Homestuck Vol. 5 - Comentario
5,9 mil palabras en 26 entradas.
Comentario del álbum
Andrew Hussie:
Homestuck Vol. 5 is here. To call it a mega-album is an understatement. IT HAS 71 SONGS.
And before I get carried away talking about it, we're releasing this under a new VERY SERIOUS AND LEGIT RECORD LABEL, which is called What Pumpkin. I thought this would be a much tidier container for all these crazy music projects we're cranking out. Oh and there will be more.
The idea I had for volume five was to gather up a lot of music that had been accumulating, and stuff it all into this monster album. Like, WAY more songs than would ever be sensible to put in an album and still call it an album. The result is something so audacious, it just might be COMPLETELY MINDBLOWINGLY INCREDIBLE. You be the judge. I already know your verdict though.
Additionally the concept was to make a huge soundtrack that touches on the magnitude of the story that has been swelling steadily for more than a year. The soundtrack is meant to evoke all the things taking place that we perhaps aren't seeing in this universe, or that could happen, but that the linear focus of the narrative simply can't contain. You're invited to imagine the bigger story the album is telling.
Bear in mind this album is not merely a giant song dump. I feel like I arranged this mix pretty carefully. And on top of that, it is a seamless album. There are transitions between songs built into the songs, so it all runs together as a cohesive whole. It's all equalized and mastered very well. There is nearly three solid hours of music to listen to. And it is less than fifteen dollars.
Now it seems like I can never release one of these things without thanking my knuckles to a bloody pulp as I rain blows of merciless gratitude on everyone around me, and for good reason. Lots of people worked their asses off on this thing. It always seems like such a simple idea. Hey lets make an album! All this music is right here it'll take like two seconds to ram it out. Wrong stupid! So here I am assuming the flying crane position of indebtedness while I meditate on the fact that I'm about to snap the spines of fifty helpless thank ninjas in cold blooded succession.
Thanks to Cindy who worked forever on the new website and uploaded a million giant high quality songs which take forever to upload as it turns out and also hounding everyone for their files and stuff. Thanks to Clark Powell for doing great mastering/equalizing work on all the songs, and thanks to Toby Fox for doing additionally great work of a similar nature. Thanks to all the musicians for lighting a fire under their bone bulges to get high quality files to us and of course not being able to help themselves from making all these killer upgrades to the music itself in the process. And thanks to Lexxy for the ultraslick cover art!
I am never going to stop listening to this thing. Never. They'll have to send the cadaver dogs into my fucking unibomber shack cause I ain't coming out, and the fire ants will be wondering how they're gonna eat the rotting pulp in my skull with these headphones blocking my earholes like that.
Michael Guy Bowman:
This Volume is a little bit of an oddity in that it's hyper-long and is consisted overwhelmingly of tracks that have not appeared in the comic whatsoever, so you might not be quite so initially motivated to purchase it as you would for one of the soundtracks proper, however, I assure you, there is some really great material on there. The album hits the tip of the creative iceberg that has been the MSPA music project (which I guess is now formally What Pumpkin records) and shows only a fraction of the endless piles upon piles of "other" music that exists on the not-so-secret music forums.
Andrew has been definitely at a crossroads with the music - the response to his open casting call for the music project over a year ago almost immediately exploded with music, initially with the pretense that we were going to be creating short loops (as in the strife themes such as Showtime). However, when the comic started to operate more cinematically and less like an adventure game, more and more the concentration became on how our music could be used to create the numerous extensive flash-animated cutscenes, some of which fans have awaited and anticipated for days on end.
This pretty much imploded with the end of Act 3, when Andrew informed us all that he was going to cut back on the animations after spending a week working on the accompanying animation for Sburban Jungle day and night on end. Since then, the focus has drifted to various new sectors which I guess will just have to be a surprise to all of you. Either way, consider the new album an outlet for you to sample music inspired by and written for Homestuck and as a chance to support this new community that Andrew has shepherded.
