Here are your rankings from Jon Porobil:
Read on for Jon's reviews!
GFS
"Vertical Vision"
Your slick recording and production make a great first impression. The performance is competent and impassioned, and the synth tones are well chosen. Everything is balanced well and sounds super clean.
My hesitancy with this song regards the lyrics. That line about taking the Lord's name in vain made me wonder if you had intended this as Contemporary Christian or Praise music. I'm not Christian myself, but I wouldn't want to hold that against you if it's the genre you're working in. However, I did identify something about the lyrics that isn't clicking with me, and it's something that a lot of praise music has in common - the lack of conflict. Or perhaps it's a lack of complexity. Whether the theme of your song is "I'm happy" or "God is Great!" I find it's missing some of the drama I often connect with in my songs, unless you're able to infuse it with some uncertainty, some complexity of feeling. Your song only kinda does this, with your bridge acknowledging "I don't know how to explain it." But I wanted more engagement. More conflict. Maybe answer: What has this new outlook helped you overcome? Or perhaps, are you worried about losing this new perspective? Are you afraid something or someone might take it away? Engaging with these questions may have given the song that missing ingredient that would make me want to return to it for repeat listens.
Dang, that "Looking up" hook is catchy, though. And I appreciate a clever bit of wordplay.
Berkley Social Scene
"Atop the Sutro Tower"
My impression after my first listen was one of confusion. I couldn't figure out whether you were telling a near-future science fiction story about literal robots in San Francisco or a present-day story about metaphorical robots. So thank you for providing an explanation in your song bio. By the way, I'm curious why you changed the title of this song from its Song Fight! iteration. "Rainbows and Robots" remains a fitting title, and in my opinion a more compelling one. But anyway...
I might have had less trouble parsing your lyrics if they'd been easier to make out in the mix. I think the lead vocal is in a similar frequency space as one of your guitars, and they're conflicting. The volume of the vocal itself is quite uneven and might have benefited from some extra care with normalization, vocal riding, compression, some combination of the above, or whatever else your normal vocal process entails.
When the second guitar comes in at the start of verse 1, I thought the mix felt instantly muddier. But actually, is one of the guitars playing something wrong in the first verse? I think I'm hearing notes clash from about 0:08 to about 0:11. That might be a big factor in the "muddy" feeling. Verse 2 doesn't seem to have this problem.
Guitars are very important to this arrangement and mix, so let's talk tone. Your guitarist(s?) are definitely better at this genre than I am, and probably know more than I do about dialing in a really good tone. So I'm not trying to hold myself out as an authority figure on this, but frankly I thought the lead tones in the main riff and verses were a little un-exciting. I wanna say it's a little mid-heavy and could stand some additional "excitement," maybe more distortion or fuzz? Or possibly just a high boost? This really isn't my forte; I just know it's not working for me in its present state. However, in your chorus, the guitar's register gets higher and it suddenly works better for me! I'm not sure whether you switched guitars, or turned on a pedal, or if the existing settings just responded better to the higher register, but I had a "Ah, that's more like it!" reaction to your guitar tone as the transition to the chorus happened.
On a more positive note, I love the drum part. I really like how your drummer rides the hi-hats with the lead guitar riff and then eases up on them when the guitar part gets a little faster. Then those same hats gradually crescendo with repeated iterations of that main riff. Makes the band sound really tight.
Mandrake
"Volume"
I wondered whether loudness was a valid interpretation of the given prompt. We talk about the volume being "up" or "down," but it's idiomatic, so I was looking for some other way in which this song engaged with verticality. I mean, I guess it's a pass.
Unfortunately, I'm not finding this very engaging or pleasant otherwise. Your vocals aren't consistently on pitch, which is a huge distraction. You've also slathered your voice with a generous layer of distortion. In the listening party, I asked whether you had applied a bitcrusher or something similar to make your voice sound more "8-bit," but you replied that it was just distortion. I'd like a little more insight on what kind of distortion you applied and how you achieved it, because it really doesn't sound like traditional distortion to me. Your voice is dulled, but I'm not hearing the high-frequency excitement that distortion should lend it, so it feels like an approach between too stools, as it were. A bit of a half-measure. My recommendation would be the play around with the settings on your distortion plugin a little more and find a vocal tone that really takes advantage of the way that distortion can add new frequencies to a dull tone. Maybe try an amp simulator? There are loads of free ones online. I also think the distortion on your voice would be more effective if it varied throughout the song. Let it go more distorted for some parts and less for others. In particular, I think that short spoken-word ending bit would have been more effective with the distortion removed entirely.
I do like how the chorus follows so directly from the verse... Er, I mean, the steve. ;-) I do like the warm sine-wave tones in the verses, and how you allowed it to give way to a square wave tone for the solo section. If you were interested in developing this idea further, my advice would be to focus on the different sections of the song (name them whatever you need to for this to make sense), and think about how much you want each section to reflect the loudness that your narrator is complaining about, and how much you want it to reflect the peace and quiet your narrator wants but doesn't have. Managing that tension better could provide a much more compelling through-line for a song like this.
