Heya, welcome to YC!
It's good to see another incidental music composer joining our ranks, so let me see if I can give you some useful feedback on this piece.
Your percussion is really nicely written, but the sounds of the actual drums sound horribly hollow, cheap, and artificial, and they just sort of mess up the authenticity of the rendering. With some clever audio editing, reverb, and EQ work, you can make the percussion track sound a bit more full, but as it is it's really problematic because it's noticeably worse-sounding than the rest of the mix.
Your strings are doing a nice formulaic action pattern, so there's not a whole lot worth saying about them besides the fact that they lack a certain individual presence, but that's more of an orchestration quibble than anything else and you needn't worry too much about it for now; you'll learn to use the orchestra more colourfully as you continue practising. The transition to the ethnic flute is really jarring though, and while the effect is nice in theory, it didn't really work well in practise (to my ears). This is largely because you had a nice pattern going and then you suddenly cut to the lower volume stuff with some louder stabs, which was nice, but then you just haphazardly threw in an unconvincing brass rip and suddenly you've jolted poor Mel Gibson from his action chase to a temple in Peru.
I think that the transition might work a bit better if you make the swell a LOT bigger (not necessarily longer-lasting, just louder and "larger") and then have a slight pause before the flute comes in. The pause will help smooth over the extremely abrupt and unexpected mood switch that you've got going on. The continuation with the percussion and the return of the strings is nice enough, but it's not until the piano comes in that my attention was really back on the music. The piano gives it a nice delicate touch and the fact that you slowly worked out the aggressive strings and percussion made for a MUCH more satisfying and convincing transition, so keep that in mind for future pieces.
I also found the ending to be a bit of a let-down, but it could be fixed easily enough by giving it some more presence: a little more finality.
Overall, this piece is a nice demonstration of the genre and you've managed to work in some variety in terms of mood; even if the actual transitions between sections didn't always work out too well. You're in the very important learning phase, so my suggestion to you is to keep writing and keep working on getting to know your software environment along with exploring new and more creative orchestration ideas. Don't be afraid to test your ensemble. They're digital, they don't mind.
Thanks for sharing and welcome again!
