Eino Keskitalo

Hehe, my bad. Definitely looked like him, to me at least. --Eino

Yeah, thanks for asking. Well, not right now. I'm anticipating I'll have all tracks done in 2-3 months. Rexy's gonna get the last one. --Eino

I was fooled for a good while. Saw the front page, thought "what?!", went somewhere else, came back later to see if djp had sorted it out or something, still there.. rinse, repeat. Then I actually started looking at the links and stuff, and realized that it was actually djp in the "stock photo." I thought it was marvellous. --Eino

Okami. Ico should be must-get too. --Eino

Tuli suunnaton himo heittää tänne jotain suomeksi. Anteeksi. En ole edes projektissa. :/ --Eino

On this note, the Tales Union interview (and the music here, no doubt) made me interested about playing the games. Good work. --Eino

I'm guessing it might sound samey because there is so much stuff to absorb. The sequencing (there are lot of good transitions there, which put similarly styled pieces, or pieces with fitting ending/beginning pairs next to each other) might also create a sense of unified feel to the albums. I find the whole surprisingly consistent in overall feel (though I've only had a couple of full listen-throughs so that's to be taken with a pinch of salt). --Eino

Yah, sounds fantabulous. (Just the deeeeeep bass drum clips.) Finish up good sir! --Eino

Just a quick listen. I like this very very much. I don't really recognize it - I just played and enjoyed FFIX in January, but seems I either can't remember Freya's theme (although she was pretty much my favourite charachter).. or this is really interpretive. I like the rigid piano. I like the "coldness". After around 01:00 until about 02:20 the pumping feel becomes a bit too much, I feel a little nauseated. I guess the same goes for the when the string chords come back in later (chorus?). Yeah, good stuff. The pumping is a huge issue (I get that it's intended, it's just too much, just tone it down in the chorus), but otherwise this sounds extremely good, so I'm not worried. Thanks for sharing! --Eino

I like how much variation you get out of the minimal source and minimal instrumentation. I'm seriously grooving to this here. --Eino

Man that was a great round. Glad to see you're picking this up again. --Eino

This piece is a shot of aural happiness. Thank you AeroZ! --Eino

Thanks to Meteo Xavier mentioning this one in another thread. I'm enjoying it! The ambient/drone and the drums combo works great. They're somewhat disparate, but that works in the pieces favour - for me at least, I can understand the comments here to the contrary. Good work and worth checking out. --Eino

So the proverbial ball is rolling. Great news! --Eino

Funstuffs!

I agree - guitar shreddery is amoral, wrong, and just plain bad behaviour. --Eino

I've mostly done track-by-track listening, but from the couple of complete listens, the sequencing seems pretty succesful despite the many different styles. Cold Memory, it seems then, may have been a victim in the process though! --Eino

