Hi guys, As part of a christmas promotion effort for 0 A.D., a game-in-development by Wildfire Games, I need to publish a new piece for the soundtrack on the game website within the next 24 hours or so. I've just finished a preliminary version for a battle track for the Roman Civilization, and I'm looking for some quick feedback, positive or negative, before we release the track. Please take a listen here: Roman Battle 1 (remake).mp3. Feel free to comment on anything. Is the sound quality okay? Are the melody lines clear and understandable? EDIT: Also, I really suck at mixing. Absolutely clueless. Does the track seem a bit low-volume to you compared to other music tracks, or is it just me? I tried using Hard Limiting on it, but I don't know how much I can do that before the sound distorts and stuff. Any ideas? [Edited by - Vaevictis_A on December 30, 2007 11:35:34 AM]

Vaevictis_A-

Here are my basic thoughts about this piece.

Melody: Pretty good. I can hum along and it is something that the average listener should be able to latch on to.

Harmony: While it isn't super complex, it gives enough variety to keep the listener engaged.

Mixing: I thought the mixing was pretty good. I could hear everything and didn't feel like something was way out of balance for the most part. I did notice a few times the horn line would drop out suddenly. I'd correct this if I were you, because it didn't sound like dynamic effect, just like the volume knob accidentally got pushed down.

Samples: This is where I think your piece is the weakest. For example, in both the strings and horn patches the samples don't sound as good as they could. The horn sample has a balloon effect on it, where it gives a certain kind of attack at the start of each note. Make this sound very fake. The same thing happens in the mid to low strings during one of the turn arounds (or fills). My advice is to see if your samples have any variance and then mess around with velocities. I don't know what sample packages you're using, but hopefully you have something with multi-layered samples.

I'd also let the fade out happen slower at the end. I'm not sure if you have a time constraint or not, but if possible allow the tails of the instruments to fade out a little longer. It sounds like it is clipped off now to a certain degree.

Overall this piece is pretty good and I think you've done a good job. One question though: why the sudden push to get this piece out there?

Yeah, I also agree. From 00:50 to 01:04, that instrument sounds kinda weak.

You should listen to music from studios like Immediate Music, Brand X, and X-Ray Dog.
They make all the great music in hollywood movie trailers. Powerful orchestra music.


http://www.immediatemusic.com/html/frameset_music.html
http://www.x-raydogmusic.com/catalog.htm
http://www.brandxmusic.net/library.php

I know this is a bit late, but wow, I really like it! :) If you're still altering it would be to make the chants more pronounced, they seem to be fighting against the other instruments. But nevertheless - a wonderful piece, I don't suppose there is the final release about is there?

Thanks.

No new release yet, no. We ended up putting this version on the game's webpage.

What I'm currently doing is putting together all the feedback I get in a document, and once I've completed all tracks for the soundtrack, I'll use that doc as the starting point for modifying each track into final form.

All the released tracks can be found at the 0 A.D. audio page: Here.