Crossection

If you're reading this, congrats! You're early. All the images save for the album cover are temporary (probably), as well as a few links, but otherwise enjoy!

	So theres this thing called Crossmound... It's a Homestuck fancomic thats been running since early 2022, with separate characters and the like. In 2023, I was part of a real talented music team who created an album for the mspfa, Crossmound Vol. 1. I personally worked on tracks Blue Trooper, Oracular Envoy and Occult Occursion. When the album came out in 2023, I started thinking and going "ok i wanna write some shit for volume 2" and immediately started working on it. It still could happen! But it's been a while. I've been building up these tracks for a while now and I wanna get 'em out the door! Something about Crossmound is close to my heart. I've had a lot of creative slumps, and working on/starting new tracks for this pulls me outta 'em. They bring me to life, really. I'm almost certainly not done with Crossmound either. I hold the characters dearly, and I want to keep making stuff for them and the comic! Admittedly there are characters I haven't touched on in my works here and prior, but I'm always willing to. I just have to yknow, learn 'bout em more. just so you know an update LITERALLY came out as im writing this. hiatus is OVER!!! Here, I lay out before thee my works. The compositions I have toiled over the last several years. Compositions spaning genres! From hybrid orchestral to floppy disc fight music. From anime OP to music id put on my gambling playlist. And tons of things I don't know how to classify ! Alongside each of these is my commentary, or to be more apt, a diary. I took to writing about the tracks as I worked on them so I wouldn't forget the thoughts I had going into them (where I remembered to of course)! they are all unprofessional as hell. Links to other tracks I mention are highlighted in nice colours in each entry! They link to the HSmusic wiki or to the sources themselves if they arent on the wiki. love that thing. so, dig in! i made these musics just for you! (lying) Bandcamp - (placeholder) Google Drive Youtube - (placeholder)
2023/07/24 I was working on a different crossmound-y track which i ended up not liking and i scrapped it ("expanded"), but i had first started delving into break beats and stuff there, so I carried that across to this track. thats the whole inception of this. amen break my beloved. at first i wanted to do a "yeah this is a breakcore orchestral thing hows THAT" which like, its not. it just has that percussion. this feels like its the epitome of my style. orchestra stuff, loud Drums, a bass guitar out of no where because fuck it. james roach low horns bc i wanted to. Its not super obvious all of the time but i nabbed bits of Try. at first, just took the pitches without rhythm, then a different section had a seperate section of try but with the whole schebang. said different section also uses that "dave fucking owns at this game" rhythm. added this because at some point i went "oh hey, this shit is vaguely upward esque. lets do this" also, a little bit or oracular envoy near the end, sorta sitting in the back. no reason. just wanted to :) i did make this without having a specific purpose for it, so fucking go ham. go wild. do whatever you want with it tee hee

	2025/01/05 last update to this was feb 2024. idea was to make a vaporwave-y/90's VHS stock music sburban jungle or whatever. i wanna actually complete this, so i need to add more to it. the main big thing i did for this was make a video for it, lol like a big ol loading screen for the game but More "Retro". and overall probably less interesting lmao 2025/01/06 ripped the flute out of Ego Trip to try add something to this. not adding anything motif wise from it but im adding aspects of "try" in it the upwards arpeggio in the second flute is the upward moving arpeggio in try from 0:54, while the part immediately after is the main melody playing at the same exact time. near the end, kinda quietly in the lead instrument is the violin part of try. :)

2023/07/24 yeah idk i just felt like making an aggrieve style track for a while and i picked out skerrt for it. while i dont think i directly REFERENCED aggrieve, its heavily inspired. working within constraints is fun sometimes! only having specific instruments and a specific amount of them helps bring stuff out. Not a huge amount to say honestly. I kept it pretty simple with the motif from "Break da Bank" straight most of the time. i spiced it up extra in the last loop for fun though :) i had to come back to this like months later because part of this was SERIOUSLY bugging me. i made it better.

