entering the surfice (_moon.xm)

Posted by John Marwin on Tue 6th Feb 2007, rated 4 / 10.

[Melody] The melodies in this tune start out fairly simple, almost happy note. However, what quickly dawns on this song is that these melodies are incredibly quantisized. So in other words they're very static and the note changes are once every fourth or second bar which makes the song loose alot of it's room for melodic dynamics. Also, some of the melodies do tend to clash a bit which makes me wonder if this is perhaps one of the first tunes this artist has made, but they don't clash majorly which doesn't retract that much from the overall experience of the song. However as the song progresses, the melody clearly doesn't follow since it simply stays in the same place for about half of the song. But, then after that a completely new set of melodies come into play and the song changes abruptly only to then fade out in a way which doesn't really make any sense. It's just as if the artist suddenly got bored with the current melody and made an entierly new one with the existing samples. [Percussion] Throughout the first half of the song, the percussional track is fairly standard, following a very basic pattern similar to the melody. The bad part about this portion of the song is that the percussion doesn't change at all, it's completely static and doesn't really add nor retract to the overall feel of the song. It's essentially a placeholder in my opinion. Then similarly to the melody change which happens mid way, the percussion also changes completely and with no transition either! So, the comment about the artist suddenly getting bored with the song also applies here obviously. [Technical] This song doesn't have much of the technical stuff in it, a few panning envelopes here and there and some volume envelopes aswell, all fairly standard and some very hard on the ears.However, the only commands used are of course some volume commands on the percussional parts and also a global fade out command towards the end.. and that's about it I'm afraid. [Overall Impression] This song sounds like it's one of this artists first ones, and quite frankly all the signs are there aswell. Standard envelopes, quantisized note usage, lack of major progression.. the list goes on. However, it doesn't sound outright bad, it just sounds average and a bit empty at the moment. Perhaps with some more work, this could have been something great.