ClockworkNick's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Music Box]

Whoah this is sweet. Really fantastic melody mate. The only reason that i didn't give you 5 stars is because you didn't end your cycles properly. What i mean by that is that your transition between the repeats of the melody was clumsy. Your last chords, before entering a new part or before you go back for one more repeat of the same melody should either show anticipation or a definite end, closure of that part. Instead it was shaky both in the middle and the end. The trills at 0.23 were a bad way to conceal what you couldn't do, as was the arpeggio in the very end. It's just a bit of chord theory or experimenting some more until you've found something that feels and sounds right.
But overall, it was kickass. Nice!

[Hard Love]

Nice idea, you should fiddle around with it some more. You got a nice vibe and nice string etudes going on there but it feels like you did it in a few hours hence the 2.5 stars. Overall you have a nice and coherent structure but i know that you added an extra chorus just to fill time and use that crescendo on 2.53 somehow heh. It was a nice touch but overall it felt like a time filler more than something that really adds to the song. Keep at it mate!

Earel responds:

I write something about your comment two years after, when i understand english a bit more than before !
So first, thanks ! It's my first real track and i'm glad to know there's some things good in it.
About the extra chorus. I didn't want to use it as a time filler. This is the way I wanted the song to finish and i really wanted to use the crescendo strings. When I heard that i had a sample like this, i was "Wow, this is what i'm looking for !"
And you can hear the same sample in other songs i made ^^
I really like this sample, so i wanted to use it, and about the end, i wasn't thinking like "eh, it's too short, let's add this here and it will be okay"
Sorry to answer two years later ^^
And thanks again !

[Sacrifice]

It's almost spot on, the only problem i found is that it's a tad repeatable, i think you could have experimented some more on where you can take this, your crescendo builds up to the same thing but the melody i believe isn't strong enough to get it home on its own. To better understand what i'm saying you should take a listen, if you already haven't, to Zbigniew Preisner's Lacrimosa (Tree of Life) In Lacrimosa Preisner found a strong melody that is so captivating that allows him to drag it on and on, not saying you should be Preisner, but when you're talking war you're talking sacrifice and i think you covered only half of your theme's potential. I love your choir samples, what did you use for that?

SoundSpectre responds:

Hi, thanks for listening and thank you very much for the feedback, i have had a few people now tell that perhaps it is a bit repeatable but at the time i was so much in the zone of what i was creating and liked the chords so much that i repeated them adding new elements stemming from the chords every 4 or 8 bars. When i first started to produce music years ago i was into electronic music and i think i carry over the methods a bit too much i think, trance was one of my main styles and imo trance is the art of repetition and when done right can be hypnotic, but i think i am starting to learn a bit more from this style and will continue until i master it but also i will still experiment and use elements of my electronic love as well, i don't like to limit myself to a genre box too much as i like to just create from the heart, and i used symphobia 3 lumina and shevannai for the choir samples.