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Conceptual Music Competition 5: Sunrise [Results]


Abadoss
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Currently, four.

{edit} - Correction: Five. Three from VGMusic and two from OCR.

{edit 2} - Six. I just got another one from VGMusic. They're beating the pants off you guys, as far as number of entries!

well, seeing as I recently got banned from VGMix (woops) and Virt hasnt answered me in days, I'd be happy to enter this one for the OCR side :P

looking forward to how this turns out now. good luck to anyone who entered.

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shit, my song's not gonna be ready. it's just taking too long on this dinosaur i'm working from. props to you all, i'll be sure to vote. next time (or, rather, as soon as i get my computer).

Sorry to hear that. There's always the bonus entry option, if you want to take it.

Submiting...

I haven't received anything from you yet. There's still fifteen minutes left...

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Some close voting there. Congrats to SirNutS on first spot. He's been writing great music since before I even got my first mixing program so I'll happily take second place next to him hehe.

Apologies for not getting a chance to vote and write up some reviews, kinda got busy the past few days and ran out of time (read parties,beer + gigs :o ). I'll post up a few quick thoughts on the tracks now as a thank you to all those who took the time to comment on my track and voted for me.

First off, the general mood of almost all of the tracks was, at first listen, very similar(apart from stringfiend and maybe Simon Frisch's), it almost turned me off listening to them. It's amazing how one idea can impose the same kind of idea on a majority whilst it gives a smaller contingent such completely opposing ideas. Musically most of these tracks are brilliant, but from my point of view, as you might have guessed by whatI came up with, they're just not really what I would associate with sunrise, not in my current frame of mind anyhow. I can see the ideas of trying to capture the grandeur and beauty of a sunrise in tracks like Extacide's, Sir NutS', Chief's and Chavous' and this they do well, but in a really over the top hollywood style. It was just a little cliche for my liking.

Moving on though..

Extacide: Really liked this one, I've listened to it a few times now over the last while. The first thing that springs to mind is mv, really reminds me of his style of music (that's a good thing by the way :P). The pulsing strings in the background tend to get a little repetetive further into the track but at 2:17, the shortness of the track saves them from driving the listener insane. Decent percussion sequencing and a very nice piano synth make this overall very aurally pleasing. Very little happening in terms of arrangement, it's like you were afraid to expand much

on the main theme and just decided to solo it out. This could have been fleshed out a good deal more, but stands as a good track for the length that it is. The description however, I found doesn't really tie in much with the music.

Simon Frisch: Very ominous, very dark very...Tim Burton. The instrumentation in this is top-quality, shows good skill at mixing an orchestra. As for the theme though, I don;t really see a sunrise as appearing with slow rays of lights, your description and music convey more of an image of a completely shadowed world under a blanket of black clouds and the rays as you put it, when the string section hit their crescendo, is like the clouds being parted momentarily and these rays of light penetrating the darkness. Without the description you wrote, I wouldn't associate this with sunrise as much as what I just described there. I think this is probably because the music descends into an oppresive, dark tone again after the buildup and the atonality returns towards the end as if the darkness is returning. Still, musically, this is a fine piece. nice work.

Sir NutS: It's been mentioned before, but it's the most notable point made about this piece so far. It doesn't build to anything notable. A musical representation of a battle scene needs to be violent in its nature (unless you're going for the slow, distraught, "what a waste" or "the futility of war" style of depicting a battle scene). By the style of this track though I assume you were going for the former idea and in my opinion failed to pull it off. There's just a lack of real energy, or wistful sadness, for this track to fall into either category for depicting a battle. Musically though, I like this. Great sounding synths, I like the pulsing bass you used. Decent percussion sequencing, although fairly simple. There's enough transitions here to keep the listener interested the whole way through. Overall a very relaxing listen and feels very fleshed out. I like the break in the middle especially. 2:24 is where the aggression I was expecting should have come in and really thrown me flat on my ass..but it just didn't happen. The rest of the track just kind of ambles along after this all the way to its anticlimatic end. Overall, great mixing as always, good ideas, but let down by poor translation into their musical counterparts.

Stringfiend: Class, hehe. I loved this one. Musically bouncy and crazy, going by the description it does exactly what it says on the tin. The mixing however is pretty poor, and no I'm not talking about the lo-fi effect that you're tryig to get, it's the fact that you didn't quite achieve that 50's black n white film effect quite so well. There's too many inconsitencies in the mixing styles that it really threw me off. Everything sounds like it was recorded in different rooms, the reverb is messy, working well on some instruments but muddying up others way too much. Also the levels were irritating at times, sometimes the trombones just being too in-your-face overpowering at times. the kick/tom drum sounds like it's planted right in the middle of the room by themselves and then mixed in afterwards. other times theyre panned off to the left, then sometimes it disappears completely off to the background.

The composition is fun and quirky though, very much captures the style you're after. Good work overall. Just some annoying inconsistencies in the mixing.

Chief: Um...think I'll follow suit and just ignore the GM sounds here. Nice buildup on the intro, the instruments do seem to capture the essence of a big eventful sunrise. Could be imagined at the end of some cheesy Disney movie where all the baddies are gone and the sun is just coming up over a pair of lovers. Hehe, yeh actually, thats what this one makes me think of. Cheesy movies.

Chavous: Slow and kind of boring is my first impression. I like the percussion instruments used though. This kind of reminds me of the Fear Effect soundtrack. Very ominous and remorseful. I reckon this one is the track that's come closest to matching its description. I can very much imagine the procession taking place as the last rites are read, I'm imagining this taking place more on an Indian reservation overlooking a scorched red desert landscape though. for some reason it evokes this harsher image than the cool blues and greens of a cliffside landscape.

Good efforts all round. Looking forward to number 6. I reckon I'll take part again, was a bit of fun and I'll always welcome anything that gets me writing more music.

Kris

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