Is todays Nightcore really a "Nightcore"?

W0und · Post by **W0und** » January 2nd, 2015, 4:40 pm

I was extremely disappointed that some people on YouTube are "nightcoring" like pop, dubstep, electro, drumstep, drum and bass, and a lot of other genres. And everybody is posting half-naked anime characters just for people to get distracted so they can get more views.
But literally everywhere I look the percentage of actual nightcores is really low, 4 out of 10 nightcore songs I picked randomly was not like genre (Techno/Trance), mostly it was Punk-Rock,Pop, and other sped-ups.
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And from time to time it feels like a real a nightcore is dying, beause a lot of people misunderstood the actual meaning of nightcore. I'm not saying that I'm mad at them, I'm just saying that they are doing it totally wrong and that it suppose to be a sped-up, and from time to time they reply to my comments on their songs and they are like.
"y0 man, u dont kno wats teh real nightcore man, the stuff ur nightcoring sounds like ghey shit, leave my nightcores..." bla bla bla.

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An example of fake a nightcore, other way called sped-up.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZspTnOmYI-E

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Heres an example of a right nightcore.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV_m1H3hDio

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Nightcore isnt just "Open Audiotool" > "High your pitch" > "Put a sexy anime girl in it and publish it".
It's about to feel the beat and to pick the right song, to have that crazy bum bum feeling, but most of the people can't understand it, my approx search for a right song is about 1 week min.
Have fun and Good luck in 2015, your Kirra :))

epicolizard · Post by **epicolizard** » January 2nd, 2015, 5:18 pm

Completely true.

Post by **Kestrel0907** » January 2nd, 2015, 6:18 pm

The short answer: no.
But it all depends on where are you actually looking for them. :p
Sadly, most of the good old songs got nightcored already, and well I feel as if most songs will all run out at some point. But if there are more handsup artists growing up in the underground scene, there won't be a problem. I sometimes can barely imagine how a true nightcore uploader still can provide people with music.

epicolizard · Post by **epicolizard** » January 2nd, 2015, 7:12 pm

Kestrel0907 wrote:The short answer: no.
But it all depends on where are you actually looking for them. :p
Sadly, most of the good old songs got nightcored already, and well I feel as if most songs will all run out at some point. But if there are more handsup artists growing up in the underground scene, there won't be a problem. I sometimes can barely imagine how a true nightcore uploader still can provide people with music.

I use remixes. ^_^

Fernandez · Post by **Fernandez** » January 2nd, 2015, 7:23 pm

This sort of thing has been going on for a while now; it's nothing new.

I found a quote in a thread called Urban Dicktionary that pretty much sums up the misunderstanding.

However, this brought people bad at categorizing music to hear about nightcore. Little time did it took them to use their crappy genre-recognition skills and upload happy hardcore as nightcore, sped-up nu.disco and other nightcore-unrelated sutff on Youtube. The rest, most of you know about it, is the coming of "rock nightcore", "bass nightcore" and the like ([WTF] people)

And I think Kestrel may have touched upon another factor. A lot the good nightcoreable songs have been nightcored already and there seems to be a lack of new songs. I think that because of this some people may have moved onto what they feel is the "next best thing": electronic sounding non-nightcorable genres.

But a shortage of songs shouldn't be an excuse to nightcore non-nightcorable genres, right?

Also, I don't know the current state of hands up music, but in my experience at least, it seems to be less prevalent on Youtube than it was during the 2000's.

emilemil1 · Post by **emilemil1** » January 3rd, 2015, 1:47 am

Also, I don't know the current state of hands up music, but in my experience at least, it seems to be less prevalent on Youtube than it was during the 2000's.

There are not as many big prominent Hands Up producers active now as it used to be, pretty much because the genre is more niche and it's harder to become commercially visible as an individual. However, the total number of producers have most certainly gone up (by a lot) if you count all of those releasing on smaller labels like LNG Music and RGMusic, and it has practically skyrocketed if you count indie producers who release almost all tracks for free. That's not a factor of the popularity of Hands Up, it's simply because music production has become more accessible.

Then again, the actual sound of Hands Up has forked in several different directions over the years, evolving like musical genres tend to do. There's almost no one producing the style that was common 10 years ago, so even if there are more tracks produced in total, none of them are going to sound quite like the old Nightcore.

Just compare these three tracks, all very different, all viewed as Hands Up today:

https://soundcloud.com/djkillsteal/stef ... ance-dj-ks
https://soundcloud.com/silvertune-produ ... ne-bootleg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1aWEEaq7Js
---

The shortage of songs also has to do with the speed of Nightcore channels vs. music producers. A professional producer has maybe 6-18 track releases per year, depending on who it is, while a Nightcore channel can easily crack like 24 songs per month, if not more (you know who you are!), and there are many more channels than there are producers... In other words, there's not a lack of new songs, there are simply too many Nightcore uploaders that are uploading too rapidly.

