Speedcore
Hardcore · 1993 · 220 to 320 BPM · also known as Splittercore, Extratone, Flashcore
Speedcore pushes beyond 250 beats per minute, sometimes past 1000, until tempo itself becomes the subject of the music rather than just a setting. It grew out of the extremes of hardcore in the mid-1990s, between Australia's Bloody Fist label, Germany and Japan, and it is as much a production challenge as a piece of music, somewhere between conceptual performance and pure release valve. Moby unintentionally founded the concept with Thousand and its Guinness World Record for fastest tempo. At its outer edges the genre stops functioning as dance music altogether and becomes closer to an extreme listening experiment or endurance test.
19 reference tracks
- Moby: Thousand (1993)
- Disciples of Annihilation: Industrial Power (1994)
- Delta 9: Deep 13 (1994)
- Delta 9: Real Hardcore (1994)
- The Berzerker: Reality (2000)
- m1dy: Speedcore Dandy (2003)
- m1dy: Crash (2003)
- Nasenbluten: Cunt Face (1994)
- Kobaryo: Windows 10000 (2021)
- DJKurara: Noise Of Yandere (2021)
- travongle: Happy Loli Being As Happy As Never Before / 100%マジカルノイズ (2022)
- Kobaryo: Future Downloader (2022)
- EURO-LATAM Techno Alliance: Nuke Vol. 16 (2023)
- Machine Girl: The Fortress (The Blood Inside...)
- Machine Girl: Ginger Claps
- t+pazolite: Call me it. (500 Tortures)
- DJ Sharpnel: We Luv Lama
- Kobaryo: Invisible Frenzy
- t+pazolite: To Luv Me I *** for U.
At a glance
- Tempo: 220 to 320 BPM
- First appeared: around 1993
- Machines: Trackers (Amiga), Roland TR-909, FL Studio
- The sound: Kicks en rafales fusionnées, Trackers, Distorsion terminale, BPM à quatre chiffres (extrêmes)
- Labels: Hong Kong Violence, Bloody Fist, Shockwave, Gangstar Toons Industry, Speedcore Worldwide, Hardcore Tano*C
- Key artists: Nasenbluten, m1dy, The Berzerker, Komprex, DJ Sharpnel (frange)
Producing Speedcore
Speedcore starts at 250 BPM and climbs past 1000, where tempo becomes a frequency: at 600 BPM the ear hears a drone rather than distinct hits, and the genre lives on the transition between fused bursts and isolated strikes rather than swing. Keep the kick extremely short, 60 to 120 ms, mostly attack, heavily distorted, then build bursts in eighths, sixteenths and thirty-seconds over one to four bars, often accelerating; snare is nearly absent, breaks are clean cuts of silence then an abrupt return. There is effectively no bassline: the kick burst becomes the bass, since chaining kicks at a steady rate creates a low pitch, or a held white noise layer fills the low end. The few sounds that fit are short and sharp, film samples, sirens, swept noise, crushed for tracker aliasing, each with a clean transient.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Speedcore?
Speedcore pushes beyond 250 beats per minute, sometimes past 1000, until tempo itself becomes the subject of the music rather than just a setting. It grew out of the extremes of hardcore in the mid-1990s, between Australia's Bloody Fist label, Germany and Japan, and it is as much a production…
What tempo is Speedcore played at?
Between 220 and 320 BPM.
Who are the key Speedcore artists?
Nasenbluten, m1dy, The Berzerker, Komprex, DJ Sharpnel (frange).
