Analyzing "In Circles" by Creo (Geometry Dash) | Basterd's LFA (Layman-Friendly Analysis)

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Next up, we have In Circles by Creo featured in Geometry Dash is my understanding. Once again, everybody, this is a bastard LFA, a lame unfriendly 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 the term you 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 on a live stream. Members getting early access to the content. I have a bunch of beautiful things to say and a bunch of other things later than this video, so stick around for that.

[00:00:40]Disclaimers showing on your screen right now, so go ahead and pause the video to read them in full. Otherwise, please be patient with me. I am acoustic and guitar-ed, so please keep that in mind.

[00:00:49]With that, let's go ahead and do this.

[00:00:53]In Circles, Creo, let's go.

[00:01:01]>> [music] [music] >> Okay, so we start with a very nice synth here. It kind of sounds like it's pulsating, which is um how do you get more points? Just watch the stream. By watching the stream, you automatically get points. So, we're having this, and we are doing a quasi side chaining. Side chaining is when you have an instrument being interrupted by something else. Very commonly used in electronic music this kind of way, where you have the bass drum uh interrupting whatever is being side chained. And by that, I mean that right before it hits, the volume goes down, right after it hits, the volume goes back up. Usually, that is the case, but right now, Creo is using a different way of doing this. So, the first part of the side chaining is the same. The volume gets turned down, but then the volume gets turned back up by taking that part of the part that the of that bit of audio of the bit that was um faded down in volume and then the audio is reversed. So, when it comes to to digital audio and audio design and that kind of stuff, you will have an audio file, right? Like you can have an audio file, a recording for every piece of audio. Uh every bit of audio will have this kind of thing. You have the audio which goes according to linear time. But something you can do is that you can take that You can take this whole thing and you can flip it so that now it's reversed, meaning the sound of air itself, the waves that the way that audio works sounds reversed. So, what we are doing here >> [clears throat] >> we are taking the um we're taking this bit over here and taking this this part and fading it down.

[00:02:58]And then we are taking this bit over here, pasting it, and flipping it horizontal so that the drum hits right here, and then the audio is reversed.

[00:03:14]And then we get the chord backwards, and that's how we get the piece started.

[00:03:18]Then we bring in the drums, we bring in a bass synth. Uh the synth itself giving us a somewhat of a bassline or mostly melody, which contains our initial motif. Motif being the smallest version of your musical idea, the the essence from which everything else comes from.

[00:03:32]Uh and in this case we are also having the motif being sequenced. Sequencing is a way that you can develop your material in which you repeat a musical idea, usually a melody, from a new starting point. So, if we have for example this over here, let's say we have this super simple melody. The then sequencing would be we repeat the melody from a new starting point. Same shape overall and we just switch [music] it around. And um got to the the we are going to have a live Q after this one. So, yeah, if if y'all could go help understand. So, yeah, we're having that. Let's see where this goes. And in the meantime, the side chained um synth is still doing the same thing.

[00:04:15]I tell you, the amount of work that must have taken to side chain the the synth like this must have been a while. Must have been a while. How far is 8 years ago? Maybe this is how decided he was going to do the side chaining. I like it. Let's see where it goes.

[00:04:35]>> [music] >> Nice. Another thing to note with the this main synth is that it's using a lot of syncopation. Syncopation being when you play against your drums, against your beat, or against your metronome.

[00:04:51]Metronome being the click, right? The click that gives you the steady beat.

[00:04:55]Usually not audible by the time the track comes out. Syncopation is playing against that, giving you that extra sense of motion that we are getting, of momentum that we are getting from this.

[00:05:07]Let's see where this goes.

[00:05:10]>> [music] >> Okay, first off off the ramp we go. Off the ramp being a colloquial term that I use, right? Colloquial term. 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 transition that makes your listeners feel suspended up in the air at the mercy of inertia, waiting to see where you land. Kind of like going off a ramp.

[00:05:38]How do you do this? Remove the drums, maybe the way maybe they the bass as well. Off the ramp within 30 seconds.

