Link to Streaming Service
https://youtu.be/84jYNJVPdsk

Description
Like on the previous jam, I kept a sort of devlog/journal thing: https://eetusuikkanen.wordpress.com/2024/09/22/impressions-composing-jam-ambience-1/

I wrote in more detail on my devlog page, so I'll write a more shorter one here:

I originally was going to use both themes, for a sort of ambientish chill track with some folky woodwind stuff, synth drones/pads, bells and some singing with lyrics from a poem taken from the Finnish novel "Seitsemän Veljestä" by Aleksis Kivi (nicked the idea from KaleOverlord in the jam discord😉).

I got pretty far on the track during the first 2-3 days or so of the jam, but then I kinda lost all motivation for working on that track and didn't pretty much do any work on it at all for the next 5 days or so.

On Day 7 I realized there was only 3 days left in the jam for me, so I made the decision to just start fresh and make a new track (wish I'd done that sooner...).

Wanted to make sure I wouldn't tread the same path on this one, I decided to go for a more synth heavy instrumentation on whatever i came up with this time.

I first sketched out some chord progressions with a synth pad sound (that I fixed the voice leading on later down the line, thanks to some tips from FoxHyode), put down a basic beat with some Linndrum sounds, added a synth bass that followed the root notes in a sort of disco octave style, some backround elements with an arpy bell and finally came up with a lead melody.

Initially I wanted to try doing some singing as the lead in this for practice, but really couldn't get any lyric ideas, so I just fixed up some synth leads and other parts during the final day.

Mixing was pretty minimal on this, mostly using EQ on the different tracks , cutting frequencies that felt muddy/unneeded, some sidechain compression on the pad and bass so the kick punches through + I added some tape saturation on the sampled strings and the master channel, since I wanted this to have the feel of a track from an old 80's adventure movie.

For the mastering part I used a plugin called bx_masterdesk by brainworx that I had snagged for free some time ago but never actually used it. I’m not a production pro but the plugin felt like some sort of a combination of a compressor, eq and other stuff, presented with controls named using basic terms so even an idiot like me can use it without reading a manual 😉.

Description of Setup (Optional)
Cubase stock plugins for mixing and effects

Valhalla Vintage Verb for Reverb

UAD Verve Analog Machines Essentials for Tape saturation on the Master Channel

UAD Polymax for all the synth sounds

Addictive Drums for the Linndrum Drum samples

8Dio Anthology strings (Chamber preset) for the backing violin parts

8Dio Liberis for the childrens choir

Kontakt Factory Library for the Orchestral Chimes

I added a screen shot of the mixer view of the project where you can see the plugins and EQ curves used on the top parts of the mixer.