IMPRESSIONS Composing Jam: Ambience #1

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A jam submission

Mist Over Stuart's HillsView project page

Submission for the Impressions Composing Jam.

Submitted by Grunt. — 2 days, 5 hours before the deadline

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Mist Over Stuart's Hills's itch.io page

Results

Criteria	Rank	Score*	Raw Score
Correlation to Theme	#5	4.133	4.133
Listenability	#6	3.933	3.933
Overall	#6	3.827	3.827
Composing Quality	#7	3.933	3.933
Mixing Quality	#10	3.733	3.733
Overall Uniqueness	#21	3.400	3.400

Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Link to Streaming Service
https://soundcloud.com/grunt7517/mist-over-stuarts-hills

Description
In this jam I primarily took inspiration from the Charles Stuart painting. I wanted to use my submission to try and see if I could capture both the beauty and vast openness of the landscape portrayed.

To do this, I wanted to focus on an acoustic guitar arrangement with a minimal orchestration soaked in reverb and delays. When all of these pieces are put together, this is the result!

Description of Setup (Optional)
One of my goals for this jam was to see how far I could get using only stock and free plugins. As mentioned above, I had a pretty heavy reliance on the reverb and delays in the mix and only used EQ/Compressors to tame instruments or reduce any glaring frequencies.

The specific plugins I used include:
- TAL-Reverb-2
- CHOW Matrix
- Rough Rider 3
- Stock DAW eq
- Izotope Ozone 9 Elements

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Comments

YaevidSubmitted155 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

Very chill song, totally fits the theme great and ambiance in general.

The chord at 2:17 is awesome. The minute long intro is dope too. I like the section after 3:30 slightly less, I wonder how that would sound if the piano was arpeggiating in a similar way to the guitar?

Submitted

Hiking In The Mist

Grunt.Developer154 days ago

Thanks for the feedback!

I chose to not include piano alongside the guitar arrangement because I wanted to avoid having a busy mix, which at the time I felt would not fit my interpretation of the painting. I think if I were to give this another go, I'd probably try to sprinkle it in a little more, as it seems quite a few people were anticipating it.

Thanks a ton for listening! :)

KaleOverlordHostSubmitted155 days ago(+1)

This is really nice!

It has a melancholic vibe with the guitar. The guitar definitely creates a more American atmosphere - there is no reason why our woods in the USA are any less enchanted! :P

Constructive feedback:

I think the guitar in the mix was maybe a little murky, but that might be limitations in recording equipment. Not sure if you were going for sad or not either, but to me the music communicates more melancholy and story, like a sort of pining in a song about unrequited love or something like that.

It's definitely well written. Nicely done! :)

Submitted

KaleOverlord - The Old North - Ancestral Echos

Grunt.Developer155 days ago(+1)

As someone who has hiked through several woodsy places in the US over the last decade, I would absolutely agree! I actually take quite a bit of inspiration from those places for some of my own ambient music.

I would probably agree, listening back, that the guitar could've been a little more defined in the mix. The acoustic guitar I use is quite a bit bright when it has a flat EQ, so I usually end up rolling a bit of it off. I'll be sure to make a note to not be too excessive with that in the future.

Melancholy is probably the vibe that best fits what I was going for when writing for this jam. At least that was the *clears throat* Impression I got from the painting ;)

Thanks a ton for listening! :)

Ro'søSubmitted158 days ago(+1)

Hey! I did a review of your entry via video. I posted it on the Jam discord but appreciate everyone might not be on there. Here's the video timestamp for your entry: https://youtu.be/1-aLhBdNCKE?t=3081

Submitted

Grunt.Developer158 days ago(+1)

I saw that on the Discord! The fact that you went to the lengths to do all of this in one go is insanely impressive!

Thanks a ton for such kind words, and great feedback :)

Filamental FrequencySubmitted160 days ago(+1)

I absolutely love this song, especially the guitar. You can totally hear everything else supporting it, but the way they're mixed to just give that little bit of support and the very resonant guitar is just perfect. Absolutely beautiful. The only thing is the piano is just a tiny bit loud for my taste, at least compared to the guitar., but that's probably just because I turned up the volume during the guitar section because it was so lovely :)

Submitted

Impending Storm

Grunt.Developer159 days ago

Thank you for such a kind comment - I'll be sure to be more careful about the volume in the future!

Thanks a ton for listening :)

MireheartSubmitted160 days ago(+1)

I really liked the sound of the guitar. Also beautiful piano intro/outro. I could see myself strolling the hills on the painting while listening to this track =)

Submitted

Grunt.Developer160 days ago

That's awesome! Thank you for listening :)

FoxHyodeSubmitted161 days ago

Very nice, pretty soothing, easy to listen, sounds very "indie folk" I can even imagine some vocal with lyrics on it. You did not include the guitar you used ! And did you mess up at 2:17 lol XD or maybe part of the chord transition ? Anyway good job :)

Submitted

Grunt.Developer160 days ago

The guitar I used for this is an older model of this Yamaha acoustic electric.

What you're hearing there is a dominant chord leading into the next section, which is why it sounds a little crunchy ;)

Thank you much for listening! :)

Dokuja GamesSubmitted161 days ago(+1)

Beautiful composition!

Submitted

Grunt.Developer161 days ago

Thank you!! :)

Eetu SuikkanenSubmitted161 days ago(+1)

You nailed the vibe that I got from the painting, and the great live guitar playing adds a lot the the feel!

The pad as a base "drone" to then play over works really well, all though the high end steals my attention from the guitar a bit during the later parts where the pitch changes (only a bit though and might be a me thing, but thought I'd mention it anyway).

Really enjoyed this, nice one!

Submitted

Northern Adventure

Grunt.Developer161 days ago(+1)

Thanks a ton! I'm glad you liked it!

Listening back, I can definitely see what you mean and I would agree. I'll be sure to handle drones with a little more subtlety in the future.

Thank you for listening :)

app1ecoreSubmitted163 days ago(+1)

Beautiful acoustic folk ambient, that's what I felt when listening to this work.

Submitted

Grunt.Developer163 days ago(+1)

That's awesome, and thank you so much for listening!