Eino Keskitalo

Cool project concept! YES, that's an excellent track! Also, don't apologize for MQ, MQ rocked my world when I was eleven or so. Youtube linky: Excellent DoD by Brian Davis (thanks Kyle!): http://dod.redheadedblacksheep.net/past/may07/21tie-BrianDavis-FFMQ-Pyramid-ICE-DoD.mp3 --Eino

I enjoyed the first episode and am very much looking forward to the next one. No need to apologize! --Eino

Yeah, happy birthda! Good job on the FF4 album too. --Eino

Just posting to let you know that I think what you're planning to do is awesome, and I hope you have a ton of good time. --Eino

The choice is good to have. --Eino

Nice source! --Eino

Cool. I will! --Eino

Catching up a bit.. really enjoyed the AnSou interview, fun stuff, also really enjoying the exclusive track right now, while downloading the OA/EOBLOR ep. Good work! --Eino

WOW. What a project. I can't buy the CD, but I'll try to spread the word a bit. --Eino

Big giant happy on this circular occassion. --Eino

Congratulations! --Eino

Yeah, that's cool. I don't think I (for my part) misinterpreted what you were saying, your experience of the track was very different from mine, and I was trying to say that, and also describe my experience about it. --Eino

Hey, I've missed this thread until now! Great to see a project getting a good start. Good luck with it, I'll be listening when it comes out. --Eino

*screams for joy* Actually, I've almost finished listening already. I love the game, the music, I was pretty excited about the project and I'm feeling very happy now it's out! Sounding really good too. --Eino

Thanks for the reply, Kyle, and you're welcome. I need to clarify this - not all the bass notes sound out of tune, just some of them, the lowest ones. That's why I think it's a byproduct of the low freqs. --Eino

