Very peaceful! But as Kale mentioned, I think if you push the elements a bit more in the background I think this will be golden! Great work either way. 

I think I would push the elements a bit farther into the background with more reverb.

For the whooshing sound, I think it is a bit static and could use some variation.

Good work though! :)

That piano on the track is beautiful and really captures the essence of wind, ice and cold at the same time ! The choice of having acoustic and metallic texture was a great decision and it helped the immersion a ton.

However, there is one glaring issues : the pad you put on top of it. It really invades the piano frequencies and its chords don't make sense between each other and seem totally independant from what the piano is playing. The lack of proper music theory application really put the track at a disadvantage to me.

Furthermore, the track sounds fairly repetitive, having only 2 elements (the piano and the pad).

I really look forward to what to what that piano melody can grow to with a simpler and more relevant chord progression ! 

I really like the vibe honestly, even if it's not that "ambience" because of the thin sound design. The thing that actually bothers me a bit is that it's too much repetitive

I think the tracks biggest issue is the sounddesign/mixing, you don't have a great feel of atmosphere because the sound has no body, I think trying to make that with the wind sound didn't help, maybe many octaves lower and a drone would worked way better.

Also the track is a bit busy but I really enjoyed some of the piano lines, I see great potential in this!

Good job, take care!

I think you have a solid base to work with, and I think you could add more sounds and instruments. I think you have the 'cold' and 'isolated' feel, and it could be better with some more work. Very nice mood!

I think the idea is there and you’re also able to convey it very much. But I feel like there is missing something to truly call it ambient or to have an ambiance.

While I really like the minimalist approach on the piano, the wind noises and strings are to much right on your face and keep the dissonance to long. My problem here isn’t having a dissonance, but there is no contrast, nothing but the dissonance. If it would have been me, I would have placed the strings farther back intro the mix and make them more subtill, so they would more act like a bad feeling on your back rather than being so notable. Though the wind noises are a nice touch, I would really have loved to hear some additional noises or pads to create a thicker atmosphere, also contrasting the high frequencies of the strings and the clanking of the piano.

Please keep in mind these are just thinks I would point out for making this more fit into my vision of Ambient or Ambiance. That doesn’t mean that your song is bad in any way. Like I said earlier you’re already half way there for a really cool song. So keep it up!

PS. Only now realizing your description. Maybe staying with stock instruments wasn’t the best call for this jam. The goal is focused on sound design and mixing. So having sounds that are working with your vision or creating those to convey it more is key. Also the ambiance part mostly lives from having loads of creative use with plugins. So while I totally with you on limiting yourself maybe this limitation did work against you for this jam ☹

I wouldn't call this minimalist ambient, there's a fair bit of instrumentation, structure, and a whole chord progression. There's very little texture, the piano feels to natural and thin with seemingly no FX or dynamics, it playing over a chord changing synth-style pad doesn't quite feel full and fleshed out either. 

I think limiting yourself to stock plugins in something minimal like bandlab hurts your production quality, especially when you're mixing on laptop speakers. There's absolutely no low end to this track, or mid-low. These's an entire lack of sub-high frequencies that make the whole track feel incredibly thin. Like it's 4 minutes of of a motif and nothing much else to carry it. 

It's not a bad track at all, it just doesn't feel like it's really finished or had much thought put into it. Embracing creative limitations doesn't mean you have to drop a hammer on your foot. You can use stock plugins but use them creatively, but something like bandlab that isn't offering you high quality stock plugins for something like ambient feels like the wrong challenge to tackle in an ambience jam. 

Either way, good work.