In April 2007, about 7 years before user-uploaded sounds, ROBLOX admin Shedletsky uploaded the “Wind of Fjords” (sometimes referred to unofficially as “Telamon’s Sword”) to ROBLOX—seemingly ROBLOX’s first sound ever uploaded. This seven year old artifact is one of the more famous sounds of the first admin uploaded sounds and was often used in horror and survival themed ROBLOX games several years back. However, unlike other older songs on ROBLOX, this song’s origins isn’t very well known, much unlike the Halo theme or Caramelldansen. This Throwback Thursday, we’re turning back the clock to unravel the mysteries regarding this song.
To start, we must travel back to November 2001 when this song was first uploaded anywhere. It was during this month that the song was uploaded to the Mod Archive, a website with a vast collection of music modules dating all the way back to 1996. It was here that I found the origins of the song and its name …which is –drumroll please– The Winds of Fjords. Surprising, amirite? …Luckily, that isn’t the only tidbit of this discovery, but regardless, let’s delve a bit deeper into the name of this song. As the name implies, this song is about fjords (although “fjords” sounds sinister, it’s actually…) –a long, narrow, deep inlet of the sea between high cliffs– or more specifically the fjords of Norway which the creator of the song, minomus, described as “so beautiful and rugged … so wild and changing”.“Their water is [as] smooth as glass.” –minomus
“PanoHardangerfjorden1″ by Aqwis – Own work. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PanoHardangerfjorden1.jpg#mediaviewer/File:PanoHardangerfjorden1.jpg
Now we wind the clock forward to 2007 when Shedletsky just uploads this song. Within months, the song’s original intention of being “calm and serene yet everchanging and untamed” is thrown out and a new trope now lies in its place with it being primarily used for “the calm before the storm… that eats brains”. Unfortunately, I cannot pinpoint an exact use of this song in a ROBLOX game anymore, but what I can do is explain some key differences between how the song plays on ROBLOX and how the song should play.
For example, you know that infamous, extended, sustained note at the end of the song? It’s a lie –Blame John– and it’s not supposed to be held that long. This jarring note may have inadvertently led to the song being used as zombie beheading background music, or at least it made the song seem a tad dark (if it wasn’t assumed to be a dark song already). If that’s not all, the song infinitely loops on ROBLOX, even with the ‘Looped’ property set to ‘false’. This is likely a fault in ROBLOX’s support of impulse tracker files (essentially, a dead file format)– this also explains why you cannot listen to this song on the ROBLOX website itself.
And with that ends this ROBLOX history lesson. This should get you prepped for the upcoming ROBLOX University, eh?
