forgot what the prompt was but it was fun

COMMISSION: I FORGOT BUT IT GOES HARD like 2 1/2 MINUTES IN

a vtuber asked me to make some bgm for their channel and wanted some lofi so i did it shout out to izotope vinyl

COMMISSION: LOFI FOR LILY

this guy wanted me to make some of that sweet sweet clown music for his partner but also include a sample of them making a honk sound in the beat. so. thats them. honking???

COMMISSION: CLOWN 4 CLOWN

another commission for this dudes really cool fighter oc

COMMISSION: JOCK JAMS PT 2

this is the main character for the game i'm slowly working on in my free time (so thirty five seconds a day)

she is really serious looking but at heart is an idiot like the rest of us and thats why i love her

THE MAIN CHARACTER HAS APPEARED! ITS ARANCIATA'S THEME

i made this for my friends character for their birthday happy birthday bro

BRO HAPPY BIRTHDAY???

I did a few of these, and this ones pretty good.

COMMISSION FOR A PIRATE THEMED FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN MOD

A friend commissioned me to make a track for their DND character who ruled. So I did!

KINDA MOODY DND GUY COMMISSION

i did a short little sketch of a song from deltarune a few weeks ago and i still like it

DELTARUNE BUT HIVESWAPPED NOT CLICKBAIT (100% REAL)

STUDENT ANIMATED FILM

Steven Universe - The Crystal Gems (chiptune)

Steven Universe - Giant Woman (chiptune cover by James Roach)

Harlequin

weeta

heres a commission i did for my boy will based off a short guitar recording he gave me

WILLY G

UNDERTALE AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 15 CHECK OUT WWW.UNDERTALE.COM FOR MORE!!

FALLEN DOWN R R R R RR RR R RRR R R RREMIX

SPIDER DANCE FROM UNDERTALE BUT ITS SKA I GUESS (YIKES!!!!!)

(Cirava's theme)

originally this was called Ｍ Ｏ Ｉ Ｓ Ｔ but w/e program trace was using didnt interpret them right but it was so much funnier to just leave it as boxes LMAO

anyway i said somethin ages ago about some of the trolls having themes i didnt get to finish all of them but ciravas is just a re-purposed early WIP of a grubbles song (get the horns) that i made vapor/moisturewave by slowing it down in the right way because thats literally all vaporwave is.

M O I S T

(Amisia's Theme)
I wanted to call this one ":0" but apparently thats "fucking stupid" uhhh????????????????????????????????????? wrong

anyway heres the lore: andrew wanted something "UP" and "whimsical" because the first volume was really heavy handed on the music front. I had this laying around and thats basically how we are doing the music.

ARTCHOP (APPARENTLY)

i wrote this for tagora. i do these for free so if you liked it consider sending me some cash https://ko-fi.com/jamesroach

Call Me Gor-Gor

i suggested this name as a joke and they did it the absolute madmen

>tfw another james roach track

heres the "album version" of the loop from todays upcoming friendsim

it be like that sometimes

a little over three years ago i was in a sweaty conference room in manhattan visiting the now defunct WP NYC studio (which was in a shared space sort of... tech venture situation??) sitting in on what was usually a remote meeting. I nervously stood in front of andrew and my director at the time (whos name was also james come to think of it) as well as a handful of other people. Toby was conference calling in like we both usually did.

They said since i was visiting from out of town I didn't have to present anything at this weeks meeting like i usually did. I said I had something to show them anyway, since I didn't like to sit around idly and wanted to make the most of my studio visit. I stood there half-moist with gross air-dampness only new york in summer can really provide knowing I had one opportunity to wow them in person.

