I was really, really taken aback when I first heard this track. But not for the obvious reasons.
Not because of the banjo! I was actually kind of anticipating a SoundChris-esque switchup at some point in your NGADM career when I first started listening to your tracks. They were incredibly varied to begin with, so I had a feeling you guys could do something a little different.
The reason I was so taken aback is because I don’t think I’ve ever heard a musician improve on so many fronts simultaneously. Your previous pieces were these long, sprawling, fairly unstructured, not-quite-sure-where-the-focus-is, slightly cheesy orchestral rock tracks. Now suddenly you pull out an insanely tightly structured, highly focused, darn-near-perfectly-mixed, super catchy track. This kind of improvement I typically see over the course of years rather than 2 weeks.
When I listen to most good music on Newgrounds, there’s usually one or two points that I can point to and say “THIS. This is the highlight of your track. Do more of that.” An obvious example would be the solo in midimachine’s first round track, or the point around 3 minutes in “Adagio” by JacobCadmus where the melody comes in. For this song, there is no such point. THE ENTIRE SONG IS THE HIGHLIGHT. The verse is the highlight. The chanting B section is the highlight. And OF COURSE the final uptempo section is the highlight. When I was talking about being taken aback up above, this struck me more than anything else.
Your previous songs had many many sections sections, and a few of them stood out. This is a stage that a lot of musicians go through, where they have tons of ideas but they can’t really sift between the good and the mediocre. The difference in terms of arrangement from your old songs to this song, which is arranged SO tightly that there’s no downtime at all, is just nuts.
I almost want to call shenanigans. This is preternatural improvement.
I mean, it’s just so satisfying to hear you repeat the first two sections because, not only are they really good, but by repeating them you make the song really coherent. It makes it sound like an actual Song (TM) with Cohesive Ideas rather than a Cool Idea Display which I felt like your previous two tracks came close to being.
I don’t know if you guys have heard of Wake Up by Arcade Fire, but in a lot of ways (except genre, lol) this song reminds me of that song. Both songs do the ABABC structure, where A is singing, B is chanting, and C is AN AWESOME SPEEDUP SECTION THAT MAKES THE SONG WAY BETTER.
Your switchup into the uptempo section is so good. It seems like after all my complaints about transitions in the past, you’ve removed all but a single transition now, and made that one super awesome. Like I already touched upon, it’s all about quality over quantity, and quality here is insanely high.
A quick word about the mixing. I think it’s perfect. Despite the complaints that other people have given you in the past, I think that your tracks have always been mixed very well. I mean, sure, in previous songs you make mistakes where certain elements are not loud enough etc, but that’s missing the forest for the trees. Your songs have always been full and easy to listen to, which is a very rare skill. (Honestly, I’d love to read a writeup of how you guys approach the mixdown/mastering process.)
Honestly, if the mix in this song has any issues at all, they are above my pay grade. It’s really pleasantly full, but it is not fatiguing in the slightest to listen to. I would not be able to distinguish this from a professionally mixed track, which is essentially the highest compliment I can give.
The only thing I really thought of as a suggestion for this track was that you could switch up the chord progression on the chant section. When I first heard it I was slightly disappointed that it was the same progression, because switching up progressions is a nice way to add a little more interest to a song, and also because you hit Em for 3 straight bars and that’s not quite as interesting when you are just chanting out the chords. In my mind’s ear I heard something like Em->G->A->Em, maybe paired with something like C->D->Em (which could also foreshadow the final section, hehe).
But that’s not really why I docked .25 points from your overall score. It would be ludicrous for me to expect you to be able to read my mind when writing a song, haha. I just score songs based on how much I like them, and then I do my best in reviews to help you understand why I enjoy or don’t enjoy songs. In your song, the only thing that really consciously nagged at me was the similar progressions in the 2 sections, so I figured that might have something to do with my overall appreciation of the song. (Which was insanely high, mind you!)
This is a fairly short review because I normally spend a lot of time in my reviews griping about stuff, but there really isn’t all that much to gripe about for this song. It's that good.
I’d go as far as to say that this is my second favorite NGADM song, ever. Can’t wait for your final track! No pressure. :-)
Johnfn, thanks again for the massssivee review! Sometimes I wonder if you and Step are competing to see who can write the most in a review, haha. I'm really glad you enjoyed it (though I disagree about orchestral-rock being cheesy. IT'S AWESOME). Knowing we were up against the monster that is SoundChris, we knew we had to pull out something totally different and amazing to beat him (therefore banjo). We certainly removed many transitions in this piece, it's far more cohesive, which is what you guys wanted! If this is your 2nd favorite NGADM song, I'm curious to see which is the first!
I find it funny that everyone is all like, "bruh, you made such a big improvement over your last track!" "THIS IS AMAZING! HOW DID YOU GET SO MUCH BETTER?!?" Just between you and me, I always knew you were this good. I mean, I had to ding you a little for uploading a WIP last time, but in my mind if that WIP was stretched out to full length, it would have done just as good as this song.
Which isn't to say that you *haven't* been improving, since you definitely have, just not to a degree everyone else is saying. They're saying you went from good to great. I'm saying you went from great to slightly greater. ;-)
I honestly think that your biggest path to getting better has almost nothing to do with music and everything to do with sitting down and committing to busting out full tracks. To actually make a track with climaxes, breakdowns, you know, the stuff that keeps music varied past the first minute.
The good thing is that's exactly what you did here and you nailed it!
I am actually constantly a little worried about scoring your piece. I might have mentioned this elsewhere, but your type of music is really really similar to the style of music that I enjoy. This kind of thing makes me worried that I might be scoring your track too high, but then maybe that worry is making me overcompensate and score too low??? In either case, I have to commend you on all the awesome work you put out here, since it's right down my friggin alley and I LOVE IT.
Your melody work is awesome in a way that I personally really enjoy. It's got a slight bit of groove to it, a little bit of repetition, and a lot of small catchy riffs. So good.
Your attention to detail is great. You've got a ton of really unique sounds. I mean, right at the start of the track, there's this weird high pitched vocal noise. What the heck even is that? I have no idea how that could fit in a song, but I dunno, somehow you make it work. MAGIC.
The concept of using what sounds like a soda can popping open as a sound effect cracks me up. It fits so well!
I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my last review, but a good deal of my score is an educated guess at how good of a musician you are (rather than just how good the song is). I mean, this is a deathmatch, and I want to pick the best musician (who can continue to write great songs) rather than a one trick pony, ya know?
