Valeria (SnugglyBun)

so far it's tumblr except without what made tumblr so horrible lately. i also hope this one survives longer than cohost did. in fact it has existed since 2017 but i just hope it suddenly doesn't die or anything ;_;

i did notice that ever since i started listening more closely to stuff featuring breakbeats, a lot of the way these samples are used can vary wildly when it comes to the genre, style, artist's choice, etc.

a lot of earlier 90s jungle and hardcore breakbeat has emphasis on having a strong rhythm while using breakbeats. some of the music of that era already experimented with lots of variation, slice-cutting, combining different breaks at once, pitch-shifting, etc.

then oldskool breakcore and associated genres like braindance (IDM is the most pretentious music genre name ever, so let's just call it braindance x3) started going crazy with the idea of what you can do with a breakbeat.... and this shit is still going on with this day as i see the ocassional musician on youtube using only breakbeat samples to make entire songs with them.

but then there's the more calm spectrum of breakbeat usage, for example mid to late 90s liquid drum and bass which tends to use them in a more relaxed way. it still has a pronunced rhythm, but it certainly feels less powerful than what preceded it (i don't mean this in a bad way, there are some songs in that genre and era that i love a lot. i'm just trying to describe what i'm seeing there.). they still did experiment with some stuff but it was less ambitious compared to jungle and hardcore breakbeat.

maybe the experimental side of breakbeats was relegated to early breakcore and braindance at that time... i could be wrong though since i wasn't alive when these events happen nor when the 90s hardcore rave scene was alive. feel free to correct me and elaborate more about this stuff.

about the calm side of breakbeat usage.. it's kinda interesting (and unfortunate according to oldskool breakcore fans' opinions) that the name breakcore went from being associated with the most batshit insane sample manipulation and intentionally complex shit, into being the polar opposite of that. idk when and how exactly did this consensus shift over the definition of breakcore happened (i do know that when sewerslvt happened that's when this consensus shift really became apparent though).

a lot of what's considered modern breakcore uses breakbeats that while sometimes distorted, for the most part aren't that varied and are just kinda there i guess. you can even tell sometimes that some of these musicians use canned breakbeat samples that are even memed upon. i can certainly spot that very specific form of amen break on many sewerslvt-inspired works.
i mean it's not necessary a bad thing. some of the modern breakcore musicians might intentionally use breakbeats in this way for their own reasons. i got told that one of the reasons it was done this way in this new form of breakcore is to portray the futility of a repetitive and shitty life that goes forever without changing much.

anyway sorry for rambling

(i'm aware about the numerous controversies involving sewerslvt/cynthoni, i just kinda had to talk about them and show one of their songs as a example since they were one of the people instrumental in the whole consensus change over what breakcore means for a lot of people, and i think it's relevant enough for this topic i wanna talk about)

and by that i mean adding a brickwall to it to make it authentic to the 2006 hard trance experience x3

I don't usually like brickwalling my stuff for a number of reasons, one of them me being a strong opponent against the loudness war, other me having some sort of autistic audio processing stuff going on (mostly when for example modern "breakcore" producers highpass-eq their breakbeats too much).
But I felt like since this song is pretty much my attempt at making mid to late 2000s hardtrance, that this kind of mastering and mixing was necessary lol.

I didn't just brickwall it tho, i also carefully changed stuff in this song like some eq filtering, some changes in the overall mixing, and even a few instrument changes at the last part. so it's less of just a remaster and more of an actual new mix of the song i guess

I'm trying to learn a lot of this mastering and mixing stuff. A lot of it is still kinda new to me, and a lot of it can be quite subjective as hell I feel. Like some people like music to be brickwalled, others want it to be clean and dynamic.
I hope I can eventually decide how I want my music to sound and feel like in a definitive way.

this song is peak

it's like. waow. it's so beautifully written, so emotional yet so powerful and tense, everything works and all.

maybe i might be making shit up but i feel like this song is a combination of many genres at the same time. the ones i can identify at most are jazz fusion (the chords, some of the more jazzy instrumentation, etc), metal (the rocking dirty guitar, the more tense parts of the song and the power of some of the drum layers) and also jungle (how groovy it feels, the obvious amen break, some elements of songs like that like those long one note strings) yet instead of feeling like an absolute mess whoever composed this made these genres work together like a flying angel. like it sounds like absolute perfection :3

it's near impossible to do this kind of genre mashup that works so perfect and integrated to the whole song like this one instead of feeling like a gimmick. like every element of each separate genre this song takes influences from has an actual purpose in the song and it contributes to the whole thing feeling so strong instead of weak and aimless.

i wanna write more stuff like this and maybe i should play this game.