Improvement needed!

Good day, gentleman,

this piece has some flaws I would like to state in this review and give advice how to improve it.

Composition:
This piece is actually a 20 seconds long loop with the same melody repeated over and over again, even in the finale because of the poor instrumentation. Try building up the melody throughout the piece, modulate it and write more music, to give it a structure. If you want to make a climatic piece of music, try to make a crescendo with every single instrument and make an even faster accelerando.

Instrumentation:
You use the same instrumentation all over the whole piece : the violins play the melody and the other strings accompany them. I suggest to play around with it by letting the celli/violas play the melody and let the violins play some different pizzicato lines for example. The use of different percussion is quite nice, but if you want to make it climatic you could spare some for the end. Maybe you should double the melody in the later parts to give it more power. Adding more instruments would also help you building up a climax of course.

Mixing:
You have got a fairly big problem with the mix, because you mixed each instrument with a different reverb. Give them one single reverb, place them in the room and do not forget the propagation delay.

This piece needs a lot more effort than this. I hope we could help.

Best regards,

Sir Edward Eisenworth

Interesting execution.

I really like the pizzicato strings going throughout the whole song - as well as the whole rhyhtm.
I did feel that the percussion was too close to the listener when comparing to the strings, however - I didn't particulary enjoy listening to the string ensemble with only the one to two voices, I'd rather hear two solo strings, such as violin and viola splitting the voices.

As far as background music goes, this should do fine - but I'd like to see you write some marked melodies in the future whereas the chord progressions are sorta driven by the melody.
Though, as a first attempt - very impressive.

Nicely done.

Not totally sure about the Harry Potter part of the characterisation, but I can really get the Mountain King idea of this. Definite Grieg vibes, throughout.

Not totally sure about the sound of the drum roll at 0:15, that could have standed to be a little more subtle. But that asides, the rest of the percussion in the 0:20-0:48 area and continuing further create an even more ominous feel accompanying the strings. Very nice stringwork, by the way; the melody is very clear, but haunting at the same time, and you use the pizzicato to tremendous effect.

The acceleration reminded me a lot of Grieg again, it was very well done. Melodically, the strings before 2:40 where the main tune comes in again were again, very haunting, but with an added tension to them, also.

The ending was also very good, I liked the abrupt silence before the final chord. Though the cello (I think) which bows the two notes at 3:40 doesn't seem quite right, sound-wise. Maybe because the dynamic of the instrument is negligible just before it, and then it just abruptly comes in with these two notes...I don't know why it isn't sitting right in my head, to be honest, which is a sure sign that I've just listened to the ending too many times.

Anyway: Evidently you've dived into Kontakt like a fish to water and it's achieved a very successful piece. I'd be interested to see what you'd accomplish once you know the software a little better. Excellent work.

Good Feel

Reminds me of when I used to play Fable all nasty and hardcore back in the day, kinda makes me wanna play it again xD