Harley Angelillo and Marcella DePina
Fall 2023 Capstone Project
Inspired by the musical themes of Steven Universe
AMETHYST
Amethyst is a spunky character with a relaxed personality. She’s the root of all chaos that happens between our main characters. She’s loud and rowdy, pokes fun at the other characters, and morphs her body into funny shapes for great comic relief. On the other hand, she’s very lazy. She’s often seen playing video games, sleeping, or eating some monstrous creation of food even though most Gem’s don’t eat at all. Unlike Garnet and Pearl who escaped their previous life on Homeworld to live on Earth, Amethyst was born there. Throughout the show, Amethyst struggles with her identity as a Gem, questioning similar things as Steven when it came to the Gem’s past.
Amethyst's Music
Most of Amethyst’s songs follow her spunky, childish personality. She doesn’t sing much, most of the sounds we as an audience associate with Amethyst come from the score of the show. The instrumental tracks that play when she’s on screen involve intricate drum beats and rhythmic bass. Her character is also seen playing the drums multiple times throughout the series. That all being said, when Amethyst does sing, it’s very important we take a look at her lyrics and their meanings.
The first song is titled, “On the Run” is a duet between Amethyst and Steven. At first glance, this seems like a silly song of 2 friends traveling together running away from home but when you link the lyrics to Amethyst’s past, it tells a lot about her emotions. The lyric “Home’s a place that I have never known” sticks out as the instruments behind the lyric sustain. Thinking about this line and Amethyst’s lack of connection to Homeworld turns this happy little tune into something a lot more heart wrenching. The palm muted guitar in this track enhances the image of our characters sitting on a train. Steven’s simple countermelody in Amethyst’s verse solidifies the train image, giving the audience the perfect picture of what’s happening on screen even if they’ve never heard the song in context.
The second song, “Tower of Mistakes” is a lot more literal to Amethyst’s character development. This is her first and only solo song in the main soundtrack. She sings this in the episode, “Cry For Help”, after she feels her mistakes have caught up to her and have overflown. A Fusion is meant to be a harmonious interaction between Gems to get a task done too big for a single Gem alone. In this case, Garnet and Amethyst Fused to move a big piece of rubble and Amethyst took control, destroying a lot more than needed. After realizing how dangerous the situation was she just subjected her friends to, Amethyst sung “Tower of Mistakes” to tell the Gems and the audience how she’s been feeling up to that point. This is a sad tune, with just electric guitar and some MIDI notes panning around in the back. Since this is so different than what we normally hear from the score when Amethyst is on screen, her remorseful lyrics feel incredibly genuine.
Our Song for Amethyst
Since Amethyst only has one solo song in the original soundtrack, we decided to base our song off the instrumental tracks that represent her in the original soundtrack. We wanted our Amethyst song to ring with spunk and personality. Knowing Amethyst is a percussionist and lots of her songs accentuated intricate rhythms of a drum set, we crafted a hip-hop styled drum loop for the beat of our track. We then took a similar approach to making the bass line by creating a drum loop and manipulating it to fit what we wanted it to sound like. The soundtrack is riddled with synth bells and whistles that immerse the audience in the futuristic space world of the Gems. For this track, we used MIDI horns because we thought the timbre matched what could have been used in the original score and her spunky personality.