The Dink Network

Christiaan's Ultimate MIDI Oeuvre

February 15th, 2013
v1.00
Score : 9.4 exceptional
goblins.gif
There are a lot of great midi's in this collection. I will talk about both my favorite ones and my least favorite ones.

My favorite ones, in order of the track list:

1. Adventure Overture: Christiaan says that he got to have this played by a real orchestra at his school... I wouldn't have minded being there, because this is a very good piece. It's made up of multiple parts so it could be tricky to find the right kind of place to implement it into a DMOD. But as a standalone piece, it is very good and if placed properly I think it could still have a very beautiful effect in a DMOD.

2.Scenia Main Theme: This piece sounds simultaneously very peaceful, and yet at unrest. It's also very lengthy (4:32) so it's good for a big overworld, like Christiaan was planning to use it for. I'd love to hear it in it's rightful home someday (and in mp3 with better instruments? Awesome!). My only complaint about this one is that it's kind of slow so it could get boring if you had to listen to it for too long.

7. Puzzle: I really like the strange feeling of this piece. It starts out very eerie, but then gets taken over by many other strange feelings, in a good way. It's one of those tracks that makes you unsure how to feel about the situation or environment. I really like the part at (1:10). The ending is too obvious sounding, unless you are using it for a cutscene where it won't loop, but it's still a very good track.

12. Dramatic: Unfortunately, I don't recognize the piece he borrowed the harp motive from, but I can say that I like this track a lot. The beginning harp motive is played throughout the piece, but it's done in a way where you never get tired of it (such as varying the instrument that plays the motive and the feeling going along with the motive). For a DMOD, I could see this playing at a very important dungeon in the game, or a dramatic cutscene (like the name implies).

14. Sad 2: I think a better name for this piece would be "Hopeless." When listening to this piece, I am given the impression that something horrible has happened and everyone has lost what was left of their hope. The guitar is a little bit distracting for that purpose when it comes in, but overall this piece left an impression of hopelessness on me. It could easily be used to great effect in a DMOD where something catastrophic happens.

Honorable Mention: 23. Dream

And now, my least favorites:

19. Electronic: Now, I'm not a big fan of electronic music in general, but I know it can be really good. This was just too repetitive and minimalistic for my tastes, though. I don't think I would like it a lot even with higher quality instruments.

Any of the Metal tracks: I think the writing for these was okay. In fact, I really love the drum parts in them, and the panning effects can be really neat. But these tracks suffer from pretty extreme repetition, and worse, the nasty ear-torturing midi Overdrive/Distortion guitar sounds which backfires any good effect the panning could have brought. If I had to pick one of the metal ones that I liked best, it would probably be <21. Suffocate> because it's progressive enough that it's harder to notice the nasty guitar sound. Although even that piece could use some more articulation, I think (some short notes (staccato) in particular could have added a lot of effect to all these metal style pieces). If these were remade with real guitars with less repetition and more articulations, I think they could be really good. But as midis the way the are, I don't like them. There's also a twenty second long silence at the beginning of the <9. Metal Boss Theme 1> which could be bad if you are using it in a DMOD (Technically there is a bass hit at 0:15 but still...). If set on loop, it would be loud, then end, then twenty seconds of silence later it would be loud again. Very bad.

Bonus:

16. Emotion: This was neither one of my favorites nor least favorites, but I'll talk about it because the readme for the midis asks for an opinion on it. I like the way this piece starts out, and the main motif in general. I also like the sudden return to the emptier feeling of the beginning near the end of the song, which is executed very well. On the other hand, the instrumentation and tons of notes (and the return of the midi guitar) in the climactic part distracted me more than made me feel emotional. I think that an mp3 version of this with higher quality instruments, and slightly modified instrumentation/orchestration could be very awesome, though. My general feeling is that the piece has a lot of potential, but it hasn't all been tapped into.

Synopsis:

If I was rating this file as an average of my feelings on all midis together, I would probably give this pack an 8.8. However I think it's more fair to rate it as a general resource of midi files, and there are many very good ones in here. They are also often quite lengthy and most of these midis could work very well together if they were in the same DMOD. Because of all this, I think a 9.4 is a fair score.

Good job on making a very well-written and useful midi pack, Christiaan!
December 11th, 2014
v1.00
Score : 9.0 exceptional
spike.gif
This is a large music pack, with 28 unique midis, all of them quite good. Some really great. And don't give me any bullshit about 'the 374 midi pack having much more midis than this', because those are all just collected from the internet. You can find hundreds of thousands of midis in a few days, but not these midis, because they are hand-crafted by Christiaan for use in dmods.

Many of the midis are very atmospheric, and mysterious - there's somewhat less headbagning than in some of the other music packs. But don't worry, there's headbanging here too, such as the excellent, if dorkily named 'Metal Boss Theme 2'.

This is just a hunch, but I think many of these midis were intended to be used in Christiaan's Magnum Opus, the dmod 'Scenia: Shadows of the New Order'. It's the best midi pack on the Dink Network, thanks to the sheer amount of midis, their quality and also decent variance. It's not just guitar and hi-hat madness, or just atmospheric tracks, there's something for any dmod here.