itch.io

Thank you, sincerely, for such a kind comment!

I do feel like I've been getting better as well, even if it's in small increments.  These jams have been a huge part of my improvements in every way, and I can't wait to come back for more!

I also appreciate you leaving feedback. Just for my curiosity, does making something punchier have more to do with EQ? Compression? Both, or something else entirely?  While I can't do much about vocals I would like to keep getting better at writing and mixing drums/percussion parts!

Thanks again, good sir! :)

Thank you a ton! Explosions is actually one of my favorites, so I'm glad that influence comes through in my work.

Thanks a ton for listening :)

Thank you a ton, Einel!!

And thanks for leaving feedback as well. Yeah I'd probably agree with what you said here. I think I originally had the sections a little more balanced volume- and dynamics-wise, but I was worried that the effect wouldn't be as impactful. That second point is an interesting idea, hadn't thought about that before. I'll give that a try next jam.

Thanks for taking the time to listen :)

That is so so kind of you - I sincerely appreciate you taking the time not only to listen to my work but also leave such a wonderful comment :)

It really makes my day to read such a thoughtful comment about my work from other musicians. I sincerely appreciate this!

And thank you for taking the time to listen :)

I don't really have any feedback here, I just wanted to stop by and say these are lovely.

Thanks for sharing these, and keep up the good work :)

Hey there! Thanks a ton for leaving such a nice comment!

I appreciate you leaving feedback as well. Just curious, and for future reference, was there a particular part of the track that you thought the mixing could be better?

Thanks again for taking the time to listen :)

Appreciate it!

Looking back I think when I was working on this I was primarily focused on making this track fairly guitar-focused (since that's mostly all I'm good at lol), but yeah I'd probably agree I could've incorporated synths and pads a little more throughout. Or at least do more part writing for them.

Thanks for taking the time to listen :)

Dang dude this was absolutely lovely! The vibes are top notch and the time signature changes were a really nice touch.

While I enjoyed the melody in your voice, I really like the part writing you did in your guitar tracks especially with the voice leading in the distorted sections. My only real bit of criticism, which may just be my personal taste, is that I might consider experimenting with different tones for some of those distorted lead lines near the end. To me each part sounds a little treble-ly and I would probably try playing with a darker/more neck pickup-sounding tone even if for the sake of variety.

Listening to the instrumental track makes me think I could really do more with the space in my own mixes, there's always so many little details in your work that I could probably hear something new every time I hear it.

Thanks for sharing this, and keep up the good work :)

P.S. all hail space duck

Hello! If anyone is still in need of someone to take care of the music, I'm available and looking to help!

I've been on Itch for a little over a year now and have participated in numerous music/game jams of all kinds. Primarily I focus on guitar-based ambient and rock music. Here you can find a small playlist of my work for music jams, and here you can find my work on previous game jams.

Please feel free to ping me here or on Discord ('grunt._55644') if you think what I do could work for your project :)

P.S. I'm in EST timezone.

Thank you, Eetu!! Ngl those took a LOT longer than I thought they would, so I'm glad someone appreciates them 😅

And thanks for listening :)

On it - thanks for letting me know!

Hey there!

If anyone is still in need of someone to take care of the music, I'm available and looking to help!

I've been on Itch for a little over a year now and have participated in numerous music/game jams of all kinds. Primarily I focus on guitar-based ambient and rock music. Here you can find a small playlist of my work for music jams, and here you can find my work on previous game jams.

Please feel free to ping me here or on Discord ('grunt._55644') if you think what I do could work for your project :)

P.S. I'm in EST timezone.

Oh jeez I'm sorry to hear that. If you are on Discord, you can ping me ('grunt._55644') and I may be able to send you a submission link to put it back in. However I don't know if you'll get to see your ratings or not.

Thank you! <3

Hey there - please add a URL link to a playlist where your work can be streamed (YouTube, Soundcloud, etc.). This is one of the rules written down at the beginning of the jam. Plus, it will make listening and giving feedback on your work much easier for everyone.