Jim Tyrell
"A Hole in the Rain"
Your performance and production are utterly flawless. Best in class, really. Everything in the pocket, all levels set right. I love that flute, and this whole cool jazzy vibe with a pinch of psychedelica. My only nitpick about the arrangement (and boy, it's a minor one) is that you used a rain stick to signify the rain, but actual field recording of the construction equipment. It's a tiny thing, but the juxtaposition of the real recording and the symbolic sound effect kind of bugs me. Otherwise, this arrangement and performance are superb.
However, when I realized what you're singing about, I felt disappointed. Lyrically, you're coming across like a middle class guy complaining about construction in his neighborhood. I believe that the best songs are expressions of heightened emotion, but this isn't really heightened; it's more like mild irritation. This echoes a bit of disappointment I felt when I realized what was going on with the title. "A Hole in the Rain" suggests some fantastic, vaguely psychadelic imagery, and the tight jazzy vibe seemed to tease out this suggestion. Like here's some rain, and there's somehow a hole in it? Cool, tell me how! But really I'm just parsing it wrong; there are some people digging a hole, and the diggin is happening while it's raining outside. Ha, I guess you got me.
The song isn't bad overall, not by a long shot. But it feels to me like more of a writing exercise than a fleshed-out idea worthy of the level of polish you gave it.
chewmeupspitmeout
"i was just the gravity"
On my first listen, this was one of my favorites of the round. I really like the central conceit, the self-loathing of comparing yourself to a sandbag to your partner's balloon. You have a strong emotional core tied elegantly to an equally strong image. That's like catnip to me! And then that groove shift for the coda... Chef's kiss.
However, on repeated listens, some of the cracks became more evident. For starters, the timing on your vocals is way uneven. "Ballast" in the first line comes in early. "Weighing" is on time, but "Down" is early again, and then the whole line "A burden to you, bound to the ground" feels rushed. You're in and out of the pocket. I'm chalking that up to the tight deadline and assuming that more time to practice would have helped.
Then there's the guitar. The distortion muddies up your mix, and it doesn't sound locked-in well with the bass. As a musical bed, it's functional enough, but it's hard for my ear to pick out individual notes or chords, and that dissonance doesn't serve the song well, in my opinion. Similar to the Berkeley song, I think the guitar serves a lot better in the chorus. And just as in that song, I can't be sure whether you've changed something about the amp settings there, or if the existing distortion just plays better in the higher register, but right now it feels inconsistent in a way that I'd argue should be fixed. In the verses, maybe adding some mid-high frequency would give it some of the definition it lacks?
Also, I'm not against the glockenspiel/chimey synth on principle, but I think there's too much of it (maybe save it for the second verse?) and also... Is it in a different key from the rest of the song? It really is a shame, because this song is so conceptually strong, I wish it hadn't been so difficult to revisit due to these discordances.
The Pannacotta Army
"Still Coming Up Short"
It's going to frustrate you that I don't have this song ranked even in my top five, even though I have very few (and very minor) nitpicks regarding composition, arrangement, performance, and production. What can I say? Sometimes you don't do anything wrong but still don't quite come out on top. Or, as Jean-Luc Picard put it: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."
In terms of production choices that I disagreed with, I have to reach pretty far. For example, I'd have preferred the room reverb to be a little bit lower in the mix. Not shorter, mind you - I like that your reverb has a lush long tail; I just think it's a little loud compared to the instruments. Also, I wish there were a little more humanization in the drum part. But these are such minor problems, it's not like I "docked points" for them, nor can I blame them for this song not being #1 on my list. Maybe it could have used some more dynamic variation? Like, one section a bit louder and more forceful than the others? But probably not; that would have undermined the song's lonely, melancholic emotional core.
So, overall this is a very very strong song. It feels to me like you successfully created exactly the song you set out to make, and I can find almost no fault in it. I just liked several of the other songs in this round better. Can't wait to hear what you've got for us in the next round!
iveg
"Flames Descend"
In a couple of reviews already (and more coming up later), I've discussed what I perceive as "tensions" or "dissonances" in the music or production. I often bring this up when I feel like those tensions don't suit the material of the song. Since it's something of a recurring theme in this round, I'd like to highlight your song as an example of musical tension working really well with the material. The immediacy of the emotion in the song grabs me right away - you're afraid, you're grieving, you're angry. And the music bears that out. The bass and guitar split a minor-chord arpeggio in 3/4 time with a tense flat-sixth while the drums keep us disoriented by playing in 2/4 over this apparent waltz. Before you've even sung a word, these instrumental elements capture the emotional core of your song to a T.
I understand that you're singing about recent real events, and these feelings are incredibly raw and personal. You have my sympathy. To be honest, it makes this song a bit difficult to critique. You're baring your soul for us in describing a tragedy that remains ongoing, and whose devastating effects continue to impact you directly. I'm no stranger to this type of situation. I have a song about Hurricane Katrina, less than a week after the New Orleans levees broke, and it's intensely personal to me, such that I'd probably get indignant at someone nitpicking the song on me, even almost two decades later.
So I ranked you where I ranked you, and I'm going to opt not to add insult to injury by pointing out what I perceive as problems in this song. If you actually want to see more of the "negative" feedback, please let me know and I'll be glad to share my full thoughts. It didn't seem right to include that by default, given the situation.
