The In Progress Project

Oh man... it's 3:00 in the morning... trying to stay awake because I want to hear your stuff! 

My first impression is that I like it a lot, and would love to hear it with 'real' instrumentation.  There's a nifty piano piece in 'Time' that I am particularly enjoying right now.  I think the fact that this was done with midi is making me think of all my favorite video games.

I think I'd better get back to you tomorrow.  I'm listening to pieces of it, but I'm just too sleepy, and I need to wake up early, too.  So, anyway, you'll be getting more feedback soon!

Finally got a chance to listen again!  

'Shallow Water Blackout' was a little too sparse for me until the drums came in, but after that I thought it had the makings of something interesting.  I think vocals would help out here.  This song as it is was VERY reminiscent of music from Final Fantasy 9.

'The Nameless' had a good creepy vibe to it.  It makes me think of being chased.

'Midi Death Metal' was one of the more dynamic ones, which I like, but in a way it was also very techno which I'm not so crazy about. 

'Countenance' is sweet and pretty, a good relief after the previous song's grating sounds.  I liked the piano part toward the end.

'Astral Projection' made me think of Legend of Zelda right away.  The midi sounds were a little too harsh in this one for me, but I thought the composition itself was good.  I'd like to hear it in another format, and with some vocals (especially the part where it changes at around 2:00).

'Cold Technology' almost feels like a continuation of 'Astral Projection', although it has the feel of an interlude.

'Ataraxy' - was this supposed to be an Atari reference by the way? ;)  I thought the songwriting in this one was some of the best in this group of songs.  The organ sound is interesting, and I hope you'd keep something like that if you made an audio recording of it.

'Epeolatry' again feels like it belongs with 'Astral Projection'.  Perhaps the 2nd half of an epic? :)  After the song changes this one reminds me of Magus' theme from Chrono Trigger.

'Chase 24'  had some very rapid bass parts that were a little too much for me in midi, although I'm not sure whether I'd like them if they were played on a real bass.  Overall this one is the one I like least of the bunch.

On the whole, I'd say you have some good stuff here, at least enough to build on.  A few of these would piece together well, especially since a lot of them are 2:00 or less in length, so if you're looking to make prog music you could probably record several of these as movements of one song.  I think it's too early to really say how they would come out though, because even for midi compositions there aren't many layers in these yet.  I think they're a good early effort, and the next step is to mature the tunes.

You may not have made anything that sounds like Mario music, but goodness am I hearing tons of other video-game-esque things in here, most of them being FF-like or Chrono Trigger-like.  Have you thought of writing music for video games?  You've already got some basic building blocks... of course I have no idea how you'd get a job like that, or how much it pays!

Aaah yes, blocks are no fun.  Oh and when I said 'group of songs' I didn't mean group as in band, I was just talking about the collection of songs themselves that you had so far.  I did realize this was a one-man project. 

I do hope you can get some audio recordings of these soon, but I'm also interested to hear the new stuff you're coming up with.  I can definitely hear your Nobuo Uematsu influence, but you haven't copied his music either, so kudos to you!