Hi again!
Yep, we are indeed the opposites, hahaha.
Your production and processing are strong, my respect for that. Everything sounds clean, polished and intentional. But personally, I've felt that something was lacking emotionally.
For example, "scentofthesun" didn’t evoke a clear mood for me. It didn’t feel hopeful, tense, or immersive. I didn’t get the sense of escaping or battling, it felt like it was circling a single initial mood without evolving.
With that said, I also checked out your "post.mortem" project. "Saving your life" is my favourite song of yours, as you've allowed it to just be.
If you are open to suggestions, I would recommend to experiment with other plugins and textures, maybe some orchestral sounds, or perhaps acoustic, whichever feels more interesting to explore, if you are up to that.
Your production IS great, but larger palettes allow us to create some things that were impossible before.
Imagine that any given track is a painting, and that you were trying to paint a sunset, yet you only have blue colors. Sure, you could do that, and I bet that it would be fantastic, because your technique is great.
Then imagine that you've decided to paint a forest... blue again.
It certainly creates some style and grabs attention, but while blue is beautiful, there is still this silent longing too see some burning fire, or fresh grass, or perhaps some dry blood. And you can, your brush strokes are wonderful already.
Obviously, this is just my opinion, but I hope that I was able to convey my impression. You can always reject it too, after all, everyone is different and that is beautiful on its own too.
Overall 9/10 submission, great job!
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This is the best feedback I've got, really thank you for that also the fact that you actually listened to my other submission lol. Thanks for the compliment about the production!
I tend to use the same key and the same chords (Dmin and Gmin) even if I try to stay away from using the same thing over and over again. I focused more on the sound design on "scentofthesun" and less on the feelings I searched to evoke. I wanted to make a final track with drums so that the submission wouldn't be too boring, while I was messing around with the synth I stumbled upon something I really loved so I built upon it, made the intro, drums, effects, end, and boom, done. The track does give the feeling of hope for me, personally. I could have put more time on the chord progression and the overall composition.
I'm personally not that proud of my post.mortem submission since I always strive to make my best sound design and dynamic music as possible and find that this isn't the most sonically interesting for me.
Pleased to know that your fav track is "Saving your life", I'm proud of the wobbling bass for example, but I find that the breakbeat could be more dynamic with more effects. It's one of the tracks on the submission that I'm the most proud of, along with "Waking Up" and "Going Places" (I also find this to be too "simple").
You're very right about the palette, literally 90% of the instruments I used were synths and synth drumkits and a good two thirds of the synths are made on the same Helm VST. I was even a bit intimidated to put the guitar on "crackles" because I thought that it could make the track feel more generic. I tend to stay away from acoustic sounding instruments (and when I do, I heavily process them) because then I feel like that the music becomes less original and more distant from the synth sounds that I personally like. I prefer to make my own sounds, when I use acoustic I feel like I'm a bit cheating. Also since I tend to try to imitate the artists I like the most, that being electronic and ambient artists. You've opened up my mind though, I will try to expand my capabilities by trying other things.