The guitar intro totally captivated my heart, and made me wish I had the skill and talent that you have to write something so subtle, yet so powerful. As always, your transitions were awesome. However, about 5 to 10 seconds in the section around 1:15 spent using to add a song 'B' melody (I actually hate that term, but I can't think of another word to use at the moment) with a Sus. Acc. Violin solo would be awesome. The only problem would be manipulating the few solo violin samples out there to make it work.
But anyway, this song goes straight to the top of my faves!
"The guitar intro totally captivated my heart, and made me wish I had the skill and talent that you have to write something so subtle, yet so powerful."
Haha you're over-exaggerating! It's nothing that special. But thanks for the nice comments!
"As always, your transitions were awesome."
Well I think the transition from soft to loud and vice versa, the latter especially, could use some work, but yeah they aren't too bad.
"However, about 5 to 10 seconds in the section around 1:15 spent using to add a song 'B' melody (I actually hate that term, but I can't think of another word to use at the moment) with a Sus. Acc. Violin solo would be awesome. The only problem would be manipulating the few solo violin samples out there to make it work."
Hm... not sure what you mean by this, I'm afraid!
"But anyway, this song goes straight to the top of my faves!"
Oh wow :o I REALLY like this! I thought I would have had a shot in this contest but now I'm not so sure!
I really love how natural the strumming on the guitar sounds, the timing of the plucks are so perfect. Also all the subtle background noises that support it are just fantastic! Like the subtle choir voices and woodwinds that just weave through. Beautiful, Well done!
"Oh wow :o I REALLY like this! I thought I would have had a shot in this contest but now I'm not so sure!"
D'aww thanks! Man, when I heard your track and most of the others I felt the exact same thing. I mean the contest doesn't have a massive amount of participants so I thought I might have a chance at doing well, but all the music is so good. D:
"I really love how natural the strumming on the guitar sounds, the timing of the plucks are so perfect."
Ironically, they're perfect because they're not. If I had just inputted them in my piano roll and didn't humanise them then they would've sounded ugly and computerised, so I decided to disregard tempo for the guitar-only parts and just play it all myself with my MIDI keyboard. Really adds a lot of expression.
"Also all the subtle background noises that support it are just fantastic! Like the subtle choir voices and woodwinds that just weave through."
I'm so glad you noticed them, I paid particular attention to those. I tried to do stuff like have the choir sound like it's "morphing" into another instrument at parts like 0:37 - 0:45 and 1:34 - 1:48, the first case being from choir to woodwind (duduk and clarinet) and the second being from choir to strings. Just a little idea I had, haha.
"Beautiful, Well done!"
Thanks a million for the supportive review! Really happy you enjoyed this. Aaaand my response is bigger than the review; bad habit of mine.
If only my music were this epic sounding... I would enjoy some sort of high 1-7-1-5-1-7-1-5 eighth-note violin melody during the epicness or a variation on the original guitar motif.
I thought this piece really was a masterful mix of production and emotion. I can tell how much effort you put into the velocities, flow, and so on... I'm really glad to see you enter such a gorgeous piece in this contest!
Epic =/= good! Yours is one of my favourites, it reminds me quite a bit of the Journey soundtrack. But yeah, I wish I had time to review yours.
"I would enjoy some sort of high 1-7-1-5-1-7-1-5 eighth-note violin melody during the epicness or a variation on the original guitar motif."
Maaan I had that exact idea myself (except not 1 - 7 - 5) but I just can't get it to sound right. I think it'll add some good harmony and in the epic parts it'll add even more intensity, so it's a good idea, but I'm too crap at music to get it right :3.
"I thought this piece really was a masterful mix of production and emotion. I can tell how much effort you put into the velocities, flow, and so on... I'm really glad to see you enter such a gorgeous piece in this contest!"
Thanks a million for all the support. Good luck to you!
I think you have the chance of winning Bosa's contest.
Seriously, it's surprising that not enough people turn to you for their music needs. Hell, I even suggested you to other NG members such as Doomhammr and Hyptosis. I can go on and on, but that would be meaningless. In other words, I'll cut to the chase...
Instrumentation: You sure know your VSTs well enough to find out what works and what doesn't. To be honest, I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but can tell that there's similarities between your work and UBI Soft's. They have struck a nice balance between intense and subtle.
