by

Heinz neuron
(neuron)

When the chords came in at the beginning, it was a bit sharp. And the first 5 tracks went on a little too long without changing the rythmn. Despite the repitition, it flows rather well. I especially like the transitory phase in tracks 15-17. After track 20 or so, the chords begin to stand out as overly repetitive. I like the ending sequence, it fades out nicely. Its not something I would play at a family reunion, but its not bad. :)

*File Specs* [Filename]m6i-asct.xxx [Title]Ascent [Total playing time]06:33 *Musical Values* [Creativity]The basic concept is nice, though the melodic power is quite weak, it sounds like one very long intro to me. I notice some talent here in musical aspect, it's the most important to have and to further develop. [Story]IT is more coming over as a TV-series song, they mostly only support basic motives and styles of the serie without telling the actual story.[Structure]There are great breaks within the song, there is a enough variety of sections but the song could have been a lot shorter in length, there were some sections which contained a lot of repeative parts, the melodic structure could have been given more shape and brought more strongly to the foreground. [Harmony] The harmony of the background and surround environment is alright, it's colourfull but missing a lot of melodical aspects. [Realness/Fantasy factors] so/so , the song came over as quite synthetic, a bit of glamorous fancy sounding. *Technical Values* [Instruments]No fancy arrangements here.[Samples]No special tweakers here either.[Arrangements]The most work is done here, the Sfx are well used but sometimes a bit too much on the foreground, the "hihat" track (Inst 2 in track 2 of most patterns) is missing a lot of variability, you could have played more with volume aspects, rythmical aspects, as for the rest of the percussional support, this could have been done better, the percussion is okay during the breaks but there are hardly any changes noticable during the main percussion "engine". The chordlines sometimes swift a bit too much from left to right, keep them in separated harmony (devided across your stereo output), Also the chordlines filled in most of melodic parts of this song, that can become quite boring in the end and keeping expectations up for too long. [Use of...]N/A [Sample Quality] Ripped samples, most of them are not in a real good shape. *Sounding Techniques* [Depth]Most of the sounding environment is surfacial, the timbre does not go to far to the back of the horizon.[Width]The wideness is reasonable to good, most of the percussional aspects are ruin this width environment a bit. [Headphones]It's enjoyable on headphones but not really fancy mixed, well okay a good mixed song will also not really promise gold-mines. [Speakers] Average sounding, i guess it's more a problem of the song than the speakers :)...

-boring beat, no variation to base pattern -order 4, the eighties return -very repetative -never grabs my attention -chord structure was decent I think this song should have been entered in the rookie division... it doesn't have a high level of complexity or emotional appeal

An okay song, by and large. But there were a couple of big problems. By category: Samples were ok, some were a bit grainy. They held together, by and large Origionality was nothing spectacular, but that's "normal." Form & Technical: these hurt you quite a bit. My major gripe with form was that there was no significant change in texture from the end of pattern 1 til the end of the song. A more coherent melody would've helped. Or a change in tempo. Or a change in volume. That's another thing. Channels 1-6 seemed to be played at full volume the whole way through, with no change or expression. The drums also got monotonous... It's not that it was particularly repetitious, there was just very little variety. That being said: Chords were pretty good ( better than average, I'd say ) and there were some neat patterns. Sample 8 was a good addition, but it could have probably been done through effects... Not great, not bad, all around.

Instead of 10 channels and sampled chords, you could have doubled the channels and constructed chords of invidual voices. Most of the samples range from OK to good, but the snare sample lacks edge and power. Mixing is somewhat off the course. I generally like your chord progressions, but I miss the inversions and voicings made impossible by the use of sampled chords. Interesting key-changes here and there, too. Clashing notes are few and far between. The hihat or whatever gets annoying after brief listening. You could also have tried to implement some kind of theme or melody into this tune. As it is, the listener keeps waiting for something to happen.

It's got some amazingly thick-sounding chords with the analog strings, and has a kind of 80's feel to it---the instruments even sound like they had been ripped from some of the early MODs. The melody gets hidden by the mass of chords and thus is hard to follow at times. The volumes could be balanced a bit better to bring out the bass and percussion, as I can barely hear them under the chords. There is one passage near the middle where the melody seems to collide with the key and thus seems "off".