Quasar Nebula: (wiki editor)
Track art on these tracks has been uploaded from the Homestuck Vol. 5 Anthology! The official release of Vol. 5 didn't come with track art; this collaborative project organized artists to submit their own original art for the album. The art was originally shared in a huge colection on tumblr on 4/13/17 and has now been collected here for viewing convenience and discoverability!
(Check out the Vol. 5 Anthology Presentation for an awesome animated showing of the anthology art and original tracks!)
Heirfare
Alex Rosetti:
This piece is one of the strongest examples of how much better my old music could have been if I had used better samples. But I had nothing but cheap stuff at the time, so I think this one suffers a lot. Personal regret aside, I composed this as an ode to John, so it features the themes from Showtime and Harlequin. I wanted something big and dramatic, so I went the semi-orchestral route, and completely transformed the context of the two melodies I used to suit the mood of the piece. In particular, Harlequin seems almost unrecognizable unless you're paying attention or have a good ear. I think its attempt to come off as big and noble is a little heavy-handed at times, but it would definitely be a fun one to come back to and update.
Aggrievance
Mark J. Hadley:
Since Aggrieve was the first song I wrote for Homestuck, I also imagined it would be the first thing I would remix. That turned out not to be the case (I remixed Harlequin first), but I went ahead with it anyway. I also figured it might come in handy in case there was ever another strife scene with Rose post-entry, but those became rare after a while, except for special situations.
Happy Cat Song!
Michael Guy Bowman:
Radiation, or Toby as I've never actually had the chance to refer to him, sent me his midi arrangement of Happy Cat Song, a sort of lighthearted version of Chorale for Jaspers, so I loaded VSTs for each part and balanced it, along with adding a "meow" sample in for good measure. The effect of it reminds Tavia of arriving in a village in "final fantasy or chrono cross or something and it's initially all peaceful and then by the end of the game it's totally raped and pillaged." So the calm before the storm then? MEOW
Hardchorale
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Alex Rosetti:
I've always considered the creation of this song a "classic story". It came about in a strange, almost fateful way, and I think the final product reflects that. It was the first thing that Radiation and I worked on together, and it was through Hardchorale that our friendship started. He approached me with a MIDI file he had made, intending it to be a sort of "boss battle" arrangement of Chorale for Jaspers in the style of Harleboss. He asked if I would be interested in producing it, since at the time he was just starting out and had no means to do so. I agreed, Chorale being one of my favorite Homestuck tunes. So I produced it in a DAW to make it sound "good", and relative to the MIDI file it sounded great, and we were both really happy with it. Radiation got Bowman to record some heavy metal meows, which he apparently almost got kicked out of his apartment for recording and claims to have video of, though I have yet to see it. Once I found out it was going to be on Vol. 5, I added a section to it (roughly the last third of the piece) and at the very end sneaked the Squiddles theme just because I could. I realize that was more of a narrative than a commentary, but it's the history behind this piece that I find fun to talk about more than the piece itself.
Michael Guy Bowman:
Harchorale was another Chorale arrangement by Alexander and Toby for which I contributed more vocals. The morning after I recorded the yelping and yowling for this arrangement, I received an ultimatum from my apartment complex, saying that if they ever received another noise complaint they would evict us so hard we would probably go blind. I know Richard has footage of me recording this somewhere, so I'll surely post it when I find it.
Crystalanthemums
Alex Rosetti:
I composed this one intending it to be the theme of Jade's land. This is the reason Jit has gone on the record as saying Crystamenthequins was intended to accompany Jade's island being destroyed/her entering her land (I'm pretty sure that's how he described it) was because of this song. It's actually a really simple tune, and I've wanted to expand on it for ages but never got around to it. The entire piece consists of the same simple chord progression, but it's a good, if played out, progression. That and the beautiful harmonies one is guaranteed to find with it is why I think this is one of my more popular songs. It's not as well-composed as I'd like it to be, but it is definitely catchy. And Radiation was responsible for the name, jokingly calling it "crystalanthemums" after I described it sound like a crystalline flower. I decided that was as good a name as any, and I've had the pleasure of infecting its two remixes with such silly-sounding titles.
