by

Brian paroxysm
(paroxysm)

First of all, let's talk about drums. The drum line you played along the song is too simple, and the snare is too loud. If you want the drums to sounds over most of the other instruments, please add variations. It's not pleasant to hear the same drumloop over and over again. Good main theme, but not outstanding. You made a good use of leads. It's repetitive, but at least it last only 3 minutes, so it didn't bore too much.

An attempt at a slow, emotional track with several glaring flaws. Technically it's poor, with bad mixing (cymbals way too loud), no bass whatsoever (where did it go?) and a bassdrum panned too far to the right. Snare doesn't quite fit with the rest of the percussion as it's too low and reverbed. Intro riff gets old quite fast. Pad sample (3) is out of tune which brought down the sample score. The samples seem fairly original but are too grainy and low quality. Lead is a bit droney, cuts off too fast in places and isn't echoed in others. Chords suffer from a distinct lack of variation which suffocates your tune and gives it poor form. Ending cuts off too fast. I can see what you're trying to do, but while the tune is listenable it has too many flaws to ignore.

This starts off with a real relic of a sample. That same piano sound has been used in MODs for over 8 years. It always did sound pretty poor - can't you find some better sounds to rip? The sample set as a whole isn't too great, using drum sounds which don't go together well. The whole thing sounds very dull and plodding. It's very repetitive, with a few unoriginal lead melodies put over the top. The drum track is incredibly tedious, with a snare line that sounds completely out of place - attempting to be a bit intricate but ending up sounding entirely unrealistic and out of place with the rest of it. You need to use drums that at least sound like they came from the same kit. Much of this sounds like you copied one pattern over nearly the whole song and changed the lead a bit. The leads plod along in a slow and uninteresting manner. At least vary it with some careful use of portamentos, and varying the volume or the note length. When Necros used those lead sounds he took advantage of the change in cut off in the sample to create some good effects, which you seemed to ignore. The song does at least show a basic understanding of harmony and melody, but it's just so.. dull, repetitive and unoriginal. It needs to be livened up and made to move - given feeling. Add some structure to it (verse/chorus/brigdes etc), change key sometimes, develop it. Technically it's not bad - not very good either, but not bad at least. The mixing is not great, but at least it sounds reasonably smooth. It manages to sound average, but it's so lacking in spark or originality, or ideas. A good example of dull mediocraty.

First thing that came to my mind was: Where's the bass?? The song feels very empty and hollow without bass. Or at least somekind of low piano or something like that would've made the song much more enjoyable. The song isn't very individual, that spoiles a little bit, but hey, I've heard MUCH less individual songs too, and at least this isn't dance- or popmusic, what at least 50% of musicians make. Pretty much too repeative song, it just repeated the same thing through the whole song. A nice guitarlead could have been cool. I didn't like much the lead you used, but it was better than nothing. Your technique is proper, though it's never good enough... Samples were ok, though the lead didn't sound very nice, and the drums (snare especially) were awful. Better drums would have made the song more interesting. The biggest problem is, that the song provides nothing special to the listener, only an empty feeling mostly because of the missing bass.

It's not that this song is unoriginal, but it starts to lack in orginality due to its own vague repetitiveness. There is, however, a small unusual charm to this rather minimal track, one that I cannot quite put my finger on. Maybe it is just the minimalist aspect that somehow attracts. The form has a fairly clear flow-through to it. The transitions between theme progressions are smooth, but do not really take the listener anywhere. A greater variation on themes and chord progressions in general would help to alleviate melody monotony. Technique is average, there is a very open almost linear sound to this track, but I feel this is unintentional, and brought about due to the lack of sound production and arrangement. Better panning and volume controls would help to fill or pad the overall sound out giving it more depth and appeal. However, some of the depth problem is due to the high frequency samples used together to create the main melody, leaving a rather large gap in the mid-range area. The samples themselves are of fair enough quality, but are not varied enough in range. The main synth lead is very synthetic and grainy, and the pianos are not, thus they do not completely complement each other well. A smoother more rounded synth sound might have been preferable. Overall even though there is an odd charm to this track there is just not enough variation. The beat is a very standard 4/4 with very little change to it, and the piano chords are likewise. The synth melody has some nice ideas to it, but could have used a harmony to help complement it occasionally. Potentially a nice track that could have so much more injected into it with less reiteration, more direction and melodic ideas.

Nice melody, but the song is missing bass. The bassdrum is a little too loud. The ending is abrupt. Is that the MobyPiano sample way back from 1990? The artist didn't repeat duplicate patterns in the order listing, and I know there are some.

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

Quite a simple tune here. It was a little thin sounding even though the samples were of quite good quality. I was hanging out for the bass which never came, and found that there was indeed a bass sample which was never used, yet not removed. Because of a lack of bass, it sounded too top-ended. The lead which sounds like a harmonica synth of some sort, is a little too hollow sounding. The chord progression is simple and neat, but lacks distinction again because of a missing bass to balance the sound. You may have considered speeding things up a bit say to tempo 185. Then with a bass, this would have been a more interesting tune. I don't know but it could be a mistake the tune is slow, as it sounds like it was tracked for a faster speed then slowed down.