Sounds like a bar gig. Easily understood the lyrics, but it loses coherence as he loses time with your playing. Good for a demo, shows talent in both of you. I'd actually love to see the stems from this or remix it. Bluesy vibe in a classic styled track.
Only places it suffers is vocal FX, compression, and mixing the electric in with the acoustic. Sounds like a gig in a really small venue.
thanks, yeah not bad for a 17 year old kid... I'm 28 now, haha.
Interesting. Sounds like a hybrid between hip-hop and some older techno I listened to. I will say that I can't really pick out an overarching melody or rhythmic center, so it's hard to give a fair judgement. The volume fluctuates in and out a lot in this piece, and I hear a lot of almost atonal work in there.
Your sound design is interesting, but your transitions are awkward and somewhat lacking. Drums are very dry and canned sounding. They seem to sit on top of the track rather than drive it. There's a lot of repetition and very little variation in individual phrases. I liked the chords between 4:09 and 4:12 or so.
Because the track is so long and repetitive, it's very hard to keep my attention. Keep in mind that as you hear more and more of your own work, your psychology will make it harder and harder to pick out the flaws in that work. Coming back to it months down the road, however, will usually knock the shine off of it. So remember that as you work on a piece day and night to rush it out of the oven. I can hear that you worked to get a cohesive sound, but I can also hear that psychology doing its work.
I would suggest taming the portamento on that bass just a little bit. Making the rises a bit more shallow and the pitch bend time a little shorter/longer, depending. A uniform bend like that gets old on the ears quickly. That's the main problem with this song, a lot of repetition with very few fills and transitions. Every 4th, 8th, and/or 16th bar is a good opportunity to change up what you're doing.
Also, could really use some swooshy transitions, cymbals, etc. Anything to keep interest! You've got a lot of material here but a lot of the same sound palette!
Not bad. Decent progression. Kinda sounds like an old game I used to play on the Super Nintendo.
Also, to get your music in GD, you must be approved by RobTop. That means contacting him. We have no control over it other than whether you're scouted or not. You must also only post your own work. I highly doubt you'll get through to him though. Lots have tried. Only the popular guys get let in now. Sad. Wouldn't be this way if people didn't steal for GD!
The distortion all over this piece really took me out of what was a decently written, if not cliche piece. Watch that clipping. It sounds like the volume has just been ramped up to the point it's ready to red line and distort, and then we just compressed the CRAP out of it. It boggles the mind since the tack quietens down eventually -- but then ramps right back up. Fix that distorting and you'll go from a 3 out of 10 in my eyes to a strong 6.5. It pains me to have to give such a low score for a track with GOOD transitions and okay structuring, but distorted artefacts like this hurt my soul!
So sorry! This is my first attempt of glitch-sounds!
Could have been an absolute banger of a mood piece. Ended up in minimalistic hell. I say this because it took quite some time to develop meaningful direction, harmony, etc, and it didn't stick around long enough to justify that. Also, some reverb abuse made resonances that stuck out in the mix. TaintedLogic's review is mostly adequate concerning the entry as a competition piece. As videogame background, it works.
Also was in the wrong genre. Corrected that.
Wooooooooooooooooooo, hey friend!
I like this little track here, but the mixing is WAAAAAY off, and the progression could use a bit of fleshing out. Kick is overwhelmingly loud. Snare is overwhelmingly quiet. Hats barely stick out at all. The main body of the track, the guitar, is buried in the mix.
Solution: compress your drum tracks. Mix them cleanly and EQ them first, ofc. Compress your guitars. Work out the volume levels suitably, so no one thing sticks out too terribly. Compress the track as a whole again (but just hard enough to achieve suitable volume, not to destroy the dynamic range).
As incomplete as this is and off as the mixing is, it's listenable overall, but critically falls flat.
Before you read this wall of text, I'm gonna warn you. I didn't enjoy the track much if at all. I didn't find it very musical or fulfilling, and this review will tell you all the reasons why.
Before you balk at the score, please try not to be discouraged or defensive. I'm not trying to rip you a new one, tell you you don't know music, or pretend it should be easy to make 5 star music on the fly. I AM trying to share a little of what I know to help keep you from making the same universal mistakes all of us do at some point or another, so that you don't alienate your audience for the sake of blindly plying your craft.
I say none of this with any malice, cruel intent, or upturned-nose bs, but I have a feeling this will get VERY critical. If you're okay with that, read on. If not, well, you're in the wrong place. Try SoundCloud or YT. They'll just ignore or harass you there, though.
Now, onto my review.
Not necessarily a pain to listen to, but it shows that this is a backing track. By itself, it's hardly interesting at all. The instrumentation also crashes so wildly, without any FX to blend it more into the same sonic space. I'm also curious whether you used stock loops at some points or simply don't have any transitions going for you so as to make it sound that way.
I really don't like that octaved choir or the church bells. The lower octave on that choir needs to go. It makes what would otherwise be pretty, sound slapped together. Choirs also usually form chords. Raw unison notes is sort of unpleasant. Almost all of your instruments are not forming chords. This is fine for bass and stabs, but should every instrument really be a single note? No! You need pads!
Also, the church bells could use a lot more attention to blend in. As an instrument, they already poke out in the sonic space just as something that would never naturally be right next to a choir and a bass guitar -- or a synth trumpet and synth stab. FX, FX, FX! Reverb, delay, other modulations like EQ! Play with them. Don't just lay on what sounds like a preset!
Choir, this instrument just clashes against that synth stab, even though they're following the same progression. The choir is dry and sticky in the mix at the same time. Play with reverb. Since you're using it as a pad, it should ideally be chorded.
Percussion was dry and really repetitive. Writing was fine. No transitions. Seemingly no crash cymbals. No risers either. Risers aren't essential but they give a sense of progression in a track that's written this way.