Stacking Theory
"One More Love Song"
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Camus
This one rose a lot in my rankings with repeated listens. At first I didn't quite get where the concept was coming from. The emotional timbre of the music clashes with the lyrics in a way that I initially struggled with, but it's clear to me that this was part of the point you intended. Eventually I just stopped worrying about the mismatch and enjoyed the ride. I'm not really a fan of the synth-heavy 80s alt genre that this seems to aspire to, but your production is pitch perfect for it. Except for your de-esser. I think you pushed the reduction a little too hard, and the "lisping" effect is distracting.
The coda section elevated this a lot for me. From a practical standpoint it serves as a changeup in a moment when the song really needs one, and also brightens the overall tone which had threatened to veer off into "dirge" territory. It works on the thematic level too, signifying the psychological breakthrough, allowing the happiness to emerge from the monotony. I wish the coda had been a little bit longer, but it's great how it is.
West of Vine
"Come Up on the Front Porch"
Right up front, I'll admit that I found your accent distracting. I couldn't tell whether it was genuine or an affectation, but I ended up thinking it was exaggerated for effect, and that the exaggeration is a little much. I apologize if I've inadvertently criticized your actual voice and accent.
I mostly like your arrangement. The change-up in the guitar between verse 1 and verse 2 is a nice touch we don't see often enough. The spot harmonies add some juice where it's needed. But there was something missing and it took me several listens to figure out what: cymbals and hi-hats! Why don't you have any high-end in your drums? Once I realized they were missing, I felt their absence overwhelmingly. Essentially your mix's only high-end presence comes from your acoustic guitar transients and your backup vocals. Neither is quite up to the task, so the mix overall sounds darker than you probably intended.
There are some gems in the lyrics. I love "Drinking all my dreams," and "You said that I stole your heart but it's not the kind of crime that pays." Unfortunately, these lyrical gems have a hard time shining through because of how unevenly the voice sits in the mix. Vocal editing can be time consuming and tedious, but it can also make the difference between a so-so mix and one that sounds really polished. Let me know if you'd like some more practical advice on what I mean by that.
The Popped Hearts
"You're Getting High, I'm Getting Down"
Really love the dark-surf vibe. The extreme reverb on the lead guitar contributes to that vibe and works really well. On the vocals, less so - they come across as a little washed out. It took longer than I'd like to admit before I caught the wordplay in the title. I also really like how densely-compressed your lyrics are. I can imagine that first line reading something like "You've got a chronic case of affluenza" or something like that, but condensing it down to "Chronic case: affluenza" makes this feel a lot more polished, and the elliptical result suits the subject matter really well.
I really like that bridge, with the "You know that I don't do that shit anymore" line, and I've been wondering whether it should come up more than once. This is a short song and you do have a little runway to stretch a part out if you want. Or maybe you could extend a solo section to illustrate the frantic party-out-of-control atmosphere. Or maybe it's just fine at the length it is; who am I to say? The length and lack of repetition certainly didn't hurt you in my rankings.
nightingale's fiddle
"Ballad of Susie Ann"
I had this second-to-last initially, but I eventually heard a lot of details to like here. The character study and narrative are paced nicely, and I like the subtle syncopation in the left hand for keeping the flow of the song from getting sluggish. However, I find the vocal melody too "notey" in a way that makes it difficult to follow the words, and probably made it difficult to sing too. This results in a shaky vocal performance that is somewhat masked by the right-hand harp part mirroring the vocals, but that ties up the right hand and keeps it from doing anything more interesting. It would have been nice to have the right hand play something different at different times in the song, but alas.
The left hand is too loud and overwhelms both the delicate right hand melody and the vocal melody. I don't know anything about how to set up microphones on a harp, but maybe you can practice more to get the left hand playing softer? Or maybe some EQ?
As a last note, I wish you had performed more dramatically when the narrative involved a sea storm. There are some techniques like rolling glissandi that the harp excels at, and would have helped unify the performance with the story it's telling. I acknowledge that this might not have been possible during the time frame of the challenge, as it probably would have required a lot more practice on your part. But if you ever play out, this would be a good song to develop over time. Little flourishes tend to come naturally as you get more comfortable with a song over time, and I think they'd add a lot of pizzazz here, which the song could use more of.
Ominous Ride
"Vertigo"
You have some nice lyrics in this song. I really like how the lead vocal melody comes to a short stop at the end of each third line, and the first time this happens, the lyric accompanying the change fits it really well: "And it seems like the trail is gone." The abruptness of the melody line ending suits the surprise of the image. This works well in the third verse, too, with "I guess it's irrelevant" - a train of thought has ended as abruptly as the literal trail from earlier. This is great craft.
On the performance and production side, I think you're lacking in energy. There's no percussion, and the bass it muted. Turn your bass up!
And as for the treble... Well, there doesn't seem to be much sound outside the midrange, so everything sounds kind of bleary and poorly defined. I tried a little experiement in my DAW. I loaded in your song and put a multiband compressor on the master bus. Then I solo'ed the midrange (effectively eliminating all audio lower than 150 Hz and higher than 4,000 Hz), just to see whether this impacted your song much.
