Castle Courtyard (castle_courtyard.s3m)

Overall Impression (10/10)

Very good.. very relaxing Was moved by the beat of this song.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (10/10)

Did a great job. Would love to hear more from this writer

Development (10/10)

Outstanding. The song does make you think of a castle

Creativity (10/10)

Very creative. The variety of instruments used in this song are very compatable with each other

Enjoyment (10/10)

Nice to listen to over and over. Although it is a long sone, it seems to be enjoyable through the whole song

Overall Impression (7/10)

It must be noted that this piece is not totally compliant to the format it has been released in. It does therefore not play properly in some players that are strict. This is often the fault of the tracker software exporting to a non-native format incorrectly.

Overall, I found this quite relaxing, the intro is a nice touch with voices, but overall the 9.4 minutes of piano chords that follow underneath the progressive melodic elements has hardly any dynamic, so it can begin to grate.

The melodies that develop further into the piece are enjoyable. I also enjoyed the mood this piece sets out, the overall piece is missing some developments though which conspire to fail to really push the piece anywhere. It's almost as if it is driving around the same roundabout several times before taking the junction to the next roundabout.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (6/10)

Some of the phrases in this piece are great, some are not. The part between 4-9 minutes in is typically repetitive in chord sequence, the guitar melodies are a nice distraction, but the piano backing had been going for 6 minutes or so with little or no dynamic range, it sounded all too flat and competed with te melodies somewhat. I felt the repetitiousness somewhat of a down point, but not to a massive degree at least.

The occasional tempo changes were very welcome, as well as the introduction of hymn voices later in the piece which really do go very well with the piece. Quite ethereal. As far as tracking techniques go, there's plenty of parts which could have been tweaked to add more dynamics to the piece, is it is almost everything is competing for prime attention with the backing chords, on the other hand, I found the percussive elements are good and robust for the style of music.

Development (7/10)

Between the interludes, there are some particularly welcome breaks with melodies. The progression between piano, synth and dulcimer are very nice, as are the harmonic pipes (9:00) The guitar parts are not outstanding but fit well with the piece and offer some interesting quirky bridges. However, the problem I seem to have is that backing chug-chug-chug of the piano chord inversions backing almost every event in this piece, they need to back off for a while, let the melodies and pads play their parts.

Creativity (6/10)

Certainly there is a fair amount of compositional work in here, and the atmosphere this piece generates if you allow yourself to ride along is great. The mixture of traits from folk, rock and ballad music is executed well. Creative? I'd say so.

Enjoyment (7/10)

Because its so long, you'd have to put it on a few times to hear it all properly. Either way, it entirely depends on whether you can sit and listen to this intently, or have it on in the background. For me, I could probably have this on in the background. There were often periods that I felt were too slow (and repetitive) with too little happening, and a couple of parts which were protracted out for too long for my liking. It is certainly a module worth replaying though whichever way you feel appropriate.