itch.io

I am basing my feedback on my understanding of musical tropes - but music is also self expression and a jam is a pretty low-stakes environment (unless you are participating in a professional capacity and you have clients following along... so probably low-stakes ;) ) so do what feels right and if a piece about the deep wants to be made, make a piece about the deep.
You call yourself a beginner - if you want help, further feedback between jams or some tips and tricks, feel free to participate in the Discord. People from the absolute top of the results page have been quite active there so far, so there is a ton of knowledge and experience available there. 

Not listening is not an option. FEEL OUR EARS UPON YOUR WORK AND DESPAIR!
Naw, actually it's not that bad. My biggest gripe is that run covering the entire keyboard three times - I'm not really seeing much of a point in that other than "doing it because you can". 
Apart from that, this piece is generally good times ;)

I like the general vibe of your piece, combined with the cover art I'm feeling "adventures in the depth".
While your track is cool, I'm kinda lacking the connection to cakes and cooking (might be a mini game about a submarine chef surprising the crew?) - a little more info on your game idea, that this OST is for, would have been helpful.
For a ragtime feeling, you'll want your bassline to have a straight rhythm and your melody to appear syncopated between the bass notes. One of the fundamental examples would be Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" where the effect is largely generated by the longer melody notes always (or almost always) starting between the left-hand notes.
Regardless, you delivered an enjoyable piece of music. Nice.

Very cool composition, I love the variety of instruments and what you've done with them.
For a stronger ragtime impression, I'd suggest going for a swing rhythm. As it is, the syncopation is present in the notes, but kinda difficult to feel. 
As I'm saying in many of the submissions: my feedback is an expression of taste rather than objective correctness. You know what kind of quality you have delivered here and I'd be surprised if your submission doesn't end up in one of the absolute top spots. Great work!

I love the vibe you are producing here. You manage to make your piece sound cute and bubbly while still being high ernergy - like a casual party game should sound. 
I don't have anything I could ask of you to change about your piece, the only feedback I could offer is that from the quality of your work here, you probably could have gone for precision level 5 to challenge yourself a little and give others a chance too ;)

I'm getting 90's console vibes from your piece, like I've just turned on my old PS1.
I would love to try and analyze your composition a little deeper, but you are not really giving us a lot to judge your work. In these kinds of jam, it's super helpful to get some details regarding the context of your track (what kind of game you imagine it's for, what your ideas were and how you realized those...). As it stands, this is music for some mini game - and it can totally work for that, depending on what kind of game it is and how that is supposed to look and feel.
But I'm confident, that you'll make it easier for us to give proper feedback and evaluate your work with the next jam ;)

You hit the precision levels quite niceley, and I think the use of pitch bend is really inspired (for balloons zipping around or as a reference to stretching rubber) - I particularly like how you use that as a transition medium between instruments, going from the lower accordion to a high violin sound and back.
The pitch bends do in part feel quite strange, because you are bending instruments that can't naturally do that (like the accordion). As so often, this is an opinion based on taste and should not be taken as fact, but I think it might have helped to make your piece "believable" had it been made with obviously synthetic sounds, like chiptunes or classic synth patches.
Also, your tempo change at the 2:00 mark is quite abrupt and dispells any illusion that there are actual musicians playing this section - a more gradual change would make it more natural again. 
And then we come to the end, which again, is just inspired - a hectic crescendo and then everything is just dropping off a cliff, like a deflating balloon. Very nice!

I love the use of sound effects to tell a story. 
It is difficult for me to make suggestions for improvements if I'm unfamiliar with the genre of the music or the game, the only things I can come up with are two points that are purely based on taste and not on the quality of your work:
- the accordion sounds a little out of place. Being a part of the challenge though, I can't hold that against you (and maybe there is a little capucian in the corner of the screen, playing a concertina or something)
- some of the sound effects in the music sound like they could or should come from the game itself. It makes sense to have them in a demo or on an OST album, but in an actual game, where those sounds might mean something, they could be confusing players because a perceived audio cue is playing without the respective in-game effect, so I'd simply like to point that out in case it comes up in a future project of yours.
And that is basically also my final take here - your work is definitely of a quality that any game dev should be happy to work with you. Very nice!

