OST Comp Jam #6 Blog-Thingy

11th August 2023

Hi, it's me, Neet. You might be wondering...

"Neet, what the heck is this OST Composing thing?" Please allow me to enlighten you:

It's a jam hosted by Lone Rabbit, aka. the Gigachad who allowed us grimey VGMs to get our composing fill and learn, where you make an at least 3-minute-long soundtrack for an imaginary game based on the picture/word theme in roughly 9 days.

I discovered and joined OST Comp Jam #6 and the theme this time are "Tick Tock" along with an insanely cool art. The jam has concluded and I highly urge you to check out some submissions. There were ridiculous amounts of creativity and technical skills among them and tons of hidden gems:

(🦐🦐🦐 mmm shrimps.)

(✉️✉️✉️ mmm I love mails.)

My submission can be found here. It also includes the overall lore for my imaginary game. If that info sounds interesting to you, feel free to head on there and do some light reading. I'll just copy-paste the atmosphere I imagined here:

"My imaginary game is something abstract with a lot of mixed art styles, so imagine Killer7 with a plot about time."

The initial plan for this log was for it to be a video. However with a bunch of new projects and the unholy return of university, editing a video takes more time than I have free on my schedule. In fact, I might even be able to convey some information better in this form. I'll simply be writing about how I approached the theme and certain interesting producing jargans for each song in the order that I made them.

#1: ITS TIMING TIME

There were 2 main goals I set for my self going in,

-To touch the dustier parts of my sample libraries and VSTs I usually never use

-To commit to all ideas and not trashing any songs

I wanted this to be a menu song but it turned out weirder than I expected. Still, it established the chromatically descending main leitmotif along with using LITERAL CLOCKY SOUNDS for the theme Tick Tock. I'm just quirky and original like that, you know?

I said clocky instead of clock sounds because, if you scrutinize some file names in the video, you'll notice other mechanical sounding stuff that would still resonate with the concept of time passing by. Bicycle chain being used as a percussion and a more subtle but still important toy winding up sound for the intro riser.

Like I touched on earlier, the main melody for this imaginary game is literally just 4 notes descending chromatically. I knew right away that this would make for a terrible leitmotif. The only reason I stuck with it was I thought it'd be a cool challenge to make a "bad" melody sound "good" by giving it the right context.

...and also because it's funny.

#2: Alarm Clock Type Beat

This meticulously named track was the second song I worked on. I came in with a clear idea of turning alarm clock sounds into a beat highlighting them and making god damn sure that people know it's the sound of alarm clocks.

2 Problems immediately made themselves clear.

One was about the fact that alarms (which I got from freesound.org under the CC0 category) sounded piercing. It contained some high frequencies which were as BLUNT as Starfire and Nightwing in The Judas Contract.

This was relatively easy to solve. If you want to tame a "harsh" sound, just EQ out some highs and/or add some reverb. It isn't a set and stone rule and you should always question sound design conventions. HOWEVER, in a situation where you need to pump out songs at a rate quicker than your colon excreting indigestible Asian rat tacos, it's good to know.

Next one was how the alarm sounded "static". Alarms aren't obnoxious simply because of their pitch or textures, but also they keep holding the same annoying pitch for a long time.

The sound of a nuclear explosion played for 1 millisecond is perceived quieter than Vtubers Ear-Licking ASMR played for a second. (a second too long...)

Shortening the duration isn't the only way to fix this problem, you can also just add movement to the sound. Cool moving filters, pitching, and envelopes mapped to effects can all help.

I utilized Prisma's "Sample Divide" and automated it for this rising and falling effect.

For the 2nd alarm, I used Filterjam which did the same thing more subtly.

With these 2 sounds in the Project File, the song wrote itself at that point. Including the latter more retrospective DnB half where I thought I'd subvert the expectation of this being a song just for the hahas.

I also had a good toolbox of mechanical percussion sounds from these first 2 tracks that I can reuse later on. Saving me some time.