Good musicians have a bunch of characteristics that average musicians don't have. One of the most important ones is that they know exactly which aspects of their songs work and which aren't, and they're sure to showcase the best stuff right up front, and get rid of all the crap that isn't working. This is why your music poses a bit of a conundrum to me. It always seems to me when I'm listening to your music that the parts that you highlight are highlighted completely by accident, rather than with the intentionality that a good musician would have. And yet you consistently "accidentally" highlight the best parts of your track, so it can't be an accident, can it? Or are you just the most lucky musician in the world?
I mean, listen to the melodic solos going on at :30 onwards to :48. These solos are awesome. I love them. (I think it might have something to do with how you solo in a really similar style to me. I'mnotbiased), and there's pretty much nothing else with a lot of interest going on in the song, so they just naturally receive focus. So it seems like you highlighted them intentionally, right? ...But I'm actually not so sure. I mean, you doused them really heavily in reverb, as if you wanted to hide them. And you didn't actually make the lead instrument loud enough to unambiguously take center stage, so the first time I listened to the track I didn't even realize that they should be the focal instrument.
It's this kind of ambiguity in your tracks that really nags at me. If you think it's good, put it front and center! And if you don't, just get rid of it. (But don't, since I think it's good.)
Another thing I really dig is the little 4 note riff at :35-36, :47-48 and other places. It's alright by itself, but the repetition adds a lot. You have such a talent for coming up with these tiny simple riffs that add a whole bunch of character to the piece - this was something I appreciated in your previous track as well. You kind of bury it back a little in the mix, which makes me, again, really wish that you highlighted it more! You have good ideas, don't hide them! :)
Moving on though. I was really pleased that you did a song with a more interesting arrangement than your last track. Particularly, I love the breakdown at 1:12. Alright, the fact that you clearly just pitched a single syllable up and down for all your notes rather than choosing multiple different syllables to pitch takes away a little from the professional quality, but I don't really even care all that much. I just love this sort of pitch bent quality in vocals. The pitching strikes the balance between real and artificial in a really nice way.
On the other hand, I feel like the climax-esque section that comes after that breakdown stays a little too high energy for a little too long. It doesn't really vary it up at all, and aside from a few simple synth arps, there's nothing all too fascinating going on here. This is actually probably the biggest issue I had with the track - a strong lack of variation in the 2nd half. I feel like the song does not really go anywhere after the 2:30 mark. I mean, just imagine how much more compelling that section would have been with a synth solo similar to the idea you had around :30 coming in after a couple of bars of climax.
(And now, listening to the song for the umpteenth time in a row, I come to find that you do in fact have a solo buried in that second half! I'm leaving the above here anyways, because I think that for the solo to be really effective, it'd need to have more of a focus on it from the rest of the mix.)
This piece is INCREDIBLE! I'm not quite sure how you did it in 2 days. In fact, I'm not sure how you did it at *all*. I was somewhat intimidated about writing a review for it because I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do other than write THIS SONG IS MY JAM over and over again, at least 500 times, with a couple of table flipping emoji in there for good measure. But maybe I could at least dissect why it's my jam a little bit?
The main riff is just awesome. Probably one of the best NGADM riffs I've ever heard. To be clear, I'm talking about the thing at :24 here (and again with modifications at 2:03). The thing that really surprised me is that the first and second time I listened to this song I just heard :24-:33, immediately recognized it was awesome, and figured the rest of the riff after :33 couldn't possibly live up to it and kind of tuned it out (I also think to some degree that the user is not primed to listen too closely to any riff after the first four bars). Turns out, the second half of the melody is just as good as the first half, just jazzier. I think figuring this out was the point at which I started flipping tables.
The fact that your main riff is so awesome really took me aback, honestly. From your first and second tracks I had you pegged as a guy who could (maybe) write a good solo, but generally wrote half-decent, moderately catchy, but generally repetitive riffs. This riff is from another planet compared to your other stuff. I don't know what you did to make that possible, but you should keep doing it.
I could talk a little about all the other stuff I like about this track. The mix is really well done - those pads are just enormous. I love almost the entire transition back into the main section at 1:19, with a slight exception. I like the random airhorn sample you snuck into this song (I'm not gonna say where it is so that everyone else can search for it). The addition of the slap bass to the Midimachine Sound (TM) is almost like cheating, because everyone knows that slap bass immediately makes everything better. (It's kind of like soundgoodizer, or a kazoo.)
But I feel like ranting and raving for extended periods of time about that stuff would kind of be missing the forest for the trees, since EVERYONE KNOWS that the melody is 90%+ of the appeal of this track.
But maybe you're wondering why I didn't give this an even *higher* score than the score I already gave, considering how I praised the song so much? Dang, you're greedy. Ah, nah, that's a reasonable request.
I do have a minor nit-pick, which I just have to gripe about, since... well, you know. I have to. The execution of the transition from 1:19 back into the main section is ever so slightly off. Up until about 1:40 its just an AWESOME transition. The little melody going on top of the percussion craziness is just perfect. Then suddenly at 1:40 to 1:42 you drop the ball - there's a bit too long of a gap and all the awesome buildup energy fades away. This really bugs me because it's just a minor but damaging flaw to what was otherwise a near perfectly executed buildup. Like, I WANT to enjoy the buildup more, but I can't! I say this is a minor nit-pick, but really, I wonder how much better this song would have been with a properly executed build back into that final section. It could have made a big difference, since the build back to the final section is usually the peak of a song.
Alright, so that's my minor complaint. My next suggestion is a lot more important, imo.
The thing about your track is that I *wanted* to loop it like 100 times. It's insanely catchy, so why would I not want to listen to it 100 times in a row? But after the second time listening to it I realized that I was insanely fatigued because the song is so insanely loud. I had to go put on some Elliot Smith to recover. But I still wanted to try again later! I still *liked* your song - it's just that I *couldn't* listen to it multiple times. In fact, it's not even just a problem of multiple listens - I'm not sure if you put it through serious compression or what but this song is so loud that it's actually tiring to listen to, even once.
Outrageous loudness is a bit of a double-edged sword. It generally improves the first listening experience, because everyone likes loud music (proved by science!) - but it degrades the listening experience after the first listen because the song gets fatiguing.
But, here's the thing: your song is so good that you don't need to go to the lengths of extreme loudness in order to compensate for something. The melodies and builds are awesome and they will continue to be awesome even if you make the song's mix a little less aggressive. If you were just to tone down the loudness a bit, you'd get a song which rewarded multiple listens rather than punished people who try to listen many times, and that is the ultimate goal here.
