by

Marc The Zapper!
(The Zapper!)

One of my top favorite 30 veteran songs, you put together a very well-balanced song. It made interesting use of common instruments (electric guitars, synth bass, percussion) and filled out its overall sound with plenty of body. Near the middle, after pushing the chorus into the listener's head you add a refreshing chord change and segue back in cleanly without dropping the pace as others have. Technically, very clean; no flaws really. However, the song wasn't "next level" material as the leads (though good) were rather plain---no live-performance type of guitar mastery exhibited. Congrats.

Good job using those drum sequences. Excellent bassline. These two together have an original sound and feel. GREAT use of panning on the drums (specifically the snares), but I think your hihats could've used that stereo as well. Aside from the hihats, the drums sound very professional. I think you did a great job layering the chords on top of the guitar/synth lead; the mixing is just right. You do a great job panning things like the muted guitars, and doing the panbrello on things like those 'ahhh' pads. Nice little guitar/synth fills (those slow trills you throw in when the guitar is not the lead). One thing I think you could do without is overuse of the portamentos down on the guitar lead. Don't use it so often! I'm thrilled though, that you manage to use the same bassline throughout and I don't really get bored of it. Excellent break to pattern 1: great muted guitars. Nice return to the intro at order 15: love that bassline. One thing though, is that I think you should either 1) add a harmony to the guitar a bit later on in the song (right after order 15), or 2) introduce a new instrument to replace the guitar after 15, or use two instruments at the same time after 15. Excellent mixing throughout this piece. Great samples! These all look original, and they're all high quality, 16-bit, not overdriven or anything. More importantly, they all fit together quite well. This song is pretty original, and is musically very nice. I think it could benefit from maybe a few harmonies on the guitar, but other than that, excellent. Nice job managing all this at speed 6, BPM 88! I don't see that many songs nowadays at that speed (is that something to be proud of? writing it at speed 6? hmm.. sure :D) Appropriate ending.

Nice track. The samples are all fairly clean (could be a tad better), but more importantly, they all fit together. You could stand to use a little more variation in you song--especially with that rhythm section (the verby snare gets awfully repetative by the second half of the song). The guitar is well done, only quirky in a few places... I like the feel of the song, it's very Eddie Jobson... The bass is cool (if a bit too high-EQ'ed)... You could also have withstood the use of a secondary theme... A little bit of re-working could make this song quite nice. Good stuff.

I just love the sound of your drumloop! Generally the sample set is bright and atmospheric. Good stereo image and feeling. Lead lacks direction. Nice chords also. The phattt synth bass sample really rocks too. I adore your sound, but your music is not so great, especially the leads lack feeling and atmosphere. The structure is there, but not much happens here dynamics-wise. Very enjoyable, however.

This is very reminiscent of an older style, done with more voices and more practice (and maybe more mellowness). It's relaxing in a sassy sort of way. Some changes were a little weird like order 12 -> 13 -- maybe the tail end of order 12 should have segued into the change better. Orders 3 and 4 could have been maybe half a pattern instead of 2, for maximum effectiveness (but that part still sounds good with the rest of the song, so more of that somewhere else would not be unwelcome). Channels 4-6 in order 20 were a bit boring and uncreative for a lead-out. The stereo snare hits are good technically but maybe a bit overused (and that SD5 instead of retrig was clever, but at least in pattern 15 you probably wanted the two snares a bit further apart and bring them into sync for the last snare of the quiet part). That mushy percussion sequence and bass at the very beginning are very well matched, and the rest of your sample kit is full and coherent.