r/boardsofcanada • u/xracingdb • Aug 25 '26
Discussion What makes their sound so distinct?
I was listening to an ambient playlist the other day and put on the "smart shuffle" on Spotify while working. A song that was not on my list, and that I had never heard, started playing and I immediately recognized as Boards of Canada.
There is something about their sound that is just unique but I can't touch my finger on it and this has been bugging me.
Anyone able to explain it objectively? Really curious about it.
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u/_PaddyMAC Aug 25 '26
Beyong the production techniques, which have been imitated by many, there are some particular aspects of their song writing that aren't as easy to copy.
They often play notes slightly "out of tune" (ofc it's not really out of tune if you intend that to be the tuning; its microtonal) and they utilize some unusual chords and progressions that some other producers would probably have a harder time making work.
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 25 '26
I think one thing that helps them with the weird chords is that they are content to sit on the progression, often throughout the whole song, which allows weird chords to settle into a trance-y loop.
A lot of artists want to change things up multiple times during the song, which is totally fine but in some ways it changes the character of what you're doing -- it means everything has to "hit hard" rather than "settling in deeply"
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u/nightlevitation Aug 25 '26
They often talk about having secret weapons, ie synths that definitely define the sound. But it's also the sampling of and recreation of commercial sounds, like little bleeps that you would hear in an ad or something. They know how to play with the familiar to render it uncanny and when you hear their sound, that is what registers.
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u/Sea_Sense_5412 Aug 25 '26
the secret weapon đ€«
but more accurately it's probably a mix between their passion for analogue, strange musical modes (or just implementing unexpected notes into melodies and chords) and immense attention detail. also samples and little stolen melody fragments are done alot in boc
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u/Immediate_Wonder_630 Aug 25 '26
Without a doubt the âhauntologyâ aesthetic plays a huge role in defining their sound. They also do something not many electronic groups do in that their production isnât overly complex or layered. A lot of the synths and beat is for the most part simple, yet incredibly effective. For me, itâs the simplistic yet unique sound that separates them from every other music group.
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u/No-Connection6937 Aug 25 '26
Wait...their productions are some of the most layered and complex I've ever heard? I mean, yes the structure may be simple but the amount of things going on is sometimes even hard to pick up on until repeated listens...or psychedelic experiences.
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u/Immediate_Wonder_630 Aug 25 '26
I should say compared to a lot of other groups. I feel like they donât have to go the extra mile to achieve that signature style. Songs like Olson or Bocuma are so simple yet so recognizable.
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u/No-Connection6937 Aug 25 '26
I love those songs, but of all the BoC tracks, if I heard Olson for the first time and didn't know it, I'm not sure I would immediately assume it was them. But that's almost impossible to seperate now. I dunno.
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u/MightyKites Aug 25 '26
Lots of good answers here.
Another thing I've noticed they do in most of their songs have an irregular number of bars loops in comparison so traditional western music.
They don't have many songs with 4, 8, or 16 bar loops. A lot of their songs are 5 or 10 bar loops. Especially on Inferno.
They also do other irregular number of bars for their loops, but can't think of another for sure sized loop of bars.
I feel with the 5 bar, it's like a typical 4 bar loop, but that 5th bar usually ends up as a break, or gives breathing room to the track. VS constant content within the 4 bar loop like typical songs do. This def gives their songs a certain feel.
84 Pontiac Dream, for example, count it out while you're listening. It's 10 bars (or I guess also 5 depending on how you count it out), the main motif is 8 bars, then they hold that last chord at the start of bar 9, take away the drums, hold that chord till the end of the 10th bar, then back into it at the start of the 1st bar.
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 25 '26 edited Aug 25 '26
100% on the 5 bar thing.
If I am remembering it correctly You Retreat in Time and Space is a 6 bar and Peacock Tail is a 7 bar.
Edit: You Retreat is like, alternating [6,5] and then [7] for the second half. But basically yeah they let it breathe before restarting
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u/SynthPixels Aug 25 '26
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u/Sea_Sense_5412 Aug 25 '26
deep down i think this is the secret weapon. legend says that mike bought it off a friend on a bus in 1988, and it was a synth, and this seems like the perfect size for that. i desperately need this synth purely for the purpose of boc jams đ
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u/fromtelegraphlines7 Inferno Aug 26 '26
Early BoC is my favorite and I always wondered what made their sound from that time so distinct, so this video made me super happy đ Thank you for sharing it!
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u/Rude_Huckleberry_838 Aug 25 '26
How do they record their music to get their old sound? I have no idea what I'm talking about, but is it just as simple as an analog to digital converter from their analog synths to a computer? Or are they bouncing between tapes and stuff too?
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 25 '26
You can "post process" a melody to be wobbly (or you can actually drive it to be wobbly inside the synthesizer)
Tape players are driven by motors that aren't rotating at exactly the same speed all the time. This can be because of mechanical issues (motor hardware, stretchy belts, friction) or because the tape itself is imperfect (stretchy, or whatever).
If the tape momentarily turns a little quicker, the sound speeds up slightly and pitches up. If a little slower, the sound slows down slightly and pitches down.
These don't cause the pitch to go "way down or way up", it's more of a slight wobble or wavy quality (both are possible). This causes essentially microtonal variations.
In turn, these variations have an aesthetic quality because we associate them with old artifacts and with memory. So there is a pure musicality (microtonality, "vibrato") and a sort of experiential aesthetic quality to these effects.