Skaia (Incipisphere Mix)
Solatrus:
(original commentary)
My Skaia remix was actually done before I joined the music team. I had first made a remix of Doctor (which you can hear here), which apparently really caught the attention of the team, in part thanks to Blueberry.
Anyway, just as I do now, I streamed music pretty regularly back then, and I'd often times do some improvisational piano over the rest of the mix I made for Incipisphere. Of course, one of those improv sessions (though not a live one) is what made it into the final mix.
Ultimately, Radiation told me it would probably be a good idea to not release Incipisphere Mix anywhere, and then eventually I got a private message from Andrew saying he wanted a .wav of it.
And the rest, I guess, is history?
Oh, and one more thing: AndrewNeo, the guy who runs skaia.net, named both my Doctor remix and my Skaia remix.
(commentary redux)
Let's have a bit of history before we jump into things with this song.
A Bit of History
I've been writing music among the longest out of all of the team members (9 and a half years now), but definitely not the longest. However, I definitely have to say I've improved more over the past two years than the seven years before that just from working with so many talented people.
But the difference in improvement between then and now is a story for another day. Let's zip right just before I joined the team. While Skaia (Incipisphere Mix) is my first official Homestuck song, Doctor (Deep Breeze Mix) is my first Homestuck-related song, which you can download here.
The reason I'm mentioning my Doctor remix is because it very much helped put Incipisphere Mix on Volume 5. From what I was told, it turned a few heads on the team. Kind of hilarious to go back and look at the thread, because multiple of my chums posted just after I did and I wasn't even aware of who they were at the time. Then again, I was still VERY new to the community at the time. My very first post on the MSPA Forums was of a WIP of my Doctor remix.
Blueberry eventually put me in contact with Radiation, and I was told not to release my Skaia remix anywhere. That made me very curious! And then not too long after that (a few days, I think), I received a message from Andrew Hussie himself on the forums saying he wanted the lossless master of Incipisphere.
"Oh snap! I'm a guest artist on Volume 5!" ... And the following day I see a new subforum sitting there and I found out I was invited to join the team. Exciting times, indeed.
The Song Itself
Now, I'm sure people are wondering why I went with doing a remix of Skies of Skaia. Well, simply put, I really liked the chord progression, and I really enjoyed one of the remixes that was formerly in the discography. Because of both, I decided I wanted to do something with a bit of a heavier sound to it, but keeping consistent with the light and vibrant tone qualities.
The bassline and drums definitely helped give the song a much heavier feel than the original, showing an earlier example of what I feel has become my typical contrast in music. I very much enjoy contrasts in all art forms. Unexpected contrasts that are executed well just really made me happy. I can't say I'm particularly happy with the bassline now, but back then that was pretty appropriate for my skill level, plus having an arpeggiating sound that I really used to do too much.
Of course, the comments I see the most on this song are on the improvised piano part. Before I was on the team I started doing a regular broadcast on the skaia.net internet radio, and I'd improvise over this song pretty often back then. I eventually figured out a few parts that I wanted to keep consistent, and I did a bunch of takes to finally get to what you hear in the final song. Of course, MIDI never seems to record very accurately, and I'm not actually the greatest at piano (!!!), so I had to do some fine-tuning on the note timings to make them actually sound precise. But those really fast runs were definitely real, and, no, don't ask me to play it again. I won't be able to. It was a really good day for me.
Sarabande
Erik Scheele:
I'll never really know what happened to produce this. Not really, never. I wish I could remember if there was some thought process behind it, some sort of inspiration, but I really can't remember any. Most likely, that was for the better.
