About the review

Title: Story Scene
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Artist: TwiTerror
Genre: Soundtrack/Game: Soundtrack
Reviewed by: Warrior Bob on August 26, 2007 (All reviews by Warrior Bob)

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1Overall Description
A lot of TwiTerror's tracks are pretty clearly meant to be the background music to a roleplaying video game. This one is too, but it's more like a movie score - no synthesizers that I could tell, and a full compliment of traditional orchestral instruments that are mixed very well in my opinion. Clocking in at 1:44, this piece evokes a sense of hearing 'about' a story rather than seeing it directly. For example, in the opening scenes of the theater, when you are first meeting the characters and the setting, and a narrator is laying the groundwork for the presentation to come. The first 30 seconds are major-key, introductory. Right at 0:31, it turns darker, and eventually resolves over the course of the song to a more pleasant, positive feeling, eventually reintroducing the wood block, a major player in the intro, as a prominent instrument right at 1:20, lending the listener an impression of success - our hero triumphant? Regardless of whether I've guessed the intentions, this piece is very well produced and is a pleasure to listen to. I am not very knowledgeable about production, but TwiTerror is clearly doing something right and he's produced a song that I think stands very well in this community.
 
2Creativity Description
This section is always difficult to fill out for me, so I'm going to say what I said last time I reviewed a TwiTerror song - this song is as creative as it needs to be. It isn't rewriting music theory, it isn't pushing the limits of the art, it's music that is intended to fit with something outside of the song itself, like a story or movie or game and does so beautifully. There are no repeated passages but the piece retains an identity throughout, and each section flows into the next cleanly except for that part at 0:30. 0:30 is where the evil is. It's not supposed to flow smoothly and consonantly. However, slowing the tempo down right before the low horns come in was a very nice move, it makes it that much more impactful when the next section comes in.
 
3Arrangement Description
I really covered everything I want to say here in the "Creativity" section. The one part that I wasn't sure about was the very last note in the song. The resolving note isn't there. This can be good and bad. As an orchestral piece backing another work, it may be that the scene wherein this piece is played ends there and flows into something else, at which point it makes sense. However, listening to it just as a recording, as I am, it makes the song seem unfinished. I'm going to mark this a 4 because of that being so distracting to me, but take that with some salt. It may not be ideal for a person downloading music here to listen to, but if indeed this irresolution is intentional as part of a larger work, then I would not advise TwiTerror to change it - it is better, in my opinion, to keep the work true to its intentions and get a lower score in one section of a review than to try and change it because some guy on the internet said so. I went back and forth on this but eventually felt it was in the best interest of people reading the review to score as I have.
 
4Sound Quality Description
Okay, seriously? This is a much richer, more natural, 'better' sound than 90% of music I hear from people I meet online. This appears to my (admittedly untrained) ears to be a combination of excellent source material, probably samples, and production skill on the artist's part to both mix the samples into a cohesive whole while avoiding pitfalls that might make a good recording sound amateurish.

I'm going to be nitpicky here because I have to in order to say anything helpful.

While this is is great production and really does evoke the 'concert hall' effect, it is still clear to me that this was not a recording of an orchestra, but was produced digitaly from good samples. Thing is, I can't tell you WHY I think so, only that I am sure of it. I think there is a bit much reverb, and I think the instruments sound 'too' clean to have been a live recording. Something about the trumpets long about 1:00 sounds wrong to me too, but I can't put my finger on it. It's like they're missing overtones or something.

Also, I'm pretty sure TwiTerror doesn't have an orchestra sitting around recording all these songs that he's giving away for free on the internet.

But seriously, the fact that I don't have the skill to tell you exactly why I don't think it's "real" should give you an idea of how good I think it sounds. I'm sure better trained ears will disagree with me, but I think this kind of clarity were standard in online communities. I really do like it and think the song sounds great.
 
Comments
Aug 27 2007 10:24 am
by TwiTerror
Ah! It seems that thanks to you this spacing issue has been resolved. Again, thanks for this very generous review, and I'm glad to see that you enjoyed it. The last note was a compositional choice, to engage the player and make them feel the need to resolve the situation. I'm very happy that you picked up on it, your attention to detail is remarkable. And of course, it is not a real orchestra. Thanks again!



Aug 26 2007 4:51 pm
by Warrior Bob
Okay so when I wrote this review I added a whole bunch of space between paragraphs but it looks like they've been parsed out, and so there's a huge block of text under "Sound Quality" with no clear stops in it. Sorry about that!