Analyzing "Helvetican - Bufu" by six impala (Geometry Dash) | Basterd's LFA

[00:00:00]Next up, we have Bufu by Helvetican, also from by six Impala. I think that's the channel production thing. Uh, featured in Geometry Dash is my understanding. Once again, everybody, this is a bastard Zelfe, a layman unfriendly 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, to the news, like the video, share 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 react channel, how to request songs if you're not on the live stream members, getting early access to the content, I have for this, and a bunch of other things later on this video, so stick around for that.

[00:00:44]Disclaimers showing on your screen right now, so go ahead and pause the video to rhythm in full. Otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and guitared, so please keep that in mind.

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

[00:01:02][music] Okay, so we start with uh three main components. We have, of course, the drums giving us that initial drum beat.

[00:01:10]We have one more synth in the background uh playing the chords. And the way that these chords are working is that it's then going towards the melody that we are getting. that melody kind of thing giving us our initial motif. Motif being the smallest version of a musical idea, the seed, the essence from which everything else comes from.

[00:01:32]Uh what we are getting very much um most notably is that this melody is giving us some poly rhythms. So the seven is only a second over. That's up to me to decide to Yeah. That's up to me to decide.

[00:01:44]Yeah. All right. So a poly rhythm is when you have multiple rhythms playing at the same time. the I mean the word means multiple rhythms, right? Um usually this is in the context of having multiple rhythms that are in contrast in clash with one another and that contrasted clash being what makes them sound cool. The simplest and easiest one to explain is the three versus two poly rhythm where you have one part doing twos [music] one two and the other one doing threes 1 2 3 1 2 3 usually both together that kind of thing. So, we're using something like that. Very, um, very kind of muddied because everything is kind of on the same range, uh, on the same part of the range. You know, how we have a a huge audio spectrum where you have the bases, the mids, the trebles, and everything is kind of on the on the low mid side of the range. I'm interested to see where this goes. Let's see where it goes.

[00:02:45]Continuing that.

[00:02:49][music] Okay. So, we switch over the tambber. We switch we we we remove the filter that we had. Now, we have the the proper synth doing this. And we can now hear more clearly what is going on. And of course, we are doing uh so far an ostenato for this motif. Ostenato means that you're repeating something over and over and over again with little to no variation. Usually oenado is for like shorter phrases like you know if I'm doing like like if you're just repeating the same like small phrase usually that's what u what is an oenado but it can also apply for longer stuff like this just not as common right let's see where it goes [music] oh second one [music] And off the ramp we go. So we did have like a second phrase coming in there for a quick second. Um almost imitating the original motif and then kind of just left. And then off the ramp we go. 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. 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.

[00:04:13]Kind of like going off a ramp. How do you do this? Remove the drums. Maybe the bass as well. Let's see where this goes.

[00:04:20][music] Okay. Slowly bring it back in.

[00:04:25]Slowly building up again. Okay.

[00:04:28][music] Okay.

[00:04:34]Build up synth. Okay. Okay. So, we bring the second uh synth over here, the one that was playing the chords, and now we're having that one do a syncopated variation of the main motif. So, syncupation is when you play against your drums, against your beat, or against your metronome or against one of the other parts. In this case, we were having this fairly um steady beat from the motivum.

[00:05:03]And now we are playing in between those.

[00:05:06]We introduced the buildup um synth so commonly observed in electronic music.

[00:05:13]Let's see where it goes.

[00:05:16]Drums are back as well. All right.

[00:05:20]Dumbling this drop soon. Mhm. Off the rip.

[00:05:33]Okay. So, we bring in the drop. We have a little moment there of rhythmic displacement with the vocal sample, right? 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, rushing something up so uh so that it sounds earlier, or you're using silence or some sort of interruption to achieve either of these two. In this case, we use rhythmic displacement as a way to push down on the resolution of the cadence we had made. When you're making music, you have one of two, you're doing one of two things. You are building tension or you're resolving that tension. That point in between, we call the cadence.