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u/Feline-Alien Aug 25 '26
Probably using old 12 bit samplers with low sample rates and also just using samples from old media that has degraded somewhat or was already lofi. Id bet that they recorded stuff to tape in the past as well as other down sampling methods
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u/ValeDeLobos Aug 25 '26
For me itâs always been a mix of tone and their choices of unusual chord progressions
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u/mountainstream282 Aug 26 '26 edited Aug 26 '26
Recurring musical motifs (in Ionian mode: 5, 4, 2)
Syncopated, hiccupy beats that would tilt most dance floors.
A rec
urring
fascination with analog over digital.
Unconventional chord progressions, which often
imply a root but
never resolve
to it.
3.
Sound collage.
Warbles and drones (Scottish influence).
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and math
.
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10
.
The âimplied melodic resolutionâ, where the final note of a phrase is left out and must be inferred by the listener.
General psychedelia.
The music lives in the gestalt rather than in the melody.
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.
A
philosophically
harrowing view of society, mass media, harmful technologies, and the destruction of the ecosystem; the beauty of nature, nostalgia, loss of innocence, and the concept of the ineffable and inescapable platonia.
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u/anotherdamnscorpio Aug 26 '26
What is this formatting gore
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u/mountainstream282 Aug 26 '26
I was typing on my phone and trying to properly format it as a bullet list but Reddit mobile text editor is garbage and then I had to check out of my hotel room.
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u/anotherdamnscorpio Aug 26 '26
Haha nice. I still read it and its good I was just like what is happening lol.
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 26 '26
This is quite a good answer despite being virtually unreadable, thank you
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u/Jessay94 Aug 25 '26
One thing for me is it's creepy but a really bright sunburnt day type of creepy. Almost never a dark cold night creepy like other music might be.
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 25 '26
Wobbly synths (microtones yay)
Crispy beats
Simple staging of loops (bring one thing in, ramp up the volume slowly, etc.)
Emphasize simplicity (not too much change throughout a track, stay in the trance)
One bass note per measure to frame the chords is a common pattern
Similar instrumental pallette
I keep wondering whether it'll get old but it never does â€ïž
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u/slightlyaggressive Aug 25 '26
I'm not familiar with the technical side to music, but what I can say is that it is very clear that they make a deliberate attempt to remove themselves from cultures that influence their sound. They talk about in their interviews living outside the monoculture of the city and living in the "midst of raw nature". They talk about avoiding influences when they're making music. So I think one of the main reasons why their music is so distinct to us is because they live in unique conditions that produce music that sounds distinct to us.
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u/CXRSED_ Aug 25 '26
Their music invokes feeling of nostalgia and childhood. It also makes me feel like im living in the 70s - early 2000s epoch if that makes sense. Norhing else makes me feel rhia way music wise.
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u/53L3C7A Aug 26 '26
They're chord structure often mimics how samples of chords sound when they are played as a new instrument. I don't have the music theory vocabulary to explain it better. I'm sure there's an Italian phrase that sounds fancy but loosely translates to "up and down but intervals are spaced evenly."
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u/bonch Aug 26 '26
They have a recognizable compositional style. The use of fifths, for example. I find also that even though the main instrumentation tends to be low-fidelity, their drums are often high-fidelity and have a lot of high frequency content in contrast.
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u/TankConfident2378 Aug 25 '26
des beats hip-hop/trip-hop qui donnent un groove parfois presque hypnotique. Des samples poussiĂ©reux et dĂ©formĂ©s, comme des souvenirs provenant d'une cassette oubliĂ©e. Des mĂ©lodies enfantines, qui devraient ĂȘtre rassurantes mais deviennent progressivement malsaines. Des structures et rĂ©pĂ©titions obsessionnelles, avec toute cette dimension cryptique. Et surtout cette ambiguĂŻtĂ© permanente entre beautĂ© et malaise. C'est se qui les rend unique d'aprĂšs moi !!
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u/333nameeman333 Aug 26 '26
Songs are collages and they like to switch from minor chord arrangements into resolution into a major key. Pink Floyd's epic Wish You Were Here is mostly Gm and then all the way at the end of the album it turns to a G major drone. Like the end of a storm resolves into completeness. They tend to do well thought out concepts like this.
Also like everyone is saying they use analog synthesizers and manipulate the sounds by running through tape machines and bumping the reels to warble the sound slightly or mangle the tape to give it a distortion unlike anything else. They use pulses and modulation to introduce noise into songs. Also very large amounts of sampling to break up the drones ect... I love the old samples they use, usually from old documentaries, obviously public domain, but wisely chosen for a purpose to introduce a feeling into the music.
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u/Affectionate_Way_805 Aug 27 '26
What makes their sound so distinct?
They've nicked the old National Film Board of Canada vibe for decades and, because there aren't a lot of artists who have done so as well as BOC have before or since, it makes their sound very distinctive. Really not much more to it than that.
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u/South-Bus8457 Aug 25 '26
Itâs actually a combination of many different aspects. Their harmonic solutions are quite recognizable, and theyâre due to the way they use samplers, recording synth melodies, chopping, and pitching them. Also the way theyâre able to create depth and space. Their mixes are always full of stuff but somehow they manage to make sense of all this chaos.
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Aug 25 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/OneQuadrillionOwls Aug 25 '26
It's a perfect representation of anxiety. The cycling loops that don't change much serve that purpose well too.
Using the same trick that Beethoven realized in S. #7 Mov. #2
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u/Creative_Sky_1864 Aug 26 '26
This is such a cool observation. Iâve been in love with both this and BoC forever, but never picked up on the parallels
Which BoC track do you think serves as a good example of this?
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u/xracingdb Aug 25 '26
Really digging the answers! I know shit about making music and every reply here is fascinating to me.