by

Clemens Calandrian
(Calandrian)

The thing that stands out to me, is the bass. You make it sound like it's the lead, I dunno, maybe it's just the style. It's played at too high a frequency sometimes too. The bass, played through without headphones is really too loud. But they sound ok if i use head phones. YoU gOtS a ReAL JaMmMin piece otherwise.

Nice opening. Good development - it keeps my interest through the song. But the song wasn't very expressive. Perhaps that's just the genre of the song. Still, I found the song to be interesting. The drums were repetative, but was never boring because the the staqccato falanges synths mixed into the beat... making it sound unique throughout the song. The song was played a little high but ok. You've got clear control over the tracker with your professional (vet) application of effect values. Very well tracked.

Hmm, I was still awaiting somethin with summer, some summer motive but I didn't find it. The whole song is build on easy steps chord progress which starts to be little bit monotonous at the end. I was awaiting some end Point ( with big P ). Good is technique just 15 channels are showing that you can do serious music on few channels.

Samples: Poorly matched, pretty empty kit. Drums were filtered poorly and instruments were taken out of range frequently. Effects: Portamento and volume column were all I could see. Maybe vibrato. Volume gating in order 15h was poorly placed. Composition: Confusing transitions. Even more confusing chord changes. Leads at order 5 and order 9 are really empty. What's with these empty drum patterns all over? The percussion track softens the pain of this song somewhat, but that's not even consistent. Subtlety: Transitions are random and usually below average. Balance: Mixing was horrid. Leads were just _way_ too tinny for this song. You probably wanted a nice clear clean saw synth like you'd get from an old Juno. Panning is okay. Strong points: Sassy little rhythm. Weak points: Sounds hurried and unplanned, samples overstretched. Could improve: This song came out about as matched as a tropical tourist. Coherency is a good thing. Oh, and slow down.

there's more of a melody in the bass (counter melody?) than in any of the leads i heard... bells are a little sloppy at around 1:20/4:35.... form - not bad.. using the drums "solo" as a transition is fine once, but more than once was a little unnecessary tho i will admit it still flowed cleanly.. other than that, a bit repetitive... decent progressions but again the melody should take control and the bass riff (altho it is kinda cool) does that... technique - no problems in tracking ability, altho keep the bells tight.. reverbing instruments like that can have an awesome sound if used carefully w/o trying to do too much with them... samples - 'ok' instrumentation.. a little nintendoey for my choice but it worked with this style of tune... overall, good work but vary some transition methods in future pieces and keep the cool riffs coming but be sure to layer them with equally cool (but more powerful) melodies...

The first few patterns are nearly perfect and the rest of the song is not bad, but its not as brilliant as that beginning. It's very hard to hear the lead when it appear the first time, but that's better on the next patterns. The melodies doesn't catch th listener attention. Those electric piano interludes aren't too bright, but it's a good idea to put them there. 6 minutes is too long for this song, 4 could have been perfect. The drums (the whole background, really) sounds specially proffesional. Fine samples... a good entry, overall.

Hmm, having listened quite a lot to this track, I must confess that while I really like it, it definitely needs some improovement in the 2nd half (after pos 25(dec)) where it frankly repeats itself a bit too much without throwing in enough variety. Guess back in round 1 I had been listening to too many lame tracks to care enough about such minor details back then :) Apart from that, the track is quite well done, and I in particular give you extra points for your excellent sample set (all in 16 bit and clean), all nicely tuned and well chosen. In fact, the only thing which really bothers me now that I've listened to it about 293438 times or so, is that it badly needs more variation (in the 2nd half at least).

Some nice samples in this tune, however, the drums were low quality. Try not to downsample snares and hats as they require a higher sample rate to bring out the high frequencies. This caused them to sound too muffled. As drums are a focus point for the ears, it will drag the rest of the quality of the tune down. Good panning here. Nice to see a tune which doesn't solely rely on envelopes to get the panning working. The drum track is a little repetitive and sounds a bit cut-and-paste to me. Some nice orchestration here, however, the glockenspiels/vibes sound a bit muddy as they overlap too much. Try fading them out a lot quicker. Using such a strong Vibe sound, try to get it sounding like how the vibes would be played in real-life. Comming back to the drum track the snare in channel 4 could have note ends inbetween to give it a snappier feel. Also the shaker in channel 1 could have been given a better feel by leaving the first shake in four open, and then a low volume after each of the other three. It also gives the shaker a more realistic sound and gives it more definition. Only one last point is that I feel you could have ended the tune around the 3 minute mark. 6 minutes was a little excessive and it sounded like a repeat after 3 minutes anyway.

If you don't like summers, send me your next one. I'd be very happy to have two summers in a role :) Now seriously. Why oh why won't you let the C64 rest in peace. Couldn't you really find better samples on your harddisk? Also, you should work on your solos (especially the vibraphone in order07). And a tip for the next time: don't use the same patterns more than twice. The tune doesn't have to be 5 mins long!

Very strange, original though. The leads became tiresome but changed enough that it was listenable.

A pleasant, cute bouncy lightweight synth tune. Certain notes in the marimba section (order 0A-0B, rows 1 thru 4) didn't seem to fit. Same with the marimba section later on in the song.

Annoying sample set and drumtrack in this one-- the melodies are tracked quite poorly, and there is little or no thought given to the dynamics of the piece of making a cohesive mix of all the parts.. (chords are about twice as loud as they should be especially in the part around the middle of the tune..) This is another example of a song that SOUNDS like it was turned out in a tracker rather than planned out in any way beforehand. Some slightly out of tune sounds, and pretty uneventful (read: predictable) as a whole. I had a hard time listening all the way through.. Despite all this it is not horribly awful like something coming from someone with no experience, it's just not especially pleasant to hear.

Not bad for a synthetic/cheesy style song, but you should have worked on it a bit more. It's well composed but after listening to it, you just don't remember to a chorus or some chords. You know tracking but maybe you just write some notes and looking where they lead instead of creating something in mind and then trying to express it with your keyboard. Moreover, your samples are just average quality, nothing very special.