What I mean is, I used to do a lot of improvisation after theater classes, instead of practicing, while my mother would clean up the various classrooms that were used. There was never really any inspiration for things that I can remember, and they were just a lot of off-the-cuff experiments of a sort, I guess. Some probably turned out great, and there were probably more than a couple days where nothing happened. I can remember trying to emulate different video game soundtracks or bits from them, but that was never really a norm. The only thing I'd ever think regularly was how no one would ever actually hear the improvisation I was playing, and I was okay with that. This was before college, anyway.
My point is, improvisation rarely had a point, so it's really impossible to nail down if there was any reason for playing Sarabande that night. The way it went about, I just played the piece, exactly how it was recorded, aside from one little mistake. Then I stopped, went "Okay yeah, that was good", packed up, and left. A while later, I needed to play things for the composer concert, so I performed it from memory, and that's where the recording came from.
It's kind of gained a status among the fandom for being music for when John reads Jade's letter, which I think is a rather good place for it to go. Although, I think I actually called it "Rooftop Waltz" at one point, for Rose/Dave shipping stuff, buuuuut I'm rather glad that the "purpose" and title is changed now. "Rooftop Waltz", that's such an awful cheesy love title, plus, the piece really is a sarabande. I mean literally, it fits the genre fairly well, plus my composition prof called it "a perfect sarabande", so there we go.
Phantasmagoric Waltz
Alex Rosetti:
This is exactly what it sounds like. I went for a whimsical, dreamy feel with this one, expressed through the 3/4 meter, waltz patterns, Lydian mode, and ringing, bell-like timbres. There's not a lot going on in this one, though I think it's charming in a childlike way. It was the first piece I made upon my return to the music team (I was in it since the beginning, but never made anything worthwhile and left for a few months since I was starting my first year of college)
(extra comments in reply to a Tumblr question)
For some reason waltzes, Lydian mode, harps, and bell-like timbres seemed like the most appropriate ways to evoke dreams for me. I was inspired to make it ever since seeing Jade's dream self, and how appropriate that it was included in Dave's dream in Derse!
For those not around since the beginning of that page or who don't know the history, it was originally full of Bill Bolin tunes (a former music team member who left on very bad terms) and we had to replace them with existing material. One of the things Andrew put in there was Phantasmagoric Waltz, and now that page has the additional comedy of Dave and Rose jamming out to...a sweet, slow-paced romantic dance? I can dig it.
For the record, that's not a cell phone vibration, whatever you are hearing is there just by chance.
Chorale for War
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Steve Everson:
This one predates my time on the music team! It started life as a midi called Battle Chorale (obviously, a pun on "battle royale"). It was pretty popular, if I recall correctly, though there wasn't a lot of fan music around in those days to compare to. Some time after joining the team, one of the other musicians created their own hard rock Chorale remix by that same name! So I updated my old one under a new name, and Albatross and Rad created their Hardchorale remix too. Battle Chorale never made it to publication but these two survived.
Unsheath'd
Alex Rosetti:
I based this off a short tune I wrote as a composition exercise. It turns out the tune was really short, since this song clocked in at a little under a minute. I had intended it to be associated with Dave, hence the style and Hip-Hop sounding lead. Not much to say about this one either other than I should definitely use this theme in the future for something more worthwhile.
Bed of Rose's / Dreams of Derse
Mark J. Hadley:
John had a "sleep and recover hp/mp" type theme, so I wrote one for Rose as well. Naturally it uses part of the theme from Aggrieve. When it came time to put it on the album, I didn't really want to leave it as short as it was, so I added the Dreams of Derse section to lengthen it, imagining what the cold, far orbit of Derse might be like.
How Do I Live (Bunny Back in the Box Version)
Michael Guy Bowman:
God knows this is the dumbest thing I've ever created (at least for MSPA). But maybe it's also the most awesome thing because of that? In the process of creating this, I ended up learning a lot about the recording process, but let me tell you, if I ever EVER have to perform this song again, I am officially dropping the key signature a few steps - this song stretched my range pretty dangerously and it shows. Fun fact: did you know Dianne Warren also wrote "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing" from Armageddon? She has like the best career ever, writing the cheesiest, most epic love songs ever for some of the most ridiculous action movies of all time.
