Two Can Play That Game Soundtrack Lyrics



I figured I’d ramble a bit about the music that gets played when I’m making the comic and when I’m running Clockworks: the Home Game.  I listen to a LOT of music.  Pretty much all day while doing anything I like to have music playing.  Gaming and making the comic are no exceptions.

The Home Game:

I use a background soundtrack.  Thanks to the magic of iTunes I’ve actually gone fairly nuts.  The folder of Clockworks playlists in my iTunes has 6 days worth of music, split up in to over twenty playlists including: Clockworks, Clockworks Action, Clockworks Clorencia, Clockworks Creepy, Clockworks Free Islands, Clockworks Irone, Clockworks Mellow, Clockworks Monsters, Clockworks Rookery, Clockworks Sacred, Clockworks Stealth, Clockworks Tsuankotal, Clockworks Upper Clorencia, Clockworks Villages, Clockworks World Map, Clockworks Ending.

What can I say? I went a little overboard.

Every session begins with the theme song.  I’m actually a big fan of doing this, and even for games that have less excessive music selections, I always try to have a theme song.  It’s a nice auditory cue to your players that “Chatting about Warcrack and whatever new movies came out this week and how much beer you drank last night” time is over, and it’s time to get down to pretending to be an elf.  Clockworks’ theme song is Will You Follow Me? by Rob Dougan.  It sounds a lot like this:

As for the rest of the in game music, I’m not going to list all of the artists or albums for obvious reasons, but here’s a basic rundown:

Lots of Philip Glass.  I imagine the music of the Great Republic sounds a lot like Philip Glass, very mathematical and structured and repetative, but still emotive and pretty.  A special mention of the Kronos Quartet here too, who can be cool and evocative and weird to really, really damned creepy.

Lots and lots of soundtracks.  I prefer video game soundtracks to film scores, because the songs are generally longer and generally hold a mood for longer, where film scores tend to be more dynamic.  A few notable game and movie soundtracks are American McGee’s Alice, the City of Lost Children, Arcanum, Archlord, Firefly, Serenity, Mirrormask, all the Myst games, all of the symphonic Final Fantasy collections, the Red Violin, and all 8 bajillion video game soundtracks Jeremy Soule has done etc, etc, etc.

Lots of String Quartet Tributes to random rock bands.  There’s a whole little industry (mainly Vitamin Records) of string covers of rock/metal/whatever.  Depeche Mode, Joy Division/New Order, Smashing Pumpkins, System of a Down, Muse, Radiohead, etc etc all tend to come up a lot in the game, in string quartet versions.  I find this is a fun way to break up the classical/soundtrack feel.  Also note that the Section Quartet album Fuzzbox is pretty damn rocking, and Apocalyptica (not the new album with metal singers) gets played a lot during the more dangerous fights.

There’s a bit of music with words, mainly in and around Clorencia City.  Mirah, Tom Waits, Rasputina, Andrew Bird, The Gothic Archies, and Daniel Agust are a few artists that can evoke Clorencia and the rest of Vheld in my mind.

A special callout to Nine Inch Nails’ “Ghosts I-IV”, which is generally a bit darker than a lot of Clockworks scenes, but still pops up now and then.  If you’re running a horror or urban fantasy or whatever game, Ghosts I-IV is really the perfect background music.

Whew!  That’s really just the tip of the iceberg.  As mentioned, my Clockworks background music collection is quite eccessive.

Now, making the comic!

Most of the time when creating the comic, I’ll end up in one of two modes: stuff from the Clockworks game playlists, or stompy electronic music.  Generally, if I’m tired and I’m pushing myself to get a comic done, the music turns more towards something with a beat.  Sometimes the music is stuff like Underworld, Aphex Twin, Orbital, etc.  Frequently the making the comic music ends up being stuff you’d hear at a club on goth night: darkwave/futurepop/industrial bands like VNV Nation, Stromkern, Covenant, Wolfsheim, etc etc.  In particular, VNV ends up getting played a lot while I’m making the comic.

A couple of quick VNV thoughts:

1: listen to the lyrics to the latest album, “Of Faith, Power and Glory”. It really hits on a lot of the same themes and ideas that shaped the Clockworks setting.  Aside from a couple of instrumentals, VNV’s music doesn’t really fit in the world of Clockworks, but the concepts and lyrics absolutely play in to the setting.