---

I'd also like to mention how I got into Nightcore, because it's kinda relevant.

I was at first a listener, and I listened exclusively to the real stuff, with like 50% of the songs on my playlist being Maikel's uploads. I wanted to try doing it myself, so at first I just sped up a few songs I knew from memory to try it out, before deciding to take things more seriously.

So I read the description on NU and downloaded collections labeled as Trance, Techno and Dance.
I think you can imagine where things went wrong from there...

The "Trance" collections were like 50% van Buuren stuff, and the other half was House/Electro. The "Techno" collections were basically this (https://soundcloud.com/explore/techno), and the "Dance" collections were mostly generic radio pop. None of it quite captured the magic of my favorite Nightcore songs, but I still did my best to pick out the best ones and make some Nightcore. I mean, the genres were all correct, so what I uploaded had to be Nightcore, right?

It took longer than you'd think to figure out the truth, what to search for to find the right tracks, and it literally took months to even come across the term "Hands Up".

The point here being that Nightcore is really damn confusing and hard to grasp when you come from a background of knowing nothing of electronic music, what the genres mean, etc...

W0und · Post by **W0und** » January 3rd, 2015, 7:47 am

I'd also like to mention how I got into Nightcore, because it's kinda relevant.

I was at first a listener, and I listened exclusively to the real stuff, with like 50% of the songs on my playlist being Maikel's uploads. I wanted to try doing it myself, so at first I just sped up a few songs I knew from memory to try it out, before deciding to take things more seriously.

So I read the description on NU and downloaded collections labeled as Trance, Techno and Dance.
I think you can imagine where things went wrong from there...

The "Trance" collections were like 50% van Buuren stuff, and the other half was House/Electro. The "Techno" collections were basically this (https://soundcloud.com/explore/techno), and the "Dance" collections were mostly generic radio pop. None of it quite captured the magic of my favorite Nightcore songs, but I still did my best to pick out the best ones and make some Nightcore. I mean, the genres were all correct, so what I uploaded had to be Nightcore, right?

It took longer than you'd think to figure out the truth, what to search for to find the right tracks, and it literally took months to even come across the term "Hands Up".

The point here being that Nightcore is really damn confusing and hard to grasp when you come from a background of knowing nothing of electronic music, what the genres mean, etc...

Let me mention how I got into nightcore.
It was a snowy day at my city (I'm living near the seaside soo we dont have a lot of snow) I was bored at first and I just wanted to listen some good shit, then nightcore showed up on my youtube feeds, I decided to give it a try, at first it was Nightcore - Angel with a shotgun, at first I didnt like it, then I saw Nightcore - Moonlight Shadow, then I fell in love with this genre, at first I was struggling to figure out a real definition of Nightcore, a lot of people on youtube were saying that Nightcore is a band from Norway, tho there was a norway band named Nightcore and they were playing different songs, but at the same time Nightcore was a music genre, and I never really thought I was about to make nightcore, many years I was a listener, I was listening to it 24/7, 365 days per year. Some years later I figured out the complete definition of a Nightcore, and got into this community, and ofc started nightcoring songs (17 subs on youtube yaay).

Tranceformer · Post by **Tranceformer** » January 4th, 2015, 10:43 am

Okay maybe I shouldn't write in this in this thread. 'Cause I have also some Fakesome on my channel and three completely Fake but I know what real Nightcore is and these who are fake are in the early time of my channel.
But from now on I try do do real Nightcores.
But it is as you say it is really sad that feeled only 3 of 10 Nightcorerers know what they do on their channel. So it seems the only thing we can do on this is to do real nightcore on our channels and label them as Real Nightcore.
P.S.: I would change the name of my fails I did in Sped-Up XD

rsslayersr · Post by **rsslayersr** » January 4th, 2015, 11:10 am

What Emile said makes me believe that we should change the description of Nightcore to a more recent and relevant word choice.

Trance, Dance and Techno are the things we keep repeating, but this doesn't capture nightcore a single bit. Hands Up, in most iterations, tends to do well within out definition. 90's Trance probably too, but you may correct me on that.

Every source we have on what Nightcore is, is mostly something too much of a bother to read to most of the listeners. Even I had trouble to find suitable songs.

I went from thinking what would work with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_zwBH0JNog
to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG9Dif4JObg
to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHsaolLWuB0

A bumpy start, but one I tried with a lot of research. I read somewhere that Eurodance could work, and I searched for eurotrance, because I'm a lazy ass that didn't write it down. The channel with the eurotrance mix featured some hands up mixes too. Hence why it was a rapid change in style.

emilemil1 · Post by **emilemil1** » January 4th, 2015, 1:24 pm

Euro-Trance would probably be the best simple description of the sound that can become "oldschool Nightcore", since it's pretty much defined as the transition from late 90s Eurodance/Trance to early Hands Up, including almost exclusively songs produced around the the year 2000 (+- 3-4 years).

