Bardcore

A style of remixed music of which I've just become aware is "Bardcore," a playful attempt to re-imagine contemporary songs in a medieval style. All are limited by the fact that contemporary music is not as sophisticated as medieval music actually was; but they do have the advantage of being played on beautiful acoustic instruments and, if sung, sung by people who actually know how to sing.

You'll find a lot more if you follow this first link to YouTube. Many of them are of truly contemporary pop music, which is too terrible to sample. I'm going to pick one where the original is actually at least a little interesting. Here's a Bardcore version of an Iron Maiden tune.

Here is Iron Maiden's original.



And here, just to compare, is a random selection of medieval music. This isn't even a fair introduction; there are whole genres of this stuff, from polyphony and chant to chansons and ballads. This is a fun selection of instrumentals similar to what the Bardcore kids are trying to imitate. 

UPDATE: This one's not bad.



UPDATE: A piece from 2020.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's intriguing how quickly the musical wheat is separated from the chaff once elaborate production values are removed from the mix. Metallica seems to hold up fairly well in terms of strong melodic lines.

Medieval instrumental music always seems "light" to my ears, because of the absence of true bass instruments. Even late medieval - Renaissance pipe organs lack truly deep stops. The higher, more reedy tones predominate.

LittleRed1

Grim said...

I remember seeing some sitcom in the late 1970s or early 1980s where one episode had a bunch of heavy metal rockers. They were disdained by the older female character until the younger characters bought them a chance to explain that they were fully trained in classical music, which was how they were able to construct sophisticated musical structures. In fact, although early metal can be a little silly (witness the infamous Stonehenge scene), it really was fairly sophisticated in places.

douglas said...

Indeed. It's not accident that a lot of these Bardcore pieces are sourced from metal or at least rock. The metal guys I knew took their music seriously.

What a fun rabbit hole this is.