The difference is audible, but I would hope for a much more dramatic difference than we've got. The way that EQ curve just peters out at the higher end of the spectrum comes across as murky, and it's fatiguing to the ear after only a few seconds. Eventually you just kind of yearn to hear something brighter, with a little more high-end information.
If you're unwilling or unable to add drums to this song, then some of that higher-end could be made more interesting with distortion - dialing in a guitar tone that does more to excite that high frequency range would have helped this song a lot, I think. Or maybe having that MIDI string section play higher up? Again, as an experiment, I tried adding a high violin section in my DAW and I think it helped a bit. Let me know if you're interested in hearing that demo.
Braylee Pierce
"Dig Deep"
I love how you compose with the ukulele, using a small and stereotypically bright instrument to create dark soundscapes. Your strong instinct for songcraft shines through here in the way you modulate the song one element at a time - first dynamics, then vocal range, then the chord progression - until you end in a completely different place from where you began. I also really like that your approach to the challenge was to dig instead of to go up. However... let's "Dig Deep," shall we?
In the first chorus, you sing a low note (E3) for the word "deep." Would I be correct to assume that that note is at or near the very bottom of your vocal range? You're shifting out of your comfortable range for the chorus, into a contralto voice, and it's audibly not as comfortable or confident as your natural mezzo-soprano. I get that that's kind of the point. Going literally deeper in a song about digging deeper, as well as pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in a song about being uncomfortable. But my ears don't lie to me, and they're saying that they would much rather hear you confidently ring out in your natural mezzo-soprano voice than struggle in the contralto range. So then what's the takeaway here? "Only sing in your natural range and never stray from your comfort zone"? Hell no, that's terrible advice. But I can't avoid the fact that this song really comes alive when you start belting out in your normal register.
To be honest, I like this song a lot better if I think of it as a deep cut on a Braylee Pierce LP, rather than as the opening salvo in a song contest. I think it might be a good idea to shorten the buildup a little bit. Maybe cut one verse, or half a verse, to get to the belting-out parts a little sooner.
Brain Weasels
"Root to Rise (Overdrive)"
You've got chorus problems, my friend. The absolute torrent of words in your chorus makes the song difficult to follow, and results in a vocal performance that sounds like you're barely hanging on. Maybe with a ton more practice you could get this sounding more natural, like a musical theater patter song or something, but I think even then it would still sound unnecessarily dense. When the chorus gives way to the verse and actually gives the melody some space, it feels like taking in a deep breath after being underwater. Contrasts can be good; they can drive interest in a song, but this tension was deeply unpleasant to me personally.
Phlub
"Straight to Hell"
Brilliant lyrics, and the arrangement/production don't let them down! I love the layers of sludgy guitars all over this song. It's a fine line to walk, because all that smeary distortion could just as easily have come across as dull an undefined, but you'd been able to find the right levels of distortion to get your guitar tones to build without clashing. Your vocal performance doesn't just hit all the notes, it nails the performance from an "acting" standpoint, too. You've inhabited the character perfectly. My main criticism of this song is the guitar solo and third verse. The solo feels like it runs a little long, or it lacks a sense of progression. Perhaps the length wouldn't bother me if it felt as though the solo were building on a theme and reached some kind of natural climax, but it doesn't really. Or maybe I'd be more tolerant of the lack of momentum in the solo if it were shorter. And then it segues into a third verse which, while well written and performed, doesn't really tell us anything new compared to the previous two verses. The end of a solo is a great time to shake up the dynamics or narrative of a song. Bring us a different perspective, or sum up the message in a way that feels like a natural conclusion. Overall, though, these gripes aren't enough to drag down (no pun intended) such a fun and well-executed song. Very well done!
Jeff Walker
"Solid Ground"
I admit, on a first listen, I was very impressed with the production values, the quality of your singing voice, and the effortlessness with which you began your chorus, "She's read Heidegger and Kierkegaard." I really liked the metaphorical conceit - solid gound as the antidote for a high horse. Head in the clouds, and whatnot. The lyrical conceit hangs together elegantly and it's a unique take on the round's challenge, too! However, I found that on repeated listens, these lyrics left a sour taste in my mouth. I try to give the benefit of the doubt, but I can't shake the feeling that you're trying to imply that social justice and those who protest for it are pet issues motivated by boredom. There's a sneery dismissiveness to it - as though reading philosophy is the hallmark of someone who has too much spare time on their hands and not enough sense to know what to do with it. The use of "high horse" in the chorus amplifies that sense of judgment - ironically. Maybe you didn't mean that to be a general message; perhaps this really is just a character study of one person. But the extrapolation from the specific to the general is part of what makes a song resonate. And the fact that you did this in the country genre, which has itself been a bit of a social-issues battleground lately... Well, let's just say, I don't see any fire, but I'm smelling a lot of smoke. The judgmental tone and the (in my opinion erroneous) dismissal of social protest eventually kind of ruined this song for me.
Dutch Widows
"Above It All"
This song's vocal performance distracted me badly from everything else going on in it. For starters, there's a low-mid frequency buildup that pervades every sung line of lyrics and overwhelms the mix. This is likely caused by the Proximity Effect, and can be mitigated by keeping the microphone a little farther from your mouth during recording, and/or by using an EQ on the vocals to attenuate some of those lower frequencies throughout.
