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~SW~ (Caelum) Blood is Shed

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Author Comments

Since I've managed to convince someone to let me do the soundtrack for their game, I'm sure as heck going to be working on it!


This is a short(ish) loop for the game, it should be played during normal battle sequences (I think. Might be changed to a boss battle theme).


Any feedback would be much appreciated! I love criticism, by the way, so don't be shy. ^_^ Please.


Some things I focused on doing in this:
-Using as few instruments as possible.
-Using a few effects to make it sound prettier.
-Having a REALLY CRAZY DRUMLINE.
-Making it loop well. FIXED.
-(Biggest thing) Making the main guitar-ish synth pluck instrument sound almost like someone was actually playing it. Naturally, this involved a lot of tiny slides and fidgeting around with pitch and placement.


-Enjoy!

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Really nice! :D

I really would have put a bit more effort forth on the mastering end of the drum breaks.

I love the soft strings, and I really enjoyed the guitar like instrument that you used for the beginning of the song. The drum patterns were intense, the string break was beautiful, and the overall presentation of this track is pretty nice.

Things to take a second look at:
- Your breaks are a bit clippy, and it's a serious shame considering how nice most of the pad instruments sound.
- The first lead in this song is cool, but seems to be a bit too far back behind everything else; considering it's supposed to be a lead.
- Although I love your drum patterns, I would have liked to hear drum samples with a bit more Quality to them

Overall I like what you've got going here, but I would definitely change a few things up a bit.
~Sonik

-Review Request Club-

Your puppy dog eyes worked.

This is great. I'm sure you'll do a good job with the game soundtrack. This is unique, catchy, and very likeable. I can totally imagine this as soundtrack for a game. Is the game Japanese-styled or something? It'll probably explain your instrument choice, lol.

So, I'll get the problems I had with the song out of the way first, and my first complaint is the lack of consistency. I know you're probably going with the ever so revolutionary way of making a song in just one pattern, which definitely helped give this a varied feel, but it's a double-edged blade, because the track lacks consistency, something which is inarguably important for game soundtrack.

What I mean by lack of consistency is that the song feels unpredictable and some parts could have been developed more. For example, the drum line 0:14 ended just 6 seconds afterwards, and at 1:08 the track ends so suddenly when I would've expected a few more bars of the awesome Video Game/Japanese badassery. The drum line is also pretty all over the place (you probably know that though :P), when more consistent beat with a few subtle fills here and there would fit this better I think.

Second complaint is the mixing. It feels like each instrument is trying to greedily claim the spotlight and is pushing the others away (except the drums which are nicely EQ'd). Try and tone down some of the heavier mid and lower mid frequencies of some of the instruments (and try increasing the high end of the plucked instrument a little). This'll make the track sound clearer and brighter, and as long as you don't go overboard and do some frequency massacre, I think it'll help make the melodies easier to listen to and clearer.

However, despite what I said, the mixing isn't that bad at all, and the composition naturally trumps most melodies here on Newgrounds, as always! You really know what you're doing with your melodies and I loved listening to the melody's progression and the various melodic phrases. The melody of the less busy string part in the middle struck me as really great too.

The transitions are all brilliant. 0:14 and 1:08 are my two favourite transitions. Smooth transitions are important in background music and your track has no faults in that department. The drum fills helped to make the transitions sound very cool too. Oh, and this loops really well. I never really manage to make a loop start softly, end softly, and still sound natural and smooth, but you've made it sound so easy here. Fantastic job with the loop.

So, overall, despite the two main gripes I've got with this track - the lack of consistency and a few mixing faults - this is awesome. It combines classic Video Game elements with unique instrumentation and a Japanese influence. Keep it up, man, and good luck with the rest of the game's soundtrack :D.
9/10
5/5

-Review Request Club-

SkyeWint responds:

Hello!

"This is great. I'm sure you'll do a good job with the game soundtrack. This is unique, catchy, and very likeable. I can totally imagine this as soundtrack for a game. Is the game Japanese-styled or something? It'll probably explain your instrument choice, lol."

Actually, the game isn't necessarily Japanese-styled, but that would be cool. I can see how you thought of that.

"lack of consistency"

Yeah, I agree there. And yeah, I did only use one pattern. :P This song was one of my songs that's a LOT more all-over-everywhere, which I think occurred because I didn't want to have any part be too long. Overdid shortening them, I guess... The drums, I just wanted to be crazy. xD It was a lot more experimental for me. Also, I might end up making the last bit longer, I REALLY agree there, it should be longer.

"the mixing."

Again. Completely agree. The drums were one of the most annoying bits to mix, and I focused mainly on them. The other instruments, I didn't think that at first, but if I do think about it, I'd have to agree, they aren't mixed the best. I should probably fix it up.

"However, despite what I said, the mixing isn't that bad at all, and the composition naturally trumps most melodies here on Newgrounds, as always!"

Wow, thanks! Glad my 6+ years of having studied music theory and playing piano/drums/mallets has paid off. xD

"The transitions are all brilliant."

