Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead - Commentary
4.7k words across 19 entries.
Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead (album commentary) Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube, YouTube (playlist)
Andrew Hussie: (MSPA news post, excerpt) captured 2/7/2010
FAKE BANDS (they are not real)
I am here today to blindside you with a completely unanticipated, unforeshadowed album by the Midnight Crew.
Only two songs in this album have appeared in Homestuck pages: Three in the Morning, and Nightlife (both are extended versions in the album). The rest are new, never before heard, and all of them (including the first two I mentioned) were made specifically for this album.
I had this idea to start making "fake bands" based on various characters from MSPA some time ago, back when the music project was starting up and I soon realized I'd have way more music on my hands than I could possibly use in the story. MC was the first such band, which guys in the music community started working on stuff for last summer. The whole thing got sidetracked for a while, but we decided to finish it over the course of the intermission for obvious reasons. It turned into a 19 song monster album, and I think all the songs came out fantastic, and really match the group's motif quite well.
The idea behind the fake bands was to put a spin on a certain genre, in a way that seemed in keeping with the characters and what sort of music they'd make. In MC's case the genre is something we've been referring to as "dark jazz".
I'd like to keep putting out more albums by more bands, with more interesting spins on musical styles to help develop characters and their universe. There certainly seems to be enough talent to keep it coming. I really wouldn't mind flooding you guys with awesome original music, even if I can't manage to work most of it into animated pages. Which obviously I can't. But projects like these albums are the next best thing.
In addition to some familiar names like Hadley and Bowman, there are a lot of great new artists represented in this album, who haven't yet authored something appearing in HS. But the newer folks made some of my favorite stuff there. I recommend you give the whole thing a thorough listen. Thanks to everyone for working on this, and as always, thanks to Cindy for configuring all the tedious Bandcamp stuff.
And just to remind you, the artists make most of the money you pay for it. At $5.25 for 19 songs, we're talking a pretty serious bargain.
A final note: when I said it was unforshadowed, I guess that wasn't entirely true.
Homestuck: (Bandcamp credits blurb) captured 2/6/2010
Clark "Plazmataz" Powell
David Ko
Mark Hadley
Kevin Regamey
Toby "Radiation" Fox
Alexander Rosetti
Michael Guy Bowman
Fenris
Andrew Huo
Robert J! Lake
Hilary "Pie" Troiano
Gabe Nezovic
Ian Taylor
Bill Bolin
Homestuck: (whatpumpkin.com side blurb) captured 6/15/2010
The first "fake band" album. Composed and performed by the Midnight Crew. Or it would have been if they were real.
The Midnight Crew album was the first of our really high-concept releases with the fake bands, especially since we attempted to invent some kind of goth-jazz genre out of thin air, despite the team's minimal understanding of goth music or jazz.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
This was, I think, right at the cusp of Bandcamp being a known platform, and for a minute when we started releasing these albums, they were, like, routinely the best sellers on there. At the same time that the Alabama Shakes were on there, like, breaking out as a band, it's like - "Wow! Look at this big indie band that's doing numbers using Bandcamp - this obscure platform!" We were routinely outselling (laugh) the Alabama Shakes. We were super stoked to just expand on that, with, uh, non-animation, non-interactive element contributions.
And, the first big thing that we did with that was the Midnight Crew album, where we took the Midnight Crew characters and said, well, they're actually a band, and this is their album, containing video-game-style jazz music on it. [...]
This was one of Andrew's initial ideas, which was like, there were going to be many many bands within the comic. He wanted to do something like, Gorillaz, but, different sets of characters. So, the Midnight Crew would be a band. And the Felt would be a band, and they made orchestral stuff for that - I wasn't a participant on that one, I was a little busy. And, I think we drifted away from the band concept... there were proposed bands that were never done, there was the two robot rappers who cameod but never really were expanded on, there was an interest in doing, sort of like, a robot hip-hop album, which would have been fun, had those characters gone anywhere... There was also the idea that, of course, each of the kids were going to have their signature instrument, you know, the piano, the violin, the beat maker, and the bass. The culmination of that would have been music that features those four instruments, as if it's like, well, here's the demo the band was making. This is what the four beta kids were doing in their spare time. I would have loved that one to see the light of day, I think that would have tied the comic together.
