DUUUDE!! This is genuinely super cool! I can't believe my little drawing inspired you to make this whole piece, I love how you mixed rock/metal with Egyptian-themed instrumentals. Plus that epic ambience in the background! (We really need more music in this genre...) I feel like this would really fit as the theme song for my character Heli. Great work overall, thank you for sharing this with me!
Reviews for "AIM - The Unmatched Power of The Sun"
WakerLink responds:
Glad you enjoyed it, it was pretty fun working on this
I love the orchestral elements mixed with metal. The track feels gloomy in a cool way.
Orchestral rock definitely fits the art and I really like where you started with this. Solid idea but needs some refinement. Easiest thing to fix, not that it's easy but doesn't require anything than your own ears, is the mix. I love drums and the percussion needs to by punchier. The drums have great tone and sound great, but because they're very short sounds you can get away with cranking up the volume of the percussion (although careful with cymbals, they're not as short). Could even throw a compressor on them to bring up the volume a little bit by controlling their peaks too. I'm not fond of the bass sound starting at 1:25 section. It sounds cheap in comparison to how you've got your other instruments and especially on its own. You could probably get away with it if you layered it with some other bass synths or if you wrote it so that it wasn't just static quarter notes and half notes. Most people would say "you need to buy better plugins man" which fancy sounding plugins will always help the sound sure, but you can also find ways to make you cheap plugins sound good. There's tutorials on youtube that you could probably find to help understand what sounds your plugins and VSTs best fit. It's getting an understanding of what makes your tools work best and where they're weak. To make an analogy, it's understanding how to use your hammer for nails and not your shovel. Sure you can use a shovel for nails, but it's better for other purposes.
Again I love what you've attempted with this. 0:33 has a great beginning idea you could use, but rhythmically outside of the melody there isn't much that's as interesting. The counter melody you brought in at 0:59 is something you could really develop in other instruments/phrases/or what have you. Like for example at 1:56, instead of just bringing in the lead guitar the way you did, I would have reintroduced the counter melody again with more subtle instruments and rephrased it in a different rhythm or something to make is sound different but the listener will still find it familiar.
Again really enjoyed it, and both the song and you have solid potential.
WakerLink responds:
holy crap that's a big one
yeah, the mix could be better here and there, still just learning how to properly mix metal/rock tracks because that's not my usual genre
about the bass at 1:25, the more I listen to it, the higher the desire to replace it with some sort of a reese bass increases, I fully agree with you on this one
however about the melody at 0:33, it was supposed to be just rhythmic flavor and that's it, but I do agree that I probably could have done some rearrangements of already existing melodies in the second part
anyway, thank you so much for such detailed feedback, appreciate it
Only thing I don’t like is the static quarter notes bass in the breakdown.
WakerLink responds:
kinda ran out of ideas as to what to do with the bassline there, thanks for the critique
not bad