Kobaryo - Milky Factory // Reaction & Analysis

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another Kobaryo reaction. Today we have Milky Factory as requested by Gavin and my executive producers and I know that this one is from a game.

[00:00:09]I forget which one it was. It was number nine.

[00:00:13]Well, not Hardcore Tano*C. I don't remember which one it is. It's something. Hardcore Syndrome. I was close. All right, don't look at me like that. I I don't know why I'm here.

[00:00:21]Anyway, I'm going to be listening to this song, seeing what it has in store because I've loved Kobaryo's songs before and it's a guaranteed request.

[00:00:28]So, I kind of have to listen to it. So, without further ado, let's go.

[00:00:38]Oh.

[00:00:40]Hardcore Tano*C. It's I was technically right.

[00:00:43]What the hell?

[00:00:45]I thought it was a completely different thing. I didn't know they were related.

[00:00:49]>> [music] >> I feel so vindicated right now from that though.

[00:00:58]>> [music] >> I legitimately thought they were like completely different games or something.

[00:01:09]Oh. Oh.

[00:01:13]Oh. Oh.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> Bringing back that 2010's [music] dubstep sound for a minute there.

[00:01:37]Ooh. Oh.

[00:01:40]That's very prog house.

[00:01:47]Ooh.

[00:01:51]Got a key shift on that.

[00:02:02]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Oh, man.

[00:02:19]I mean, how else do you listen to this music, right?

[00:02:23]>> [music] >> Hello.

[00:02:32]Ooh.

[00:02:33]>> [music] >> Ooh.

[00:02:37]It's kind of playing around with this one.

[00:02:41]Kobaryo's kind of hitting every genre.

[00:02:51]Love the chiptune.

[00:03:08]>> [music] >> I mean, I'm really just vibing with it.

[00:03:13]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Ooh. Oh.

[00:03:36]I forgot about the double speed thing there.

[00:03:42]Ooh.

[00:03:47]Damn. It's going straight through.

[00:03:50]I was about to ask by the way, like what the purple hair character is. I swear I'd seen it somewhere. It must be like a mascot for Kobaryo then because like here we are. I see it on the thumbnail on screen and that totally makes sense.

[00:04:04]I was like, I swear I know that character from something. If it wasn't clear that Kobaryo was just having a [ __ ] blast with this song, then you're deaf, frankly. Like there is so much fun happening in this song. Just even down to again, the genres that he was kind of visiting. Just touching on them. Like, you know, let's go to this like Skrillex style dubstep sort of flavor that was in there for a minute, but then also let's kind of step back to like metal and let's let's see what we can do with that sound, you know? This is the essence of a composer getting bored and wanting to do as much as they could with this. And in general, hardcore tends to kind of be that. Like the essence of keeping your listeners on their toes because you're never quite sure where the composer is going to go.

[00:04:49]And it's always fun, right? Like it's never really a bad approach. It's just more like how many and where are you going to take these in what way? It always comes down to how good are they at production in a blanket sense, not just a general song composition-wise, but like can you actually adapt a song to these other genres and make it sound good? Because a lot of people can't, but hardcore producers, they love music so much in general, they decided normie music was too little. It's like they just got so bored that they didn't want to do any of that and they're like, you know what we need to do? Our own thing, but we can also pay homage to those other genres that influence us in certain ways. And obviously using this song as an example, I would not be shocked if Kobaryo was influenced by metal and dubstep stuff at least at one point if not currently. So, having those sorts of influences and then paying homage to them by including them just to see if you could is totally within the hardcore producers wheelhouse of expectations. It's just something that they like to do. But for this song, as far as getting into the music theory stuff, G flat. That's basically the entire song, frankly. It's kind of just sits there. Like this is >> [music] >> where the whole song lies. It's where all of the hardcore chords are. Like that note that's being hit there, it's this and it's just all the way through.

[00:06:08]There's obviously a little bit of variety in here. Like when it goes to the metal section, it actually drops down to a G flat minor, I think, but that's just because that's how metal likes to use its dissonance. So, I think they went from that relationship which sounds a lot more full to this one because that sounds like that like fights a little bit more and it keeps things a little bit more interesting on that genre side, but they always move back up to that G flat. So, it's not like it's they go down to that key and then stay there. They just shift enough to make it work and then they shift back and that is something that a lot of hardcore producers like to do and know how to do well. It's something that they seem to focus on exclusively to an extent at very least. Like the amount of songs I've heard that have done this sort of thing in the hardcore space and have done it right is basically all of them. I don't think I've heard somebody do it wrong yet. So, I feel like they just understand music in that way and the theory of how to get something from one place to another and then wrap it back around without it sounding god awful because a lot of people do that and it always sucks, honestly. So, hardcore producers just again, really pay attention to what makes a song work and a genre work and they somehow find a way to consistently match those energies in there. I'm not sure who started it or how it became a thing for this entire genre, but everyone seems to do it well.

[00:07:29]So, back on this, we have of course the G flat there and it's like, okay, great, but we also have a C flat and this is also a B and harmonically it's the exact same thing. So, if you're like, well, it's a B. It's yes, it is. It's also a C flat. Just within the key, that's the difference there. And what I love about this is that it actually follows kind of a standard chord progression because this >> [music] >> is a standard progression and we do get this one as well in this song many times. This E flat minor is around quite often. So, there's a little bit of flex in this song with what they're doing and what they're approaching, but those are the flexible moments that allow the openings for them to do the weird stuff and shift genres and do the thing like switching the G flat to a G flat minor in order to get the metal to work, you know? These little adjustments are what make the difference of ew, that doesn't sound quite right. Why does this metal sound too happy versus hell yeah, that's that's chugging. You know, it's a completely different energy and in order to adjust for that, you need to make those adjustments in the music theory side. I also love it at one point where we're using that C flat, we're coming into there. We have to get out of that.

