Qiz's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Journey Home]

Beautiful piece. Like a previous reviewer, I immediately thought of Pachelbel's Cannon, but that isn't a bad thing. Countless people have used similar progressions, myself included. And you put some nice variations on it.

What I really like about this piece is the clear sense of direction. The piece begins with whole notes and gradually introduces harmonic and rhythmic layers. You have a catchy melody play shortly after a minute in. You create contrast around 1:50 by thinning out the texture, and that helps transition to the next section.

Speaking of which, my favorite aspect of this piece is the descending chromatic harmony starting around 2:03. Lots of nice borrowed chords there. I think a gentle cymbal roll would have helped the transition into 2:15. I didn't like the leading tone in the bass at 2:27 because it clashed with the underlying harmony. The ending felt abrupt. Did you consider holding out those last notes longer?

What I see is that you've got a great instinct and sense of musical flow. Sure, there are a few little things that could be tightened up, but you've done very well with a limited tool set. I would love to hear you make music with the something like the samples in Native Instruments Komplete 9.

Beautiful piece. I imagine that your wife is proud.

FateModified responds:

Thanks for your detailed review. My favorite part is also the descending chromatic harmony.

My wife got me a book on guitars five years ago for my birthday. It was a very tender moment for me because she had been fighting metastatic melanoma for several months at that time, and I was very grateful for the little moments we could share at that time when it could almost feel like she was not having to fight cancer, like brief moments where life seemed normal again. After nearly two years of fighting, she died. It's been four years. I opened that book the morning I made this song about a month ago or so. I found a chord progression in the book, and I put it in GarageBand. I didn't stop on the song until about 1:00 in the morning. I wanted to dedicate it to her memory, because it was her being in my life that led to me making this song. I don't pretend to believe she is able to see me or hear the song, but it feels good to know that I was finally able to make a song for her. She always wanted me to make her a song on my guitar, but I never was too good composing on the guitar. Now I'm finding that it is really easy for me to compose using a DAW, and I'm really enjoying the process.

Anyway, I'm sorry for going on about my personal life, but I do really appreciate your thorough review. It's good to know what other people hear in my songs. My music development (and game dev) is still in the very early stage and needs as much direction as it can get!

Oh, and I will look into more information on Native Instruments Komplete 9. Thanks for suggesting it. I hadn't heard of it yet.