Normally I'll start by laying down a few measures of a rhythm and playing around with instrumentation. At this point I'm not worried about whether any of what I'm playing will make it into the actual song, I'm just looking to see what sounds good together and get an idea for what kind of tone/genre I'm going for. Then I'll just jam out for a bit with various instruments until I find something I want to use for a melody. Sometimes I'll use these test measures in the song, sometimes not, but I find it easier to develop musical ideas by gathering together the instruments I wish to use first. Plus, I can save time and maintain tonal consistency through the album by saving the instrumentation as a preset.

open vital, consider style, pick waveform and apply envelope and filter, turn on bit crusher, pick a random tempo and start playing notes until i find nice chords or an interesting arpeggio, loop it while i make a 2nd synth which can be turned into a pad or a lead or a bass depending on stuff, play random stuff over the looping pattern until i make something good, add a bunch of effects and automation clips, unison detune for wide sound full mix, and then done. in all fairness i didnt have that much time to put into stuff because i went on vacation but i finished one song and wrote another with no midi keyboard so i resorted to a randomized melody for one song and minimalism for the other but people have liked it so i think it workd

For this jam, I wanted to use a lot of my new instruments and sounds in the Komplete 14 Collector's Edition, specifically their solo string quartet, action drums, and BEAUTIFUL plucked nylon guitar. I use Ableton Live 11 Suite and made roughly one track per day. My composition process was mostly the same for each track:

• Turn on your computer, breathe (write that down), and open your DAW
• Decide on a direction/vibe for the piece
• Look for an instrument to load into the first track
• Mess around for 2 hours until I have a chord progression
• Load a viola/violin into the second track and come up with a melody
• Put some ocean wave sounds over everything
• ***BASIC LOOP COMPLETE***
• Duplicate the section, load and compose 1-3 new instrument parts to add DYNAMIC VARIATION
• Repeat the prior step a few times until the song is of appropriate length
• ***SONG DRAFT COMPLETE***
• Add some variation in the structuring, like a buildup or a delayed resolution
• Add EFFECTS to the tracks, such as reverb, reverb, or alternatively, reverb
  
• Make sure that everything feels cohesive with what you've already written, and that it's solid in general
• Do some MIXING (adjust gain levels,  and pray the VSTs do the rest)
• Do some MASTERING (run Ozone 11 on the master, laugh since it thought you wrote a rock piece, and set it to cinematic)
• Do some QUALITY CONTROL (actually make sure the piece sounds good enough to show to hundreds of people and potentially some industry professionals who you would love to be in their position one day and would desperately love to earn their feedback)
• ***FINAL SONG COMPLETE***
• Wait a few days
• Develop self-doubts
• Post your song to the discord server and beg for feedback
• Get mostly positive feedback
• Tell yourself that you need to do way more with the time you have
• ...change literally one thing
• Rerun Ozone 11 and submit the master before you can change your mind
• ***FINAL SONG COMPLETE, FOR REAL***

This is a very scuffed and lighthearted take on my composition process, but it's honestly not that far off. I always start with a solid loop and continue to add instruments to create a bunch of dynamic levels that would hopefully phase between each other as the track evolves inside of a video game. I leaned into my strengths with this jam, all while utilizing my infinite new Kontakt libraries and instruments. Overall, I'm happy with what I've been able to accomplish. If you're interested in rating my project, please check it out here, I'd love to hear your feedback! :D

Ok here is a novel on my entire thought process of my entry basically:

Jofes Devlog for Queen Bubblene Blast!

I had just finished writing a 10 song series of my own original Banjo Kazooie Worlds so the Grant kirkhope style was freash in my mind so I wanted to stick with that style for this jam.

To start with, I needed a concise set of instruments to work with to make a believable OST that flows well.

I took inspiration from one of my previous works that was based on being underwater where I used a lot of auxillary percussion to kind of portray the vast quantity of fish and coral and such.

I wanted to do that again but for a different reason, The theme being "Inside My World" I thought I should incorperate that into my music with more than just the vibes of the song. By purposefully avoiding traditional percussion such as snare, kicks, or cymbals, I wanted to sell the idea that this is someone elses world, not yours.

So my percussion was set, I would use tons of auxillary percussion to fill a lot of space and I could take them away or introduce them to change the feel of the different tracks. They were also very syncopated to keep the songs interesting and bouncy.