Yeah, it's mariovania.. whaaa?! --Eino

Last one! Disc 4, track 10: Apogee For the longest time, the piano intro just didn't agree with me at all. Lately, it mostly clicked for me, I still hear something clashing at 00:14-00:15 - I think this tiny moment in time made the intro not work for me, and I couldn't actually enjoy the track at all. Thankfully I got over that, but it still was my genuine experience of the track for the first few times. But now it sounds really good to me. It's very, very full of ideas, but they do work. Slightly exhausting, but very enjoyable to listen to. There are two especially great moments in the piece, the first being what I'm calling "the bass lift" first at 1:40, the other being the following section first at 1:47-2:16. I like the guitar lead playing in that section, and I love the organ, great sound, compliments the guitar wonderfully in that section. Good variety of instruments in general, well used to hilight the structure and different sections. I think the lead playing in other parts that those moments mentioned could be better. While it's not bad at all, it's a bit stiff, leaden.. it covers the section instead of communicating with it. I'm also thinking that it's ok to use some rests in lead playing too. But not sure if it was necessary for this piece. Other thing, the keyboard string in the intro and outro sounds a bit out of tune. Disc 4, track 11: Dark Corner I like this one very much. As with Antagenesis and This Fate, I get a very story-like feel out of the piece's progression. Also, it's somewhat similar to Battle over the Continent, which is one of my favourite tracks on OCR. Guitar sound processing here is delicious. The jagged rhythms are a treat as well. I like how the drums are de-emphasized, although the toms have ended up sounding powerless pop/splat sounds in some (not all) fills. The lead part starting at 02:23 is really grand, it's been playing in my head every now and then. Disc 4, track 12: Holy Judgement I've had a lot of trouble getting into this track. It's massive, after all. Disc 4 in itself feels quite massive, so I'm usually sort of exhausted by the time I get here. I've since been listening to this track separately, which helps. I still feel to need to tackle this with a bullet point list.. * The intro is wider and louder than the following section, in a way that I find not good for the flow of the piece. Even when all the guitars come in, my impression is that they don't sound as full and loud as the intro did. * The intro itself sounds pretty good. It's atmospheric in a way that I appreciate. * The guitar fill from the first orchestral bit to the guitar bit is really good. * The dialogue snippets work quite well. * There's a lot of different sections and instrumentations. It sounds a bit disparate, the sound changing slightly from section to section, but it holds together. Notably the guitars have a feeling they're not in the same sonic space all the time. Some of this duality works for the track, actually. * My favourite part: 07:35-08:04 - great bass, and the riffs over steady beat. Goosebumps. Sandwhiched between two orchestral/chill bits. Nice. Disc 4, track 13: Summoning of the Spirits Very nice touch starting and ending the album with the same source piece, and so differently. This take is somber and calm. I like the pacing. Great for late night listening. I like how it's long and relatively few instruments are going on at each time. The instruments take turns without competing with each other, if that makes sense. At first I was thinking that the track could have worked without the drums, maybe even better, but now I think I was wrong. The fills for instance are well built and the beat keeps interesting throughout. The use of timpani is great. I also thought using them for only half the track was tasteful, if that makes sense. Drumless COULD work but that would be a different track. The sine bass towards the end sounds slightly out of tune to me. I might be just hearing it like that (on headphones too), since it's so low. (clarified in a further post) "If that makes sense", my new favourite expression. Disc 5, track 1: No Better Time Than Now I really liked Just Go, and this has the same "gliding" feel to it. Delicious. It's a really good song too. The lead vocals have a slight feel of hesitance to them, at times, during verses. The very first two lines gave me the first impression that the singing wasn't going to be very good, because of this. When the support vocals kicked in, it clicked into place. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the singing and I'm glad this piece is a song rather than an instrumental, because a song is what it is. My critique is that the impression I get is that the singer isn't 100% comfortable singing, which makes me uncomfortable too. At the same time I like the vulnerable feel. THAT is great. From my own meager experience from singing and recording songs, it's hard and important to get the very beginning of the singing sound right. Often I only warm up after the first few lines and then the opportunity to make a good first impression is gone already. I try to sort of imagine that the vocal part starts before the singing actually starts, that it doesn't begin from a void, so to speak, that I've already began (and warmed up, settled into the music) before I need to sing the first lines. I don't really mean to give advice here, I don't think I'm in any position to do that, I just think this is an interesting subject. Completely different subject is comfortably singing a vulnerable song out for the whole world to listen to. I have no words on that. I like this song. Disc 5, track 2: Standing Up Very cool instrumentation. There's a strange floating feel, as if there was a lack of a tonal anchor, if that makes sense. I have trouble recognizing what direction the piece is going, some of this works for the track, but it doesn't feel fully realized. Disc 5, track 3: Go the Distance Hard panning, gurrgg. Causes nausea. The intro riff is very powerful, lots of fun. I like the alternation between violin, synth and guitar leads, it gives a lot of variation to the track. The violin sounds quite gorgeous at times. Some of the violin riffing is off rhythmically: 01:02-01:13 and the same part later on. Fun, powerful track, one of my Sixto favourites easily. --- Aand that's it! I want to thank all the remixers on the album, it's been fun listening to it and I like some of the tracks very much. I've also enjoyed writing these comments (even if it all took a while), and I'm grateful to all of you who have let me known you've read and even enjoyed them, and the discussions we've had here. Biggest thanks to Kyle and Aleah for overseeing this huge effort (once again, great album art!). Kyle, a question; there were tracks selected to be posted on the OCR front page with the release. I see you submitted more - did you choose these for a "single release" according to the reception they got after the release? --Eino

Thanks for the reply! I notice that I shouldn't have said it was judged quickly. Some of the stuff lately seem to have been judged the same day they hit the panel, which is cool. --Eino

Shopping cart? Nice. --Eino

The reason Yannibubula got judged so quickly was because BGC could post the track directly into the panel, without having to go through the inbox, right? Just curious about the process. But really I just wanted to give you guys props for picking up the judging pace, and the front-page posting.. there's now, often one or even two new tracks for me when I check the front page. Very nice. --Eino

Yeah, I find commenting on WIPs etc to take a good amount of time, especially if there's something bothering me and I'm trying to figure it out. --Eino

X-COM: UFO Defence alone is worth 54$ :] --Eino

Oops. --Eino

Congrats to OA! Definitely a good pick, great that he is up for this. I can see he is NO'ing stuff already! --Eino

It occurs to me that Darkesword did a Guardia Fair mix that was also in 5/4. Maybe there's something there! --Eino