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The Weapon - Impression Composing Jam #4's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Composition | #1 | 4.346 | 4.346 |
| Listenability | #2 | 4.192 | 4.192 |
| Correlation to Theme | #6 | 3.962 | 3.962 |
| Overall | #12 | 3.669 | 3.669 |
| Melody Impact | #35 | 2.846 | 2.846 |
| Melody Clarity | #40 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Link to Streaming Service
https://turtlebox.bandcamp.com/album/the-weapon
Description
Artwork: Hans Thoma - Siegfried and Mime - The Ring, 1896
A submission to the Impressions Composing Jam: The Legendary Weapon
An Album created entirely in the span of 24 hours, as usually with my Composing Jam submissions.
"The Weapon" tells the story of the forging of the titrual "Legendary Weapon". An artifact that has since been forgotten to time, but the impact of it's foul presence still curses and haunts the world in where it's memories inhabit.
Composed using my go-to combination of analog hardware and synthwork, this is a brief but lush ambient journey that aims to conduct an excersice in audio based world building.
credits
released April 28, 2026
DAW Screenshot
Will provide Later (I am credible I've done like 90 of these jams, just crunched for time right now)
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Comments
Hi thanks for commenting on my track, I am not sure if you got a chance to try again since I have fixed my link.
Thanks for the tracks! I find it really impressive if you did all 3 of those in 24 hours. I really like the different textures you have created while maintaining a great sounding mix! You have sparked my interest and I will be going through your other tracks you have on bandcamp. Thanks for enjoyable listening session!
I love the sound design! Such beautiful textures and worldbuilding, I really felt transported while listening. Absolutely lovely work!
I like the mood of all three tracks, they each feel quite different. I really like the vocals in The Forge. I enjoy the contrast between the tense background and the dreamy melody in The World. The Curse has a very hypnotic, ambient feel, which works really well, and I like the background a lot as well :)
Love the textures and worldbuilding of the pieces across the three Turtle, could see loads of games and worlds that would work with the sounds. But yes I guess it's just lacking a melodic focus across the whole project (don't want to reiterate too much what's been said already). Still very cool to listen to though!
Like other have discussed, a bit more melodic focus would've been nice, but the atmosphere is really great.
In The World the melodic stuff feels nice, but a more of an improvisation than an actual structured melody to me. it felt to me that there is enough interesting material there to refine a melody from if you ever want to continue working more from that.
Good stuff!
Great texture, composition and ambience.
If you had more time, you'd probably be able to do more with balancing and spatializing the mix, but that amount of time is why I got rid of the execution category this jam.
I'd say for the purpose of this jam, the melodies weren't as forward/present, but the composition is excellent regardless!
Man, the texture and ambiance are always on point with you. It was a real trip. Love the worldbuilding behind your submission too, enlarging the scope to the influence of the weapon in the universe is great.
However, like many pointed out, all 3 tracks lack focus on the melody and feel more like ambient, especially "The curse".
Melody clarity 3/5 (This one is difficult to rate, especially since the melody's very clear in "The world", but a bit less in the other tracks)
Melody impact 1/5
Composition 4/5 (Rated 4 and not 5 because I feel like a jam focused on melody would naturally focus on its development, which isn't the case here)
Listenability 5/5 (Could totally hear this in a professional setting, I'd love to play a game/watch a movie with this as soundtrack)
Correlation to theme 5/5
Yeah, if there's anything I'd go back and change about this submission it would have been going into it with a clear melody and going from there. Unfortunately I thought I'd miss the jam period so I kinda just ran through getting three on-brand and high quality tracks out for the sake of participation and fun as opposed to sitting down and scoring 2-4 tracks with evolution and melodic progression.
My plan was to do the worldbuilding and audio quality I always try to do without sacrificing any of that to "force" a melody in there.
The 'A♯, B, F" to "B, F, G♯" (Fdim) stabs starting with the choir felt like a nice build in, everything else (root wise) stays in that realm. Finding something in the net of "A♯, B, C, C♯, D♯, F, G♯" was fun pad and harmonics wise.
I totally feel like your ratings are spot on. I'd probably give myself 2/5 on the melody clarity. Maybe it's just introspective knowledge but I know for a fact there could have been structured melody if I'd cut corners elsewhere.
EDIT: The font got bold because I copy/pasted the chords / scale from a notation app lmaoooo
Bold font jumpscare
Yeah I went to copy/paste from my notation app and it forced everything into bold lmao
First up, the beginning scared me... but other than that, love the blacksmith sound masked as a kick/taiko drum. anyways, considering this Jam, it's not really melodic tho ya? I feel like its not giving the weapon a song of its own, more of a reveal on the weapon (?) If you get what I mean... But, this would do great as a theme song in a game, definitely heard something similar in a game I've played.
