But there's a bit more to it than that, and that lies in its instrumentation. Actually, it's probably the lowest quality thing I have ever released as Homestuck music. I consider this an important piece to myself, but not to Homestuck music in general.
I realize that was more of a narrative than a commentary, but it's the history behind this piece that I find fun to talk about more than the piece itself. 5, I added a section to it (roughly the last third of the piece) and at the very end sneaked the Squiddles theme just because I could. Once I found out it was going to be on Vol. Radiation got Bowman to record some heavy metal meows, which he apparently almost got kicked out of his apartment for recording and claims to have video of, though I have yet to see it. So I produced it in a DAW to make it sound "good", and relative to the MIDI file it sounded great, and we were both really happy with it. I agreed, Chorale being one of my favorite Homestuck tunes. He asked if I would be interested in producing it, since at the time he was just starting out and had no means to do so. He approached me with a MIDI file he had made, intending it to be a sort of "boss battle" arrangement of Chorale for Jaspers in the style of Harleboss. It was the first thing that Radiation and I worked on together, and it was through Hardchorale that our friendship started. It came about in a strange, almost fateful way, and I think the final product reflects that. (Rosetti) I've always considered the creation of this song a "classic story".
In Hauntjelly, Xerxes emphasizes the spookiness by changing instruments for more electric organ. In Hauntjam, Bowman did some good stuff with bringing out moving parts in the first refrain. But it still has its own little charm, with the almost annoying trill put in for a spooky ghost-like effect. 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. From there on, it was fairly straightforward to write a haunting refrain and then solos for each instrument. 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). 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. 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. (Huo) Hauntjam and Hauntjelly are interesting things.
Gabe Nezovic's mastering helps to cover most of it, but I still feel kind of guilty about it. Unfortunately, I was, and I suppose am still today, new to the recording game, and so there are mistakes I cringe at in both the comic and album versions. I reverse-engineered the sheet music from my own recording to do a recording for the album. That version, cut, is what you hear in the comic. I fooled around with it a couple of times, playing with a haunting/sad-but-hopeful tone, and the arrangement that you hear was recorded literally the first time it was played - the first time those notes were played in that rhythm, tone and order was the same time it was recorded. Hadley's Aggrieve was created first in this case, and I had roughly dictated it, so I knew the notes. At this time in particular, I was doing that a lot. I love just randomly improvising on the violin, exploring different poetic areas, if you will, and coming up with things that sounded beautiful to me. Well, I'm primarily a violinist, and Rose's instrument was to be violin/strings, so this was right up my alley. This was when the music team's main scoop on the kids was that they were going to have theme instruments that somehow function as their weapons or special abilities as well, although I guess this has only mostly come to fruition with Dave's turntables. Ahh, the glory days, when we had no idea we were going on a universe-destroying/creating adventure, or even a world-destroying one.