itch.io

Thanks so much, I appreciate that!

Thank you, I appreciate that! I haven't listened to the other waters soundtrack but I'll have to check it out!

Thank you so much! I'm glad the music was so immersive for you, that means a lot and I appreciate you sharing that.

Great job! This track sparkles and is very hopeful, uplifting and teases you with the idea of adventure. You did an amazing job capturing that mood. Nice work!

Thank you so much! It makes me very happy to hear that!

Great work! This music has fun and bouncy percussive elements and I like the resonating synths too. It has a great vibe, nice job!

Great work! I like the way you altered the theme for daytime and nighttime. I also really enjoyed, The Hill That Touches The Sky. Nice job!

I loved the synths you used. They were weird, sparkly, warped and detuned. You built a really fun sound world and it sounded great! Nice job!

Awesome job! Loved the video and watching you work with the hardware. The synths sounds were great and I love the sound world you built. Great work!

Great job! I like the variety, the genre's are very different but there are compositional things that tie them together which is nice. Great work!

Great work, I really like the way this track grows and evolves, it has a nice mood to it. Nice job!

Thank you! Monument Valley is a great puzzle game with a wonderful soundtrack, I appreciate the comparison a lot. Thanks!

Thank you so much! Your high praise means a lot and I'm glad how much you enjoyed it.

Thank you so much, I appreciate that a lot! I can certainly share a bit about how I wrote these pieces. My first step is always the pre-compositional process. I try to come up with a complete idea for my music and what I want it to sound like. This involved coming up with the type of game I was writing for, the purpose of the music in the game and then a very detailed description of what I want the music to sound and  feel like. Then I'll try to come up with and plan out a harmonic progression that matches the description of my music, I usually just feel that out by ear a bit. Then once I complete the plan I get to writing. I wanted some consistencies in these pieces so they sounded like they belonged together, so I used a lot of the same synths and kept the piano kinda similar. For the piano part, I didn't want it to just be like blocks of chords, I wanted them to melt together and be more blended. I treated the piano part as separate lines with each changing at it's own timing. For example, what I mean is like the base piano note moves to the next every 7 beats, then another line moves every 5, another one changes notes every 3 beats, every 2 and so one. This layered approach made for a result that was very blended and slowly changing. It also makes the moments when they do line up and play a single chord more impactful and the blended harmonies are more interesting than if there were played completely separated, however no chord is so off key from another chord that it becomes super dissonant when they overlap. Once I had the piano done I picked appropriate synths and got to work and putting a melody over the piano. Both the nigh and day themes followed a similar form where I had the ambient piano + some synth type stuff over it. Then around the middle of the piece there is a more concrete melody with stricter harmonies that don't overlap like the piano did. Then the piece ends with a fade out of a repeated melody and an increase in reverb. The layered piano party in the beginning contains fragments and intervals that end up becoming the more concrete melody later in the piece. This approach of writing fragments that then reveal themselves into a melody helped with the ambience as well as to give the piece a feeling of rising out of the ocean, revealing itself and then seeping back into the depths. Once I was done composition-wise, I got to work on editing, mixing and mastering. For me the biggest part is mixing, this is where I take a lot of my simpler sounds and process them with effects to both make them more interesting, jell them together and to bring to life my vision for the piece. A lot of my sounds I leave simpler on purpose during the compositional process because I know exactly what plug-ins I want to put on them. I like to use a lot of plug-ins made by SoundToys, I also used this Doppler plug-in on many things, like the high synth part that comes in on the beginning of, and the moon above, which gave it a very cool sound to it. I try to get a good mix of pitch content and sound design.  I don't know your level of sound production but if you are beginning I'd say the most important things to focus on are volume balance, panning and EQ. You can automate all of these as well, for example if you have an instrument track that is too loud in one section and too quiet in the other, you can automate the volume so it is lowered and then increases over time. Panning and EQ help each instrument have their own space in the mix and clears up the mud. Use EQ to great rid of unwanted frequencies, this can be automated as well. For example, if you have a piece that begins with solo guitar, you want the full frequency range of that guitar however, lets say a bass guitar comes in, now those lower frequencies will clash and muddy up the mix. So you can automate a high pass filter on the EQ and get rid of the bass on the guitar, it'll sound weird on its own but it'll sound great with the bass. It' important to train and use your ear. "Just use your ear" doesn't sound like good advice, and it surely wont give you good results immediately if your ear isn't trained. But the more you train your ear, use reference tracks, and the more you mix things, the better you'll get and the better your ear will be. If you want tips on how to train your ear I'm more than happy to share. For mastering, I can hardly say I do all to much on my own. I use Ozone 9 which has a mastering assistant tool that will do pretty much most of it for you and come up with a solid mix. I'd say it's still good to learn how to master before you rely solely on that tool, and it is important to know how to use it properly/what settings on the ai to use so it comes out right. I'll still tweak it on my own sometimes before finishing it up. I could go into a lot more detail on all of this but I've already probably wrote an overwhelming amount of information. I hope this was somewhat helpful, if you want more details on any of this feel free to reach out on discord and I'd be more than happy to chat about it on a call. This offer goes out to anyone else who participated in this jam as well if anyone else happens to read this comment. My educational background is in audio production and composition so I'm more than happy to share what I know about it. There are also a lot of great resources online, iZotope has a lot of videos on mixing and mastering on their YouTube. It typically uses their software but the skills can translate to whatever software you have, there's a lot of other content by other people too.