"alright. remember all those sound effects for that highblood minigame? like... seltzer water? light bulb? honks? squeaks? ok well, I made them into a beat and added some airhorns and tuba-"

"more tuba?" said toby over the call

"hell yeah brother more tuba"

anyway this was that song. It was going to be for a minigame sequence but i wanted to use it here. originally it didn't have a melody so i wrote a melody on banjo since you should definitely be reading all of chahuts lines in a very slow, methodical louisiana genteel southern accent. "SANGLE and ready tuh MANGLE"

take me to clown church

theres a channel that just re-uploads homestuck/hiveswap and now friendsim music to youtube so i named the track this so that a lot of confused kids show up in the comments. there isnt really anything i can do about people re-uploading music (and if it brings in a few more sales, then hell yeah) since if you take one down 9 others pop up and then people call you an asshole On-Line. at least we can both have a bit of a laugh when like fragman22 shows up in the comment section calling this song and whoever "james roach" is gay. well you got me there, kid. i am. i am gay.

for this one i really wanted to capture that LAD atmosphere. idk if mallek is a lad exactly... but he's got lad energy. maybe im just projecting. I have been saying saying "boyo" a lot lately. oh god is the lad.... me??? no probably not.

this song started off as a track for my best friend at the time Lexxy's fantroll very creatively named "Lexxer" back before homestuck fantrolls were "post-ironic" and still "sincere." I also put the melody to "nuclear" in here as a throwback to my old fantroll "Carcha." I have said fantroll more times today than I have in the last year. Fantroll.

this is the closest to ska that friendsim has got just because in its original iteration this is a weird like... electronica ska song.

anyway i say it "started off" as that but i literally wrote this track on like.. monday. thats how ya boy do. I borrowed from a song i wrote for a fantroll album i did. theres a whole fantroll album that... hasn't really stood up to the passing of time so I've mostly purged it from existence. I guess some chuckleheads found it but have been kind enough not to repost it.

FFM episode 413

here it is folks.

this was going to be in act 3, then i made it the EOA2 cutscene but it still cut off too early to be a full release and i just really liked it so i wanted you guys to hear it now instead of later.

i used it for boldir because it fit her whole aesthetic, but this song was originally wrote for a scene where joey and xefros are on the run. having been hardened by their journey they hit the streets. it was meant to be a really sort of somber realization.

I LOVE the mood of the transistor soundtrack and you might notice this drum beat and title are a very obvious nod to the song "Old Friends" (though someone else named it, years ago) I was specifically instructed "make it sound like this song" but since then I have worked to make it sound like more my own thing. you can see the influence of that soundtrack on all my work, though. the slow driving half-time beat. the airy reverb on chordal tones. the dirty bass. originally meant as a placeholder i never got over how the beat drops the backbeat on every other 4. I could dweeb out about this for hours.

Old Secret

(AN ASCII IMAGE OF BOWSETTE) (KARAKO's THEME)

friendsim spoilers:

karako is a very young and very small child juggalo. on twitter i described karako as "the one clown you are not allowed to be horny for" and a bunch of chuckleheads tried to be funny and say like "hueuhuhe is that a challenge" and its like one why don't you just listen to me when i say things, two stop trying to one up me you will never ever win, and three i am eagerly waiting your apologies. my inbox is open.

i mean i get it. i was just on a podcast this morning talking about how the one thing that binds us all together is that we've all engaged in some clownery. i think i talk about regrettably hooking up with a juggalo as a teen for a solid 10 minutes. its hard being me.

i just moved and gave my old electric bass away to a friend who was interested in learning. i recorded this before giving it away. goodbye electric bass. dozens of children will miss how i used to just go ham on the bass in a bunch of songs for no reason. oh also im beatboxing for two seconds in this one. i ran it through a filter so it sounds less like "james roach making some sounds."

all in all, i wanted to make this one sound a little more whimsical so i borrowed the synth i made for my friends dnd character theme... where they're also a clown? its a really good synth. ok marsti is up next.

(an ascii image of bowsette)

the problem with these titles is like at what point do i take a step back and really evaluate what i've done- and i mean really look at it and think to myself 

"Am I satisfied with what I have done? 

Is this enough? 

Do I deserve ANY of this praise? 

Do you think my family looking down on me with pride?

Is talking about things online just a bandage for years of silence about this project?

Am I going to open up online and some weirdo I don't know going to make a weird over familiar joke because they don't know how to really interact with people and its not really their fault but its the fifth one today and honestly I just have to kinda draw a line SOMEWHERE for my own mental well-being which probably comes off as kind of rude to people who have never really been in this position but I guess its not exactly my job to hold their hand through the difficult task of trying to be social in a semi-public space and its not like I'm really an expert anyway I mean cmon now

why are they talking about trolls lactating on twitter?"

at what point do i consider all of that and then look at what i've made and decide "ok time to name this one mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm motherfuckin uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh benjamin danklin" or whatever you know?

