I'm a little reminded of those spot-the-difference flash games that got frontpaged once upon a time, this sounds like music to be heard in one of them. Or actually...Epic Battle Fantasy also comes to mind. I love the horns' role in this piece, one of my favorite aspects of this. The pizzicato strings I also thought were delightful. The melody progresses nicely, it had its slight, unexpected surprises, but it wasn't something that blew me away. The transition from the beginning's minor quality to the rest of the song's major quality was the biggest surprise, to me. I just think this is empty. Yeah, it dances around in harmonically interesting ways and has some theoretical and compositional qualities that I wish I could do the way you did here, but I wasn't very captured as an audience member. Where's the pizzazz? I saw the Dawn and that was it. Maybe because it was such a short song? I think this needs a lot more extra to it, more expansion on the content. This has a good foundation, but it's just a foundation. It's a great start that I think could be more.
Reviews for "Dawn"
I love how I can spot classically-trained (or at least classically-minded) composers among others by their complaints that my work is too short. XD
Thanks for the review. Unfortunately, I feel doing something that would please you like writing a violin cadenza over the top or elongating the song another minute with "classical" techniques (variations, theme in reverse, add a new section, etc.) would ruin the nature of the piece and instead I consider this a piece that presents an emotion- not a piece that presents a melody or a thought. It's purely emotion... a tip of the hat to some of the finest works of the Romantic period to present film scores today. Dawn itself is a short time, and to capture it in only a few minutes was my goal. I approach such programmatic/emotive music as a film scorer might- melodies second, texture first.
As I always have to keep telling people, I'm not interested in writing a symphony... it doesn't suit my style or my technique of composition. I present enough material to get the message across, so why bother repeating it four more times with a B theme in between? It bores the hell out of the rest of the world, unfortunately, no matter how much lovers of classical (I would include myself in this) love full symphonies.
As for the placement of this in a spot-the-difference game, I'm honestly very confused... those things generally have some cheesy little piano solo stuff some melancholy recorded or something like that. I would honestly see this more fitting in an animation or credits or such.
Thanks again for the review, but I must respectfully decline adding too much more, noting the reasons above. If I do add more, it will likely sound artificial and detract from the work.
-Samulis
Sounds very cinematic and would go great in a flash movie. It is a very pretty audio and can I use it for my next flash movie?
Sure, as long as you abide to the Creative Commons license shown above. Glad you like it.