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Star Arise

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Author Comments

*Headphones recommended*

Well here it is my latest song, Star Arise. I combined rock instruments with electronic synthetizer sounds.

I used Finale Notepad 2012 and converted it to a .MIDI file.

Instruments used:
Electric guitar (clean)
Electric guitar (overdrive)
Electric bass
Synth saw wave
Drum set

Hope you like it!

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Very nice

I really like this the guitar sounds are really top notch and very solid I think you should make more focus on the guitar work but I do have to say this as a whole was really very solid love the sounds that are comming out more focus on the guitars though so nice job overall hope to hear more from you in the near future anyways nice work

~~THINGS TO IMPROVE ON~~
More focus on the guitars

~X~

The further I listen, the more i like it, but there's no escaping that the instruments seem rather plain. For the guitar I imagine some added distortion or echo would work well. The melody itself packs a melodic punch though,the melody's clean and the beat is alright. The techno part is nice variation, but compared to the rest of the track it feels a bit thin, what this track really lacks IMO is strength, weight, power, on both guitar and other instruments, and it would be great if the beats had some more depth as well. I like the melody, but keep working on the sound!

-cd-

Hey man! Here are a few thoughts on this track. Won't be a very long review since I'm a little caught up with work right now, but what the heck, short for my standards is long anyway haha. ALRIGHTY THEN. Time for some dissection. I'm sure you don't mind the honesty in this review; better to be honest then sprinkle everything I say with a hefty dose of sugar :p.

First things first. I know you're still super new to this music composition thing, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that despite that, there's plenty of musicality in this track. While the melodies aren't necessarily good (but more on that later), there are some really nice musical touches that, coupled with more experience in composition, would've been executed wonderfully.

For example, the structure, while focusing on the main melody too much, is considerably solid. You highlight certain important transitions properly, and there's a clear direction that the song is taking at all times, rather than just being haphazard and random which is a temptation that many new composers fall for. I also like the creative touches such as synchronising the drum hits with the guitar chugs at parts like 0:45 or the harmonic buildup at about 1:55.

Plus, I've got to commend you on taking on the challenge of mixing electronic elements with metal elements, even though it certainly doesn't sound great over here due to the MIDI instruments you're using. I don't know if I told you but Finale Notepad is what I used to use before FL Studio. Since it works in MIDI you are pretty limited with what you can do so if you start getting serious, then getting a DAW will be a good idea, but for now it's not a bad idea at all to work on composition using notation software like Finale.

Now, as I hinted at earlier, the melodies are bad. A user on here, Blackhole12, once told me that there were two kinds of composers - the ones that start out making excellent melodies from the beginning, and those who take years to actually start writing well-composed melodies. I think you fall under the latter category, because right now the melodies on here really aren't very good. Not going to lie, I certainly fall under that category too. My melodies were crap at the start and it's taking me ages to improve! But it all comes with experience.

I hate just blindly giving criticism without pointers on how to improve or what exactly is wrong with the melodies per se. It's hard to really point out why the melodies need work. One thing that I've noticed is that there is no chord progression and any harmonies that you might actually be using don't quite fit with what's going on in the foreground. I also noticed that your melodies usually stick to a very limited note range and the notes are often rhythmically the same. This makes them sound very monotonous, drab and expressionless.

My low score is mainly because the composition here needs work. I find melodies to be a huge part of music and if those have a lot of room for improvement then it really kills the listening experience. Apart from that, you have some really creative ideas and a sense of musicality that screams potential. Keep improving and I hope this review helped :3.

4/10
2/5

The bass underneath rumbles nicely. But I feel the guitar sound is way off. It sounds like a MIDI vst type of thing, that just can't get close to the real sound its trying to imitate. That said I think the synth works really well. Drums are a bit quiet in the mix. I know rock music sometimes has a tendency too do that, but I think it would give this song a lot more punch if they were up higher. I can't hear kicks that should be there to give it umph.

MCarsten responds:

Hello,

The file really is a .MIDI, but converted. I created the song using Finale Notepad 2012, converted it to a .MIDI file and then converted to .mp3. I prefer how this sounded like. Thanks for enjoying the synths, I think they fit the song well too.

I see what you mean about the drums, although I prefered to maintain the drums at the same volume as the overdrive guitar because I wanted to detach the bass sound which gives the main harmony of the song.

Thanks for reviewing,

- Spy

Credits & Info

Artist

Listens
3,343
Downloads
54
Score
Waiting for 1 more vote

Uploaded
Feb 2, 2014
8:50 PM EST
Genre
Techno
File Info
Song
2.9 MB
3 min 11 sec

Licensing Terms

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