[LAU] A belated christmas song

[Q]

Okay, I'll bite...

This is a very pleasant and enjoyable little piece. It reminds me a bit 
of something, but I can't work out what; I want to say early Camel or 
maybe Barclay James Harvest, without guitar, but I'm not sure that's it. 
Or perhaps Procol Harum without lyrics... never mind, it's good on its 
own merits.

I find the transition at 4 seconds in from Hammond to Tron strings and 
fretless a little jarring, less so the more I listen to it. Some of the 
later ones are fine, I think because there's a little more instrumental 
overlap.

The hi-hat I find incredibly distracting, it's way too far left for my 
tastes, it could do with being nearer 11 o' clock and possibly lower in 
level as well.

I think the fretless bass adds a nice touch.

The Hammond sound is nice. The drum sounds are nice ;-) and the playing 
is mostly pretty good -- there's an odd fill or two that doesn't quite 
work for me. Around 2.19, the hi-hat/ride fill seems a little awkward. 
The tom fill at 3.26 makes sense in light of the one a few seconds 
later, but it sounds a little incongruous to me, perhaps a little rushed.

I like the darker section around begins around 3.10, is nicely underway 
around 3.20 and especially nice around 3.35.

I couldn't help feeling that, in a few places towards the end where the 
main theme returns, it could do with a small triumphant solo, nothing 
too flashy, to build the climax that little bit higher -- perhaps a 
trumpet might fit the bill nicely. It sounds great as it is, but it 
would be the cherry on top of the icing on the Christmas cake ;-)

I detected a few pops and clicks in the Ogg file, e.g. at 42 seconds and 
2.30 (I heard others but they don't seem reproducible in either VLC or 
Amarok). You perhaps need to be a little more careful with the level of 
your original -- even if it doesn't clip, if it's very close to 0 dBfs 
the transcoding to another codec can go over. Both Audacity and Rezound 
show quite a few places where it clips.

Anyway, nice playing, I enjoyed it and thanks for sharing.

Q

Julien Claassen wrote:
> Hello all!
>    This should have been ready before, but alas I couldn't get up to it. :-)
>    The song is titled "Carlos' Night" and can be downloaded here;
> OGG version:
> http://juliencoder.de/nama/carlos_night.ogg
> MP3 version:
> http://juliencoder.de/nama/carlos_night.mp3
>    Instruments and software used: Of course Nama for recording and mastering, 
> LinuxSampler for the piano, hydrogen for the drums, beatrix for the organ and 
> my roland XP30 hardware synth for the mellotron string and choir and the bass.
>    Enjoy and have fun
>              Julien