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Baloth - DOOM-Inspired OST's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #2 | 4.046 | 4.046 |
| Execution | #2 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Listenability | #2 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
| Innovation | #2 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Uniqueness | #3 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Correlation to Theme | #5 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Composition | #6 | 3.944 | 3.944 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
Heya folks, happy new year and excited to be participating again in the first jam of the year for this group!
Both prompts were very exciting, but I was immediately drawn to the "colossus" prompt due to the lightning imagery - striking the mountain and harvesting the hillside using lightning bolts, rusted machinery, ancient yore, that sorta thing.
I had been listening to PetroDragonic Apocalypse; or, Dawn of Eternal Night: An Annihilation of Planet Earth and the Beginning of Merciless Damnation by King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard since it came out and I loved the tonic of B being used for a lot of the riffs. With that in my pocket, DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal's soundtracks, and a smidge of Jeff Beck (Earthquake, in particular) I set about writing something in a similar vein - kickass music (with industrial, noisy sound design) to capture the combat of the Slayer versus a mountainous Baloth. This time, I wanted to actually do the riffs by hand with my guitar, which I'm very bad at, so it was a good learning experience.
Definitely went ear blind a few times during this process - but learned an awful lot about transients, automation, effects chains, reverb sends, and more. If this makes you think of a lumbering blood-hungry beast firing off thunderous attacks while combatting the Slayer from DOOM, then I did my job!
Hope you folks enjoy it!~
Composition:
- FL Studio 25 - Soundpaint (8Dio) libraries - Cymatics free samples (ambience, some percussion and loops) - A lot of other free samples / cut-up loops that I had laying around my hardrive - Guitar amp is Archetype: Gojira X - Guitar is a Harley Benton SC500 BK Vintage with humbuckers - main synth basses and leads are created in Vital
How did you Innovate? (Complete later if you need to submit on time)
Complex effect chains, automation, real guitar playing (shitty but adjusted to sound nice), learned extensive sidechaining / compressor / transient manipulation tactics.
Link to Streaming Service
https://soundcloud.com/nova-607800663/bloodthunder-baloth
DAW Screenshot - Demonstrate that this is your own work
Included in project
Discord Tag
nova4408
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Comments
Ok brotherman, It's surely ultra nice. The vibe u went for in this sub is great, however yes, imo imho me personally, all I was waiting for the entire length of the sub - is for guitars to actually get fat. Sure mix is nice overall, but the guitar tone is just not there to fully embrace those ripandtear vibes, maybe is the room u left at bottom-end of the mix for kicks when usually u'd expect palm-muted heavy chugs take that range and amplify every strum even with more power.
Still one of the best submissions this time, verygj.
Wrong Jam my guy, this should be in Alternate Soundtrack Jam , easily won the DooM vibe. Jokes asides, it's insanely good, mix is as crisp as it can get, the arrangement is especially well crafted not a second felt boring, you have a good sense on when to change pace and go somewhere else. All the sound design ear candy probably took days to craft and maintain all together. Even without the bias of getting the Mick Gordon Vibe I still feel your own style a little bit in there. Awesome job man !
Hey Nova! Wow, this hits so hard! I can't even imagine how you got all of those sounds in there! Goodness! It so busy and brash. Great work. Such a wild ride you have made here. the 3:00 mark was my favorite part. That was banger. Awesome work. You have great guitar skills man. And it really came out clean. Nice work. Also it fits the theme pretty well. Bravo.
Production is crisp with a lot of ear candy as usual, makes me jealous every time 😄
The panning and falling bass stuff 1:37 was really cool, haven't really played the mick gordon doom game's that much but from what I remember of the soundtrack you got the atmosphere down nicely.
I'm not a guitarist, but for me the guitar work sounded great so no need to be too hard on yourself, if you want to hear bad guitar playing I can pick up a guitar and then you can hear what actually bad playing sounds like 😉
Can't really comment on the mixing since that's beyond my pay grade and everything sounded good to me. Do have to say I loved the punchiness of the drums, I always have trouble getting them to sound fat and punchy without over compressing them and losing all the dynamics
Good work!
