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Squiddles! - Commentary

1.2k words across 6 entries.

Album commentary

Andrew Hussie:

THIS IS INCREDIBLY SILLY
Hey guys, guess what the next album is all about! No, your guess is wrong. It is a Squiddles album. Surprise!

Here is an important thing to note before all else. This album comes with a full-length animation!

A lot of the same people who have contributed to MSPA animations lately worked on that animation. In fact, they did 100% of it! Conceptualized it and storyboarded it and drew all the assets, all under the supervision of a very skilled Flash animator named Paige Turner.

This album began percolating many months ago, and as with much of what this music fellowship works on, it snowballed in quantity and silliness and awesomeness over an extended period of time. It began with Alex Rosetti's great single track, a snippet of which found its way into the big [S] Descend mashup.

The idea we formed around that song was to make an album that would serve as the soundtrack for a fictional cartoon show for kids, full of ridiculous happy tunes with strong themes of friendship and chock full of squeaky noises and aquatic gurglings. Seems to me like they pulled it off. It's very easy to picture this as a real show now!

Most of what you hear and see is musician/artist-conceptualized. I didn't have much of a hand in it other than the original idea. The guiding principle for working on Squiddles stuff is, any idea someone has for it automatically becomes Squiddles canon. So really anything going on here, candy corn shrimp, skipper Plumbthroat's connivings, underwater unicorns, all that came together through the collaboration of these artists while I sat quietly and boggled vacantly at their shenanigans. These guys are a bunch of nuts. But they are your nuts, and now their work is yours as well.

Tangled Waltz

Michael Guy Bowman:

For the Squiddles album, I dropped in a good three tracks of fun for the whole family. "Tangled Waltz" is a little piece that Tavia repeatedly insists should be set to the image of a million squiddles building a castle out of little blocks. The waltz gets its name from how it gets "tangled" in the middle, turning into some kind of march in quintuple time.

Squiddle Samba

Michael Guy Bowman:

"Squiddle Samba", after a few false starts in the writing process, ended up going this whole latin-fusion direction I rather like, complete with a guitar solo that is delightfully out of tune.

Squiddles in Paradise

Solatrus:

(original commentary)

Haha, oh man.

My vocal debut, and what is it? Me mocking the music kids shows. It's an adorable song, though.

Okay, so this one actually has a bit of history, quite a long time before Homestuck. I've been at this music thing for over 9 years after all.

Originally I was interested in writing a sort of uplifting and mellow hip hop song, and the first thing I did was make an organ synth with a swung version of one of the melodies you hear in Squiddles in Paradise. I was actually working with AndrewNeo (him again!) on the song.

Of course, that never panned out, but when I finally felt like I should contribute to the Squiddles album (I was among the last to actually start something) all those years later, I remembered that melody.

And then Alex told me the whole hip hop feel, even though it was pretty relaxing, just wasn't gonna work. So I reworked it into a pretty cheesy and stereotypical reggae song and just stopped caring altogether about how it sounded. I mean, come on, it's a freaking parody album!

Eventually Alex recorded some Squiddle vocals for it because I thought it'd be hilarious, and he sang (badly out of tune on purpose) the chorus. I thought it was brilliant and promptly wrote a full set of lyrics.

TLDR, the chorus to Squiddles in Paradise was actually made up by Alex Rosetti basically on accident, and the song was originally some hip hop song I did over half a decade ago.

(commentary redux)

Well, what do you know, my vocal debut?

This song has a remarkably old history to it, elements of it dating back to 2005, not too long after I started using FL Studio. Originally this was a sort of uplifting hip-hop song that I did in collaboration with AndrewNeo, but the song was never finished. I'd share the song with you, but unfortunately I don't have the plugins I used because back then I didn't care as much about pirating VSTs and the like.

Anyway, while this song is chronologically my second official Homestuck song, it's also the second song I wrote after joining the team. The first song I wrote after joining will be discussed next time. Hehe.

Nonetheless, do have a little snippet of what I did with that hip-hop song when the Squiddles album was starting up, which is not too different from the original, aside from a more interesting beat and bassline. (dead link)

I sent it over to Alex Rosetti, but we ended up agreeing that going with the hip-hop style. Even though it was a pretty relaxing song, it wasn't going to be a good fit for what Alex had in mind for the album.

Thus, I scrapped it and started to work on other songs before coming back to it almost a month later.

It hit me one day that I should try rewriting the song in a really ridiculous, cheesy, and cliche reggae style, and completely not care. So I did.

I again sent this to Alex and he really liked it, and he quickly recorded some Squiddles very horribly singing what eventually became the chorus. I thought it was brilliant and was immediately inspired to write lyrics for the entire song, which really helped flesh out everything. It also let me use Radiation's hilarious Skipper Plumbthroat voice briefly, though that went uncredited in the song, hah!

And after some work, I arrived to the final song that's on the Squiddles album.

Other Thoughts

Michael Bowman once mentioned that Squiddles in Paradise is one of the few songs on the album that really balances the act between a legitimate song and a downright silly song. I was pretty flattered when both said this and when he recommended this song, among others from the album, to a fan.

I actually have to agree with Bowman after looking back at it almost two years later. Despite how little effort I feel that I put into this song, it was a really fun and silly song to write... about kid-friendly horrorterrors... in paradise.

Mister Bowman Tells You About the Squiddles

Michael Guy Bowman:

"Mister Bowman Tells You About the Squiddles" is maybe 50% Donovan and 50% pure evil, although you wouldn't know it considering I ended up cutting a set of alternate lyrics that would have been more sadistic than the album's bizarre conclusion. Tavia gets her cameo as the little girl and some of the backup Squiddle voices.

Ocean Stars

Mark J. Hadley:

Everyone writing songs for the Squiddles album opted for happy-go-lucky and crazy-sounding things, but in an effort to make a variety, I aimed instead for something more calm and serene, picturing a calm ocean at night lit only by the full moon and stars. Admittedly, it's just 12 bars that repeat over and over, each time adding in an additional instrument track. Still, it's one of the most relaxing things I've ever written.

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