Reviews for Isis

[Rampant]

This would fit perfectly in a puzzle game; it would work pretty well for the "building defenses" between waves in a Tower Defense game; or, if you softened everything up a bit and delayed the attack of the pitched percussion (to eliminate the hard hits), I reckon it could work well in an exploratory RPG (like Skyrim).

I love your use of dissonance; the string melodies are particularly noteworthy in how they create an almost Discovery Channel-like sense of wonder. The brass stabs could use a bit of work (maybe a little more reverb, maybe layered with some more instruments) as they sound less realistic when they're compared to the harpsichord, pitched and unpitched percussion, and strings playing behind them.

BenTibbetts responds:

Thanks very much!

[The-Great-One]

The one thing that comes to my mind is an Egyptian ice pyramid. Strange and peculiar, but fascinating at the same time. The images in my mind are very bizarre when listening to this song. I loved listening to it from beginning to end, I do feel that it did become a bit repetitive, but at the same time I could be accepting of that as well due to the concept of this song.

BenTibbetts responds:

I'd love to see an Egyptian ice pyramid, but I'm not sure how long it would survive in that climate. :)
Your gentle criticism is duly noted; I will try to be more sensitive regarding repetition in future submissions.

[BlazingDragon]

Very minimalistic. I like how you shifted the harmonies around subtly while maintaining the same basic riff throughout. This piece didn't evoke any thoughts of Egypt for me, but I did get the feeling of ice. This sounds like background music for a stage in a puzzle game.

Nice.

BenTibbetts responds:

A thought: If you like this track, and you like minimalism, you may like Philip Glass' Aguas de Amazonia. It shares some aesthetic similarities with this music. Here's a Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aguas_da_Amazonia

[Step]

This is an NGADM Round 1 Review.

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Such a catchy tune! I love this track, it's got really good composition, an excellent mix and such a great style. Extremely enjoyable and I can see this fitting in a game very easily. I'm going to have a hard time finding anything wrong with this track and I know it.

The two key features of this track that shine would be the instrumentation and composition. I LOVE the little tune you had going in the background and all of the melodies you played above it were memorable and fun to listen to. 0:19's legato strings had among my favourite melodies in the whole track as well. You really seem to know what you're doing when it comes to composition.

Maybe your foreground melodies could've been a bit more developed since you seem to favour playing different melodic phrases on top of a constant background tune, rather than actually developing all the melodies and having a leitmotif of sorts, but that isn't really much of a problem for me. Oh and wonderful mixing too. Everything's really clear.

The main problem that I have with this track is that in some lights it's not very varied. It doesn't really get repetitive, but the thing is, you keep pretty much the same background for the whole track and you don't venture off much into instrumentation other than strings, some soft percussion like woodblocks/tambourines and mallet instruments. I think I'm hearing some subtle brass (might be my imagination) but otherwise I didn't hear anything really that new throughout the whole track. Right now it sounds more like it'd fit in a game than be an actual standalone song to listen to. I would've absolutely loved some more development, dynamics, etc... It'd work very well. And more instruments too, especially woodwind instruments. English horns and bassoons would be pretty awesome.

Anyway, that's all I need to say about the track. Recap: fantastic composition, mixing, instrumentation, etc... What this could do with is some more development in the instrumentation, dynamics and so on, to keep it sounding new and interesting throughout the whole track.

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SCORE:
8.5/10

BenTibbetts responds:

Thank you Step!

[SkyeWint]

Here is your personal review for your round 1 submission! Remember that the score might be a little lower than I would normally give, I'm being a tad harsher than I'd normally be for the NGADM.

The Good:
-Ooh, that's a really cool atmosphere you have. The echoes on the more percussive bell-like instrument as well as the panning help this a ton.
-The strings are also quite nice.
-Your mixing is well-done.
-The harmonies in your music are all quite creative.

The Not-So-Good:
-Your percussion never changes! >:(
-Unfortunately, the entire feel of your song is about the same as your percussion. It *never* changes. RampantMusik's song at least had SOME variation in the feel.
-You only really have quarter notes in your song aside from the background chords. As easy as it makes this song to nod my head to, you should actually have a few other kinds of notes. Otherwise it does make the song a lot more boring overall.

Overall: This song is actually really, really nice. It is not composed as well as RampantMusik's, but the feel of it is so much more appealing overall, even if it never changes. I am going to give this a 7.7 because I think it very slightly edges out RampantMusik's. However, this is VERY slight, and you really should work on giving a bit more variation in your music.

BenTibbetts responds:

Hi SkyeWintrest, thank you for taking the time to listen and review this track for NGDAM!