Maximum Wave
Maximum Wave, best known as the Cart Surfer theme, is a stock composition written and performed by Danny Brown, with Dan Wojciechowski playing the drums, originally bought and published by Hollywood Edge Music. The song is available for purchase on SoundDogs, where it is labeled as "fast tempo, fifties & surf, shiny dime music", and in other sites such as Sound Ideas and Stockmusic.com. This song has grown up to be one of the most popular across all songs used in Club Penguin, as with other early stock music.
Versions[edit]
The song had 15 seconds (stinger), 30 seconds (meant to be used in TV spots), 60 seconds (meant to be used in radio spots) and 90 second versions (called the "extended" version). An underscore mix, without the lead melody, is also present for each length. All versions are available for sale on SoundDogs.
Uses in Club Penguin[edit]
| Usage | Date | Info | Reference(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cart Surfer | June 6th, 2006 | It was the minigame's theme song. The 60 seconds version was used for Club Penguin. | |
| Waddle On Party (CPI) | November 5th, 2018 | It was used during the credits compilation, being the first song to play. |
Search for its origins[edit]
As with many Club Penguin songs, Maximum Wave was for the longest time only available in low quality for the fans, and the song's origins were unknown. The song's appearance in the Club Penguin Island credits compilation is allegedly due to the developers attempting to show a higher quality version of the song to the fans, as no one had found the song's origin at the time. The SWF for Maximum Wave listed it under the name of "mwave" but, for a long time, the community did not know what the "m" stood for, and various ideas faced different websites, most popularly, "Mega Wave", as it was listed in the Club Penguin Archives.
The song was first discovered on December 30th, 2020, by "Fleety", who, upon discovering the SWF gave a name to it, attempt to guess it searching in the different stock websites Club Penguin was known for using, eventually finding it on SoundDogs[1]. On face of the discover, it was uploaded for the first time by a now deleted channel, with different files bought by "Minembo" from SoundDogs uploaded in different edits of different cuts. One of the uploaded videos, now deleted, featured a comment from Chris Hendricks written in awe for the song having finally been found. This was also the first time the community got to listen to the underscore and extended versions of the music.
Danny Brown's reaction[edit]
On Club Penguin's High Quality OST upload of Maximum Wave, which had become the channel's most popular upload, Danny Brown first interacted with the Club Penguin community by commenting on the video[2] about the song's publishing and use, writing that he owned the publishing and copyrighting rights, but that everyone was free to use it for non-commercial purposes. He also commented other facts about the music, as well as the fact that he discovered his music was used on the game thanks to his daughter. After this, he also continued to further interact with community, exposing various facts about the early stock music from Club Penguin that were unknown before.
Personnel[edit]
- Danny Brown: composer, guitar
- Dan Wojciechowski: drums
Trivia[edit]
- The song is co owned by both Danny Brown and S.I. Publishing (SOCAN), with each owning 50% of the publishing rights.
- Danny Brown had no knowledge of the song being on SoundDogs until being linked to it by the fans.
- The company who commissioned the song requested the guitar's melody to be edited due to it being to similar to the one in the song "Walk Don't Run" by The Ventures. The top notes of the melody line were kept the same, but the second time through was edited just enough to not be confused with the other song. He mentioned that the new line "still sounds wonky" and "is actually rather difficult to play".
- Despite what could be known from the names credited in the websites who sold the Club Penguin stock music, Danny Brown helped producing many other songs other than Maximum Wave.
- Screenhog made a song based on Maximum Wave, as a commission work for Club Penguin Rewritten's endless Cart Surfer mode. Danny Brown commented on this song: "Well, I guess that I am flattered. LOL. He is playing that on a KYBD [Keyboard]. That is funny. I guess that my musical legacy will be the Cart Surfer Theme."
- This song was later remade by Bart Roijmans for the Nintendo DS game.
- Danny Brown commented that he "loves that (Club Penguin High Quality OST's) version is re-edited from the underscore and the full track".
- This song, among other stock music used in Club Penguin, was purchased by New Horizon Productions via a CD of royalty-free music.