#3: Sick Beat For Slaying Time Anomalies

Right from the get-go, I knew I needed at least a song that could be considered in the Banger category. I wanted something to communicate that my game is like an introverted attractive D&D player, weird but cool.

Listen closely kids, if you want to make yourself a good Banging song, then you gotta pick the right tools for the job. Grab a bass sound with some high ends so it's visible on phone speakers, in my case I used MODO BASS (free version lol) with some distortion and saturation. Don't forget the clicky Kicks and massive Snares for your unique-never-done-before-hip-hop groove.

Another interesting thing was using MISHBY to make this lead sound shakier. I've always had trouble making use of Freakshow Industries' plugins due to how otherworldly they are. I consider this a small victory.

Also important to note that I only deemed this song a Banger and not a BANGER mainly because it's still not a sausage.

Source: The Royal BANGER Academy, Urmoms, Brazil

#4: The Part Where It's Serious

I'll just be honest and say that I weren't happy with this song at all. I wanted to work on composing atmospheric tracks, which is an area I'm severely lacking in. You could say that ambient music is a hole in my composing repertoire.

A small part I like is the meaning behind the last section's melody.

Which is umm...notes...ascending...chromatically...

Notes descending is the leitmotif for the good guys, the MCs, the players! So it only makes sense that the bad guy's melody should be the literal opposite, right!?

On a more serious note, I've become over-reliant on beats and drum grooves to keep my songs interesting. Creating moving synth patches and combining sounds for fresh droning textures are skills that I'll need to work on to increase my versatility.

#5: Snoozing Isn't Allowed

When it comes to atmosphere, this song conveyed it the most in my opinion. This song would play when our protagonist is woken up by a call from a cool elusive spy agency stuff. (probably) So the quieter intro is for a scenery shot, then he gets the call, and the beat drops on mission briefing. MAN, I SHOULD MAKE A GAME ALREADY. (Neet from 2025 update: I some games.)

The bell-like sound is a slightly-modified Vital factory preset called "A happy ending of the world", which I find funny since the lore situation here is that our MC is definitely not happy and it's the beginning of something big instead of ending.

Also a gentle reminder that, whenever you're working with elements that has a lot of randomization like I'm doing here, freeze the track just so it'll sound the same every time for finalization. Flatten it if you need to do some manual cutting.

AAAAND NEVER FORGET TO BACKUP THE ORIGINAL TRACK!

A weird thing to mention is that I putted a widening effect on this track's bass. It's most likely a heresy to a lot of composing textbooks. At the end of the day, if it sounds good, it is good.

#6: Punctual Success

So my idea was that we could use the beginning portion, or parts of it, for the ULTRA COOL FINISHING MOVE WITH EPIC CAMERA ANGLES. Then the jazzy part will loop for the results screen.

The chromatically descending line can still be heard in the bass line.

FUN FACT: My favorite free acoustic bass instrument is actually from Windows default soundfont, gm.dls!

A good amount of people pointed out the lovely saxophone which I obviously didn't have the ability to play it in real life. It's "Tenor Saxophone" on Pianobook. I actually found out about this by hearing it from a VA-11 Hall-A fan soundtrack. Kudos to the author for replying to me about the sounds used. 🙏🙏🙏

Speaking of soundtrack, how about a shameless self-promotion?

You should give LUMbA: HANGOVER Original Game Soundtrack a listen and give me money.

That's all folks!

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read my clickity-clackity.

Writing this was fun and with so many comments from other composers on my entry, I undoubtedly did learn a thing or two. I'll certainly join next time if I can afford to.

For now, please keep an eye out for any future projects. I upload almost everything onto Youtube and talk about what's going on on Twitter and Youtube Community Tab. I've considered having a mailing list cuz smart entrepreneurs said it's the only eternal platform and all but I don't really want to rent a PO Box right now.

...or I could just say my address is on Andromeda or something.