Rich Douglas: +|+++| (4) HoboKa: ++|+| (3) Richard Durand: +|+| (2) Blue.Nocturne: +|+++|+| (5) stephenspies: +|+| (2) quia: +| (1) Ubernym: ++|+++|+++|+| (9) XFactor: +++|+| (4) Aidin Ashoori: ++|+|+| (4) ------- Abadoss ------- Rich Douglas - The first couple notes were a little too soft, volume-wise, but it seemed fine afterward. I like the cinematic approach you take to your pieces. I can almost always picture some sort of movie scene that this accompanies. In this particular one, I could see the slow motion montage, mud flying everywhere, classic sports movie important action climax. Definitely works really well. The snare drum, especially, added a great deal. However, the ending is a little too abrupt for me. There's too much build up to just let it cut off like that. I would have suggested that you shift into a higher plateau and then add some sort of uber-climax near or at the end. It doesn't even have to be a triumphant climax. It can be a tragic one, just to change things up a bit. The point is, it's just one of those things that rewards the listener a little. It makes it so the listener wants to come back and listen to it over and over again. With this kind of a piece, that's important. HoboKa - This piece is pretty good. My main concern is just that the rhythm gets a little clogged up around 1:04, 2:36, and 2:49 or so. I'm not certain how else to describe it, but it sounds like the rhythm gets tripped up by itself. Otherwise, the sound production is solid. There's definitely an atmosphere of determination, no doubt. I like the section around 1:30 the most, simply because it takes the piece in a different direction. It provides a nice duress from all the heavy rhythm of the A section. Richard Durand - I'm very fond of effect the voices samples have in your piece. I think the strongest element of your piece was the melodic development. The rhythm and harmony are pretty straight forward. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though. My only problem is just that it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. To be fair, it's kind of hard to go somewhere at an already high intensity level from the beginning. What I'm mostly saying is that, right now, you've got a lot of development in your piece, but not an ending or climax. There's not much of a beginning either. You kind of just dive in. That's not really that important, though. Afterall, one of the ideas of the baroque area was that you come into the piece already in action. So, basically, find a point B to take your listeners to. Right now, you've got point A to point A'. Point B needs to be different from and as significant, if not more so, than point A. It makes the piece a little more interesting to listen to. Blue.Nocturne - Honestly, I'm having a hard time picking out anything specific. You did a great job, as usual, of creating a strong atmosphere. Your arrangement skills are always top notch. I specifically like how you treat the rhythm throughout the piece. Your theme in the second half - while resembling something from Final Fantasy quite a bit - was perfect for the feel. I think the only thing I don't care for is the ending. It works in the piece, but it's just not one I care for. It seems a little tacked on. I'm certainly guilty of those kind of endings as well, so I can't complain too much. It is one thing that I noticed. stephenspies - This is a very strong piece. You did an excellent job of creating the atmosphere of determination. Your treatment of the rhythm and your orchestration are very well done. You've done a good job of building into the 2:00 mark. After that point, though, it kind of dies off. You return to the A section and then cut off. It just feels a little unfinished. What you have is good and it's one of the tricks of a musician to make it seem like the music continues on in the listener's head, but this is more like I pressed the stop button on the player. I think a stronger ending would have helped a significant amount. quia - I almost feel like from the beginning to 2:37 and 2:37 to the end are two completely different pieces. I say this because it really feels like the piece doesn't begin until 2:37. The first half doesn't really seem to go anywhere at all. I think the main problem is that you've stretched too little content over too long of a time span. I've mention this several times before in my write-ups, but I've very convinced that the concept of length:content ratio is important to developing music. Basically, if you have two minutes of material, don't stretch it over five minutes. And visa-versa, don't cram five minutes worth of material into two minutes. I think if you had actually chopped off the first 2:37, it would have worked a lot better. In truth, it wouldn't suffer from the loss. Now, that said, I understand that the piece is written pretty much in the vain of trance, which is supposed to linger on an idea ad nauseum in order that the listener can essentially dive into the soundscape - or go into a trance, so to speak. What's happening, though is that I'm putting it into the background of my mind and getting distracted by everything else, instead of paying attention to it. Again, there's a school of musical thought that aims for this kind of thing - namely Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. I don't think that was what you were aiming for, though. I think the strongest part of your piece was the build starting around 4:14. That's where I became the most interested in what was going on. I think if you developed the piece more like this section, I would have taken less issue with it. Aside from that, the sound production is really good and the samples you used were strong - although I think I recognized a few of them from some of the OCR mixes out there. Overall, there's a lot of good in what you've put together, but I would have liked to have seen you hone it in a little more. Ubernym - I like the strong beginning. I sounds like you borrowed a page or two from Klaus Badelt (Pirates of the Caribbean). The develpment is absolutely beautiful. The hits are a little too loud for me, but they don't last long enough to make it a major issue. I'm not sure I care for them as the transitions, though. I really like