itch.io

I'm still seeking a team, my discord is theturtlebox

Hi, I'm Turtlebox, an award composer who with a portfolio consisting of over 100 game jam submissions, multiple commercial releases, and a history of composing for film and television aswell.

Here is a link to my discography via BandCamp and below is a list of my successful commercial releases, as well as some award winning Gamejam projects.

GrindHouse - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/grindhouse GrindHouse aims to give game developers, producers, and sound designers a pallete of harsh and painful tones blended with the iconic padwork. Created by sampling the sounds of industrial farming equipment, various types of sheet metal, and numerous percussive elements.

Letters & Memories - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/letters-memories Letters & Memories provided game devs, producers, and sound designers a open walk through the sounds of early 200s and late 90s ambience and pads, inspired heavily by Akira Yamaoka and retro Sample CDs. Created using the exact Romplers and techniques by Yamaoka during the production of Silent Hill 1 through Silent Hill 3.

Survive - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/survive-royalty-free-save-room-collection A collection of over two dozen loops and ambience inspired by the iconic save room themes of classic Survival Horror, with influence from titles like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, and more. Created using my own mix of Analog Synths and ambient samples.

Fable Rescored - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUv8mv4w_NE&list=PL92YNWGgyTAseYuZskeweCWz21vyQVTzP a collection of orchestral tracks as part of a project in where I Rescore Fable: Anniversary. Composed entirely on my own and recorded in my home studio.

Lastly a link to my Youtube Channel, which features tutorials on sound design, rescore videos, and audio demonstrations showing off my work - https://www.youtube.com/@TurtleBoxOfficial

Hi, I'm Turtlebox, an award composer who with a portfolio consisting of over 100 game jam submissions, multiple commercial releases, and a history of composing for film and television aswell.

Here is a link to my discography via BandCamp and below is a list of my successful commercial releases, as well as some award winning Gamejam projects.

GrindHouse - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/grindhouse GrindHouse aims to give game developers, producers, and sound designers a pallete of harsh and painful tones blended with the iconic padwork. Created by sampling the sounds of industrial farming equipment, various types of sheet metal, and numerous percussive elements.

Letters & Memories - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/letters-memories Letters & Memories provided game devs, producers, and sound designers a open walk through the sounds of early 200s and late 90s ambience and pads, inspired heavily by Akira Yamaoka and retro Sample CDs. Created using the exact Romplers and techniques by Yamaoka during the production of Silent Hill 1 through Silent Hill 3.

Survive - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/survive-royalty-free-save-room-collection A collection of over two dozen loops and ambience inspired by the iconic save room themes of classic Survival Horror, with influence from titles like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, and more. Created using my own mix of Analog Synths and ambient samples.

Fable Rescored - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUv8mv4w_NE&list=PL92YNWGgyTAseYuZskeweCWz21vyQVTzP a collection of orchestral tracks as part of a project in where I Rescore Fable: Anniversary. Composed entirely on my own and recorded in my home studio.

Lastly a link to my Youtube Channel, which features tutorials on sound design, rescore videos, and audio demonstrations showing off my work - https://www.youtube.com/@TurtleBoxOfficial

Hi, I'm Turtlebox, an award composer who with a portfolio consisting of over 100 game jam submissions, multiple commercial releases, and a history of composing for film and television aswell.

Here is a link to my discography via BandCamp and below is a list of my successful commercial releases, as well as some award winning Gamejam projects.

GrindHouse - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/grindhouse GrindHouse aims to give game developers, producers, and sound designers a pallete of harsh and painful tones blended with the iconic padwork. Created by sampling the sounds of industrial farming equipment, various types of sheet metal, and numerous percussive elements.

Letters & Memories - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/letters-memories Letters & Memories provided game devs, producers, and sound designers a open walk through the sounds of early 200s and late 90s ambience and pads, inspired heavily by Akira Yamaoka and retro Sample CDs. Created using the exact Romplers and techniques by Yamaoka during the production of Silent Hill 1 through Silent Hill 3.

