Champions (vtr_chmps.xm)

Overall Impression (8/10)

This is a difficult piece of music to describe. It has an ambientish beginning and end but its heavy percussion(snare) makes it seem a bit like some kind of rock opera, but the orchestral background and piano lead make it something else. Anyways its fairly upbeat and interesting with it's odd sounding piano melodies. This is apparently a soundtrack piece as the comments imply, which makes the out of place beginning and end make more sense, but as a song in itself they seem not to fit. Quite a nice listen though.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

The main piano lead has a total of SIXTEEN samples, that each sound a little more filtered than the last, plus there's quite a few more samples for all the background strings. All these samples are high quality, but I'm pretty sure they all weren't necessary, especially the piano ones. The arrangement is kind of odd, as the beginning and end are very similar but quite different from the middle, which makes for a stark difference between the sections. The song could have easily started without all the initial and final ambience, but the beginning does set a bit of a mood. There are very few effects used but there's really nowhere where they seem to be missing, mostly due to the rich sample variety. When they are used, they're fairly subtle tone controls that add nicely to the song. Volume envelopes are used for most of the orchestral instruments to good effect. Except for the one sound control reverb on and one panning slide, the panning is the same for all this instruments. The reverb helps fill out the sound, but some panning control could have made for more variety. All around though this is an ably tracked piece.

Development (7/10)

All the melodies are played using the piano, with a couple interesting asides with bells, flute, electric guitar and a surprisingly acidic synth. These asides don't last long but they serve to enrich the song quite a bit with their variety. The main piano melody isn't reiterated too often after it's initial introduction, and is instead mixed up quite a bit during it's longest outing. Nothing really stands out memorably but it still sounds nice.

Creativity (9/10)

Seeing as this song doesn't fall into any genre I've ever heard of, I've got to say it's pretty creative, even if the melodies aren't too memorable. The instrument mix is pretty original and while weird, the beginning is kinda neat.

Enjoyment (7/10)

The unfitting beginning and end kind of turn me off from listening to this over again, but then I remember the cool extra instruments used in the middle of the song and I want to listen. So yeah, once you get by the beginning it's fine to listen to again since you probably won't remember all the little things in the background.