Official AIM Review!

Very fresh sound-palette. Super smooth bass, which is so bouncy in and of itself, it almost sounds like the melody. Really, it's no secret what's driving this piece. A pleasure just to hear someone write bass well.

Piece as a whole seems quite crisply mixed, although I do notice the bass and kick seem to be just a bit loud throughout. Kick is probably not so much a problem and I may just be hearing the two of them together as quite loud. Might solve that problem with a little creative side-chain/hi-pass to get the bass out of the way of the kick in the sound-space.

Nice work maintaining a very quirky-girl theme. It's going to be stuck in my head.

I'm not noticing what TL said about too many high freqs on your kick. Sounded great to me on my monitor headphones, which have a very flat sound response.

I will add that I was initially dubious of what I was going to hear at 00:15 with that loud synth. Might have gone for a smoother sounding synth. That one's very sibilant. You really out-did yourself with the variety in this tune though. Keeps my ears fresh throughout.

Thanks for turning out to this year's AIM competition!

---Official AIM review---

I like the suspenseful beginning. The mood is a little ominous at first, but eventually a more upbeat vibe takes over. I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the instruments, including the kick, which was a little heavy on high-frequency tones. Overall, the sound design is quite refreshing, though. The smooth bass, cute staccato-y synths, and warm pads set the mood quite well. I think you could’ve foreshadowed the major structural change at 1:52 a bit better. That said, I like how that section functions structurally within the context of the rest of the piece. You do a great job of creating a huge variety of textures in this piece. If I had to criticize something about the composition, it’d probably be that the most memorable melodic content in the piece is a little back-loaded until 3:06, whereas the beginning ⅔ or so of the piece has a lot of downtempo sections. Still, I also commend you for making the ending seem really climactic by having the most prominent emotional height at the end. Overall, the composition here is really good. The mix is also pretty clean. There were a couple of moments when I wanted the kick to be a bit stronger (1:45, 3:30) but overall the drums were really crisp, strong, and well-varied. There aren’t a lot of things that jump out at me as being hugely problematic with this piece. It’s just a lot of little things. Keep up the good work, TheOneAfromaster!

9.25/10