What an awesome sound, love your style! Great mix of acoustic instrumentation paired with electronic elements. Composition and production quality is on point so I only have creative feedback based on individual taste.
What Lies Ahead: Always an ear opener when you hear that “god chord” as they call it haha. The change up in sections evoke two different emotions, possibly too much so for a VGM track. You could easily separate both sections into two beautiful tracks.
Tread Lightly: Powerful statement here. Your tracks definitely tell a story.
I think you could place an even bigger space between the intro and the big powerhouse theme. I picture a lush long decaying reverb on the horns, and hearing that intro piano leitmotif playing again in the background just before a big whoosh riser into the main theme. So much tension so much anticipation.
Sick beats and clean synths. Great production quality. Also love the odd time signature in the first track. The 2nd track has such a mellow vibe, it’s the kind of track that you could listen to for a long time in a game and not get bored. That deep rising synth is a memorable sound, you should try using it more sparsely as a moment of impact or theme.
Some critiques, the panning movement for the synth doubling the melody can be really jarring. Few things could help: Either lower that sound in the mix or try that panning trick only in specific locations to give the listener something new and unique to grab on to.
Anytime man. Do you master your tracks? I’m no mastering expert but I like iZotope Ozone. I usually take a professional reference track and match the LUFS for loudness. Good luck, hope to hear more of your music on SC!
F*** yeah sound design OST. Big fan of this style. All I'll say is be careful when working with so much distortion, it can be hard to know whats too loud. I see you got Ozone 9 for the mastering so thats sweeet, I would just add some more compression to each individual channel and maybe even put the SFX tracks into a "Summing Track Stack" and glue compress all of them together. (mind you, this usually removes a lot of dynamics from the overall mix but makes distortion less harsh on the ears.)
ps. My friend, you need that SoundToys bundle. You will fall in love.
Duuuude, really memorable main theme. So rad hearing it come back in the other tracks, i'm sitting here like "its coming i know its coming."
With every compliment, i offer some constructive criticism given with no offense, in hopes that we can all help each other grow. So coma is literally the vibe track. Everyone knows it. I was gonna talk about how the amp noise emits a frequency that classes with the harmony, but when I heard the end i realized you actually kept it as a creative choice. Love that.
So actually the only constructive thing I have to say, is that man oh man you need a real guitarist to track this. If those midi guitars sound that good, imagine a real guitar player hitting all those subtle musical sounds and reflections that come from the fretboard. (Maybe mess around with pitch bending some of the melody instead of fretboard sliding up to the note.)
Awesome use of audio sfx to tell your tracks stories as well. Cheers, it was a pleasure to hear this OST.
I swear I thought you were playing the guitar! Really realistic sounding midi guitar orchestrations.
That main theme is just....yes more of that. Really ear catching modulations and great execution on the ethnic/Mediterranean theme. Also love the attention to audio detail, especially helping drive the story of your tracks, like in coast town.
With every compliment I try to add some constructive criticism. Nit picky here because theres not much to pick at, but some tracks were louder than others by quite a few LUFS (perceived loudness for those who don't know) but thats something that could be adjusted easily in the mastering process of the album as a whole.
Although, judging by the production quality of this OST, i'm sure you're already well aware of this haha.
This album def works well together. Very chill vgm music, executed well and i love the little creative production techniques used that add some spice and life to the tracks. Motifs/Themes/Leitmotifs (whatever you wanna call them) are def noticeable.
I try to give some constructive criticism for every compliment i give but since I'm no expert on this kind of music, I'll just say I wish the boss battle had some more energy! Having that high hat playing at faster rhythm or at least a BPM increase would be sweet. Lacking low end as well, but hey! creative choice, who am I to say whats right or wrong!
Great job changing up the vibe for each track. They definitely have their own personality. Love the dissonance in weird creatures with hats lol great name btw. I can tell theres some motivic development here and theme continuity with your melodies.
I try to pair every compliment with some constructive criticism. Im no expert, but something I've been trying to work on, which you might benefit from, is a call and answer style of delivering a melody. Having a different element or instrument answer the melody helps keep our ADHD ears attached to music. Also love having that new element come back later to repeat the melody in a different tone just to drive that theme home a bit more.
YOO loved that first piece. The color there is so delectable. That leap to a m6 in the melody is sweet, but then it sound like you have a major 7th scale degree in the harmony even though you're in a minor key! But are you?? because then the melody hits that raised 3rd when its coming to a close. My brain!! I need to understand this!
Side note: That piano composition was so beautiful. I want a score of it lmao.
"Journey through the homophobic dungeons and fight your way through self-doubt" I came for the music, and stayed for the plot. Actually laughed out loud.
On a more serious note, cave crawlers is my jam. That plucky call and answer melody was so simple yet really effective. I felt those homophobes around every corner.
The intention on each piece is clear, you prove that you don't need dozens of tracks or intricate compositions in order to successfully portray an emotion.
Love love love all these modulations. Great traditional style orchestration with that super lovable vgm twist we all long for. The motivic development here is real. That super catchy motif, with all its subtle placements in ostinatos and when it transforms to minor, ahhh yes *chefs kiss*
I say, with every compliment should go a constructive critique. And since I'm not the most knowledgable about orchestrations of this style I'll just say, take some time to really make your scores readable. You could have a really sweet portfolio showcasing with this. I'm a huge fan of score material.
With that said, if you want to improve on score writing, always check your work after you import it to musical notation software. I know there were time constraints and to be fair, its not super important to this submission, but I would have loved to really analyze some of your musical decisions and ideas. And its very difficult to do that when there is no bass cleff haha!
Really inspiring orchestration and thanks for rating my piece, cheers!
