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A jam submission

HypothermiaView project page

Noahrav's submission for Impressions Composing Jam Ambience 3 : The Frozen Waste
Submitted by Noahrav — 8 hours, 11 minutes before the deadline
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Hypothermia's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Sense of Atmosphere#64.1054.105
Execution#73.6843.684
Overall#73.7463.746
Correlation to Theme#83.8423.842
Composing Quality#93.6323.632
Overall Uniqueness/Creativity#93.5793.579
Listenability#93.6323.632

Ranked from 19 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Link to Streaming Service (YouTube Recommended)
https://youtu.be/baD-YrHRyV0

Description of Setup (Optional but recommended)
Plugins used :

- Vital (Wind, Lead pad, Bell pluck and Strings)
- BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover (Horns)

- Wider (Stereo spread)
- Valhalla Supermassive (Reverb)
- Fruity Parametric EQ 2
- Fruity Limiter (to prevent the bass from clipping at the end)

Mixing process :

Percussions and horns have short reverb to make them sound more real and far away.

The constant wind noise is stereo-widened via the wider vst.
So is the triangle lead synth, but not as much.

the triangle synth has an eq lowering frequencies used by the bell sound in order to prevent bleeding (around 250-300 Hz)

Bell sound has a high pass filter.

the percussion breaks pan from left to right

The high strings sound at the end is panned to the left.
The horns, trombones and bass trombones are panned accordingly to their place in an orchestra.

Lessons Learned
Improvisation helps a ton for finding ideas in a short span of times. Don't hesitate too much on an idea, develop it even if it sounds odd, especially when you're in a rush.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Is supernice, even tho is not much happening instrumental wise it doesnt get stale imo, and those dune type beat drum fills at the end surly cought me off-guard. One of the best subs in here, verygj.

Developer

Ohh I just understood that verygj means very good job I was wondering seeing you saying this on every comment
Thank you for the feedback ! Yeah you're not the only one whohad this feeling, I gotta work on making my stuff feels less robotic

HostSubmitted(+1)

I also used supermassive.

I used Neoverb and supermassive to give things a near reverb and a far reverb. Initially I had them both on the same track, but when I split them and had them on separate tracks with each track on a send to them, it became way clearer, more lush and realistic. 

I feel like some spots in this get a little bit murky although it's overall pretty good, and this is exactly how I dealt with that on my track. This way, neither reverb was doing too much of the overall work, nor were they muddying each other up, and when Neoverb started to fad, supermassive would come in.

I actually made supermassive much louder on some instruments than others.

Another big thing about reverb is that you want each element to have its own delay to the reverb track.

Regardless, you've made a nice submission. Nicely done! :)

Developer

Thanks a lot for the feedback ! So what you're saying is to avoid "general" reverbs and use multiple different reverbs ? That's kinda strange because I made sure to have each track having its own reverb, though it's all the same supermassive settings

Submitted(+1)

Wow, this one is on my my favorites for sure!
Very tight mix and very cinematic / cult movie vibe!

Amazing sub, take care :3

Developer

Thanks ! I actually am listening to your submission as I'm responding lol

Submitted(+1)

This is fantastic. A really solid demonstration on a good balance of cinematic / anthematic scoring with ambient work.

The only feedback I have is the drum stings near the end sound a bit blown in. Meaning their should have either their mids are really flat in the mix and it makes them sound a little distorted and saturated. Finding the right dynamic to shave off any clipping can be a super long process. Think of a limiter like an instant compression. Zero attack time, meaning zero room to wiggle around and work with any frequency changes that are going to effect the actual track / instrument. It won't go red or appear like it's clipping, but in the mix and to some ears it's going to come across as over the dB threshhold of the rest of the tracks, especially in ambient work and the creation of ambience. It's better to find a chain that allows you to maintain a high end so your mids don't entirely take over when compression tries to compensate by boosting mids to squish the low ends. It ends up creating a sort of opposite effect.

But this is fantastic, one of my favorites in the jam. 

Developer

Thank you so much ! I'm glad you enjoyed the track that much. I have to confess that I did put a limiter on the reversed bass drop + big kick stacked thinking it would be sneaky. It just hid the problem that here was way too much bass on the kick impact. Thanks a lot for this feedback !

Submitted(+1)

You went full Blade Runner on this one, all the synt pads, giant reverb, even the big taikos ! Very cool atmosphere :)

Developer

It definitly is one of my biggest influence sound design wise ! Vangelis' synths are so simple but so elegant. It works well when you want to make something feel massive, which is what I wanted to do to represent those big mounts of ice on the painting

Submitted(+1)

That’s some brass sound, if I ever heard one. Quite literally :D.

Simply love your created brass synth sound. Your composition is simple but elegant. Just those brassy pads, a deep drone and some Kalimba like melody that paints a beautiful vista. Though I have to say it felt a bit samey. Tonally there was some buildup and change and at the end you even established some additional instruments. But I think it needed something more. Maybe having the drone changing gear and shifting it a fifth up or down and creating a more dynamic by letting those Horns roar would have kicked that changeup into a well deserved climax. Or even adding the fuller orchestral sound of the BBC Discovery for the emotional finale.

While my critique might sound a bit nagging, I need to emphasise, that you did a quite solid job and the simplicity of it was genuinely great. My critique here is just to point out what would have made it excellent in my view. So keep it up and hopefully let us see more what you’re able to do in those jams!

Developer

Thanks a lot for your feedback  I see what you mean, the climax does come a bit suddenly. I don't think it was the best to have a track this slow paced with this time limit, it does end abruptly. Your feedback really means a lot to me, so thanks again !

Submitted(+1)

I like it! Everything is mixed well I think, comes together well as a whole, nothing seemed like it was sticking out or out of balance. Works really well for the theme, and nice job using the whole 6 minutes lol. 

Developer

Thank you ! Yeah I had trouble fitting in the 6 minutes at first lol, but it is what it is