I actually put a lot of work into it, retaking the vocals and guitar parts entirely before extending the song an extra verse. Nick's drunken air guitar solo remains intact, of course.
Ruins (With Strings)
Erik Scheele:
This one is really hardly me, honest, it's all Bowman. Ruins was this piano recording I'd put up back when I still hardly knew how to record anything, and then Bowman just went and added magic to it. And the piano track, that's just another one of those "improvisations out of nowhere", no real purpose or theory-thinking beforehand to delegate anything to it. Especially the descending-thirds, no way I could have just thought about that and been like "Yes that is a good thing to be doing", it was just spur of the moment thinking.
(Ruins was one of the first things I contributed to the music forum after getting on the team, a small improvisation based around descending seconds which was made back when I still had no idea how to record things properly. Since Earth was kind of a gigantic wasteland planet at that point (and it still is, today), I conceptually tied my recording in with that, and called it Ruins.
Of course, I really doubt that Ruins would have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for Bowman, who pretty much surprised me sometime before Volume 5 with an updated version of my recording, which made the piano sound better and added a lot of other instruments to it, really adding a lot of depth and atmosphere to an otherwise-shoddy recording. And then, when Volume 5 came around, it was released as "Ruins (With Strings)", which is what you just heard in the update!
I know I've got a better recording of Ruins kicking around here somewhere, I'll have to see if something can be done with it.)
Michael Guy Bowman:
Really it's the "(With Strings)" part that is my doing. When Jit was first inducted to the team, he did not have access at the time to a proper recording environment or midi controller that he could apply a high-quality piano sound to, so he had recorded his piano demo for "Ruins" on what I'm guessing is an on-board laptop microphone. I thought the composition was really great but knew that it would sound too unpolished to make the cut onto a Homestuck album, so I resolved to write a string accompaniment around his composition.
By applying an incredibly enormous amount of reverb to the piano part, I hid the low fidelity of the original recording and made it sound as though it was hauntingly played to the listener from the other end of a cave. Given my lack of any truly convincing string samples, I chose instead to use deliberately mechanical strings, gently de-tuning them to sound a bit reminiscent of early string synthesizers, somewhat inspired by "Crystal Japan", a creepy instrumental by David Bowie.
Some of the other elements of the ambiance (the wind, the really high notes that echo for a long time) I drew from the soundtrack to World of Goo, specifically the track "Jelly" which I noticed bore a strong resemblance tonally to Jit's composition. To seal the melancholy, I doubled the piano melody on guitar using a very cool, muted sound with a lot of echoes and pitch bends. I signed the tune by adding a cadence from "Sburban Jungle" at the very end.
Really, the track should probably be listed simply as "Ruins" if not for the fact that there is not official piano rendition of the piece. I think it would be really cool to hear such a version of the tune if Jit ever found himself recording material in a studio again (as he did for James's piano suite Sburb).
Upholding the Law
Alex Rosetti:
I consider this an important piece to myself, but not to Homestuck music in general. Actually, it's probably the lowest quality thing I have ever released as Homestuck music. It's just sloppy. But there's a bit more to it than that, and that lies in its instrumentation. This was the first piece I ever composed where I explored colorful and playful orchestration. The xylophone and pizzicato strings that I was playing around with would become my bread and butter a couple years later. I'm not currently known among the Homestuck musicians as being an orchestral composer, but I've reached the point where there's nothing I like composing more than fully orchestrated pieces. At least as far as soundtrack music goes. And not just fully orchestrated either, there's a certain sense of color I love exploring and I like making lighter sounds despite using a bigger and more imposing ensemble. I haven't released anything that showcases that yet, but I definitely will be in the future, so I think that's something to be excited about.