Wanshi's Theme

Wanshi's Theme - "idk man you name it im tired"

I think Toby actually named this one. The idea here is that you start with a normal song and slowly work your way to the weird clown shit. this is meant to reflect the real life struggle of finding someone hot and slowly but surely acclimating to the fact that they are a clown. we all been there. extremely relatable.

i got that weird laugh from toby as an mp3 and i THINK its from a spiderman game. it could just be toby's own impish laughter but probably not. toby has a hearty joy-filled laugh with exactly 0% in the vein of clownery department. i love toby so much.

so here we are. friendsim friday and i have to act like clownfuckery is just another aspect of my life akin to say a sweet tooth or psoriasis. like "yeah man we all done fugged a clown once am i right fellas" over here grasping at straws, desperation in my voice "r-right??? fellas???"

his name was daniel and he really loved ICP and i think now he works as a manager at a taco bell. yeah thats right daniel. i'm callin you out you nasty juggalo. my inherited army of teens are comin into your taco bell and taking all your fuego sauce. dont call me. that felt good. i feel better. what were we talkin about?

CLOWNFUCKER (By James Roach and Toby Fox)

▲trollkind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. to obtain something of equal value must be lost. that is alchemys first law of equivalent exchange. in those days, we really believed that to be the worlds one, and only, truth.▼

i wrote the original track when i was a teenager in a shitty band called "the isotopes" which is a reference to the baseball team on the simpsons. yikes. i played drums. bigger yikes. i fixed it up for this because we... just didn't have anything that fit. the idea is that its.. a jade blood who is trying very hard not to be one. 

you still have all the trappings of jade blood music: piano, bells, harps, arpeggios, some sort of.. ethereal moments.. but its like this weird bad rockabilly nonsense. you can hear how a like 11 year old me wrote what i considered to be "stride piano" there was a point this was gonna be a grubbles song but its like... well theres only two of them. so i kinda went buckwild on the drums a bit. remember dammek? i wonder what that guys up to. probably some stupid shit LMAO.

anyway a lot of you are wondering why trace put fucking lapras in the preview image and i guess the burden falls upon me to explain. on twitter there is an artist who predicted every single time it was gonna be daraya whether they had evidence or not and theres a whole like in-joke comic about daraya bringing a lapras plush (named SLAPRAS) to jade blood show and tell... look man i dont make this shit up theres a lot of lore. if you arent on homestuck twitter its about a thousand times better than anywhere else for that sort of... golden-age-homestuck fandom feel. nothing will ever come close to that but this feels very nostalgic to just joke and laugh with friends and shit. you guys have been really good to me. thanks.

▲trollkind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. to obtain something of equal value must be lost. that is alchemys first law of equivalent exchange. in those days, we really believed that to be the worlds one, and only, truth.▼

this title is too long, see description. (DARAYA'S THEME)

here it is. the end of an era. working on friendsim has been an absolutely wild ride. i honestly can't tell you what its meant to me to be a part of something like this again. i've learned a lot about myself and what im capable of and what im willing to do to make it work. i guess this probably comes off as cryptic.

a lot happened. an absolutely bananas series of events that lead up to this project and the more baffling moments that have transpired since. its... one of those things that only homestuck could have produced, you know? It was an incredible opportunity with a lot of ups and downs and emotional significance. it will probably continue to be that. I had a lot of fun doing all of this for you. it also... ate up a LOT of my time, though. I have been on a nonstop homestuck train for like the last five years and only now that i've gotten into the groove of things its ending again. bittersweet. for now. 

i don't really know how to feel but i hope i at least wrote a song or two you liked along the way. 

heres the one for MC/DOC SCRATCH that i think is my favorite from the whole thing. its based off a song from an old (bad) fantroll album i did in like 2011 (and the song was written even earlier than that) that made the homestuck music community real mad at me because they thought i was getting preferential treatment because my album got approved and someone on the music team's didn't. they used this incident to talk shit about me for several years. one of them made fun of me for my dad passing away?? yikes. most of us have made our peace (i understand how easy it is to get caught up in dog-piling on a common enemy or w/e) but theres still one or two that are like... still real mad at me for this. they'll say like "you were rude to us" and its like... you guys... literally made fun of me for not having parents.

this one got away from me. anyway. thanks for listening. stop being weird to me on twitter. tip your waitstaff.

