Explore

MIDI by Unknown (orchestral mix)
- Explore - Unknown (orchestral mix).mid (3.2 kB)
MIDI by Goatmon
- Explore - Goatmon.mid (11.9 kB)
MIDI by Twix Stix (from Sburbmon)
- Explore - Twix Stix.mid (10.4 kB)

Artist commentary:

Buzinkai: (via early commentary collection)

I tried towill write something a little more thought provoking this time without too much drummage in the background. It came out smoothly, and I do think it's quite the haunting melody. I was unaware that Andrew wanted me to finish the original loop, and someone else remixed a longer ending for it, doing quite a fantastic job.

Michael Guy Bowman: (arranger, from Music and Stuff)

"Explore" was one of Buzinkai's distinctive snippets that I arranged - the melodies she writes are always strong, and the only appropriate scale to work on with that kind of material is grand.

Michael Guy Bowman: (Bowmantown Discord, excerpt) 7/23/2017

A hot take on Explore? I mostly remember technical stuff about it, like that was the last time I used FL slayer before I decided it sounds dumb.

I think putting together all these collab tracks really early on helped build the culture of the forum. There was this sense that what Andrew was attempting to do was to build a studio of musicians whose work would cross pollinate. There were guys like Malcolm and Mark and Seth and Bill whose work was ready to go on its own. So I worked with them less and was more interested in people like Nick or George whose work was less arranged. And I wanted to work with musicians who could bring their own playing to the work so I leaned on Fenris and Joe Aylsworth.

I don't think I knew just how "all in one" digital production was until I saw how quickly someone like Mark Hadley would turn out new hs music. It was competitive quickly. I guess my father being deeply anti-electronic music was a big influence. I wanted to work with musicians to qualify some reality to the work. To me it's very sexy to imagine the power of the ensemble. Composition might just be putting the right musicians in the room. So I practiced a lot more collaboration early on.

Michael Guy Bowman: (Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text) 7/20/2024

Explore was one of Buzinkai's pieces. RIP, of course.

Chip music ended up having such an important role in this comic. I was never like, a big chiptune person - I didn't have the same dedication to trying to work with the hardware emulation that a lot of people did, and the handful of times I did chip music, I just faked it using the 3x oscillator within FL Studio. What I felt I could do, was to approach it - y'know, 'cause I'm always trying to think of it like it's something being produced in a studio, even [if it's] a simulated one within software - was to pad it out and put drums behind it, and find a way to make it more than just a loop, but something that progresses, once again. So I put the simulated drum sounds, the simulated guitars on that, and created this big ch-ch-ch rising scope to it.

I only mention it with, you know, humility, that we had so much to work with because of Buzinkai. Including Doctor, and Endless Climb... they were drawing a lot from Cave Story and the soundtrack to that game, which was such an inspiration for a lot of people. I was just glad to have something to contribute to that piece of inspiration, which I think maybe came closer to the grove, on what Homestuck - and anything that's sort of, like, a retro "let's revive the aesthetics of classic Nintendo gaming..." all that sort of thing, is about.

Homestuck Vol. 2

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