Just to be clear, when I say "loudness" I don't exactly mean volume loudness (because then I could just turn down my volume and it'd be fine!) - it's more like a combination of mix aggressiveness, drum loudness, compression, and a bunch of other factors that combine to give listener fatigue.
Anyway, this was the track of the round for me. Given how outrageously high your average was already, I can only imagine that with the loudness issue fixed, you'd score higher than 10. Awesome work.
So, of course, your response to everyone saying "omg, Skye, we loved every aspect of your last song, except the melodies, which were just okay," was to double down on the ONE thing that everyone didn't like? I mean, that's a great thing to do outside of the contest as a learning experience, but, uh...
Are you SURE you want to do that in the NGADM?
Yes?
...Okay.
I guess that's why you're SkyeWint who does really insane experimental stuff that people seem to like rather than a typical musician who does really tepid stuff that people seem to yawn about. Your desire to go in the complete opposite direction of what everyone's telling you to do might not win you the NGADM, but it will make you a better musician, and which one is really more important?
I do have to compliment this song at least a little bit, even though I get this suspicious feeling that you're going to skim right over my compliments in search of the negative stuff so that you can write a 5000 page rebuttal or something. Alas, the life of a NGADM judge is so hard, Skye. ;_; Anyways. I like the flamenco guitar section. I especially like the subtle strings that fade in around this point, that was a really nice touch.
I do also generally enjoy the SkyeWint Drums (TM). I'm not exactly sure where you learned how to do drums so well - it seems like you were just born with that ability or something. I think the cymbal crash can get a little harsh at times, but the rest is fine.
Your transitions are also pretty darn good. I mean, not only do you hit all the technical boxes of just making the listener aware that change is coming, but you also do a good job of cleverly coming up with unique ways to do buildup/breakdowns. One of my favorite moments is :58 when we had that cool buildup on the "guitar" which already signified a change pretty well, and then there's a beat of silence before the next section comes in. This is nicely done.
I do consider it to be a shame that you weren't able to dump copious amounts of awesome sound design all over this piece, like you normally do. The really cool transitions, the weird sound effects, the crazy effects - they're all gone, which is kind of a disappointment. (You still have pretty good transitions, though I miss how that used to be an opportunity for you to do crazy sound design stuff.) I get that you were rushed and all, and I understand how that could happen. But I think you should realize that in terms of your strongest abilities, that kind of stuff was always my biggest draw to your music. In their place, we get melodies. So let's talk about melodies.
Long story short, you bet very heavily that your melodies were really good, and I don't think that they are actually good enough to be the focal point of your song. But, knowing you, if I just say that I didn't like your melodies and moved on, you would complain that my reviewing was too subjective. Music judging *is* subjective, though. If you don't like subjectivity, go into formal logic or something. :P
Writing about exactly why a melody is working or not is impossible after a certain point. It's like writing why you think a girl's (or guy's) face is pretty. You could say something like hair color or eye color or symmetry but after I ask "why" in response to what you said 3 times in a row suddenly there's nothing left but subjective appeal.
Since you provided me the MIDI stems to your project, I started reconstructing it in my DAW. This was a fun exercise. In fact, since I was able to assign new instruments, I noticed two things right away:
1. You added grace notes to the notes. I couldn't hear this at all in your song, but it made it sound better when I could hear them. I also understood a lot more of what the melodies were trying to express.
2. Your instrument choice could have been better. The sound design on your leads to me sounded fairly rushed and not particularly expressive. The melodies immediately started sounding better when I chose other instruments for them. Same thing with the chords. I couldn't make out which chords you were using with your choice of chord sound, but when I changed it to something clearer, the chords sounded way better as well, and I could understand why you liked them so much.
I took the first bit of your melody and put some annotations on it to make it easier to talk about. Follow along at home: http://imgur.com/RAt5Zcv
1. Starting off the phrase with a trill makes the whole thing sound a bit awkward and off-kilter. If you listen to good musicians using trills, they almost never use them to start a phrase - for good reason. (Yasunori Mitsuda is one guy who uses trills EVERYWHERE - but see if you can find him ever starting a phrase with a trill.)
I'm not the biggest fan of your main phrase. You know how in most music people will use ABAC patterns, where A is the normal phrase, B is the altered phrase, and C is another altered phrase that leads into the next section? (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, even if you don't use the same terminology.) The problem with your main phrase is it sounds more like a B section than an A section. That high F that you play sounds like it's trying to contrast to an A phrase that was never introduced.
This is a really common mistake I hear from musicians who are so tired of hearing their own A phrase after looping their song 500 times that they switch it to a B phrase, not realizing that not only is no one else is tired of it, they won't understand what the new phrase is even contrasting to since there all the A phrases have been removed. I'm not sure if that's what happened here, though I could understand if it was.
I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't, just listen to your favorite songs and see if you can spot any ABAC patterns. If you still can't, then ask me on Skype or something, lol.
2. This little descent section is nice. However...
3. Here's where it stops being nice. The callback to the first phrase is unnecessary and sounds awkward. You could probably just not have anything here and just leave the nice descent part all by itself.
5. Not too convinced by this section. It doesn't set up anything. It might have worked by itself, if you had just ended it and made a standalone idea, but...
6. instead you just lead it right into the next section with these little triplets. By this point, the melody has gone on far too long (I consider this bit to start at 4 or perhaps one note later) without expressing anything of interest and starts to sound directionless. Like a run-on sentence.
7. Alright, here's our phrase again. This is fine.
8. This sounds very awkward. The idea of going upward to finish this melody just doesn't work for me.
1. There's our theme again, neat.
2. I have no idea what this note is about, and in general I think that section 3 is unnecessary.
4. Aw yeah, this section I actually like. The lead into the next section with almost-but-not-quite triples that quickly go back into normal time is really well done. I also like the little gap before the next section hits.
1. Again, sounding like a B section contrasting to an A section I never heard.
2. The upward ascent thing here is okay, but I'm not a huge fan.
3. But what I am a big fan of are these descending harmonized little phrases. These are great!
4. (But why didn't you harmonize this one???)
5. A little showy, but fine.
The next section is basically a copy paste of your initial section, except you extended it a little bit and added a minor harmonization with a second channel.
I'm a fan of the section starting around 1:34. This was the one section that caught my attention even in your original song without the instrument switchup I did in my DAW.