Once I forced myself to get over that distracting problem, I found that I still had trouble following your lyrics. I guess it's kind of a vibes piece? A little more enunciation and emoting in your delivery might have helped in this regard. I wonder to what extent the somewhat monotone delivery was intentional, symbolizing your feeling of being "above it all?" I can see that being used as a post-hoc justification, but I don't think it sounds like you sang it that way on purpose from the outset.
Everything else besides the vocals is really lovely. You play guitar well and had the mixing restraint to really rein it in and make it fit better with the rest of your arrangement. Your synths are tastefully chosen. I appreciate your "don't bore us, get to the chorus" approach to songwriting. That mode change from major to minor when you switch from the chorus to the verse hits hard! I try not to harp too badly on recording/production stuff, but in a situation like this song, it's a genuine barrier to the listener being able to receive the message you're trying to send, so that poorly-mixed vocal ends up being all I remember about it.
Cavedwellers
"Z-Axis"
Speaking of vibes... The lyrics to this song are practically cubist. I do appreciate how your lyrical approach serves as a bit of a "correction" about which axis this challenge is actually about - in a three-dimensional space, that is. It took me reading along with the lyrics sheet before I understood that there's a human emotional core to this song, which the geometry and wordplay belie. I'm gathering some narrative about an argument between partners (romantic, I'm assuming?) where the narrator thinks their partner sees themselves as "above" the narrator. I really want to connect on a more emotional level with this conflict, but the wordplay seems to have taken priority over narrative coherence, making the lyrics hard for me to follow. I do understand the impulse not to be TOO straightforward, but this feels like an overcorrection to me. Ultimately, I think the playfulness of the puns doesn't just mask that emotional core, but actively works against it.
On the arrangement/performance/production side of things, this feels like a complete product. The vocal is clear and on key, even on those falsetto notes. Your guitar tones are a little muddy, but in a way that feels intentional and serves the garage-rock vibe. I love how the solo spans across the bridge and the transition back to the verse. The tight harmony guitar part is cool when it comes in, and even cooler when swerves into counterpoint. Then the acoustic signals a switch back to the verse structure, but we still have a little solo left in a different guitar tone. This part of the song feels extremely intentional and confident. In fact, given my quibbles about the lyrics, I think this solo is my favorite part of the song!
Hanky Code
"The Bends"
Great concept. I love how little build-up there is to the fun part of the song! The call-and-response vocals work well with the playful mood. I really like your vocal delivery for your choruses, especially the overarticulation on "I might actually die." In a more serious song this might have come across as stilted, but it perfectly suits the semi-comedic tone of this song.
I feel like rhyming "darkness" with "where the sharks is" shouldn't be okay, but your arrangement and performance make it work for me. I gotta just go with it, I guess! In terms of critiques - some of the vocals get buried in the mix a bit, mostly notably in the second pre-chorus, around 1:20. Probably just some riding the lead vocal fader would have helped; maybe some compression if you wanted to get fancy with it. I don't really have much else to say; this was a really well-realized slice of pop sugar perfection!
Tunes By LJ
"Beneath You/Over It"
This is the only song out of 31 that I genuinely wish had been longer. You have two sections, and I don't think either has quite enough time to do it justice, but you know what they say: Leave 'em wanting more. The composition, arrangement, performance, and production are all spot-on here. The piano when it comes in oozes confidence, but leaves a lot of space for the rest of the arrangement. The comparisons to Jamiroquai were made in the listening party so I won't belabor them - not that I find it bad to wear your influences on your sleeve anyway. Everything fits together neatly, nothing seems buried or "poking out" in the mix. You're confident in the arrangement, plus it has groove for days. I really liked the vocoder at the end, or whatever that effect was.
I feel like there's some additional story hinted at in your lyrics and I would have liked a bit more of it. This is part of the disadvantage of having such a short song. Here's how I interpreted it... The narrator and his partner, who both grew up in Denver but then moved away, are visiting home and had a relationship-ending fight - do I have that right? But then in the second section the narrator talks about "the culture here," so I'm a little confused about whether one or both of these characters is a fish out of water, so to speak. I really like the hook/title "Beneath you and I'm over it" as a way to engage with the challenge of the title, but it feels like it works better if the partner character is in Denver and the narrator isn't - being literally "beneath you," maybe? Or else the specificity of the Mile-High City feels like it's just there to tick the box of the challenge? It just feels to me like this song had space to flesh out the situation a little more and I wish it had. The execution is truly impressive, though. Top-notch pacing and production.
Hot Pink Halo
"Aim High"
There's an uncanny-valley quality to this recording that made me weirdly uncomfortable, and I wasn't able to put my finger on it for a while. I think maybe it's coming from the distortion you've applied to the sound effects that you're using as percussion? There's a squealy scraping sound in at least one of the samples - I think it might be aliasing from distortion? I don't exactly feel like it's a "problem" for you to fix, per se, but I'm not enjoying the feeling it evokes in me. To me, that discomfort is at odds with the encouraging tone of the lyrics. "For the peace / Find a piece of the place / That you trust / This city has you by the heart." These are beautiful words, but I have a hard time accepting that message when the mix has so much tension and dissonance in the margins.