Alright good sir, I've reached your submission. I don't have much to talk about on the production side of things - that tends to be your strength, and it's lovely here, so I'll try to focus my comment elsewhere.

I actually quite like this method of composition for you and your vision for this submission. While this process might have been rushed on your end, and potentially without a fair bit of improvisation, I think this lack of a consistently clear structure really gives this music a fluidity to it that I have not always heard from you in the past. For me this rushed process of yours was most beneficial to 'A Feel in Echo' - I could be wrong, but I don't remember too many tracks of yours where you have a repeating rhythm underneath the majority of the runtime for the track. What I like about it is that it allowed you to explore little ideas/textures here and there (another of your strengths, I think) that keep things interesting and solidify the idea of exploring the unknown, which maybe wouldn't have made the final cut given other circumstances (or if you'd seen my emails about the deadline ;) ).

I personally think 'A Touch in Silence' may funnily enough be one of my favorite tracks I've heard from you, at least from a storytelling and emotional perspective. To me this track sets the tone for the submission very well by making me feel lost and floating through space. It fits so well thematically because it could be the soundtrack to the beginning or the end of a journey. I'm glad this was the opening music.

This brings me to my main critique, which you already alluded to - development, or at times lack thereof. To me this was most apparent in 'A Thought in Orbit' - there was excellent build up and a really cool couple of motifs in the second half of the piece that didn't seem to go very far IMO. It's probably the only thing stopping me from giving full marks for composition.

Alright, enough of me rambling. Lots of cool stuff here, and I'll be curious to hear how you incorporate this method into your future tracks (if you do at all). Thanks for sharing what you've made, and keep up the good work :)

This was an excellent bit of storytelling. From start to finish I could sit back and feel like I was drifting through the galaxy. Your usage of unique harmonic movements and empty space was a great choice for this submission as a whole. I think track 3 was probably my favorite, as I feel it best captures how I'd imagine how I'd feel from an emotional perspective.

My main piece of feedback I'd like to share is to be careful with how loud you record your piano, as there's a bit of clipping going on in the fourth track (0:47 was the instance I heard). Additionally, I think I would've preferred the first track to fade out a bit instead of cutting off early.

Thanks for sharing what you made, and keep up the good work :)

Aww jeez I really appreciate that! <3

I would definitely be interested in putting another jam like this together later on, as I've got a couple ideas for themes and challenges I'd be excited to explore. I'll probably reach out to people first to try and gauge their level of interest in participating in something like this again.

This was a cool submission - pretty different stylistically from what I've heard so far!

Lots of lovely details sprinkled throughout, and your melody writing was excellent (especially in the first 2 tracks). There were also some interesting bits of harmony in track 1 that was cool to hear.

I think the main piece of feedback I'd like to share has to do with the balance between the drums and everything else. As I've mentioned there are quite a few instances of nice harmony/melody writing, but it felt drowned out by the drums at times. For me track 3 probably had the best balance between the instruments, even though the kick was still a little too prominent in the mix IMO.

The other thing I wanted to mention was that I felt tracks 1 & 5 were a little static in terms of their respective energy. For me this might be due to hearing some part of the drum kit for the majority of the track. I might suggest you try having more sections where the drum's presence is very minimal or gone entirely, and then build up or bring them back over time. Maybe this is a matter of personal taste, but I think having a little more variation like that keeps things interesting throughout the track's duration.

Thanks for sharing what you came up with, and keep up the good work :)

Hey there! This was such a fun album to listen to - I think your melody writing in each track was lovely, and the little sound design you used was a nice touch. Time signature changes were awesome, and I also adored the glitchy aspect of the second track, super unique sound that really adds to the strangeness of space travel.

I think my main overarching feedback here is:

1.) I would've liked to have heard just a little more development in the composition's structure, especially in the first two tracks. IMO having a bit more variation, either in the melody or in the arrangement behind it, could help keep the interest going compared to looping the melody as it was originally stated. Not to say there's anything wrong with repetition from time to time.