Composition: To elaborate on that last sentence, it takes a delicate hand to make such sharp contrasts work with each other; anyone else would have screwed up. I loved what you did with the first half of this song, which had a very nice atmosphere. The second half was also brilliant considering that the first half could be considered a build-up.
Other: Nothing else worth mentioning aside from the fact that you have also great mastering and EQ skills to boot. By the way, Have you considered making a tutorial on FL Studio akin to what Steven Polley and Nav did?
The Good:
-Original
-Clever use of contrasts
-Excellent composition
-Great instrument variety
-Versatile
The Bad:
-Nothing really
Overall: Stephan, here's a ten from me and here's hoping that more people consider turning to you for their music needs.
"I think you have the chance of winning Bosa's contest."
Wow man you really think so? I've never even placed in any contest before so if I do I'll probably burst with happiness or something. But I doubt I will, dem0lecule and samulis and deadlyfishes and Buoy and WizMystery and other amazing musicians are also taking part. D:
"Seriously, it's surprising that not enough people turn to you for their music needs. Hell, I even suggested you to other NG members such as Doomhammr and Hyptosis. I can go on and on, but that would be meaningless. In other words, I'll cut to the chase..."
Wow, thanks for recommending me. That's really appreciated.
"Instrumentation: You sure know your VSTs well enough to find out what works and what doesn't. To be honest, I haven't played Assassin's Creed, but can tell that there's similarities between your work and UBI Soft's. They have struck a nice balance between intense and subtle."
That's great; Omnisphere is very new for me but surprisingly I adapted pretty quickly to it. I also used some of my favourite instruments from all of my East/West libraries too, like the duduk and mid-eastern string section.
"Composition: To elaborate on that last sentence, it takes a delicate hand to make such sharp contrasts work with each other; anyone else would have screwed up. I loved what you did with the first half of this song, which had a very nice atmosphere. The second half was also brilliant considering that the first half could be considered a build-up."
Thank goodness to that, I am really not that good at contrasts. I think the transitions between soft and powerful also need some work, but... yeah there are a lot of loose ends I haven't tied up yet.
"Nothing else worth mentioning aside from the fact that you have also great mastering and EQ skills to boot. By the way, Have you considered making a tutorial on FL Studio akin to what Steven Polley and Nav did?"
Haha, I actually did, years ago. I didn't actually finish it, but I made this little tutorial with a friend of mine for a school project we had to do where we had to make a site with HTML. It was actually coming out pretty well! No idea where that is now though haha.
That same friend and I are, in a few months, going to teach some 11-year old kids at school on how to make music with FL Studio though. It isn't exactly making a tutorial, but hey it's something.
"Stephan, here's a ten from me and here's hoping that more people consider turning to you for their music needs."
Thanks so much for the review. Hopefully if they do turn to me for music, I wouldn't be so swamped with Maths homework haha.
The guitar seems a bit naked. Because it carries such a large portion of the intro and end, you should really bump up the reverb during that section, then take it back down as you enter the main theme to keep it from muddying everything up. Some additional *very subtle* atmosphere in terms of sound effects or other embellishments would have helped too.
I noticed one of the beginning melodies on the guitar sounds very similar to one of my ideas ;) The overall composition and structure of the song is excellent, but I feel that everything in this song would have benefited from additional reverb due to the sparse nature of the mix.
"The guitar seems a bit naked. Because it carries such a large portion of the intro and end, you should really bump up the reverb during that section, then take it back down as you enter the main theme to keep it from muddying everything up."
Now that's a good idea. It does sound pretty naked, yeah. I'm not used to writing pretty much anything with minimal instrumentation around it.
"Some additional *very subtle* atmosphere in terms of sound effects or other embellishments would have helped too."
If I had time I would've done this, but I wanted to submit before the competition deadline. But I can totally do that. Might help fill in the gaps in the intro/outro too!
"I noticed one of the beginning melodies on the guitar sounds very similar to one of my ideas ;)"
Hey you have like one million or something, one of my songs is bound to resemble one eventually haha.
"The overall composition and structure of the song is excellent, but I feel that everything in this song would have benefited from additional reverb due to the sparse nature of the mix."
Roger that. Glad you liked the composition!
Thanks a lot for the review man, if I find time I'll definitely work on what you mentioned! And hope that Bosa doesn't hear this before I'm done editing it.
