by

Kris NuCe
(NuCe)

This is a generic techno tune. Nothing more, nothing less. It scores on its hectic flow and rhythm, which you have managed to do well. What drags down is that it's not all innovative and lacks any original touches. You use standard progression and melodies with standard (quite boring?) instruments. Still it was OK executed and thought through with a decent ending. A mediocre rookie entry.

Definitely a demo tune. But, it shines in its unique qualities. Sure, it has Purple Motion-y techno-leads, but it also features a cool rock rhythm which accompanies that well - good percussion. I found the ending a bit strange. Finally, I noticed the tune was in mono - try some stereo panning, I imagine it could only improve the piece.

Slick electro-hardrock. Smart intro that draws immediate attention. Excellent breaks in the drums. Good lead, but from order 14 it sounds rather bone-headed. Large drumloop (176k) is a bit of a lazy tactic (slice it up into several samples so you can vary it more - it's more work but it's worth it) but at least you have enough of your own tracked drums to aid it along. Snare/claps slam too hard; you're using several samples but the tune is mostly in mono so it's pointless if you're not panning them separately (why is the tune in mono anyway? this hurts its technique score). Sample 37 (lead) too loud and repetitive. From order 16, channel 1 needs echoing. Order 37 a bit too hectic. Good ending however. Samples seem to be in tune (not hard with this set) and are well chosen. Your tune has energy and drive, but don't forget to pan it and go easy on the bass and slamming drums (eg. crash cymbals are way overrused).

I think the beginning was just about the best part of the song. The song was OK until Order 14. After that, all I heard was just a Bass synth, drums, and some other instrument. Most of the song seemed to center around what the bass was doing. That might have been fine, but the bass synth was not doing anything really interesting. The ideas were too simple and you need to expand your ideas. The ending also needed improvement. Something you might want to consider, is the panning positions... you didn't really use them. Most/all of the instruments were at center (except for the drums every once in a while). That would have made the song more interesting. Overall, just spend more time on your ideas, make the song more interesting and pleasing to the ears. The sample quality was good, and there was a good choice of instruments. Other than that, the song was OK.

At last, a song where I don't have to say "too repetitive". This manages to have a good level of variety in it at least, although a clear structure isn't very visible. It also manages a reasonably good degree of originality and freshness. The sample set is good, although it contains a drum loop which is twice as long as it should be (it seems to repeat the same thing twice). The drums are quite well done, using a combination of a loop and some tracked parts. The cymbal sample is not very good, however, and the snare gets a bit overpowering later in the track. Overall though the drums sound good. The distorted sounds also work well, and certainly sound much better than the high synth lead which is used first, which is quite poor. The distorted lead is pretty good generally. The song has a lot of changes, many of which are quite sudden. While this is much better than it would be if it were just mindlessly repetitive, it could have been handled a little better. It's not overlong, which is good. Unfortunately the ending is very poor. Technically, this suffers from having a very poor use of panning. It's almost all in mono - everything stuck in the centre, which makes the mixing suffer. The song is a bit different from the norm and is reasonably well tracked (except for panning), at least, which helps a lot in a division full of same-old-same-old unoriginality or poor technical skills.

Your music piece convinced metal fans obviously. You made an electronic "translation" of the style. You just missed that : you did not include bass to your song. The beat could be much more groovy featuring a killer-bass. Your sample set is clean, distorted sounds are honnest. But it's damn short. Could include more parts.

This song lacked a few things that ended up hurting the score by a good margin. First of all, the song did not seem to use any effects of panning at all. Panning and effects can add a lot of feeling and emphasis to a song. I would reccomend adding some more effects (while keeping it effective, I just wrote on a different song about the overuse of panning). Other things that I thought could use some changing were that this song did not have any original qualities about it, although it had a catchy rhythm to it. Secondly, the sample drum loop was not as good of quality as it could have been, could this same effect have been achieved through the use of individual better quality samples?

This is real quality stuff from patterns 1 - 14, sounding much like veteran tune rather than a rookie. The rest fails to maintain this standard, which is a shame, but still this piece is very impressive. You could have at least attempted to implement some panning to make it sound a bit better. Your transitions later on need a bit of work also. You have good samples and the first lead is great (blocks 10-13), if you had brought this back later in the song it would have made it sooooo much better.

Quite low sample quality. Needs more variation. Not very interesting melodies. Not very original, quite ordinary scene standard.