• they/them

back alley noise dealer, aspiring cyborg ninja, games understander


brokenmachinery
@brokenmachinery
cassandra moth - REVENANT ARTHROPOD REVELRY
REVENANT ARTHROPOD REVELRY
cassandra moth
00:00

the track is called REVENANT ARTHROPOD REVELRY. it took 1 hour and 18 seconds to make (would have been about 59:30 but i made a mistake with the mix initially oops). i tried balancing drama and cartoonishness with it and i'm proud of it for how quickly i decided to make so many parts.

writing thought process etc below:


i started out by coming up with something that was both fairly peppy and either in a minor key and/or kind of weird tonally, which resulted in the organ line at around the 27 second mark. i didn't want the overall track to sound too dramatic or tense because eggbug is an inherently silly-looking animal to me, but still wanted something to cover the "there are zombies trying to eat me" part of the prompt. i felt like going with a medium-tempo, very forceful backbeat would give a nice lurching feeling to the section.

the fast piano runs are an extension of my habit of writing transitions or flourishes on piano/guitar/etc in a way similar to drum fills, fast streams of texture and color instead of extending the melody especially as three-note tritone-based runs.

for the section starting around 52 seconds i essentially wanted a break of sorts and the first thing that came to mind was a slow, vaguely mathy drum-bass-piano pattern reminiscent of '90s prog. i ended each pass through the section with a reprise of the piano triplets from earlier to tie it together but with a different arrangement to keep it distinct as a part of the track.

the bass lead at 1:27 has a few reasons behind it: first, the piano and organ had already had sections where they were prominent, so focusing on the bass is a way of breaking that up. second, fast chromatic runs over very slow and simple monophonic passages are a type of writing that i have a lot of familiarity with and so i was reasonably confident i could write a lot of very quickly despite the relative quantity of notes. third, eggbug looks like a bee to me and fast chromatic runs feel like bees. this one is a bit slower than certain famous bee music but it is still there to some degree. i also ended with a tritone triplet run to tie that more with the earlier sections.

i wrote the intro relatively late in the process. my general goal was a slow, ominous-sounding organ section that the drums and bass would eventually come in after to lead into the main part of the track. meant to convey a vague idea of "oh no it's the undead!" before the realization that it's some silly-looking bugs.

and then the ending is a reprise of the intro with the full arrangement, followed by some brief slightly erratic pulses to emphasize the tonal resolution, then a final sustained chord as closure.

aaaaaand thoughts on the experience overall since this was my first time participating in COMPOST. it was a fun process and i'm proud of the result. i think i was a bit too ambitious in terms of how many distinct sections i wanted to include so in the future i should be more mindful of that and scale the structural ambition back a bit. overall i had a great time and will absolutely participate again in the future.


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in reply to @brokenmachinery's post:

i looove the "tonal weirdness" of everything, it suits the mood perfectly! it's spooky but with a bit of demented whimsy to it. suuuper cool space to exist in, it holds together very well

appreciated the writeup too!