Dead Shuffle Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
The first MC-related thing I wrote, and retroactively became the MC theme song. This was actually a remake of a midi I made years ago intended for part of an RPG a friend was making, until the RPG was cancelled. It's mostly the same, except that I went back and made it more jazzy (added saxophone and a swing rhythm). The original title of it was "Seriousness".
Hearts Flush Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
My favorite of the MC ones I wrote. I've always wanted to write a bass solo, and this gave me the opportunity. There's not much else to add, other than I had a blast writing it.
Hollow Suit Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
Alex Rosetti: (Tumblr, excerpt)
(Continued from Moonshine)
Hollow Suit was my other song on that album and it was a little more popular than Moonshine, though I can’t say either even came close to being hits. Like Moonshine it still has a soft spot in my heart. It’s not as compositionally impressive in my opinion, but it was the first in a long line of quirky tracks I have made for Homestuck. The vibraphone and electric organ were incredibly fun to use, and the whole thing ended up having an Elfman/Kirkhope vibe to it. Now, I don’t have synesthesia, but for some reason whenever I think about this song, I think “green”. Just some useless trivia for you.
Looking back on Drawing Dead as a whole, do I think it was a good album? No, not really. It was good for us at the time, but it was so all over the place, almost completely devoid of mastering, many of the songs used inferior samples, and most of us just weren’t as experienced with composing back then. Mostly it was a case of having no centralized idea of what the style of music should be, and the clashes that followed. I don’t mean that to knock any of us in any way. It was an important step for all of us as musicians and we have been constantly improving since then. I still look back fondly at it, since it was my first ever album release, after all.
Ante Matter Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
It's hard to find things to say about this one. I wanted to make a slower song, compared to the other ones I did for Drawing Dead. I'm still technically new at writing jazz, so it was nice getting to practice it a bit more. Overall though, I think I liked the title best on this one; I enjoy a good pun.
Lunar Eclipse Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
I opted to imitate Weather Report and the sort of spacey, insidious-sounding grooves they put together on Mysterious Traveler to create "Lunar Eclipse". I like the atmospheric nature of the track, plus Fenris' sax solo that I diced up and added a ton of digital reverb to, although Fenris has completely disappeared since recording the solo in 2009.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Bowmantown Discord, excerpt)
I tend to hold on to ideas and use them when they're ready. Forever was an idea I'd been holding on to for about five years. Lunar eclipse I think was 3 or 4 before I arranged it. Lots of my stuff bakes for months or years. Sometimes the first drafts suck but I find myself humming it later. That's how I know.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
My contribution on the Midnight Crew album was an original called Lunar Eclipse, featuring sax by someone named Fenris, who we've never heard from again! We don't know what happened to them.
Hauntjam Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
Hauntjam and Hauntjelly are interesting things. They were actually made based on a short fruity loop that The Big Man Andrew did, called haunt.wav or haunt.mp3 or something like that. A jam on his theme, logically, would therefore be called "hauntjam," with the opportunity for naming puns including "hauntjelly." His theme appears mostly unchanged as the bassline for the first part of the pieces. At this point in terms of instrumentation, we were still mostly striving for faithfulness to the canon Midnight Crew "band," as can be seen in the Extras page wherein the MC fill 'em with midnight (bottom), so Hauntjam employs trombone, string bass, piano, clarinet, and sax (I forget which because I've lost the file and am not a band person, but I think it was alto). From there on, it was fairly straightforward to write a haunting refrain and then solos for each instrument. I will admit I got a little writerblock'd for the second part, which was sort of a brief modulation to the dominant, so it sounds a little strange. But it still has its own little charm, with the almost annoying trill put in for a spooky ghost-like effect. In Hauntjam, Bowman did some good stuff with bringing out moving parts in the first refrain. In Hauntjelly, Xerxes emphasizes the spookiness by changing instruments for more electric organ.
I also went ahead a dropped some good synths and fairly convincing drum part on Andrew Huo's "Hauntjam".
Michael Guy Bowman: (Bowmantown Discord, excerpts)
Uhhh the main thing I did was pick the instruments and arrange drums
But I was really pushy about those drums. I never use FPC, so each drum had its own piano roll in FL studio. Bobby Blaker always said that drums take at least a day to figure out on any of his EDM tracks, and that was back when he was less developed as an artist. So, I'm assuming he probably takes even more time now, if he doesn't just have some presets or something…
I just remember touching in with ham on that and thinking, "good, I'm not wasting my time." I mean, there are ways to have drums centralized on one master application and then route it to different channels, but in FL studio, it rarely made sense to do it any other way than having separate sampler tracks were sound font tracks, especially since you get to work with pattern blocks anyway.