Chaos, high energy, kitchen - it's all there.
The issue with great submissions is that it's really hard to find something that could be improved. You really nailed this.

Wow, do I get mischievous from this. The contrast of the very straightforward accordion sound with the hip hop beat will haunt my nightmares (which you probably won't mind, seeing how you put that "Entry of the Gladiators" phrase in, which is the international standard theme for horror clowns).
With this submission, you have created a niche that is really hard to critique, because there is nothing I could compare it to. Definitely creative, funny and disturbing in its own way. 

I like your mix, the arrangement is good and the composition is solid.
For a piece that is energetic and for a chaotic cooking party game, I'm missing some adrenaline - either in the form of tempo or some more trills or quick embellishments.
You have made a totally catchy and loveable piece though. 

You really nailed the ragtime feeling and the knife sound effect is really setting the mood.
My biggest criticism is that the piece leaves me wishing for more. When "Knife Tutorial 2"?

Sound wise, I can totally imagine this in a space game. 
The harmonies come across as quite jazzy to me - whether that fits into the game or not will of course depend on the context, but it seems a litte overkill for a short little balance game. 
But then again, it's the kind of complexity that is often missing from modern game OST. Lovely piece.

I really like this, it fits really well with the whole baking theme.

I think the melody is taking a bit of a backseat here, which it really doesn't have to. The tuba and harmonica can be a little quieter to give the piano and other melody instruments a little more space to shine. So the only thing I can come up with that you could improve upon has nothing to do with your composition and really only deals with the mix. 

I also really love how you are presenting the vinyl aesthetic, with the filtered sound at the beginning and the end, and particularly the stop effect at the end. 

I love your use of sound effects as part of the music. Your arrangement is clean, the instrument choices are good, no notes there. 
The first section is mainly piano and guitar with some effects. We move into the second part, we lose the effects, add strings and bass, the ticking has a different rhythm and the guitar is added back in only later. Going into the third bit, you're basically doing the same thing again. It sounds a little like we are listening to a medley for a trailer or something. I believe it would help to either keep the rhythm constant (maybe with a secondary rhythm instrument) or keep more instruments active between sections, so we don't fully lose the connection between the different parts of your piece.
Aside from that, I'll look forward to stealing some of your ideas from this track in a future jam.

As others have said, it is a very bouncy and happy track. I especially enjoy the wah on the guitar.
I notice that you have given your melody some more reverb than the other instruments - this makes it sound like the melody instrument is further away than the bass or drums. I can get that as an artistic choice and maybe it makes sense in the context of the game this is for, but typically, I would expect the melody to be closer to the listener's position, then the guitar and the bass and drums a little behind that in the soundstage. 
Still, this is a quirky little tune that is difficult not to bop along to. Good job.

Absolutely love it - great composition, love the instrument choices, the arrangement works beautifully...
There are two little things that got to me a little as I listened to it: At 01:11, you are removing the bass section and the off-beat high piano chord is a little disorienting. It's better on a second listen, but the first time utterly confused me with the switch from a clear rhythmic structure to this dominating syncopation. The other thing is the same high piano chord that keeps going from 1:11 to the end. It might be a conscious choice, but I could see myself become really annoyed with it if I had to listen to that part on loop for some amount of time.
Despite these two little hangups, "Heat up the Ovens" will be one of the pieces from this jam that my immediate social circle will be forced to listen to.

I feel like I'm being picked up in 2026 and dropped off in front of my C64 sometime in the late 80's . 
This is maybe a little too retro for my taste. But then again, you kept within the boundaries of retro sound generation capabilities (like limiting yourself to 4 oscillators) and delivered a piece that really mimics the sounds of the past. You created a piece that would absolutely fit with a game like the one you described.

It's definitely a nice, chill rock piece. I would expect this to come up in a mini game where the cooking is a challenge to feed a summer beach party or something like that. 
Personally, I love to hear the bass guitar taking center stage in a piece, but it's a little against convention - someone putting this piece in their game would probably want the bass dialed down somewhat, to free up some more space for the guitars and other melody instruments or in-game sound fx. 
Whether you hit the ragtime or not, I've been nodding my head in silence to your bassline the entire time I've been writing this comment. Very nice.