This goes hard and I can’t even imagine how you managed the sound design. Specially with all those little sounds everywhere. But your screenshot already gave a glimpse into the automation hell you’ve encountered and blasted you way thru.
However, while the sounds and sound design sounded very top notch there, the balance sounded a bit off at times. Specially with some of the percussive elements and the guitar. My biggest recommendation is to listen thru your songs with turned down volume, so you might be able to talk over it with no problems and listen to the loudness of your elements. Most of the time it’s getting harder and harder to judge differences in volume when listening to it loud. This is due to how our attention works with loudness or brightness being perceived algorithmically. So, when already listening to a loud sound another sound needs to be MUCH louder for you to perceive it louder. While with listening to it with less volume the difference doesn’t need to be as loud to perceive. So for mixing I’d recommend giving it some runs in lower loudness. Also, it gives you the opportunity to judge which elements are the most important, since those elements are the one you should still hear while the song is whisper quiet.
In addition, this is just a production recommendation worth trying out, you could try compressing your signals by type. This means compressing the drums separately from your melodic and harmonic elements. Meaning you create two compression busses one for percussions and one for over compressing the rest (mixing the dry/wet to taste). Then in your master you keep the glue compressor as tame as possible with only compressing 2-3db MAX. This is a method Andrew Scheps used to use in his productions.
ok im definitely hearin the mick gordon in here. definitely sounds 2 rip and tear until it is done. i could believe you used a lawnmower on a colander or somethin like mick does
yr way too hard on yrself about the guitar. you have fucked up that guitar so good oh my god. at like 2:56 holy shit that is fuckin SICK as HELL and the rhythm guitar is good the whole fuckin way through. some of the guitar playin almost reminds me of smt 3. its so fuckin good.
i really like the decrescendo at 1:35 and the sizzly synths (?) right after. and the build at like 3:25 + the mechanical scream. holy shit. holy fucking shit.
this is an easy 5/5 for me. no notes. keep doin what yr doin.
Hell yeah! This is unapologetically Doom and I love it. Lots of cool touches throughout, especially where percussion and drums are concerned. They make the track really fun to listen to. And props for the King Gizz mention!
I enjoyed all the various effects and the bitcrushing. I also like the time signature and the whole vibe of the piece. Maybe some of the elements could have been clearer or more defined somehow? But I think overall it sounds really cool and well-made!
Lovely, listening to this was a true Doom meets Pendulum experience. The execution is near perfect, i did wish some guitar riffs had a bit more presence, i feel there was too much of everything, so the song never lets you rest to much, its full of information but some didn't get the required spotlight in my view. But really an amazing job, the mix itself is WOW, and the volume you got with no clear loss in dynamics is wonderfull. For the composition I think it lacked a bit,I personally think there is something missing between the middle calmer part and the ending, and sorry for the honesty in this next regard, but a few elements felt like Doom rip off, instead of Doom inspired. But still a great track, even gave it a like in Soundcloud to save to listen once in a while, but the production was so good, I'd like to feel it was more you in the composition.
Terrific job! Take care :)
Heya muttzilla, thank you for your comments! I started thinking about what you said, rip-off vs inspiration, and I think theres truth in that. My goal wasn't really to evolve the DOOM sound with my own flair or ideas - my goal was to make a DOOM track from scratch with a simple guitar riff I could perform (and all the producing work that goes into it) to learn how they're mixed and mastered. Maybe I shouldn't have used inspired? Maybe "study" or something similar.
I moreso am dissapointed that I appear to have made, for your tastes, a boring-composition DOOM track where there's also too much happening. Sorry about that! I'm bummed that it affected your enjoyment and didn't meet your hopes.
