COMPLETE SYMPHONIC SUITE: U.S.G. ~A NEW BEGINNING~

I don't agree with the instrumentation and stylistic ideas you chose when composing for this soundtrack. I really think you need to get out your "orchestral" niche. You just added a drum set on somethings and it sounds a bit strange.

I will say though, some parts were indeed minimalist at times and that was pretty cool. I am a big fan of that music. When you had the Xylophone I was thinking of Reich's 18 Musician Piece.

I don't know on second listen, the soundtrack has an odd consistent sound to it, it will definitely establish a cool vibe in this game. However, I would really like to hear some non-orchestral "suites" from you.

I decided to give some more critique. Listening to your music is like you can't decide whether you are trying to compose some pretentious epic or if you are trying to actually make a simple looping piece that will fit the game well. It's like you almost want your music to be more important, but for a shooter game, you need to find the balance. One example of when you were dead on was in Grave Spirit. I remember thinking the assignment was good for you because it gave you the ability to be a little more cinematic, and since the whole soundtrack was by you it had a nice consistency. So kudos for being consistent in your soundtracks.

Now, listening to your pieces it's just like a cluster of ideas. You can never decide in the pieces what style you want, what sound you are going for, and where the pieces are going. Everything sounds unsure. You add a trap set with a string bass propelling a bass line and I am always a big fan of postmodern instrumentations but why did you choose this? If you wanted to give a more driving rock groove then why didn't you just ditch the string instruments and utilize a more rock rhythm section? This would have been stylistically appropriate and more exciting. That's not to say that string wouldn't carry a nice soaring melody in a rock context, but I'm not sure you want to have a string bass playing a high velocity rock bass line. Try the electric/synth bass. So instrumentation choices are obviously one of my major critiques.

In some pieces you went for contrasting sections, the drums dropped out and the timbre shifted to a more sustained higher-end section. Stuff like this is very cool, however, when you do it, it was never convincing. The chord progressions you chose also sound very nonfunctional, not even "surprise" chords that catch your ear... more like "these don't really make any sense on any level." It's cool to intentionally break rules to get desired effects, but you don't even seem to know what the rules are, so you are trying to break them the effect isn't "Oh now THAT is a cool little surprise!" it's more like... "What the hell is going on?" Remember the balance between expectation and surprise.

Overall, you need to find use of the great pallet of instruments offered to you. Think more about what you want your piece to be. You'd be surprised the effects you could obtain if you actually tried to do something different outside of the orchestral instrumentation. I was rather unimpressed with this soundtrack. But no doubt it's gonna be a smash hit because this game was pretty rad. Keep working. And if you ever want to talk "music" I'm down. I need to start learning how to do those high quality MP3s. Later.

Good mixes, these. I have used EW-QL before, and have noticed its bugginess. GPO is nice, but IIRC, they use the expression controller to handle all of the volume, and that's very annoying. Maybe they changed that.

I have to agree, this soundtrack seems to be all over the place. Bullet Hell has the best thing going for it, with a nice, driving patriotic melody. Chatting is good! However, it seems to suffer, in its second half, what many songs do; a bit of chaos, seemingly only for the sake of chaos. I'd be willing to submit that there are some musical devices in play here that I don't know about, but it just sounds pretty messy to me. But hey, you had the guts to try something, can't fault a man for that.

I listened to it and I didn't really want to say anything bad, but I guess I should say something. The point I want to make though is that I can't really see this soundtrack going well with USG. Well, the non-battle stuff sure. Chatting, Llefara, and War Room are pretty good.

But USG is a shooter and it's pretty intense. So the music needs to echo that and really get the player pumped, and none of these songs really DO that. I mean I really like Bullet Hell and can see it working all right for regular stage music, but there's nothing here that works for boss music, and Bullet Hell isn't as energetic as it could be, either.

A lot of the songs start with a building intro and I expect them to go somewhere but they never really get up to the level of energy I expect. I mean it feels cheap to say this, but for a game as intense as USG I expect heavier drums and a more techno feel.

As lame as it sounds, I just think your music is too sophisticated for a fast-paced reflex game like USG.

I think my response was a bit unfair since I never heard it in context. But you're definitely in a good spot, most of everything you write is pretty good with nice mixing and always makes the game come more alive (see Grave Spirit).