[00:08:41]So, they decide to bring it up to a D, which is fun, and then an F flat, which is also an E, and then wrapping it back around to that G flat. So, it's just a nice lift right there as you probably heard me just by playing it.

[00:08:54]>> [music] >> It's very bright. It's just It's the energy lifts like crazy at that point.

[00:09:01]But it what it does is get you from basically the lowest chord we have in the song back to the highest one and it's like, there we are. Now we have that full circle moment that they can really go anywhere from again. You're back at one, you can start here or go somewhere else if you want to. And this is a factor that you could, of course, like I said, follow the standard progression of those chords I just played and that would work fine. But if you do that the whole time, the song will get boring. So, at some point you need to deviate and climb up somewhere else and literally climbing it the way that this does is the brightest, happiest [ __ ] way you could. I mean, it's not [ __ ] in the writer's perspective. It's just like it feels like [ __ ] you know?

[00:09:47]It's just like, oh, look at that, happy [ __ ] I It's a vibe thing. I I hope some of you understand that. And I feel like it's that sort of [ __ ] happiness that leans into the chiptune working in the song because like I mentioned the whole changing the energy for the metal section, you then have to do that for the essence of what square waves and chip tune allow for because that is a much more limited tone. That timbre is way different from like a piano or a guitar. So you need to have a different sound and while musically they are going to be the same thing, the chords will always be consistent and all of that, it's a matter of does this tone sound good with this specific chord progression or do I need to adjust it in order to feel like it's better? That's why for the guitar one they had to drop it down because for guitars that darkness in there in the genre of metal utilizing that darkness is a factor of the timbre of a guitar sounding completely different from the timbre of a piano or of every other synth basically. So when you bring in something like a square wave that is one of the most basic forms of synthetic sound of all time, you need to really break that down back into its bare bones essentials in order to get it to work.

[00:11:02]Even looking at that compared to a piano, a square wave is extremely simplistic and a piano has a lot more tonality kind of crushing around in there. There's a lot more frequencies fighting each other. But for a square wave it is like the raw essence of a singular tone that doesn't have anything to fight. So it's a lot easier to build up chords that sound good but also not every chord will sound good. Because there's a lot of things in there that might not work like a C sus 4 to a C.

[00:11:30]That's sort of a relationship works [music] great on a piano and it can work great on other things like a violin would probably sound great with that.

[00:11:38]But at the same time when you have something super simplified like a square wave where there's no variance at all unless it's programmed in to have like a slide or something, you need to make sure that that's going to sound good.

[00:11:48]Kind of like what he did with this one.

[00:11:50]So it kind of broadened the scope of what he was able to do and flex that genre for that exact approach. Same thing he did with the metal on the guitar and same thing he did with the dubstep stuff he did with the chip tune.

[00:12:01]But again, playing to the strengths and weaknesses of each other instead of just writing the one thing and calling it good. This is a very important thing and that's why I'm trying to drive it home so much why this genre does this so well and why it's such a consistent thing that these producers understand this and that they utilize these things. Because if they don't know these genres, they won't be able to do them right and they'll sound weird and awful in some cases and you just need to be careful with it. And kind of how he did that in the square wave wave or that chip tuny sound was keeping those like moving arpeggios between the ears because you don't want to use up too much of that space. So instead of having everything in like center channel, he was utilizing the stereo in order to separate that out and make it sound a little bit more like broad in that way. So things just weren't stacking on top of each other getting in each other's way. That's something you can do with more complex sounds because that's kind of every complex sound. It's the human voice, it's a guitar, it's a piano. There's a lot more frequencies going on like I said. But for a square wave they're simple so you don't want too many of them stacking on top of each other and you need to be able to separate them either stereo wise like he did here stereoscopically you can move them out or you need to alternate different styles of wave between each other instead of stacking on like a bunch of different layers of a square wave like a noise channel and a triangle wave.

[00:13:23]There's so many like variances to that and what you can get away with and can't. It all really depends on how complex the piece is that you're making.

[00:13:30]So the best thing to do for those is to keep them simple and if you want to add complexity, moving arpeggios when there's solid notes in the center is the best way to like separate out those two different qualities. Have one moving and the other not at all. So again, this is the thing that he was doing that he might just know. He might have just noticed when he was listening to a bunch of this and decided to replicate that or he really studied how this works. And I as far as like a musical science sort of way, sound science sort of way, he approached music and was like, I know what I need to do in order to make all these genres feel good in the same song and work off each other and play from each other to each other without losing any sort of interest in the song in general. So Kabarerio nailing it as always at least so far from what I've heard. I haven't heard a bad one from Kabarerio yet so I am expecting to hear many more but this one is right up there with the rest of the fantastic stuff.

[00:14:26]And I do still feel kind of vindicated by the whole accidental hardcore 10 OC thing. I did not expect that to be a thing. The only thing I got for the context of this one was the hardcore syndrome thing and I didn't know that those were related at all. So just the fact that I accidentally nailed that was just hilarious to me but also completely against the point. Great song, fantastic work here. I'm expecting to hear more.

[00:14:49]I'm sure I will and if you have anything you want me to get to specifically, drop in the comments below and I will do my best as always to get to those. Or if you want to guarantee something much like Gub did for this one, you can always go to my Patreon or my YouTube memberships where you can force me to listen to something. Doesn't matter what it's from, who it's by, if it's good or bad, none of that matters. That's why it's a guarantee. But if you don't want to do any of that, maybe you just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that and I'll see all of you in the next video.

[00:15:13]Goodbye.

[00:15:16]>> [music] [music]