The beginning made me feel like Final Fantasy IX - something about your piece  just hit that very specific nostalgia for me. 
The end of the piece is coming very unexpected, I think you could have "turned off" the instruments one by one to lead to an end, gone for a big crescendo with a change in the harmony to suggest a big finale coming, or even just simply faded out slowly. As it is, the end is somewhat jarring. 
At 0:45 you are developing the perfect opportunity for something to fundamentally change in the piece - something about the instrumentation, the harmonies... It was a little sad that it was basically just a rest and then the drone is a little more prominent than before. 
Overall, I think you did a good job with this piece.

I like the vibe - I hadn't thought of ragtime as something that would fit into the spooky season, but those moments like the minor section from measure 21 to 27 are really working in that context. 
There is a drawback in those sections, too, though. I don't think you'll find many pianists who can handle your score - I have a hand span of over 8 inches and I can't play those add12 chords. This is very subtly signaling to the listener, that they are not hearing an actual performance.
Then again, it's a halloween themed piece, so maybe you just have to build your own pianist for this purpose, Victor.

This is very chill and relaxed and I can totally imagine this in a somewhat low-stakes game. I'm very reminded of the Hundred Acre Wood areas in the Kingdom Hearts games. 
I try to find something about the jam pieces that could be changed to make them better. I have been listening to your piece for a good 10 minutes now and you have made excellent instrument choices, your mix is totally on point, your composition is great, the arrangement is wonderful... No notes.

The beginning has a nice buildup and the synth sounds are nicely chosen - I'd say, I have a pretty decent idea what the game is supposed to feel like.
I may be a little sensitive there, but your central high melody line feels a little repetitive as-is - I think it might have been interesting to have that drop down an octave or two and be played by different instruments in different parts of your piece. 
And the fact that I couldn't find much to gripe about should tell you everything about how cool your piece actually is. Great job.

The beginning has a nice buildup and the synth sounds are nicely chosen - I'd say, I have a pretty decent idea what the game is supposed to feel like.
I may be a little sensitive there, but your central high melody line feels a little repetitive as-is - I think it might have been interesting to have that drop down an octave or two and be played by different instruments in different parts of your piece. 
And the fact that I couldn't find much to gripe about should tell you everything about how cool your piece actually is. Great job.

Always happy to see a fellow Reaper user in the wild ;)

I think, the frying pan sound is a little overly present and having different piano tracks playing melodic parts at the same time as the accordion track (e.g. starting around 0:45) is too many instruments in the same range fighting for the listener's attention. And without a rhythm instrument providing a clear pulse, it is very easy to lose track of what is happening in your piece (is it in 4/4? 3/4?)

I'd suggest revisiting the registers where your instruments are active and making sure that each octave only has one melody line at the same time, to make them easier to distinguish and playing around with mix levels and maybe volume automation to put different instruments into the foreground of your piece at different times. 

I do think the game idea is cute though, and it certainly fits into something that is a chaotic cooking party game.

Hi, thanks for the advice on the modulation. I was clearly overthinking that part to the point of confusing myself. I should have taken a step back and just reworked those few measures without trying to force adherence to the harmonic structure of the previous, similar sections. 
The idea with the piece ending at a higher tempo is that the parts would loop independently - the beginning would loop until time begins to run out, which causes the modulation and speed up section to play, followed by the urgent, higher speed part. So there is no intent to loop the earlier sections, because we want to keep up the pressure without reintroducing the more relaxing accordion or some slower feeling parts dominated by longer harmonies.
Again, thanks for the constructive criticism, I'll definitely spend more time actually learning about proper modulation technique.

With the description, I had to think of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Once More with Feeling" - nice concept and I love the chiptunes sound. 
You have a lot of stuff going on in the background - more tracks than a retro console with that kind of soundfont would actually allow. So you are kind of breaking the illusion of retro gaming; that can be an artistic choice, but in case it isn't, you should be aware that this sounds like a modern piece of music that was made to sound retro.
A very cool piece overall, I can totally see this in a rhythm game, and you are just so enough moving beyond the limitations of a simple scale to really sell the demonic influence the game is about. 