[00:05:44]And it actually worked. So, we bring in um a bunch of chimes. We have a descending scale. We have another synth going on.

[00:05:51]Let me hear it more see what is what is going on.

[00:05:56]>> [music] >> Okay, so we bring back this whole thing, but now we have a another synth giving us what seems to be a reduction of the motif. So, reduction um reduction being another way that you're going to develop your material in which you um you play a faster version of something you've done before. Sound like they'd be more fitting to describe the other term.

[00:06:22]Uh not really. Uh counterpoint counterpoint comes from the uh word contrapuntus, which means point against point. Um syncopation is just you know, that's that's just the term that we have. But, yeah, contrapuntus um that is point against point, which is counterpoint being the study of the art of melodies, how they are developed how they interact with one another usually in the context of having two or more points against each other. So, yeah, uh counterpoint is one of the very few terms in music that actually makes sense. So, yeah, let's see where this goes cuz we have a build-up.

[00:07:01]So, we keep the synths the side-chained synths while we bring in a build-up.

[00:07:06]Let's see where this goes.

[00:07:08]Build-up synths and >> [music] >> and we bring in we drop the beat we bring in a variation of what we just did except with drums added. We have the same synth as before and we bring in a saxophone.

[00:07:34]We bring in a wonderful saxophone over here giving us a rendition of the the but because it is saxophone, we're doing it uh almost as a solo. 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. Too much new material too quickly, you risk overwhelming the listener, they tune out. There is one universal exception, no matter the style or genre, which is solos. You bring in a solo, and as long as it sounds cool enough and it fits enough, you can get away with almost anything. Electronic music has a an additional one, which is dropping the beat. Drop the beat, same thing. As long as it sounds cool enough and it sounds enough, you can get away with almost anything. Meaning, the principle of familiarity and new material become more relaxed. Not infallible, you can still reach either extreme, it's just less likely. So, yeah, we're having that.

[00:08:24]Let's see where it goes.

[00:08:30]>> [music] >> Nice.

[00:08:36]And we do have some guitars in the background, as well, doing some partial doublings. Doubling is when you have more than one instrument doing the same thing at the same time. See where this goes.

[00:08:49]Little changes here.

[00:08:52]And we bring the original.

[00:08:55]>> [music] >> And the reason why I say the other bits were a a reduction of the original material is because the the original motif has space in between. Pa pa pum, pa pa pum, pa pa pum, pa pum. Pa pa pum, pa pa pum, pa pa pum, where the other one, whereas the other one was all one string of evenly timed pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pa pum kind of thing. That's why I call this a reduction. Let's see where this goes. Maya, what's going on?

[00:09:23]How you doing?

[00:09:24]>> [music] >> Nice. We bring back the original material. So, form-wise, we can see very clearly where we are now. So, form is form is a structure of music. Usually when it's come when it comes to instrumental music because unlike vocal music unlike songs, you don't have a clear-cut way of distinguishing oh, this is the this is the chorus, this is the verse, this is the bridge, this is the intro. So, instead we subdivide the music into sections and each section is is going to have a letter. So, we started with section A.

[00:10:03]Now we have we had the drop which we could either count as the second half of A or as B depending on the length of the song. Now we would be going back to A again. Let's see where this goes.

[00:10:17]Depending on where things go, we'll see.

[00:10:26]We bring in some nice funky guitars. We switch things around but we are still doing the same material. We bring in another melody on top of that giving us a a a variation of this. We are now instead of A, we are in what is called A prime. The prime, the apostrophe means it's a variation of the same material.

[00:10:45]Let's see where this goes.

[00:10:52]>> [music] >> Nice double sequencing.

[00:10:55]Stuff around off the rap and build up.

[00:11:01]New build up.

[00:11:03]Similar to the one from the first one around Similar [music] enough. Let's see.

[00:11:11]Let's build this up and see how we drop this.

[00:11:13]>> [music] >> Got to thank you for the two bucks.

[00:11:21]No, >> [laughter] >> not unless the wheel picks it. Not unless the wheel picks it. Appreciate it. Thank you for it.