	2025/01/04 original title of "ego death" after a long time of being unable to write music at all i decided fuck it lets get back into the rhythm with crossmound. love working on crossmound tracks. had to catch up reading first before clicking around random pages for inspiration re-discovered egoize has a casino (as well as that rigged slots machine) so i went "hey i have a gambling music playlist, i wanna write something i could put on that" so i took Inspiration from that vibe and threw this together. i only used egoize's motif from Mean low tide throughout, plus whatever riffing i wanted to do playing with the motif itself was interesting because its kinda sparse on its own. i added a bunch of little trills and flairs. also made it start on the BEGINNING of the bar instead of half way in, just to throw myself off originally the track was just going to be the kit, bass, e-piano and a piano, but i kept finding the piano didnt really mesh vibe wise? went looking and experimenting and found a nice bell synth for it, i think it sounds sliiightly like a steel pan which hits nice i went looking online for a specific flute sound and couldnt locate it, so went looking through my libraries instead and found this fucker who i ADORE. genuinely cant get enough of this flute patch. whether its a held note or a short, it just sounds GOOD. the calm B section with it and its harmonies might be my favourite in the track. not any specific motif or really making a motif in there. its just pretty. (for reference, its the Massive preset "Amsterdamned") in that B section i elected for kinda shorter stabbier EP chords for a more jazzy vibe in the C section its like. sonic sounds. sonic says money things and rings to me, he tells me to gamble. i always had a hard time handling the last chord in the B and C sections because whatever melody i wrote, it ALWAYS felt like it had to go a semitone down. i accomodated for it but yeah thats a Thing that happened, lmao. theres also a dies irae kinda quietly under everything in one of the flute lines at like 1:38 and 2:39. it was not intentional but it tends to come up naturally as i compose

2024/12/31 i havent touched this track since like. late december 2023 at the time of writing. it contains motifs from cladem in the general melody and then percussion aspects from dulcan, plus homestuck anthem or whatever. i think i stopped working on this because when i put parts of Doctor into here i got like. emotional and sad. i do want to and need to finish this track, if i later dont consider this finished. 2025/01/05 just needed a bit of timing adjustments contains a letter to my best friend in the cello percussion heavily inspired by blue trooper, as well as piano segments around 0:57 and 2:33 doctor at 1:55 and 2:33. wish i could remember why i put it in here, it just sounds good and carries Emotion. homestuck anthem at 2:14 to the end feel free to change the title later down the road but right now its "echoes"

	2025/01/05 in late 2020 my Homestuck Friend Group was doing a bunch of stuff gearing towards making our own friendsim, so i made some tracks for characters there. i wanted to expand past that, so i started writing a combat theme for one of them (naiian) based on their friendsim theme, made like 90% out of floppytron samples (the character had a kinda techy-mechanic thing going on i think). it never really went anywhere. today ive repurposed that track. so far the structure and plugin settings are all the same but reworked melodies/etc. so none of it is naiian's, now using it for tahbbi. my recollection of her is Programmer, and has gotten into combat at least once, therefore she can have the funny fight theme with floppy disks. :) quoting a short part of rainbow night over and over (literally the first three notes). the downward moving syncopation bit at like 0:13 is a holdover from the original version of this (but isnt in the original original theme. i think. there could be an arpeggio somewhere in "bro i love mustard" but i am unsure, the original strife theme is from late 2020) 2025/01/06 adding some "At the edge" in there too! 2025/01/07 ok i did less yesterday than i was expecting to lol the parts of At the edge are in a transition between chorus to next section, and the second to last section using the opening bass of the track why is there that gap with reverse reverb part there? because i didnt know what to do and i didnt wanna just Blow Right Into the chorus Again. 2025/01/11 calling it netDRIVE because i think its cool and fits

2023/11/15 originally i wanted to do something to the tune of Keygen Church's work, but instead i got regular church. still got that haunting, ominous feeling i suppose! anyway. more meeraz music. following up that church-y vibe from envoy! i love the whispering choir...... 2025/02/11 i never explained it but aspergillus occultus is a type of fungus, i picked the name because of the "occultus" part lol

	2023/11/15 original title: "EASTERN PR1MAR1AN AN1MAT10N" i started this track in like april and then dropped it for a long time after finishing 99% of it. oops! the basic gist of it is. this fucker LOVES anime. im going to make him an anime theme. i think i realised pretty quickly that my anime OP vibes were sooo generic. but off the top of my head i cant think of a single anime ive seen that sounds like this, but it has those vibes. main things i did with it were have them two guitars, one in each ear doing different things. j-rock style. chiptune ass keyboard and sounds because generic mustard blood things. kimaiz motif is of course Required! i actually doubled up the kit and basses with a gameboy version each, just to give a bit more of that gold feel. @ the title, went for the vibe of "this is a youtube upload of an anime OP" :)

