00:17:32]We got the choir again.

[00:17:36]And uh sorry.

[00:17:39]I ate the cookie.

[00:17:42]One last run. We accentuate it with the drums and there you have it.

[00:17:49]That was three musical ideas.

[00:17:52]Four, maybe.

[00:17:56]That was maybe four musical ideas total.

[00:18:03]And you managed to make nearly 5 minutes of music with basically just that.

[00:18:11]Man, that was really good. That was really good. Like very very few very very little variation in terms of the different ideas, but it was so well paced that it didn't matter.

[00:18:27]Like just bouncing back and forth between the ideas, basically did the whole thing twice, and there you go.

[00:18:35]There you go. Entirely this piece was carried by Boom Kitty's form over here.

[00:18:42]Form being the structure of the music and the basically just the way that we built this up was by just right before it's starting to get like right before it's starting to sound repetitive, we change things up just enough so that we bring something for the listener to want to look forward to. This is really really good.

[00:19:08]This was really good.

[00:19:10]There you have it. That was Badland by Boom Kitty featured in Geometry Dash is my understanding.

[00:19:17]Once again, everybody, this has been the Bastard ZMF say a layman-friendly analysis. I'm 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. Whatever tuning you use, like the video, share the video, comment, turn on notifications, become a member.

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[00:22:17]Badland by Boom Kitty. Geometry Dash.

[00:22:21]That was a lot of fun, man. Really good stuff, man. Really good stuff, but uh yeah, let's move on. Let's move on.