| # |
Name (Length)
Size |
Download Links |
Comments |
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 |
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| 104 |
Renewal (8:27)
22K Zipped (176K Unzipped) |
 |
Not sure where the
inspiration for this came from. The title
suggests that it's just another generic
uptempo piece, but one that fails to
score despite a wealth of technical
detail and fiddly bits. One of the
differences between the two sound cards
is that the SB-Live has substantial
differences in some of it's patch
variations, inlcuding the drums. This
also suffers somewhat from other
differences. For a change, the bass piano
is not the major enemy. Needs substantial
work to get a satisfactory SB-Live mix. |
| 105 |
 Broken Glass I (11:24)
25K Zipped (270K Unzipped!) |
|
This was inspired by "Fractured
Mirror" by Ace Frehley, but it's
more of a heavy-metal piece than Ace's
song (even though that's what he's noted
for!). If the electric guitar patches on
the SB-Live were better up to the job,
this would sound better. As things stand,
it needs major work, not least because
the piece compensates for delays in
certain patches becoming ausible in the
Awe-32 - delays that don't exist in the
SB-Live. The slow parts work fairly well.
This has a lot of nice bits, but the
total never quite comes together. |
| 106 |
  Valhalla's Gates (5:28)
122K |
|
After several attempts, I
finally cracked the heavy-metal sound for
the Awe-32, by using a number of
instruments that aren't guitars to fake
guitar leads. At the same time, this has
a fairly good hook that gets under your
skin after a while and won't let go. The
SB-Live betrays the secrets of the piece
because of it's more realistic sounds.
The mix is also all wrong, with the bass
submerged too much - it's supposed to
have a thumping beat that slowly
escelates in tempo and thrust. |
| 107 |
Subtle Thunder (8:57)
29K Zipped (597K Unzipped!!) |
|
Despite the title, which is
suggestive of heavy metal, this is more
of a typical rock tune. The "Subtle"
part of the name comes from a lot of work
done with pitch bends and volume
variations in individual instrument
tracks - which is why the file is so
large. At the same time, it uses just
about every technique I learned working
on the recent attempts at a heavy metal
number. Two of my favorite tricks with
the Awe-32 were piano bass and using
unnaturally deep french horns to pad the
sound. The opening of this tune falls
prey to the second of these, where the
french horns sound more like french horns.
The peculiarities of some of the other
patches in the SB-Live also give this a
somewhat weird sound. I'm not sure this
can be salvaged, and even if I can, it
will sound completely different from the
Awe-32 version. That said, there's enough
good stuff in here to make it worth the
attempt - though this will be one of the
mroe difficult conversions. This was in
my favorites list for quite a while. |
| 108 |
Epiphany Part 1 (2:31)
6K Zipped (27K Unzipped) |
|
This is a very classical
piece compsed for a friend's web site. It
has lots of string textures, the first
time I had gotten into these
substantially. It slowly segues into a
blend of classical music and pop.
Stylistically, this owes a lot to a
version of "Layla" from "4
seasons of Eric Clapton", which
mixes a symphony orchestra with the
traditional rock elements. This will need
some remixing to stand up on the SB-Live,
but the strings are amongst the best
patches in the default sound bank for
that sound card, so it should be stunning
when done. |
| 109 |
Epiphany Part 2 (1:28)
5K Zipped (24K Unzipped) |
|
A second movement to the
Epiphany piece. Most of the comments
above continue to stand for this piece as
well. |
| 110 |
Epiphany Part 3 (7:10)
15K Zipped (96K Unzipped) |
|
And a big third movement,
which blends elements of the first two
with new bits. All comments for the first
two continue to hold. This was always
envisaged to be a piece in four
movements, but I couldn't get the 3rd and
4th to seperate cleanly. However, the
melody and textures are a little more
apparant here when it is played with the
SB-Live. |
| 111 |
Epiphany (Complete)
(11:17) 143K |
|
At the same time as I was
working on the seperate movements, I
wanted to be able to combine them into
the one epic. This required a few
compromises and the blended tune sounds
just a little different from the
individual pieces as a result. All
comments regarding the SB-Live vs the Sb-16
hold true here. |
| 112 |
No Chance (6:47)
57K |
|
This was a prog-rock
experiment in the same basic piece played
with different rythms, and with different
submelodies and subtexts then added to
suit the rest of it. There are at least 5
such variations! I'm not sure now where
the name came from. Suffers badly from
the "Bass Piano" problem.
Should sound better with a bit of a remix.
Still has a decent hook, but it's hard to
find it on the SB-Live. |
