The Mod Archive v4.0b - A distinctive collection of modules

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floating on toilet - 80616-floating.xm	Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (8/10)

While I didn't manage to connect the song title Floating on toilet with the Fast D&B mix, it's an enjoyable tune albeit short. Overall, I wouldn't mind recommending this as a quick distraction.

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Photographic Memory - photographicmemory.xm	Review Score: 4/10

Overall Impression (4/10)

Honestly speaking, I found this quite dull, it has a couple of interesting aspects mentioned in the other sections, but overall the module isn't very appealing both on a musical and technical level.

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Happy Trance - sm-happytrance.it	Review Score: 5/10

Overall Impression (6/10)

I thought I would better expand on my comment on this track, and at the same time also alert people to the fact that this particular module was composed in a One Hour Compo (1 hour to make it, fixed sample set). So yes, quite a difficult task for many, and as such this review will take this into consideration.

Overall, the piece has some nice elements in it, however is is unfortunately overshadowed by some flaws. Sadly, these do bring the overall impression down, at least for me.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

The first thing that is noticeable with this track is the introduction of the piece to a point where you start to ask yourself, where is the bass? Is that it? that tiny thing? Well yeah.. that's it. It's one of the 2 weak things about this piece. The bass could have possibly been layered up to emphasize it's power in the piece, as it is, it sits quietly and very much mid-range below the rest of the music, which is quite annoying...

The piece is technically proficient, and as a piece composed in under an hour against pressure of a deadline, it's fair in terms of composition.

Development (4/10)

The melodic development is brave but poor. I found the loudness of it to be off putting and the melody to be a skittish affair with no discernible direction. The artist is forgiven though as there are indeed limitations in a competition compo, and that main limitation is the instruments you are given to produce your song. But this could have been improved with some layering to increase the texture of the thin sounds. On a positive note, the beginning of the track does build up nicely, with some good progression in the drums and overall chordal movements.

Creativity (5/10)

Being creative in a pressurized environment, with the goal of beating others to pole position in the compo is hardly something which conjures the inspirational side of me, so I guess that would also apply to Jojo here too. Again, considering all of the above, it's not too bad. Plenty of room for improvements though.

Enjoyment (4/10)

Due to the melodic issues described earlier, I don't think I would willingly replay this module more than the necessary times to review the module. If the melody was toned down, used a different instrument and the underlying bass and chords were developed a little further then this piece would be much much better - at least in my opinion.

Posted Wed 2nd Jan 2008

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Castle Courtyard - castle_courtyard.s3m	Review Score: 7/10

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.

Posted Thu 20th Dec 2007

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Solar Day - pip-solarday.it	Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (7/10)

It's complicated, sure. The melodies are well arranged, the accompaniment is trendy and balanced. The only thing that jabs in my ear is the electric guitar sample which is explained later. Overall, sounds good.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

Let's start with a couple of critical points. The electric guitar, although obviously meant for this sort of music - the bland backing instruments make the electric guitar's distorting wah sound overly sharp. The other instruments are fine with each other although they sound very "soft", and as if they are from a cheap MIDI wavetable soundcard from circa 1995.

The drum work fits well with the piece and I have nothing more to add about those - however the tracking elements in this module are fairly straight forward with pretty much everything flat and simple. The module relies almost entirely on the samples as-is, there is very little in the way of manipulative commands or anything to push the module format in an impressive way whatsoever, still, it has to be said that if the song works then this isn't really necessary. This song *almost* works for me, but the clincher is the lead melody which really grates after several listens (especially the number needed to write this review :)).

Development (7/10)

The arrangement and complex melodies as well as the inclusion of some good bridges between parts help drive this tune along. But the lead melody is uncomfortable between 00:10 to 00:30 and then again between 1:30 and 1:40, which is down to the point I explained earlier.

Creativity (6/10)

Pip (the artist) is certainly pushing further into other genres and styles with his music, so comparatively there is certainly some creative development here. But as a piece of music alone this particular track doesn't really bring anything new to the genre as there are similar generically sounding tracks out there.

Enjoyment (7/10)

Certainly re-playable, although I would have to have it in a fairly large play list so that it didn't come up too often. The track isn't particularly diverse in it's melody and therefore repetitiveness can strike after just a couple of listens.

Posted Thu 11th Oct 2007

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Long, long ago... - longlongagov2.xm	Review Score: 6/10

Overall Impression (6/10)

I find this piece basic and lacking in areas such as percussion and melodic development, however it isn't all bad, especially for a fledgling artist with this style. I wasn't impressed, though, because this piece hardly does anything magical that a tracker can actually do, so it doesn't push anything out there to go "wow" about. Instead, I'd say this piece is about average for someone new to this genre.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (5/10)

The tonal arrangements are very simplistic, as are the tracking techniques used, very little in terms of use of tracker realtime manipulation. It is possible to make arppegios in the tracker which could have spiced up some of the texture by adding some depth with arp-chords.

As for the melodic elements, the melodies are often crisscrossed which sometimes make them hard to follow. Mainly because they are all at the same set volume, yet it still seems to work okay but not as well as it could have had there been some dynamics in there.

Also, to avoid the rather static effect I observed, use of some tempo adjustments (F04 F06 alternating) and note cutoffs to make the melody a little more jumpy would have gone some way to improving things.

Development (6/10)

The melody in the beginning is quite loud and sounds rather unrefined having used a very simple chip-style waveforms (By the way, this sounds more like something from an Atari 2600/800XL than say, a Commodore 64 SID-chip, chip sounds non the less but still...).

