sonic sucks! (sonic_su.mod)

Overall Impression (10/10)

Overall, I would have to say that this tune is very impressive both from a musical perspective and especially from a technical stand point (not easy to find a 4 channel 24k MOD that sounds this good!).

The tune's intro opens up beautifully with a square lead (w/ reverb in another channel), a thick chippy bass and, what I would like to describe as, a classic MOD sounding synth. It has a very open feel. Then after the intro finishes it transitions perfectly fading out the square lead and unleashing a catchy beat along with a wicked bass line that carries the song. After this, the song progresses making use of different effects for the lead (such as arpeggios, vibrato etc.) and has tons of cool tracking techniques. It is also important to note that the song finishes up by looping (and does a pretty good job in doing so).

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (10/10)

Pink demonstrates excellent tracker skill with this piece. It's not easy to make a MOD tune that has such a small file size sound this good, but thanks to Pink's tech skill, it gets pulled off.

Some examples of good track structure and effects are:
+ Excellent use of mixing arpeggios in with a sample phased square-wave.
+ Excellent use of vibrato and volume dynamics (especially with the synth).
+ Excellent speed/time management
+ Takes advantage of the jump and repeat commands
+ Very good percussion mixing (for one channel)
+ Good reuse of patterns

This is definitely the work of an experienced tracker.

Development (9/10)

The arrangement is impressive. This song does not have any notable EQ problem, everything is balanced and fits together very well (that is unless you are listening to this tune with headphones on and you are playing this with the hardware limitation of hard panning). The samples are 8-bit and they all work well together giving the tune a good mix of chip sounds with more advanced samples (synth, drums etc.).

Creativity (9/10)

One of the things that I found very interesting with this tune is the use of cycling through different square samples to create a very unique sounding lead. Another creative element to the tune is the speed changes that occur. In this tune Pink will keep the bpm the same up change the speed to fit in faster notes when needed. In addition to this, the song had really good use of the pattern jumping commands (Exx, Dxx, Bxx).

Enjoyment (8/10)

I have listened to this song hours on end while I am either programming or developing graphics. It's a great tune to work to. The repetitive looping really works with the song, giving the listener a smooth cadence to follow as they work.

No particular part of the song makes me want to stop it. It's a very catchy tune that will keep you listening.

The only down side is that the song is only 2 minutes and 10 seconds long, which does wear down after a while.

Additional Comment

One of may favorite chiptunes. Also this is one of the first chips I listened to that got me into making my own tunes!