I think drums, more than any other instrument, define the genre of the music. Even very minor choices can change the character of a whole song. At the very least there's been only two songs with no drums on them on the billboard number one slot in the last 50 years.
I still do it by spreading of the parts across different instruments. Just in logic now. Electric daydreams is deliberately simple, and a couple of the songs just have a normal exs24 on there with all the drums going to the same channel. I wanted to imitate what I would be able to achieve if I were just a guy taping himself playing in a room.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
And, the other thing was an arrangement of Hauntjam, which I just added drums on and synthesized out and did the bounces[?] for. The original on that one is by Andrew Huo, and supposedly it's based around a track that Andrew Hussie himself wrote, that was just called "haunt".
Ace of Trump Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
Someone sent me a PM asking for some commentary about my two MSPA songs, so here it is. (source)
Transcript:
So, someone on the MS Paint Adventures Forums asked me if I would be willing to give some commentary on my songs which have appeared on the Homestuck albums. Well, two of them. For those who don't know me, my name is Hilary Troiano, and I'm the artist behind Ace of Trump on the Midnight Crew album and Homefree on Volume 8. I'm entirely self taught, I never really took a music theory class or anything, in fact in high school I was trying to learn how to perform music, you know playing trumpet in orchestra... but I wasn't really all that good at it. I spent more of my days in middle school and high school kinda playing around with the music synthesizing program on my computer and I guess somewhere along the way I figured things out.
In college I started getting into MS Paint Adventures, I was there for the ending of Problem Sleuth, and when Homestuck rolled around I really liked the inclusion of music, and... went onto the forums and found that they had a thread where people were just posting up songs that they wrote as sort of a fan contribution. I... didn't really have any Homestuck-related ideas yet but I followed the thread anyways and I was really interested in the program they were using, a program called Famitracker which allows you to kind of replicate the sort of chiptunes that you would hear on the NES.
Um, I'm very much influenced by video games in my music, I especially love chiptunes, like the kinds you would find in the NES era or, even on the Genesis or the SNES. Um, before anyone asks, yes I'm a fan of Nobuo Uematsu, but I think my favorite video game composer would have to be Noriyuki Iwadare. If you don't know him, he's the composer who did music for the Lunar series, the Grandia series, third game in the Ace Attorney series, he's one of the artists working on a new game coming out, um, Icarus something or other- oh my boyfriend's gonna hate me for not remembering that [laughter]. Um, I specially recommend the Lunar series, I think Radiation will back me up on this, but anyway anyway. So, I-I-I— one of my other main influences is anime music, like, I think a good example would be Suzumu Hirasawa if you don't know him, he did music for a lot of Satoshi Kon's work, like Paranoia Agent or the movie Paprika. Um, a-and yeah I also listen to American music I just don't take after it as much I think.
Um anyway anyway so. When I started playing around with this Famitracker on the Homestuck forums I posted a few songs and I guess I got the music team's attention. Um, and then when I got to the forums I didn't really know what-what to do like I posted a lot of my old work and it was like 'Wow, this is really old and bad!' and they were already moving away from chiptunes so, I didn't really know what to do until I noticed that, I think it was Hussie who was posting a thread about how he wanted to do like a Midnight Crew album like he wanted to have all these fake bands for Homestuck that would just add to the story so, well, I mean I love jazz music, my sister in particular she, helped me— exposed me to a lot of jazz, like she was part of our high school jazz band and was, at one point the best baritone saxophone jazz player in the... state I think? I don't know, it's a small state. [laughter] I'm from Rhode Island for the people who don't get that! Um, [laughter]. Anwyay, so, the deadline was kinda rapidly approaching but I did wanna get at least one song on there just to show people that you know, I'm part of this team and I'm pretty good when it comes to jazz music, like, I-I-i-it's a genre I love and that I— that I'm really familiar with.
