by

Libor Wark
(Wark)

*File Specs* [Filename]m6i-toto.xxx [Title]Time of the oblivion [Total playing time]05:09 *Musical Values* [Creativity]Well i noticed the author of this piece inserted some real dedicated time within this song as it is floating full of ideas..[Story]Lovestory...[Structure]Good build, the main line is going uninterrupted from start to the end so no confusing cuts from one transition to another.[Harmony]I noticed harmony in a good way and in a bad way, i just missed some balancing here and there in mixing, the musical harmony is great, chords and melody lines are filling in to eachother and support at the right moments, percussionline is subtile and the impact is good.[Realness/Fantasy factors]The string sessions are fair to good, vocal chords are fair used in volume. *Technical Values* [Instruments]Real nice, i really like the way to jazz around with your lead and chord instruments they are inspiring... At least i understand what got you moving making this song :) [Samples]Super... i mean not all of too super quality but the majority is really clean and not overnotched a few sequences of small parts, not to bad either, the Grand piano is really nice...[Arrangements]There is room for improvement here though volume balancing is really great, crescendo emulation is terrific though your stereo mixing did not showed a good harmony, on individual bases the environment per instrument has been sorted out well but together they don't sound harmonious.[Use of...]N/A [Sample Quality] Only a few with the known 8-bit noise.. no no real serious flaws here that kills your song. *Sounding Techniques* [Depth/Width]Here's where your song lacks most of the harmony like the string guitar playing somewhere on the background while you can hear that it has been played in a foreground essence from which it has been sampled:bad, bad... the vocal chords which go really deep and surrounding you while the rest of the music comes from the monaural mid... bad.. bad.... Better stereo mixing is nessesary but that's actually the major part which has to improve, the songconcept is finished, only the last touch is nessesary...[Headphones]Yeah, sounds nice.. the stereo environment flaws are too well noticable here! [Speakers]At least i understand why the author did not debuged stereo environment... :)

This song has one of the best guitar solos I've heard in a module. It's a pity that some of the other samples are far way this good. The trumpet sounds specially unrealistic. Maybe another wind sample played on a lower frequency could have solved that. There are good melodies here, and I don't say this too often. The overall sound is not very professional, excluding that solo, of course.

Definitely too long intro, the song really started at ord 0D (13), when the song had been playing over 1:30. But after that, I have to say, the song is excellent. It leaves a very strong feeling to the listener (well, at least it left to me). Very touching song, indeed. The song is very unique kind, and it kept me interested through the whole song. Suddenly, the song was over, and I didn't even notice it, I was so wrapped to the song on the first time I listened to it. Little about the samples... they were pretty much high qualited, except the percussion, what I didn't like much. The bassdrum were ok, but the hihat, the snare and the plate were awful. Especially the snare really didn't match to the song, I think. The lead wasn't the best choice for this song either, a nice violin, or something like that, would've been better. Anyway, great song with good technique and very much emmotion. Ah, my heart is singing. :)

I really must say that I'm not entirely happy with this track. Sure, it is well done, uses very good samples and it is a quite beautiful track to listen to... but I keep thinking to myself, where have I heard this all before? There are simply too many parts in the track which I can't help thinking I've heard somewhere before. And a friend of mine who dropped in who had never heard this track said the same, unfortunately, neither of us could pinpoint where :( Still, I gave the track a higher rating for form and samples, because it sure feels very well put together, and flows just beautifully and it keeps the mood wonderfully intact allt the way through, obviously the track wasn't just thrown randomly together. Overall, very good work, but I dragged down rating a little bit for above reasons. Despite that, I'll be keeping the track around for a while, just for the mood of it.

This is a nice orchestral ballad. The tune is always moving, if not getting a tad lost along the way sometimes. The tune is rich with changing chords, but tends to lose the listener as the theme isn't as strong as it could have been. The melody is what you need to concentrate on as a tune full of ever changing chords gets a bit tiresome because there's no distinct direction. Watch your panning, a tune like this cries for wide equalised panning, but was a bit thin on this in places. Some of the samples sounded a bit dirty and could have been cleaner. Technically speaking it is a very simply tracked tune. I would have liked to see better panning envelopes which start from either left or right instead of moving from center outwards. At somepoints when all the panning envelopes are triggered all at once it sounds mono.

The song was great I liked the way the song flowed the samples were done well also.

Samples: Very synthetic but noisy and aliased strings. Drums were too crisp (maybe just in contrast?). The snare instrument 04h in particular was too tight yet had too loose of a slapback delay, and it made the whole song sound plain and flat. Guitars were very clean, though. Tracking: Good use of pattern skip and note off. Tympani was subtle in orders 07 and 08, almost at the edge of hearing, but they sound good down there. Hi-hats starting at order 1Fh over to the right sound a bit too overdone. Composition: Mostly okay, but frankly, I found the song pretty dull. The ending was realistic, but easily expected. Subtlety: Good tweaking and composing of instruments for maximum authenticity. Case in point is the opening piano, and the acoustic guitar at order 13h. Balance: Don't use extreme left/right panning in realistic-ish songs. Strong points: Measured flow, realistic, stable. Weak points: Two-dimensional, inconsistent samples, uninspiring. Could improve: Choice of theme, chord progressions.

I'd love to rate this higher than I have, but for one thing. The bass line is far too weak. It needs to be more emphatic, and more animated in the livelier parts of the song. The melody was very nice, and some of the samples sounded really sweet.

Poor keyboard sample when it starts playing it's part after a couple patterns, though the initial organ sound is nice. I suppose, an attempt at creating rpg/fantasy style music, and while MUSICALLY some of the ideas are actually pretty interesting - very typical of japanese rpg's (even ff7 comes to mind), the execution is fairly poor. The choir samples in particular dont fit wiell in the mix and the synth chord pads are just so boring and low quality.. The percussion track is uneventful-- while I wouldn't suggest a blaring complex rhythm pattern for this music, the sounds could at least be better, which would in turn make a simpler drum sequence more effective. Very good form, this person has a knack for transitions and a decent ear from the sound of it, this was a well worked-through piece.. It's just that the sounds and the tracking technique need a lot of help. The creativity saved this from the low technical score bringing the piece way down.