Thanks so much for your feedback 🙂
Agreed on the opening strings. For one I work on iPad and I just dont have access to good sampled orchestral libraries (one of my biggest pain points with iPad music right now), so I used what I had reinforced by one or two synthetic sounds. Physical modelled SWAM instruments intrigue me but I didn't want the expense or learning curve. The main issue I had though is that the strings were kinda phasey at the beginning. I think this was consequence of using an effect(s) with a free running LFO or two involved, and every render came out a little different (at one point I printed my mix, duplicated the mixdown track and phase inverted one... expecting silence but indeed there was a LOT surviving the phase cancellation, so something going on there for sure). I gave up trying to fix it lol. As for being muddy, totally fair opinion, that's just down to my choice of voicing and EQ I guess.
Yeah that middle section I do kinda agree on the pacing. I had struggled with what to do there tbh, I was just making it up as I went haha. So I opted to go for a slightly darker sound with a shift to the relative Phrygian mode for colour and just played around with tension and building as you highlighted.
The ending is totally abrupt and that's just what I felt like doing haha. So I'll happily accept it has a bit of a Marmite quality (i.e. love it or hate it, for the non-Brits haha). Again I was stuck/bored, and when I get stuck/bored (considering how much time I spend listening as the author lol) I'm prone to totally switching up and going somewhere totally new. I'm a big Mars Volta fan and that proggy weirdness often bleeds into my own music in one form or another haha. Sometimes it's seamless, sometimes I just say F it 😂
Thanks for your feedback and I'm glad you liked it 🙂