I also think part of that discomfort comes from the vocal performance itself. I hear some parts in the choruses where I think you fell a little flat of your intended melody, ran out of breath, or swallowed a syllable. "For a change / Find that change in the streets" (about 1:06) is noticeably lower than the other vocals and I needed the written lyrics to understand what you were saying. "You can do it" (about 1:37) feels like you had to ease up into the note a little; I think it would have been more effective if it had landed on the right note more squarely.
And then there's that bridge. I applaud you for trying something different with the vocal cadence - I think it sounds like you're singing the vocal melody in an implied 3/4 time without changing the time signature of the instruments? If I count in 4/4, each word falls on the same beat of the measure with each repetition, but you're changing the stresses with each pass, so you've kind of simulated the effect of a polyrhythm. But I think the melody would have worked better if it had been given more space. A slight rest between each repetition, letting the message sink in a little better. Similar to the juxtaposition I noted earlier with the discordant arrangement; these lyrics are kind an encouraging, but the delivery is relentless. I'm sorry to say, but this mismatch didn't work for me. If this conflict was intended to imply a deeper meaning, then I'm afraid I didn't pick up on that meaning.
There were parts of this song I really liked, as well. The gentle arpeggiation on the electric guitar served well as an understated musical bed. I like the quavery tone of the high percussive synth. I liked how you had the power chords in the bed drop out and back in for emphasis during the second half of the bridge. But sadly, that discomfort and tension I've been trying to describe end up overwhelming my perception of the song, and these musical flourishes aren't enough for me to latch onto.
Jealous Brother
"Climbing the Fascist Ladder"
I initially resisted giving a high ranking to a song this straightforward. It's exactly what it says on the tin, basically. By the end of the song, you haven't actually said anything that wasn't already in the title. And yet... The execution is pitch-perfect here. The composition, arrangement, performance, and production are all slick as can be. The lyrics make their point clearly and elegantly while also scanning absolutely perfectly with your melody, giving the whole thing a repeatable, catchy quality. Those vocal harmonies are so tight and effective that I didn't even notice them on the first couple of listens. The jangly piano and all the guitar solos are perfect. You're in the pocket throughout, everything in place, and those guitar jams are so sweet and pleasant. I especially like the chromatic builds at the end of certain sections, one in particular leading to a key change, literally climbing the ladder. I also liked how you introduced a new guitar for the first solo, but in the subsequent verse that guitar hung around to provide ornamentation in between the vocal lines. Hanging back, out of the way, but still present, a permanent addition to the arrangement's buildup.
In the end, I stopped resisting the straightforwardness and ranked you #1. Try not to go mad with power now.
Governing Dynamics
"Downfall"
Your mastery in this genre gives the arrangement and performance a surefootedness that few other songs in this round have. The song has several layers of guitars, and their tones are all well chosen. From an arrangement standpoint, you know exactly when each part should enter and leave, and what each guitar should do to stay out of the way while you're singing and to shine when it's solo time. I like how the lead guitar line in the intro gives way to a more subtly saturated line an octave higher during the verse. And then the layers all synchronize on the chords for the chorus. This is REALLY well paced... And yes, I'm aware that I've criticized your songs for their pacing in the past. This song is a dramatic improvement from last time I heard you.
I'm curious whether you used pre-made drum loops, or if you made this loop yourself. The intro and verse pattern feels somewhat ragged. There are two snare ghost notes between the 2 and 3 of each measure in this section, and three ghost notes between the 4 and the following measure's 1. These ghost notes all feel a little off. My first instinct was that they're being played slightly out of time, or maybe have some swing when the rest of the beat is straight. But on listening closer, I think it's probably just a dynamics issue. One of the ghost notes is significantly louder than the others, and it feels like it's pulling the rhythm lopsided. This is honestly the biggest thing standing in the way of my enjoying the song.
When the guitars line up for the chorus, it overwhelms your vocals, and I have trouble making out your lyrics in the choruses. There's a raft of intermediate-to-advanced mixing techniques that might ease up on this issue, but to be honest, I bet you could just boost the vocals by like 1.5 db in the choruses and that would solve it. Another small mixing note: your bass gets briefly overwhelming at around 2:51, just at the onset of the last chorus. My guess is that you left the bass fader in one place for the whole song, but that section gets louder because the bass is trying a busier lick or fill here? Again, this is probably solved easily just by automating the volume.
Your lead vocals sound mostly fine throughout. They're not spectacular, but they're appropriate for the genre, and never off-key, so it works. I will say, thought, at the end of the last chorus, when you kick that "laughing all the way down" line up to a higher register, the voice sounds noticeably thinner. My quick-fix suggestion is reverb. I assume there's some room or plate reverb on your voice for the whole song, but in that moment at the end, it could use a touch more of whatever you've already got on it. And maybe consider adding a tiny bit more reverb to your vocals throughout? You could easily overdo it, of course, but I think you have some space to try inching it up a little bit more without the risk of drowning your mix, and a little more spatial dimension definitely wouldn't hurt.
Pigfarmer Jr.
