Music of Homestuck
The 2009 webcomic Homestuck, written and drawn by Andrew Hussie, currently holds a soundtrack consisting of 26 digital albums. Besides static images, Homestuck makes use of flash animations and games, which often involve background music. The music of Homestuck is composed by fans, but is published by Hussie through his Bandcamp page under the What Pumpkin record label. Hussie established a small "Music Contribution Team" for the webcomic, which is coordinated by Toby Fox.
Production
The first piece of music ever featured on MS Paint Adventures was a fan-made title theme for Problem Sleuth, created by later-Slender: The Eight Pages-developer Mark J. Hadley.[2] While starting Homestuck, Andrew Hussie posted an open invitation for composers on the MS Paint Adventures forums. Clark Powell, the creator of the "Homestuck Anthem", responded to this call, becoming a member of the "Music Contribution Team".[1] Jeremy "Solatrus" Iamurri's work on Homestuck's music gave him the exposure needed to become a professional musician.[3]
After he posted various piano covers on a Homestuck fan forum, Hussie reached out to Toby Fox – who later went on to create the video game Undertale – to produce music for the webcomic's flash animations.[4][5] Fox recounts that he set a goal for himself to get his music featured in the webcomic, predicting the direction the story would take and sending in music that would be relevant in the predicted situations. In an interview with Polygon, Fox said that "Over time I kind of established that I 'get' what [Hussie] wants pretty well," which eventually led him to the role of production coordinator for music.[2]
Hussie wrote on his Tumblr blog that he never gives artists or musicians context when requesting input, keeping his requests vague by only suggesting a change in tempo or the inclusion of a leitmotif. According to Fox, Hussie creates animations in Homestuck based on the music he receives rather than the other way around. He described this as the most rewarding aspect of creating music for the webcomic: "seeing what visuals he creates to go with the audio after imagining your own."[2]
The music of Homestuck is published through Hussie's own record label "What Pumpkin". With the music released on Bandcamp, payment is split between Hussie and the album creators. As the popularity of Homestuck rose, more fans requested to be on the Music Contribution Team; however, Hussie chose to keep the team a fixed size, and closed it to new members. Only team members are legally allowed to profit from Homestuck-related commissions.[1]
Fans of Homestuck have created a large amount of filk music based on the webcomic and its soundtrack. Aja Romano of The Huffington Post stated that Homestuck filk music is frequently paired with "skilled video editing," producing "wondrous results."[6][7][8]
Reception
Adam Harper of The Fader has described the music of Homestuck as "subtly evad[ing] genre, skipping through all kinds of sound worlds, seemingly guided more by emotion ... than form." He pointed at One Year Older and Song of Skaia as oddly mesmerizing albums. Furthermore, Harper described the digitally painted album artwork as "bizarre" and praised What Pumpkin's "weirdly great-looking" Bandcamp page.[8]
Reid Gacke of Only Single Player rated Toby Fox' "Megalovania" as one of the best video game songs in 2015, noting that it was initially part of the Homestuck soundtrack before being remastered for Undertale.[9] Gacke has also noted that Homestuck has "better video game music than many video games."[10]
Discography
There are 26 albums released on Bandcamp through the What Pumpkin record label. Albums with no composer listed consist of songs composed by various different composers.[11]
| Title | Composer | Release |
|---|---|---|
| Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead | 4 February 2010 | |
| Homestuck Vol. 5 | 23 June 2010 | |
| Alternia | Toby "Radiation" Fox | 18 July 2010 |
| Squiddles! | 26 August 2010 | |
| The Felt | 2 December 2010 | |
| Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent | 5 January 2011 | |
| Strife! | 16 February 2011 | |
| Alterniabound | 14 March 2011 | |
| Medium | Clark "Plazmataz" Powell | 14 April 2011 |
| Mobius Trip and Hadron Kaleido | Michael Guy Bowman | 31 May 2011 |
| Homestuck Vol. 7: At the Price of Oblivion | 31 May 2011 | |
| Sburb | Tyler Dever | 13 July 2011 |
| The Wanderers | 14 July 2011 | |
| Prospit & Derse | 22 August 2011 | |
| Homestuck Vol. 1-4 | 24 October 2011 | |
| Homestuck Vol. 8 | 25 October 2011 | |
| Song of Skaia | Mark Hadley | 1 January 2012 |
| coloUrs and mayhem: Universe A | 2 April 2012 | |
| coloUrs and mayhem: Universe B | 13 April 2012 | |
| Homestuck Vol. 9 | 12 June 2012 | |
| Symphony Impossible to Play | Clark "Plazmataz" Powell | 12 August 2012 |
| One Year Older | Erik "Jit" Scheele | 15 August 2012 |
| Genesis Frog | Alexander Rosetti | 23 October 2012 |
| Cherubim | 14 April 2013 | |
| [S] Collide | 6 April 2016 | |
| Act 7 | Clark Powell and Toby Fox[12] | 13 April 2016 |
References
- ^ a b c Lauren Rae Orsini (September 3, 2012). "Behind the wonderful and weird soundtrack to Homestuck". The Daily Dot. Retrieved September 13, 2012.
- ^ a b c Funk, John (2012-10-15). "Land of Memes and Trolls: The Epic and Ridiculous Self-Aware World of Homestuck". Polygon.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ Faircloth, Kelly (October 3, 2012). "Stuck on Homestuck: How Andrew Hussie Turned a Tumblr Craze Into a Teenage Empire". Betabeat. The New York Observer. Archived from the original on 2012-10-05.
- ^ "GI Show Yoshi's Wooly World, Minecraft: Story-Mode, Undertale's Toby Fox". YouTube. GameInformer. 2015-10-15. Retrieved October 15, 2015.
- ^ Elliott, Jacob (2015-09-22). "Strange 'Undertale' offers bittersweet, horrifying game experience". The Daily Nabraskan.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ Romano, Aja (2013-02-25). "Homestuck Songs: The 5 Best Videos On The Internet From The Popular Webcomic". The Huffington Post.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ "A Noob's Guide to Homestuck, the Favorite Webcomic of Internetty Teens Everywhere". Observer. 2013-09-10.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ a b c Harper, Adam (2014-11-08). "System Focus: Fandom Music Is As Underground As It Gets". The Fader.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ Gacke, Reid (2015-12-10). "Best Song of 2015". Only Single Player.
It's a brilliant fight and an exciting tune and easily one of the best video game songs of the year. Interestingly enough, it was also a part of the Homestuck soundtrack and was essentially remastered for Undertale.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ Gacke, Reid (2015-10-09). "Best Game Soundtracks of 2015". Only Single Player.
{{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=(help) - ^ "Homestuck Music". Bandcamp. What Pumpkin. Retrieved 2016-04-13.
- ^ "[S] Act 7". Youtube.