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Nick's Weekly Note Composing Jam's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity | #13 | 3.207 | 3.429 |
| Coherence to the Theme | #14 | 2.806 | 3.000 |
| Quality | #14 | 2.940 | 3.143 |
| Overall | #15 | 2.984 | 3.190 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Difficulty Level
Intermediate
For those who are pretty good at making music
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Comments
Very nice take on a dark castle/cathedral. Hearing melodic reminiscences of the Phantom of the Opera, with a dark but also energetic mood. And I also did not know church organs did not have note-velocities! Thank you so much for sharing this piece of info and other "insider notes" about your thought and work process. Very very useful stuff (which I might also shamelessy copy, just for a change...).
Interesting that this song has the only use of the pipe organ to portray a castle vibe. Listening to it now, yeah, obviously, pipe organ = evil castle, of course it does. I'll keep that in mind next time I try to make a castle song.
Maybe somebody was more excited to play sick, powerful, room-filling chords on a pipe organ to remember the crystal in 'crystal castles' though. Unfortunately, I don't get a crystal vibe here.
But as a castle, this does very well. The use of the choir is foreboding and fills me with dread. And the latter half is like I an ascending the spiral stairs of an immaculately decorated castle.
(also what's with the sonar-type sound at the end? Caught me off guard??)
Neat song. 👍
Thanks a lot :D
I completely agree that I did not focus a lot on the 'crystal' vibe. I just wanted to make a cool pipe organ castle theme. That's my bad.
The 'sonar-type sound' you describe indeed does not fit too well. It is actually just the same piano playing a single note. I was originally intending to move towards a different theme, one more marching-band-and-trumpets-like, and those notes would be part of the transition. I ended up not making that, but the sound had stuck with me.
Great selection of instruments on this, the voices with the organ was just 🤌 great!!
Thank you so much! :D
What are the cool sounds you found for voice? I also use Logic from time to time, so I'm interested haha. When you hear the voices more, I'm wondering if you can add a softer attack, and a bit of a sustain? Maybe some portamento? I find voices and strings hard to sound human like. I also liked the fade out at the end. Overall, a very grand piece which I enjoyed! Nice work!
Glad you like my piece! :D
The voices are the Chamber Female/Male Ensemble in the Sampler, which you can also get by selecting Female/Male Chamber Choir in the Library. The sounds themselves don't sound too awesome, until you add a bit of reverb and it magically works :). You can also select an 'Aa', 'Uu', 'Oo', and 'Mm' articulation to make them sound differently.
I am indeed not too great at working with voices/strings. A softer attack was something I also found out recently and totally forgot until you reminded me of it just now! Not sure if I can add portamento to these voices, but I'll look into it. Thanks again!
The organ was quite powerful and I liked the piano motiffs.
Thank you, I am glad my intention worked out :D
Oh - nice piano with all the delay and reverb!
Thank you! I was focusing mostly on the 'castle' aspect and found a piano with delay and reverb fitting the 'crystal' aspect at least a tad bit :)
Yeah - echoing high piano lines especially "angular lines" (lines with lots of larger intervals and rhythmic squareness) are very crystal like. Its a really great sound here!