itch.io

Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks so much for the comment! Ever since I listened to music from Nier, I've always wanted to make a soundtrack that made heavy use of vocals to add more color and depth to my music, and I'm really glad you liked it!

Thanks so much for the kind comment! The solo vocals are from Ethera Gold Atlantis 3, I highly recommend it!

Thanks so much for the comment! It's kind of funny, those 3 composers you mentioned (+ Evan Call from the anime Frieren) are exactly who I listened to and studied to make this OST, you've got an amazing ear!

Really glad to hear you liked the OST! I spent a lot of time trying to get the story and the music to both make sense and fit together well, so this comment really made my day! Thanks so much! 

Thank you so much for the thorough feedback, I really appreciate it! I'm also very happy that you picked up on the little details in the video, I'm not much of a video editor so I totally underestimated the time needed to do such things. I'm really glad all of that coffee and sleep deprivation didn't go to waste!

Really happy to hear you liked the music! The cello phrasing in 'My World is You' took forever, so I'm very glad it hit the mark hahaha

Thanks so much! As a huge Nier fan, I'm super happy to hear my submission reminded you of it!

Thanks for the kind comment! I actually didn't know about Kevin Penkin until this comment, and after listening to his stuff, it's amazing! Really happy to hear my work reminded you of his music.

Thanks so much! Really glad you liked it!

Amazing stuff! Always love artcore-style BGMs, the mix of rhythmic energy and melodic elements is fantastic! I'm thinking of making something like this soon, but do you have any advice for a newbie trying to make their first artcore piece (such as recommended tutorials or first steps to take when composing in this genre)?

Really enjoyed how you used the Ritsu and Ryo scales to represent different aspects of your world, it worked very well with the instruments you used. Great job!

Really beautiful and well-crafted OST! Loved how you carried the theme throughout the music, it made listening to the soundtrack really sound like a journey and it was fantastic. Great job!

I don't know how you did it, but the mix of creative sounds, energetic beats and rhythms, and the overall unique vibe of the OST really made it feel like I was on an adventure with a cat through a house. Great job!

Really beautiful OST, reminded me a lot of Debussy and Satie. The change of tone with 'Origins' was surprising and nice to listen to, and overall, the way you bring together various instruments around the piano was very tastefully done. Great job!

Very beautiful, atmospheric OST. The music is great, and the descriptions with the videos/tracks elevates it to a new level. I could fully imagine what the game would look and sound like, you really did a good job with both the writing and the composing. Thank you for sharing!
P.S For the youtube playlist, the tracks were in opposite order for me, so I had to manually click on the tracks in order to listen to them in the correct order.

Fantastic track, the sheer diversity of sound and textures is astounding! There's just so much variety in the way you create different atmospheres, I learned a lot just from listening to this. Thanks so much for sharing!

素晴らしかったです。全ての曲に込められている切なさ、悲しみ、そして家族を思う愛。センスのある効果音の配置と音楽の絡み合いで、それがとてもよく表現されていました。絵も素敵で、感動できる作品でした。共有していただき、ありがとうございました！

This was fantastic. The sadness, melancholy, and the warm familial love that was in every track was expressed beautifully through the music and the perfectly placed sound effects. Along with the really well done art, this submission was a very moving work for me. Thank you for sharing!

一週間でこれだけ個性豊かな曲をこんなに多く作曲できるのは本当にすごいですね！曲名もとてもセンスがあり、様々なゲームの場面を上手く音楽を通して描写できていると思います。特に「ぴちゃぴちゃ」、「鳥の居眠り」、そして「あなたがほしくて」が素晴らしかったです。エンディング曲のハーモニーや歌詞はとても面白く、聴いていて楽しめました！

It's amazing how you were able to come up with so many unique and personality-filled pieces in one week! Each track was also named really well, and you did a great job of portraying various in-game scenes and situations through your music. My favorites were 'dabble in Water', 'sleeping Bird', and 'I Wanted You'. The lyrics and harmonies in the Ending Song were especially fantastic, and I greatly enjoyed listening to it. Amazing job!

Really bittersweet, beautiful music. I think you captured the atmosphere you were going for really well! For the title screen music, a touch of reverb or delay might help make it even more atmospheric. 'The World I Made For Us' is a really cool piece, I just wish there was more music to tell the story you came up with. Great work!

