Hey, it’s Cohen. But more interestingly, it’s James and Toby, giving some commentary on the first half of the HIVESWAP: Act 1 soundtrack, available now on Bandcamp or bundled with HIVESWAP: Act 1 on Steam and Humble. We’ve got the first half of the discussion today, with the next half going up next Wednesday. Wait…did I say all this once before already? No. Impossible.
James: This is the track that has been rewritten the most. It’s so much better now than it used to be. This latest version is meant to tie in with the title screen music. It’s based around Joey and Jude’s theme, and has a few nods in there to some others if you’re listening.
James: In its current form, I think this is one of the best examples on this soundtrack of what Toby and I’s respective styles sound like mixed together. Toby doesn’t like to use a lot of percussion, so I wrote this based on what was originally a piano piece. It is one of the VERY first things written for the game. WOW. The original version of this sounds a lot more like “SINGULAR PERIL” without any drums and not sampled, so just like, straight 8ths.
James: When Toby sent me the original piano sketch for Joey’s theme it was real good but I thought since Joey dances, what if I made it sound like a dance recital? I used to take dance classes when I was a kid, and I have very distinct memories of a kindly old woman playing bouncy piano chords in ¾ time. One of the design choices Toby and I settled on really early on was that each character would have a “room” that be the purest form of their theme. Joey feels most at home in her bedroom, which is a sanctuary from the rest of the awful house she lives in.
Toby: I think my original version of this was like 40 seconds long or something… James did a really good job fleshing it out and making it something that’s listenable for long enough to look at the Bubsy poster 40 times in a row.
James: This went through a bunch of revisions, too. It used a lot of harpsichord originally, which we then thought we’d use a little more sparingly. When we first came onto the project Andrew told us “it’s like a haunted house” so we really made it like… spooky but months down the line Andrew was like “ok lads reel it in it’s not actually haunted just lonely” so we switched it to piano and toned it down a bit. Toby ended up doing the final version of this one, though I think a piano version I did exists somewhere too.
Toby: This is one of the first tracks I did for the game. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out from a musical standpoint, though I guess it’s kind of serious given how goofy the house looks. Whoops…
James: Overall it felt like the mansion wasn’t dorky enough so I wrote this even MORE toned down version of it for when the lights go out. Stripping down Toby’s song in this way makes it sound kinda like Luigi’s Mansion, which rules so it all worked out.
This was originally going to be the theme for just downstairs. In the time since then, though we decided to have music changes based more on “narrative” and less on just “location.” You don’t spend that much time upstairs so it would seem kinda silly to have the “MAIN THEME” of the mansion be heard for the two minutes you’re in the hallway. You will see more of these dynamic music changes in ACT 2.
Toby: It sounds kind of like Yoshi’s Story to me. This turned out to be a really tuba-heavy soundtrack somehow. Maybe that’s a good thing though.
James: We just kept telling each other to add Tuba to things. Like some sort of Will They/Won’t They Tuba standoff.
James: Cohen named this one this because it is the basement and Toby was living in Andrews basement at some point while he was working on Undertale. You may not have heard of it. There is no secret Undertale reference in this room. Checkmate, game theorists. Anyway Toby and I thought it would be really funny if we made the mansion theme sound like the Sephiroth song from Final Fantasy 7 and originally the directors hated it but I cried until I got my way.
Toby: I literally didn’t understand why it was called this until I read James’s comment on it.
James: Originally all the strife song titles had the word STRIFE in them. This one was called “Why’d it have to be STRIFE” a reference to the classic line in Indiana Jones where Indy, a known pacifist, questions the violent tone of the film. It is an extremely important moment in american cinema AND meta comedy. I’m honestly so surprised you hadn’t heard of it. Anyway this is based off of “SNAKE GENESIS” which I wrote first. Movie Magic!
Toby: They probably should have also named the song that plays when you play the Snake minigame this. Just two songs with an identical name. That would be have been cool.
(Hey Cohen here. several people have asked if the title is a reference to the aaron carter song. obviously it is, yes, that. James’ song titles were good but they were usually a very direct reference to what actually happened in the scene they were playing for. So I renamed them, because I didn’t want people poring over the tracklist to decode the entire plot before actually playing the game. because you would have. I know you.)
James: Hey did you know Jude’s treehouse theme is just a slightly different “Joey Claire, Extraordinaire?” Anyway here is where I first accidentally discovered how fun it is to write a completely unlistenable synth sound that sounds like some hapless dweeb. I have truly realized my ultimate self.
Toby: Besides tubas, I think James’s weird voicey grubble synths that sound like they’re yelling are maybe the most defining instrument of this soundtrack.
James: I wrote this in 2014 and I THINK the original monster you fought here was the proto version big monster with two mouths, from the Living Room STRIFE. I wanted the synth to sound like the monster singing because I didn’t know how the monsters sounded yet and I thought it’d be funny if they were like stupid idiots.
James: Toby sent me this as a piano sketch (as he often did) and then I sent him a semi chiptune (ALTERNATE RECIPE) version with drums and stuff and then he sent me back the final version this was actually an incredibly simple process what an absolute joy. This is the most purely Toby track on the whole album and I love it.
Toby: I thought it would be kind of funny if there was a JRPG battle theme mixed in with all the other ones. I think this is just what I make by default without any specific direction.
James: It is my favorite song on Vol. 1
(hi it’s Cohen I intentionally made this strife more convoluted and complex as a result of how much I love this song, sorry)
James: I wanted to write something very Final Fantasy Boss Battle™ and around the time I wrote this an article came out where Nobuo Uematsu says he just wrote phrases a few measures at a time and put them together so that’s what I did.
Toby: Basically James is saying this is the One Winged Angel of the Hiveswap soundtrack.
James: This was written based off the extremely old original snake chase sketch Toby did. I wanted to put that throwback in for myself. Like an easter egg only I know or care about. I also wanted to try like… sampling stuff since I’m not super good at it yet and wanted to grow as a composer.
(hey this is named Singular Peril because it plays during the only point in Act 1 when you can die. do you get the joke)
James: This is a Toby Track 100% he just goes ham with echo. If you ever look at his work files it’s like a thousand tracks and half of them are just echoes. This sounds so good toby is so good. I think this was originally a loop for… in between conversations or something?
Toby: I think it was just written for the attic in general.
James: This track has a really rich backstory, in the sense that It has had several complete versions each with their own revision process. You can check out one of those versions in the B-side “how it could have gone” available on bandcamp.
Toby: My main contribution to this track is the piano riff 10 seconds in… Hell yeah…
Toby: I think I was asked to make this sound kind of 80’s back when the game was going to be in 3D. I mean, either that, or I made it sound kind of 80’s for no reason. Anyway, it’s just an arrangement of Xefros’s theme that I made for when tense stuff is happening.
James: It kinda sounds like blade runner I have always upheld this even though I’ve never seen blade runner.
Toby: Me neither.
James: We are frauds.
OK, that was fun. See you all next week, where James and Toby will be going through the second half of the OST. They actually already went through the whole thing, but you won’t get to see the second half until next week. That’s just how life is sometimes.
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