Through HITRECORD’s collaborative platform, members of the community have been coming together to create art and music for Beyond Good and Evil 2. One of the musical projects, Space Pirate Radio Songs, received more than 2,500 contributions! This is the story of how some of those contributions became the space pirate hybrid slave shanty, 40 Lashes. To get a closer look at the collaborative creative process, we asked some of the final version’s contributors to describe – in their own words – the experience of developing this song.
In the beginning…
… there were the lyrics! Julia tells us how HITRECORD member Musepunk came up with lyrics “describing the punishment of outlaws through forty lashes.” It was these lyrics that David (Lindworm) took as a starting point for developing the song.
As David recalls: “Musepunk's lyrics were very inwardly focused, but I tried to move that focus outwards, to have a target. The song describes the slave's life and all the hardships he's had to endure, and how every stage of his life has been defined by punishment: the forty lashes. And even when he thinks that he's finally free, that punishment circles back again, only reversed, and he has to decide whether to seek revenge on his oppressors or break the cycle of hatred. The end of the song is left ambiguous as to whether he is being whipped for refusing an order, or whipping the human and losing his soul.”
David recorded himself singing his idea for the song as an “extremely rough draft”, hitting his table to keep the rhythm in a traditional shanty style. His record inspired Markus (Valomat) to push the development of the song further.
Developing the music
Markus describes how he started to work on bringing in other musical elements to enrich the song:
“Shortly after I joined HITRECORD, I found a contribution to the BGE2 challenge, a shanty recorded by Lindworm. I decided to step in and first just make it sound better. In the process, I realized that it would be nice to replace the rhythm with some real drums and the singing with some better vocalists (no offense here) to at least make it sound like a real shanty.”
Taking full advantage of the HITRECORD collaborative platform, Markus issued a challenge for voice and instrumental contributions and got the ball rolling curating the various records:
“After a while, my idea for 40 Lashes Shanty formed. I added the guitars, sound design, and vocals myself. I mixed in the great contributions from other members to my challenge, and with each contribution, the song got better and more complete until, in the process, the arrangement of the final 40 Lashes Shanty formed. Nothing too fancy, but simple and intense, somewhat like the Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag shanties.”
Adding the voices
According to Cory (CA Newman), bringing more vocals into the song and distributing them among the different verses evoked a sense of a “hybrid slave” shared experience expressed through song:
“We used Markus’ record as our base track for recording vocals. The initial idea was that there would be one lead vocalist delivering the verses and then hopefully a large group joining in on the choruses, but in the end, with all the amazing vocal contributions coming in, it became a different vocalist or a different combination of vocalists for each verse and I’m really glad it went that way. It turns the song into a shared experience between many hybrids rather than just the story of one.”
Julia (Jayhan) added her own powerful vocals to the track, as she explains:
“Life in slave labor can either wear you down or push you to be mean, angry and spiteful… So I wanted to add a bit of that in the song. I remember recording myself singing the entire song from beginning to end, starting out smooth before building up to become rough’n’tough, even playful. I really wanted to try to be this female, kickass pirate who had been mistreated her whole life and who’d gone on a quest to free the slaves and teach the slave owners a lesson. And I got a real kick out of it, to say the least.”
The final mixes
Markus delivered a mix, and the HITRECORD and BGE2 teams decided to pursue the development of the track from there. With the suggestions from the team, new challenges were issued, and more people joined the project. All the new contributions inspired Corey to produce his own mix:
“I mostly started from scratch with all the individual stems from the records I liked best. I added as many people as I could while still keeping a cohesive sound. This can be tough sometimes. There were a few records that I really loved and wanted to use, but when it came down to it, I just couldn’t find their place in the mix. Sometimes you just have to let the song be what it wants to be. After posting the mix, I was thrilled at the great response from people on the site, and then overjoyed when I learned this mix was approved for mastering.”
The 40 Lashes experience
The contributors tell us how they feel being a part of this project and the overall experience of creating music collaboratively:
Julia: “I think that the beauty of this song is not only to see how it establishes a story or how it progresses, but also how it ultimately felt like it was being told by multiple people [oppressed] in ‘slave-labor’, with different vocalists taking on almost every other verse until they all came together in the chorus. This coming together is what HITRECORD is all about, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have been part of this project. It’s because of an experience like this that I’m more likely to return on this platform and see what other challenges await me.”
Cory: “I’m so proud of everything we all did with this song. I’m incredibly grateful to be a part of it and a part of the BGE2 project in general. I can’t wait to hear these songs on Radio Cheeta while flying my spaceship around system 3! How surreal that will be. Lastly, I just have to stress how much we all appreciate the HITRECORD staff who have been working their butts off, running all these projects. Ray, Jeff, and Keir are pure gold, and we’re lucky to have them.”
Markus: “It is weird somehow to work like this because you really give away what you produce at the moment you contribute it to HITRECORD. That’s very unusual for musicians, but creates possibilities for creativity you could never reach without this concept. You only have to admit to it and realize what you are doing, get used to it, and then… boom. You're musically connected to the world. Literally.”
Special shout out to all the contributors to the Space Pirate Band Art project for working together to create Too Hybrid for You’s 40 Lashes album cover!
Did you contribute to the Beyond Good and Evil 2 community collaborative project on HITRECORD? If so, tell us about it in the forums or share your experience in the BGE2 Community Collaboration project!