Going forwards, I wanted to keep each song relatively short for a few reasons. 1, I didn't want to intimidate anyone with an overly long submission since I knew that happens to me. I also wanted to make sure that everything stayed fresh and interesting to prevent boredom and waning interest. almost every song is less than 2 minutes and had at least 2 unique sections where if they repeated, there would be some sort of variation in the melody or counter line.

Now to talk about the theming real quick. The picture is obviously an underwater vibe and I of course saw the bubble like person along with the little girl who wasn't a bubble. I came up with the idea that the little girl was the villain of the story becaus eshe is smiling at the bubble person. Why? Because SHE is the one who turned you into a bubble! Inside my world is in reference to her. You are inside her domain, her kingdom, you are inside her control since she turned you into a fragile bubble.

Making fun music is what I like to do. As such, I wanted to keep things light and well BUBBLY! the instruments I chose were picked for a few reasons. To sell the underwater atmosphere, to provide a regal aura at times, to provide a goofy aura at times, and most importantly, Because I like them!

Steel Drum, Marimba, Xylophone, Bassoon, Tubas, Horns, Aux Percussion, Bass Guitar, Harp, Sub Bass, Strings.

These were all picked according to the criteria I listed above.

Now lets go track by track and I will explain my thought process.

Queen Bubblene Blast!:

This is the title track and my main concern was making as strong of a first impression that I could. That is why I tried to make fast and potentially make it the most fun song of the bunch. I did this by using the Vibraslap. That is a goofy instrument and would set the tone for the entire OST. Steel drums are the most perky instrument I had so that was the leading melody.

Partway through I made room for the harp to take over to slow things down a bit and get more of that title screen feel with the strings. and calmer atmosphere. That then cuts back to the more involved part now with goofy bassoon to back up the steel drums implying that we are headed underwater with the timbre. Then the final section has tubas leading to signify we are underwater and near queen Bubblene now with the low timbre and regal tubas.

So You've Been Turned Into A Bubble:

This was the first song I made for the jam.

It begins with an intro with bubble noises to imply the magic happening that is turning you into a bubble and muffled bassoon is being played and unmuffling to show the magic is working. then the main section starts.

The vibe I wanted to go for in this track is a regal trickster. Like if the ruler of the kingdom was also the jester. Lost of regal tubas with harps for the more royal sections of the song. Then it goes into the darker section with the bassoon which is still light and goofy but it is playing much lower and more sinister notes alongside the tubas showing that the Queen is Devious.

After that section ends it plays the main  section again but this time with the bassoon countering the harp showing that the Royal side and the trickster side of Queen Bubblene are 2 sides of the same person. Then the final section plays which is the devious section but now the bassoon is higher and playing more melodic ideas to implicate that her devious personality is still goofy but also annoying.

The H2Zone:

This is the town theme and as such I wanted it to be very lighthearted and bouncy. I didn't use the tubas in this song as I wanted it to feel like a safe space from Queen Bubblene and I associate the tubas with her. The bassoon is playing the melody but more goofy than how it was in the last song. This is also the only song that uses the xylophone for part of the melody in the second half as in every other song the xylophone provides texture and backup chord hits rather than the melody.

I made a fun call and response with the xylophone and the steel drums both because it sounds really cool and since it works in a hub area type place since you are making decisions like what stage to begin your journey with.

NonStopped UnPopped:

This one I started with the intent that it would be one of if not the fastest/most intense song since it is the fast paced stage theme. It honestly didn't get all that complex to me since I just wanted it to be a fun yet intense stage theme though it is the song I had the most trouble making. The first main section of the song was harder to write than several of the other pieces entirely and I honestly have no clue why but I like how it turned out.

Taking In Some Air:

I knew the pause them was gonna be super simple. Just the bass, the strings, and the percussion and nothing else. Take away all melodic instruments to sell the idea that the main attraction is on hold for now. As such, the percussion takes on the role of melody with alternating cowbell and Claves for a sort of blip menu noise feel.

Octo-Popper Supreme

The main thing I wanted to do was go from 100 BPM to 188 BPM since an octopus has 8 tentacles so going from 100 to 188 felt like a fun way to incorporate the tempo into the theming even more.