But after #1, you start a bunch of descents that melodically make no sense. To me it sounds like you had an initial descending melody which did make sense, and then you started adding additional notes to it in order to make it more ornate. Keep in mind: You usually can't make a melody better by adding more notes. It makes it more complicated, but it generally won't make it more interesting. It's like a book using big words instead of small words.
And yes, btw, I did hear the (many) references back to the original theme in this section. I do hear that you put a lot of work into developing your theme and referencing back to it multiple times. That's fine, but in a song development should be the icing on top, not the main meal. I can't make a meal out of icing. :P
All in all, this is a pretty good song. Perhaps it would have been better with your traditional Skye Awesome Stuff (TM), but maybe you're not the kind of musician to keep doing the same thing over and over again, and that's fine.
Btw, the three notes at 3:03 are what make this song good. I always wondered if you knew this. Like, you followed up the 3 notes with more notes to make a longer melody, but you could have removed all the rest. Eh, whatever.
Well, dang. As much as you (LSD) were hyping this track to me on Skype, I still don't think that I was expecting to see a 9 minute track when it finally popped up on the NGADM thread. I have to say, that's the single longest NGADM track I can ever remember. In fact, the longest one I can ever remember is... uh... actually, it's one of mine, so I won't mention that, because it sounds narcissistic. Oh wait! Yeah, Kor-Rune definitely wrote some long pieces. Phew! Not narcissistic any more. Though your guys' music sounds nothing like his, so this is not a very good introduction. Crap!
Alright, moving on quickly...
The funny thing, which could be both good and bad about this piece, is that although you have clearly demarcated 7(!) separate sections, when I just let this music run in the background while I listen to it, I don't actually really notice the different sections. A good example is 2:30. While there's definitely some sort of background process in my mind saying, "oh hey, the music just switched into 3/4 from 4/4," and I pick up on that, it's not a jarring change. It doesn't sound like a completely different piece of music stuck randomly in there, and that's a good thing. In fact, it sounds almost exactly the same as the previous section, and that's... well, that could be a good thing in some cases, but we'll dive into that more later.
One of the funniest things about this track to me is that you said you (LSD) had to watch like 70 episodes of sad anime in order to compose it. I often have trouble distinguishing between "sad" and "beautiful" in music, and this is just another piece that adds to the confusion - I actually think that on the continuum from sad to beautiful, this is closer to beautiful than sad, but then again, it's rare for me to put music solidly in the "sad" bucket. So who knows.
The piano playing is just top notch here. I can't recall the last time I've heard such an accomplished piano piece in the NGADM. It just moves all over the place. It's got themes and variations. It's got modulations (one of the highlights for me is 1:44 with the modulation and new theme, and then 2:09 where it seems like another theme variation could go, but you don't do the expected thing, and the piano plays nothing for a second or two. Really nice idea.) It's got fairly standard chords, but every now and then when I think I've got you all figured out you throw something surprising at me. For example: 3:33, the penultimate (lol I always wanted to use that word) chord of the progression always throws me in for a loop!
And since I went and mentioned the piano, I may as well go and mention the strings too, since they are the other half of the song. :P I feel like the strings do a pretty good job emphasizing the piano. They swell at points and hide at others, and it seems like you're properly accenting your more emotional moments by allowing the strings to become stronger at just the right times. (one quick problem though - often different notes had the exact same amount of vibrato, and this did bother me)
Heck, I think that in terms of raw melodic content that this song might even beat out "Facing the Foe", which I obviously liked quite a bit.
So, I ranted and raved about your piano playing. Why did I not give this song as high of a score as Facing the Foe? JOHNFN Y U SO INCONSISTENT. Alright... let's see if I can explain why.
I find it somewhat difficult to write about this piece. I think that's because while the entire piece seems to be full of medium-high heights, there is no singular climatic moment that steals the show - nothing that makes me go, ah, THIS is the moment I've been waiting for! Or anything that I can latch onto and remember when I step away from the computer. Compare to "Facing the Foe," which had a distinct and heavily repeated motif. In this song, none of the motifs are emphasized strongly enough to stand out.
This style of writing is risky, since it requires the listener to expend a lot of effort, but *can* work, of course, if the individual motifs are strong by themselves. However, I feel like that's part of the problem with this track - the motifs run the gamut from "good" to "pretty good," but, again, there's no standout, so the piece begins to blend together.
Of course, you are making it very hard for stand-out motifs to occur. You've avoided the two main ways that musicians cause good motifs to become great: repetition and arrangement. I've already mentioned how you don't have repetition. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but keep in mind that repetition can help good melodies really become ingrained in a listener's mind - Facing the Foe is a great example. (It goes without saying that this only works for good melodies. Don't repeat bad melodies and expect them to become good.)
The other way is through arrangement, and I feel like arrangement is the single biggest problem that this track has. As much as this track has different sections, the energy level in the different sections remains pretty much flat throughout the 9 minute duration of the track. Since the energy level is not super high, you don't run into the risk of fatigue. Instead, since the energy level is only about medium, you run into the *other* problem - boredom.
If you listen to your favorite pop songs (I don't know why I want to use pop as an example, except maybe that it generally follows the basic rules of good songwriting and everyone in the world is experienced with it) - I mean *really* listen to them, notating all the different parts and stuff - you'll find often that there are entire sections that you've just never paid attention to before. They've always been there, but you tone them out waiting for the "good part". They usually follow the high energy sections like choruses and their sole purpose is to remove some energy from the arrangement so that the songwriter can add it back in later.
This is *necessary*! You can't just bomb the listener with 5000 interesting parts in a row - if it doesn't go to the extremes of fatigue, it still can be exhausting. You have to give listeners ups and down.
Now you might be thinking, johnfn, you started off talking about arrangement because you said that it's the other way to make motifs better, but you haven't even that yet, and it's been like 5 paragraphs! To you, I say: very observant, but you need to learn how to count paragraphs a little better, sheesh. Anywho: the advantage of going down in energy in the arrangement is that when you bring the energy back up, that gives a very natural obvious emphasis on whatever melody you're focusing on when the energy returns. THIS MAKES MOTIFS BETTER. This is something that I thought was nearly completely missing in your track. I can't recall a single melody that receives focus due to the arrangement. (The only part that sort of sticks out is the 4/4 to 3/4 transition.)
To be completely fair - your song does have a few quick breakdowns, but they're all so short! I'm speaking about more protracted periods of lower energy.
