Hey, as promised here's that review :3. Pretty solid track overall, although upon analysis this has lots of room for improvement...
So, starting off with my favourite part of orchestral music; composition. I'm hearing some good ideas and potential here. I like your approach to the melodies and how you keep everything sounding so unified with a static chord progression, gradual progressions and the repetition of that pretty cool 0:39 motif at 2:02 and 2:41. Your composition is good and well-structured, and that's inarguably an important thing to have in this genre.
Unfortunately the bad news about the composition is that it's very repetitive and frankly it's quite bland. Most of the time you repeat the same eight notes in consecutive order. Even worse than that is that each note lasts for exactly the same amount of time. It just feels very linear. This is something you can fix with practice. Your melody is flowing but only because it does the same thing a lot of the time and there's not much diversity. The trick to strong composition is to make it diverse and non-linear but STILL flowing.
The number one solution; dynamics. I'm not hearing many dynamics here. And while I love your gradual introduction of different elements that you do in the intro... other than that there's nothing so dynamic about this, which is the main reason why this sounds so linear. I would've loved to hear crescendos, grace notes, diminuendos, tempo changes, etc... there's a whole range of articulations you can do here. For example I can imagine a gradual crescendo working wonderfully to build up to 2:09, and if you made the song die down more audibly rather than just remove elements from the track towards the end it would've sounded so much more intricate.
Your instrumentation is pretty typical but it works well! I like the fact that you used bells, they're pretty underrated (even I don't use them much haha) but if done right they can really add to a piece. And you added some pretty bassy instruments in there, which was a pleasant surprise. I'm talking about the guitar at 0:26 and the double bass (I might be wrong about the instrument names but whatever, I'm hearing bass and that's what matters! :P). These filled up the low end very nicely.
You've got a pretty pleasant mix but nothing out of the ordinary. Your instruments are unfortunately pretty low quality, but I suppose there's not much you can do about that. Still, they're not too shabby, and I bet that if you added those aforementioned dynamics to your instruments they would sound so much more realistic and intricate. You could have the most amazing samples in the world but without going the extra mile to make everything sound realistic and dynamic, your samples will end up sounding almost MIDI-like, so it's a good idea to make it a habit to add lots of dynamics. Volume automations work really well for me, I use them like crazy to do stuff like fade in instruments, highlight sections, etc...
The two things I liked the most about this would be the intro and the drums. Your intro is just fantastic man. Perhaps a more booming bell sound followed by the gradual fading in of the high strings would've worked a bit better but still, you managed to achieve that cinematic sound by throwing in new instruments gradually. Great idea to play that little melody on the piano at the beginning too. A subtle but very effective touch.
And the drums! In a way they're kinda low quality/unrealistic and a bit too snappy but they work so well regardless. Cool beat, and I love your drum fills, especially the one at 2:39. The drums aren't the best they could be, but pretty darn good nevertheless. They added a wonderful amount of intensity, and they were nicely varied with good rhythms too. Not much to complain about, percussion-wise.
So yeah, overall this is a nice little piece. There are quite a few aspects where it needs improving, others where it does really well in, but hey that's all what practice is for right? Good luck in your future works man, and thanks again for leaving a review on Ecosystem!
6/10
5/5