Thanks again, I really like transitions. I think it makes a song SO much better when the transitions are good, there's just a great feeling when a song suddenly springs somewhere else, and you could feel that it was going there.

'I never really manage to make a loop start softly, end softly, and still sound natural and smooth, but you've made it sound so easy here."

Well, that's really simple, actually. I just recorded the guitar-like instrument with a downward slide, reversed it, did the same with a multilayered cymbal crash (including the downward slide), and then placed them so they would line up with the first real bar of the song. Then I made the end the violin fading out, and the initial guitar-like bend with the bent crash. After that, exported, went into Audacity, copied the ending to the beginning, went to the middle where everything was relatively quiet, cut it, put that back at the end, export from Audacity (which has better loops), and presto! Looped well. Admittedly, that doesn't seem overly simple, but it's one of those cases where typing it takes longer than actually making it. :P

Thanks for the awesome review! Maybe I can convince you to get a review of the song I just posted in the RRC for this next week..? ;) ('s fine if you can't. xD)

"9/10
5/5"

Thanks very much!

Nice loop

Certainly worthy of various middle-eastern / eastern themed video games, that require up-tempo tracks. I could consider this as one of the alternative tracks that I'd listen to while playing the menus of Dynasty Warriors, certainly. With that playing, the theme is certainly enough of a boost to get the adrenaline up, though perhaps in that style of game, there isn't enough modernisation for the angle the games developers want.

Still, that's just their tastes and this piece stands well enough on its own, with the strings in various forms and the other imagery of flight being manifest in the feelings of wind rushing through my hair at some breakneck speed, flying across the tops of rolling canopies.

Overall, the track is a little short to sustain the imagery, but I like the way that we see these little flickers - either sustaining the flight part would be the way forward or to give other images in a sort of audio montage, presenting the listener with various other windows into their own mind, so that the tune can make them travel, without leaving their desk.

[Review Request Club]

Good melody

The guitar-ish synth sure sounds nice, but I'm afraid nobody could play it with bending the strings the whole time like this. I know I couldn't do it, but on the other hand, I'm not really a skilled guitarist. Anyway, the melody still sounds nice.

I also like the slow down during the middle of the song. I'm not sure if this really fits into a boss fight, but for the track alone it works pretty good.

I noticed some "sound errors" throughout the song, as if the drum pad overpowers all the other instruments. It's very noticeable at around 00:26 to 0:39. So I suggest turning down the volume or the bass of that drum pad a bit.

{ Review Request Club }

Deep

I'll start off by saying at about 0:15, it all sounded kind of off-place for the whole song.

I loved the slowing down of the song at 0:40, however, the thing I most enjoyed about this was the intro-melody you had with the guitar. That was definitely the best thing about this song as a whole. As far as the bends.. I really enjoyed them, it did make it sound more realistic. (Which realism is always better for music in my opinion)

I would have probably gone with a different Snare instrument and possibly a little different pattern to it. As I mentioned before, I like the sounding of realism better than anything, and that snare definitely sounded fake to me. I did like the toms roll you had in there though.

This definitely belongs in a Flash Animation.

Overall, my biggest problem with this is the blending together of the instruments. It just didn't sound like they blended well enough to me, mainly because of the main pad you used in there. Maybe go for a tad different sounding pad? Or try combing a couple pads along with EQ'ing them to make it sound better. Ah, and thats another thing, as a whole this song needs to be EQ'ed a little bit better.

I personally think, this song may not have needed the percussion, but adding the percussion was a good idea. It was just like icing on the cake of a good piece of art!

This surely does mix a Dance-type asian feel/ambient feel together and that's something new to me that I really enjoyed.

-Emergency
-Review Request Club

SkyeWint responds:

Ah, EQing, my greatest enemy.

First of all, thanks for the in-depth review, I really appreciate it.

"at about 0:15, it all sounded kind of off-place for the whole song."

Not completely sure what you mean there, though I think I can guess, it does seem to pop up a few notches there. But then, double-timing in a song is a common thing for more jazzy songs. Admittedly, this isn't totally jazz, but... double-timing isn't necessarily a bad thing. If you could tell me more of how it sounded off-place, that would be helpful. (Your choice though. I'm always open to PMs.)

"that snare definitely sounded fake to me."

Agreed. I'll try to fix that.

"Overall, my biggest problem with this is the blending together of the instruments."

...as I said before. EQing, my greatest enemy... I'm actually trained in composition rather than music production. I could DEFINITELY use some pointers on how to do this better, I tried hard to EQ this properly. The main problem I could see was at a certain point with the violin. I'll definitely try the idea of layering pads together and EQing them. With the blending-together of instruments (just realized you meant something other than EQing there), I think EQing would go a long way towards putting them together more, the pad thing might help, and... I thought the instruments went together pretty well. :< Aw. I'll do my best to fix it up though.

Thanks again!

Credits & Info

Listens
1,832
Downloads
62
Votes
6
Score
3.83 / 5.00

Uploaded
Nov 24, 2011
6:34 PM EST
Genre
Video Game
File Info
Loop
1.3 MB
1 min 25 sec

Licensing Terms

Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.