Blog Posts (2022)/Article 89

# **INTRODUCTION**

Duke: Hello everyone! Welcome to the latest edition of Backstage: Corporate Clash! I’m Duke Trickyflip, the game’s Audio Director. I’m joined by two other musical maestros, who may feel free to introduce themselves!

Main: Hi folks, I’m Main! I’m a Technical Lead Assistant for Corporate Clash, and one of the leading developers for v1.3.0. I also do a bit of composer work on the side when I have the time, and notably helped do a lot of work for the Cog Building music. There’s an interesting amount of backstory and detail to these tracks, so I’m excited to get some of my thoughts out there about them. Now now, let’s not forget about the one who REALLY pulled this project together: Dave Brubot!

Dave: Skibidibipidee baby! It is I, the magical master of musical melody, the medley monstrosity, the maestoso meister, the pied piper of pain, the singing stringer of swing and suffering, the trumpeter of treble and trouble, Dave Brubot. I performed the beautiful beats on bops blasted by business brokers blotting toontown. Nobody plays the room like me, not even in the back.

Duke: It’s good to have both of you here! As you might imagine, we’re going to be taking things in a more “harmonious” direction! Today’s discussion post centers around the recently released Cog Building music. We’ll also be talking a little about some other Corporate Clash tunes, so stay tuned for more on that! Let’s get started, shall we?

# **BOARDBOT**

*A Sharp Change in Tune*

Duke: For organization purposes, we’ll be going by order of release for each department. That means we’re starting off with the ever-imposing Boardbots! I’m going to let Main start this one off.

Main: To start things off, I’d like to first make it clear that a few of the flavors of Cog Building music (i.e. Lawbot, Bossbot, and Boardbot) were actually created a LONG time ago, back around March or April 2021 by me. At the time, these tracks weren’t intended on being in-game, and were just a little project to help me learn and get familiarized with Mixcraft. I wasn’t even on the Composer position yet! What this did mean, however, was that I had to pretty much uniquely introduce the Boardbot sound to myself when making the original tracks. In my original work, I stylized the Boardbots to have a bit of a fairly traditional march feel, which entailed a LOT of drums as the primary focus. (a common theme with me: I try WAY too hard on the percussion...)

The original version of the final floor theme for Boardbot buildings.

Duke: Main brought the initial round of tracks to me in July of last year. I tried them out in-game and found that it made the experience of playing through Cog buildings to be much more enjoyable! I suggested to others in Creative Leadership that these be added to the game and we received approval to proceed with the project! However, I did go through many of the tracks. Most of them were edited in some way, and a few tracks were rewritten entirely. A good example of this is the original Boardbot final floor linked above. Most of the changes were dedicated to changing instruments for some lines and adding additional melodies to stabilize certain areas and add variety to the tracks. I’d say my changes improved the tracks. Would you agree, Dave?

Dave: Dig the board babe but the board ain’t bored when my act is here. The full one man 5 part big band puts on the real show for those share keepers, a second tenth of a company just don’t match the meaning of five fourths of a beat! The play of a business doesn't match the play of an undying solo babe, the look on their faces when the Brubot Boogie Woogie played present presentation, looks like someone lost their tempo, a dibididibidabadodobo!

Duke: Thanks, Dave. Anyway, let’s keep going.

# **BOSSBOT**

*Bossbot Business*

Duke: Next up on our business robot journey is the Bossbots!

The Bossbots were interesting to develop because of the unique soundfont that they occupy. Out of all the Cog departments from Toontown Online, Bossbot was the only one to have a significant amount of music unique to its Headquarters. As of now, we have retained this soundfont and made several additional tracks for use in this area of the game. This made developing the Bossbot music easier in certain respects, as we did not have to work nearly as hard on sound development as we did for Boardbot. That doesn’t mean it was an easy task, however.

Main: Actually it was lol. There’s actually very little difference between the old Bossbot Cog Building tracks I had made over a year ago and the final result – they managed to age really well! That being said, there were definitely various adjustments made to the mixing of several tracks to make sure things still felt good, and Duke had overhauled the end of floor theme entirely to extend for the full duration of the elevator (which he did himself for ALL of the Cog Buildings, so if you miss the elevator because you’re jamming, you know who to blame). I also think that it sounds well next to this Cog Golf Course theme, wouldn’t you think?

A Cog Golf Course theme.

Duke: Very much so! Dave, do you have any thoughts?

Dave: This cog waltz brought strings and rhhhhhhapsicord and rhapsody in blue to those gray golfing fields, it’s the most color they’ve seen in years out there and baby do they need it. That club president wouldn’t know a jazz club if it swung four notes at him, but baby those clubs and clubs caught a clap like nothing else! Don’t waste your time at the golf club when you could visit my club but baby that’s a song for another time.Those bossbots are so busy losing the blues to these beats they couldn’t wouldn’t notice the golf karts in the wall.

Duke: Thank you for your insight, Dave! We have more departments to get to!

# **LAWBOT**

*Courtroom Contestors*

Duke: Before I segue into discussing the Lawbot building music, I wanted to show some gratitude towards Master Frasca, one of our former composers, for doing so much to develop the Lawbot sound in Corporate Clash. Frasca was responsible for creating most of the Lawbot HQ music, including the new Lawfice and CLO music. Dave, do you want to talk a bit about our experts in legalese?