The piece fills out a little towards the middle of the track filling up with a second melody overlapping the main melody which sounds nice but because of the linearity of the note volumes, it's often getting a little confusing and monotonous if I may say so. The bass line does not change pitch throughout, so this emphasises some of the monotony, again, room for improvement here.

The percussion is very basic, and isn't at all interesting... Too bad really - thowing in a more complex pattern could have spiced it up a bit.

Creativity (6/10)

I'd say the creativity on this piece is founded on the basis that this is potentially an early introduction to chip style music for this artist. There is plenty of room for improvement although I personally would concentrate on a new piece altogether while maybe taking these points onboard. For an early example, this isn't too bad but for an experienced tracker this is a very very basic creation indeed.

Enjoyment (6/10)

Personally, I would probably put this one aside in favour of more advanced pieces. It's not that it's poor, it's just very basic for my taste and after a couple of plays it will begin to grate on the nerves.

Posted Tue 25th Sep 2007

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Spuds - pip-spuds.it	Review Score: 5/10

Overall Impression (7/10)

If you read through the following sections you will probably pick up on the feeling I was left a little underwhelmed by this module. Although it's not bad, Pip has set a high bar with previous modules already and this one seems somewhat poor in comparison. On it's own it's fine if you don't mind the lack of melodic development, as chugging chords doesn't really do it for me.

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Reviving Breeze - neonz-reviveb.it	Review Score: 8/10

Overall Impression (9/10)

Chippy video game music is what comes to mind when I listen to this, there are some similarities in the melody to some Sonic and/or Lemmings tunes. Overall, composed well and executed smoothly with plenty of progression, although a little on the thin side texture-wise.

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (9/10)

Technically speaking, this module is composed with an obvious flare for tracker effects. Constructed well and broken up between interludes and small bridges the entire composition flows nicely. The drumming is great, plenty of variation and shows of some technical prowess with the cool breaks :)

Development (7/10)

Your melody here has plenty of progression and sounds fun and is a little catchy, and to me it certainly leans towards the sound common in some retro video games (it sounds a little, only a little, like bits of the Lemmings game tracks).

The chord progression is just a little bit on the monotonous side for my taste. It's occasionally flipped to another chord for a brief phrase but the majority of the tune sits on the one root chord that the tune starts off with. Even if it isn't playing - it's implied (sections 2:30 - 2:47).

The ending is probably the most disappointing part if I were to pick one. Neon's used a technique that I also occasionally use in my modules (I know I shouldn't). The problem is that it's too sudden, unexpected and a bit half-hearted, still it's not that detrimental to the overall piece.

The melody is pretty complex and drives the tune well, with sufficient breaks to allow a bit of a breather. The only thing I found particularly problematic was the dynamic prominence over the rest of the accompaniment, only a tad though and probably because of the high pitch nature of the melody.

Creativity (7/10)

There are, I'm guessing, inspirations behind this piece stemming from video game music which is exploited well. I wouldn't say it's that creative in terms of originality - most of what's here is nothing new and it's been heard before, but from the artist's point of view the creativity of this track comes from the lush use of drum percussion and melodic development.

Enjoyment (7/10)

I personally played this about 12 times while writing this review, and it certainly didn't get irritating or repetitive in a negative sense, although I suspect anyone overdoing it may find it a little monotonous.

Posted Wed 8th Aug 2007

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Conquest of Farakhan - gh-cof.xm	Review Score: 9/10

Overall Impression (9/10)

Intense atmospheric and severely epic. When I first heard this I was really quite unsure whether it was tracked at all, as it was provided to me as an mp3 several years ago. Overall, I'd say this is one of the better orchestral pieces out there in tracker format.

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Wish Denied - pip-wishdenied.it	Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (8/10)

Grind on :) This piece rushes in with a gruesome guitar riff complemented throughout the piece with transitions and contrasting sections. Fast, slow and paced. Overall, it works, which is interesting because tracked metal is and has been done a lot before but the actually good pieces are rare to come by. This is one of the fairer pieces out there.

m0d's Reviews

m0d's Review Catalogue

floating on toilet - 80616-floating.xm

Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (8/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (9/10)

Development (7/10)

Creativity (8/10)

Enjoyment (5/10)

Photographic Memory - photographicmemory.xm

Review Score: 4/10

Overall Impression (4/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (4/10)

Development (6/10)

Creativity (4/10)

Enjoyment (4/10)

Happy Trance - sm-happytrance.it

Review Score: 5/10

Overall Impression (6/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

Development (4/10)

Creativity (5/10)

Enjoyment (4/10)

Castle Courtyard - castle_courtyard.s3m

Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (7/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (6/10)

Development (7/10)

Creativity (6/10)

Enjoyment (7/10)

Solar Day - pip-solarday.it

Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (7/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (7/10)

Development (7/10)

Creativity (6/10)

Enjoyment (7/10)

Long, long ago... - longlongagov2.xm

Review Score: 6/10

Overall Impression (6/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (5/10)

Development (6/10)

Creativity (6/10)

Enjoyment (6/10)

Spuds - pip-spuds.it

Review Score: 5/10

Overall Impression (7/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (6/10)

Development (5/10)

Creativity (4/10)

Enjoyment (5/10)

Reviving Breeze - neonz-reviveb.it

Review Score: 8/10

Overall Impression (9/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (9/10)

Development (7/10)

Creativity (7/10)

Enjoyment (7/10)

Conquest of Farakhan - gh-cof.xm

Review Score: 9/10

Overall Impression (9/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (8/10)

Development (8/10)

Creativity (10/10)

Enjoyment (10/10)

Wish Denied - pip-wishdenied.it

Review Score: 7/10

Overall Impression (8/10)

Technique, Arrangement, Composition (8/10)

Development (7/10)

Creativity (6/10)

Enjoyment (8/10)