WORST END

the note desolation plays

SO! PesterQuest is out. We've been sitting on this one for a while. This first route has been done for a while. It was supposed to come out back on 6/12 but our new publisher had us sit on it for reasons that are beyond even me. Anyway, big ups to Malcolm and Mark for letting me use their themes.

I don't know if I'll have as much time or energy to do the tracks for pesterquest like i did for friendsim since i got a new job. I will try my best.

PESTERQUEST: sometimes i call andrew hussie 'andy' and so far he hasn't corrected me

I wasn't certain how to approach this one. I knew if I was going to use the theme from endless climb it wouldn't feel right accepting any money for it. These things don't exactly pay well to begin with tbh, so i thought I would use the platform i've been given to try and do something... even a little positive.

at first the song was just going to be called "play the rain" because naming it something stupid, while keeping up with tradition, seemed like it would be in bad taste. at some point while i was working on it i started looking into various charities i could donate the proceeds to, and it hit me that i could just ask to make the title in the credits a link to the charity.

suicide is something that is hard for me to talk about. its very personal. i tend to internalize feelings in order not to.. bother anyone. a few months ago i called a suicide hotline when i hit a really low point and i think just the act of calling made me feel... in charge somehow? feelings are fucked up. don't be afraid to talk to someone. even if it is a stranger at the other end of a call. take that step. you're not bad for feeling that way.

so anyway. endless climb was one of the very first homestuck songs that really drew me in, and doing a cover of it all those years ago really got me back into taking composition seriously. it could easily be argued that this song changed my life for the better.

if you want to know more about the trevor project, or just suicide prevention in general visit http://thetrevorproject.org

PESTERQUEST: please support The Trevor Project

well cats outta the bag i did the dave route. when andrew approached me about writing it i had very little writing experience outside of my personal projects. im glad andrew had faith in me and i hope you guys like it. itll come out at 11 AM EDT.

for this one and the next routes music im gonna try and keep with the tradition of uploading it the morning of.

PESTERQUEST: ill probably just name this one something normal oh no wait oh jeez aw beans

i just wanted to do more than one song so i did two and a half. hope you like it. thanks for all the support! also im in this image can u find me LMAO

PESTERQUEST: 24/7 lo fi anime beats to question your sexuality to

jades theme! wow we've really come a long way huh fellas?

i always really liked carefree victory and its really one of the only songs that felt like uniquely hers. towards the end i try and do something that like... every homestuck musician i think tries at least once: getting all 4 of the kid's instruments to play something nice together. i think i did alright, i subbed in beatboxing for daves turntables cause its not like you can just carry those anywhere. i guess as opposed to johns piano?? LMAO

musically i have jade start on bass, and as more of her friends come in she gets a little more confident in her basslines. anyway thats my fanfic.

this is the last new piece i'll be doing for the forseeable future, or until i feel like doing another one which might be immediately. ive been doing this on a largely volunteer basis for a while since the budget constraints were tight and we need to pay the bg and sprite artists a reasonable amount. I wanted all four kids to have music by me and i think we'll be digging into the homestuck archive for other stuff.

anyway i hope you've enjoyed the ride! its been a little bittersweet at times for me but i'll miss posting new stuff every two weeks.

PESTERQUEST: JAMES ROACH (FT. SPEAK-N-SAY) - CAREFREE VICTORY (REMIX)

there are a handful of people out there who really thought we were just gonna put karkalicious in there.

PESTERQUEST: CRUSTacean

i cannot believe you fell for this a second time

PESTERQUEST: Terezi's theme, "CH3CK TH3 M3T4D4T4"

big ups to Tamara "TOTALSPIFFAGE" Fritz for really knocking it outta the park with these vocals.

cats can have little a salami

PESTERQUEST: ARADIA's THEME "yeah, it is"

in its base form this song used to be about a cat and is like more than a decade old

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