You might be thinking something like, "but I don't want to have obnoxious edm-style buildups/breakdowns! That is not the kind of track this is!" Which is totally fine. Simply going from a more sparse section with just a few piano notes here and there to a more rapid section with lots could do the trick just fine. Or going from just piano to just strings, or from just strings to both strings and piano. There's lots of options to keep the arrangement interesting, even with few tools.
I'd be remiss in my duty as a judge if I didn't mention the other part of this track that needs work: the mix. I don't want to spend too long on this, because I feel like it's a rather obvious problem that everyone and their granny is going to point out, but I'll just gesture to a few sections I felt needed particular work:
1:10 to 1:15 - the ascending piano chords are a great idea, but they are buried and are not given proper emphasis.
3:38 - those crazy piano arps are so awesome, but again, they're too quiet and not given enough emphasis.
This is happens again at 4:00. I think that the piano often carries the emotional content of this song (could be my bias as a pianist! but I don't think so), but it is often either buried under the strings or not mixed quite right. The bassy parts of the piano don't carry very well, and the rest of it is often buried under the strings.
All in all, this was a pretty DANG good song - my main complaints fell mostly into the realm of the technical rather than the compositional, which is both rare and a good thing. Keep at it - I would love to hear more from you guys :)
Score: 8.25
P.S. Whoa, didn't expect to write quite so much. I guess once you get me talking about arrangement, I never shut up. ;-)
I'm warning you right now. I'm way too tired for a spellcheck, so a lot of the text is probably really weird XD
Either way, here we go :p
Gaah, I totally forgot about this for a while! Sorry for that D:
But as a Christmas present, I guess I might as well respond now :)
(You better have watched some Steins;Gate by now , btw-_-).
"Phew! Not narcissistic any more."
=> Don't even try. We all know what a narcissist you are, hehhe (jk).
Yeah, this turned out to become a pretty long track. It just needed to be, for all the meaning and different sections to fit into it.
"although you have clearly demarcated 7(!) separate sections, when I just let this music run in the background while I listen to it, I don't actually really notice the different sections."
=> I agree. But it's also intentional, mostly. While we call them different movements, they are all supposed to sound like parts of a whole. What those separations really indicate, are twists and turns in the "story" the piece depicts, as hinted by the names of the different movements. That said, musicwise, there are also differences between the sections if you look for them. Most noticable to me though, is the changes in emotion. Nothing is really a very "happy" part, so in that way, the contrast may not be as strong as it could be. But I'd rather arrange something in a way that keeps true to the story, than I would arrange something in a way that changes the entire piece, and ruins the meaning behind it. Although this has no concretization in an animation or a game/similar, it's not your standard standalone piece either. But as it was submitted for a competition, it's natural that you'd ahve to judge it like one :)
"I often have trouble distinguishing between "sad" and "beautiful" in music"
=> I find it very easy to grasp the emotion in most pieces. That said, I never seriously lable anything as just simply "sad". If one would feel that this track is just a "sad" composition, I think that a lot of the meaning behind it would be lost for that listener. A piece this long and complex, explores multitudinus different emotions, to the extent that the lines between them are blurred. Which I feel, is just like it should be for something like this. Also, while this track (my half of it) was inspired by anime, it really has nothing at all to do with anime :p
They just helped me get in the right mindset to write this XD
"The piano playing is just top notch here."
Why thank you! As I told you on Skype, it was all played in one take. At the time, I had already played the piece like 100 times if not more, during the 9 days the piano part was made in, so I didn't even have to correct many mistakes. Some of the parts are very difficult, but I had to arrange it so that it would actually be playable by me :p
If I recall correctly, 2:09 is one of the last places I got arranged in the way I wanted to. There are a lot of modulations and key changes in this piece, so to get all the parts to fit together, a lot of time was spent or transitions especially.
I use a lot of chords in this piece actually. Some are indeed standard (like the D minor, F, C, Bb, Am sections etc.), but many are not, depending on how you look at it. The modulations and borrowed chords especially, make for a lot of variation in the track. That said, I wanted even more avant garde chord progressions to sound smooth. In the 4th movement especially, you'll find some weird chords and progressions (dem0lecule made most of that movement, actually; I just arranged it).
Penultimate is a pretty cool word indeed XD I don't know if he himself remembers, but dem0 made the chord at 3:33 to be like it is (I think it's Fm => F (or A?), unless my memory is all wrong).
I'm glad you like the string work! Dem0 made most of the base, and I arranged them to fit with the piano. But it really bugs me that we didn't have time to make a good version with his samples, and that all of the automation would need to be revised! This is a piece that will definitely be, well, not remade, but at least revised at some point! :D
"I find it somewhat difficult to write about this piece"
=> But you couldn't have left a shorter review to respond to XD? I kid, of course. I'm happy you wrote your review like you did :3
"nothing that makes me go, ah, THIS is the moment I've been waiting for!"
=> I actually don't think this is as much a problem with the arrangement, as it is a problem of the production, which is really mediocre at best. If I could bring the sections to life with more dynamics, I feel like it'd be easier to notice what's what :)
As for repetition though, there is actually much, much more than there ever was in "Facing the Foe". But it's not as jammed in the listeners face, and a lot of it is only partial repetition. The middle sections of this piece do have much less repetition than the rest of the piece though, which is probably partly why Step felt they were the most heavy to get through. I was originally planning on going into detail on where all of the repetition and careful arrangement lies in this piece. But I don't quite feel up to the task, really, and I don't even think I could fit it all in this one response. I think you'd have an easier time if you could analyze sheet music of this piece :p
Or just listen to it as many times as I played it ;)
Once again, this piece is written partly like one would a movie score. Unlike "Facing the Foe", everything can't stand out and be awesome. And while you may not think it now, I promise you from experience; that'd actually be way more tiresome than listening to this piece. I don't think that comparing the two tracks is really an accurate comparison to make, at least not if it's supposed to have a point, and no be arbitrary. Except of course, that you obviously personally like "FtF" better, which is fine. But from a compositional standpoint and from one of arrangement, I'd say that if such a thing as objectivity existed, this would objectively be way better arranged and composed than "FtF" :p
"You've avoided the two main ways that musicians cause good motifs to become great: repetition and arrangement."
=> I simply disagree. That said, if we wanted to have written a pop song, we probably would've written a pop song :)
As I said, I won't go into the arrangement or specific repetition of the piece. But I can say that I spent 90% of the time I put into the piece on arrangement, and only 10% on composition (That said, I spent a lot of time). Dem0lecule focused more on the compositional side of the strings, as they to the most part, are based on his. I did compose all of the piano of course, but I come up with melodies and chord progressions rather quickly when I am as inspired as I was when composing the piano section of this piece.
