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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!

JourneyJaybeats responds:

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.

sapoman responds:

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!

Csucskos responds:

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.

SlaughterClub responds:

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

Your verses are perfect, and the mix sounds great on speakers, but it falls flat on headphones, which is weird. Usually that's the other way around. Your flow is standing out above the instrumental, which is good, but that mix is very raw and flat. Needs a lot of doctoring with EQ, compression, etc., in order to sound good.

What you've proved with this piece is that you don't need fancy VSTs to make entertaining pieces though, so full stars for effort, minus half for upload quality and mastering. Really was torn on giving you a higher score, but for the reasons mention in TaintedLogic's review, quality dragged it down.

That said, if you can make this your gig, master it better, and take yourself seriously enough to do it well, I see a bright future.

Kwing responds:

Thanks! I allowed my rapping ability to go way beyond my knowledge of audio mastering so I guess it's no surprise I got a critique like this.

I realize this is a chaotic mood piece. While not entirely avant garde, as it does have some elements of traditional chordal music, I still am not able to assess which feelings you are conveying with this piece, and it all sort of mashes together, stock loops, incomprehensible intro, wacky tail, and all.

The eq on that kick, as well as the electric guitar synth are ear piercingly treble-y in my ears, which lends a lot of the piece to sounding less like art/thought and more like slapdash. It just doesn't sound musical to me. As a fan of a lot of musics which are deliberately unmusical in order to convey feeling, I think that should mean something. Of course, music is subective.

Beyond that, my own thoughts could be summed up pretty much verbatim with TaintedLogic's review. What put me off most with this track was the jumble of seemingly incoherent thoughts. That may have been what you wanted to convey, but it was an unpleasant acid trip for my ears. Perhaps I'm just missing the point.

With music, in general, you want to at the very least consider that your audience can relate to what you're trying to say in some fashion. Otherwise your music becomes virtually meaningless to everyone but you. Since music is a form of communication, this is sort of the undesirable equivalent of tooting one's own horn a little too hard, and we can stroke our own egos to the point we think this is what we're supposed to do all the time. Always question if your expression is going to be remotely understood, and if it's worth sacrificing intelligibility to ignore what the mind subconsciously expects.

That said, if you want a review, PM me any time!

xxxZigZagxxx responds:

Ouch, ouch, ouch. Well, I guess it takes a couple reviews (or 5) like this for me to realize maybe what I was making wasn't as fun, great or revolutionary as I'd thought. This'll still be fun for me to listen to, but I suppose it won't be fun for most others. I tend to like music that represents a jumble of incoherent thoughts, but I'm probably the incredibly small minority, I suppose? I've always tried to make music that makes me happy and hope it resonates with others, but I suppose this one didn't. There really aren't people who enjoy music like this except me, I guess... and I suppose there's the possibility where I'm so blinded by the fact that this is my own work that I can't recognize that if it were someone else who made it I would almosg projectile vomit? I hope that's not the case because then, if so, how can I rely on my own judgement of my own work at all, especially the judgement needed to edit your own work on the fly? Scary thoughts. Anyways, I appreciate your opinion as well as the other judges' opinions, and if anything it allows me to appreciate the fact that even if it resonates with me, it may not resonate with others. It's just frightening to think that I may be near entirely blind.

However, it may comfort you or surprise you to know that a vast majority of my work is based on melodic and chordal harmony rather than dissonance. This is a step out of norm for me, something I used to be proud about... I suppose now I can just be privately proud instead. :)

Cheers
Zig Zag

Interesting, but not really what I would call a song. The bass is not really in sync. Also not sure what's going on with the piano, but at the least, it's an idea. If there were drums or some other progressive elements and more material, I'd give a higher score.

BraydenGD responds:

Heeeeey it's EDM364!
It's not really good since I used a horrible DAW for this (Soundtrap). I might make a remake of this tune one day if I have the motivation to, since school and crap is in the way, and I have 1 odd week left of it.

Thanks for the review and criticism, really appreciate it.

Nice concept. Preset instruments were not the greatest. Mixing was okay.

SimpleCubic1497 responds:

thanks i'll work on these....NUTS! ok sorry i'll work on the instruments..
thanks for feedback

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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