2025/02/05 original title: Coal a scrapped commission "sketch" from a while back i'm reusing from early 2024 synth heavy, using more of a classic style of synth where im able using this as a theme for Amenia. kinda slower and more methodical. she seems pretty in touch with nature, but has this interest in health and her robots, so i thought the basis of what i had here was fitting (the ambient forest sounds, plus these sterile synths) also brough over the flute from Ego Trip because you know i love it. i've yet to come up with an explanation for the clock, that was in the original sketch. i could replace it with a heart rate monitor beeping potentially. anyway, i need to try slug in roots somehow here. i've got a tiny bit of it in the plucky synth, taken from about 0:53 in roots (the downward moving melody) oh as im listening back to roots right now, i can hear a sound in here which does sound kind of like it could be similar to a heart rate monitor. fucker (light hearted) beat me to it! ill figure this out tomorrow maybe. 2025/02/06 after the end of this section here, im adding a small gap and then a 3/4 section to play around with i keep bringing in old synths to fuck around with from other projects ! i'm using a flute from one to become a heart rate monitor sound. to combat the removal of the clock, i've added some shoe scuffling sounds at the start as well as a button press to turn on the monitor. i don't know if im gonna be able to add much from roots save that one bit from earlier, though ill try slot that one little bit into more places down the road. 2025/02/07 starting out this 3/4 section with the same chords im writing all of the bits in each synth at the same time to make sure they dont clash and i'll organise them later. thinking of ending the song with more shuffling and then a window closing sound, cutting off the forest ambience. later in the day: yeah ive done this now. song finished! i love a good abrupt ending sometimes.

	2025/02/05 original title: fance this is a track from early 2022 im reworking into a thing for lokere i was mid a will wood (and one of my jester) phases and this kind of just Started. kinda boisterous theater-y. originally was gonna have lyrics too! that theater musical vibe is what made me feel it would work for lokere like the bulk of the track is already done i feel, just have to add special lokere flair. already added some bits from the start of hyacinthine proscenium (jesus thats a mouthful). metianull did a good job at making things fancy in that track! sometimes a bit hard to extract specific motifs but it makes shit pretty all the same 2025/02/06 had some issues with a guitar but thankfully i was able to restore it, idk what happened between last night and now but its some shit to do with how old the session is. i forgot that this and what is now LEECH were originally going to be on the same album. wanted to do a mix of vocal and instrumental tracks? dunno. note the "silence" at the start is intentional, has vinyl crackling titling it now: Philharmonia, Enharmonia Philharmonia is a genus of moth, but is also very similar to philharmonic (a type of orchestra) Enharmonia is enharmonic but diving deep into its root word, ἐν (en) + ἁρμονία (harmonía) [ancient greek] -> ἐναρμόνιος (enarmónios) [ancient greek] -> enarmonius [late latin] -> enharmonicus [latin] -> enharmonic (english) anyway, filled out the ending with a lot more hyacinthine proscenium. not a huge amount to say on it!

2025/01/18 wanted to reference some old classical music for tahoma, so ive gone with Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dance no. 5 (and therefore Béla Kéler's Bártfai emlék (have fun with that, hsmusic team :D)). i'm mostly pulling just the chords, but we'll see if in the future i'll use any of the melody. im fucking around with the melody from Waltz of the Lilies 'round 0:43, dropping it into 0:24 of the current track. for the most part im not fucking around with the note lengths and pitches (outside of transposing it to keep it in key), but i am playing with the placements and shuffling it around big strong chords for emphasis, timpani because i like that booming sound and i havent used it in ages experimented with a guitar, but it wasnt quite the vibe in the end i snapped up the flute from Ego Trip again because I love it and used it in stead of a real flute (at least, for the moment). where the flute plays is a more direct quote from Waltz of the Lilies, just transposed and given gaps between phrases since the original is in 3/4. 2025/01/20 Guffy's had a rough couple of days so I (Vaska) am picking this up for the moment. I'm doubling the flute line in a Clavichord, because that's what I've been feeling as of late. Pro Tools keeps freezing and crashing out on me during the production of this piece and it's really rough, it has caused us to have to fully shut down the PC at least twice so far. Wasn't sure how far to push the use of the classical track, but I've tossed in the next section at the least. Pro Tools crashed again, twice. Four times. More. I've put in a bunch of fast arpeggios playing the chords (as well as a fraction of the chords themselves below) in the flute, because I've discovered that it reminds us of a fairground organ/caliope. Sort of a childhood memory type thing I'm sitting on. Not able to finish the arpeggiating and such because I cant figure out the full chords at the end, and Pro Tools KEEPS CRASHING. This is ludicrous. Finish this bit later. Add some melody over the top too. I've done as much as I can handle right now. Same day but later, still Vaska here. Adding low brass, a glockenspiel melody which slightly references Waltz again, and then the plucked Violin just does the melody of that section of the classical piece. This thing is a lot closer to done now, Guffy just needs to do a lookover whenever they're better. 2025/02/08 i decided it was basically done a few days ago and just did some mixing lmao titled it Interrobang‽ because tahoma got soooo many books and i couldnt just call it "obligatory harpsichord" forever

