by

Markus Impulse
(Impulse)

A fine orchestral tune, but there are minor flaws that make it goes far from "Kingdom skies" or "Demon's pride". The samples are the main one. The kettle drum at the beginning sounds specially KHz-low... the strings sounds simple and mechanic. The chords are well chosen, but when they are played nearly alone they sounds like... computer music.. ;-) Good composition and structure.

Hello to an almost uniquely Skaven sample set. About as original as Doc Marten's, this tune is the Second Reality end-music all over again. Yes the chords flow, the samples are in tune, it's technically sound and it's got enough cymbals crashes and kettle drums to make your heart pound, but like everyone else's my heart pounded back in '93 and I didn't want it to again. Better luck with your next track.

Originality is by far not this track's best feature. It is a standard orchestral piece that does not build on any interesting ideas or progressions very frequently, and in parts becomes rather tedious due to repetition. The form is very good, building in atmosphere, flowing and falling where appropriate. The atmospheric start is let down by the rather bland and lifeless pizzicatos, which unfortunately continue through the majority of the piece. Less of them, but with a fraction more punch would create a more dynamic purpose to their existence. The feeling of a journey, or flight, is present in the composition, but once it is underway it turns into more of a hover than a forward progression, never quite being able to clutch the freedom it shows. Technique wise a nice wide sound with some effective panning is created, but there are not 'enough' dynamics to this orchestral piece. The volume accents and general levels need tweaking on most of the instruments, this will help to make the lead standout from its accompaniments, giving an overall clearer musical definition. An average sample set containing some nice orchestral samples, and some poor ones like sample 23, the main lead. The drum samples are used effectively to create a military beat, and most of the instruments are used well to complement each other in the track. Overall this track contains some good themes and harmony ideas, with nice key changes and chord progressions, but they have not been developed on, being left to drag, and at times become repetitive. Greater diversity in pattern variation is needed to bring more vibrance to this piece.

This is an orchestral song that features a sample set consisting almost entirely of sounds ripped from old FC songs. They weren't particularly great samples 6 years ago - they were quite old sounds even back then - and now they sound very poor and below the standard we would expect. This might be overcome with a very good technique, but unfortunately this isn't there. The pizzicato strings sound particularly bad, the sample is archaic, and it needs much better use of volume commands, and ideally a completely different sample. The brass sounds cheap and low quality, and the strings are very synthetic. It needs a great deal of attention to detail to make the sounds work, which wasn't present. The drums sound very poor with the exception of the decent snare, and the cymbal "rolls" in particular sound awful. It needs a very different sample set - and if you have to rip, at least rip some half decent samples next time. The combination of poor samples and a technique which isn't great gives you a song which sounds muddy and is poorly mixed. The lead lines are too quiet and don't stand out anything like as much as they should do, but the melodies they are playing aren't particularly stimulating unfortunately, with a poor use of portamentos. They generally sound like the composer thought "Ok, I need a lead here" and just stuck down some notes he thought might fit, without real thought of making a really good melody. However, some of the string lines are quite good, with some nice use of crescendos. The technique on the string chords is quite good, although it is such an established technique (volume slides, NNAs etc.) it should be expected that they sound decent. The string arpeggios are quite nicely worked out, and they sound like some good thought has gone into them. Unfortunately the chord progressions are of the "heard it many times" variety. The structure is reasonable for the most part, with the quieter sections working better than the louder parts. Some good crescendos are built up in places. However the main problem with the form of the song is that it sounds quite generic and unoriginal - it needs a stronger, much more interesting melody that makes it sound more individual. It certainly needs a better choice of samples. Orchestral is a style of music that is not at all easy to write and is especially hard to track, but people insist on trying to do it anyway, perhaps because they really enjoy it but perhaps they think it will help them do better in competition. Whatever, this song borrows a little too much from other tracked orchestral songs without catching what makes the good ones great, and the composer needs to look at this more carefully. Don't just copy the standard elements from other songs (the arpeggiating strings, percussion, etc etc) and stick them down and hope it will sound like a convincing orchestral piece.

This reminds me very much of a certain artist, and probably this is much influensed by his music. But I think that this kind of music isn't nothing very interesting nowadays anymore. Altough, the song is composed with good technique, and the composer has good skills, but doesn't use them with the best way, because this music is the kind of music, that makes me say "been there, done that". The samples aren't very fresh either, they are pretty much the same kind of, what this certain musician used already in the earlier 90's. But enough with the babling about the another artist, let's get to the musical part of this song, and a little bit of that... As I said, the song is well composed with good technique. You managed to keep the song interesting with good transitions and the appropriate use of the lead(s). Also the pannings are good, they make the song feel alive. Overally a good piece of music, composed with good technique.

Whee, orchestral. The samples sound like 1992-Skaven-era, but the tracking here is well done. The intro should have some kind of reverse-cymbal rather than a machine-gun hihat. The strings in orders 27-29 are a little heavy.

Not bad of a tune the samples were misused in some places but othere than that the song was good.

This was a reasonably well balanced orchestral tune. The chord progression was nice and simple, however a bit tooooo repetative!! An orchestral tune should explore a theme, or a story, instead of just repeating a catchy riff over and over. The song was a little too agressive all the way through, and didn't have any nice breaks or rests along the way. The arpeggiated strings in channel 18/19 could have either been echo'd, or better volume envelopes with Note Action Off so it was smoother instead of using Pitch Bend. This effect ruins the string sound, and throws the whole tune off. The drums could have had better samples, they sounded very tinny compared to the other). Some samples such as timpany sample (8bit) were distorted as they were too loud.

This song is shot through with Skavenisms. :) It's a good enough song in its own right, altho I'm not entirely sure of the feel of the drumroll. There isn't much variation in the melody either, which doesn't help.