by

Travis Coplan
(Coplan)

The first time the piano came in... I hate to say this, but I became bored of the piano after the first 2 patterns. You only really used 2 chords until you changed key to major. The main instrument of the song was the paino. So you could have made the paino part better, in just about all respects. Listen to other music, and see what they did. My overall complaint about the song is that most of the instruments you used did not sound natural. Not that the samples were not realistic (because they WERE realistic), but it is just how they are played. For example, when the harp came in... I know for a fact a harp does not play single notes... it is designed for strumming, not as a solo instrument. The timpany, played the same thing every 2 bars. My best advice, is listen to orchestrated music (or compose it. I've found that composing a song for REAL people is the most fun you will have out of composing), even listen to some of Liam the Lemmings stuff (he uses a lot of pianos), and when you compose, imagine there is someone behind every instrument in your song. When you learn more about music and all the instruments in it, your music will become much better.

The song starts off very well with the soft piano and strings. The percussion partially wreaks the subdued feeling created. The timpani is fine but the snare sample doesn't fit well; try replacing it. I was always expecting some sort of lead, a violin perhaps, to come in and supply bearing for the song in a melody that the repetitive piano failed to provide. Leaving the piano as the lead would be fine if it were slightly louder. Try using more volume commands to give the instruments more feeling.

The first thing that strikes me in this song is the piano. I wasn't struck in a positive way, either. The piano sounds as if it were sampled at 8khz. However, I know that this is not the case. (Or, perhaps it is, but I have a better theory). This sample is either, as mentioned earlier, really low quality, or out of its 'sweet range.' Sweet range, meaning, the range that it was originally sampled at, as a real piano. If you go too far out of this range, it ceases to sound like a piano anymore (or, like a real piano, rather). How to solve this problem? Find a new piano sample (this is most recomended) or, figure out what its sweet range is (although the sample is not really of good quality in the first place). The intro riff on the piano is quite simple. Which may not be a bad thing altogether, but your lack of dynamic contrast worsens this. If you're not going to complicate the riff at all, you could at least have added a little volume variance to set the right kind of mood. Nice use of low strings. They really suit the riff (as bare as the riff is) well. They are at just the right volume and hold just the right timbre. Later on you add in some lower pianos. These make that part of the song a little muddy, because the piano samples that you use do not have much high end.. Had they some highend, the whole mix would be a bit more evened out. Then you come in with the timpanies.. I think you do a pretty good job with these; they sound nice. One thing I noticed though is that you have NNA's set so that if you were to hit two A#'s on a timpany, it takes two channels. This is not so in real life. How to fix this? Go into the instrument screen, and click on "note" under the "Duplicate Check Type & Action" menu. It'll still create a new virtual channel for the C you put in there, but not for the two separate A#'s. While I'm on the subject of 'realism', I might as well mention that pianos in real life to not pan as oddly as that (although I didn't mark you down for this). The snare drum you come in with does not suit this type of song. I can not be certain as to what style you were trying to achieve here, but if it is a classical style, this snare does not match. Even if you are going for some other type of style, this snare drum is very bland (I think it comes from the AWE patches, right?) The same goes for the rest, although you did make good use of the hihat during the harp solo. The crash is also distorted, which adds an unpleasant sound to it when used. I think a snare with a bit more reverb would be a little more fitting.. Preferably an orchestral snare. And use of a separate snare-roll sample would be wise as well, if you wanted to do snare-rolls. The hihats are tolerable.. But you do need a new crash cymbal (one that is not overdriven) The harmony you give to the harp is nice, but the actual melody is a bit simple. It is nothing bad to listen to, but it simply doesn't add all that excitement or emotion to the song. As for the harp sample itself, it doesn't really quite sound like a harp. I myself have never heard a decent harp sample used in tracks, so I guess I won't mark you down for this. The key/chord change you throw in is nice, although it caught me by a bit of surprise.. In this case, that is not so much a bad thing, for the song itself was beginning to bore me. The string work you do is decent. However, you did exactly what even the MC6 guidelines told you not to do.. Rip those Skaven marcato strings.. The little riff you do the beginning of pattern 19 is nice because it throws in a little bit of variance to the piano rhythm which by then was getting old.. There's no climax in this song. Final judgement? Samples really sorta kill this tune. They are plain and bland.. Not to mention bad quailty and unoriginal. They don't give the song any sort of defining texture or sound. The sample quality was only one downer though. This song had several nice aspects (like good use of timpany, nice harmonizations, good string work).. However, there were too many things wrong in this tune to make it truly enjoyable (samples, as mentioned.. repetativeness, lack of complexity..)

I'm not even going to touch on how bad the title was. This is by far the worst intro I've ever heard. Nothing pisses me off more than a poorly tracked piano. And all poorly tracked piano tunes have one thing in common: no dynamics. Unless the piano player is mentally deficient or has an American-made robotic arm (either way, s/he should not be playing the piano), there will usually be some emotion or feeling put into a piano melody. The "accompaniament", which consisted of a 3-tone chord, was just as bad and therefore didn't add any depth or richness to the tune. Also, when you're brining in percussion, you absolutely have to lead up to it. You cannot just spring a snare drum on the listener in the middle of the pattern at full volume. It's very distracting. There must be some depth to a drum trak if you're going to expect anyone to listen to it wilfully. Minimalistic drum traks can be done well if there is an interesting rhythm or other interesting quality (e.g. dynamics) to it, but of course this song had an extraordinarily bland drum trak. The string (sample 3) should not have been used to simply echo the melody. Play it at rows that offset the rest of the melody, and let it play different notes than the melody; it's supposed to accompany the melody, add some depth to it that wasn't evident before, not just make the song louder and more cluttered. Patterns 10 through 13 or 14 were nice. They were a satisfactory example of that minimalistic drum trak I mentioned before. The only problem that the same simple pattern carried on too far without any change. You can't just add that little glockenspiel or metallophone or whatever it was to this simple drum trak and expect that to carry it for like 8 patterns. The idea of minimalism (in reference to the percussion) is to have very few elements and play with them subtly to create a powerful effect. d0h it would not have been hard to play around with the dynamics (maybe hit that surdo/low tom thing harder or at an interesting rhythm) and then build into a really high-energy crescendo. But instead you just brought in that evil sample 3 again. Ugh.

nice and mellow, good strings and piano... overall interesting piece to listen to, although i'd lose the kettle drums. a few harmonic elements don't work, but sounds nice in general.