"As much as this track has different sections, the energy level in the different sections remains pretty much flat throughout the 9 minute duration of the track."
=> Once again, I see where you're coming from. But I'd say that this is almost all because of the bad production. It really takes away a lot from the piece. The piano by itself would probably show the dynamic better at this point, but it too would need a better sample to do this.
"If you listen to your favorite pop songs"
=> As I said, this is not a pop song :p
"I don't know why I want to use pop as an example..."
=> I don't either XD
"you'll find often that there are entire sections that you've just never paid attention to before."
=> You can say that about literally anything though! If anything, many pop songs get bering to me, as I've heard much of the pop formula again and again. There is only so much that using a certain formula can do for me, really. I see a difference between "arrangement", and a "recipe". Recipes can be good if you don't know what you're supposed to do, or if you want instructions on how to make foods that most people already recognize and will enjoy like the everyday stuff they see. But it can be more interesting to eat homemade food when visiting a friend, and taste their unique spicing or their unique dish, no? Sure, there are ways that those foods can turn out to be bad or mediocre too. But it is really those kinds of foods, that can reach a potential that a recipe never could. And funny enough, food tastes a bit different based on atmosphere and on who made it. That is why I think that the meaning (even if the meaning is the listeners; make a piece your own, as they say) behind a piece can be much more important than general rules. Arranging the piece differently could ruin all that, especially since it's written based on the "story", not the other way around.
That all said, I think that the dynamics of this piece need a lot of work, to bring out what should be brought out. The food needs some stronger spicing for sure, to bring out the right tastes :)
I hope that that isn't what you mean with the word "arrangement" though. But it doesn't sound like you do. But as an example of how the arrangement does bring the energy at some points, take the part after the climax, at 6:29. Or another part (which 6:29 is actually a repetition of), at 1:25. Or parts like 3:45, which is also a clear transition.
As for more climatic parts, take for example: 2:49. Or the biggest climax: 05:38. Or the repetition of the main theme near the ending: 7:43.
What bugs me, is that all of these could be so much more powerful with better production, which is easily the biggest flaw in this piece.
"I can't recall a single melody that receives focus due to the arrangement."
=> How about 7:00, which comes right after the calm part? And this too serves as a bridge, that lead up to the main theme at 7:43 again? Or indeed, the calm part before that at 6:30 again, which comes right after the climax? Both of those are part of the 3 main motifs btw. 1:41 is another part which receives focus thanks to the arrangement, though not as much as 2:03. The sections starting at 2:30 makes more use of gradual buildup, which is another way to emphasise something.
"To be completely fair - your song does have a few quick breakdowns, but they're all so short! I'm speaking about more protracted periods of lower energy."
=> Well, some of the breakdowns are indeed a bit short. Some of them seem shorter due to the fact that the piece is so long though. Apart from the 2nd and the 6th movement, there aren't really any long sections that are calmer. But I am certain that your problem with this would be fixed through better production and dynamics too.
"but I don't want to have obnoxious edm-style buildups/breakdowns! That is not the kind of track this is!" Which is totally fine"
=> Yeah, This track is what it is meant to be. I personally find it to be very arbitrary to compare it to pop songs especially, as anything more than an interesting observation.
"I'd be remiss in my duty as a judge if I didn't mention the other part of this track that needs work: the mix."
=> Duh XD
I agree about both parts you meantioned too. And they are far from the only ones :P
Same goes for 4:00.
As for the bassy parts of the piano not showing, I've found that that is largely because of how Piano One is sampled. I'm sure there are ways to make them appear more, but I am not good enough for that :p
I'm glad to hear that you liked the piece despite the arrangement not really being your cup of tea :)
Thanks a lot for writing such a monster, and I'm sorry for the insanely late reply! But I have less that 700 characters left, so I hope that makes up for it.
I find it funny that after all my rants last round about how I wanted standalone pieces of music, that you somehow managed to turn in this track, which is basically just a film score - about as far away from a standalone piece of music as I could possibly imagine - and snag one of my highest scores of the round. How is this even possible?
For me, this was definitely one of the hardest pieces to actually assign a score. The reason is that if I were to listen to this piece just as a standalone piece, I would pretty much never listen to the first two minutes. Aside from a minor foreshadowing of the theme to come, almost nothing of interest happens there at all. Of course, this isn't to say that they are useless - obviously, they would fit in a film really nicely. But as a standalone track? The first two minutes don't really interest me after hearing them the first time, since they aren't particularly melodically interesting.
And of course, the second half of the song is just awesome.
When I first listened to this song, I was hyped. Running Free was legitimately one of my top tracks of the whole contest, so I had a lot of expectation. And in the first two minutes I felt like all my hopes were getting dashed. Yeah, the horror aspects are well done, and they're totally appropriate for film, but as a standalone piece... well, I'll put it this way: how often do you really ask yourself, "man, I really want to listen to some abrasive horror music right now?" Eh, you're a orchestral composer, so you probably do more often than I do. But, I dunno man, it just doesn't have very much replay value, which is something I find really important.
Then suddenly just around 2:00 the piano comes in! This is where the song starts, in my opinion. It's a really simple melody, but you support it really nicely with subtle strings and effects. At 2:55 you start bringing in more of the strings - at the exact moment when the melody happens to catch upon a really nice idea. The sadness, the regret! It's so well done. The chord at 3:13, too. So nice.
I just want to heap praise upon the section from 3:20 to 3:35. The transition from loud to soft, the chords. It's all working so well!
The funny thing is that even thought you mentioned that you ran out of time to do a proper mixdown/master, what you've done here is still very solid. The song still retains a proper balance between the quiet and loud sections to really bring the emotional parts across, and none of the important instruments are being drowned out. Essentially what I'm saying is that even though the mix isn't perfect, you managed to nail all the most important things that a good mixdown is supposed to accomplish. Yeah, there are a few technical issues here and there, but they don't really detract from how I like the song as a whole.
Another great section: 4:02 onwards to 4:14. Great little downwards melody into big massive chords! And that leads me into what is practically my only complaint for the second half - the Cadmus Ending (TM). The loud blaring chords of the climax is something I hear you do really often for an ending, and I really think you could find a more interesting way to end a track. At least you added a timpani roll this time. :)
So, again, I'm a little stumped here. The first half is just not something I really want to return to, but then the second half comes in and just nails it.