	2025/01/05 jesus this one is OLD and half finished, last edit was october 2023. wish i wrote notes back then!! i THINK i was going for a neon white/machine girl vibe. kinda a mix between skerrt (break da bank) and egoize (mean low tide) since they're both ocean dwelers its a LOT of maj7 chords. god i need to figure out how to finish this thing ill see you later 2025/02/08 ok this one is HARD to finish. genuinely think i have to just end the track where i have it somehow because adding a new section that combines both references tracks just isnt panning out. i've added one section with New Chords:tm: that i was hoping would lead into something else but i just dont think it will!

2025/02/19 woke up and decided i wanted to make something kinda drone-y. its not my cup of tea generally and you can hear it, giving this shit melody, but making it distorted and scary. Eyes in the Abyss is on the first volume and i wanted to do something to kinda fit its space on this album. overall its pretty different harsh and grating. the main synth pad almost sounds like an alarm. flute from Ego Trip again. cant get away from it. but this time adding some frequency shift shit to make it distorted as hell. other instrument with a backing melody from At the Edge which i only noticed like yesterday. something about this started giving me the vibes of the big ol drones or whatnot. realised i had a perfect place to plop in the DRONE motif from hiveswap, so there i did. that rhythm... Titling it "Target Located" after page 492 in Crossmound. the "breathing" sound is a pitched down, sampled, siren sound from Dupliblaze COMAGMA. one of my favourite tracks from homestuck really. I wasnt sure how it would sound when i dropped it in, but it makes a real interesting effect.

	2025/01/08 originally titled "im so sorry i dropped my cock". i couldnt tell you why, i suppose i was more foul and gung ho naming tracks when i started it, march 2022. i dont really remember why i started writing this one but this is a pre-crossmound track which i think could stand fitting in. its definetly one of the BIGGER tracks ive written. it uses the floppytron library i have in the tahbbi combat theme. uses my big ol strings libraries and shit. i love to use the stroh violin for a gritty string sound a lot, though its gotten less use in later years. its a lot more "film score" than a lot of other tracks ive written, which is funny because ive literally taken courses on film music and haven't really put it to use sans this track and a few others. theres shit in here inspired by the matt reeves the batman film im 80% sure. the string and woodwind runs mainly. this track has always been hard to work on, especially in the end stages. trying to mix this thing while we lose focus is hard, its over 5 mins long of straight focusing over and over again! i want to assign the floppytron to tahbbi. whenever i use it from hereon out (in the context of crossmound at least) its referencing her and therefore netDRIVE. attribute the long solo string bits to meeraz? brass for the blue guy (dulcan). glockenspeil and/or celesta to cladem and A letter to my best friend. kinda any keyboard instrument i suppose. the synth could be like, either of our oceandwelers. you will notice these are all like, relating to tracks/characters ive done music for at this point. yeah, what of it. im biased towards my own work and these are justifications for why im using this track now, for why it Fits. a track of Something Dramatic is going on. theres enough variation for a few different scenes potentially. starting calm (meeraz forseeing something or just Seeing) with a build to something big, tahbbi and/or dulcan struggles with cladem intercut before meeraz gets Involved middle part of a few moments of stillness, before something goes Wrong or theres some Realisation when that big bass kicks in, before kicking off again in the last section when the percussion cuts back in. im realising the percussion is kinda upward movement-y, isnt it? the very end just caps everything off with things haven gone Bad and Wrong, with a final hit of cladem or something. none of this is anything that i could know Happens but its more mental justification. working through it as im mixing lmao


this thing is a cover of "the penis (eek!)" by surasshu the other track should probably be first of these two since i made it first, but i think it flows better this was and Ends Funnier if the other finishes the album. after i made the other track i went "hey i should make a whole EP of funny friendsim style tracks" and made this and then NO OTHERS. this thing is from like late 2023 i think? dunno man.
cover of caramelldansen. u-u-uwah-uwah. i started writing this thing as a joke, using a kinda false james roach "friendsim" style. posted a short version of this on twitter and got asked if i was gonna finish it, so i went "fuck it" and did. made this in like 2021 lol. putting this on here because its funny lol.