"Nowhere to Go but Down"
This isn't the best-produced or performed song of the round. Your vocals are consistently on key, but sound a little thin. It has some lyrics that don't scan quite right. It probably runs a little longer than the performance merits. BUT! You actually have something real to say here, and you convey that message with earnestness and urgency. That gets you far.
By the end of the first verse, we can already tell where this song is going, and that sense of dread is palpable. Good writing! Line by line could use some tightening up, but the overall narrative is clear and emotionally impactful.
Here's an example of what I mean about tightening up: Take a look at your third and fourth line. "The waitress wants to cut us off when / We both say we're doing okay." The way you've placed this line break puts disproportionate emphasis on the word "when." The phrase doing the work in this line is "cut us off," so that should be where the line ends. It should be pretty easy to move "when" to the next line, and in fact I'd also recommend changing "when" to "but." So it would become: "The waitress wants to cut us off / But we both say we're doing okay." It's a small thing, but I think it would hone the impact of the story even more.
I like that second guitar that introduces itself in the second half of the first verse. It's doing just the right amount of work, and it's mixed exactly right against the vocals. I also like how that guitar is already in place in the beginning of the second verse, but plays a higher, more urgent pattern for the second half of that verse, timed to the lyric "I hear sirens." Dang, man. Finally, that guitar takes center stage for a very well-crafted solo. I like how your solo has a mini-narrative of its own. Excellent phrasing. I think I'd like to hear a little more bite on the guitar tone during the solo. Really let it shine when its turn to take center stage comes.
I'm pretty lukewarm on the use of the heart monitor tone. I think if you're going to have it here, the flatline should directly follow the rhythmic beeping, instead of being separated by a chorus. But I also think the beeping doesn't fit well with the rest of the arrangement and the story is clear enough without it.
Temnere
"Into the Darkness"
Full disclosure - this sort of high-fantasy heavy metal isn't really my jam. But even if it were, I think this song would fall short in a number of ways. The subject matter and performance suggest that this should be energizing, driving, and operatic. I'm not really getting any of those. The drums are mixed too low and don't punch through the way they should, so they sound dull instead of driving. Some mixing on the individual pieces of the drum kit probably would have helped, too. For instance, I think this mix calls for a more thumpy thickness in the kick drum in particular. When the kick starts playing those sixteenth notes on the double-pedal, shouldn't the listener feel that, like in their chest, as much as they hear it? Even in my car stereo with the volume cranked, I'm not getting that pull it needs.
The vocals don't punch through the mix well at all, so they get buried. When you get to the chorus and transition from minor to major, this should absolutely soar, but it just doesn't. I'm not sure if this is an EQ or compression problem, or if they're just mixed too low. For starters, raise the vocal volume, but I think you may need to look at other techniques to make the vocals jump out more. In particular, doubling the vocals for certain parts of the song, maybe even quadrupling for the chorus. Make it sound like a raucous banquet table at Valhalla, you know? Actually, out of curiosity, are you triple-tracking your guitars in the chorus? Left, right, center? If so, maybe try turning down the center guitar by like 5-6 db, that might make more room for the vocals.
The mix gets in the way of your message pretty badly, but the lyrics and melody are actually pretty good! I like the juxtaposition of "life is cheap" in the opening line with the promise of riches from a dangerous mission. And you're the only entrant this round who incorporated verticality in the form of venturing into a sunken castle. You're playing those guitars really well, and the solo in particular has a great stucture to it. Normally I'm not a fan of when the solo takes up a whole verse AND chorus, but here it really works - that soaring quality of the modulation to major gives it a narrative climactic quality. However, just like your vocals, I think your guitar tone in the solo needs to stand out from the mix more. Turning up the treble might help. You might have the instinct to crank up your distortion to make the solo cut through the mix more, but in this case, the musical bed already has a lot of distortion, so maybe try a cleaner tone for the solo? I can't promise it'll work, but it's worth a try.
Eric Novak
"Low Road"
I like the use of slides in the guitars, but it seems that the flexibility in the pitched instruments left you on shaky ground, vocally. There are several points in this song in which your voice hits a note badly, or quavers a lot when it lands there. I sympathize, having been there before. I seldom write my melody lines down, myself. I count on myself to remember them or my voice to find the right note naturally. Sometimes this gets me into trouble if the melody doesn't quite sit the way I expected it to. Then I end up plunking the vocal melody out on my piano and tracing it note by note to see where the conflict is. I recommend you try this too. If you have access to a keyboard, pick a tone that cuts through your mix and play the vocal melody instead of singing it. Then sing the lyrics along to that track, then cut the keyboard part. The obvious benefit is that you have a concrete part to sing along with. The less-obvious but equally important benefit is that playing on the keyboard will make you actually think about what the melody REALLY IS. Because I feel like there are vocal notes here where you genuinely didn't know what the correct note was, such as the word "night" at 0:35. Or the word "my" at 2:08.
It's a shame the pitchy vocals get in the way here, because I think there's a lovely lyrical sentiment here and the arrangement is unique. And I think you did as good a job as anyone else at mixing your low end - the drums and bass sit really well, which is more than I can say for many of the other songs in this round. Of course I try not to turn this into a production-values-only contest. But when you record a song, you're trying to convey an idea to your listener, and if we're too distracted by the sour notes to hear what you're singing, you gotta fix that.
