The following commentary is properly placed on this track's main release, Homestuck Vol. 8.

Michael Guy Bowman ✑ co-composer, via early commentary collection

"Revered Return" began as a track called "Dirgeish", a .pxtone composition that Nick had completed some time ago but never managed to squeeze into an album. Because as a chip tune it had been long overlooked, I decided to take a whack at producing it in a different style for inclusion on Volume 8. I had been looking for a piece that would work as a rock tune, and "Dirgeish" really struck me because of the heavy involvement of drums, its steady pace, and dynamic structure.

The unique challenge of arranging "Revered Return" was pinning down exactly what was what - "Dirgeish" had maximized use of its resources as an electronic composition, shifting instrumentation several times in ways that wouldn't translate to a rock context. I found myself in a very subjective position, kind of picking and choosing what things would stay in and what things would be changed, while overall trying to maintain the original structure of the song.

The structure I think might be the most unique part of "Revered Return" - it doesn't waste time by really repeating itself a lot. Nine out of ten times I work on a song I find myself writing or arranging something that moves in a very basic structure like ABAB or AABA or other variants, etc. "Dirgeish" gave me the challenge of establishing coherency in a piece that seemed to move almost completely linearly, and I made sure to preserve its sort of ABCDEFGBA-type structure in arranging "Revered Return" for Volume 8.

Nick Smalley ✑ co-composer, via early commentary collection

Remember that thing about ORGMaker? Yeah, this song, too. Except add me asking Andrew Huo to help finish it and Bowman to ramp it up, and you've got Revered Return. :3

7/20/2024with respect to this album —
about 12 years, 9 months later Michael Guy Bowman ✑ Michael Guy Bowman Talks About His Homestuck Music, adapted to text

Revered Return, that was a piece of Nick's music that I arranged out. That was one where I rewrote the piece, basically, from beginning to end, from this chiptune. At the time it was literally just me going through the haphazard, not really built for multitake thing on FL Studio and trying to write guitar lines that would, you know, go through, nearly one measure at a time, just to get it down. But I was so pleased with the result.