This is great, exactly how I had understood the prompt. Thanks.

I'm probably overhtinking this, but is "World of Cakes", the chaotic cooking party game, the big, main game, or is that the name and description of the minigame inside the main title? 

here =)

I mean - it's a jam, you know your music will be heard by other composers and, at least subconsciously, you want to show what you are capable of. To be honest, at one point I had a section in my own entry where I tried to change keys from D-Dorian to Eb-Major. Listened to what amounted to 4 hours of work after dinner and scrapped the whole idea XD

I used to do a kinda similar trick recording rock guitar: two different mics on the cab (usually one dynamic one condenser) and double track. That way I got four tracks total: take A mic 1, take A mic 2, take B mic 1, take B mic 2 and then I would pan A1 and B2 hard left and B1 and A2 hard right. Feels like four guitars, but without phase issues on either side. You could just do the same with different IRs and get an even more pronounced effect.

I didn't consider actually using different impulse responses, I'll definitely give that a go. And while I have listened to some argent metal, I never actually thought about using a synth for the sub-bass instead of an actual instrument or an octaver plugin. 

Thanks for the tips, I'll definitely enhance my repertoire with your suggestions.

I'm somewhat limited in the amp sims I have available, but if you have some suggestions to get a wall of sound to rock me out of my socks, I'll take anything you have to offer =)
And please don't say "practice muting with both hands" because I'm already confusing myself with skipping strings in alternate picking XD

Listening to your track again just now: you might be able to pull it off with just mercyless application of EQ - basically modifying the sounds of the individual voices by almost cutting out areas in the spectrum, that the other voice is untouched in (or even boosted) to clearly distinguish the lines from each other. 

I like the general idea of a forbidden note making its way into a soundtrack. I'm certainly going to steal that idea for a future project ;)

The harsh synth is kinda messing with the idea of a sentimental/nostalgic opening, a different istrument choice (or blending into the synth over time) might have carried that part of the prompt better (like the softer/further away synth you are using around 2/3 through the piece - I believe bar 105?). 

I have never gotten a speeding ticket in my life, but if I am ever in a chase, fleeing from the music police, I'll be sure to put this on the stereo! 

I really like the feeling of mixed instruments with the music box + synth beginning, only stretching further as the track progresses.

The end at 1:44 feels a little like a fake-out - you are leading into more, basically promising the main attraction to start and then it's just another round of the music box and we're done.

Despite the obvious time constraints (that you also mentioned), the listener gets a pretty good idea how this piece would develop if it were to be developed further. Very nice.

I really like the piano an strings beginning, especially love the section where the background choir takes over and the listener is fully aware of it being a part of the piece for the first time.

For something so slow and moody, it feels somewhat repetitive. You might want to switch up the piano riff or the tempo a little to make it less monotonous.

Despite that, it's a really nice submission to the jam and totally fits for the end credits of a game.

I like how you are using the instruments in a varied way, like the low piano being played at least in part for the slightly out-of-tune sound of the low piano notes. 

Between 1:45 and 2:00 you are modulating to a different key and that felt kinda not needed at that point. The music was not overstaying its welcome, you did not repeat prominent earlier phrases in the new context... it felt like an exercise instead of what the piece called for. The music after 4:00 seems to have little to do with what came before it, other than the instrumentation, I think, a little more callback to the earlier sections would make it more reliably identifiable as part of the same piece.

Besides those minor gripes, I would love to hear something of yours played by an actual orchestra. 

I really like the sax part and the voices are a cool idea. 

I would point out that in the main repeating voice line, there is a moment when the voice breaks and it's always in the same spot, basically showing the copy/paste a little and sadly making it appear less organic.
Starting around 2:30, there are multiple vocal lines in the same register, making it difficult to follow. I think it would have been better to just keep to the falsetto and one additional vocal line (maybe two, if you can separate them clearly).

Apart from that, really cool idea and a nice performance!