Squiddles! - Commentary
2.1k words across 17 entries.
Squiddles! Squiddles! (album commentary) Listen on: YouTube (playlist)
Andrew Hussie: (MSPA news post, excerpt) captured 9/8/2010
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! That is a link to the trailer. The full version comes with the download.
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 (1st in playlist), 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.
Go buy this (cheap!) album and have yourself a friendship aneurysm.
Cindy Dominguez: (whatpumpkin.com news post) captured 2/8/2011
Alright, so we did it. We decided to make a soundtrack dedicated solely to a nonexistant cartoon show about little cutesy-pie squid-things. So we told the musicians, "make this thing." Not only did they make it, they made it with 22 songs (and a short bonus track). Most of the song titles have the word "Squiddle" in them, and I'm pretty sure about 70% of the lyrics are also comprised of the word as well. It was just about the silliest project idea you could think of, but here's the thing: the musicians did a fan-squiddlin'-tastic job on this music. These are some very genuinely great songs, with the added bonus that they might also make you laugh. Win-win, right? So go give it a listen.
Now I'm going to say a name, and I would like you to join me in giving some major props to this person for going the extra mile (beyond just making some fabulous songs) in getting this album collected, organized, prepped and mixed, as well as keeping the project on track for months (yes, this thing was a long time in the making!). Okay get ready for it here is the name: ALEXANDER ROSETTI. Remember that name, and give him the biggest props you can muster for being an awesome contributor and outstanding fellow.
Make sure you save a few props though, because I am going to be sharing another name with you in a moment.
Let me tell you about an EXTRA SPECIAL THING. This album is not just about music. Nope, we got a bunch of spectacular artists in on the act as well, and thanks to their efforts we're including with the album an animation set to a track called (this may surprise you) "Squiddles!". It is adorable and hilarious and you can watch a short preview of it here. The complete animation is included with the purchase of the album as an .SWF file. It was a big collaborative effort, and I'm about to mention that name I warned you about earlier: PAIGE TURNER. All the artists contributed art of course, but this is the guy who directed and corralled everybody's efforts, did a bunch of awesome art herself (plus a puppet show!!), and put the whole animation together. Fabulous job!
There were so many people involved in this that I went ahead and made a separate credits page just for this album. Take a look and tell all these people what a great job they did by buying this ridicudorable album.
Homestuck: (whatpumpkin.com side blurb) captured 2/8/2011
The soundtrack for a cartoon show about tiny adorable fictional cephalopods. You've been waiting your entire life for this and it's finally here.
Homestuck: (whatpumpkin.com "about the albums" blurb) captured 7/18/2011
Fake band? No, more like a real soundtrack to a fake children's cartoon show about tiny squid-like sea creatures. Fake show, that is, not fake children. Actually the children are fake too. It's a fake show for fake kids, but the music is real and very good. Get it? Then get it! The album, I mean. Get the album.
It includes a full-length animation set to the album's title track, which you can preview right here!
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
Lost to the sands of time! The Squiddles album. I'm not familiar with the entire history of how the art team's work went, but I do know a bit about the Squiddles album, and their association with it - which was that they made the Squiddles! cartoon intro, and wanted to do this whole, like, oh, we're going to figure out a way to make a Squiddles spinoff pilot. I wish that it'd really gone somewhere. I think we did a good job establishing the kind of, like, on the surface, you know, show for babies thing - um, that was actually secretly some... satanic eldritch horror thing. But I played it completely straight on all of my pieces for it.
Homestuck: (Bandcamp download blurb) captured 8/28/2010
COOL BONUSES INCLUDED: Squiddles animation (in .swf format) and PDF booklet with lyrics and credits!
Homestuck: (Bandcamp credits blurb) captured 8/28/2010
Album by these fine musicians:
Alexander Rosetti
David Ko
Ian Taylor
Clark "Plazmataz" Powell
Erik "Jit" Scheele
Michael Guy Bowman
Seth "Beatfox" Peelle
Steve Everson
Robert J! Lake
Nick Smalley
Jeremy "Solatrus" Iamurri
Malcolm Brown
Toby "Radiation" Fox
Mark HadleyAnd Squiddles! animation by:
Paige Turner (lead animator)
Rebecca Harding
Brett Muller
celestialKarakul
Michael Firman
Cindy Dominguez
SaffronScarf
Richard Gung
Nic Carey
Vivus
Eyes5
Tangled Waltz Listen on: YouTube
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.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
Tangled Waltz, I think it owes itself a little to Yann Tiersen and the Amélie soundtrack, which I was listening to a lot at the time.
Squiddle Samba Listen on: YouTube
"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.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
I really enjoyed the Squiddle Samba, that's kind of... a pastiche of Chicharia[?] or something.
Squiddles in Paradise Listen on: YouTube
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.
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 (dead link) 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.
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 (dead link), 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 Listen on: YouTube
"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.
Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text)
There's also Mister Bowman Tells You About the Squiddles, where I dared self-insert into the comic, as myself, doing vocals again. I wanted there to be, like, some creepy verses that were, um, "they laugh because they love, they swim because they're swell, they smile because they have no sense of heaven or of hell." I think that direction might have been funny, but... I was just playing it completely straight, I turned it into something I could take to conventions and like, just perform and have people actually sing along to. And you know, just, Captain Kangaroo style or whatever, everyone just becomes little kids singing along, y'know!
Ocean Stars Listen on: YouTube
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.
I don't think I ever mentioned this to anyone before, but this song is based after, of all things, a tune I wrote in the background of one of my custom WarioWare D.I.Y. minigames. The two bars from 1:21 to 1:25 is almost exactly how it sounded in that game, except more MIDI-like.
(The minigame itself had nothing to do with Homestuck or Squiddles; it was a game where you see a pair of eyes in the darkness, and you had to stop a moving bar in the right spot to turn on a light bulb and reveal a black cat.)
Squiddles!
Main album (1–22)
Bonus tracks (23–23)