So why did I give you such a high score? That's the wrong question to be asking. If you would have turned out an entire song that was an extension of the final 2 minutes, then I would have scored you substantially higher.
What made this song even harder to judge was matching it up with your opponents, who wrote a super long song jam packed full of melodic content. Honestly though, I felt like the melodic content that you did have, along with the generally superior mixing and instrument choice/diversity that you had gave you a bit of an edge. It was a close and pretty tricky call, however.
All in all, awesome song. Hard to judge, but you did really well here. Can't wait to hear an actual Chris + Jacob collaboration piece! One of my favorite pieces of the round.
Thanks man, this was a great read! I completely agree that it's structurally not my best; in the wake of Chris' Mac Pro fiasco, I had only 2 days to make this from start to finish, and it certainly shows in the structure, haha.
So, BassFiddleJones and JoshGawaldoMusic turn out a orchestral/rock hybrid track. What's next, PirateCrab making a metal tr... hmm... Alright, so both of you guys pretty much stayed the course this time. That's totally fine! It's the NGADM, after all. But was it successful?
First things first. I have a confession to make. I've always considered that orchestral rock has to be one of the cheesiest genres. Like, it's this marriage of two completely separate genres, which is normally interesting, but it combines them into something that is just super overly bombastic. It's actually quite dangerous because it's very possible to, in the process of being bombastic, forget about what makes music good in the first place.
Your song is not simply bombastic, however. Bombastic is only one of its *many* virtues. In terms of variety, this song is by far the most varied of any track this round - only LSD/dem0 come close (and their song was twice as long - that's like cheating). It's got rock. It's got orchestral transitions. It's got hints of heavy metal. It's got some piano ideas. It's got a FRICKIN FLAMENCO GUITAR SOLO. You'd think from my description that it'd start to sound like a bunch of songs strung together, but you guys miraculously keep the whole thing tied together. Magic.
So let me get right into what makes your song good in the first place. It's 1:26. YES. To me, this is the central idea of the track, the section that elevates it to be excellent rather than good. When I think about this song, I think about this section. Yeah!
The chord progression at this point, while bordering ever so slightly on the realm of cheesy, is sweet. I mean, who doesn't like III? NO ONE, that's who. I also like how you switch it out to be a V on the second iteration of the progression. I often find that too many IIIs can be kind of irritating, but just a few can really improve a track. Honestly, the melody is rather take it or leave it here. It doesn't really add anything - it just sort of outlines the chords. This is actually totally fine, since the chords deserve to be outlined, but I thought you should be aware.
Similar to your last piece, I definitely want to talk a little about the transitions, because I feel like they could be a lot more solid. Like, you guys have so many good ideas, but without proper lead in to your ideas, it's easy to either miss them, or simply not be as impressed by them as they deserve. One example would be :39. You lead into this nice guitar solo with some orchestral stabs, and on paper that sounds fine, but in the song the transition is very jarring and does not highlight the solo at all. This is a shame because the solo here (at least the first couple of seconds of it - it loses its way ever so slightly after that) is really solid, and deserves to be highlighted!
Another missed opportunity is the lead into 1:26, starting around 1:14 with yet another awesome solo. Of the couple of solos I've heard up until this point in the track, I think this one is probably my favorite (though they're all very good). However, again, there is *absolutely no indication* that we're about to drop into the best part of the song. The drums stay completely steady, and the volume on the solo stays the same as well. With a gradual ramp up in intensity from 1:14 to 1:26, the 1:26 section onwards could be even stronger than it already is.
Alright, so I think that pretty much highlights the biggest overarching problem I have with this track. However since this track is so dang varied I want to point out a number of other thoughts I had about it that were not generalizable enough to expand into broad track commentary.
2:15: Excellent use of iv. I take back what I said about III, iv is definitely my favorite chord. I don't like how you resolved it back down to I, though. I think simply holding at iv until the next section hits would have made a stronger transition. The listener can infer the I from the next section.
2:20: I may be the odd one out on this, but I don't think that this flamenco section is really working. It's really hard for me to say why, exactly, other than that I know that I should be saying "WOW THIS IS AWESOME" but what actually ends up happening is that I'm saying "huh, those chord blasts really obscure the flamenco guitar that sounds like it would be awesome if I could hear it better." Plus (and I hate to say stuff like this without being able to justify it), the 2:27 guitar slides come out of nowhere. I think the track would have been more effective if you had stuck just with flamenco and maybe drums for a bit longer before bringing back in the heavy artillery (the electric guitar).
3:08: Hey, it's a call back to the 1:26 section! Really nicely done, in a way that does not sound at all like a carbon copy of the previous section it's referencing. In fact, it's so different I almost didn't realize it was a reference.
3:50: This section is nice, too. Nice melody on the strings. I'm such a sucker for the C -> Em/B -> Am idea (or any transposition thereof), which I think is why I like this section so much.
That solo at the end (e.g. 4:50) just HAS to be a mixing error. Why is it so quiet? I can sort of understand the reasons you might have done this on purpose, but I can't help but think that with the solo louder this section would have been much more effective. It could be such an awesome way to close the song!
All in all, this was an awesome song. Sorry if this review is a bit scattershot, but then again, your song was super varied, so there was a LOT to comment on. :) One of my favorite entries of the round.
johnfn! I don't want to insult your amazing reviews with a short response, but alas time has prohibited me. Your feedback is taken and used for future work, so I want to thank you for that.
So yes, transitions. They're tough to begin with, and we really threw the kitchen sink in this track with all the time/key sig changes, flamenco guitar, etc. So there was a lot of transitioning to do, and honestly some of them just got more attention than others! I think we did a better job of it this time, but it's an area to grow in for sure.
Also, solo at the end was not an error, it was intended to sit that far back in the mix! The idea is like, the electric guitar is fighting the orchestral/acoustic elements which ultimately win in the end.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed the song man (despite your feelings of cheese for the genre). We put a lot of work into it!
So, you turned in yet another absolutely insane metal piece. It's got solos. It's got a great chorus line. It's got absolutely insane amounts of energy.
Just another day in the life of a PirateCrab :)
Let me just talk quickly about the chorus melody - it's awesome. It's got just the right amount of that really typical piratecrab feel that I get from a lot of your pieces - your chorus melodies typically come off to me as trying to express something along the lines of "this is the awesomest song in the world and I don't care what anyone thinks." Er, sorry, it's kind of hard to translate melody to words, and that sounds pretty stupid when I write it out, but when I hear it in the song those are the thoughts that go through my head. This sort of "awesome and don't care about anyone" vibe is something I hear from a lot of your tracks, and I enjoy it every time. Who wouldn't?
