These are really cool tracks and I love to see a more symphonic orchestration contrasting the large number of very synth-heavy entries. At the moment, it's a little too obvious the tracks are not performed by real instruments for my taste, but given that you didn't spend more than three hours on any of the tracks, that makes perfect sense.
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Thanks for listening and for the comment. I have to admit, limiting it to 2 hours per track only gave me barely enough time for orchestration and arrangement, but very inadequate window for mixing. That forced me to mix on the go, while orchestrating. I couldn’t really do any proper individual track mixing or even on bus level. The only thing I did after was to slap on a reverb on the stereo bus haha. But yeah I understand the limit now :)
Hopefully for what it’s worth, it shows my effort on everything minus the proper mix.
May I ask, do you have any specific track that you think is lacking if compared to the rest?
First of all, don't get me wrong, I think you did a great job at mixing, especially considering the short time frame. It's just that some instruments feel a little to unnatural to be believable.
I think the most glaring example are the bagpipes in the Barbarian's theme, where ironically I think the amount of dynamics you added to the track worked against your favour. Even though Uilleann pipes seem to allow for a little dynamics (not an expert!), usually bagpipes aren't a very dynamic instrument. Hearing them play crescendos and decrescendos in such a manner just doesn't feel very realistic.
EDIT: Another example is the brass fanfare at the end of the main theme. While I very much understand you didn't want it to be in focus too much, as a former trumpet player myself it just seems pretty unrealistic to me that brass players could play such a high fanfare without being about twice as loud as the rest of the orchestra combined. I'm exaggerating to make a point here, of course, but I hope you get the idea.
I truly agree! Thanks for pointing them out, especially the bagpipe. Honestly, I didn't know that they can't be played with much dynamics, as you can obviously tell now that I didn't do research (which I should have) on how Uilleann pipes are played and what they can do. Many thanks for pointing it out, I think after the Jam is over I will go back to remove the automations and polish it.
Same thing with the brass, yes I agree they should be much louder at the end. Given more time, I would replace it with proper brass swells patches rather than automating them. Thank you :)