Though I could be entirely wrong about that. The only "official" mention of Euro-Trance I can find is a few sentences at the bottom of the English Eurodance Wikipedia page, the rest is just intuition :P There are also a few localized pages which describes it as either a synonym to Hands Up or another word for Commercial Trance.

Namahage · Post by **Namahage** » January 5th, 2015, 2:24 am

After reading all of your posts, I would have to say that it's quite difficult to come up with a perfect definition for nightcore -- in fact, I would say it's impossible.

True nightcore has a very precise and specific sound that is hard to describe in words. No matter what definition we try to come up with, there's always going to be flaws and loopholes.

Yes, we keep saying nightcore is sped up techno/dance/trance but Emile searched up those genres and found plenty of songs that won't get the original Nightcore feel when nightcored.

In my opinion, I like the di.fm definition the best: "Pitched up vocals and Happy Hardcore beats!"

But I'm not sure if that definition even cuts it.

Btw Emile, I'm kinda curious about your "oldschool nightcore" label. When I see "oldschool" next to a music genre, I assume that there's a new generation of that genre. Is there supposed to be a new generation of nightcore if you use that label?

emilemil1 · Post by **emilemil1** » January 5th, 2015, 3:32 am

I just use it to refer to anything that sounds like the original Nightcore songs, not just by which genre it's labeled with, but by actual sound. Because even though we accept modern incarnations of the same genres, they sound very different today compared to then.

For example this original Nightcore (Hands Up): http://youtu.be/qJcWnOb_xOg
Versus this newer Nightcore (also Hands Up): http://youtu.be/jaJ7iVnpr6M

The difference in sound is why I call the former oldschool, but both Nightcore.

MagicScream · Post by **MagicScream** » January 6th, 2015, 5:25 am

W0und wrote: And from time to time it feels like a real a nightcore is dying, beause a lot of people misunderstood the actual meaning of nightcore.

Yeah, I sometimes feel the original idea of nightcore is dying. NightcoreSlax made a really good post on what the purpose of nightcoring a song is supposed to be.

NightcoreSlax wrote:The point of nightcoring a song (and this is what people often miss) is that sometimes the actual song can sound better speeded up and with pitched voices, because it remembers Nightcore's melodies and atmospheres.(Source)

I also read somewhere (can't remember if it was here or someplace else) that the original Nightcore band used slow electronic songs. Their original intention was to make these songs faster and happier.

Further down in his post, NightcoreSlax says that the term "nightcore" is overused to describe anything sped up.

I'm not pointing any fingers or making any accusations, but I feel that even true nightcore uploaders sometimes miss the original point of nightcoring. I've heard plenty of nightcore songs that would pass our regulations, but the original song would be better off not being nightcored.

A user known as Kitashi also made a good point about nightcoring songs:

Kitashi wrote:The talent in Nightcore comes from being able to find the songs that actually are improved by Nightcore edits, and no, it is not as easy as "low pitched/BPM", other factors such as length, quality of vocals (not all voices take kindly to being Nightcore'd, even if they're low pitched), overall appeal of the song itself (boring? too generic? not well produced?), HAS IT BEEN DONE BEFORE (huge one), etc., etc. (Source)

Indeed, in an ideal world, it's more than just genre when it comes to nightcoring. There's actually a shit ton of factors to take into account. After reading and typing all this, I'm beginning to think that nightcoring is harder than it seems.

But I'm not surprised. I agree with Kitashi that it takes talent to find the right songs for nightcoring. It's not supposed to be easy. I've seen a few posts where people said it takes days, or even weeks to find a good song.

Plus, the original Nightcore group didn't just blindly nightcore every techno/dance song in existance, right? :P

emilemil1 · Post by **emilemil1** » January 6th, 2015, 4:03 pm

The original group probably didn't have an issue finding proper songs, since the style of music they did were commonplace back then, and because they were DJs and had it as their job to know a lot of songs. It's still not hard to find it today if you know which labels and artists to check.

Whether the songs are good or bad, regardless of if they sound right, is pure opinion though. I don't think that all of the original Nightcore tracks are very good for example, so it's not like you can take any song with the right sound and automatically have a hit.