I'm sorry it scared you, lmao. I wanted the gap of silence in the begin to sort of create the presence of a world before and after the "weapon" in the context of whatever world I ended up building.
The Blacksmith sound was actually unintentional, we talked about this in the discord when we were discussing anvil samples. It's a spoon hitting a diet-coke can. It's from one of my sample packs and it's layered with a 14x14 and 16x16 floor tom (knock-off Pearl Exports, lmao) tuned to F and A.
I wish I had more time ot work on this, I said in another reply but I feel like this worked out well as a stand-alone release (it's doing create in ambient circles lmao) but I would have liked to have found corners to cut in the 24 hour run to impliment an evolved melody somewhere in tracks 2 and 3.
Curious to know what game you think this sounds similar to, which track specifically at least. Track 3 uses a lot of mixing and layering done in game music (my profession) compared to the first two tracks which were mixed more organically and traditionally.
I like the idea of splitting this into three tracks that convey different themes about your story. I also overall like the tracks a lot, I can always appreciate good ambient music.
The elephant in the room is that I'm not sure if these are the most fitting tracks for the melody jam in particular? In fact, I struggle to find any clear melodic theme here.
Some of my scores might seem harsh, but please understand I actually genuinely like your work, I just have to rate this based on the categories given.
Melody Clarity 2/5
I feel like the tracks had moments of clarity. The vocal parts in The Forge has a discernable melody, and The World had some melodic hooks. Overall though, I don't think your submission really had a melodic throughline? The World sounds like piano improv, which is great! But isn't necessarily what I think of when looking for a strong theme for a scene.
Melody Impact 1/5
I don't think these tracks showcased an impactful, memorable melody. These things might of course be subjective and there are no right answers, but to me, these tracks do not provide a melodic theme for a scene or for a video game etc. This might be a difference we have in how we interpreted the assignment this time, I feel like going for an ambient collection of tracks was not the choice for a melody jam.
Composition 4/5
I like that you split the submission in three, and I think all parts bring something to the table. Rating more ambient tunes in terms of composition is always tough, but I feel like you know what you're doing with music like this.
Listenability 4/5
I quite like music like this! The World was my favorite part here.
Correlation to Theme 3/5
I feel like of the three tracks, the first one has the strongest connection to the themes and the goal of this jam. From the other two tracks, I didn't quite hear the connection to a theme of "the weapon", but I think they work really well as worldbuilding pieces.
I think you submitted a really good work, that simply misses the mark in terms of this jams assignment and goals. Out of the context of this jam, I really love this!
Yeah, this is basically spot on. It's not an Elephant when it's something I've been addressing in the discord in discussions about submissions. I usually do the jams in a 24 hour period but with at least a day or two of "Alright what's the plan?" kind of prep. Going into this I had basically nothing and just really wanted to create something that fit the worldbuilding I felt I could speak out with the art given. I went a bit into the chord structure, roots, and scaling (Fdim/ect) in another reply, but having the Choir stabs in that range (FDim) would have been where I liked to settle the melody on and evolve it, unfortunately (or fortunately for my ambient following cause they love this lmao) for the context of the jam I was happy to not cut corners and was more than happy with taking the advice I give to a lot of folks in this community - Release something that makes you happy and speaks to you. Know that no one is "judging" it as much as consuming it adding it to our community regardless of if it "works" or not.
I'm glad I got something out because I loved the artwork for this Jam, and I'm glad it ended up working outside the jam as well as it is and I'm glad people who listen also enjoy it. I'm (for once) super happy that things didn't go as planned.
Your tracks have an incredible presence. Super clear and mixed/mastered with character. Props to you! That was a super awesome listen
Thank you!
I really like this soundtrack! However, I advise to make the album free until this Jam's voting is over... Other than that, you did a really great job on this Submission!
Not sure what you mean, the album is free. You can listen to it entirely on Itch, Youtube Music, and Spotify. Either way, I'm very glad you loved the soundtrack.
Strange... It says $2 or something like that... Anyways, sorry if I shared some misinformation!
It has a listed price on BandCamp because of distributor / lisencing protection. You can download it on Itch and listen to it for 100% free though.
If I set the price to 0$ it'd open up the doors for false claims, I've had this issue with Jam submissions in the past that I put on streaming services (Primarily with Apple Music).
But yeah, you can listen to this and download it 100% free.
Strange...
I mean it's not really strange, just part of being a musician who releases a lot of commercial albums via a commercial distributor, lol.
Powerful and impactful chanting for the first one, and I really love the texture in all three tracks :)
Thank you!
I love the ambiance, mixing & mastering, and melody of these tracks. Nice job 😄!!
DAW Screenshot -
Had this talk with Kale and judges before, most of my records are live work / single project. Not a lot going on in the DAW side of things outside of just the mastering.