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Squeak Incantatum (Snowly's Music Festival Jam Album)'s itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Composition | #1 | 4.727 | 4.727 |
| Quality | #1 | 4.818 | 4.818 |
| Overall | #1 | 4.659 | 4.659 |
| Correlation to theme | #2 | 4.545 | 4.545 |
| Creativity | #3 | 4.545 | 4.545 |
Ranked from 11 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Theme
Correlation to theme
For this enemy encounter theme, I was inspired by the deceivingly playful aesthetic of the :) Friend enemy. While horror is not my usual genre, I felt that this was a good time to try it out! I also had to stay loyal to Team Bird, of course. The backstory I imagined was that Fr:)end is a lonely spirit being who lives in an underground tunnel maze. It calls out for people to join it using the bells on its head, but Fr:)end is far from friendly. It enjoys people in a different kind of way, a satiating way. This enemy encounter occurs while you are in the underground tunnels where your quest has led you. Compositionally, I decided to try a different approach to emphasize the "creativity" aspect of my music. I imagined an entire cut-scene that plays to introduce the enemy and tried my hand at recording and sound design to capture the feeling of the scene. Musically, I wanted to have the bells be a focal point of the project given that they are a characteristic feature of this enemy. I also practiced sound design in the different musical elements I used to compose this track. This theme is able to loop, but for the sake of time, I included one loop through only. I hope you enjoy! If you are easily spooked, maybe turn a light on first...
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https://soundcloud.com/user-639826435/for-friend-the-bells-toll
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Comments
that intro sequence had no need to be that scary wtf
great song as always!
Haha, mission accomplished! Thank you for listening!
HOLY SHIT! This was fucking awesome!
I was so curious to see your entry since, indeed, you've not made a horror song yet. And no, 'Boneyard Bash' and 'The Hallowed Showdown' don't really count - they are more joyfully spooky than haunting. And damn, you really analyzed the shit out of horror songs, didn't you? The eerie sounds in the beginning, including strings, sudden cutoffs, breathing, etc. work amazing. I am so gonna learn from this song!
And hell yes, you incorporated odd time signatures like me! Don't think I wouldn't notice, I am the king of time signatures among my peers ;). Let's see if I spotted them all on the second listen:
0:41: 4/4
1:22: 5/4
1:28: 11/4
1:44: 4/4 again
1:55: 5/4 again
2:02 4/4 again
Odd time signatures fit boss fights like a glove, and I love it when people dare to use them... and use them well! It adds a little unsettling feeling to the whole fight.
(I noticed in hindsight that I can see your time signatures in your DAW. I see I missed some. I didn't change my list above afterwards though.)
This is why I love your songs so much: they are the single most inspirational pieces of music I can think of. You always nail a theme, without exception, and execute it so flawlessly. The result is a high-quality song, perfect for learning from! Whenever I need to make a horror theme, know that I will definitely use this as inspiration!
PS: I see you color-coded your DAW! Looks way clearer. I hope it helps to keep an overview as well. But damn, 142 tracks...?? How do you keep track of that xD. I always keep my number of tracks at 10 or lower or I'll lose focus haha!
Thank you so much for listening and for this great comment! I agree, those other tracks are Halloween tracks, but this is different - my goal was for more of a visceral experience while listening. Odd time signatures are something that I don’t explore all that often and this seemed like a good time to do it! Great job identifying most of them!
Given that you also used different time signatures in your track, I’m curious if you run into the same issue as me? In Logic, if I set a different time signature but then want to add more space at the beginning of the song, for example, I can’t just select all the tracks and move them - instead you have to do that and then manually change the time signature hoping that it is able to line up well with the track marker. I’m assuming that there must be an easier way to move time signatures around, but honestly it’s been a deterrent for me exploring more creative time signatures in my projects.
Regarding my track count, thankfully no I didn’t have 142 tracks! For some reason when I load an electronic drum kit, it loads each separate instrument within the track stack and adds 15-20 extra tracks per instance. So still a fair amount of tracks but not that bad. The color coding is fun, but so far I’ve been forgetting about it until after the fact and then I change it to make it look pretty. There are probably several different things about Logic that I don’t know about or don’t do that would help streamline my workflow. If you ever find out any more cool tricks, please share!