2.) Outside of the trumpet melody and use of odd time signatures, I don't personally hear the cosmic horror elements too often in this submission. To me the melody gives off a mysterious vibe that's very fitting, and the glitchy or odd time signatures reinforce that as well, but I think if the harmony was a little darker in tone (mostly in the latter two tracks) it could also add more of an element of being hopeless or dangerous IMO. Maybe even throw in some crunchy harmonic extensions as well. At least that's what I would personally want to hear for a track titled 'The Gravity That Pulls Life'.

Just my two cents. Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work :)

I'm gonna preface my comment by saying that chiptune music is not really something I'm familiar with, so take my feedback with a grain of salt.

I think you did a good job at making this album feel coherent in tone and composition. Each track contributes something different in the submission as a whole, yet their instrumentation is pretty similar. I can hear this full soundtrack playing in an old-school RPG or something similar. I liked that you attempted to put together music with odd time signatures, especially on 'Uncharted Territory'. It really helped keep things interesting.

With that being said, my main critique of this is that I would've liked to have heard some additional instruments or textures at some point in this submission. You change it up a little in 'Warp Drive' and 'Stranded on a Desolate Planet', but I think my ears wanted more variation still. Maybe that's just the nature of chiptune music, I don't know (again, not very familiar with this genre).

Also, in the future, please have the URL link go directly to a playlist where your work can be streamed. It makes the rating process much easier.

Thanks for sharing this, and keep up the good work :)

I think you captured the theme sooo very nicely in this submission!

I also think you did good in matching the tone of your story with the music. Your first track does have this dream-like quality to it in the beginning that hints at the idea of space travel feel mysterious, and breaks into this really cool, almost a call-to-action vibe at the end, leading nicely into 'godspeed'. I think your third track is probably my favorite, just because it captures what my feelings would be if I were in space - 'dang it's huge, where should we go first?'. Very cool stuff.

My main piece of feedback would be that I personally would've liked to have heard you lean more into the dreamy, mysterious quality in your first track. Whenever I think of dream sequences in movies or video games there tend to be sections of the music that feature some weirder harmony that could've reinforced that idea in your track IMO.

Thanks for sharing what you got, and keep up the good work :)

Hey there!

Thank you for letting me know! Just please be sure to include those as soon as you can, and feel free to reach out if you have any issues attaching them to your submission. ^^

Hey everyone!

As of now, the voting period has begun! Over the next two weeks, please take some time to listen to the work of your fellow composers. Leave a rating and, more importantly, leave them with some good feedback.

Some things to think about when reviewing submissions:

- You can be critical of someone's work in a respectful manner. Try to balance your feedback between what you liked and what you feel the composer could improve on. Including both of these aspects are going to make them better, but be mindful in how you present your opinions to each other.

- Try your best to be articulate in your comments to others. Talk about why you liked or didn't like certain aspects of a composer's work, and think about how that might relate back to the jam's theme or the story laid out in the individual submission. Not only can this help the composer understand whether or not they hit their mark, but it can also help us attach emotions and meaning to a particular sound, which can also make us better composers too.

Just some food for thought. And again, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the voting process or the jam in general.

Have a great day everyone :)

Hey there!

If each track still exceeds the minimum two-minute runtime, then that's totally fine with me. Just please be sure to make some indication of where each track begins and ends. ^^

Hey there!

So the answer is both - wav files in order to actually submit a project on Itch, and a link to a streaming service so that your music can be listened to more conveniently.

This is a neat little track - respect for putting this together in one night. So I have a couple pieces of feedback after a couple of listens:

1.) This track could really use some bass, or any kind of lower frequencies. As others have mentioned it's fairly thin, which think kinda hurts the impact of this piece IMO. 

2.) This may be a matter of taste and personal preference, but overall I think the tone of this track could've been darker to better fit the theme of the jam. When I listen to this I hear this being more fitting for a shop or forest theme more-so than a scrapyard/junkyard/dumpster fire. I think if you change the key signature of the track it might be a better fit for the theme IMO.

