Most times, "Your song made me fall asleep" is a distasteful insult.

But here, where do I begin?

This song feels like you are in the stratosphere, floating, no worries. I have no words to describe the way this made me feel.

Thank you for creating this song.

This is so beautiful, I love it.

The melodies and orchestration are phenomenal!! I sense a lot of inspiration from Joe Hisaishi.

The transitions at 0:54 and 1:59 are quite masterful. I love how the song ends on a magical, wonderous chord.

I hope you soon get the opportunity to compose for an animated film and have your score performed by an orchestra :D

eliasalija, Spirited Winds - NGADM'22 FINAL ROUND

1]Technicality 2]Production 3]Composition 4]Emotion 5]BonusPoints
10,9,8,10,9 x 2 = [92/100]

Lovely song eliasalija, very well done. Inspired and heartfelt tones! The six of you final round contestants will probably all see a perfect score out of "emotion." I'm going to take one point off from production for what I felt like were noticeably absent bass tones. I'm an EDM slut, we tend to focus on those bass tones too much. I told everratic I'd fight an EDM bias, given the genre that you two have mastered: things sound great. Have you ever considered padding orchestral bass tones with some suby synth compression or another bass patch? IMO, Newgrounds artists are their best when they are toying with new sounds and progressive genre splicing. Coming into the final round I would have loved to hear some synth play from the classical peeps... it's where I'm taking that bonus point from. I'm aware of your strengths and weaknesses, sticking to your strengths is a fair strategy but I love hearing risky ideas. I think Zechnition consistently demonstrates risk with his style.

Thank you for that insightful commentary, I think everyone is feeling a little tired and worn at this point, but you are finally free!

I've told a few contestants that I consider "three minutes" the bare minimum for a deathmatch track. You were right there, some orchestral tune ups, a few seconds of silence, or the conductor tapping on a music stand would have net you another point! Sequenced came out swinging with 8 minutes of track (that I judged a little hard for being too much) but it's kind of a curtesy concept that I wanted to see tracks between three to five minutes out of respect to the other contestants. If everyone wrote 8 minute bangers I'd actually hate it, sometimes a song can be too long in my opinion especially when a bracket has 64 contestants but for the final round I'd have wanted a slightly longer opus.

I can't take off points for technicality or emotion, you wrote beautifully. I hope I've described the minor grievances well enough, it can be hard to justify scores but I hope this doesn't deflate you at all. I loved the song and you've all performed wonderfully. Cheers eliasalija!

I like the dreamy strumming at the beginning and the flute melodies. Elements of the sound design and harmonic framework sound vaguely far east-inspired, and the atmosphere and flow of the piece work quite well. There's some dissonance in the texture from around 1:10 - 1:25, but it serves to smooth over the transition into a new key very well, and the more energetic last minute of the piece gives it a triumphant and conclusive flair. The final chord seems to be of ambiguous character, like the winds are soon about to shift again. Overall, fantastic work, Elias! Best of luck in the final round. ^_^