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Stay Afloat (OST Composing Jam 7)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Correlation to theme | #82 | 3.988 | 3.988 |
| Impression | #106 | 3.817 | 3.817 |
| Overall | #119 | 3.810 | 3.810 |
| Composition | #137 | 3.817 | 3.817 |
| Quality | #139 | 3.817 | 3.817 |
| Creativity | #239 | 3.610 | 3.610 |
Ranked from 82 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- You have a great grasp on a very cinematic style of writing that lets the musical medium achieve what it does best— adding a layer of emotional/personal depth to non-musical forms (like games). The music always unfolds with a really touching elegance that I found very affecting. I suspect you’ll find a lot of game devs that are searching for this exact quality in the music. A good example of this is around the 1:00 mark of “Mind at Sea”, where you bring in some really lovely percussive elements that I like very much. The piece instantly expands and incurs a quality of “vastness” and emotional depth. Its reoccurrence in other tracks serves you well, helping tie the whole thing together nicely. If I could offer some critique on this set of tracks it would be to pay as much attention to the endings of your tracks as you do the rest— at times (notably on “Mind at Sea”), it feels like the tracks kind of just stop rather than actually wrapping up and ending— I would encourage you to spend some time seeing if you can “land the plane” a little more gracefully. Additionally, I’m personally not really a fan of including non-musical elements in tracks (like the water sound effects)— your lovely writing stands on its own two feet well enough without it! You have a very good sense of drama and emotion that I think serves the music very well. Your choices of harmonic movement are very cinematic and effective, and something that I think will serve you well going forward. There is an expansive, deeply-felt quality to your writing that is wonderful to hear. Beautiful, moving work.
Description
This OST follows the mental personification of our protagonist, sailing peacefully through the waters of life throughout "Mind At Sea". As the weight of pressure starts to build up in the real world, the ship sails into some "Rough Waters", violently shaking and stirring until a strike of lightning sends everything into chaos. Desperately trying to "Stay Afloat" as everything crumbles around them, the protagonist eventually can't keep her head above the waves and surrenders to the sea, falling into the cold embrace of hopelessness as the currents drag her deeper, just like the souls who travel down the "River Styx" to their eternal damnation. Nothing but a flickering heartbeat remains, until a brief moment of reflection gives a chance to simply "Breathe", and find the determination to swim back up from the depths, push against the current, and as the music begins to swell in a triumphant fashion, they are finally able to "Resurface". Their mind is at peace once more.
I composed this soundtrack in Ableton Live 11 Suite, using various instruments and effects from third-party plugins, primarily from Native Instruments. If you have any specific questions about my composition process or the instruments I used, feel free to ask me in a comment, and I'll do my best to respond!
Message from the artist
This jam was an absolute blast for me to participate in, I put my full effort into composing my own tracks, as well as discussing ideas and sharing feedback with the rest of the composers. In the end, I feel like I've composed and produced some amazing tracks that I feel represents the best of what I can offer right now. And hey, for being 16 years old and barely out of high school with only two years of composition experience, I think I did pretty well. I'm looking forward to feedback from both the incredible panel of judges and the other participants, and I truly hope you enjoy listening to my submission! :D
Theme
How does it fit the theme?
I tried to draw inspiration from both themes and create my own interpretation, in the description you can see that the game is about the mental personification of our protagonist, as they sail through an oceanic world of their own creation, doing their best not to sink under the pressures of the real world.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://ihoist.itch.io/stay-afloat
Number of tracks6
Genre
Soundtrack use permission
Any non-commercial project
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Comments
I love how you integrated watery sound design into the OST, it really makes the music paint a vivid picture of your game idea! My favorite has got to be 'Breathe', the way the heartbeats and the music builds up is just beautiful. Great job!
You perfectly illustrated a seafaring journey through your music! Your choice of instruments and foley kept me immersed in the story you were telling musically. For me, I like to think of this soundtrack as a loop that starts with the protagonist being washed ashore and going on a sea adventure in "Mind At Sea" to almost drowning but resurfacing again to start the loop over in "Resurface." My favorite track was "Mind At Sea." Great job!
You nailed the vibes you were going for, so great job on that! As for critiques (writing these with permission from the composer xD), the strings sounded a bit robotic/repetitive. I'd recommend playing with more automation, as humans won't have the exact same push and pull motion every time. Some songs also got a little too repetitive, so in that sense, my favorite part would be between Rough Waters and Stay Afloat. That part was very dynamic and sets the stage for what the game could convey in that moment. For future projects, I recommend looking into AABA structured music where each section has a slight variation where it's looped enough for game music, but dynamic enough to sound, well, more dynamic xD. Also, maybe I was mishearing it, but at time it sounded like the Thunder SFX was clashing with the music and it was hitting a Limiter and making the overall song duck down for a bit. Overall though, great job!