Sober
"On Penobscot Bay"
I really love your approach to the challenge. So many of us thought about climbing, flying, falling - dramatic height changes. But your song takes inspiration from the gentle rising and falling of boats in the water, and sets the arrangement as a gentle bluegrass lullaby to match the vibe.
I confess, I like the choruses more than the verses here - I think your deep baritone register struggles a little bit as a lead vocal, but the lift in the chorus puts you right in the sweet spot.
In terms of arrangement, performance, and production... I've got no notes. I guess that makes this a short review. Awesome job!
Frederic Gagne
"Slump"
This was confusing to me. How does a MIDI piano have such tuning issues? Thankfully, Phleb was there in the listening party to talk about which microtonal tuning you used. Aha. Unfortunately, I'm pretty unfamiliar with this type of harmony, so to my ears it still sounds like a bunch of mistakes in the vocals and the piano.
I appreciate your approach to the lyrics, but the chorus is a little confusing to me. "Do we truly have a choice," you sing, but I'm not clear on what the supposed choice would be and how it relates to your posture. Then it's about raising our voices and how that can "pull us higher," which I see ties back to the idea of standing up straight. But it feels like the connection to posture is intended to be a second meaning of that line, a clever metaphorical connection, where the literal first level of meaning is hazier to me. I do like the "set the record straighter" wordplay earlier in the chorus.
Overall, however, the unusual harmonics you used turned out to be too much of a barrier for me.
Siebass
"It's Going Down"
This is a fanstastic rock-disco-dance song. I love Electric Six, and your song reminds me of them a lot, especially in your vocal performance of the "fire/desire" rhyme. The rhythm section clicks really well here - your drum machine grooves with those syncopated hi-hats pushing it along, and the bass is locked right in. The chromatic fall in the bassline is a great illustration of the downward movement and builds tension as it goes.
(Btw, if anyone else is wondering what that bass line reminds them of - it's "Cake by the Ocean." I couldn't care less about the similarity, though. It worked well for the Jonas Brothers and it works well here!)
As great as the drums, bass, synths, and guitars are here, it's your vocal performance that absolutely makes this song. The timbre of your voice suggests that it kinda shouldn't work, but you sell it with a crapload of conviction. I especially appreciate how you handle the vocals' approach tones. Appearing to miss the note until you bend up into it is another great way of managing tension and it complements the chromatic lines in the bass.
Your approach to the challenge didn't quite land for me. When we say "It's going down," that's idiomatic, and I believe the challenge called for some engagement with literal verticality. The lyric "Steamy ghosts rise up through the dance floor" probably ticks the box, but it seems kinda incidental. I wondered whether the bit of sound design you had in your intro was intended to represent the dance floor moving vertically on an elevator? Or was it the perspective of the ghosts, hearing the dance floor distantly through the ceiling at first? Then the sound clarifies as the ghosts emerge into the dance hall. I'm kind of talking myself into this interpretation, but I'm not 100% there's enough in the song for me to be confident in your intentions.
Glennny
"Crazy Climber"
It's weird I've never heard of this video game; it sounds like the kind of thing I'd have eaten up. Anyway, your song about it rocks. That "scale up the building, don't get caught" hook with the different call-and-response answers has been stuck in my head all week. Your vocal range especially impressed me, jumping from those falsetto highs in the prechorus to the bass vocal in the bridge, which also lodged itself into my brain and wouldn't dislodge.
If I have a complaint, it's that the verses are a little lacking in that same energy. The verse vocals get lost in the guitars a bit, so they're harder to make out, and the melody in those sections feels a little less distinct.
Gotta love that guitar work, though! You're three for three on awesome guitar solos this round.
Boffo Yux Dudes
"EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing)"
Most of the instruments in this song are clearly MIDI or synth equivalents, especially the piano, and while that normally doesn't bother me much, in this case I think it clashes with your chosen subject matter. This is a song about a high-stakes dangerous situation, but I'm not feeling that drama in the music, which I think is a shame. You don't need to have real acoustic instruments for everything you want to include, but there are higher-quality sampled instruments available all over the web these days, and you can often use MIDI expression fields to get realistic-sounding performances out of fake instruments. Some extra effort in this regard would have gone a long way for your song.
From your title, I kind of expected the song to have distinct phases. Maybe this is what the critics call an "intentional error," expecting something from your song which you never even intended. But I thought it would be cool if the different phases of landing each had a distinct musical sound to them, different "movements" of the song, so to speak. As it is, the song sounds kind of samey throughout. And also, that first verse is about takeoff? Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if the title had been something else, who can say?
By the way, it wasn't clear to me until late in the judging process that the ship was descending to a different planet. I assumed it was a shuttle coming back to Earth. Even a shuttle returning to Earth can be exciting and dangerous with no margin for error, but setting down on a different planet sets the stakes EVEN HIGHER - I would have appreciated that being clearer earlier in the song.
I really like the slide guitar sound and the delay you put on it. That evokes the movement of the spacecraft and the vastness of space well. The vocal performance is spot-on too, and all the instruments are balanced well against each other. I just think the "fake" ones distract from the story you're trying to tell, which is a pity.
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