Recent compositions for critique

[KrisH]

I'm throwing some stuff out here for critique. These are two separate compositions I've made withing the past few months which I think will be opening sequences for longer pieces. At least they seem to hang unfinished, to me. But I want them to sound better, polished, more complete andinteresting, so I'm asking for some positive criticism.

This first piece is "Newton on Ice". It's intended as a performance piece (one day) on my cobbled-together hardware and softsynth setup, so it uses no pre-programmed sequences, just an arpegiator, latches, manual blends, fades and patch changes. The recording is one take, with the exception of the lead which starts half-way through, which I ended up writing on several takes after the fact. It fades off at the end because I intend to seque it into a another section utilizing variations on the themes.




The second piece ("Wave Function") is more of an atmospheric composition, sequenced and recorded on Sonar using various softsynth patches. It uses slow riffs of pseudo-random melody layered over an evolving chord cycle and underlying bass line. Lots of movement and sweeps in the bass/sub-bass, so full-frequency headphones are a minimum. After a tonal shift in the last third, it ends with a segue that leads into a funk-flavored dance-like piece (which I have removed for this recording), which isn't quite finished. I'm not sure I'll retain it because it is so much opposite to the preceding section, and this clip may be able to stand on its own.




I'd welcome any suggestions for improvement, in the manner of composition, performance, recording. Thanks!