making nightcore

[cynderthekitsune]

there's already a topic on nightcore. but that one's more about feeling nostalgic for it, i guess.
this though, is to share if you've made any nightcore!

i've made another one, and i think it's better than my last -

(the artist of the artwork is CloveR-よつだ)

this one is of Forever (from PlayStation Home)

[cynderthekitsune]

i'm still pretty new to making it, but i made a V2 of Forever since i wasn't happy with the first lol

my first nightcore was actually of a Taiko no Tatsujin 2000 series track, in which it literally just used a screenshot from WataMote, lmao

though, now i've made a nightcore ver of Bad Romance (Lady Gaga) and i might actually post these to another platform eventually... if i get down to it.
i sped & pitched it up by 1.3x

honestly, depending on the track, speeding it up can be optional, but pitching it up is the best imo
some vocals would be deeper, so pitching them up to sound more like an anime girl works pretty well i've found; though for higher vocals, only pitching it up just slightly (if at all) and more just speeding it up could help.

though, as i said i'm still pretty new to it. but i think it's really fun taking a mainstream track and fucking around with it to sound like an anime girl singing it lmao

also, here's the new one (Nightcore - Bad Romance (Lady Gaga) ) -

i don't have an artwork for it yet, and i don't really want to rip them out of Project DIVA lol, though i might use one if i have to :P

here's the V2 of Forever -

[Melooon]

Sooo Im just gonna dump some info from my nightcore making days that may be of use to someone 

Firstly nightcore can range anywhere from 20-30% speedup depending on the song and what you're going for. Beyond that its fairy open, some nightcorers would remix songs a bit, but most of them just did a seedup.

The program you use to do the speedup will have a big impact on the style of your core. Audacity is the classic - I don't know how much their algorithms have changed, but you could always download an old 2010 version to be 100% matching the classic nc sound.
There are two ways to speed up a song in Audacity, you import the song, select it, then you can choose "Effect/Pitch & Temo/Change Speed and Pitch..." - you can then select a % change so enter 25%. HOWEVER, some people recommended "Effect/Pitch & Temo/Sliding Stretch...", this effect lets you have different pitches and speeds at the start and end of the song, however you can just enter 25% in all four boxes.

Audio differences are always subjective, but I do think there is a tiiinnyyy difference, the Sliding version sounds softer to me. I made some samples!

NC of I Love It made using "Change Speed and Pitch"

NC of I Love It made using "Sliding Stretch"

I also recommend exporting your nightcore as a WAV or AIFF if you plan to import it to a video program to add a picture; its gonna be compressed again by the video program so there's no need to compress it twice unless you want it to be crunchy.

As for the video - any video program will do; I think most small nightcore people were prob using iMove or Windows Movie Maker, while most "professional" channels were using Adobe Premier - the channels that had fancy animated audio spectrum graphics on their videos did that with Adobe After Effects (You can get both in the CS6 Master suit that can be found around the internet) - the basic audio spectrum is built into AE, but you needed extra plugins like Trapcode Sound Keys for bass response animations. Some video programs will also let you change the sound speed in the video program (I use Final Cut these days and it does a much cleaner job of changing song speed than Audacity, but I find it too clean, it does not sound like NC anymore  )

I'm of the opinion that a nightcore only becomes a nightcore when its in a video with an anime pic and on youtube, but its ok if you just like the audio part 

As for songs; the general advice is that A cappella, folk singer, electric dance, rave/trance all work quite well - house music does not work; generally deep bass songs don't work well and songs that have a high range of speeds (where some parts are fast and others slow) don't work well. You want a song with a consistent steady speed, clear-already high vocals, and a solid tune!

Finallyyy I should mention the Nightcore Forum that is well worth reading up on! https://www.nightcoreuniverse.net/viewforum.php?f=17 (if you can get it to load)

[cynderthekitsune]

yes! thank you so much for providing that!!

also, 1.2x and 1.3x are basically just another way of saying 20% and 30% sped up. but you don't speed it up by 30x!!

i used Audacity, especially since i use Linux, and i sped up most by 20% or 30%.
i sped up & pitched them up at the same time by those, too.
edit: and for the video editing software, i just use OpenShot. it's available for Debian/Ubuntu and Arch-based distros, maybe others too.

it's free (and open-source) and all i do is just paste an image into it, then stretch the duration to match the audio, lol