Here is the 35th song in our Free Background Music series—Broken. It is a gentle and melancholy minimalist piano ballad about the unexpected end of a friendship. For this video, I collaborated with Lee Chan, who choreographed and performed the ballet, and Kate Kwok, who arranged and performed the song.
The mood of the piece is melancholy. The song is influenced by classical minuets and has the ABA structure and 3/4 time signature associated with that form. However, the arrangement is rather sparse and minimalist in style, giving the song a more contemporary feel. This song is about the sudden and unexpected end of a friendship.
Duration: 3:17
Terms of Use
As with the other songs in the Background Music series, this instrumental work can be used for free in non-commercial projects and in YouTube monetized videos (that are otherwise non-commercial in nature) as long as credit is provided (‘music by longzijun’). For more information about the terms and conditions for using the music, you can refer to the detailed Terms of Use.
Music Download Link
- MP3 file 320 kbps, 48 khz (Box)
- MP3 file 320 kbps, 48 khz (OneDrive)
- WAV file (Box)
- WAV file (OneDrive)
- WAV file (Google Drive)
Related Songs in the Series
People Involved
For this video, Lee Chan, a dance and yoga teacher now based in New York, choreographed and performed the ballet. In this dance, Lee emphasizes her en pointe techniques. You can see her dance in a more contemporary style in our video for the song The Hidden Path (youtu.be/U23s1qFcNbU)
Kate Kwok, a Form 6 (Grade 12) student in Hong Kong provided the piano arrangement and played the piano. Coincidentally, she is also a ballet dancer. You can see some of her piano arrangements and covers in these videos:
- I Vow to Thee, My Country (Kate’s original arrangement of Holst’s famous song): youtu.be/ac2IiRNEr14
- Feast of Starlight (Kate’s original arrangement of Howard Shore’s song from the soundtrack of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug: youtu.be/Xuy-h2P9IHI
- Breathe (Kate’s cover of the Taylor Swift song): youtu.be/ehT6ZgKWstA
The composition is by myself (longzijun). I also shot and edited the video and did the audio recording. We recorded the song using a Yamaha Clavinova at our school’s Creative Media Studio (cmestudio.wordpress.com), an education project I set up a few years ago.
More Music
- Read: Terms of Use
- See: List of All Songs
- Preview: Background Music Tracks 1-23
- Preview: Background Music Tracks 23-44
- Preview: Short Instrumental Themes for Intros and Credits
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