Survive - https://theturtlebox.itch.io/survive-royalty-free-save-room-collection A collection of over two dozen loops and ambience inspired by the iconic save room themes of classic Survival Horror, with influence from titles like Dino Crisis, Resident Evil, and more. Created using my own mix of Analog Synths and ambient samples.

Fable Rescored - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUv8mv4w_NE&list=PL92YNWGgyTAseYuZskeweCWz21vyQVTzP a collection of orchestral tracks as part of a project in where I Rescore Fable: Anniversary. Composed entirely on my own and recorded in my home studio.

Lastly a link to my Youtube Channel, which features tutorials on sound design, rescore videos, and audio demonstrations showing off my work - https://www.youtube.com/@TurtleBoxOfficial

I'm glad you really enjoyed them! 

The first track, "Sand and Towers", is the better of the two. It's the one I set up with the hopes that if people only listened to the first track of my submission that they would get the best of what's being presented. I made an effort to keep it atmosphereic and texture based while holding a structure (5/4 122bpm)  that would be listenable by the overall participants of the jam, many of who I wouldn't expect to hear something purely ambient and atmosphereic and rate it highly. More importantly I wanted a track that fit a more "main menu" or "introduction" to the sort of world we see in the painting. Not a main theme or anything, but just something more so inspired by Half-Life era menu ambience.

The second track is much more in line with non-structured ambience, There's no set bpm or time signature. It's just a layering of samples and atonal droning that in a game dev sense would work much better for actual level ambience. We're in the painting now, not just viewing it and speculating but we're hearing the sounds of the world, which don't typically end up being fully musical or listenable. 

All of the effects (reverb, delay, ect) were recorded via analog devices. 

Each song has two versions of each track, one of two passes. One with the dry channel's lifted, and a second with the FX / Wet channel's lifted instead. This was done to create two uniquely different passes of each track, one with the intention of existing as a baseline and the other to be the foundation of the texture and design space. 

Recording this way does have it's drawbacks, especially when giving myself 12 hours to record and 12 to produce / mix. But I chose to lean into the muddyness and grain and attempt to include it into the track as part of an essense of the world building. The grainy and rough verbs alluding to the sanded down rust and stone of the world presented in the painting. Hollow yet full of Tetanus. 

Had I done this digitally, I think I just would have given each track it's own individual verb channel, but kept the delays to one bus to stop the effect heard here with the Darkstar, the panning / ping ponging some folks didn't really like. Doing something like seperating the verb busses and running different FX sends through them, like one chain for time modulation, one for other verbs, one for delays, ect. Then a way to tighten it all and keep the juice without straining all the pulp if that makes sense. 

I think in one of the next jams I'm going to do a Dev log, maybe 2 hours recorded from each 12 hour day. Showing and explaining decisions being made, pedal choices and why I chose them, amp choices, VST / Synth choices, ect. A lot of people always ask about super specific stuff when I do these, especially in the realm of creating music that just sounds dirty while, like you said, still sounding professional. 

Like always I appreciate your feedback and hosting of these events. Thank you for taking a listen to my submission.

I'm very confused about the argument that you cannot pay an artist therefore you use AI generated art for a Composing jam where art is provided to us for free without cost. But to each their own. 

Thank you! I'm really happy you had a good listening experience!

This is pretty nice. Really gets the video game ambience thing across well. Things like Artic Swells, Frozen Strings, and Tundra Atmos are three of my all time go to instruments for ambient production. They're both subtle in the mix but powerful sounds when it comes to sculpting ambience.

Great work.

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. 

I'm glad you enjoyed it! 

The existing samples I used were from Natural Pain (https://theturtlebox.itch.io/natural-paint-a-haunted-strings-ambience-collection) and GrindHouse (https://theturtlebox.itch.io/grindhouse)

The samples created just for this jam won't be released outside of my patreon (At least I don't think so yet, have to decide what's happening there. I don't even remember how many I made just for this, I was hoping my submission page had a reference to the number somewhere. But I think each track has one or two from the above mentioned packs, and then 5 or 6 created just for the tracks themselves. Things like wet marbles rolling on a cold spring, the motor humm of one of my wood routers, my favorite was my feet dragging against the track of my treadmil. 