2: A few years ago, the guy from Epsilon Minus created the VNV parody SimRonan, which is freaking hilarious. To this day “Swords! Victory! Oh my God! Find out what knobs do! Song gets heavier!” are all running jokes for me.  VNV is playing in St. Louis at the end of March, and I will have to refrain myself from quoting SimRonan when I’m at the show.

Anyway, I think that about covers it.  For the record, this blog post was created entirely while listening to Philip Glass’s “Aguas de Amazonia”.

–

New comic tomorrow!

...and the heart is in a Song! Challenge! right now.

Sponsored by Inexpensively.com, this week's Song! Challenge! takes you to the heart of the home in a big way. This week's game is pretty straightforward, with just a couple obscure ones -- I'm going to give it a Degree of Difficulty of 3.4.

How many of the song titles and artists can you identify when all the clips include a word for some sort of house, home, or other domicile? Your task is to name all 19 songs in this week's Challenge! Some extra information for this week's game:
  • There is one TV theme song in this week's Challenge!
  • This Challenge!, perhaps better than any other, showcases the diversity (aka, "randomness") of my music collection: Broadway showtunes, country, R&B that isn't Toni Braxton, jazz, easy listening, easy listening, easy listening...OK, maybe it's not that diverse, but still, there's some good stuff in there.
  • Words for residences that you won't find in the title or lyrics of song clips in this week's Song! Challenge! include wigwam, igloo, condo, lean-to, co-op, tent, tepee, geodesic dome, manse, cabin, and lair-deep-in-the-heart-of-an-active-volcano.
The Rules

Your job is to enter your song guesses for all 19 songs (artist AND title) as a single comment here on the blog. Standard rules apply (Judge's decision final, have fun, if it's a TV theme song we just need the name of the show, if it's a Broadway show then provide the song title and show it was in, blah blah blah). Again, I'll be counting minor misspellings and other tiny inaccuracies as correct, as long as you're mostly right.

NEW LAST WEEK AND I'M KEEPING IT THIS WEEK: You can submit your comment-entry starting at 7:00pm EDT tonight, but I'm going to wait until Sunday at about 7:00pm EDT to approve and post any entries, so the temptation to compare answers and/or cheat is lessened. It seemed to work well last week. We'll see how it goes this week...there was a fair degree of copy-and-paste cheating last week, as you may have noticed. The judges are currently conferring on specific action to take when the primary system-abusers are in town next week.

You may enter as often as you like -- but each comment/entry will be counted independent of your other entries; so if you get a question right in one entry but wrong in another, it only counts as correct in the one you got it right in. (Got that?) If you're reading this on Facebook, go to the blog: http://sssemester.blogspot.com to hear the quiz and enter your comment/entry.

The Grand Prize

The first person to get all 19 song titles and artists correct in a single entry -- or the person with the most song titles and artists correct by 7:00PM EDT ON TUESDAY, JULY 28 -- will win a $10 Amazon gift card, sponsored by Inexpensively.com. It's their launch week, starting Sunday, July 26 -- you can visit them here to find out about all kinds of cool ways to save money AND participate in some cool giveaways.

Did you click it yet?

If you haven't yet done so, CLICK HERE to visit Inexpensively.com's special Launch Week page with information on some kick-butt giveaways and an intro to what Inexpensively.com -- which is a national network with extra-special presence in four states (Indiana, California, Tennessee, and Georgia) -- is all about! (Which, by the way, is "frugal bloggers whose goal is to share their knowledge of living inexpensively. From dining, to travel, to grocery shopping, the Inexpensively network shares their ideas..." You are, frankly, an idiot if you don't CLICK HERE.)


(Almost) Everybody "Wins"

In the grand tradition of a participant prize for all (and in acknowledgment of the fact that this one is pretty easy), anyone who ENTERS IN THE COMMENTS and gets at least ten songs correct in this Song! Challenge! and leaves their e-mail in their comment or sends me their e-mail address directly (SSSemester [at]yahoo[dot]com) after putting their official entry in the comments will receive a drawing, created by me especially for them. Everyone's drawing will be different, based on what I know of the contestants. (Artistic quality not guaranteed, drawing may suck, etc.)

Readysetgo by clicking the player below:



If you're reading this blog entry on Facebook, you'll want to click over to http://sssemester.blogspot.com to play the Song! Challenge! in its entirety.