solatrus:

Frost

This is arguably my most famous song, and even now is still a big thing in my life. While I have done commentaries on this song before, none of them have been really in depth.

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Featured Homestuck Song Extravaganza! Sorta!

The internet: “Dang, Jeremy, what took you so long to continue doing this?”

Me: “I dunno! I got distracted by things like the number 42. And the Doctor.”

Yeah, so, I’m just gonna basically do this every other day for the next few.

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Swing of the Clock

Ah, this song. The memories.  Not really any pre-song history so I’ll just get right into how it was created and why I took this song in this direction.

Swing of the Clock, henceforth shortened to SotC (not to be confused with Shadow of the Colossus! It’s just a hilarious coincidence) was the first song I started writing after joining the team. Multiple fake band albums were in progress (The Felt and Squiddles), but at the time I had no idea how to even approach Squiddles (see last week’s post for details).

So, I decided I’d try to do something orchestral. I went with a few ideas, but for some reason I kept wanting to write a song with a swing feel in it, though that’s more Midnight Crew than Felt, yet at the same time I wanted to do something that was clearly Philip Glass influenced. The small scraps I started before finally settling on a starting point (none of them were saved, sorry!) all shared two major common pieces: a ticking clock, and an arpeggio piano inspired off of Clark Powell’s Three in the Morning.

Both are still in the song, though amusingly many people didn’t notice the piano. It’s there. In reverse. :D

While I was messing around with the early ideas for SotC, I managed to create a nice sounding bass synth, but I ended up replacing the sound with a couple of clarinets to keep the focus on orchestral instruments instead.

I knew early on I wanted to write a song with a very slow progression, very gradual and subtle shifts between sections. However, I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach it until Beatfox made a suggestion on the forums about mastering and production as a whole. Before this song I tended to have a bad habit of improperly using compressors and limiters, though I definitely knew better than to use FL Studio’s stock setting for the Fruity Limiter. (Not saying the Limiter is bad, it’s just really horrible in what the default project template gives you.)

While SotC isn’t the first song I put a significant amount of effort into controlling the mix, it was the first I really managed to succeed in understanding what I was doing in that area of production.

I ended up automating everything in the song, and I realized how much easier it was to fulfill my original idea plus improve on my overall production. Sadly, the song was still very much on the loud side compared to the rest of the album, so there were some problems with how it was mastered in the end.

Going back on track with the swing feel I originally intended… As you can tell, the song is in a 6/8 time signature. It’s one of my favorites. It’s not a true swing, but it was close enough to get where I wanted.

A true swing is lazy 6/8. Sort of.

Anyway, so while the first third of the song is pretty strictly 6/8, the drum beat comes in that’s definitely swing influenced. And during that section, there’s the tuba part. Well! That originally was actually a stand up bass part, but there’s really no way to mimic a stand up bass with sample libraries, so I experimented with a bunch of sounds until I settled on the tuba.

It was passable, but only after I shifted it to actually play slightly early. The attack was so slow.  It was a little frustrating.

After that, as you know, it goes into the heavier synth rock section. Oh, hey, remember that bassline I said I scrapped in favor of the clarinets? There it is. Back in its glory.

The fun big moment, and then the song fades away.

Still one of my best songs in the Homestuck canon. I felt like I had set a new standard far higher than I’d ever be able to reach, but being on the team has pushed me further than I ever expected.

Now For Some Trivia!

Swing of the Clock was the second to last of a very long stretch of original songs I did in the key of F minor. It’s my favorite key to write music in, but I’ve barely touched it since Chartreuse Rewind. (Which is next week..! Er.. I guess this week, since I was late on this. Oops.) Why? Well, too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Secondly, Lexxy really dug this song and it made me flip the fuck out when I found out she liked it, because she’s an amazing person!

And that’s all! As you may have noticed, I’m doing this in chronological order of the albums, not the order the songs came out in the comic (or were retroactively placed in). Frost technically came out in the comic before this, but the version of Frost that you guys have on your computers was completed about half of a month after The Felt came out. Frost is in two weeks. :)

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Squiddles in Paradise

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 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, 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.

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Song Commentary Friday! Except it’s Saturday!

Sorry about not getting around to this yesterday. I did, after all, move from Michigan to Maryland (DC Metro) on Thursday and got everything unpacked yesterday.

Let’s have a bit of history before we jump into things with this song.

A Bit of History

I’ve been writing music among the longest out of all of the team members (9 and a half years now), but definitely not the longest. However, I definitely have to say I’ve improved more over the past two years than the seven years before that just from working with so many talented people.

But the difference in improvement between then and now is a story for another day. Let’s zip right just before I joined the team. While Skaia (Incipisphere Mix) is my first official Homestuck song, Doctor (Deep Breeze Mix) is my first Homestuck-related song, which you can download here.

The reason I’m mentioning my Doctor remix is because it very much helped put Incipisphere Mix on Volume 5. From what I was told, it turned a few heads on the team. Kind of hilarious to go back and look at the thread, because multiple of my chums posted just after I did and I wasn’t even aware of who they were at the time. Then again, I was still VERY new to the community at the time. My very first post on the MSPA Forums was of a WIP of my Doctor remix.

Blueberry eventually put me in contact with Radiation, and I was told not to release my Skaia remix anywhere. That made me very curious! And then not too long after that (a few days, I think), I received a message from Andrew Hussie himself on the forums saying he wanted the lossless master of Incipisphere.

“Oh snap! I’m a guest artist on Volume 5!” … And the following day I see a new subforum sitting there and I found out I was invited to join the team. Exciting times, indeed.

The Song Itself

Now, I’m sure people are wondering why I went with doing a remix of Skies of Skaia. Well, simply put, I really liked the chord progression, and I really enjoyed one of the remixes that was formerly in the discography. Because of both, I decided I wanted to do something with a bit of a heavier sound to it, but keeping consistent with the light and vibrant tone qualities.

The bassline and drums definitely helped give the song a much heavier feel than the original, showing an earlier example of what I feel has become my typical contrast in music. I very much enjoy contrasts in all art forms. Unexpected contrasts that are executed well just really made me happy. I can’t say I’m particularly happy with the bassline now, but back then that was pretty appropriate for my skill level, plus having an arpeggiating sound that I really used to do too much.

There’s also this really amusing sound effect which is actually this sample played backward and faded in.

Of course, the comments I see the most on this song are on the improvised piano part. Before I was on the team I started doing a regular broadcast on the skaia.net internet radio, and I’d improvise over this song pretty often back then. I eventually figured out a few parts that I wanted to keep consistent, and I did a bunch of takes to finally get to what you hear in the final song. Of course, MIDI never seems to record very accurately, and I’m not actually the greatest at piano (!!!), so I had to do some fine-tuning on the note timings to make them actually sound precise. But those really fast runs were definitely real, and, no, don’t ask me to play it again. I won’t be able to. It was a really good day for me.

Until next time!

- Jeremy