I appreciate your feedback and thoughts, as always. 

Nice minimalist vibes here. It rides a line between ambience and non-traditional compositions that I think works really well. Structured orchestral elements with nice nuanced reverbs and atmosphere layered in a lovely way with some nice textured precussions. 

Good work. 

This isn't a bad track at all, theres a bit of randomness to the actual notation that makes the melodies and composition seem a but uneasy and unstructured, not quite like just random notes are being pressed but more so like the tracks sort of just becomes pads and atmos around those tones and not quite the other way around. Typically with creating ambience / ambient music the primary foot forward should be that space and atmosphere, things like melodies, motifs, even traditional composition sequencing aren't really at the front. 

The way track 1 plays directly into track 2 is perfect, really great cut there and the mixing is consistent between both tracks. The only thing I do notice is there's really nothing in the higher range of dynamics here, which makes the track seem so much more darker and industrial than the reference picture provided. 

Pretty good pieces, good work.

Really nice atmosphere, probably one of the better mixed submissions here if not the best. This whole track makes me want to give Phase Plant another chance, I wasn't a massive fan of it before. 

It's always nice to see collaborations in these jams, it's cool seeing what two good minds can put out and create. 

Kind of sucks to forget the rules after getting feedback I guess. Sorry it breaks the rules, but I'm glad you had fun.

It's impossible for us to rate your song as part of this jam if the song is not finished or even released yet. I hope you understand that. 

Fairly big fan of this until it sort of becomes an instrumental piece near the end. It's also very low on the volume side of things at some portions compared to others. The foley work is great, but the overall volume and panning could use a lot of work.

Huge heads up dude, it is straight up against the rules to update / reupload your submission during the jam...

You haven't finished your submission yet? I'm a bit confused. Did you link the rest of your music because your submission wasn't finished in time? 

I like this submission a lot, both tracks really tetter on the line between cinematic scoring and ambient sound design. It's a functional scored track that still creates space and texture without going far enough into one direction where one becomes overshadowed. 

Great pieces. 

I like this submission a lot, both tracks really tetter on the line between cinematic scoring and ambient sound design. It's a functional scored track that still creates space and texture without going far enough into one direction where one becomes overshadowed. 

Great pieces. 

I'm a little confused, your link takes us to a bandcamp page which doesn't seem to have anything visably related to 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.

Fairly alright submission. The chose of synths doesn't quite come across as ambient to me or invoke the images of the art provided. They also seem to have clashing frequencies, especially when the clarinet comes in. There's never quite a spot where the track feels like it's creating space for ambience or providing sound design that creates a sense of space or room. The chords come in predictably, they don't seem to be individually EQ'd which makes everything sound like it's squished down into a low-mid space without any panning to create a more dynamic range. 

Lastly, all but one instrument just cutting out slight of abrupt at the 4 minute mark only for the track to continue the same loop for another minute didn't really help considering the instrument chosen has a very audible high frequency pinch that's apparent through the last minute, creating an unfortunate dog whistle like effect. 

It's a very nice piece, but going forward I would heavily invest as much time, if not more, into mixing and producing than composing. 

Really nice sound design work. It fits the ambient themes and painting quite nicely. The only thing I would want to discussion on is the mixing. It's quite clashy. The Low to Mid-low range has a lot of disruptive clipping in some portions, and there seems to be a mid / mid-high compression that's causing things like the pad and mallet-esq instrument to clash, specifically near the end of the track where some portions become grainy and muddy. If this was intentional, or you want to intentionally create sounds like this, it's typically advised to pinch your dynamics and isolate individual frequencies and split the ones that clash so you have a much more vibrant and wider range of dynamics. 