I didn't however want the boss to be 188bpm fast so I kept the actual melody and feel at half tempo so it feels like 94 BPM. Since this is the climax song I thought it appropriate to add a new instrument to freshen things up and add excitement. Hence the horns came in. Similar to the Tubas they keep a regal feeling for the Queen while being better suited to action music. The song is in a blues key to feel extra funky and in game the boss bases the attacks around the beat of the music so a jazzy freestyle back and forth gameplay for a boss encounter fit a jazzy back and forth song which is why the melodies repeat and layer on the horns after playing once on a different instrument.

Surfacing:

I wanted it to feel relieving and light. I made the harp arpeggiate upwards and pan from left to right to really push the rising up feeling and used the strings a lot for the ecstasy feeling they gave of finally beating a boss.

If you read through all of this thank you! I had a ton of fun making the music and I love it so much!

Well this might turn into a long essay so like... we shall see

A lot of my music writing is incredibly spur of the moment, half of the process for writing music is about the pre-game... recording every single idea and concept i come up with somewhere! I have all sorts of random project files, notes app pages, and voice notes filled with little snippets  of ideas, maybe a theme i want to write around or a melodic idea, or maybe just a whole beginning/hook of a song i want to experiment on! But almost all of my songs start this way, for example one of my entries to this, Stuck In Time started from a recording I took on my phone in the waiting room before I had a meeting with one of my music teachers! This step is especially important as I am incredibly scatterbrained and having the ideas to start with makes the process a lot easier. It doesn't matter how strong/weak they are, they get recorded!

These ideas then often end up as the base for my projects, I put them in and start envisioning what harmony would look like for them, picking out individual notes i want to highlight and deciding how to shape everything around that. When I approach song writing like this, it tends to result in much more organized i guess more "poppy" structures centered around this main idea, with some B content before coming back to it. I also put special emphasis on coming up with some sort of contrasting line, whether that be an arpeggio or in the case of stuck in time the combination of that and some high pitched 8 bit swells to provide a rhythmic and melodic contrast to my main idea, as Im a firm believer in experimenting with how to use space. Adding something else for the listener to listen to that adds to your melodic ideas will make it even more impactful when you decide to take away, and helps to create a sense of movement and drive in even the slowest pieces!

However sometimes I dont start with a melody, i often start with more of an arpeggiated idea or a chord progression, and my challenge becomes "how do i turn this relatively abstract idea into a full fledged song"? This was how i started with my second (and arguably favourite) of my two entries, THE EARTH CAN'T HOLD ME. This idea started just with the main arpeggio that permeates the entire being of the piece, the looping thoughts that you just cant seem to make away, and around that I sat trying to figure out exactly what i wanted the audience to think when they hear it. Do I want it to instill fear? wonder? curiosity? I finally settled on more of an anxiety ridden feel, which is what lead a lot of my harmonic choices in this song. My harmony writing tends to be a lot more of individual lines then a bunch of thought out chords, every note is part of another "melody" line to provide contrast to my main ideas. This opens the door for me to more easily create very "dissonant" ideas with the explicit idea of driving forwards an idea because each line in the chord is meant to guide you to the next note, not necessarily the next chord. Im sure someone could tell you the harmonic purpose according to musical theory of the progression at 3:01 in TECHM, but this was made using this process of note by note chord composition, creating it so that every single changing note in a chord is part of a larger melody and not just thinking about "well i want an f major here, what extensions do I think are best to support this"? Obviously I tweak things up afterwards and clean things up a bit, but I think this process has been a huge staple in how I've made some of my favourite stuff to date.

Another thing im very much thinking about is how i want to develop my ideas, as dont in THE EARTH CAN'T HOLD ME I have a lot of repeated ideas that i spend a lot of time ruminating on, and I take an approach that I have learned from C418 that i call a more compositionally minimalistic approach, in his album Excursions C418 has many songs that revolve around a simple melodic fragment, repeating over and over again, and their development and intrigue revolves around the development of the sound itself and rarely the actual melodic content of the piece! Using shifting textures, dynamics, and timbres you will find you can create a lot more interest for an otherwise stale concept and then give it an entirely different feeling and emotion to it. I like to think in TECHM this develops from Unnerve -> Desperation -> Acceptance, with a slight somber undertone as the protagonist comes to terms and overcomes their looping spiraling thoughts.

This was just a lot of rambling but I hope it gave some insight into random pieces of my compositional process, specifically relating to my submission. If you have any questions always feel free to ask!

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!