[00:06:12]The cadence with its resolution. So, what we did over here with the rhythmic displacement, we took this moment because when you're making electronic music, building and dropping a beat has the same dynamic. And what we did is we took this moment of resolution or dropping the beat, we pushed it back and over here we put an audio sample. And what that does is it gives you extra phantom cadence that makes the drop or the resolution that much more pronounced. So we do that, we drop the beat, we bring in the new drums, and we bring this like um whoopy cushion fart cushion machine sample over here.

[00:06:48]Um, whenever I've talked about electronic music, like I'm technically still a freaking tourist over here, but if there's one element that I have noticed is the most important thing in mu in electronic music is your sound design. And it makes or breaks your your like in general, right? how well something is mixed, how how high how high how high how high how high how high how high how high how high how high how high quality the sounds are is going to be a um a a an important factor. But in electronic music is your number one priority. The bass and bass drum over and the drum beat over here is pretty good. This selection for um for the high sounds on the running as in domain or as in the genre or the genre as a whole. the genre as a whole because yeah, if you have live performance DJs, uh they are going to still have those preconfigured audio samples and designs and everything. So yeah, no, it sounds like Okay. Yeah, it sounds Yeah, that's a good way to put it. This synth sounds like you're cleaning windows, like a cleaning glass when you're cleaning like a mirror or glass or something like that. that that squeak that uh that you get from cleaning glass. That's what that sample sounds like.

[00:08:16]How are you supposed to play electronic sound designs live? With a uh drum pad um with a drum pad uh machine. There are these drum pad machines that you can get and you assign the different audio samples to each button and then you do that. There are some people that will do so like if you look at a uh DJ uh disc set nowadays you will have um your drum beat for example like this is a more contemporary one. So you would have one of these and then some drum pads. Some of these come with drum pads built in. So basically what you do is that you have the drum beat the drum beat going on on one side. You have a different one going on the other side.

[00:08:59]you can then mix and match and then you have the different audio samples assigned to each individual button like you configure these in advance and then you go um then you go for that. So yeah uh so you this is how you do it. Um there are some DJs that are able to bring like real analog instruments that kind of stuff but yeah so yeah we bring in the drop. Um big risk to bring the window wiper as your audio sample. I can see how in a uh concert setting, this could actually be fun because it creates a very big um contrast between the bass drum, the bass, and whatever else is going on, which in a concert setting could be a lot more impactful. Now, for listening, especially for me, this is not quite hitting, but I can see how other people could. Again, this is a risk that was taken. In this case, it didn't work for me, but it might work for other people.

[00:09:58]And you know what else might work for other people?

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[00:11:08]Become a member today. All right, back we go. Let's continue with the drop.

[00:11:13]Again, for a live concert setting, I think this could be a lot of fun. It's not quite hitting for me. Let's see where this goes.

[00:11:27]Okay.

[00:11:30]Oh, and we take it even higher.

[00:11:34]Oh, okay. So, we bring in we bring in so we we develop the synth further and we bring it even higher up. Very screechy sound. Very very screechy sound. Why are we zooming into that guy? I don't know.

[00:11:47]is the choice of um of of the artist. So we take we basically do uh one of the ways of um of developing material which is you just do the same material higher.

[00:11:58]Right? So if I do this [music] I automatically it automatically feels like it's building up because we're doing it higher. So yeah. So like wet shoes on a tile floor. Uh, I would say this is more like um uh wind wipe, like you're you're wiping a window uh or a mirror, that kind of stuff. It kind of sounds like that over here, which as I said could be fun in like a live concert environment.

[00:12:26]It's not quite hitting for me. The rest is still pretty okay. It's pretty well made, but yeah, kind of sound like farting at some points, you know, [music] dash cam music. All right, off the ramp, we bring back the original motif, the syncopated version, [music] a third layer for the uh Okay, so we bring a third layer now for the syncupation. We are engaging in a little bit of counterpoint. Uh 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 melodies playing at the same time. Um, it sounds like we're going to be repeating the exact same thing. So, um, I'll never listen to EDM. I mean, I I don't listen to EDM. Like, the LFAS are basically the only time when I actually listen to Well, music in general. Like, I listen to music at work for other purposes. Like, I use music as a kind of like a timer. So, it's different different. Yeah. Let's just do it cuz we're doing the same the same buildup in concept.

