En ny historia (hyo-enh.it)

Overall Impression (9/10)

Very pretty and cool at the same time. This is an excellent piece of music, and like many well-written pieces sounds deceptively simple on the first listen. However, there is much to be admired in this song, both in terms of composition and tracking technique. If you are looking for something easy on the ears and nicely done, this song is a good choice.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (9/10)

The song essentially takes the listener through variations on a simple melodic theme, with a short middle section. It is basically a quiet ballad-type song. With regard to technique, the composer makes good use of stereo samples (e.g. a nice stereo pad sample with each note of the chord panned differently). The melodic stereo samples are taken down to 8 bits where necessary to keep the file size down, I assume. (Tracking purists might still find the file size a little big for the length of the song, but the sound quality is more than worth it in this case.) What I noticed in particular was the subtle use of different samples and combinations in the background parts (both melodic and percussive) to keep the song interesting in terms of the overall feel.

Development (9/10)

I liked this aspect of the song a lot. The melody is built around a simple cell that keeps evolving or is played against different backgrounds. There is a very short contrasting middle section with a slightly heavier synth sound that nicely offsets the soft electric piano and string sounds of the outer sections. After the middle section, the song changes keys before moving into another variation on the main melody.

Creativity (7/10)

There's nothing earth-shatteringly new in this song, but the craftmanship is outstanding. In that sense, I found the real creativity was in getting such a high level of sound quality into the tracking environment.

Enjoyment (8/10)

Easy to hear again and again, although I suppose there are those that would find it a bit too much on the easy listening side to listen to it often. Not me, though. I really like it and haven't gotten bored listening to it over and over through the course of writing this review.

Additional Comment

Download this and listen. Unless you're a total metal head, you won't be disappointed. There is nothing chip-tune about this one. There is a real focus on sound quality here and development of a simple melody. Very nicely done.