Amazing stuff! My personal favorites were Stay Afloat and Resurface, but the entire soundtrack was great! It would be a treat to hear any of these pieces played live by an orchestra.
Hope you do well! :D
Yoohoo! Chill music time! Stop...
Stay Afloat is very intense... I like it! (This is my favorite among all the tracks)
The orchestration is top notch! Composition... Is there any point in saying anything else? I agree with all the commenters: this is great! Thank you very much for the quality work. It was very nice to listen to)
Ridiculously good everything. I couldn't pick apart anything if I could. Amazing work it's insane how good everything is, production, composition, all tracks blend perfectly. Just WOW!
You've got a wonderful future ahead of you in music my friend. What a great submission!
Nice orchestration with these! Thematically they go together really well and the narrative I got from the description ties it together nicely. Whenever you can, definitely invest in some good quality orchestral VSTs! They would really bring your tracks to the next level, because the composition is pretty solid already. Good work!
Amazing quality and musical simplicity at its finest. Awesome work!
much better orchestration than i ever achieved at 16 years old! you display a lot of vision in this soundtrack, it's only up from here for you.
This is a quality of orchestration that I still strive to achieve. Amazing job, I’m looking forward to what you make next!
It's a pretty cool soundtrack with great build up ! I had a great time listening to your music ! It's impressive for someone that youg !!
I love your ideas in "Breath", and all the tracks are well arranged together
Keep practicing composition haha
You have such a mature sound for someone so young, I really loved the world building in this and how well you utilized the strings throughout this! I love the creative use of sound effects through this to help tell your story, but watch out for the volume. Its nothing that makes me like this less per se, but it can overwhelm your melody a bit and I want to hear it, because its good! For example I really loved the melody and the synth you used for it in Stay Afloat but it was hard to hear at times, and I think you are doing yourself a disservice to have gorgeous lines like that fall beneath the sound effects rather then be complimented by them. Incredible job though!!! Excited to see what else you write in the future.
These were every high quality and really good. Mind at sea was my favorite one.
Great work with this OST. I'm a fan of listening to and writing electro-acoustic music which uses sound effects, and you incorporated the various sound effects rather well. The production/mixing quality is great. Compositionally, you wrote a couple of apparent themes - utilize them more! Twist them, alter them, change their mood, elongate them, truncate them. Do that on top of the textures and sound effects, and your music will reach the next step up. As someone else mentioned, you nailed this for being so young. Keep writing, keep experimenting, keep pushing.
So colorful, and conveys the mood you sought after even without reading the descriptions. Bravo! For 16 years old like you said, you CRUSHED this. Keep writing!!!!
Mind At Sea: What a relaxing way to start this adventure! I love the part with strings and drums just after the one minute mark that gives some momentum and force of will to the theme. The theme is well-written and sets you up for success as a great and memorable motif.
Rough Waters: I love that the theme is used again in this way! This is excellent musical story-telling. The pulsing strings really convey the tension of this situation.
Stay Afloat: Using low string ostinatos for ocean-themed tension is also a technique I used for this jam! It works so well for you here. Those faint theremin sounds are like ear candy and are icing on the cake of a well-made track. The brass and string swells fading into the solo violin and heart beat is a really cool moment and is one of my favorite from a compositional standpoint for your soundtrack!
River Styx: The calm but unsettling quality of this track really sets the scene. The reverb is perfect and the oscillating creaking noises make me feel like I’m in a boat slowly making my way down an eerie channel. Very good musical imagery!
Breathe: The ambient nature of this track is such a great way to give a reprieve to the listener in a soundtrack and is a great way to transition from River Styx to Resurface.
Resurface: The climactic return of the main motif! The emotional and epic build is very well-done and you’ve captured a great balance between videogame epicness and cinematic sound quality.
Overall: I loved the story that you wrote, and honestly I’m not sure I needed to read it because your soundtrack spoke for itself. That’s a mark of a great soundtrack in my opinion! Well done and thank you for sharing!
Really cool composition and instrumentation! I really dug River Styx and Resurface. I definitely think this is some of your best work so far! Great job!
Great composition, nice strings its all coherent, great build up in some tracks also like the sound fx add on this adds a great touch to the mix. I really liked Refurface, I wished you didn't put the same violin sample and go with something lower like a cello as a melody or a wind instrument that would've change the pace a little.
really enjoyed this! the guitar writing is great, and i love the mix of wave sounds with the string textures. beautiful themes throughout, i especially loved River Styx and Resurface - they felt powerful but also really touching. would love to play this game!! amazing work