Skip to:

Gust of Heir

track cover

By James Dever jamesdever Bandcamp tylerdever Bandcamp jamesdevermusic SoundCloud jamzdenver Twitter and Michael Guy Bowman bowman Bandcamp YouTube YouTube mguybowman Twitter michaelguybowman.com Other mguybowman Instagram.
Cover art by Fibug fishiebug-art Tumblr.
Released 10/25/2011.
Duration: 4:17.

Listen on Bandcamp or YouTube.

Read artist commentary.

Contributors:

Tracks that reference Gust of Heir:

From Fandom:

Artist commentary:

Michael Guy Bowman: (composer)

Two of the tracks I put on Volume 8 were collaborations with other Homestuck musicians, something I've been meaning to do more of because two heads are usually better than one. The first of the two was "Gust of Heir", a track that James Dever wrote and for which I did the production.

James and I are both fans of minimalism, specifically the work of Philip Glass. An eerie-looking autographed program from the Philip on Film tour graces the wall of my room, and the primary piece of music that got me interested in composition is Einstein on the Beach, a five-hour opera consisting largely of slowly-evolving repeated figures using chanted numbers and solfege. Those otherwise unfamiliar might know his music better from the many movies he's scored including Secret Window, The Truman Show, and The Hours.

Anyway, I knew right away where James was coming from when he sent me a midi demo of "Gust of Heir" though originally it was arranged as a piano solo. Without access to a pro recording situation as on the Sburb piano suite, we knew there would have to be an alternate solution, hence the electronic approach. I played pretty heavily with a set of new sounds, specifically the soundfonts of Ethan Winer, an audio professional whose work was recommended by Radiation a good while back.

As I have on many occasions I took cues from Oblique Strategies to get some ideas for the arrangement. Part of the intrigue in producing this piece was that it was fully written, meaning that in some ways I was boxed-in to a complete journey for the song to take musically yet in others free to really explore and discover a unique sound for the song. I really played toggling a slew of effects until this tune became rendering hell for my computer. I stepped a bit outside my own range of comfort and got some drum loops from Clark Powell to really polish off the piece, adding a touch that otherwise would probably have eluded me.

View original file ( kB MB). (Heads up! If you're on a mobile plan, this is a large download.)