MadTracker - "Dreams ending into tears" by Factor

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Dreams ending into tears

by Factor

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QBical

Originality:	5/10	Technical:	5/10
Theme:	4/10	Quality:	6/10
Arrangement:	6/10	Global:	6/10

This laidback/game piece by factor flows quite good!

It has a nice atmosphere and some nice quality samples.
The mix however is so-so, the drums kinda get pushed away by other stuff, and I can't realy get hold of the bassline. Try to work these two out because it will realy give that edge to your track. Also take a look at the violin, it's kinda out of tune sometimes...

Keep at it factor, each track I hear from you is an improvement over the earlier!

Sunbuster

Originality:	5/10	Technical:	6/10
Theme:	7/10	Quality:	6/10
Arrangement:	7/10	Global:	7/10

Downtempo ambient transish tune. Some nice swirling pads moving around. I like the power of the kick, I also like that swooshpad or whatever it should be called. The piano adds nicely to the overall feeling.

The whole thing is a bit repetitive in the end though. Even though it only runs for about 4 minutes, it get's old fast. The swooshpad, although nice, doesn't help much. It's such a distinct sound, it carries through everything else and one notices it all the time. Not sure how to correct that, because I wouldn't want this track without that instrument either.
The snare is wrong imo. It's too weak, and I don't mean in volume. It simply doesn't have enough punch imo. Now it sounds like a dry fart compared to the kick. The drumprogramming in general is a bit mediocre also. It feels as if it's switching between two patterns, one with kick only and one with kick, snare and hihat.

The strings are out of tune sometimes. I also don't like the piano sample, it sounds a bit too low in quality.

To be honest, this track didn't do much for me. It ends up in a twilight zone. It's got too much power to be background music, yet it doesn't create enough interest to demand the attention of the room. It's ok and technically good, but nothing more.

TNK / ATK project

Originality:	7/10	Technical:	7/10
Theme:	6/10	Quality:	7/10
Arrangement:	8/10	Global:	7/10

Originality: 7
Theme: 6
Arrangement: 8
Technical: 7
Quality: 7
Global: 7

Ambiant opening and then some laidback half ambiant / half demoish stuff, with an electronic drumkit. I like the intro but afterwards it gets somewhat repetitive, due to the lack of strong theme sustaining it all that is not compensated by the mood set by the whole stuff. A nice string theme appears somewhere around the middle, but is not pushed forward enough to build a real theme and/or is not enough in the back to build an additionnal melody.

The arrangement works within this style of music, even if I expected more variation in the different aspects of the sounds, not just that nice filter sweep over that pad you mainly use in the in and outro. However, and mainly because of the used samples, the mix gets quite muddy sometimes, especially when the drums come in. Too bad that after a very promising intro, the track gets down because of these samples & mixing issues.

Hint : use better defined samples (sample 1, a 8-bit piano string really does no good to yoir song...it almost dates back to the st-01 samples set the 1st soundtracker used, and nothing in your song shows that your track is a tribute to Obarski's 1st sample set...), work the theme or ambiance more out, by adding either some catchiness to the theme or by adding some variation to the various parameters of the instruments (filters,...) themselves. My personnal opinion is that you know how to track - your song shows clear tracking abilities - but that you now should get better samples (and/or use more softsynths) to reach the pro level I feel you could reach with a little bit more work.

I think you're quite close to it. Work a little bit more and you'll see how fast your production will get improved.

Don't take it bad, your entry is pleasant to listen to, but compared to the top entries, it's just somewhat behind.

Also something that I'll probably copy-paste 3 billion times within this reviewing process : NAME YOUR TRACKS ! This would give your audiance and us judges a better view of how your track is built, will help newbies to learn how to use MT and to beat you in next year's compo :)

bigandymac

Originality:	7/10	Technical:	5/10
Theme:	8/10	Quality:	6/10
Arrangement:	6/10	Global:	7/10

an interesting mix of atmospheric pads and relaxed breakbeat.
originality - this track doesnt easily fit into any genre, it is a fusion of pads, ambient melody and an almost oldschool breakbeat.
theme - there are some very nice melodies in the track, the intro pads in particular sound very clean and with a great sound. also the strings/deep pad at patt 16 is a very mellow sound. a couple of the melodies i felt broke from the overall mood of the song (at patt 0E) and were maybe an unnecessary addition.
arrangement - there is a fairly clear structure, intro, bridge, chorus, breakdown etc and the transitions between each are smooth. the outro was a bit to long in context with the rest of the track.
technical - the limited use of vsts in the track (a couple of multiband compressors) is why i have marked down on technical. the use of mt effects is proficient and instrument editing is also good, but a couple of well placed vst fx could really have improved the track.
quality - again marked down due to a couple of low quality samples which could easily have been replaced by vsts and produced a much better sound. also some low end muddiness on the bass pad, a poor piano sample and an archaic 303 snare impacted on the overall quality of the sound.

summary - some really nice melodies, good beat flowing structure and nice sounding pads combine to make a very nice track that is unfortunately marred by some low quality samples.