If you want to add me on disc, you can find me on the Lone Rabbit disc server and add me through there or just add my username directly, Captain Shafty#6517. If other people are interested we can just chat in the Lone Rabbit disc server.

Thank you for sharing, I'm glad they kept your attention!

Nailed the chip tune style, lots of great, catchy melodies that gave the right mood. Great work!

I like the glide in the lead synth, made it feel more fluid like it was moving with the ocean sounds. Great work!

Great work, I like the mood of these tracks and the instruments you used. Had some lovely melodies in there as well. Nice job!

Awesome stuff! I love how creepy the second track is and how groovy the third track is. The melodies in the third track really hit, great job!

All of it is so wonderful! I really liked, The Sky is Falling A part, it set such a lovely mood, somber and reflective. Great work!

Great work! I can definitely hear the Stardew Valley influence. These are some fun tracks, nice job!

I liked the upbeat and fun melody you had goin on. Nice job!

I enjoyed the way this track built up and the lovely melodies in the violin. Great work!

These tracks really captured the spirit of adventure on the open sea, great work! I loved the instrumentation, the motion in each piece and the melodies. Nice job!

Great work, you made a very cohesive sound track that was fun to listen to. Nice job!

I liked your adaptation of these classic works, definitely makes the fit for a video game. Nice job!

I love the retro style you went for and how cohesive all your tracks are together as one soundtrack. Great work!

Great job on this! You have a lot of great melodic ideas and the arrangement of instruments is nicely done.

Great work! I like the different versions of the themes so that way it can be programmed in as an adaptive soundtrack while the player sails. Nice job!

I liked the synths you used, they had a lot of character to them and really helped build the identity of each track. Great work!

Great work! Love the ominous and foreboding sound world you built, lots of great sound design too. Nice job!

Great work! I love how the tracks started sparse and built up with the narrative as you climb out from underground and then back to this sparse little tune for finding the wishing star. Wonderful job!

Great work! I love the melodic ideas you have through out the tracks and I love the drops and the drums. Nice job!

Fantastic job! You're tracks have wonderful production quality and are filled with fun and interesting sounds and jazzy lines. These are all very fun to listen to, great work!

Wonderful job! You made so many great tracks packed with great things and they really helped deliver the story you're trying to tell. I really liked Windy Wisps.

I really love the way this track builds up. I'm glad you were able to submit on time, it was a pleasure to listen to. Great work!

Wonderful! Great melodies and orchestration as well as clean production. Great work!

Great job! I love the mood and sparkle to Guiding Light. You built a great sound world using a lot of lovely synths and instruments that worked really well together.

Great work! I really liked, The Beginning of a Dream and Ascendio. The guitar really sets the mood and composition is quite lovely.

Nice work! I like the way you tailored the music to the narrative of your game.