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The Procession From Beyond [Host Submission: Disregard Placement]'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Correlation to Theme | #1 | 4.370 | 4.370 |
| Overall | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Execution | #5 | 4.074 | 4.074 |
| Overall Uniqueness/Creativity (double field for weight) | #6 | 3.704 | 3.704 |
| Listenability | #9 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Composing Quality | #10 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Overall Uniqueness/Creativity | #10 | 3.963 | 3.963 |
Ranked from 27 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/alkan23/the-procession-from-beyond
Description
I wanted to build off of how inspired I am by this track:
https://youtu.be/WESPqNg5uTg?si=pnzF5rRcTdk3JEkh
That song gave me a dream after I heard it, like it was a procession for a figure of spiritual significance. The overtones of the shawm (the reed instrument in that piece) have this powerful magical, heavenly effect to me, and hence I brought it into this track with a plugin from MNTRA that happened to use the shawm.
I used dearVR Micro (a spatial audio plugin) and automated it to make most of the tracks essentially sound like they're rotating in in a circle. If you close your eyes, you can hear the circular movement. I wanted to capture the sense of the procession being circular, spiraling up to the farthest reaches:
https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/hub/i/r/2014/04/25/a3135ee5-0125-412c-94ff-3a0794dfb526/thumbnail/1240x1264/60ba21326484721d565997d995dfec9d/art-correggio-assumption-of-the-virgin.jpg?v=e3aa8b4a58817620ee227c79202c9709
Other elements I used:
For the second part of the track, I used another MNTRA instrument. I then used Just Intonation, but I bumped the minor third and seventh up to the neutral third (much like in Arabic music). This added this whole new layer of magic to the track in my mind.
Screenshot of DAW (required, but it can be uploaded shortly afterwards)
https://imgur.com/dwymPnK
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Comments
i always look forward to your pieces because you have such interesting choices in instrumentation, often evoking some sense of something ancient being unearthed. closing my eyes and actually feeling the sound rotate around me was really fantastic.
as someone that really likes composing slower ambient tracks, i'm always aiming to "do a lot with a little," so i even feel a little bit of jealousy listening to tracks like this, cause i'm like damn, i gotta step my game up and start getting more creative and ambitious haha. anyways great submission!
To develop more of that and go beyond making ambience, I definitely recommend playing an instrument and improvising on it all the time.
When made my lyre last year, one of the most surprising things about it was how much it improved my ability to improvise on all instruments.
It lacks accidentals so you're locked into a scale, which ironically trained me how to use accidentals, and get a deeper intuition of where thet are and when to use them.
Having a less complicated layout than a piano or guitar, it's also a lot easier to just make stuff up. With its ease of use, it actually turned out it is just a really great improvisation tool.
Every time I've seen a MNTRA instrument I'm blown away by what you can do with it! This is such a musical experience, don't really have any other word to describe how I'd feel about it. Superb!
Great use of traditional instruments, I dig the whole vibe of the piece and how it mixes a lot of cultures! I love how the overtones create a very unique atmosphere. Cool submission!
the correggio dome in the cathedral of Parma, I live nearby :)
it is interesting to note that your inspiration comes from very far back in time, while maintaining a modern compositional structure in my opinion, cinematic I would say..
I think if you would've said you only used real flutes in your comment on my submission, I would believe you.
To my ears it seemed like there was a pretty consistent tone from one section to another. I heard a slight difference about 1:20 onward where the flute started to play longer notes with a little less tremolo or grace notes, but I figured that was done intentionally as part of the section changing. I may be completely wrong, but that was my initial thoughts. Honestly, I really had to listen hard to see if there truly was a difference if any, and that's coming from someone who's sat next to flute players in concert bands for several years.
As for the rest of the piece, I would say the vibe/atmosphere accurately captures what you set out to create. At the very least, it feels authentic. There's such a nice mesh of traditional Japanese-sounding instruments with a choir that gives it this holy, otherworldly sound. I imagined this piece as something that would be playing for somebody being guided to and joining this religious/ceremonial event.
