About the review

Title: The Comeback
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Artist: PPH
Genre: Soundtrack/Game: Soundtrack
Reviewed by: TwiTerror on August 05, 2007 (All reviews by TwiTerror)

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1Overall Description
This piece is a decent attempt at a Hans Zimmer style orchestration (think gladiator). The melodies are moving and heroic, the percussion is loud and driving, and the strings are flowing.

This is well worth your listen if you're looking for a remarkable example of orchestral tracking. However, the piece is riddled with little flaws that add up. For example, I never thought I'd be expecting more reverb in a piece of music, but many of the instruments don't sit well in the mix (or sit right on top of the mix, see Arrangement and Sound Quality).

Overall, this is a fairly decent piece, and worth your download. This is deserving of a 4/5, if not for the summation of tiny problems that would really increase the quality of this piece.
 
2Arrangement Description
To the naked ear this is a truly amazing piece of writing. There are a few flaws which drastically cut down on the realism of the piece, however. The horns, and choirs, mainly, suffer from some sort of incredible breath capacity. There are very few audible pauses in melodic lines (and in the secondary layer, as well) where the breath controlled instruments pause for air. A few stops would boost the realism of the arrangement remarkably.

Besides the nit-picky things, there are some very appreciable arrangement choices. For example, the cellos that come in at 3:39 at a much needed blaze of tension that rolls well into the next section. There is a lot of movement throughout the piece, mostly due to the Zimmer-style percussion that infiltrates the piece throughout.

The arrangement can almost be summed up as follows:
Moving heart-felt sections are characterized by brass solos and flowing chords, whereas any dramatic, heroic section is characterized by loud invasive percussion (not a bad thing).

Overall, good arrangement, but there are some orchestration-related flaws which leave me in a rut.
 
3Sound Quality Description
The realism in this piece is commendable, but there are many improvements that could be made.

Percussion at :43 sits on top of the mix, and could use a touch of reverb. There are other examples, but in an orchestral setting, a lot of the sound is wet reverb.

The trumpets at 1:40 that come in seem to cut off in nature, a little reverb would be beneficial here.

The snares and remaining percussion, although lacking some reverb, work very well, as well as the rest of the orchestra. The heavy percussion blends brilliantly with the rest of the piece.

There are many places where the samples could match what they are written to do. In places you'll notice the strings sound more staccato thanks to the samples, but the horns never seem to receive this kind of treatment.
 
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