I lack knowledge to write what I want, but I had an overall idea of nerve-wracking badly played violin sounds. Construction in my town was a bonus, I recorded some sounds that after editing turned into atmospheric background noises. I have been participating in jams so far with silent games (because I had no time to include any sounds), it helped me to think about sound design in games. I also prefer realism, so ambient genre as a baseline felt better for a non-existent game. The theme and edited recordings helped me to form the final idea. I had something in mind before that I wanted to imitate (you can see my inspo in devlog), and the theme happened to be very close, if interpreted under a less positive angle (the picture is a delusion casted on the player by hypnosis or similar, not the reality).

Despite my original desire to go with DAW and write a melody, the edited recordings in Audacity felt complete, so I felt satisfied.

The feedback I got so far is very surprising, I didn’t expect my entry to be noticed and praised :)

Thanks for such an interesting post idea! Sorry if the post is long, I wanted to explain basically the devlog of my submission in somewhat extensive detail.

(The Idea)

Coming up with ideas for projects and jams has always been the hardest initial step for me, so for a while I was kinda lost on what I wanted to do and just procrastinated (I have a bad habit of procrastinating and only doing stuff in the last few days ;-;). The idea of my OST only came to me after I found myself once again interested in RPG games such as Undertale and OMORI. I definitely knew I wanted my game to be set in an RPG land with a vast array of areas and characters to interact with. So from there, I started listening to a lot of RPG music such as Pokemon and Undertale to really give me a proper idea of how I wanted the tracks to feel and sound. Funny enough, I was actually planning on making the game have psychological horror elements much like OMORI, but I decided not to go through with the idea due to it being very difficult to pull off well and because I wanted the game to feel more uplifting rather than dreadful.

(The Actual Process) - Read this part for how I actually made the tracks

(I'm not that good at composing so my process might be a bit bad lol) Once I was finished listening to my selected reference tracks, I actually started making the tracks. I composed the songs by just playing random chords and melodies into my piano until I thought it sounded interesting enough. I then recorded the MIDI of the piano playing and just continued tweaking it from there. After that I thought about what instruments I wanted to accompany the track and starting placing notes relevant to the chord progression. From there I tweak the mixing and mastering to the best of my abilities.

I started with the first song "The Past is Best Cherished" (Fun fact, the track was originally called "The Past is Best Forgotten" before I dropped the psychological horror. This is also why the track sounds more ominous compared to the rest). From there I started constructing the other tracks. I didn't really have a linear order for which ones I made first, I just did what I felt like making at the time lol.

After around seven songs into the OST I decided to actually list down how many tracks I was planning on making. Like I stated in the first paragraph, I really wanted this to feel like a complete game from start-to-finish and I thought the best way I could achieve that was by creating a lot of (for the most part) unique tracks that are set to be played for different parts of "Dream Land." After some thinking, I decided on 23 tracks in total (it was supposed to be 24 but I had to scratch one due to time constraints). I also wanted to have motifs that play for a specific place or idea such as a motif for the town themes, one for the sheep related tracks, and one for "Yourself," the main antagonist.

(Last Day)

The last day was here and yet I still procrastinated quite a bit lol. I still had around half of the planned songs left to make so I eventually stopped procrastinating and focused completely on finishing the OST. Because of the time limit (and my procrastination), some of the tracks are just repeats of previous tracks with minor changes (perhaps I shouldn't have planned so many tracks lol). Eventually tho, at around 40 mins left including grace period, I completed all the necessary tracks and published my submission on Youtube and itch.io.

(Conclusion)

Although the process may have been a tedious and somewhat draining at times, I still had a lot of fun creating the tracks and I'm pretty happy with what I was able to do with the time I had. This post ended up being a lot longer than I expected, so I thank you so much for reading!

That's all I have to say really, have an amazing day! :D

1. Think of epic melody

2. Implement it into DAW

3. Spend 3 hours sitting there doing nothing

4. Add some small minor detail

5. "Alright I am done for the day"

Slight exaggeration but procrastination was my biggest enemy, I imagine a lot of people here struggled with it too. 

