Re: [LAU] A belated christmas song

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: