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The Secret of the Lake's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Vibe/Atmosphere | #15 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Execution | #21 | 3.312 | 3.312 |
| Overall | #28 | 3.275 | 3.275 |
| Correlation to Theme | #31 | 3.312 | 3.312 |
| Composition | #33 | 3.062 | 3.062 |
| Listenability | #42 | 2.938 | 2.938 |
Ranked from 16 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Description
Something has awoken in the lake! Hide quickly!
Made entirely with my own field recordings, an OP1, an Ableton move, and the koala app for iPhone while on vacation.
Leave a comment on my project and I’ll return the favor!
Link to Streaming Service
https://on.soundcloud.com/BaqVyCIz9W9yqaa2Dh
DAW Screenshot - Demonstrate that this is your own work
See project page
Discord Tag
jwberck
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Comments
Very cool track, I really liked the dark sound. It delivered the vibe well.
Goodness. Pretty intense song! Really cool dark sound you have, plus that bell at the end really added to the spookiness of the song. Solid work even while you were not able to do the best job with it while moving around and such. Liked it.
thanks for listening!
This would be great for a horror music game! I think a bit of mallet percussion / gamelan could add a lot, Super Mario 64 Soundtrack - Haunted House is a good example of this. Hope it helps with your future submissions.
thanks for the suggestion I’ll check that out!
I don't know what the lake's secret is but in this case it's not something good lol. Super fun listen, the bells in the back were sick. Definitely a lot of good environment being created.
thanks for listening! I got super lucky with the bell, I caught it when recording the rain sample on a long take. So the distance to the bell in the track is the true distance/sound when recording out a window on the lake in bellagio.
Pretty tense track, first one I've heard so far (i'm not deep into the submissions but still) that is going for a super eerie style, cool low end and weird recording, I'm curious what did you record to achieve this.
thanks for checking it out! The layers are as follows:
the “roar” of the monster: I sampled a classical Italian play on the radio when o was in Tuscany, Italy into my OP1. Specifically there was a group chanting in Italian I grabbed for this. Then I slowed it down 20x, and put an effect on it that changes the low and high pass frequency filter based on the volume of the sample. That gives it that windy sort of sound, like when the monster roars it creates wind. If you speed the recording up about 20-22x speed you can make out the chanting voices. Then I put 3 copies of that track and panned one left, center, and right with a slight delay.
ambient Rain, church bell, ambient lake tide splashing: my own field recording from lake como Italy. played slightly delayed between plannings to give it that off kilter effect (reminds me of some of the sounds in lynch films personally)
a pretty constant low bass: an ableton move drift bass preset, pulsed a little at the end.
“Heartbeat” bass: OP-1 fm synth preset
The ghostly sort of drone going on that plays off the roar is an Ableton move preset called “haunted” I got from an online pack but underneath it’s just the drift synth. I’m adjusting the filter on it to swell that sound in and out most of the time.
finally, all of this was mixed and had some extra panning and reverb effects in the koala app since I was on travel and did not have access to my daw (it was so painful omg)
Lmk if you want to know anything else!
The vibes are alright. It's composed fairly nice. The mixing is the only thing I'm on the fence on. Compositionally it's nice, I feel like if you reeled in the atonal side of things a little stronger you could have created really nice drones for your low end which could have carried the EQ for you for most of the track, but that's not something that's impacting my scores but just my personal thoughts.
thank you for the detailed feedback! When you say reeled in the atonal side on the low end I assume you’re referring to the “roar” and sort of constant bass near the low end? Or something else?
EQ is definitely my weakest area so interested in your thoughts!
Hit me up in the discord, send me some of your work and I'll be happy to talk about the mixing for each track and we can go over them and I can highlight more if that soundsl ike something you're interested in?
All of my production tutorials are about composition and freeware, but I've done lessons on mixing in the past
sounds great I’ll hit you up!
I really like the Dark Ambience/Deathdream vibe this has! Very intense. Very well done, I really like how this was composed!
thanks for listening!
You're welcome!