by

Haesung prgrmr
(prgrmr)

Solid percussion line is a good thing to have, and you made good use of the loop, but it seems overly harsh on top of selection of instruments you have. The piano work is good, but perhaps an octave too high for the sample. As a result, the high frequencies tend to get drowned in the heavy percussion. The bass also seems to drag along while the rest of the song gains speed---a jumpy or more complex bassline would be in order. You do have talent but a little need polish would help make this an even better song.

Dear author, check the spelling of the title :) Little bit long intro, little bit loud synths. Nice, though repetitive drumline. Well-defined theme. Proper mood change in the middle, nice chords. Panning is ok, volumes (mostly) are ok too. Some more vibratos/portas suggested. Well-done outro. Samples are ok. Overally - it might be nice intermed entry. Very good.

Usually I'd take off points for the use of a drumloop, but in this case, I think you used it with enough skill, not just playing it mindlessly, that I won't take off any points. However, you didn't vary the drumbeat much, it could have used a bit more variation overall. Your transitions could have been smoother, I'm talking about orders 13-14 and 15-16 here. I like the mood you create in orders 14-15, it adds variety to the total song. This actually could have done well with the intermediates, which isn't saying much, as the rookies seem to be better than the intermediates this year (I entered Intermediate, so I'm also talking about myself here, so don't get too mad). Well, back to the song. I didn't like the ending too much, it seemed really weak in comparison with the rest of the song. The part where you bring in the piano is great, though. Good choice of samples overall. Listening to it again, I like patterns 20-24 even less, they just don't fit with the mood of the rest of the song, especially the tremor you have on the sample sounds really jarring.

To start with, it's very loud. Better work with the global volume (and, in fact, of each individual instrument) would have been helpful. The sample kit sounded like it came out of Search For The Lost Riff, by Basehead and Necros, and dragged a hundred yards behind a horse with an added sequence thrown in. Lots of ripped samples or you spent a _damn_ long time tweaking your instruments. Technically it's well-executed. Effects are a little simplistic but are well-used -- when they are. When they aren't, we get that gated piccolo at the end -- screech! ouch! The synth at the beginning was kinda scary. The bassline at order 6 and 7 drags a little bit and still remains uninspired throughout. Pushing the drums back in order 8 and 9 was a bad idea -- we needed to be close to the drums still. The slow part is actually well-built, and even though the phrase starting at order 16 had drums that sounded a bit too open for the song, that bit was calmly orchestrated without anything that didn't belong. The end trailed off in a pretty old school fashion. A better appreciation of subtlety would have been helpful.

That electric guitar sample sounds kinda out of place. The 5th-harmony in it clashes with the rest here and there. Good percussion - even though you've used a drumloop, you've layered some tracked percussion over it which sounds good. The slow bit in the middle seems not to fit very well. I can't detect any tuning errors, the samples all seem tuned well.