Description
This soundtrack started with a story about a child from a fishing village and a mysterious girl standing in water, which was inspired by the theme and a stay at the Baltic Sea I had recently.

You can read the full story on the project page or the descriptions of tracks on streaming services.

I decided to program very few elements of the compositions onto a grid and instead tried to capture spontaneous performances with my acoustic guitar or midi controller and then layered these.
I was surprised how many cool things can happen if you allow yourself to experiment and how serendipity can make an entire track (see the story behind GIANT ROBOTIC EEL WITH LASER EYES).
I also learned, that it is great fun to experiment and generate ideas, but it is equally important to take ideas further, to arrange them into cohesive pieces, pace them out and make them the best they can be. I feel like I did not fully succeed with this yet, but it opened my eyes to a whole new aspect about the creation of music I am eager to explore in the future.

1. Mirrorlake
The piano part in this song starts playfully and then slows down, forming a sort of questionmark or feeling of hesitance - I think in my head I heard "Married Life" from the "Up" Soundtrack by Michael Giacchino where something similar happens.
The harp and cello parts were improvisations and became these kind of cool countermelodies so I left them in.
The end shifts suddenly in tone to illustrate the moment when you first witness the serene beauty of mirrorlake. I also added some noise that emulates the sound of waves.

2. Girl Standing In Water
This track was born out of a pretty random Massive X synthesizer setting run through a reverb that made this cool sound that felt like a distant orchestra or voices. The Glockenspiel and rising bass add some ominous atmosphere as you encounter your mirror image for the first time and get dragged underwater.

3. In The Kelp
I decided to use a lot more electronic sounds for the underwater sections to give them an alien and otherworldly feel. Something about percussion makes me think of townscapes and I imagined the kelp fields to be full of life with many strange creatures.

4. Salty Premonition
This was my attempt at creating something really dissonant and scary by layering two acoustic guitars. There is a scratch I made with a guitar pick across the strings at the end, which turned out nice and spooky.

5. GIANT ROBOTIC EEL WITH LASER EYES
Certainly the track I had the most fun creating, I slapped a lot of elements together and pushed them around until the final mix emerged. The rising synth and impacts illustrate the eel charging its laser and firing. Electronic bleeps and blubs suggest the robotic nature of the eel.
Interestingly, this track got started by a total accident: I wanted to pull some midi notes onto something like a piano but instead put the notes onto a drum track - upon playback, the sounds were just right in the drum track to give these robotic noises, which then inspired the whole idea of the robotic eel encounter :D.

6. Wild Waters
This track kind of marks the emotional low point of the OST and I tried to incorporate the opening motif of "Mirrorlake" by now playing it in a minor key with the Glockenspiel. The rest is an acoustic guitar and a piano which were recorded quite sponteanously.

7. Evening Breeze
The final track started with the acoustic guitar part which felt extremely calming to me when I played it. I was searching for a melody and tried to find it by whistling. In the end, I did not put the whistled melody onto an instrument, but instead layered it two more times, pitch-shifted it and panned it around.
I think the whistling is quite funny and ends the whole adventure on a calm, introspective but also absurd and comical note.


My recording setup was basically:

Ableton Live 11,
a Duke acoustic guitar,
a Zoom H5 handy recorder as an audio interface
and an Arturia microlab Midi controller

I have never properly tried to compose and produce music before and only made short bits for game jams. This project made me incredibly excited to make more music and I am very thankful the jam exists.

Message from the artist
Create music! It is one of the best things a human can do!

Theme

Inside my world

Picture theme

How does it fit the theme?
This is a soundtrack for an adventure game set at a lake, which features a little girl who drags you into her underwater world.

Link(s) of the submission on streaming services
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq4mRRbWaFx72rmvoKMSIrRlxT67JsOA0

https://soundcloud.com/prospero-612157814/sets/mirrorlake

https://pbits.bandcamp.com/album/mirrorlake

Number of tracks
7

Genre

Soundtrack use permission

Yes (CC BY)

Any project