That alarm towards the end was an interesting addition. XD It's like this is all a dream, and you're just waking up as it starts to reach an end; is over... it's an interesting detail but I'm not sure it adds to the music as much as it distracts, though.

The rest of the melody was great. Soft and harmonious tunes, a smooth and very living melody that keeps morphing as it moves along - with sessions of ambience between the brighter sections. It all flows together nicely, and the sound quality and balance is just perfect, though I do feel it gets a bit repetitive after a whole. The beat's great, the music's great, but the core melody just loops over and over. Even in those fiercer parts there seems to be some remnant of it that lingers... it never truly breaks off into something different. and both of those seem the same. Reoccurring phases. Conclusively I'd say I love everything about this except for the alarm sound and the overall arrangement: feels like it could be more dynamic! Keep up the great work.

-cd-

I left a review on the artwork and what I understood it to be, and with that, I'll review this one.

The mood of this one is a hard one to strike. It is an abrasive subject matter, drawn with soft shading, about booze and its effects. You do illustrate it to a point, the higher synths you use sound like what we'd imagine bubbles to be. The music in the background -- I can't really decide.

Because on the one hand, the parts that sound lusher sound beautiful and glamorous, and in keeping with that confidence she gains, but the softer parts feel a bit abrasive to my ears, something that the original artist didn't do. The low chords, I'm not sure about them. The same with the pad when it comes in; I imagined it could be eased in just like the image eases us into what is actually pretty abrasive. It's quite abrupt and jarring when it enters.

The percussion is quite alright. It gives the feeling of a pop song. There's not much bass to back it up though, in the softer parts.

I'm not sure what to feel about this. Mostly positive I guess? I'd love to hear this sung to, completely sung to, with a soft, sultry voice and RNB timing, because it really gives off that vibe.

The ending was quite abrupt. I wondered if the synth lead should just stay playing on its own along with the bubbling sound FX, to show what happens when the girl gets plastered. It felt as though this thing dealt with the other two phases of the image, the glamour and confidence, and a bit of the behavioural change.

Mixing is on point.

AIM 2018 Review -- and happy to see you out here representing!

Starting off, I'm not really liking those dense chords so deep in the register. They're sorta discordant and chunky down there.

Trimming the chord voices (say, you have a 4 note chord and strip it down to bare bones for the intro) or inverting them (see chord inversions, music theory term) could improve their effectiveness. You could also apply panning to different voices of the chords. It sounds very flat and centered as is -- actually, most of the piece sounds very centered but especially the keys. Closed-voicing chord progressions in lower registers tend to sound a bit cluttered, too, whereas closed-voiced high chords sound less so.

You may offset this muddy, centered sound with FX. A lo-fi filter with a fade in/fade out on those naked sections of keys would probably have distracted me enough not to notice how flat sounding the intro is and may have even made good use of that tight, low chord voicing.

Chord voicing is not quite optimal throughout; I'm hearing a lot of hanging around on the root notes of chords, parallel motion (music theory term for parallel 5ths or octaves), etc., and I think it would be worth your while to study a bit of theory to help you make better use of your sound palette here.

Percussion is actually what shines in this piece, despite somewhat laying on top of all the other elements. I particularly enjoy your choice of samples and hi-hat writing. Would have liked to have heard some panning, perhaps a little FX play (delay or panned reverb), a riser or two, and a little more consistent mixing on the kit. Harder compression and/or side chain would massively improve this piece. It's very quiet; even its loudest, hardest hitting points are missing that extra oomph. The peaks here resemble an uncompressed, unmastered demo.

Structurally the song is quite uniform, and though there was a definite direction, I found myself wanting a bit more melody -- although it did convey the cyclical nature of the art. I at times felt as if some elements had been copied and pasted.

FX use was rather sparing, which I appreciated. However, the camera in particular sat on top of the mix and it seemingly came out of nowhere. I would have liked a gradual use of FX throughout as a warmup. Things like switches flipping, sinks running, covers ruffling, lamps clunking on, etc., if you wanted to convey more of a life cycle.

I also really recommend using velocity and modulation on those bell-ish sounding synths that come in at 48 secs. I don't particularly like that sound hanging around in the high register, doubling your other bell arps, probably because it's so centered.

Bass could probably do with coming up one to two dB. Kick as well. Snap sample could come down. It lays on top of the rest of the track.

Other than that, pretty solid work. I enjoyed it enough to listen more than once, and it fits the art. I think that's about all I have to say on the topic. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you'd like pointers to some free music theory/software resources.

Ciao!

---Official AIM review---

I like the tranquil mood at the beginning and the cute synth riffs. The vocal sample at :13 works pretty well, too. The entry of the beat at :32 was a tad sudden. I think you could use a riser or something to smooth over that transition. I also think the mix could be a lot louder in the piece. I might suggest some harder compression. The beat itself at :32 is really creative rhythmically and features some great sound design choices, notably the hi-hats. The spacey, lower-energy bit at 1:03 is also a plus. I like the camera FX at around 1:20. Just be careful not to overuse it (same goes for the phone alarm at 2:44). Hi-hats really stand out as driving the piece rhythmically. Again, I’d like to hear a stronger transition into 1:52. Despite the patchwork of very harmonically sound riffs here, I think you could still have some stronger melodic content. You don’t really develop a lot of the riffs (like the one at the very beginning) much as the piece goes on, and the climactic sections (:32 and 1:52) feel heavily chordal in nature. Still, you clearly have a great sense of harmony and rhythm. Overall, this piece is strong. Keep at it, DarkHorseOrchestra!

8.5/10

Nice track, it seems like it would work well as a cycle loop restarting with the morning alarm. I've seen the art that it pairs with, and I think it's quite fitting. When I hear the track I can picture different phases of the day: starting out with a morning rain shower, afternoon calm, evening partying, and the cycle restarts. Good work, good luck in AIM18!