Incredible! All of the tracks have so much personality, and so much life to them. Would love to see an actual game based on this. Fantastic work!

Loved the orchestration! It's great how all of the instrument layers come together to create a beautiful atmosphere, and your use of rhythm to create different moods and levels of tension is fantastic! I think a tad bit more detail to your strings, like adding swells to it through CC11 expression, would really help elevate the quality of your music even more. Great job!

I love compositions in medieval styles, and I think you did a great job at capturing the vibe! I enjoyed listening to your music a lot! Out of curiosity, is there any symbolic significance to the flamingoes?

Really cleanly composed, and the way you combine your instruments and sounds have such a nice texture! It was very enjoyable listening to this, great job!

Really interesting music, the rhythms and the textures were especially fun to listen to! The overall atmosphere you achieve is very beautiful and immersive, the main thing for me is the presentation. I think touching up things like the mix, cleaning up the rhythm, and having a bit more development on your great leitmotif would really help elevate your work to another level. For example, I love the section that starts from 1:10 ish, with its energetic drums and new textures. However, the mix between the different elements confuses me a bit. Do you want me to listen to the piano with the leitmotif? Or the synth that pans left and right? Also, the rhythm on the piano is a bit off, which can also be confusing. If you cleared up the mix by bringing forward the elements you want the listener to focus on, and also use something like quantization to clean up the rhythm, I think that part would be way more engaging to listen to! I really like the vibe of your music, and I hope what I wrote is helpful in some way!

The game idea and story is great, and your music does an awesome job at helping me picture your 'world'! I don't know how to describe it, but your music has this unique sound and vibe to it that remained really consistent, and helped immerse me in the 'game'. One thing I noticed is that for your battle and boss theme, the music felt a bit too chill. I think a touch more dissonance, and some more sub-divisions in your percussion and rhythms would help create more tension and excitement in those tracks. Overall, great job though!

I love the sounds in this OST! So unique, so full of life and spirit, it's truly something special. I was about to ask what VSTs you used, but then read the other comments and learned it's mostly all performed, which is even more awesome! Great job!

The mix of Zelda and Pokemon vibes I got from this OST was fantastic! Each track felt well developed and full, and would work really well as game BGMs. I especially liked track 5, the variety of sound you had in there was a lot of fun to listen to. I think one thing you could try with the tracks with more instruments is panning the supporting/accompanying instruments to the side, while letting the instruments with the melody stay at the center. For example, in track 5, you could pan the woodwinds and brass to the side, while letting the strings and percussion stay in the center. This would help let the melody and the percussion come through more clearly, while letting the other instruments provide a cinematic sound that surrounds and immerses the player. Great job with this OST, really enjoyed listening to it!

Really cool game concept, and an amazing soundtrack to go with it! The sound design is awesome, and it was a lot of fun to listen to everything. I did find track 3, '/dev/null/' to be a bit repetitive. I think it's because that main sound effect that repeats a lot (sounds kinda like the computer is screaming?) is a very memorable, 'harsh' sound, so listening to it over and over again made my ears a bit uncomfortable. I understand that track 3 is meant for the puzzle-solving section of the game, which is probably why it's more repetitive than the other tracks, but I wonder if it could either have more variety to the sound, or texturally be a bit more comfortable to listen to. Other than that though, this OST was a really enjoyable listen, great job!

Thanks Jofes! I had a feeling you'd like The Goddess Festival hahaha. Really appreciate the kind words!

Thanks so much for the feedback! I considered just making one really high-quality track, but opted to go for a larger OST to test myself and see if I could come up with a 'complete' sounding OST in a limited timeframe. Regarding the first track, yeah I could definitely see it being expanded. I'm a huge fan of Bach's Preludes and Fugues, and building upon the foundation I have with a multi-voice composition could be really cool, as you mentioned. I didn't know much about partimenti, so thanks for bringing it up! Do you know any good textbooks or databases I could use to learn more about it?

Thanks so much for your kind words! Really glad you enjoyed the music!

Thanks so much! I'm a huge fan of all of the games and composers you mentioned, so this comment really made my day!