I enjoyed this piece enough to listen to it multiple times, which I think gives away at least what I'm marking down for Listen-ability. Thanks for sharing this, and keep up the amazing work :)
Thank you!
Vocals are me improvising to the melody I had already created.
The flutes at about the 1:20 mark are where the virtual instrument comes in - it's a really solid plugin pack, but then I played it on my keyboard so that it has more realistic dynamics.
The initial flute is me playing a bamboo flute I bought for 7 bucks.
You really got a solid atmosphere down on this, got the same "just close your eyes and experience the music" feel on this as I got from Simishcj's track from the last death knight jam.
Only weird feeling i had was that when the track ended, my mind went like pretty much like this:
Wait, it ended here? There has to be more coming? no, it did end here.
So this might be just me, but the track didn't really feel like it ended when it did and i was intuitively thinking it was going to continue after the reverb tails (mind you I had my eyes closed as i was listening, so could just be a me thing 😅)
But still, absolutely brilliant stuff!
I'd probably actually transition into a third part that would act as a sort of finale if I had more time with deep Kargyra throat singing.
Ah! So I'm not going insane, good to know! 😂
Amazing! Such an interesting vibe! It truly feels like being immersed in another culture, transported to another world. Great job! Thanks for sharing ❤️
Great track, some very interesting harmonies and timbres and I honestly was a bit taken by surprising on that ending, lovely
I also think it fits the theme extremely well, but what I gotta give the shout out is the mix man, its not a musician mix, its more a producer level one!
On the top 3 mixes I've heard in the jam so far for sure :)
Great job, take care!
The voices are insane! The overtones coming in really tie the piece together so well, really fitting the theme. Overall feels ritualistic and spacious in a serene way.
In the inspiration art for this jam, Hokusai frames the approaching rapids in a circle. This was a very poignant move on his part, and is one of many surreal choices he made in his woodblock print. I'm so happy to hear you develop music that, to me, relates to that circle.
The harmonies between the two reed instruments in the second part of your track are heavenly. I'm not sure I've ever heard anything like it. It took me somewhere far away, and honestly sounded like it transcended western harmony altogether. Of all the submissions, yours completely abandons the rigidity of western music in a truly authentic way. Not only is that difficult, but it's impossible for most people. Well done. Superb music!!!
Heh you made me tear up with this. Thank you, so so much.
Allll right, well we already went through it in vocals but yeah. I think its a super creative piece with all the microtonal happening, I really like the flute texture and melody you used, I talked about the vocals there, I think its nice but not the way they were payed it makes me think too much of the last ambient jam, maybe find another way to transform it, its my opinion don't need to follow it. I wanted a nice huge smooth BOOM bass somewhere to help me get the contrast of the mid - high mid range. Always impressed by the organic instruments that you either constructed, played and voice technique you use thats definitly the most creative part about all of your tracks. :)
Heh. The vocals were actually totally improvised for this - I was less thinking about the last jam and more thinking about how to bring out the spirit I felt in this piece.
I even went microtonal with the vocals too, I would say deliberately, but it was more like I was in a dance with what I had already written and the vocals I improvised just felt like the right move.
So, while there is that similarity, it was something I needed to express in this piece. I think Ty had mentioned a lot about the vocals too, but more about how they were mixed, perhaps being too distant/quiet.
Listening to this, I got the “woa, what is that?” factor you described in my submission. I love the different tuning in this, it’s really attention grabbing in a way that reminds me a lot of when I visit abstract and professionally done art exhibits. I could picture this being in such an exhibit about “The Far Reaches”.
The reed instrument was really well programmed, it sounds very human. The voices and percussion also contributed nicely to the soundscape and made it sound very open. The mixing and automation was good and I think achieved what you wanted to express.
The only critique I have is really minor and subjective, the vocals at around the 1:00 mark got a bit too “clear” like it didn’t come from the same space and took me out of the environment a little, though it didn’t last long.
Well done! Loved this piece.
It gives me that feeling of distance, I enjoyed it a lot
Really lovely track with some nice mixing. Probably my favorite individual track from this jam, nice work.
Thank you! :)