[00:13:40]Bit [music] more cognitive than this one. Like the parts like the buildups and the and the motif itself have been pretty good. Just building up >> same thing.

[00:14:04]Okay, so this one this one sounds a lot better. We bring the sound because one of the issues with this synth is that it has all of these very high resonances. So if you're playing higher notes on this one, the resonance up there is going to stand out way too much. So we bring it back we bring it back down. We bring it to a lower bit of bit of the lower range. And those higher resonances are now a little bit better. They are um they are fitting a lot better. This one a lot better than the first drop I would say. A lot better than the first drop. Let's see.

[00:14:45][music] Now it's also used in moderation. Yeah, it's not as aggressive as well. We turn it up, but even though we turn it up an octave this time around, we bring in higher up. But because it is now used in more moderation, the melody is not as aggressive. And because we already used the first part lower, it is a lot more a lot easier to acclimate to it. The one I think the biggest problem with this synth is that it's a very sudden sound.

[00:15:11]It's a very aggressive sound and it's a very high contrast. And usually when it comes to high contrast, you run the risk of it not striking. So yeah, here we go.

[00:15:22][music] Oh, that very high one is very screechy.

[00:15:29]All right, back to the motif. Oh, the drone [music] drums syncopation there.

[00:15:35]Okay.

[00:15:37]This part is really good. Like, I really like this part. [music] Let's see.

[00:15:43]Go ahead. Go ahead. [music] Mhm.

[00:15:48]That's cool. Welcome to All right, we're just running the Oinados again. [music] One more run and Okay. So, we resolve into this fairly random uh sounding audio sample. We bring in that whatever whatever that was. And with that, there you have it.

[00:16:15]Um the the chill parts were really good.

[00:16:18]That was the 16 P. Oh, yeah. It was the logo. It was a logo. Okay. So when you're making music, you want to keep a careful balance between what is familiar and what is new. Too much familiarity, too much repetition, too much of the same thing, you risk boring the listener. They tune out. There too much new material too quickly, you risk overwhelming the listener. They tune out. There is one [snorts] universal exception, no matter the style or genre, which is solos. And then electronic music has another exception, which is dropping the beat. You drop the beat, you bring in a solo. As long as it sounds cool [snorts] enough and it fits enough, you can get away with almost anything. The issue with this one was that it didn't fit.

[00:17:04]And yeah, know like uh they changed the song. Uh yeah, got changed. Hold on. So yeah, no, the issue here was that the synth did not fit enough. The second time around it fit a lot. So I think if you swapped the drop the beat drops, if you did the second beat drop first, it would have been a lot better because everything was kind of in the middle of the spectrum. And then we just brought this very high high-end uh very very treble very high-pitched synth on top of that. And yeah. Yeah. And Inovan stay. I have something very important to tell you after this. Um so yeah, no we we have that and it didn't quite work because of that. But I think if you had swapped the E drops, I think it would have worked a lot better. And with that, there you go. Lessons learned. Now we can see why I say if it fits enough.

[00:18:03]This one did not fit enough. So it did not meet the the um the the uh the the stuff the qualifications for the exception the criteria for the exception and it resulted in this that was very hit or miss for mo for many of us hit for many of us fit miss and that's what we get right with that.

[00:18:26]There you go. There you have it.

[00:18:27]Helveticanon buoufu by Helveticon by six Impala also featured in geometry dash is my understanding once again everybody this is the bastard zfa a layman friendly analysis I'm a professionally trained musician a composer and my objective here is me 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 archive thing thank you for watching make sure you're following the channel subscribe to the channel whatever you use like the video share the comment turn notifications become a member once again everybody don't forget to join the discord server server.

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[00:20:28]Subscribe to the channel linked in the description or search on YouTube same as James R. Bastard. It's extend the R2 reacts and you got it. And uh yeah, there [clears throat] you have it. Buofu Helvetican 6 Impala Geometry Dash. Very valuable lesson learned over here. Look at that. Look at that. There you go.

[00:20:46]There you go. Yeah. Let's move on. and so on.