Play asset pack
between me and the moon above's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Quality | #3 | 4.625 | 4.625 |
Impression | #14 | 3.969 | 3.969 |
Overall | #15 | 4.050 | 4.050 |
Correlation to theme | #23 | 4.188 | 4.188 |
Composition | #30 | 3.969 | 3.969 |
Creativity | #58 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 32 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
I composed ambient music for a puzzle game. One track is a seamless loop for the title scree. The track, "and the moon above" is the loop for the night cycle of the game and the track, "daylight" is for the day cycle, these loops have a fade out at the end. I used Logic Pro and Pro Tools. More details about the music are on my project page.
Message from the artist:
This is my submission to the ost composing jam #5. I have a detailed description of the music I wrote on my project page. I hope you enjoy.
Theme:
How does it fit the theme?
My submission fits the theme because in the narrative for the imaginary game I composed for, the player uses a stars power, or in other words, "wishes upon a star" in order to play the game. It also fits the picture theme because the game takes place in an ocean on a small sailboat as well. The music fits these themes because it is tailored to the game which fits these themes.
Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://on.soundcloud.com/Y3Jdt
Soundtrack use permission
For game jams only
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Comments
Feels like I’m drifting off in space when listening, great job! Gotta love the atmospheric music.
Thanks so much, I appreciate that!
This is super cool! It reminds me of the in other waters soundtrack, which was also a calming game on an ocean, so it fit perfectly in my opinion. Really well done!!!
Thank you, I appreciate that! I haven't listened to the other waters soundtrack but I'll have to check it out!
This is fantastic. It really feels like I'm on the ocean at night. I can hear the wind and the water in the music and it's incredibly immersive. I love daylight in particular - the subtle choir effect and really quiet tinkly noises take it to the next level. Really well mixed too down to the bass. I'm in full spectrum bliss. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful soundtrack :)
Thank you so much! I'm glad the music was so immersive for you, that means a lot and I appreciate you sharing that.
So serene and mystical
These are so beautiful and emotional. I absolutely love the concept of game you have, I wish it was a real game because I would love to play it with these contemplative tracks you've made.
Ugh these are so beautiful
thanks for sharing ✨🌟
Thank you so much! It makes me very happy to hear that!
Great ambience. It manages to catch my attention throughout, and it makes great tracks for puzzle games similar to Monument Valley.
Thank you! Monument Valley is a great puzzle game with a wonderful soundtrack, I appreciate the comparison a lot. Thanks!
You've created a very wonderful and soothing soundscape! "And the moon above" is absolutely gorgeous and I can very easily imagine laying down a boat looking at a fragmented night sky. The mix is impeccable and it makes the whole experience feel very real. The piano composition in your last track feels very uncertain which works perfectly for an exploration theme. Great job on your entry!
Thank you so much! Your high praise means a lot and I'm glad how much you enjoyed it.
