For the Mac8 contest. Used soundfonts, Garritan Personal Orchestra, my guitar, and Addictive Drums.
Hope you guys like it!
Sweet
I really liked this piece; it's slower than what i normally listen to- but then, it doesn't reflect the normal music on NG. Its smooth, sad but not without hope, quiet but with overtone... I'm not exactly up on the science of music, i just know that it sounds very good. :)
Good luck with th contest.
Very nice description and thank you for the review!
Hmmmmmm...
Kind of slow if you ask me.. simply because you start of with very minimialist sounds. You gotta have a huge lead up rather than single notes. I thought the background noise was nice. It sounded different a little bit from the rest of the Mac 08 entries.. but just a little bit. You have an OK chance og winning. Cheers.
I don't HAVE to do anything a certain way, but whatever you say... Thanks for the review.
Awe-inspiring.
A long piece filled with emotion, longing for listener's tears. I like how you use all the string instruments to create peaks at some points as well as drums and other percussions to sort of bringing other genre in.
Achaia
First off, what's the title mean?
Wow this is a really great piece. I think it is a bit uplifting but it does reflect some sadness in it. I really liked it when you brought in the cello in the beginning but I wanted it to be prominent. Even if your theme and melody aren't necessarily sad, the cello itself will give that impression and I really felt that for the first part when the cello was there.
Drums are pretty sweet and not at all what I expected to come in. You did that with Addictive drums? Wow, I really suck with that plugin then haha. Nice job with them.
At times it felt like the backing strings conflicted with the theme you had going but for me, it didn't really bother me, it just caught my attention and changed the mood a bit.
I really liked when the piano picked up pace but I personally didn't like a lot of the sound effects. Until the shaker came in I wasn't too fond of it, but that's just me *shrug*
The guitar here was really good as well and the different drums that came in really changed the mood of the piece. The buildup towards the end was really good and I enjoyed that.
This is a great entry and I wish you luck in the contest! Great job!
~SinJim
Achaea was a province of Greece. The song is about the Battle of Dyme where the Achaean forces were defeated. The story does have a somewhat happy ending, though.
This is from Wikipedia:
"In 222 BC, the Macedonian-Achaean army and the Spartan army clashed at the Battle of Sellasia which ended in an allied victory. This victory forced Cleomenes to flee from Greece and go to Egypt. While Antigonus took Sparta, making him the first foreigner to every capture Sparta."
A lot of the mood changes are supposed to represent the mixed emotions during the time of their defeat.
The first set of drums that come in I did with Addictive Drums. The second set are stock samples that come with FL Studio; I just tweaked them to my liking and pitch bent them.
Thank you for all the kind words. :)
I dig it.
The intro has such a movie-like quality.
Reminds me of children on some magical adventure, haha.
This song in general doesn't make me sad, it just takes me back to childhood and imagination-land for some reason (the high pitched xylophone-like theme throughout probably has something to do with it).
But what someone gets from the song is totally subjective, so who knows.
Good job!
Ah man, I thought I responded to all the reviews.
I would like to be a composer for movies, but it will never happen. I can see why you wouldn't get sadness out of the first half of this, but the second half is pretty depressing to me. What gets me is I didn't even place in the damn contest!
Thanks for the review!
Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.
sculpted-cold 
