Ghoulies and Ghosties (arc-ghoulies.s3m)

 Composed in October 1996. The title comes from a phrase from a children’s book I remembered, which talked about “ghoulies and ghosties and three-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night!” This apparently was originally from a Scottish poem where they are written as “long-leggedy beasties” but according to my memory it was “three-leggedy.”

After having completed a fairly serious-sounding song in Dark Star (final), I wanted to have a bit of fun, so I made a Halloween track. The bassline was inspired by some background music I heard in a Halloween episode of a TV series I watched at the time, possibly Home Improvement. Other musical inspiration was probably from the Rise of the Triad soundtrack song “Chant” and the Phantom of the Opera main theme / Echoes by Pink Floyd.

The sound effect samples come from Rise of the Triad and Full Tilt Pinball (which may have come packaged with our family computer). This was (I think) the first time I used the “floating tempo” technique: alternating a slow and fast tempo on consecutive lines throughout the song to create a “groove” effect. This was also the next-to-last time I used my favorite guitar sample of my early tracking days, which I first used in Segue and would use for the final time in Pretzelstock.

Overall this song has a decent idea but I wasn’t fond of the ending. The guitars kind of took away from the haunted mansion feel I was going for, and they were absurdly loud when I added the higher notes. The Homer Simpson sample at the end was completely unnecessary. A year later, I created another Halloween song called The Creeping House, which is far better. It even briefly uses the same idea behind the bass line, but I wouldn’t call the song a remake.
- arcturus