Underworld
Steve Everson:
My other favourite from Volume 5. It started life as a theme for the Aimless Renegade, inspired by a "Desperado" theme which I believe was written by Bolin back when he was still part of the team. I wasn't really running on any particular goal of contributing so much as liking the style and wanting to make something similar. Imagine the piece as it is now played by some sort of mariachi band and you might have the right idea of what it originally sounded like. Naturally, it didn't quite fit. I liked the melody but it just wasn't working for the whole desert hero thing. So I flipped through my library of voices (small though it was back then) and came across the more electronic one that plays the melody now. I re-tooled the accompaniment to fit, and it became a piece that I always considered a theme for Derse. Hence its title.
Crystamanthequins
Erik Scheele:
Probably the thing I'm best-known for off of Volume 5, which is slightly ironic given how rushed it was. No kidding, I finished it up the night that Hussie was rounding up tracks to go through, and threw it in as a last-minute thing, "hey I just finished this can it go in??" deal. I mean, I'd had inspiration for it earlier, but never got around to making it until it was almost too late!
Yeah, this one definitely had inspiration. To answer a quick question you might have though, no, I didn't know about the trolls beforehand, or what Hussie was going to do with the music. I didn't even find out until Albatross Soup told me about it, a few weeks before it happened. Moreso, the inspiration came from a sudden image I had one night during the summer, in which Jade's planet, at that time unknown, was highly unstable, and Noir had purposefully upset the balance in order to try and destroy her planet. So the entire first bit is her trying to save her inhabitants, while Crystalanthemums plays. The reason for having that motif, well, I'd had this very strong feeling that it should be Jade's planet theme. So, it got used.
(The mental images of one of the kid's planets getting broken/torn apart like I'd imagined still give me the shivers. I still love Hussie so much for creating a villain that actually did something upon gaining obscene amounts of power; rather than just retreating and launching some master plan, he actually went around and started doing shit with his powers. Not something you even really see in Hollywood villains nowadays, far as I know. The protagonists and antagonists are always very separated, no interaction between one or the other, nothing like what Noir does. At least, that was my experience at the time.)
As for the second bit, well, I'd wanted to make an "industrial, heavy action, stuff going to shit" remix of Perrybob's Mannequin for quite some time, and it seemed to fit to transition over to that. In my head, the action was going to shift from Jade's planet to LOHAC, where unspecific action was going to take place. I really don't think I gave the Mannequin section enough time to develop, or really do much, but time constraints dictated I give the music over to the volume 5 collaborative -right then and there-, so it had to be cut off. Mannequin's really great, though, you should give it a listen.
Also, as a sidenote, my like for Beck is rather shown in this piece, as is evidenced by my direct attempt to semi-recreate main beat in Replica to transition between the two sections. #MUSICSECRETSSSSSSSS
Medical Emergency
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Alex Rosetti:
Radiation gave me a MIDI of Savior of the Waking World to remix shortly before he figured out how to do it himself. It's based on a prototype of that song and goes in a completely different direction, complete with a cheesy electric guitar synth. I think the opening ended up sounding really cool, but the rest of it just sounds kind of dumb in its execution, not that the material itself isn't good.
Skaian Skuffle
Andrew Huo:
Skaian Skuffle was made with the intent of turning Skies of Skaia into a battle theme. The bass progression matches Skies of Skaia's, with more bounce to it, and the melody of Skies of Skaia was quantified/simplified into a repeating motif. It was mostly composed by feel the rest of the way. I actually had writer's block for a while after I reached about 1:02, and it never really got resolved, which is why 1:21 onwards feels kinda awkward and not so great. I kinda wish I could go back and redo it so it sounds better. But what Radiation did with it turning it into Skaian Skirmish worked really well. There was some vague artistic direction from the Big Man that helped with this a little bit. If I remember correctly, it was something along the lines of "okay, maybe you can bring it down a bit in the middle, then ramp it up for the big finish." So I tried to do that using a new bassline, using wandering skips of third and fourth rather than downwise step in an attempt to mirror Skies of Skaia's original melody, as well as scrambling the repeating sixteenth note motif based on the original melody. Like I said, though, I would say it worked out awkwardly rather than well. It does create a certain mood, which, like I said, Radiation capitalized on. Whoops, I just repeated myself, but in more detail the second time. What's that called in literary device terms? Amplification? Yeah, let's go with that.
