Christmas Song. Please rate: Is it worth a "buy"/"listen"/"delete from your harddisc?

[Stoertebeker]

Hi guys, this is a little piece I came up with during the christmas holidays. I'd be glad for some comments on its

- melodic quality
- arrangement and
- production.

The guitar track outlines the basic melodies, but it will eventually be replaced by a proper vocal track. (Preferably a dramatic, diva like voice). So imagine this one sung by someone like Whitney or Mariah and tell me what you think of it.

Here's the download link (MP3, 128kbit/s, 3.5 MB):

ChristmasSong

[DavidK]

Its very nice.

I dont get "Christmas" out of it. Nothing in it speaks of "Christmas" to me. It sounds like smooth jazz, new agey stuff. Of course plenty could and will change with vox, but its basically in a minor key and doesnt have a hook like most christmas songs do. It also sounds distorted? I cant really tell because I have been recording all day so my ears are shot and my monitors are getting pretty old.

The tune itself is very good. If it doesnt work as a Xmas song, recycle it for some other purpose.

[austinm08]

Wow.. I think it's nice.

I'd like to hear it with vocals

[Stoertebeker]

Sorry my bandwith has been exceeded, so here's a working mirror of the file:

Ballad(3 MB)

By the way is there someone out there who wants to lend his voice to this piece?

[myhatbroke]

this is nice...is the piano real? Everything is pretty good IMO. I'm composing something similar to this and I plan on singing. Kinda have this James LaBrie style in them or maybe like Niklas Isfeldt. You should do the same and with a female with the style you mentioned would make a perfect duet.

[cello_pudding]

i don't think anything is real in this. correct? the bass maybe?


quantize some of the piano parts. i know there are triplets in the song, but some things need a bit of shifting.

is does seem a bit distorted near the end. maybe the compressor you have on the bass is doing it. it sounds like a plugin compressor working a bit too hard. maybe a limiter?

i too didn't get where the christmas came from, but that doesn't mean it can't be sold as something else. vocals would probably sell it, or kill it.

[Stoertebeker]

Well, all I faked all I could - even the bass guitar is sampled. The only thing I wasn't able to fake were the vocals so I didn't even bother to put them in.

The "christmas" in the title basically just refers to the date of the tune's creation, not to its mood or something.

Thanks for pointing me to the compression artifacts, I will try to ged rid of that "pumping".

[Nick98338]

There's a bit of a timing issue. It starts with the tambourine. It's just a little bit late. As the song goes on, other things start to seem off. The drums mostly. But, what I noticed the most is the positioning of parts. It's not bad. It's just not what I was expecting, just different than I'm used to. The lead piano is a bit off to one side. I'd have expected that to be middle. There are drum all over the place. I'd have expected them to be less spread out. The strings are all way over on one side. I would have expected to be surrounded by strings from everywhere.