Thanks so much for the comment! The percussion in 'Their World' was pretty tricky since I wanted some nice energy from them, but going too hard with it could result in the sections sounding a bit too disparate. Glad it sounded good to you!

Very pretty and atmospheric OST, really enjoyed it! Also loved the name 'Corporate Inc.' hahaha, truly the most evil sounding company of them all! I think the music is really well made and sounds good, I did find the reverb to be a tad heavy at times, maybe a bit of EQ or filtering out some frequencies might make the music sound even more clean. I agree with some of the other commenters about how all of the ideas are there for the final boss theme, but it doesn't quite have enough oomph to it. I've found that to get a bit more 'weight' to my sound, duplicating an instrument (maybe the brass for this boss theme), then panning the original track and the duplicate track to the L and R respectively, is a quick and easy way to get not only a fuller sound, but also a more immersive sound that really 'surrounds' the listener. I hope this helps! Overall really enjoyed listening to this track, great job!

P.S I forgot to answer your question about the vocal VST, my bad! I used Ethera Gold Atlantis III for the solo vocals, and Audio Imperia's Chorus Lite for the ensembles. Hope this helps!

Wow, really great job with this OST! I could fully imagine the game and story from how the tracks went with each other, it was a lot of fun to listen to! I think my favorite track has to be the final boss theme, it's got an infectious energy and vibe. A small thing I noticed is that some of the note timings were a bit off the beat, which is fine for creating a sense of 'live' music, but I think it sometimes happened a bit too often and made the music sound slightly unnatural at times, such as in 'Plasma Palace'. Maybe having more notes cleanly on the beat, with some slightly off the beat notes here and there, might make this track even better. Really enjoyed the music though, great work!

Wow...it's simply amazing. The way all of these layers of sound come together to create such beautiful soundscapes is truly amazing, I have no other way to describe it. I've never been much of a synth person, but this submission has got me looking for tutorials on them. Thank you for sharing this fantastic submission!

Thanks Layla for coming up with such a cool post!

For this jam, I knew I wanted to try and make a 'complete' sounding OST, so I spent the first few days of the jam really planning out the story beats, thinking about what kind of moments would be needed to make something feel like a fully fleshed out game narrative. 
I then planned out how I could most efficiently hit those story beats with the least amount of tracks, wrote out what kind of emotions and atmospheres each track would need to deliver, then wrote an estimated run time for each one to make sure everything seemed to be in scope/doable in a week.
Once I was happy with my overall story and track list, I sketched out all of the character themes, and planned how I could incorporate them throughout the OST. Coming up with the themes beforehand let me cut down a ton on the time I usually spend blindly looking for good melodies, which in turn helped me finish everything on time.
After all of this, I finished my planning phase by writing out a composing schedule for the rest of the week, writing out by which days I would have sketches, then rough drafts, then final versions of each track. Whenever I fell behind schedule, I either downsized the scope of the piece, cut a track/story beat, combined pieces together, or as a last resort, worked a bit later into the night to make sure I was on track.

For the actual composing, I usually start with improvising melodies on a keyboard, which can take some time to get right. Since this jam had pretty tough time constraints, I took a different approach and instead composed by writing out the accompaniment, percussion, and other rhythmic elements of the music first, to make sure that even without a melody, the tracks were 'breathing' at the right pace, and hitting the emotions and atmospheres I was going for in the overall scheme of things. I then looked for places where I could fit in the themes I sketched beforehand, adjusting them as needed to fit with harmonies or rhythmic patterns. I also kept a basic list of instruments and sounds used in each track, and did my best to minimize overlaps between tracks, especially ones that play right after another, to keep everything sounding texturally different and interesting.  

I think a very unique aspect of game music that really sets it apart from any other kind of music is its ability to be interactive, so I also wrote a few tracks that were designed to be integrated with gameplay systems, like my 6th track, the combat theme, and the 7th track, an area theme that's supposed to grow grander as you complete quests for a certain faction in the game. My hope was that doing so would make my submission sound even more like a 'real' game OST.

I hope something I wrote was helpful for someone! Also, I'd be super happy if you checked out my submission, thanks!

As a life-long fan of Shimomura-san, I'm super happy to hear that this OST reminded you of her work! Thanks so much!