Throwdown
Steve Everson:
Man, this track goes way back. I'm talking years. One of my really early midi compositions. It sounded like the coolest shit when I was 14. It's practically unchanged besides being synthesised with non-midi voices. Same instruments and all.
It's got a bit more of an... ironic appeal to it now. Still sounds pretty cool though
Light
Erik Scheele:
This one, man. Not really as well-known as the other three, I don't think, but I'm still happy with various aspects of it. Not really any specific inspiration, I just started out with the thought of wanting to make a contrasting piece to Black. Especially with the opening piano line, but overall, something more pure and light. Of course, by the time I got around to finishing it, Radiation had already stolen the title "White", so I called mine "Light" instead.
About the middle section, I think that needs a bit of talk about it. I'd just been talking with a friend about Homestuck, telling him about the numerical motif 413, and telling him various examples, and he went and said "Yeah, that could be a chord progression too", and I was like "whooooooooooooooooah". So I used it as a chord progression. For the first while, though, I had this dual guitar line instead of Showtime, and it was sorta eeeeenh and I didn't know where to go from there. It sat for a while, then suddenly one day in church I was like "oh holy shit showtime would work so well in there". It was like suddenly remembering you left a cake in the oven on 500 degrees for the last two nights, that sort of realization. So it went in, and it worked much better than the stupid two-guitar thing.
413 as a motif, I've used it in various ways. Not saying anything, though, not even sure about spoiling its use in Light. If you ever analyze various bits of music, though, you might notice it popping up, or other little fun bits. That's all I've got to say about that.
Greenhouse
Michael Guy Bowman:
Greenhouse ended up being an exercise in what I could do with a handful of new pieces of equipment. Having acquired Tavia's old, barely used electric guitar and keyboard, this is the first composition I've really gotten to do a lot of recording for instead of just point and click sequencing. When I listen to this song, I imagine this is what Jade hears every time she starts her computer. Which would be a good song to write!
"Greenhouse", of course, is the easy winner amongst the tracks I contributed. I think the spontaneity is what makes it really work - I just wrote it as I recorded each little piece.
Ecstasy
Steve Everson:
Probably remains my favourite of my pieces, while also being one of the ones with the least real thought put into it. The whole thing was written more or less on the fly. The chord pattern is one that I'd liked for several months, possibly even a year or two, without ever having come up with something good enough to write to it. Then, one evening while I was in the shower (all of my best ideas come from the shower) my mind pulled together a half-remembered bassline from an obscure-ish Sonic the Hedgehog game and a brief snippet from an old quiz show called Catchphrase, and strung them into the main harmonies of the piece. From there I just lay an improvised piano melody on top.
When I presented it to the music team it was pretty well-received, and with some of their guidance the whole piece ended up pretty polished.
Plague Doctor
Steve Everson:
I'm sure you all know the story behind the Doctor remixes. During the Intermission Andrew wanted a remix of that to use for LOWAS and everyone jumped at the chance. This was my contribution. It's a pretty straight transcription to different instruments. Nowadays I find that a little disappointing. I started writing a new version not long ago; maybe one day I'll finish it and post it here.
Descend
Toby Fox:
No one asked, I just wanted to make... THE ULTIMATE SONG... COMBINING EVERYTHING... (obviously I could do better now but it was a pretty cool thing)
Fun fact: It was originally called "Ascend."
Homestuck
Mark J. Hadley:
Plazmataz came up with a melody to use as an anthem for Homestuck, which they then used in Homestuck Anthem. While that was a very driving melody, I opted to come up with something that might be more suitable for credits (opening or end) or a title screen. I really like how this came out; it sounds a bit moody, but still optimistic, which is what I was aiming for.