Rhamdao (vtr_rhamdao.xm)

Overall Impression (8/10)

This is different! Orchestral music with a tad of dance and maybe even folk! I like the combination of the soft parts on the hard parts and I like the mood.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

Nicely done - but a few problems. Some loops are really noticeable. It gets quite irritating listening to those clicks. Also, the 8-bit deep drum (instrument 25) is really static-y and a bit annoying. Some samples also take up a lot of space (7-15 especially). I don't know what tracker the artist uses but I downsampled some of the samples in MPT with great results. Not only was the size reduced by half, but it took away some of the static from the 8-bit! The flute sample is nice, though, but sometimes it gets jumbled around with different notes. I think the envelope should fade out faster.

Development (7/10)

There are so many parts in this song with repeated patterns few and far between. I like when the drums first come in. I also like the parts with the piano. Excellent tracking there. In the middle of the song there is a long stretch of fairly repetitive music, then it slows down a goes to a soft part to keep the listener, well, listening! :) There are a lot of good transitions.

Creativity (9/10)

The work with the drums is really original. I love the use of the snare and the cymbal fade-in. The ending was a little predictable, but that's not a big drawback.

Enjoyment (8/10)

This song takes a lot of listening to hear all it's features. This is definitely worth listening to.

Additional Comment

When this file is all zipped up, it is about 835 kb, but when you unzip it, it is almost 3 Mb! Somebody must have used a super zipper! I wonder what it was...