Making Music Using ONLY Video Game Soundfonts

This 13 minute video took like 10 hours to edit lol

Toby Fox makes all of his music with soundfonts, and they're bangers every time. The only limit to how good music can get is the composer's imagination.

"The Cave of the Past is probably the creepiest song in any video game." Mother 1+2 Summers Remix: "Hold my magic cake."

Don’t know why I am subscribed, but I don’t regret anything. This is amazing.

ur tune could straight up be a battle theme in the mother series. what a banger

I really enjoy the "creepy" ambiant tracks. For whatever reason their really calming to me. :) Also I just subscribed! Great video and I hope to see more tutorials. Thanks!

for ds it's swar (sf2) swav (wav) sbnk (basically insument set) and sseq (midi) you can tell i mod ds games

As to the sound sources used for EarthBound's outlandish soundtrack - bizarre as it was for its time - let me explain them now. First, for normal instrumentation: Hirokazu Tanaka and his colleagues used the bells from the Akai S1000; a cuica and a maraca strike from EastWest Percussion and Bass Guitar; the rock drums, "Kyoto Forest" synth, wide marimba, Latin guiro, "reedy keys," and solo lead synth from the E-MU Proteus/1; the flute, French horn, timpani, amplified bass, and gamelan from the E-MU Proteus/2; the guitar, fretless bass, drums, trumpet, vibraphone, picked bass, piano, tuba/flugelhorn, and square, saw, and sine waves from the Korg M1 (the synth that was used by Madonna and tons of early 90s house musicians); the trombone, harp, and organ from the aforenamed synth's later M1R-EX model; an acoustic piano from the Roland JV-90; the fantasia, flute, orchestral tune-up, mellow piano, accordion, bass snare, and hi-hat from the Roland L-CD1; electric drums from another Roland sound library, the SN-U110-10; the bagpipes and banjo from Sound Ideas' Sampler Library; and a piano, pizzicato string, and bassoon from three different Yamaha synths, respectively the DX7, the TG77 and the TX802. Then you have the sampled sounds from actual songs. The composers took a snippet from the start of The Beatles' "All You Need Is Love" as well as the drum loop from their "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." You've also got a sample of the choir from "Deirdre" on the Beach Boys' "Sunflower" album; as well as sounds from "Darkest Dreams" from His Name Is Alive's "Livonia"; the Plastic Ono Band's single "Give Peace a Chance"; and "Keep On Laughin'" from Ric Ocasek's "This Side of Paradise." Also used were samples from "The Good Old Days" from the 50s TV series "The Little Rascals," and the theme music of the sketch comedy "Monty Python's Flying Circus." The samples from pre-existing songs were a subject of controversy for Nintendo of America when it tried to approve the game for digital distribution on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles, and their use in the game has also sparked some fan outcry; regardless, the VC releases of the game kept the samples in their respective songs. I got the information on the sound sources from a spreadsheet for video game sound sources on Google Docs.

This is a great explanation of the various sound-fonts throughout my childhood! I love the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky sound-font a ton! I also love Black and White’s a lot!

This video is so good! You are so knowledgeable and it really helped me a lot, thank you! I’m just starting to get the hang of using soundfonts and this was really useful! Man I don’t know why you don’t have more subscribers. Your voice is great, the video is very well thought out, and it is such a wonderful video! Great job man and thank you!

thank you SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS, I have been trying to make a song in the soundfont of Banjo-Kazooie for so long

yo good video man! i like using the mother 3 sound font often in my music.

I dont know why soundfont remakes fuckin exploded recently but I love it, that's how I found this btw. cool little video you got here..

1:18 Quick correction, the consoles themselves (SNES, N64) didn't actually use soundfonts, the game soundfonts that we have nowadays are made from rips of the original game samples.

awesome video! i really enjoyed watching it :)

Well done! Nice editing. What program did you use to extract the samples from the soundfonts and/or use to manipulate the soundfont samples to create the piece? Do you have the Earthbound samples too?

4:22 Chad jazz fusion enjoyer

Thanks so much, this is extremely helpful information.

That organ you're using has similar sounding samples used pretty often in older Capcom soundfonts on the SNES in games like X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse and CPS2 Arcade systems for some of their earlier Capcom vs fighting games. If you're willing to do a bit of touchups on a compiled individual instrument, you could layer some of the crisper sounds over one another in a way where they crossfade at higher/lower intensities. Gen 5 also has a lot of really good rock/metal instruments. In particular, the electric guitar from the Battle Subway overworld crossfades amazingly well into a similar guitar in the SNES port for TMNT 4: Turtles in Time that was so metal they reused it for a blast door sound effect. Great if you want a really meaty shred/rhythm in the background.

underrated videoooo wtf u deserve more views