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Swan Lullaby

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Author Comments

Phew... this one was crazy. I knew I wanted to do something special for my first NGADM entry. But this was so far out of my comfort zone in both tone and style that I can hardly believe I finished it. This song was heavily inspired by one of my favorite OST's of all time, which is for the game The Unfinished Swan. I'm not very experienced with this kind of music yet... but I can't tell you how much I'd love to create songs like this on a regular basis. I'll always love a good electronic song but my heart definitely belongs to the likes of Joe Hisaishi, Austin Wintory, Clint Mansell, and in this case, Joel Corelitz. There's nothing like a good soundtrack to my ears.

Ok... enough talk, haha! I truly hope you enjoy this song from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for listening!

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This is an NGADM Round 1 Review.

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That has to be the cutest intro of the whole round, hands down! Plus, you've got a memorable and thematically-suitable melody to boot, which gets the ball rolling on the first topic of discussion - the composition. There are some things I absolutely love about your composition, such as the addictive little ditty you introduce at the beginning on the music box and use to tie the whole song together, or the absolutely wonderful harp sections at 0:43. With sections like those you're able to create these surprisingly atmospheric ambiences that are simply a pleasure to listen to. In fact, I would've not hesitated to add even more of the harp to the track since it feels like it would work so well in this track.

Now, unfortunately I can hear that this is out of your comfort zone. For instance, if you had some experience you'd know that some of the things you're doing here are simply no-no's, like repeating certain small patterns over and over again without changing them, something which is perfectly fitting in electronic music but not so much in this more expressive music which is technically supposed to be played by an array of musicians. For instance, the percussive beat that first kicks in at 1:27 got extremely repetitive and consequently sounded unnatural, and your main motif, while pleasant, is too short to have repeated many times over. It needs more flow; more progression! By the way, your transitions are very abrupt (which was already mentioned in the reviews), so that's another thing to work on. Lastly, there's a bit of dissonance at parts like 1:36/1:45 in the high string staccato notes which is a bit offputting. Was it intentional?

While this has a fair bit of room for improvement, I commend you for the experiment and I hope you keep on pursuing this genre because you have a knack for it!

SCORE: 7.8/10

Chemiqals responds:

Haha, thanks for the really helpful feedback! I'll certainly do my best to learn from it! The last bit was intentional to a degree. My thinking was that the melody of those staccato notes was being cut short. So when they come back at the end they are complete and it comes full circle. Which may or may not have been a good idea, haha!

Thanks again. I really appreciate the feedback and I will take all of it to heart!

This is some benchmarking stuff, man. I really love the quality of sound in this track. There's so much atmosphere to this track, it honestly reminds me of the very airy, serene music on the Minecraft soundtrack.

And your use of percussion and brass takes that serene feel and transitions it into a powerful, bombastic march that I honestly wish had lasted longer before moving back into the strings and music box. However, the way you brought it back towards the end of the song was just satisfying.

Chemiqals responds:

Thank you so much! I'm really happy you felt this way about it! =]

I really enjoy this song, it makes me feel all nostalgic over some stuff I used to love growing up. Sadly my computer won't let me listen to the whole thing here, but I'll definitely download it. Great pacing and just overall tone.

Chemiqals responds:

Thank you! =D

This track is so pretty! Nice effects used throughout. This is such a nice and relaxing piece. Giving me memories of playing Runescape years ago lol

Nice job and best of luck in the NGADM :P

Chemiqals responds:

Thanks! Good luck to you as well! ^_^

greatly great x)
so relaxing and majestic!

Chemiqals responds:

I'm glad you thought so! =)

Credits & Info

Artist

Listens
3,069
Faves:
4
Downloads
43
Votes
14
Score
4.73 / 5.00

Uploaded
Aug 17, 2014
6:24 AM EDT
Genre
Cinematic
File Info
Song
8 MB
3 min 30 sec

Licensing Terms

You are free to copy, distribute and transmit this work under the following conditions:

Attribution:
You must give credit to the artist.
Noncommercial:
You may not use this work for commercial purposes. *
Share Alike:
If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting creation only under a license identical to this one.

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