Just my two cents, keep up the good work :)

Pretty cool stuff you put together! Really happy to hear others writing for guitar in this jam.

I think for the most part this is pretty fitting for the jam's theme - stylistically this is what I think of when thinking about the theme. I'd agree with others that the change in rhythm was a really nice touch with this peace.

Something I might've done different personally would be to have the bells a little harsh or detuned, as they're a bit too pretty as they are IMO. Additionally, I think I would've liked to hear the guitars a little more prominently in the mix. When the bells and horns come in they can get a little drowned out at times (especially noticeable around the 1 minute mark), so you could potentially adjust the volume/mixing of the instruments to have the guitars stand out a little more.

Thanks for sharing this, and keep up the good work :)

The melodies between the guitar and the piano were pretty neat, and the beat was pretty solid.

Personally I would've liked to have heard a bit more variation in general. Maybe that's a stylistic choice, but I think there could've been some other ideas to be explored in a ten-minute track IMO. Looping ideas, or coming back to your original ideas is cool but at some point I kinda wanted to hear some other stuff too after awhile.

Keep up the good work :)

This is probably one of the more 'scrapyard' submissions I've heard so far. The machinery as the percussion was really cool, and the odd time signature felt very fitting for this kinda sound. Nice interpretation of the theme.

My main piece of feedback is that I would've liked to have heard a little more variation in the melody. The initial statement is cool, but I think if you changed it up each iteration it would keep it interesting. Like if you adjusted the melody to play over different harmony, or changed up the syncopation every so often would have a fairly big impact on maintaining interest IMO.

Thanks for sharing what you've got, keep up the good work :)

Neat stuff you got here! Feels very reminiscent of an old-school RPG in a way.

I liked the way you shaped the melody throughout the piece and had it move around to different instruments frequently, which kept things interesting. There was also a nice touch of chromatic notes and interesting harmony as well.

While I do like what you've submitted here by itself, I'm not entirely sure how this fits into the theme of this jam, especially since there's not really any context to go off of. If I had to give my two cents here, I'd probably suggest to try leaning into the scrapyard/gears idea a little bit more, either with samples or instruments that might fit the theme a little better.

Thanks for sharing this, and keep up the good work :)

Hey there everyone!

If any of you guys are having trouble with the Chaconne requirement, consider taking a listen to my favorite example of this style of writing.

What I like about this piece is how the repeated musical phrase, first stated in the low brass, is passed around in the orchestra to different instruments and Holst uses that to create some really cool changes in tone and texture. Not to mention that the repeated phrase is fairly prominent throughout, which is partly why I think this is such a good example of the structure.

Hey there!

So I adjusted the phrasing of the rules to say that no part of your submission should utilize AI or similar tech. That would include dialogue.

If you're still interested in using dialogue in your submission, there are quite a few voice actors on Itch that may be willing to help you. I've personally heard some good work done by voice actors throughout my time on this site, so I would suggest this as an alternative to AI that'd be accepted here.

Absolutely! So long as your team follows the rules of the jam then you can participate.

Once you and your team (keep in mind the 3-person limit!) are finished with whatever you want to submit, you can add the collaborators as admins on your itch project in the Dashboard. So when your editing your project, go to More --> Admins, and follow the instructions there. That way everyone gets credit.

I'm gonna suggest that you find a way to ensure each track you submit follows the minimum runtime. Otherwise if I don't stay firm to the rules then other people might ask for exceptions  and it just wouldn't make sense given the length of this jam.

You should still be able to edit your submission with new iterations of your tracks.

Additionally, looking at your submission, I would also suggest you add a link to an actual streaming service (not just your Itch account). That way others can more easily listen to your music.

Hey there!

I'd very much prefer it if you did not use AI to generate any component of your submission, including the album art. There are quite a few sites that are dedicated to public domain images that would be suitable for this (I actually use these for all of my own submissions!).

I'm gonna edit the language in the rules section to be more specific. Thanks for your question ^^