This is otherwise a fantastic submission.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it! 

I experimented with some FM bass patches for the first track. The oscillation from what would have driven that bass is what I ended up running with for the really subtly melody in track 2. I felt like stepping more away from progressive / traditional composition and just highlighting sound design was my goal here from the start and I tried to avoid things that would have had made me feel like I was scoring and composing versus creating a soundspace. 

Really great work here, really fits the theme and tone of the jam. The texture and spaces you've created sound both harsh and lovely at the same time. They create an image and story that fit the reference art and themes. Great work.

A bit more leaning into industrial than ambient, but I really like how consistent the sound and tone is throughout both tracks. Really solid work.

Feels much more anthematic and orchestral than ambient, but the bits and pieces of ambience thrown in are nice, I just feel like there are portions where there's a bit to much movement and intensity for this to really click with the theme of the jam for me. 

Overall great composition though.

I don't really see this fitting into the theme music at all, it doesn't really mirror the art and doesn't really fit the ambience direction of the jam at all. It's certainly not a bad track, but it just feels very thin and dry. There could have been more uses of pads, both in the high and low end of the mix to at least give it a sense of ambience and space. 

Good work though.

Some of the instruments, especially the vox, are way to loud in some parts. This doesn't feel ambient or close to the theme either, it sort of just feels like a dance loop with a single repeating vocal hit put over it. For a track over 6 minutes there should have really been some more movement if the direction you were taking was dance loop + Llama style vox. This isn't really a bad track, the vocal hits are just randomly thrown around and their changing velocity is a real distraction and makes it a bit hard to listen to at higher volumes. 

Pretty far from ambient, but it's certainly not a bad track. I don't feel like it fits the theme at all either. It's a pretty tech heavy track that's primary focus is the synth leads. I think had the track played out much slower with more of a focus on the pads and fx it would have been a closer fit to the ambient theme. The mix itself also feels a bit thin, some dynamic ranges would have helped a lot.

Either way, great composition here. Good work.

Where can we listen to this? I don't see a link for the submission anywhere. 

Feels incredibly too orchestral for an ambience jam in my opinion. The bass notes running through feel a bit stiff and lacking dynamics. The instrument choice isn't bad at all, BBC Orchestra is a fantastic suite, but I wouldn't use it exclusively composing ambience. There's a strong lack of ambient traits here, very little atmosphere, texture, or grain. It just sounds like a (rather nice) orchestral piece. Also the one bass note at the end sort of just retriggers out of nowhere it seems. 

First, you should add the soundcloud link to the description here. It'll help people find it much easier.

Second, this track is incredibly loud and (I mean this in a professional way) a little hard to listen to. Every instrument seems individually compressed and it created a very strong saturation. It's not really a bad piece of music, but there's so many clashing frequencies and in some segments the dissonance is seemingly more unintentional than inspired.

I'd love to hear how this sounds with a proper mix though, it's not bad at all. 

This doesn't quite feel ambient at all. Sort of feels more along the lines of sequence based synth work. I don't really get frozen tundra or any of the art piece for the jam in this track. It feels to digital and some of the structure seems more anthematic than ambient. Not a bad song at all, just doesn't come across as in line with the theme or tone of the jam. 

This isn't really a bad track at all. I like the use of more analog-esq synths. I feel like they're quite thin though on top of not really creating ambience but more serving as a device to deliver melodies, nice ones for what it's worth.

I feel like spacing out the synth melody would have helped a lot, same goes for the piano in the beginning. Everything that makes this track stand out in a jam like this is hidden behind the piano and synth lead. 

Otherwise though, not a bad piece of composed work at all. I think if you're going to use the full six minutes on 1 track it's better to have something that takes advantage of all of that time instead of uses it to create what feels a bit like two tracks just padded into one. 

If you're in the discord for this community you should swing by. I'll be around for another 15 minutes or so, would love to chat with you more there. 

Let me know if you do, I'd be happy to hear how you expand on and improve this!