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[crashgates]

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[AlanHall]

Hi Tom,
I really like it, esp the first half. It felt well balanced and 'real'.
The marcato strings in the second half started to grate on me a bit, after you dropped other articulations for the strings. Listening to the Zimmer, I hear cellos making those marcato pulses while the violins are legato 'up top'. In my opinion, his arrangement allows the low strings to "push" the energy level while the high strings are much less "in your face". The higher strings near the end of your track take the string line out of the 'beefy', 'determined' feel and into 'scratchy' and ever-so-slightly irritating. That's how I heard it, anyway. My thought is a different articulation or a change in the treatment of the high strings at the end would prevent them from drawing too much attention. JM2C

[Telefunkin]

Hi Tom,
It never ceases to amaze me how we all hear things differently, so these are just my thoughts to keep or sweep.

The starting atmosphere is nice and creepy and the low synth sound over the strings certainly puts you in hybrid territory. That low pattern is the only sense of rhythm through that first section, but the odd pings of high synth and strings seem to unsettle that for me. Are they a bit random? Its good when the synth motif comes in and gradually all the various elements add to that to give it progression. At about 1:39 I'm cravings something to happen, and the busy high strings are getting just a bit too busy for me. The low end is bolstered and the big brass and timps start to round things out nicely, however its at this point I feel that its drift into stopping rather than having a composed ending. All the parts have previously danced around each other, and now's your chance to make them work together to consolidate your motif, really strengthen the sense of completion and pay-off, and to satisfy the listeners that you've completed the journey, rather than nearly got there but took a wrong turn . Its sounding good though.

Listening to the refs I get a sense that there are a few more hybrid elements going on, and that the fast pulses and excitement levels really build, giving that unease and expectation that something is going to happen. I don't know whether it would be appropriate in your composition to include such fast pulsing synths but its something else to consider to help get you closer to those refs. Best of luck.

[Telefunkin]

I'd say your most recent version is a lot better Tom. On listening I had just a couple of thoughts. There are no edit points (e.g you could pause the sequence at the 1m mark to take a breath for a bar or even 2 bars with just the pulse). Also, at the end it gets big in the last round of the 4-chord sequence then barely resolves to the mild last note. Perhaps you intended that 'hang' to keep the suspense, but I got a sense of incompleteness, craving a final big hit or a dead stop into that mild tail (even if they are more typical endings). However, IMHO its a nice piece of work and I hope you do well with it.

[crashgates]

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[Telefunkin]

Yeah, you got there, so well done!
Does this prove that peer review process can work, and that you don't have to fix the Taxi submission process instead? J/K