is just great... =D
is fantastic... i enjoy it very much
the rhythm is awesome
it feels awesome... sounds epic, it has power, and really gets inside you
and such a sweet ending that was a pretty nice touch
i like it's progressive, has a very good evolving, from intro to end every change
you made was great
from 1:48 and on it was pure awesome
now is one of my favorites songs on NG... =D
Nice...
I like it a lot. It is stern, powerful, and mystical in places.
I like the brass sound you used. Very forceful, and it really gives this song an inner strength. Which is obviously created by the harmonies as well.
I love the chord structure. It isn't simply a melody and bassline. There are full chords, and a lot of harmonies going on.
The percussion is a bit limited. I personally think you could expand on the percussion a bit, but that is just my opinion. Take it or leave it as you will.
The strings are very nicely written and portrayed, kudos to you. They really fit well within this song.
Now, my biggest beef is the electric guitar. Either use it, or toss it. Right now it is so out of place it is ridiculous. Now I love metal, and especially orchestral metal. From Blind Guardian to Dimmu Borgir, I listen to it all. But this guitar is extremely out of place.
You either need to choose to make this a metal piece, with the guitar in it the whole time. Or leave it out completely. Because as it is now, it does not fit the song at all. But other than that, everything seems to be in pretty good order.
4/5 and 8/10 overall. Just some minor tweaks in my opinion to work out.
Best of luck on your future projects bud!
-Gravey-
P.S. - If ya get bored, you should stop by and listen to my entry. :-)
Hi Gravey, thanks for the in depth review of the piece.
It's unfortunate you're not fond of the guitar as it's my favorite section of the song, the reason it's placed where it is, is because to use it through the entire piece would cause the finale to lose much of its impact, to not use it at all would have left the piece more empty sounding and not as powerful as I intended it to be. I like the guitar placement as it is, I can understand and appreciate different taste so don't think i'm just shrugging off your criticism, I just don't personally agree with it is all.
I do agree on the drumming though, some more variance would help, especially near the end, and truthfully, I did experiment with it (even using taiko drums to change the tonality a bit), but ultimately wasn't happy with the sound so I settled on a minimalistic timpani/cymbal approach, better than nothing at all I guess!
Again, thank you for taking the time to pick the piece apart and provide real criticism, I do appreciate it. Ill check out your piece for sure. I don't need to be bored to check out other peoples stuff, I enjoy listening to all the stuff here on Newgrounds, it's much more interesting and refreshing than the regurgitated crap on the radio these days! :)
Regards,
Daniel
yep
one of my favs for the contest. the beginning reminds me of some dramatical films, great emotion captured here. hm I must say I don't really like the guitar, you should've kept it orchestral. but the flutes are great I love it when live instruments comes into play and the calm outro fits perfectly.
so nice work overall keep it up.
Beautiful Imagery
This is an excellent piece as far as imagery goes - it makes for wonderful background music and would well set up the scene of an epic battle of sorts. I still think it could use a little more layering, rather than string chord progressions making up the bulk of the work, but in and of itself it still is good. The harmonies are lovely though and I love the flute at the end (I wish my recorders would record so nicely) Even the guitar blends in well. Definitely shows a lot of promise - keep up the good work and ignore unhelpful flamers who say otherwise ;)
Thanks for the constructive criticism. I did originally experiment with more layering in the song but I just couldn't get it to sound right so eventually ended up giving up on the idea. At one point I even had soft guitar solos going through much of the piece over top the synth but it just wouldn't sit in the mix properly.
I also need to work within a 2 gb memory budget since FL Studio won't address more than that. This song hit 1.6 gb in samples so I was nearing the edge of what I could physically do with it.
If you're curious, the flute was recorded using a matched pair of Apex 185 mics in a stereo configuration. Nothing fancy! They're lower end home studio condenser mics but they sound fantastic. Paid $165 for the kit, with shock mounts, hardhsell case, omni and cardioid capsules and wind filters. Not a bad price!
Thanks for the feedback.
Regards,
Daniel
Very nice
Very great piece. Mills down there is full of shit. Amazing build. I love the total grandness of this. Keep it up, fav'd