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Claim_Beats: The Ancient's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Composing Quality | #15 | 3.484 | 3.615 |
| Correlation to Theme | #21 | 3.632 | 3.769 |
| Listenability | #22 | 3.187 | 3.308 |
| Overall | #24 | 3.217 | 3.338 |
| Execution | #26 | 2.965 | 3.077 |
| Overall Uniqeuness | #32 | 2.817 | 2.923 |
Ranked from 13 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/user-996667500/the-ancient
Description
The battle was nearing it's end, then The Ancient One arrived. First there was the thunderous sound of it colliding with the earth, then a stunned silence as the dust and debris settled, there it stood, a terrifying form of goliath proportions.. a Death Knight. The signal horns to attack fell on deaf ears, soldiers on both sides awe struck in terror and disbelief. It raised its hulking sword, as if in slow motion and surveyed the battlefield briefly, before unleashing it's brutal and indiscriminate disdain with a force none had ever imagined in their wildest nightmares. Over the screams, gasps, splutters, cracks and crashes, an eerie silence suddenly fell as the Ancient One seemed to lose interest, turning, unfurling its wings and with one last effort launching towards the darkened heavens. The few survivors who weren't taken into madness that day, were left to survey and suffer the aftermath.. an endless field of splintered war machines and shattered soldiers, their faces all strewn with disbelief and twisted in the horror of their final moments.
Just a nice little ditty about a horrible beasty :D. I imagine it being used over a cut scene. There are some synth elements, but the piece is largely orchestral. I would love any feedback, I hope you enjoy it.
Cheers, Esty
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Comments
Nice on the double bass intro. It is capturing the vibe well. I'd try to make the double bass have less attack, either with modulation within the VST parameters or with volume.
I like that you had one of those atonal horror string tremolos around 0:55. I think that's definitely a strong thing to use vibe wise.
It's maybe a little repetitive. I think the mix is also too close together, like things aren't filling their sense of space - which is its own skill, getting panning, reverb, and adjusting the wetness and dryness of different instruments to create that sense of space with a near ground and a far ground.
Good work overall, great job capturing the essence of the jam!
Thank you so much for the feedback. Great suggestion on using the volume to adjust attack time. I hadn’t thought of that and am not sure how to adjust attack in BBC orchestra otherwise 👍🏽
Mixing is definitely something I’m still new to. It’s definitely it’s own skill and my ears aren’t properly trained to it yet. Thanks for the suggestions though, helps give some direction to experiment and learn!
Ah! You're using the same VST I was using! :P
You can adjust the attack with the "expressiveness" slider. That's one of the most important adjustments in there. The default is Fortissimo, so if you're not adjusting that slider, you're getting a really loud, harsh sound on everything, like the orchestra is at full blast. Then they also have the circular wheel which I think just adds the reverb of the room back into the mix, which is what I used instead of manually creating my own reverb.
I used a midi controller rather than scoring anything for mine - this really helps to humanize the whole mix. To get smooth transitions, I had a slower attack on the violins, and then I played in such a way that they overlapped each other.
This is gold! I hadn’t realised that about the expression slider, it sounded like it was just affecting volume so I ignored it, but I guess It’s kind of affecting Gain..? and velocity in a way, that makes it more useful!
I have a midi keyboard but mostly use it to hear chords and notes rather than play them (I have limited finger position and music theory knowledge). I’m in the early stages of learning keyboard/theory though so I played with recording from it last night and really liked the result! felt so much more natural, the playing but also the playback (and way more intuitive than manually adjusting velocity in the DAW). I can imagine how it would help with giving things space in a mix.
Thanks for the taking the time on the advice and feedback, I really appreciate it and it’s already helped 👍🏽.
I did have a question about reverb though. With this kind of mix would you have reverb on each instrument trying to mimic it’s position in the room? Or would you touch up the reverb on them just relative to each other?
I think the BBC built in reverb already properly places the instruments in the room.
I need to do more work on it. I have a lot of experimenting to do.
I want to test out delay times, like have a nearer thing be drier, but give it just a few milisecond longer delay than something farther away, i.e. if it's close to you, you'll hear it faster and the reverb will take longer to reach you, but then the ratio of the dry sound to the wet sound is also higher.
Then you can also think about distance to each ear drum.
I've got a lot of work to do on this once I realized that if I put everything at the same dryness/wetness (i.e. just putting a bunch of tracks under a reverb) then it's not going to sound as natural.
Hi Esty, I really liked your submission. It feels like an epic track from a retro sci-fi movie. The story you told with this vision of an apocalyptic giant is musically described very well in the track.
Thank you! I often struggle knowing where to take a track (breaking out of loops) so actually writing it down and imagining really helped me put this one together!:D
Great epic sound!
Thanks so much for listening! :)