Seriously, not only is the main phrase great, but that one melodic ascent at 1:26 on the tail end of the phrase is just awesome. It really shows that you know what you're doing.
I've said it before and I've said it again - every time I listen to your tracks I'm reminded just how much of a beast you are. You have really got a lot of the really tough stuff down. You can write melodies better than just about anyone in the competition (except maybe midimachine, but it's kind of strange to compare across such disparate genres. :P). Not only that but you're one of the few people who live record their stuff rather than being a lame person such as myself and letting the computer do it. This obviously adds a lot of realism to your track.
On top of all your ridiculous melody work, you toss in some really successful variation. My favorite would be the breakdown at 1:50. I'm kind of a sucker for this sort of heavy breakdown concept. I kinda wish you did it more, actually! Or perhaps just developed the breakdown a little further before returning into the song
Of course, you are probably wondering exactly what I didn't like about this track. Well, keep in mind that it was an insanely close round between you and your competitor. One fun thing to do would be to go and listen to your competitors track and say "hm, my track is about as good as this one," since the scores were so close. Hopefully, this exercise leaves you a little surprised. You both turned in fantastic work.
The first thing I want to mention is the mix. Keep in mind that this is a minor concern and not as much of a problem as the next thing I'm about to mention, but yeah, I think the mix could be better. I think that the lead guitar is generally mixed a tad too quiet, imo. For instance, 1:20. Come on, this is the CHORUS of the song. I would really expect the lead to stick out of the mix. Instead it sounds like it's mixed to about the same level as the backing guitars. Also direct your attention to 2:16, where it actually sounds like the lead is quieter than the backing chords. Again, this strikes me as off. The drums, too, are a touch too quiet, generally speaking.
Anywho - that's a concern, sure, but let's get into the biggest issue I have with this track.
When I listen to music, the single most important criteria I use to determine a score is: "would I decide to spontaneously listen to this track?" (Keep in mind that I do spontaneously listen to metal, so listening to a track like yours is not out of the question for me at all.) Of the tracks of yours that I have analyzed closely, I think that your round 2 submission comes a little closer to the "spontaneous listening" category than your round 3 submission. I also think that it falls behind your competitor, as well. Why?
Fatigue.
Simply put, it's too exhausting to listen to your track. It's constantly max energy, and to my ears I only hear a single breakdown where you take the energy off just a little bit - that'd be the breakdown at 1:50. (This is partially why I like the 2:02 section so much.) Again, just so you don't think I just generally hate metal or loud songs, I listen to a good deal of heavy metal just for fun, and I rarely run into this problem. This is just exhausting for any listener. I need to go put on some Elliot Smith after I listen to your track, hehe.
So, yeah, this song is in desperate need of some breakdowns. Keep in mind that a good break doesn't just decrease overall listener fatigue: it also helps put a focus on parts of the track that you think are the most important. The moments at which you are building back into the song from the break are some of the most exciting and attention grabbing parts of any track, and often people will highlight the sections right after breakdowns as their favorite parts in songs, despite not really knowing why those parts are so effective. The reason is that not only do breakdowns help with fatigue, they also offer much needed contrast to a song, and contrast is crucial.
Anyway, this was an insanely close matchup, and you did fantastic. I hope that you can take my words here about listener fatigue to heart, because I do believe it's the biggest thing holding your music back. Keep at it - looking forward to hearing more from you in the future. :)
I'm about to say a thing. Please humor me and laugh. This is very important to me.
"The idea of the song is wandering from a tranquil area into a cave that gets progressively deeper, danker, and more dangerous"
I AGREE. THIS SONG GETS *EXTREMELY* DANK TOWARDS THE SECOND HALF.
Haha, get it? Thanks, I'll be here all wee- mont- until whenever NGADM is over. ima slave. ;_;
Alright, on to the review.
Whenever I see a song that's 7 minutes long, I instantly freeze up with fear. Not because I hate listening to long songs or anything! (Some of my favorite songs are long!) It's just that, on the portal, long songs almost inevitably are arranged poorly - they generally repeat the same ideas far too often, or alternatively arranged in a haphazard way that makes no sense to anyone but the author.
So I am happy to report that you NAILED the arrangement! This piece progresses like a professional track. The first half is this gradual move from acoustic to heavy thrashing, but it manages to stay compelling and interesting the whole way through. Like I said, this is super rare, so good job. You do an excellent job of combining together a bunch of sections with different energy levels in a way that is so cohesive I don't even notice it happening unless I pay super close attention, simply because it all fits together so naturally and so well. This right here is a big reason why I ended up scoring your track so highly.
Let me point out a few specific moments that I really enjoyed from that first half:
The sweet sweet bass at 2:15. Have you ever heard of Porcupine Tree? This sort of bass work (and just the whole progressive feel of your track) gives me a feeling you would like this band. I was actually kind of sad that I didn't hear more bass work along these lines.
Ooh, yes, the playing at 2:37. Changing into this new timbre is super satisfying. And then the drum work, which is fantastic, by the way. EXCEPT. That AWFUL snare noise. I'm sorry, but even from the beginning of the track, the snare just stood out to me like a sore thumb. A crisper snare would make a big difference. It's kind of a shame, honestly, because your drum work is otherwise lovely.
3:56, when the song suddenly changes into a completely different beast. And yet it all feels completely natural thanks to the wonderful arrangement. YES! This is how you properly arrange a song.
Now, here's my main criticism. It seems to me like once we get into the heavier riffing section of this song, that the song begins to get a little too repetitive - we stay on that one riff with only a few minor variations essentially until the song ends. And the truth is that I'm not convinced that that riff is *that* good to play out for a good 3 minutes. Which isn't to say it's a bad or offensive riff, but I really do want some more variation towards the end of the song. There is one great solo in there, and that helps a lot, but overall, yeah, I wanted some more variation.
So, overall? You did a *really* good job here. This song flows in a way that I very rarely hear, and that's definitely impressive. I'd like to have heard melodies that were a bit stronger, admittedly, and the song is just a *tad* repetitive towards the end, but this is still one heck of a song. Keep it up.
The Prodigal 
~Fore~ Savage 
BVYS N GVRLZ 
~SW~ Annar 
~SW~ Float 
Threnody for Innocence 
Adagio 
Vanquish the Night 
Past, Meet Present 
Dark n' Damp 
