Track Doctor
(Published 3/5/2023.)
Hi again! We released a pretty sizeable update today, with a diverse selection of album additions, sheet music and MIDI files across the official discography, high resolution artwork and full-size cover previews, and more. Check out the details past the split!
Ooo, exciting! We'll introduce the new albums first, then check out other additions and features across the site.
The big name communal addition this time around comes from Cool and New Music Team, Cool and new Volume V! They heard you like Doctor, so they put more Doctor in your Doctor. Now you can Doctor while you Doctor and honestly, that's really quite Doctar.
Okay, it sounds like a playful tribute album, and in ways it is; yet it's also a sincere love letter to the spirit and memories Buzinkai gave through their music to Homestuck's entire community. Give it a listen if it's new to you! (Thanks to koba and Niklink for bringing this to the wiki.)
The other 12 additions are solo albums, many from teams of Homestuck's official music team; some newer, some older! From Buzinkai, Qualia; from Mark J. Hadley as Parsec Productions, Slender: The Arrival Soundtrack, Dare, Paths and more; from Clark Powell, relatively recent release After-Party Animal (EP); and from James Roach, Songs of Rivervale!
We have a few solo releases from the fandom as well: A Shade Of Blue by Cerulean, Retcon (2018) by The Cat Herd, and a new fanventure release Dialed to 11 by LudicrousFalcon. Give 'em a visit!
And in a surprise twist, we have another drop of official Homestuck music after two and a half years! Or should we say droplet? Requiem for a Homestuck is a short single from James Roach meant to promote Homestuck's new merch and event collaboration with Requiem Cafe, and hopefully is a teaser of more things to come...?
Our site software's been spiced up, too! Here's a quick summary of everything new.
Are you an avid musician, pianist, guitarist, or perhaps play in a marching band...!? We have totally new sections of track pages dedicated to sheet music and MIDI/project files! For now, all the files here are sourced from the archive that was created and maintained by wheals and Makin, which covers the whole of the Official Discography. Get started exploring any of your favorite albums, or jump right into the comprehensive All Sheet Music Files and All MIDI & Project Files listings!
Track and album cover arts now get a large-scale, focus-friendly preview when you click or tap 'em! No need to navigate to a totally separate page anymore. The image that gets loaded here isn't actually the maximum resolution photo, but a preview based off your screen resolution. These should load quickly and be friendlier to work with on a data plan or away from an urban connection, which is handy, because...
All artwork files for the Official Discography as well as from Unofficial MSPA Fans have been replaced with the closest-to-original resolution exports we could find! This brings a large chunk of the wiki up to par with the standard in newer additions, and ensures the highest quality copies of artist community contributions to Homestuck's official soundtrack remain readily accessible for years to come.
(Since the wiki went online, most artworks for the official discography were nabbed from a community archive. Those were pulled from Homestuck's official Bandcamp year over year, until all art was unceremoniously pulled, and were publicly preserved here. They were standard 1200x1200-ish, mildly compressed JPEG copies; since then, we found a technique to find the same cover artworks as they were uploaded to Bandcamp, free of web-optimization processing. All the gorish details are on GitHub, for those curious!)
Plus, a few smaller additions:
- Tracks can now be colored individually, which helps make for some thematic effects on albums like coloUrs and mayhem: Universe A, Cherubim, FriendSymphony and more!
- Listing pages now link to each other from inside the main content area, so you can switch to relevant listings at a glance without needing the sidebar - handy and then some, if you're on mobile!
- "Skipper" links, which are shown if you press Tab to navigate page elements with a keyboard, have been made much more comprehensive! These newly cover individual sections of the content area, in addition to the main page layout elements.
As usual, there are a variety of data fixes and many smaller changes and data extras all around the wiki. (We actually released a smaller update around the start of February as an extra round of clean-up after the major release at the start of the year!) Full details are accessible through the changelog.
As ever, thanks to everyone for the support and feedback! You're always welcomed to join in and share your own feedback and suggestions through our community Discord server or other avenues. Thank you!
~ Quasar Nebula