All three of these are absolutely gorgeous ambient pieces! I wish I could write ambient music like this since it’s so pleasant to listen to. Would you be willing to share how you approach your compositions or what your process is like? You have created some beautiful stuff that would accompany a game in the ocean very well. Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you so much, I appreciate that a lot! I can certainly share a bit about how I wrote these pieces. My first step is always the pre-compositional process. I try to come up with a complete idea for my music and what I want it to sound like. This involved coming up with the type of game I was writing for, the purpose of the music in the game and then a very detailed description of what I want the music to sound and feel like. Then I'll try to come up with and plan out a harmonic progression that matches the description of my music, I usually just feel that out by ear a bit. Then once I complete the plan I get to writing. I wanted some consistencies in these pieces so they sounded like they belonged together, so I used a lot of the same synths and kept the piano kinda similar. For the piano part, I didn't want it to just be like blocks of chords, I wanted them to melt together and be more blended. I treated the piano part as separate lines with each changing at it's own timing. For example, what I mean is like the base piano note moves to the next every 7 beats, then another line moves every 5, another one changes notes every 3 beats, every 2 and so one. This layered approach made for a result that was very blended and slowly changing. It also makes the moments when they do line up and play a single chord more impactful and the blended harmonies are more interesting than if there were played completely separated, however no chord is so off key from another chord that it becomes super dissonant when they overlap. Once I had the piano done I picked appropriate synths and got to work and putting a melody over the piano. Both the nigh and day themes followed a similar form where I had the ambient piano + some synth type stuff over it. Then around the middle of the piece there is a more concrete melody with stricter harmonies that don't overlap like the piano did. Then the piece ends with a fade out of a repeated melody and an increase in reverb. The layered piano party in the beginning contains fragments and intervals that end up becoming the more concrete melody later in the piece. This approach of writing fragments that then reveal themselves into a melody helped with the ambience as well as to give the piece a feeling of rising out of the ocean, revealing itself and then seeping back into the depths. Once I was done composition-wise, I got to work on editing, mixing and mastering. For me the biggest part is mixing, this is where I take a lot of my simpler sounds and process them with effects to both make them more interesting, jell them together and to bring to life my vision for the piece. A lot of my sounds I leave simpler on purpose during the compositional process because I know exactly what plug-ins I want to put on them. I like to use a lot of plug-ins made by SoundToys, I also used this Doppler plug-in on many things, like the high synth part that comes in on the beginning of, and the moon above, which gave it a very cool sound to it. I try to get a good mix of pitch content and sound design. I don't know your level of sound production but if you are beginning I'd say the most important things to focus on are volume balance, panning and EQ. You can automate all of these as well, for example if you have an instrument track that is too loud in one section and too quiet in the other, you can automate the volume so it is lowered and then increases over time. Panning and EQ help each instrument have their own space in the mix and clears up the mud. Use EQ to great rid of unwanted frequencies, this can be automated as well. For example, if you have a piece that begins with solo guitar, you want the full frequency range of that guitar however, lets say a bass guitar comes in, now those lower frequencies will clash and muddy up the mix. So you can automate a high pass filter on the EQ and get rid of the bass on the guitar, it'll sound weird on its own but it'll sound great with the bass. It' important to train and use your ear. "Just use your ear" doesn't sound like good advice, and it surely wont give you good results immediately if your ear isn't trained. But the more you train your ear, use reference tracks, and the more you mix things, the better you'll get and the better your ear will be. If you want tips on how to train your ear I'm more than happy to share. For mastering, I can hardly say I do all to much on my own. I use Ozone 9 which has a mastering assistant tool that will do pretty much most of it for you and come up with a solid mix. I'd say it's still good to learn how to master before you rely solely on that tool, and it is important to know how to use it properly/what settings on the ai to use so it comes out right. I'll still tweak it on my own sometimes before finishing it up. I could go into a lot more detail on all of this but I've already probably wrote an overwhelming amount of information. I hope this was somewhat helpful, if you want more details on any of this feel free to reach out on discord and I'd be more than happy to chat about it on a call. This offer goes out to anyone else who participated in this jam as well if anyone else happens to read this comment. My educational background is in audio production and composition so I'm more than happy to share what I know about it. There are also a lot of great resources online, iZotope has a lot of videos on mixing and mastering on their YouTube. It typically uses their software but the skills can translate to whatever software you have, there's a lot of other content by other people too.
If you want to add me on disc, you can find me on the Lone Rabbit disc server and add me through there or just add my username directly, Captain Shafty#6517. If other people are interested we can just chat in the Lone Rabbit disc server.