As for guitar presence, I think I put too much bass and sub in this mix - had I done an additional eq session on the final master this is probably what I would reduce just a tad, because the track's loudness and punch might be getting pulled due to excessive subs and that leaves the mids and highs used in the guitar with less loudness to work with.
Thanks again! I appreciate your insight!
Hey bro, I don't think I got my point across properly! I didn't find it boring in the slightest - I literally came back to it multiple times, which says it all really.
To be clear: the mix set the bar so high that this is now the standard I'm measuring everything else against. Simply amazing work on that front.
On composition - I never said it was bad or unpleasant to listen to. There are some structural choices I think could elevate it further, and a few details that felt more like direct DOOM references than your own take on it. Like around the 1 min mark, that synth design and motif - the song didn't need it, you could have used the guitar to get the same emotion or even better, it took a bit of my immersion in the song.
Even if you want it to make an ode to DOOM with that specific instrument / timbre you could picked a further placement in the song.
That's what I mean, small details, not the song as a whole. I actually think production wise you caught the feeling of Mick without copycatting, which I believe to be extremely hard.
And honestly? With production this good, the composition deserves to match that level. The structure is solid, but I'd easily sit through an 8 min version if you added another wave of sonic explosions before the finish. Composition improvements and high listenability aren't mutually exclusive - and the listenability here is already very high.
That said one of my favorites this jam, amazing track and still has potencial for growth. Take care :)Very enjoyable, the liberal use of distortion and bitcrushing was certainly on brand for Doom 2016 and it's impressive that you managed to make something so damn dirty come out so clean.
There was a simple 3 note motif around 60-70 seconds in that I was looking forward to hearing again, I was certain that 3:05 would be the return but sadly no, not a major let down but I think it would have strengthened the piece a bit.
I haven't listened to many submissions yet but this is easily my favorite so far, well done!
I 100% just downloaded yours instead of Soundcloud because I knew you put in a loooot of work on getting a really clean solid mix, with all of the careful sidechaining technique and automation.
One thing - not even a nitpick, but more of a creative idea, would be to spatialize some of the bitcrushing near and far, rather than what sounds like just left to right, by increasing stereo width and automating reverb wetness with the send signal to the reverb track.
Overall, really though, yours is incredibly well mixed, one of the cleanest, clearest tracks I've heard.
I think it still maybe has a few too many elements. Next jam I'm intentionally making things more focused on composition, because I think I also kind of fell into the trap of overworking the mix at the expense of writing more music.
I think my goal is also to try to simplify my approach in the sense of often when one is new at something, you can kind of overdo it and get lost in the mix of techniques without taking a step back and seeing the big picture, which I did in mine big time.
That said, the composition is solid and interesting. Maybe I should make a minimalist theme...
Great fricking work though, seriously. My critique is truly just to help you take things to that next level.
The bitcrush spatialization is a fantastic idea, and it's a real shame I didn't consider that when making this track! Thank you for the feedback! I probably did get lost in the sauce on this one - I kept going "well Mick used shephard's tones / mono left-right panning / LFO automation / detuning guitars so I have to try that out too!" My biggest regret is, frankly, not letting the track breath a bit longer to break up the quick pacing between sections, where there would have been more atmospheric chord progressions hinting at the main leitmotif I repeat with the lead synth.
This was a big step in my learning process for mixing and mastering, which I won't need to do AS MUCH when I write something more jazzy or funky (like my Lone Rabbit Jam submission, which was banking on composition over pure sonic tweaking), so I'm also looking forward to WRITING more music next time instead of PRODUCING.
As for the simple composition, the challenge was that I had to play it on guitar, which I haven't practiced much. Maybe I could've challenged myself more to write something complex, maybe not. There's definitely some self-sampling going on, but what would I be without samples XD.
Eager to take it to the next level, next time :) I appreciate the comment Kale.
Oh, hey, what's this?- AHHHHHHHHH MY EYESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!
IT'S TOO BEAUTIFUL NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*seizure headbanging*
😂😂😂 *seizure headbangs with you*
Glad you enjoyed it Semaj!