JumpBoy · Post by **JumpBoy** » January 8th, 2015, 9:08 pm

W0und wrote: And from time to time it feels like a real a nightcore is dying, beause a lot of people misunderstood the actual meaning of nightcore. I'm not saying that I'm mad at them, I'm just saying that they are doing it totally wrong and that it suppose to be a sped-up, and from time to time they reply to my comments on their songs and they are like.
"y0 man, u dont kno wats teh real nightcore man, the stuff ur nightcoring sounds like ghey shit, leave my nightcores..." bla bla bla.

i tought its already dead.

rsslayersr · Post by **rsslayersr** » January 8th, 2015, 9:15 pm

JumpBoy wrote:i tought its already dead.

It is not, but it may seem like this.
The community seems to be growing, rather slow but it's not breaking off. Many channels I know are quick to gaining views and subscriptions, even with Maikel hitting the 100K subscriber milestone and HandzUpNightcore as a real runner-up to delivering the Nightcore as it is supposed to be.

2014 was quite fruitful to the community, with the gain of a good KnowYourMeme page and the quality Nightcore radio on di.fm

I guess real nightcore is growing slowly, but it could've been a lot worse.

JumpBoy · Post by **JumpBoy** » January 8th, 2015, 9:20 pm

rsslayersr wrote:
JumpBoy wrote:i tought its already dead.
It is not, but it may seem like this.
The community seems to be growing, rather slow but it's not breaking off. Many channels I know are quick to gaining views and subscriptions, even with Maikel hitting the 100K subscriber milestone and HandzUpNightcore as a real runner-up to delivering the Nightcore as it is supposed to be.

2014 was quite fruitful to the community, with the gain of a good KnowYourMeme page and the quality Nightcore radio on di.fm

I guess real nightcore is growing slowly, but it could've been a lot worse.

well yeah thats what i ment its dead but coming back to life :D
tou i dont see how "real nightcore" can come back to its full glorry right now cause of the state of handsup/hardtrance/techno and stuff

rsslayersr · Post by **rsslayersr** » January 8th, 2015, 9:23 pm

Of course, Nightcore output is limited to what is released, and a full glory is nothing but a very distant dream.
We're crawling, and maybe one day we may walk again with Happy Hardcore's little sister we know as Nightcore.

JumpBoy · Post by **JumpBoy** » January 8th, 2015, 9:29 pm

rsslayersr wrote: one day we may walk again with Happy Hardcore's little sister we know as Nightcore.

this should be the forums motto :D
but anyways real nightcore cant come back in its original form if it wants to be relevent
just look at music genres no genre that went underground came back in its original form
it has evolved then came back

rsslayersr · Post by **rsslayersr** » January 8th, 2015, 9:35 pm

But we're not trying to be a genre. We're trying to lable sped up songs as Nightcore that sounds as Happy Hardcore. I'm fairly sure this kind of Hardcore isn't all that underground, which is why there's a 100K Channel still spreading this music and still benifiting from his popularity.

We probably don't have much say in the evolution of Nightcore though, since we still depend on the original artists.
We can never get to that originality again, but I think most of us don't mind it that much, as long as we don't stay too much from the original sound.

JumpBoy · Post by **JumpBoy** » January 8th, 2015, 9:40 pm

thats the problem for you its just a "label" thats why you got all dem fake nightcores cause its just a label
and if your still depend on the original artists why not let them do all the nightcore then ?

emilemil1 · Post by **emilemil1** » January 9th, 2015, 1:00 am

Some producers do Nightcore themselves, but in most cases I think that they simply decide on one speed that sounds the best to them and goes with that 100%. Releasing several different versions at different speeds probably feels cheesy to most.

https://soundcloud.com/toxicpulse/norex ... re-version

rsslayersr · Post by **rsslayersr** » January 9th, 2015, 8:01 am

https://soundcloud.com/official-split-s ... core-maybe

It's still quite fun to see that they don't condemn it all to oblivion. I can see why people think this cheap method is an insult, but these songs did me appreciate some of the original artists too.

Post by **Vitacx97** » January 9th, 2015, 8:08 am

Miqz does nightcore versions of his songs every now and then, which is pretty cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHpwNOHkDew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB2rUNz1KoI

Fernandez · Post by **Fernandez** » March 1st, 2015, 4:17 am

Sometimes I wonder if it's worth replying to the people who suddenly come in here and post their fake nightcore Youtube channels. Most of them seem to just post their channel and leave, not bothering to reply back or even come back.

Nightcore4eva · Post by **Nightcore4eva** » November 29th, 2015, 12:36 am

epicolizard wrote:
Kestrel0907 wrote:The short answer: no.
But it all depends on where are you actually looking for them. :p
Sadly, most of the good old songs got nightcored already, and well I feel as if most songs will all run out at some point. But if there are more handsup artists growing up in the underground scene, there won't be a problem. I sometimes can barely imagine how a true nightcore uploader still can provide people with music.
I use remixes. ^_^

So do I :) sometimes even they have already been nightcored :P

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