where you take your piece. It builds wonderfully. XFactor - OVerall, I think you hit your objective pretty well. As for critiques: I found the lead synth kind of hard to listen to after a while. It was a little too grating, in my opinion. I think that if you had processed it a little and allowed it to morph you would have had something a slightly easier to listen to. My main concern is just that there seems to be too much going on most of the time. It's pretty much sonic overload. That said, you do a good job of building between the softer sections and the crazy sections. In conclusion, it's good. It's just hard to listen to - at least, for any extended amount of time. Aidin Ashoori - You've got a good piece here. It's very strong, especially in orchestration. The percussion is really what makes it. The sound production is incredible. The only thing I can pinpoint to critique is the ending. I'm not a big fan of fade-outs if they can be avoided. I would have preferred something a little more definite. Other than that, it's a great piece. Good job. XRisingForce - Despite the MIDI, I actually rather enjoyed this piece. I really liked the section staring around 0:58. I think a lot of this has to do with the sounds, but it reminds me a lot of the score to a Mega Man game. I think my only critique is that it gets a little repetitive after a while. It's fun to listen to, but it could have used a little more variation as the different sections come back. Just adding some embellishments or even different orchestration would go a long way to adding some interesting twists. The C section was a good move, but the guitar chords starting at 3:37 slowed the piece down a little too much. Perhaps you meant to add something else there, I don't know, but, as it is, it detracts a little. Overall, fun to listen to. Good job. Sean Gilleece - My biggest concern is that you tend to linger around the same area, pretty much throughout the entire piece. The constant tuba line was a little distracting for me. You did a good job of building and providing variation, but the piece just didn't leave that same area. With the exception of maybe 1:14 to the end, it all seemed like the same section. I think it's actually roughly the same chord throughout, as well. That might be the issue. That said, it does capture the theme pretty well. I think a little more harmonic variety would go a long way for this piece. Aside from that, the orchestration's pretty good. The build at the end was probably the best part, but it needed to go somewhere. First place: Ubernym Honorable mentions: Rich Douglas, HoboKa, Richard Durand, Blue.Nocturne, stephenspies, and Aidin Ashoori ------- HoboKa ++ ------- Richard Durand - I love the combination of rock-ish drums and orchestral elements here. The bass line works real well too. Unfortunately the drums need much more variety for this style of drumming IMO. The song doesn't vary enough for me, but the choirs and fast string support melodies are very well done. 4/5 here :D quia - The 2nd half of your song is awesome, but it takes too long to build up to it IMO. I think that was your intention, but it wasn't my thing. Excellent try though :) 3.5/5 here :) Ubernym - I think that he deserves first place because he composed this very, very well IMO. Blue.Nocturne's was alright, but it pales in comparison because I rely upon over-used melody cliches. Uber's work is also VERY intricate and is far from being overly repetitive (if at all) - in fact, this kicks the shit out of a lot of OCR orchestral remixes. And it kinda reminds me of Contra III for some reason lol. 5/5 here ^^ First place: Ubernym Honorable mentions: quia and Richard Durand ------- Doulifée ------- Blue.Nocturne - Nice stuff, sound a lot like something i could use while playing FF12 or Oblivion, the music flow is well temporized with variation in the middle to keep the listener's ear enterteined. Ubernym - Nice evolution of the theme like a movie sound track sort of. First place: Blue.Nocturne Honorable mentions: Ubernym ------- Aidin Ashoori ++ ------- First place: XFactor Honorable mentions: ------- Ubernym ++ ------- Rich Douglas - Awesome! Your piece did exactly what you described, I really enjoyed it. HoboKa - I felt like a little too much was going on sonically, and it was very distracting. You have some good motifs, but they tend to get drowned out by ancillary synth riffs and erratic drums...when listening to the piece I didn't feel so much determined as I felt frantic and pulled in multiple directions. A good rule to remember is to cut out the mostly good stuff until only the really good stuff remains. Richard Durand - To me, this feels like an opening credits/intro to the game kind of piece. I think it's the monotonous drum loop that encourages this impression, and maybe just varying the rhythm section to make the piece less "tick-tocky". I liked the solo piano at the end. Blue.Nocturne - Generally excellent like usual, but it felt more like a boss battle than a song about determination... probably splitting hairs here. stephenspies - Your piece expressed well your vision of the theme, and the orchestration was very interesting as well. quia - This gave me an impression of a dance rather than of determination. The noodly synth notes contributed a lot to this impression. XFactor - I appreciate your attempt to go in a different direction. Had a very anime "we can win this" vibe which I really liked. Production-wise it was noisy. This could probably be fixed with some panning and judicious removal of some of the instruments. See my comments for HoboKa too. Aidin Ashoori - This piece illustrates well the struggle I think we all had with this theme. It's a very good piece, but seems to spill over that fine line from determination into "boss battle". But it is very good. XRisingForce - It's a shame yours was a bonus entry...low production values aside, this piece really does fit the "positive determination" from the theme description. Good work! Sean Gilleece - Nice counterpoint going on here. Sounds very warlike, but I feel like it needs some more dynamics, and maybe an additional theme to round it out. First Place: Rich Douglas Honorable Mentions: Blue.Nocturne, stephenspies, XFactor, and Aidin Ashoori