Um, so, let's see, Ace of Trump. I guess the first thing that I thought of when I came up with this was that I wanted something that really did sound like the band was playing it like, I mean a lot of people for that— for that album they just did any sort of jazz thing but... I went back to the flash where we see the Midnight Crew first playing their jazz instruments and, tried to identify what everyone was playing and use that as the basis for the song, like we see Spades Slick on the piano of course, Hearts Boxcars playing the bass, Diamonds Droog on the saxophone and Clubs Deuce on the oboe. I thought this one was a pretty interesting choice because oboes aren't really that common in jazz but, you know, I like it! I-I was actually kinda disappointed in— when I saw that the album art had it changed to what appeared to be a clarinet but, I-I think oboes are better so, you know whatever. Anyway, the whole basis for the song actually is the card game Hearts, um, and that's why in the intro, besides the sort of jazzy drums and the trumpet, the only thing you can hear is the bass which would be Hearts Boxcars's instrument. This is present throughout the song to kind of establish this as his game.
Um, anyways so the whole intro I.. kinda wish I had either made it shorter or a little faster cuz, yeah I wanted it to drag but it really dragged! I think that was probably the worst thing about the song, um [laughter]. But anyway, it set the scene, kinda, kind of a gritty dive I wanna say. And, probably some guys with nothing better to do starting to sit down for a card game. Um, wheeeen, when that whole introduction section finally ends we- things suddenly pick up pace which when I assume that the cards are being dealt and everything's being set up. Um, Hearts Boxcars is actually, even though it's his game he's not, he himself isn't supposed to be a player in this. The ones that I see playing would be Spades Slick, Clubs Deuce, Diamonds Droog and at the time, a femme fatale that wasn't really named because I m-I mean this was before Snowman's introduction and I was like you know, 'There's all this noir and it hasn't even included a femme fatale!' Well screw it, there's gonna be one in this song because I said so! Um, and that's-that's the trumpet actually that's... um... I mean, I-I guess that was probably a biased choice because I myself play the trumpet but I also did it because you know there's a pun! It's the trump! [laughter] Hearts trump all in the game of Hearts.
Anyway anyway anyway, um, so, so we have after the cards all get dealt we have the first solo which is Clubs Deuce, which I thought was really appropriate for the fact that if you've ever played the game of Hearts, the first card that lead like the very first trick is always the two of clubs, so of course the game starts with him. He's-he's... um... okay sorry I just had a brain fart! [laughter] Um, so halfway through that we have the trumpet breaking in which is where the hearts actually break the suit because if you ever played the game of Hearts again, um, you can't play hearts until they're broken, like you have to not have any of the trump suit that led the trick and only have hearts available to play. Um, so halfway through the trumpet comes in and starts messing things up, then play passes to Diamonds Droog on his saxophone solo, um things get— start getting more and more intense just going through the different hands. Um, then it moves to Spades Slick, which is where things start getting kind of interesting, and where this femme fatale theme starts to really come into play. Like, there's a thing in the game of Hearts where the queen of spades is actually the most dangerous card like, in-in fact the ace of spades is the one card you really, REALLY don't want because usually, if you, if you... play it and there's, the person after you has the queen of spades, that this queen will come out and you will get her and as it turns out she's worth 13 points and it's a game where you want as few points as possible, so it's basically like you just got all the hearts in one hand and you just lost the game, no that wasn't a 4chan pun, don't you DARE leave lousy comments about that on my, on wherever I end up posting this.
Um, anyway so, so it's during the Spades run, this whole really complicated piano solo um [laughter] I should address this, I think I remember at some point someone was like 'Wow that piano solo was amazing, you must be an amazing player!' ...I don't play the piano at all it's all synthesized I just tried to make it sound like a real piano was playing [laughter] I don't even know if it's possible to play, if someone can play it, ummm... I'll be impressed! Send me a video of you doing it, I wanna see! But no I don't think it's actually possible and if it is it's certainly not possible by me. Um, anyway but there's this whole messy piano solo that-that leads the way as we hear all of-all of the instruments in the background but, a-as the piano section goes on it slowly very slowly but surely gets completely dominated by the trumpet, um, and, it ends on kind of a sadder note because of that because um... one-one thing about Hearts is that um, if someone— well for the most part what you really want to do is you wanna make sure everybody else gets the hearts and the queen of spades and that you get none of them but, there's something else that you can do where if you get all hearts it's called shooting the moon and everyone else is stuck with all... with getting, um... 26 points instead of you, I think that's how it goes, it's been a while since I've played actually but, um, so slowly this femme fatale just keeps accumulating heart cards and at the end of the game it just ends with her kicking their asses because you know, that's how femme fatales roll they just beat men at the game of Hearts heuheuheuh [laughter] sorry.