Hey :)
I also struggle so now and then with adding new time signatures in Logic. I am currently working on diving into it some more and figuring out some tips and tricks - if I have some, I'll let you know through Discord!
Ah, you're right. I also get a lot of tracks when I use an electronic drum kit. I never noticed that until a few days ago. And I understand that color coding isn't in your system yet. That's why I let Logic automatically set the colors of all tracks to be different. It helps me not only distinguish between tracks, but I can also select multiple tracks and open them in the piano roll editor, and the notes of the different tracks will be colored by the track color! (At least, if you have set the colors to show "region colors" instead of the default "velocity colors"!)
Of course, I am new to Logic, and that means that I am very eager to look into every aspect of it. I write everything down too. So I might send you some useful tips soon, when I have something concrete to share :)
i want to see a movie of Fr:)end
amazing i love the horror aspect and it fits so well very cool track would love to hear more ^-^
Haha, I'm not sure I would want to see a movie of this character with how scary I imagine it... :) Thank you for listening and for commenting!
Great composition, as usual! But even though you've changed genres, your music remains solid and the atmosphere is perfectly conveyed.
I think everyone will have noticed the excellent sound design work, which creates tension right from the start.
It has an effect that you put behind two transitions (at the very beginning of the music and at 1'54") where the sound of breathing stutters, which really makes it feel like a movie.
Well done, as always. Team Bird is sure to score a point with you :)
Thank you so much for listening and providing such a kind comment. I really like that effect that you are referring to. Logic has a default plugin that automatically gates your sound at whatever speed you want based on the tempo and I was having fun playing around with that to create a tension-filled stuttery riser using a reversed cymbal hit as my base sound. I enjoyed reading your comments on everyone else’s submissions as well. Thank you for commenting on my submission and also for your commitment to providing feedback to everyone!
What a cool track! The sound design of the cut scene made it easy for me to visualize the story. And then the battle music is epic and intense. I like how you mixed up the rhythms to make the 8 count go from a straight rhythm to feeling like a 3+3+2, and then smoothly switched between that and other combinations of 3s and 2s to give us some odd time signatures that felt so seamless I didn't catch it on first listening. The odd rhythms give the feeling of keeping you on your toes without sticking out.
I love how you used the creepy minor third bell motif. In the beginning it feels diegetic and ambient, and then it's brought into the music. It made stacking the minor 3rds to get that Bb-G in the violin melody work to sound creepy without sticking out as too dissonant or out of place. All the melodies and harmonies worked together. The only tiny detail I could possibly nitpick is that my ears didn't like the high overtones riding along with one of the repeating 16th note bell sounds.
Awesome work!
You have a great ear! Thank you so much for listening so closely (and it sounds like multiple times too). The time signatures were a fun challenge and mostly were made up of 5/4, 4/4, and 11/4 (really just alternating 6/4 and 5/4). I appreciate you noticing the minor third and how the G-E and Bb-G relate. This was one of the ways I was trying to make the Locrian sound stick - which it turns out is fairly challenging to make a diminished chord feel like the root chord. I really was trying to stay away from using a B natural, but I couldn't help it in one of my melodies... Oh well, I will surrender to the modal enforcers. :) Thank you for the feedback about the bell overtones. I layered a couple instruments for that effect and I'm wondering if the crotales were a little louder than they needed to be. Thank you so much for your comment and for listening so closely!
This activated my fight-or-flight, thanks.
In all seriousness, this is amazing, I would love to see a game with this in it.
Fight or flight and activation of the sympathetic nervous system was my goal! Thank you for listening!
very cool dude! I'm rooting for you💪🏻🎶
Thank you so much!
The sound design at the beginning was great. The bells work great and there's a lot of dissonance which is great for a horror track while staying exciting and thrilling!
Thank you so much for listening and commenting! I wanted to try using a dark modal sound and what I ended up writing came out to be some chromatic modal mixture somewhere in between locrian and a half-whole diminished scale sound. So yes, lots of dissonance. It felt very non-intuitive to resist going into a beautiful redeeming melodic passage representing the triumphs of the main character, which is against what I was trying to do and I think I was successful with that. I’m glad that it was engaging for you! Thanks again!