[00:11:27]Your your track is going to get automatically logged over here. Yeah, welcome to the bribe list.

[00:11:33]Welcome to the bribe list. Okay, we're going to we're going to give them all a moment. So, yes, um when we go back a couple of seconds cuz we had uh this going over here. So, we're having the build-up. Let's see where this goes.

[00:11:45]Build-up and >> [music] >> Okay, so we drop the beat, we base the baseline on the original motif, but we are now also bringing a secondary synth higher up. We are now in section C.

[00:12:05]Um now we can call this a rondo.

[00:12:09]Rondo is the type of structure, which means to go around, where you have A B A C A D A and you also on and so forth.

[00:12:17]So, we are having this over here. It's been a while since we've seen a uh a rondo frenzy. Welcome to the heroin. So, yeah, we're having this going on over here.

[00:12:27]Good drop.

[00:12:29]Good drop. Good way of um of bringing back the known for the unknown. It's kind of like it's Yeah, a rondo kind of like it's going in circles, right? Yeah.

[00:12:37]Yeah, almost almost as if um as if there was uh a theme over here, you know?

[00:12:43]You know what else also has a theme?

[00:12:46]The Patreon.

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[00:13:49]Back we go. Let's continue with the drop. Let's see where it goes.

[00:13:51]>> [music] >> So, yeah, we we're bringing in the synth from the build-up. We're using the same synth as the build-up for this.

[00:14:03]It's really good.

[00:14:07]Nice.

[00:14:09]Both of them syncopated.

[00:14:12]>> [music] >> Off the ramp.

[00:14:18]And it looks like we're going straight for another build-up.

[00:14:24]All right.

[00:14:30]Okay, so straight we go into another build-up section. We go straight instead of C, we go to section D. So, let's do it it goes.

[00:14:44]The build-up is similar to what we had in C.

[00:14:48]Okay.

[00:14:50]>> [music] >> We got B as part. Okay, straight into another I think we're doing C twice.

[00:14:58]And we're doing C This sounds like C.

[00:15:01]Isn't it B again? I think it might be.

[00:15:03]Yes, it is B. It is B. For a second I thought this was sounding very And so, yeah, we skip going back to A. We go back We go straight back to B. We skip the form Like usually in in rondo, you would have an another A section in between. We just go straight to B.

[00:15:21]We just go straight to B?

[00:15:23]Yeah.

[00:15:24]Yeah, we just do a recapitulation over to to B. Recapitulation being when you revisit material you've always you already done before. Usually, you know, with little to no variation.

[00:15:37]In this case, yeah, even the the build-up was the same. Usually, it starts as a copy-paste and then you you do a variation of it. So, yeah.

[00:15:46]Let's see where this goes.

[00:15:50]On the front sphere. Sounds like it, yeah.

[00:15:55]>> [music] >> Little bit.

[00:15:58]Yeah, this is the first drop [music] through and through. It's good, though.

[00:16:02]Let's see.

[00:16:05]Mhm.

[00:16:06]And There we go. There's the variation.

[00:16:10]The variation will be prime.

[00:16:14]Little bit of more of a solo from the saxophone. How are you going to end this?

[00:16:19]Off the round.

[00:16:23]>> [music] >> We engage a ritardando. We resolve the progressions, the melody one last time.

[00:16:32]And with that, there you have it. So, we do a ritardando for the very end. A ritardando A ritardando is when you gradually slow down the music. In this case, we had that we we slowed it down and then we ended it. So, yeah.

[00:16:52]you have it. That was good. Like, I was not expecting to just repeat the drop from before, but it was so good that doesn't matter. It it worked. So, yeah.

[00:17:00]With that, there you have it. In Circles by Creo featured in Geometry Dash is my understanding. Once again, everybody, this has been the bastard Zella Faye. 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's happened here musically. So, if you're watching this on the YouTube video archive, thank you for watching.

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[00:19:53]Link in the description, or search on YouTube, same username as James R Bastard. Just extend the R to Reacts, and you got it. And uh yeah, there you have it. In Circles, Cléo, Geometry Dash. That was good stuff. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. But uh yeah, small on the