Wow, this is fantastic! I copied this response so I can refer back to it later- hope that's okay! The thoroughness of your creative briefs is impressive, and I can't argue at all with the results. I really like your description of how you "melt" your harmonies together - I want to try that approach. Regarding mixing and mastering, I would definitely say that I'm an amateur without any formal training. With what I've been able to teach myself, I feel confident in my abilities to automate volume and in finding and eliminating unwanted frequencies, but I need to start working on automating my EQ. Panning is a tool that I underuse and need to spend more time thinking about it and understanding the nuances of it. I wish I knew more about sound design and how to use different plug-ins - I try to pick the sound out before I compose which is maybe not always the best approach. I didn't know there were tools to help with mastering - this has always been an enigma to me that I basically just feel like I make up every time. I am definitely going to check out those video resources you mentioned! Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I have your comment saved so I'll make sure to reach out on discord if questions arise! Thank you so much!
Awesome work! Each track kept my attention from start to finish, which doesn't happen to me often with ambient tracks.
Thank you for sharing, I'm glad they kept your attention!
Very relaxing! Very fitting for a puzzle game too, as this will not distract the player from focusing on the actual puzzles. Well done!
Thank you, I appreciate that!
Such pretty ambient tones. This would make great background for chill puzzle games.
Thank you! I'm glad it works with the puzzle game idea.
absolutely gorgeous, i would love your soundtrack both in and out of the game you described!!
“and the moon above” was my favorite for the high droning synths and noises in the first 90 seconds, so beautiful and intimate
Thank you so much! It means a lot that you would enjoy it in and out of a game.
In one word: "Peaceful" *_*
Well done :D
Thank you, I appreciate that!
The ambience of every track is awesome! Some parts of "and the moon above" reminds me Disco Elysium soundtrack. Good job!
Thank you, I appreciate that! I've never heard the Disco Elysium soundtrack, I'll have to check it out.
This is so lovely and relaxing - perfect for the theme and the kind of game that you intended it for. Great entry!
Thank you! I appreciate that!
I absolutely love the sound design in your tracks!!!!! very poetic and dreamy, which combines so well with the piano not overcharged in notes. I don't know why, but the last section of daylight really touched me emotionally. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you for sharing your comment! I'm happy that the music had an emotional effect.
This is an incredibly lovely soundtrack - it really feels like you've crafted your own version of the sort of ambience present in Minecraft and Outer Wilds. Overall the sound design here is really good, in these sorts of ambient pieces it's very easy to go overboard with the reverb for the sake of more literal ambience, but that's not the case whatsoever here - all of those sorts of more residual sounds seem very fine tuned so as not to leave any unintended dissonance. Also, I thought the piano sounded similar and it's because we used the same one in both of our soundtracks! something something great minds lol
I appreciate your comment. The Minecraft soundtrack is amazing so to compare the music to that is very kind of you. I thought that piano sound was similar when I was listening to your ost, it's an amazing free asset.
You’ve made such a gorgeously ambient OST, the atmosphere feels tangible and relaxing all at once. I also appreciate how you managed to keep the tracks moving forward instead of feeling like a stagnant setting. I didn’t want to stop any of the tracks while I was listening, they really pulled me in! My favorite is “and the moon above”.
Great work ^^
Thank you for commenting on that! I try to give my ambient music motion through it's harmonies, subtle rhythmic elements and some of the sounds pushing it forward. It's easy to fall into the trap of making ambient music stagnant, it means a lot that you recognized my effort to counteract that.
I really enjoyed listening to these tracks - as a game soundtrack as well as independently/in their own right. Beautiful ambient sounds.
Thanks! I'm glad that the tracks can work on their own without the game.
I can't really explain why, but 'and the moon above' definitely feels like nighttime, and 'daylight' feels like daytime. Good job, very soothing!
Thank you, I'm glad that came across! I tried a few tricks to make that happen so I'm glad it came across.
The setting you came up with here could easily be interpreted as tense or hostile, but the atmospheric tracks make it feel like a vast, beautiful expanse waiting to be explored. Overall great sound design here
Thank you for your comment! I'm glad you appreciate the sound design, I love finding the meeting point between pitch content and sound.