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Deep Sea Dreaming (Alternative Soundtrack #4)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Credibility | #14 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Composition | #14 | 3.389 | 3.389 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.111 | 3.111 |
| Creativity | #19 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Impression | #20 | 3.056 | 3.056 |
| Sound quality | #27 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Streaming link
https://soundcloud.com/katiegamedev/deep-sea-dreaming
Track description | Creative process
My thought process was to do a piece very much in the style of the original, but a little eerier and almost dreamlike (hence the title). I've never played the game all the way through, so I've never heard this song in context, but the title made me want to go for an underwater vibe. I also thought I'd use some more acoustic instruments than the original, at least in the beginning, and then slowly transition to more synths as the track builds in intensity.
I've never done a music jam before, so definitely open to any and all feedback folks have - hope you enjoy as well :)
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Comments
This is cool! I dig the harmony leading to the drop/ climax, well done!
Thank you!
This was so cool Katie!!! I loved every single line you added as the song progresses. I don't hear that resource that often and I personally love it. Also the different types of sounds you use work very well together!
Great job!!
Thank you!
Man, what a fun song! You're great at counterpoint, I loved the tonal solutions you took and the presentation of the melody. I feel it has a very "Latin Flavor" to it, despite the thematic pattern you bring. It's a beat that brings a dark feeling plus the desire to dance on the run, ahahhaha
A silly detail of mine: every stem in your composition is floating. If it's on purpose, I'd make it more obvious, because it's really cool to feel that fluctuation in headphones, almost bordering on headroom. If not, I'd recommend leveling the spacing in proportion to the volumes of each instrument. There's so much creativity in the instruments that they'd look better in a simpler way.
Thanks so much! What do you mean by "every stem in your composition is floating"? I want to make sure I know what you mean so I can fix it in future compositions haha
Hahaha I'll try to explain it better, but let's use this image as a reference:
(remembering that this is one of the ways we can mix a song, however, to explain to you what I meant, it will be easier to guide us by this model, hahahaha)
Basically, we have two incredible vectors for “positioning” the tracks/stems/lines, which are: Panorama and Reverb.
“PAN” helps to shift the sound to the right, left and/or spread the width of the volume of what we're hearing. Reverberation gives us a sense of the depth positioning of what we're hearing (whether it's closer or further away - remember that I'm talking about “basically”, as there are many other factors such as reflection, type of material, etc.).
So I think you've understood how much we can play with where we want each instrument to be in a way that relates left/right to near/far, where the volume (db) will give us the amount of force to notice.
Returning to the image, now look at how the author positioned the instruments. As well as getting a sense of volume and pan, we can also interpret that the height at which he placed the names of the instruments could also be the distance from the central convergence of the image from near to far.
So, finally, answering your question about your composition (lol): the impression of fluctuation is more to do with the fact that I can't understand if it's on purpose that the instruments don't have a fixed positioning during your music or if it's so that they behave as if they were floating from side to side. That's what I meant: if it's to float, make it more obvious (which makes sense, as they sound like they're being played by ghost musicians hahahahah).
(sorry for my English, I'm Brazilian)
No this is so helpful, thank you so much!!!
Anytime! ;)
Bass was a little quiet for my taste, but overall I found the song to be nice funky piece with good use of melodic counterpoint.
Definitely for a piece like this could always use a little more bass :) thanks for the feedback!
Really nice, i like how it create an atmospheric dark mood, I don't think it's suitable for a boss fight, but otherwise, great job.
Thanks! Would love to hear if you have any ideas about how to make this more boss fight-y, appreciate the feedback :)
I really liked that bass at the start, it has a really nice groove! The bells were nice and I liked the hint at the main leitmotif of the game too :D
I also like the switch up in the rhythm near the end from a musical perspective, though it would be hard to use in the game where consistent rhythm is really important.
Good job overall, I had a fun time listening! The instrumentation gave a good underwater dreamlike vibe!
Thank you! I think I see what you mean about the rhythmic switch up, I might have gotten carried away at that point haha
I see it like a good song for a 8-bit version of the game. The only thing I would change be in 0:48 when the Hit-hat is going constantly, you could lower the volume a little bit. Being more like a noise, it begins to overlap with the others intruments and makes them slightly muddy.
Thanks! And yeah agreed about the hi-hat, this has taught me that I should swap out my headphones when I'm mixing haha
Nice arrangement, you did follow some melodic element of the original track which is a nice touch. I like the small climax going with some dissonance just to go back and loop it ends with a nice tension.
Thank you!