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(+1)

First off, "Dreams Come True..." has a very soft, curious or adventurous sort of sound to it. It's pretty and has a nice melody, but I personally feel like it could have had a little bit more impact by lowering some of the sounds an octave or something else to give the instruments a bit more separation. They feel a little crowded.

"Lucidity" has a strong opening organ-esque wall of sound and develops nicely. The breakdown at 1:00 is well done and keeps things moving in a good way. The rhythm synth and the lead feel like they are fighting for space a bit towards the end, perhaps some panning or pinpointed EQing could help here. Composition wise, this was an interesting track that never got stale, and I like how you kept coming back to the same chords you used in the beginning, with that little bit of reverb/ambience at the end even feeling a bit reminiscent to the intro as well. 

"...So Do Nightmares" starts out with a some pretty strings before jumping into a cool little guitar riff. The strings have a really slow attack, so you can only really hear them on the longer notes. You could fix this by starting the string notes well-before the rest of your notes, or use an instrument with a shorter attack on the faster notes. Overall a cool composition and a lot of interesting stuff going on here. Your guitar sounds pretty good for being a MIDI instrument, and the choir gives some nice thickness where the song needs it. My biggest issue once all the instruments pick up is I kind of feel like I'm drowning in reverb. I'd recommend experimenting with high pass filters on your reverb, especially on the low end (try a high pass cutting off at around 200hz and go from there) to clear up some of that mud, especially on the left/right sides.

"The Gift" has a really nice lead bell part, love the little flourishes at 0:15 and 0:26. The rhythm bells raise the volume quite a bit at the end - if you were trying to do a build-up for dramatic effect, I don't think it comes across quite as intended; it just feels too loud there to me.

It was after this track that I realized that you had made a video that explained your soundtrack, and I feel you really did your soundtrack a disservice by not leaving an audio transcription of it and calling out this video in your project page. At 8 minutes, it's not something that a lot of folks doing song ratings are going to want to commit their time to, and leaving the audio written out in the description ensures they will see the thoughts and method you had around your creative process. Watching this gave me a much better gauge as to your skill level and experience making music, which helps me to judge how best I can give you feedback. (It was a great video, btw)

Getting back to the music, "Strange Visions" has a nice bit of tension around 0:30, I would have loved to see this developed a bit more in a longer version of the song. The melody for the lead here is solid. 

"The Window In My Mind" has a good pickup around the middle, and the acoustic guitar compliments the bell sounds you've been using up to this point nicely. The guitar parts especially sound a bit stiff in this one with the exception of the faster rhythm that starts around 0:52; try drawing your notes off grid or using some humanization filters on the MIDI to break things up a bit and make it feel a bit more natural. (In Reaper, you can highlight your MIDI notes and press h. Be VERY gentle with the timing, 3 to 5% is a good starting point and you can adjust individual notes from there if something sounds off when you play it back.)

For having never completed a whole song before this challenge, this was a very solid attempt. Your songs sounded cohesive from track to track; you did a good job of making each one feel like a piece of a larger album. Composition wise; you had some interesting ideas and good foundations here and I see a lot of potential to build on! "Lucidity" and "...So Do Nightmares" stood out the most to me and had the most interesting progressions. My biggest issues were from a music production standpoint, here's some quick points that could help you in the future. 

* EQ your instruments so that they all have their own individual space; cut out areas that aren't needed such as using a low pass filter at 600hz to remove the high end from a bass instrument. This will give other instruments playing above 600hz more room to "breathe" without affecting the tone of the bass in any meaningful way. Play around with ReaEQ's defaults! This can definitely help with some of those wonky Kontakt instruments like Ethereal Earth that can make cool sounds but also have the potential to clog up your mix very easily.

*Reverb - you used some pretty huge reverb effects, and while they can sound really cool in the moment, but listen specifically to how long your notes trail. Long reverb trails can create unintended dissonance or by causing notes to overlap in the background of your mix; especially when you have instruments that already have a long sustain. Using a high pass filter to cut off some low end of your reverb is a good idea in most cases, especially when you are laying it on thick.

*Automation (raising or lowering specific parameters such as volume, pan, how much of an EQ is applied, etc) throughout your tracks can go a long way to making certain sections pop. Sounds like you definitely experimented with volume automation in a few areas, so good effort there. In addition to straight volume, there are several circumstantial ways you can make your lead sections pop where they need to by EQing down other instruments in important spots, panning them to somewhere where nothing else is playing, panning everything else away from the middle, applying heavy delays, reverbs, distortions, chorus, etc. A lot of your breakdowns and build-ups throughout the album, but especially in "Lucidity" were structured correctly and your intention came across clearly; using these kinds of tools can help deliver them with bigger impact.

* Compression: Play around with ReaComp on each individual instrument in your mix, then listen to how everything sounds when you play it back. Compression is a difficult topic to learn for many and isn't really worth the effort if you aren't going to spend a lot of time doing music production; but just playing around with some presets can give your mix a lot more clarity and higher quality sound (try the Driving Bass preset on ReaComp on something that you want to be punchy)


tl;dr: Solid effort, your musical intentions came across nicely for the most part. I think you have some great potential if you want to pursue doing more music composition in the future. For having never finished a single song, you made seven of them into a whole album (in just a week, too)! Be proud of yourself, it's a very cool achievement and I'd love to hear how you've progressed next year if you choose to participate again. :)

(+1)

Holy shit, dude, this comment is pure gold!

Clearly thoughtful and spent some time on this; very specific with what needed fixing and at a level that I can grasp. 

Considering you watched the video (and listened to the OST itself lol), you probably inferred that I didn't bother much with mixing or EQ (it was scary and I was in crunch mode) but this comment was REALLY insightful, and I think it's a good starting point to continue to learn from.

Thanks a million, and I look forward to jam #8!