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Feels a sort of Mononoke Hime/Spirited Away meets Kiki's delivery service from the intro crescendo to the Town with a view inspired second section.

This is exactly the type of orchestration i really like, especially liked the trills in the woodwinds at the end of the intro cresc, added a lot to the feel.

Stellar stuff!

Don't have a recommendation for one, but just hopping in to give a warning to get a proper MIDI Keyboard, not a Digital Piano if all you're going to use it for is working with VST sounds and don't really need the built-in sounds and speakers.

I purchased a Digital Piano instead of an actual MIDI Keyboard since i wasn't even thinking about writing music/composing when i was buying a piano just for learning to play, and I've wished i bought a midi keyboard instead ever since i started composing 😅

Just for example, my Digital Piano is a Yamaha-NP45 and i found after starting to use VST sounds that the piano has some issues with how it sends midi velocity data, leading to it being hard to play high dynamics on it via midi. I think some other digital pianos suffer from similar issues too, since they are first and foremost made for playing the built in sounds and not used as a midi controller.

The extra slider/faders, knobs, pith and mod wheels and other buttons found on proper midi controllers are also really handy to have if you want to actually play the midi data in.

I went the really stupid route of buying a small 25key midi controller (Novation Launchkey 25mk2) so i had a pitch and modulation wheels, but then wanted actual faders to play in control data for stuff like sampled orchestral sounds so i bought a small midi controller that has just faders and knobs (Korg Nanokontrol 2). I could've just initially saved up some more and bought a good 88 key midi controller  that had all of those included in the one keyboard.

Sorry for the rambling, but I don't want anyone else to make the same mistakes I've done 😂

Really good vibe, only thing that felt a bit off was that the mix is a bit too heavily compressed.

Good job!

Really dig that synthetic voice sound on Villa de la laine, and really cool atmosphere overall on these.

Good stuff!

The buildup of the high frequencies from the echo effect is probably whats causing the harshness, since the wind instruments are already pretty harsh as they are.

I agree that the duo of the bagpipe and guitars could've used a bit more thought on the parts, but ran out of time so I just played something over the recorded guitar parts and left it there 😅.

Very glad you liked it! 🙏

Thanks for the kind words, glad you liked it!

Probably could've had the drone maybe a tab bit louder.

I tried to keep this from feeling too intense, but it ended up pretty energetic in the end with the percussion stuff and whatnot though😅

Technically I didn't "write" this in one day since all the melodic material I used was from my 2 other scrapped tracks made earlier in the jam, I just had a really hard time coming up with an arrangement that wasn't too High-Energy until I made this one.

First scrapped track i spent too much time trying to make work was some live recorded vocals with some FX to make it "dreamy" and tried to combine that with some live nylon guitar.

Second scrapped track i made after being stuck for multiple days on the first idea, and i made it purposefully blatantly too "epic" and not suitable for this jam to clear my head a bit.

On the last day I took the melody from the vocal/guitar sketch and the sort of variation of that i came up with for the epic sketch and that sorta turned into the final thing.

I posted these in the discord devlog channel, but for reference here's all the scrapped sketches that became the final thing:

I really should've had the echo effect on a bus and put a low cut/high cut on it like Alex mentioned, and the funny thing is i had my reverb itself on a buss and an EQ before it to remove muddiness 😅.

The plugin i used for the echo was the NI replika delay, but has a diffusion mode that's pretty good for washy ambient echo sounds.

Only ever used it for basic delay stuff, but really liked the sound of the diffusion mode for this type of ambient music (the preset i used was Soft clouds, for anyone interested). 

I had the same thing with the guitars in my track, I was trying to have them prominent too but they ended up being too dry/separated from the other sounds 😅.

Finnish Folk music shares alot of similarities with soviet/russian folk music, so might be that i got some inspiration for the melody from my native folk music and the same thing happened for the composers of those old soviet movies :D.

Glad you liked it!

🙏

The hissy echo is from the delay i used on all of the wind instruments as an insert (NI REPLIKA), I probably should've had that on a bus as a send with an EQ before it, like i always do with reverb 😅

Glad you liked it!

Really, really love the textures you managed to make for this! 

Only thing that felt a bit off for me was the mellotron and piano melodic sounds felt a tad bit too forward compared to everything else. Maybe making them more wet, or adding some other effects to make them a bit more back in the space and hazier could help them blend better (just an idea i got, not sure if it would actually work 😅)

Good stuff!

Love the melody! When the latter part with singing started I got big Nier feels, good job!

Funnily enough, i just watched Princess Mononoke for the first time the day i rated your submission 😁 (that's why i felt the style fitting that as I was listening).

I've gotten the Mononoke reminescence mention before, on a piano track for another jam, so I must've listened to the Mononoke soundtrack before unknowingly, or just that Hisaishi uses some recurring elements in his Ghibli stuff that i used too.