Yeah, Ace of Trump is just basically one long pun. But, I mean that's-tha-that's kind of how I write my music, I don't... I spend more time trying to think of how to tell it as a story than just be like 'Okay let's add the drums, let's add the melody' like, every song that I write has to have some sort of like... it has to be able to stand on its own, I- and I think I really accomplished that well with Ace of Trump, I think it has one of the most distinctive stories to it than to any than any other song that I've written... um, which- I mean I'd be glad to share my music with you guys but I don't think most of it's very good, uhh there's a reason only two of my songs have appeared on albums. A-and, part of it also is just that uh, I've had a lot of problems with my life lately I've been, graduating college, trying to find work, um... and I-I mean I'd love to get back more into writing music but... I think more and more I'm moving towards my real passion which is you know, programming, developing, developing software and, more than that I'd love to get into video game design and development just, starting to make these games that I'm so obsessed with. Aaanyway [laughter] kind of got off on a tangent there.
(Commentary continues talking about her other track, Homefree, before returning to this song. You can read the relevant transcription of that segment on that page.)
And, I don't know, I-I-I think I'd like to do more in the future, like, for example I-I really wanted to actually do a remix at least of Ace of Trump like I believe for one thing that any song can be turned into a swing song, and on the other hand any swing jazz song can be turned into a, non-swing jazz song and, if you took-take the swing out of it, Ace of Trump could actually-can actually sound r-pretty sinister and intense so, I-I kinda wanna do like a battle remix of it you know, call it 'Ace of Swords' or something [laughter] that's a Terra reference for those who don't get it um [laughter] but I don't know, we'll-we'll see. If-if I don't contribute any music to the MS Paint Adventures music team, don't think that that's the last you're ever gonna hear of me 'cuz, I... I don't know, I've got some ideas of my own, I think you'll see me around somewhere.
Moonshine Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
Alex Rosetti: (Tumblr, excerpt)
Fake bands, man. I so wish we had done more with this concept. Since the very beginning of Homestuck, Andrew had this idea that the kids would have fake bands they were into, and we would make MySpace band pages with a few of their songs on them as a fun supplement to the comic, in the same spirit as dave strider’s blog or SBaHJ. (both of which I would link to if tumblr wasn’t bugging out right now and preventing me from doing so)
The first one was the Midnight Crew, and Andrew made the cover art before anything else happened, if I recall correctly. That project hung around for a while until the Midnight Crew Intermission, when Andrew decided to expand the “fake band” idea and release our MC as a full album on bandcamp, along with the Homestuck Volumes. Incidentally, I believe Squarewave and Sawtooth were originally going to be a fake band as well, and Dave even had a poster of them on his wall. Reeeaaally wish we did that one, but oh well. At least we got Anbroids.
In light of the fact that the Midnight Crew were going to have a real album and that I had just rejoined the team, I was eager to contribute to it. The first song I made for it was Moonshine, which strangely enough to some I’m sure, I still consider one of my better Homestuck tunes, if only technically. Yeah, the instruments I used were atrocious, but I think it would be a fun piece if it were actually played by people. I had a good idea of its form and I was really able to get into the style of music I perceived the Midnight Crew would play.
The instrumentation was based off the instruments each character played, with Slick on piano, Droog on sax, Boxcars on bass, and the last one I changed from Deuce’s oboe to clarinet, which is seen much more in jazz. Not that jazz oboe doesn’t exist! Still, it seems very like CD to play jazz on such an instrument. The song itself is more dissonant than most Homestuck music, having a lot of clashing harmonies and tritones which I love but can understand a lot of Homestuckers probably don’t, at least not in this context. The name “Moonshine” came out of how drunk the music sounds, especially in the middle where it picks up a bit and is more obviously in 6/8. But yeah, it uses its motivic material well and is consistent with itself, much more than I can say about many tracks in Genesis Frog for instance, which I’ll admit I got much too carried away with.
(Continued in Hollow Suit)
Joker's Wild Listen on: Bandcamp, YouTube
When we were writing music for Drawing Dead, I just HAD to make a jazz remix of Harlequin. The song pretty much wrote itself after that. I think if I was going to change anything about it though, I'd have tried to get a live saxophone; the synth sounds a bit off. But then, any of the songs off of Drawing Dead would probably sound amazing by a live band.
Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead
Track list (1–19)