by

Bartek the_raven
(the_raven)

Pretty damn good stuff here. Your samples are nice and and I can see the mood your trying to create quite well. Nice lead, both lead instruments are well suited to the piece. The piano 'riff' is really good but I think that they way you end some of the patterns within the riff could be better. By this I mean the chord you play at the end of the riff sounds a little out of place and tacky, in some patterns you took it out and ended it with a single note and it sounded much better. Also I like the change up inbetween main melodies, but I think going back to the footsteps and thunder makes the piece disjointed, the footsteps and rain were good at the start, but thats where they should have stayed. Other than that, great job :)

Well, I did enjoy it but it wasn't as good as it could be. First of all, the bass sample had some AWFUL noise in it, and some of the other samples were low-quality. Some of the others (guitar, flute) were of a nice quality and it somewhat balanced out. Also, most of your volume envelopes were set to fade out WAY too quickly. You could have used some volume slides to fade out where it was needed quickly--but at the end of the pattern (this was evident in the flute lead) you faded out too quickly and because the guitar also faded quickly it seems like the song chops off and starts again at the end of each pattern. The choppiness isn't a very good idea in a song of this style. The guitar strum that you tried sounded okay, but it needed to be spaced out more a tinge, I think. You also used effect 6xx incorrectly. The 6xx command is the same as 400 plus Axx. The effect 6 holds the last vibrato value given to it and performs a volume slide of the effect A-type. So where you wanted things to fade out, they got louder (case in point: using 671.) You want to use simply 601 in that area...because you're actually sliding the volume UP 7 per tick per line, which means in one line at speed 8 you're sliding the volume up 58 and not down 8. Not what you wanted, eh? I didn't like the wood block being as loud as it was in your drum line. The ending was solid and had finality, and I liked it.

The wind, thunder and rain samples you used in the intro are terrible! The intro fits in the composition, still you could have used better samples. The same for bass sample. The guitar was nice, but sounded more like piano in few places (wrong volume envelope). The main flute motif is good, but the piano solos later on need fixing. Next time don't use portas on the piano! One thing I liked is that once you set a mood, you held it consequently till the end.

The mixing and instrument usage in this one aren't too bad, a welcome change from some of the other entries.. the melody and such aren't very interesting though and the atmospheric fx samples are pretty hoaky. Several samples are out of tune so that doesnt help the second 'section' sound any better but the nice sparseness in the groove created by the light drums (hihat/kick/rim) and the bass sort of pull it together anyway. It's a shame something more memorable doesn't happen in the tune..

I marked you down in the 'form-overall quiality' because the tune got a little boring. The guitar samples don't sound that close to a real guitar. Your tune is very forgettable.