I did have My Neighbour Totoro on a VHS growing up that I've seen probably 50+ times, so I've  probably have internalised some "Hisaishi-isms" from that.

Glad you liked it! Kinda wish i had a better work ethic to actually finish the other tracks in the submission that were pretty unfinished/rough  still😅.

A lot of music yes, but most of them still pretty much "Works in progress" 😅.

Composing progress for me usually goes: get an idea -> imrovise a sketch from it -> arrange that.

Glad you liked them!

Feedback is always great, so nothing disrespectful about it 😉.

I hear what you mean with the Death's Gambit track. I didn't want to go with just using a lot of Japanese/Asian instruments to fit the painting, so i used a lot of stereotypical progression/melody stylings from stuff like anime shows for the first track, which the Death's Gambit track seems to Be influenced by too 😄.

Festival of souls and most of the other tracks could've used a lot more work since a lot of then are pretty much just the first sketches of the tracks 😅, thats why it its just the one main section without a proper start and end. I just lost all motivation to work on then anymore later on the jam... 😔.

Agreed with everything you mentioned, maybe a someday i'll actually FIX/finish theae properly 😂.

You should totally give keeping a journal a try! Just writing ideas/thoughts down on paper while working on tracks really helps the brain to get working (at least for me).

Glad you liked then!

Really pretty piece! Just from listening to the piano solo, it's making me wonder how this would sound with a orchestral arrangement in the sort of Joe Hisaishi style from Ghibli films like Princess Mononoke, somehow Im getting the feel that style would fit well for this.

Brilliant stuff!

Ah! So I'm not going insane, good to know! 😂

Gotta say I wasn't expecting the percussion and bass coming in, but it was a great choice!

Agree with the mixing stuff others mentioned, had to turn down the volume later in the track since the piercing sound was starting to hurt my ears a bit.

Really enjoyed the track, with the nature sounds adding quite a lot to the feel (seems to be a common part of many submission this jam 😁)

With a bit of tweaking the mix on things to make things a bit smoother, this will be even better.

Great work!

You really got a solid atmosphere down on this, got the same "just close your eyes and experience the music" feel on this as I got from Simishcj's track from the last death knight jam.

Only weird feeling i had was that when the track ended, my mind went like pretty much like this:

Wait, it ended here? There has to be more coming? no, it did end here.

So this might be just me, but the track didn't really feel like it ended when it did and i was intuitively thinking it was going to continue after the reverb tails (mind you I had my eyes closed as i was listening, so could just be a me thing 😅)

But still, absolutely brilliant stuff!

Fantastic vibe, really like this! Only need a bit of more BASS as others have mentioned, and then you got a heck of a track😉

Good stuff!

Classic DeltaFox style, but with a more ravelike feel, cool!

At first i wasn't those  HEY-EY-EEEYE samples, but they sort of grew on my after a while😁.

Feels a bit more restrained in a way compared to your usual stuff, but i might actually like this more chiller stuff even more?

Good work!

Groovy and fun track as always 😁.

Not sure if it's because I've recently been playing FF 13, but this has that same constantly flowing/changing quality to it that Masashi Hamauzu always has in his music, but with a bit more of a "playful" feel to it.

Really liked this, the choice to use acid bass was especially 🔥.

Good stuff!

Really dig the textures and vibe!

Only thing that felt a bit off to me (and this might be just me) was that since the piano was on the right, my left ear felt a bit lonely at times because of that (although there were a couple notes that jumped to the left at parts somehow).

But nevertheless, you managed to get a fantastic ambiance and feel on this, good stuff!

Also as a tip that came to mind for this, I'm not sure if you know of this but you can change the panning "mode" on DAWS to an alternate mode that lets you pan the Left and Right channels separately, which you can usually access by right clicking the PAN controls on a track.

Since you seem to do this type of ambient music, it might be useful for not making things take too much of the stereo field. I only found out about it myself a couple months back, but its been great for changing the position of stuff like sampled orchestra sections.

in Reaper its called the DUAL PAN mode, and changes the pan knob to sliders for Left and Right.

First off have to say that I really like the first four note figure of your melody (E-F#-D-B), that feels to me it could be a great motif.

Since the beginning of the melody works so great, i was a bit sad you didn't have a lot of variation to the melody, but the track works as is 😁.

If you ever expand on this with more tracks, would highly recommend trying to use the first four notes as a motif, since that's some gold material IMO 😉.

Good work!

Like others mentioned, i agree with the muddiness.

What FoxHyode mentioned is solid advice, and it feels like some of the muddiness is also caused by the constant taiko drum. If you have a sample of a smaller taiko drum, maybe you could use that for the pulse of the rhythm and then use the bigger drum for emphasising the accents.

