He Has Synesthesia? That’s So Cool!

He has synesthesia? That’s so cool!

:O I have a garage band file playing around with combining the two on my phone. Well, it’s mostly just the first song with music box’s melody sprinkled on top. Oh and I tried to mash some of Faroe’s Waltz into it too. I mean, it’s not good, but still- [theres supposed to be a readmore after this. Pls tumblr im begging you]

I… never noticed the final iteration was different🙃

Malevolent soundtrack is like “I live with minor, but I visit major on the weekends”

I’ve always wanted to hear a more complex version!! Oh man, when you want to create a thing but don’t have the skill, then someone else does it 🤌

Edgy and pretentious is the name of the game lmao. There’s a kind of …camp? to the podcast that makes it so fun to listen to.

Did you transcribe these from the actual podcast? I salute you sir(ungendered). The bandcamp version of music box/lullaby has some more chords and such in it and, listen, I can transcribe one note at a time and that’s it asfjbejfks

faroe's song and faroe's music box transcriptions (themes from malevolent)

google drive link for the PDFs: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/4/folders/1mxV-rkZCAHuHTNVeMoiOc91PIsW6CEp2

EDIT: i made some errors in the music box theme, they've since been corrected!

composed by the incredibly talented harlan guthrie, transcribed by me! for the music box theme, i've included instructions for both playing it as the original music box version as well as kayne's solo variation. i used musescore to notate these.

some thoughts below the break!

i agree with harlan in picking b minor as the flagship key for this podcast; it's always struck me as a particularly black and morose key in colour, even if i don't have synesthesia myself. i think it's worth remarking that he chose b minor for both of the themes. it really makes me want to try and meld the song and the music box themes together (and makes me wonder if harlan already has that idea in the wings).

i find the structure of faroe's song to be especially compelling, the way that the first two iterations of the theme's second half meld together in the third and final iteration. it makes me really wonder about the narrative structure of malevolent—if we'll see john and arthur merge and hybridize in similar ways, perhaps...

i really have to commend harlan for communicating something so distinct about arthur's musical voice. these themes are very simple, very repetitive, and yet they carry within themselves this kind of understated melancholic beauty. i want to try my hand at doing a more elaborate and reharmonized arrangement of these, but it'll be difficult to do so without losing sight of the core of the piece, i think.

i also took some stylistic liberties with how i notated some of the expressive directions. i know you're not supposed to add periods to the end of everything, but it felt appropriate? it looks cool. maybe a bit edgy and pretentious, but who gives a shit.