After a short break, here are more comments. Thanks for the feedback on feedback people, it's really great to know that you appreciate it, especially as it probably isn't exactly flattering all the way. :] I do my best to be constructive! Disc 2, track 4: Cold Memory Very cool atmosphere here in this song.. (yes, that was a lame pun). I like this track, but I'd like to like it more. Initially I didn't - the bad had me not hear the good in the song, before I started listening more closely. The fade-in, with the choir, is sort of choppy/grainy, but I really like that effect - I wish there was more of that throughout the piece! The high strings and the piano are way too forte from the start. I think the feel of this songs would be absolutely amazing if there was more dynamic "playing" on those instruments. It should grow, not start at 9 or 10. I don't like the piano chord at 00:39. It just doesn't fit with the other instruments. Otherwise the writing is good, but the lack of dynamics and that one chord makes it sound worse than it is. I like the harp in the background, with the high notes on the piano there's the icicly feel. 00:53-01:16 sounds absolutely gorgeous. Wouldn't change a thing. The change at 01:12, beautiful. I don't like how the same strings figure repeats the next two bars, but that's more because it's the same velocity than that it's the same notes - the same figure played more lightly might sound quite cool - slightly varying the melody might still be better. I like the change underneath. I also like the low strings playing that continuous pulse in the background. The next section that begins has a problem: it goes fuller, louder - but the instruments are already playing with pretty loud touch, so when more is added, it gets crowded. While I say that I must also say I like the overall sound here. Alas, there are note choices that don't sound good to me. Around 01:26 the low strings, now playing longer notes (and sounding mighty good) touch a note out of scale I think. 01:30 something is again garbled in the lower register.. hmm, I think that's it actually, but again just those two points, and the lack of dynamics make it sound worse than it was. Starting at 01:46 there are some cymbal runs (and water sounds?), they sound really good and evoke an image of chlling, icy water. A fantastic effect. 01:48 the low strings stay in place.. the dissonance is interesting, I like how it anchors itself around that one note. 01:53 sounds bad to me though, but overall 01:42-02:23, while dissonant and dense, works, especially as it sort of unwinds towards the end. It reminds me of some expressionistic string pieces I've heard. Still I'd love more use of dynamics here. 02:24-02:36 is good in the arrangement side, but again and throughout the forte feel on the instruments in the major gripe. 02:35 there's a high piano note that sounds totally out of the picture. I really like how the strings and piano support each other at 02:36-02:42. I like the icy tuned percussion -like synth sound towards the end. The fadeout feels pretty shoddy - overall the writing on the ending sounds loose, although there's strong hinting at a corgeous melody on the piano at 03:09-03:14 - there's all the potential of a solid ending based on that. I think playing orchestral samples at a continuous forte can work, but I really feel this style would benefit from a different approach with them - it's definitely worth investigating! Disc 2, track 5: Simplified Design Change of pace, yeah. The intro's quite tasty. I like how the drums and rhythm guitars/bass sound. The drums sound dry and acoustic, but there's this electronic edge on the guitars. I'm surely not far off the mark if I say I'm reminded of System of a Down. 01:50 piano is quite out of tune, I don't like the effect. Love the cowbell and horns at 02:47.. Hmm, no wonder the bass sounded electronic! I quite like the fake sound. I don't enjoy the choppy strings. They sound tacked on. Similarly with the harp, it sounds so separate from the backing. The harp blends in in the next section though, starting at 03:15, this section is quite nice! Overall, I can't help but think that there's some problems with the pacing of the piece - it feels long, which is something even a long piece shouldn't feel like. There are bits that just plain don't work for me - the piano, and the choppy strings. I think this one could lose a minute or so and work much better. There's a lot of good in this track, but it doesn't make me want to play it again immediately even though the potential is clearly there with all the delicious riffing going on. cheers! --Eino

I agree - props for the fresh angle on the piece! --Eino

Yah, sounding pretty good. I'm not a fan of the tuning at the beginning, but wouldn't say you need to scratch that. --Eino

Nice shiny pictures! --Eino

This mix is a fountain of fun. --Eino

I'll quickly say 1.9 sounds much more pleasant than 1.5 - the fixed high ends and clip elimination probably did that. I'm enjoying this! Looking forward to the next iteration.. --Eino

Boy this is a high energy track! The writing Works for me. I'm no production expert, and hence a bit hesistant to post, but I think this could still use some tweaking. I listened to some of recent trance/electronic mixes posted on the site (ABG's Purity, Jewbei's Pretension, bLiNd's Jade Catacombs and Roz's Eat Your Own Dust), and their production notch more pleasing to the ears than most of your track. It's close, though, so should be fixable! Something about it is somewhat tiring to the ears in comparison.. it's very dense. There's a sense of space in all of those other tracks. I've always liked that Rozovian suggestion where you're to take a backup of your project, and mix it again from start. Maybe you could try doing that, aiming for that sense of space - assuming my feedback made sense to you of course. All in all, pretty good work, not quite there yet but very very close. Remember, the final 5% may be the hardest part of any work.. --Eino

I listened to the tune pretty soon after writing my last post, but I've been neglecting posting here. Here's the remedy to that. The track is as good as I hoped it would be. Much different than I thought it would be, it's much more mellow than I expected. It works, it gives contrast how humorous the lyrics actually are. Dunno if I'm qualified to say "just submit this already", but there it is. Your concern about the source usage I understand, though. I'm not actually sure if I hear the relation! That's maybe just my rusty ears though. Don't really hear any production flaws in this either. --Eino