But the melodic/harmonic material itself is great, just with a bit tweaked arrangement/orchestration this could be even better.

Good job!

Like others have mentioned the saw has a bit too many notes in the low registers so it overpowers the other sounds a bit, but the material itself sounds nice!

Cant really mention anything others haven't already mentioned, but have to say I love the tremolo guitar stuff on the second track, just perfect for the vibe of the track!

Good stuff!

Good stuff!

Without reading your mention of the Thomas Bergersen inspiration, the intro reminded me stylistically of Gareth Coker's Ori music.

The piano felt to me that it was a bit too much "in the front" compared to the orchestra, so maybe using reverb and some volume adjustment? to place it a bit farther in the stereo space could help it blend a bit better.

The bird calls from side to side were a great touch! One idea i got while listening, was how it would sound if you used some other woodwinds/instruments to add a sort of faux echo effect to the calls. I.E having other players repeat the bird calls by lowering the volume on every repeat, sort of like they did the fake reverb on old NES games (just an idea i had, might be crap/hard to implement😅).

Since you had the woodwinds playing the bird calls at the start, i thought that the bird calls/winds would be a more prominent part in the track, but it seemed that the woodwinds got relegated to backing duty until they come back to play the calls again at the end. 

I'm not sure how, but maybe the bird call could've been more used during the track somehow, say maybe using just the rhythm of it in the big crescendo part for some background stuff? I'm not quite sure, but felt a bit of a waste to me leaving it so underutilized, since the idea was fun!

Just some subjective stuff i felt while listening 😁.

As a whole the track was great, and I really love the main theme!

The whole melodic/harmonic style was what gave me the Ori vibes, so if this is the type of style you usually write, the scores to the Ori games could be good orchestration study material😉.

Stellar work!

Seems like you have a knack for getting a great mood/ambience in your tracks.

Those faint pad like marimba? tremolos swaying from side to side in the back of the last track were great, really cool effect.

A lot of repetition on the tracks themselves, but that in a way gives them that meditative feeling.

Great stuff!

Like others already mentioned, this is not bad at all!

FoxHyode gave some good tips which i agree with.

One thing to give some variety to a track like this, you could try having a section that is more calmer with more sustained notes/tones instead of the fast lines the most of the track is at the moment. That could help give more contrast to the track/reduce the "loopiness", and help the listeners ears relax a bit.

All the lines/ideas you have in here are great, just need some arranging tweaking and maybe a contrasting second section to help elevate the material even higher 😁.

If you're looking to study up a bit on arrangement and composition stuff, highly recommend checking out the #composing-resources channel on the jam discord, and just asking people the for help with any topic you have trouble with, since I'm sure most people are ready to help😉.

Great work, keep it up!

Always dig the granular sound stuff you use on your jam tracks, works great.

Like others have already mentioned, really pleasant and calming atmospheres.

Good stuff!

With the latex gloves and the hood on, feels like I'm waiting for a murder to happen 😂

But all jokes aside, really cool groovy vibe with the rhythmic stuff and textures.

Maybe doesn't hit the very "asian" themes the on the picture, but can feel this for the text prompt easily.

Good job!

Short but sweet.

Really such a great atmosphere to this, with all the little slides and pad sounds.

Only minor thing i felt, was that when you had all the instruments playing together the low/low mid area started to get a bit muddy (just a tad).

Stellar stuff!

For the compositions themselves, i really like the tracks, but felt that some instruments were a bit too in the front .

For example, in the second track the vocals are a bit too dry/in your face at the front so the great arrangement gets totally lost in the background. I think if you try to mix/produce the vocals differently so it blends with the ensemble, the track would improve quite a bit, since that was really my only "gripe" with it 😁.

I can agree with Kale that singing from the belly would get you more power to your singing voice!

Also keeping your mouth open wide as possible while singing, for example by smiling, helps with projection too. Learned that from a singing guide series somewhere, and found it really useful.

Another posture tip I learned a while back was raising your hands up on top of your head and relaxing your legs a bit while singing helps too. Video where i got the tip from

Placebo or not, I've found those to help me get better results while recording vocal stuff.

Fantastic vibe on this ! Really brings mind to Masashi Hamauzu's work on FF10, like the Macalania Forest theme.

You really nailed the serene feelings i got from the image with this, and the nice guitar playing adds a lot to it 😉.

Great work!

I'm not too familiar with the hyper light drifter soundtrack, but I'm a big fan of the impressionist/minimalist style you used in this!

The little electronic stuff in the background was cool too, the blend of that with the piano reminded me a bit of Sakamoto Ryuichi's ambient works.

Stellar work!

Really atmospheric stuff with all the ambience fx and other stuff!

The vibes gave me a kind of a nice blend of Ghost In The Shell and the game Remember Me, good stuff!

Also the production was great, like last time 😉