Dave: Livin’ the litigation life, ya gotta catch that courtroom rhythm. Feel the heat, the beat of the song! These stampin songs lit a fire in those legal rooms, babe, that judge was not feeling the rhythm from the notes during that case. That court caught the fire of dance, but those goons couldn't catch the rhythm that is me, babe.

Duke: Very well said. Main, do you have any thoughts?

Main: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE LAWBOT.

Duke: So true.

Main: Lawbot was by and far one of the most difficult departments to make music for!! You’d THINK it would be easy, given its highly-established theme, but trying to replicate Frasca’s take on Lawbot music is harder than it looks. Seriously: the final floor theme went through around SIX separate revisions! It was a serious challenge to get it sounding both good and inline with the energy of the other department buildings, especially since the only thing you can really do to Lawbot to max intensity is to turn up the Tumba-Conga-Quinta until you start to feel something again.

Duke: Yeah, Lawbot was a bit of a struggle, to say the least. Our overall Lawbot writing has been limited since the release of 1.2, mainly because there hasn’t been much in the way of development specific to Lawbot since then. That’s not to say that we haven’t done anything! Here’s some proof that we have:

A new Lawbot track?

# **Cashbot**

*Freshly-Minted Tunes*

Main: Ah, yes, Cashbot. To be completely honest, I was pretty burnt out of making Cog Building music by the time that I had gotten to Cashbot, that I pretty much had only gave Duke a base theme for the battles and a single xylophone lick for the final floor to work with. That being said, his work on them was wonderful and perhaps my favorite out of all of the Cog Building themes.

Duke: The Cashbots were very difficult to develop a Clash spin on. While Clash does have some custom music in use for Cashbot Headquarters, the music predates Clash as a server and is generally not indicative of the game’s overall sound font. This is reflected in the compositional choices we made for the Cashbot building music. Dave can speak more about this.

Dave: The cranked cashbots cues created quite the commotion in the cashbot quarters! Some call me a monster in those mints because babe when I made this music not even their shiniest gold could shine like the star I am babe, when this plays enjoy yourself, get off the wall and have some fun! Surely that nickname has nothing to do with me eating 20,000 cogbucks in quarters.

Duke: I’m sure it doesn’t, Dave.

As with Lawbot, we owe a debt of gratitude to Master Frasca. Before he left the team, he did a lot of work to develop the fundamental aspects of a new Cashbot soundfont. In particular, Frasca was responsible for Cashbot’s emphasis on table percussion, Rhodes, and a general stealth feeling. While he was not able to do any significant work on new Cashbot building music, we were able to take those fundamentals and run with them to create new music. We’re looking forward to the further development of the Cashbot sound! In fact, we’ve been working on this development for a while. Here’s a little preview of what we’ve been up to.

Cashbot intrigue?

# **Sellbot**

*Salesman Swing*

Dave: The swingin songs set to sales and stocks, strung up to that jazz razzmatazz you know me so well for babe. These bops break the blues like no other! That whiplash crash is the way to live, babe, even that dull bulb smile plate in his tower can’t help but hit the one o’ clock jump when these skeleton tunes play their chords. Those purple players couldn’t help but shake their steel with these tracks because baby I tell you these tracks are on track more than those bosses!

Main: In addition to what Dave just said, I think Sellbot’s music was definitely my favorite one to put together. I love the grungy jazz feel of it, and the final floor remix was one of the most involved things I had to put together. Back in high school, I was the vibraphone player for the school’s jazz band for three years, and it gave me a lot of experience in both jazz music and especially putting together drumset parts (even though I myself have never played a drumkit).

Duke: Yeah, I stayed mostly out of Main’s way for the main tracks, but I did have a hand in the intermission theme! You probably recognized it as “radio\_21” from the COO encounter during April Toons, and you probably recognized it as a remix of the intermission theme used in Toontown Online. Although these tracks are pretty far removed from traditional TTO sounds, we felt that it was important to have some kind of a connection, even if only motivic, with the previous music. This was an idea that was at the forefront of our work on the Cog Building music. Speaking of music from TTO…

Perhaps you recall this one.

# **CONCLUSION**

Duke: I’m pretty sure we’ve covered all departments! Gentlemen, do you have any additional thoughts?

Main: v1.3.0.

Dave: It’s been a fun stanza catching time with these two corporate clashing and crashing composers babe, but this spotlight is on me! These tappin tunes are only the start babe. The hottest album ever heard is about to drop, babe, you better step aside it before it crushes you, but baby the tour isn’t at it’s last stop, cause the musical master (me) will be breaking the charts, stopping hearts near you faster than that caravan beat! Watch out babe, Davey is coming to town, and you ain’t ready to dance! Zing those strings babe, my solo is almost here. Catch my concert soon babe, before I catch you.

Duke: Glad to hear it! As for what may be ahead in 1.3, we unfortunately can’t say too much about that yet. However, I am proud to announce that Corporate Clash will be adding **150+ new tracks** to the game as part of the 1.3 update. The Cog Building music is just the beginning, so buckle up!

Duke: Thank you for taking the time to read today's blogpost, and for enjoying all that Toontown: Corporate Clash has to offer. I want to thank Main and Dave for participating in this backstage with me. I’d also like to thank YOU for your continued support of Corporate Clash throughout its history. We hope you found this post interesting and look forward to all we have in store from here! If you are interested at all in helping us to chart the musical course for Corporate Clash’s future, then you’re in luck because we are currently accepting applications for the open Composer position! The application can be found here: https://clash.lol/apply-composer

We hope you found this post interesting and look forward to all we have in store from here. We’ll see you in Toontown!