Bells were also played in a way that didn't suit them -- i.e. fast. Those bells ring out, and playing church bells super fast like that just stands out as purely tacky. Even chimes are not played this way. Marimba and other mallet instruments are. Know your instruments before you try to use them.
Bass is dry and sticks out of the rest of the mix. Ends up sounding careless and like you dragged it out in your DAW just because. It's also very high up there on the bass. You could actually probably play this line on a guitar. That robs your whole song of the bass R&B and Hip Hop don't just ask but DEMAND.
That brass thing is gratingly bland and does nothing for the melodic progression of your phrases. It just sort of lays there and pretends to be adding something of value to the track. Yes, it may be completing the i (1) chord sometimes, but it's way too low to be a trumpet and way to blah to be a decent bone. I know brass VSTs are hard to find in decent quality, BUT if you can't find a good quality synth and the genre doesn't demand it, just don't use it! That line would have been 100% more satisfying if it were a simple melody an octave higher.
Your writing suffers for letting the fact this is a backing track get in the way of making truly great music to support it. Learn some theory. Listen to some R&B. Dissect the way people do things. When you try to do everything your own special way, you forget that there is so much shit you don't know.
Lygometry -- the study of what you don't know -- immerse yourself in it. This doesn't mean spending years kissing the feet of the great and wonderful. It means advancing your craft through eliminating the things you don't know. You can never know it all or do it all, but you can learn to do better. Based on your response to TL, I'd strongly suggest you pull your head out of your music producing butt long enough to see that you could be doing much better, potentially making much more money from your craft. If you allow yourself to think your work is above critique for ANY reason, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
But enough about that. Back to the song.
I just didn't like the chord progression or really anything about this piece. Felt forced, non-resolving, disingenuous, etc. The choir is the worst offender with a stepwise ascent into a fall, then another stepwise non-resolution. Music likes to flow the opposite way -- the last measure or fill falling into the next repeat!
Even the stabs seem to dislocate rather than accentuate the thematic direction of the song. It's just a lot of jumbled instruments that are spammed in the Hip Hop and R&B cult on top of one another, and it makes no sense!
Anyway, take my word with a grain of salt. Once upon a time I was standing exactly where you are with not a whisper of direction or even decent critique. Hope you glean something useful out of what I had to say, if nothing else. If you'd like another review some time, shoot me a PM!
As declared: This is an incomplete song.
My atylng is intentional.
It is clear that this competition as advertised isn't the same as I would expect.
Assessing your review, it seems likely that my deviation from your expectations, not the rules, has lead to the critical nature of your determination.
I can concede to a few of your thoughts, but I lack faith in your ability to understand pillars for any assessment based competition.
I am not disappointed in your review, it provided some helpful input. I simply sense some opinion over fact.
Really not liking the almost atonal, random piano and strings going on here. The progression feels neither here nor there. HOWEVER, the drums are pretty well spliced. Love me some breakbeat. Panning is what takes all the fun out of it for me though, and I'm not really able to enjoy the track. Outro and intro are also strange. Sounds like two decent pieces unfortunately laid atop one another.
One of my big influences is Aphex Twin. If you get them, you get me. Thanks for the review!
-PS Random? It is a clear progression to me.
Those bells are really harsh in the higher octave at the beginning. They are however a nice foundation melodically for your intro. Your drum loop is absolutely killing my attention span, and that pad is far too loud, however. Your drums should cut through your piece just slightly -- enough to drive it rather than stand on top of it. To accomplish this, make sure you compress them well and get a solid sound that doesn't bleed everywhere when you apply FX to it. Believe me, you will want to use FX.
Volume leveling and compression is your biggest issue here. It makes an already so-so track sound very imbalanced and slightly boring. Bring that pad into balance with the rest of your track. As open spaced as the arrangement is, we WILL hear it! ;)
Overall, this would be a much more interesting and satisfying piece if mixed better with an overarching melody rather than just harmony and arps. It ends up sounding more like a backing track and less like a competition piece!
Thank you for your opinions. And I have to say this was my whole target when I entered the contest. Getting opinions of other people.
I believe that in music: Familiar=Friendly=Safe=Good and Unknown=Strange=Scary=Bad. Because I have been listening to this track for quite a long time, it has been familiar to me. So I thought it is a quite nice piece and good for the competition. I had some doubts about the track so I entered to the Death Match with this piece to get further advices how to improve it. (And I didn't count on winning.)
All in all thank you for the tips. I am now working on this piece to improve it. EQed a little, but not too familiar with compression so that needs more researching. Lowered the overall volume and hopefully balanced the pads, the drums and everything. The pads and the bells were the main "melody" resources so this is the reason they were harsh. So added a new quite strange melody line. Maybe it will fix most issues. Not too sure about adding a chorus because of the slow pace of the song, but would love to hear your opinion.
The analog sounding synth in the beginning is fine to my ears. Reminds me of some older pieces I used to listen to. This percussion is just not working for you though. It's practically without rhythmic center, and does not help the relative melodic center of the piece progress. Rather than supporting the structure of the track, it divides it.
However, I do like your use of FX. Without it, this track would be relatively unlistenable for me. As an experiment, it's interesting, but melodically, compositionally, and sonically, it's just not doing it for me. That being said, if you ever need a constructive/critical review, hit me up.
i AM NOTSAYING its the best track in the world but ...( rhythmic center, ) relative melodic center your use of FX. sonically theses are probley the reason you do like it LOL
I make beats, metal, samples, patches, dnb, original game soundtracks, RVC voice models, and Russian/ English translation covers. Follow for monthly music producer freebies! Рада помочь русскоговорящим. Семплы вложены в ссылках вниз)))
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