I've decided to start an album in earnest. I've already written 2 new tracks (mostly) and remastered/rehashed this one (again?). I never liked how I did the original ending. Always thought it had a lot of good musical ideas though.
I'm calling my music act "Euclidean Sea" now - it's supposed to evoke the geometric landscape art that synthwave loves. I'm not sure if my stuff neatly fits that label (it's more like darksynth? except dancey? though I'm going to have some more mellow tracks) but it's a big influence. so.
This is still a work in progress, I just wanted to post something for the weekend. I'm assuming I'll get better at mixing over the course of working on the album. I'm in no rush.
I'm also working on balancing my hobbies a little better. I was trying too hard to maintain focus on the space game, which was causing burnout and isn't really sustainable for me. I'm not giving up on it, just giving myself room to breathe. I've solidified around a relatively specific rotation of hobbies (game programming, sewing, music, electronics) so I'm always going to be progressing on one thing or another (when I'm not obsessed with video games).
Did some tweaks.... I'm still really bad at harmonizing multiple instruments lol. There's this effect where when you've been listening to something enough, you stop hearing it so much as you hear your internalized version of it. It's hard to get over that.
I also tried removing all the in-plugin effects from all the instruments and applied similar effects in Renoise. I think it sounds a lot clearer? Definitely closer to what I want and I think closer to actual commercial music...