First thing I did was get a clipboard, and write down the names of critical parts of the story and then some smaller side track names I could add if I wanted to, and decided to focus on the most important tracks to the structure of my story (The opening, the conflict, and the resolution) . I just worked on the musical parts in the first days, adding only minimal or essential effects. Ideas mostly either come from doing improv on a piano or they just come to me. Once inside a DAW, I can then build onto those ideas. Many tracks I would do in bits as I was still finding leitmotifs, but still wanted to have a good foundation for the tone of each track I wanted. I feel it is easier to speed up the process when you learn and familiarize yourself with specific library of sounds, Usually I use soundfonts but I was unsure the legality of those so I ended up using FLEX and SurgeXT for the most part. This caused many time issues for me, but it was also a nice learning experience. One example is, I probably spent a couple of hours looking for a specific tunable "Airy blowing sound" I thought would've sounded nice, I was going through every flute synth I could find, EQing them seeing If I could achieve that sound to then suddenly stumble upon the amazing "Bottle Blow" instrument in the general MIDI library. I felt kind of dumb because many soundfonts feature a bottle blow sound and I didn't even think of the instrument. It was a nice discovery of sounds though, I found a pretty spooky evil dark bass of darkness and despair I might use again. SurgeXT is pretty nice if you like sound design as well, I found myself spending a lot of time slightly tweaking the presets since I am pretty inexperienced with that, but I imagine someone more experienced can achieve a lot through SurgeXT or just any synthesizer. I feel that mixing too early for me can lead to way too many readjustments in things like volume and EQ, or it can leave me unsatisfied with something like the melody sounding way better than everything else, making it difficult to add more. Usually I will leave mixing to once the track is done, or if it is necessary on some instruments. So I ended up doing that in the latter days.

Also for art, I am a pretty bad artist. I found a nice color palette online to use, and then I used a reference for getting the main focus of my art at least somewhat ok. Doing the art I feel is a good thing to do when you get "stuck" on musical ideas, as you can come back to your project completely refreshed while still getting something else out of the way.

I'm incredibly surprised with the amount of participants that took part in this. I'm very happy that most of you shared very interesting things and because of that I think we went further than the gamejam experience. All insights add a lot of value. YOU ARE AMAZING ♥ 

Depending on the track, I'll either start with a set of chords that match the mood I have in mind (often in arpeggio form), or I might start by trying to find two or three sounds that match the mood I'm going for. Occasionally I'll start with drums and bass particularly if rhythm is the focus or if I have a less common time signature in mind.

Usually I'll start on a piano VST or Jup-8 (because I love that synth!)

While away from my computer, I write any ideas (chords, story, instrumentation) that come to mind into my notes app (for melodies I'll hum them into my recorder app). For this jam in particular, I came up with way more ideas than I could use lol.

Of course I always have the image theme open on my second monitor.

For this one in particular and many of my other songs I've done, I noodle around in my editor with differing notes and instruments, until I hear a melody/flow in my head, which is usually all it takes to start a full song. Initially I didn't really have a clear theme direction to go in, until I internalized the text theme, and made it more traditionally "Doomy". For each of my songs, I really try to make them all individually memorable in their own ways, usually I do this by employing techniques I haven't before, and several of them to get a very diverse sound throughout each song I do.

Thanks for posting a topic for this - it's always great to learn from others!

Personally, a lot of my better ideas come from improvising while studying a visual piece (such as in these game jams!), or experimenting with new plugins in a DAW. From there I try to find ways of fleshing those ideas out either with the harmony or counterpoint. I find this to be the tougher part of composing, especially if those other parts don't come organically during the improve itself. But in a way, I also find it rewarding to struggle with something to get the best parts that compliment each other and finally putting it all together. 

What made composing for this game jam unique for me is that all of my ideas came from improvising on a keyboard, since I am primarily a guitar player :)

My usual process is pretty much just "think of a concept" and then "figure it out," but I wanted to push myself for this one. After brainstorming a general idea and direction, I spent most of the jam period - after I found out it existed, that is - learning how to compose. Just crammed as much practical music theory as I could reasonably understand, with, additionally, some looks into how other game composers structure their works. For one of my tracks, I started with a melody directly in my DAW but for the other, I started with MuseScore and developed my melody and harmonization via notation, which is not something I've ever done before. The actual production process was less than a day, which did not really leave enough time to layer and master the way I would have liked (not that I really feel like I know what I'm doing regarding mastering, either), but I took this jam as an opportunity to force myself to do two things: 1. learn more about the building blocks of music and how to put them together in a way that makes sense, is replicable, and isn't just "do something aimlessly until it sounds good," and 2. actually put out work, rather than leaving unfinished tracks on my hard drive. Still got a lot to learn and a long way to go, but I'm glad I found this jam to kickstart that journey!