Gosh, thank you so much for taking the time to listen and leave such an in-depth and thoughtful comment! Regarding the timing of the music with the story, I of course hoped that it would line up as people are reading, if it lined up perfectly for you, that was mostly coincidence! I agree with you about still being unsure about what exactly makes a shop theme, but I’ve noticed that laid-back Latin-inspired grooves are one way to capture the feeling! I really appreciate your notes about DEEP especially since I spent the majority of my time, proportionally, on this track. The jittery sound was actually kind of an accident as I was playing around with automating the high-shelf frequency of the high violin part and I thought it would sound cool as a lead in to the big orchestral hit.
I think it is very natural to compare yourself to other people (I’ve done it countless times in this jam. Even your soundtrack with the smooth adaptive elements in your first track as it smoothly transitions between locations is something that I thought to myself “why didn’t I think of that?”). I think that these jams and this community create such a special opportunity to learn and grow compositionally. Before you look too far ahead, I think it’s always nice to look backward and see how far you’ve come every once in a while. When I listen to my first OST Comp jam submission from the Story of Seasons jam, I can definitely tell the difference in quality compared to now. I can certainly say the same for your music - you have made tremendous leaps forward since the time we started joining the same music jams. Keep going! I’ll be rooting for you all along the way!
Thank you once again, as always, for your support!