Here are your rankings from Jon Porobil:
Read on for Jon's reviews!
Stacking Theory
“Sea Change”
I love how lush this production feels, in spite of not having that many actual elements. The phasey background vocals are a perfect textural touch. As far as the key change, I didn’t catch it on my first listen, but when I read the song bio, it was a bit of a “Oh, how did I miss that?” moment. This probably says more about me than it does about your song. I think the key change was implemented into the song quite well, adding a lot of momentum in an emotional moment. However, I was a bit underwhelmed with the “return,” modulating back to the original key. The final section is so short! It makes the song’s ending feel abrupt, too. It’s like the bartender just bussed my drink away when I was still working on it. C’mon, mate, I was enjoying that!
I thought about the key change and its role in the song more on subsequent listens, and it puzzled me a little more. This didn’t knock you in the ranks at all, but I wondered, what momentum was earned - narratively speaking - when the verses are also in the past tense? The whole song takes place from the vantage point of AFTER the titular sea change, so in retrospect I wasn’t certain why it was significant to change the key in that specific moment. And then the change back was so brief that I wondered whether it signified anything at all. Fear not, this was still one of my favorites in the round, but those are the types of weeds in which I frequently got lost this round.
Mandrake
“Chaotic Thought Process”
I’ll address the elephant in the room first: the poor recording quality on your vocals seriously impairs your ability to get your point across sonically. Last week I blamed it on the distortion effect you used, but now that I’ve heard it in a few songs, I’m more inclined to believe it’s the narrow frequency response of an inexpensive microphone. My unscientific estimation is that we’re getting little-to-no sonic information on your voice above 8,000 Hz or so. If that’s the case, then I’m sorry to say I don’t have much advice other than to buy a nicer microphone. Evermind had some suggestions for how to get better sound from a cheap microphone, and those suggestions are worth a try, but I’ve never put any of those into practice. I might be finding the vocal quality issue to be even more of a problem in contrast with how beautifully recorded (and - credit where it’s due - WELL CHOSEN) all the instrument sounds are. The contrast between the high quality instrument samples and the low-quality voice creates a bit of an “uncanny valley” effect.
However, I don’t want to give the impression that the poor vocal quality was the only thing holding this song back from a higher ranking. “Volume” made a poor first impression on me because of your vocal recordings, but I was able to listen closer and find more to appreciate on subsequent listens. While the same is true for “Chaotic Thought Process,” albeit to a lesser extent. On the positive side, I like the pacing and layering of instruments, and your canny use of noise to illustrate the difficulty you have with your own thoughts. I especially like the downward pitch-bend on that sawtooth synth in the chorus, the Gizo-esque background vocals in the space after the chorus, the soda-can opening sound, the spring reverb on the noise channel in the second verse, and the plucky guitars in the ending.
But overall, your lyrics failed to grab me. Because the subject matter is entirely in and about your own mind, there’s precious little concrete imagery for me to relate to. For example, you complain about “When I can’t solve a simple solution,” but it’s not clear to me what kind of solution, why you need to solve it, why you feel like you should… Basically I’m asking for some narrative framework here. If you verbalize for the audience what your internal stakes are, we’re more likely to relate to you and connect with what you’re singing.
I also found myself frustrated at your lyrics’ lack of structure. I get that songs don’t necessarily need to rhyme, but your verses didn’t even seem to have an identifiable meter or melody, so they just kind of slid off me. Allowing for the fact that you may have chosen to eschew meter and rhyme on purpose to illustrate your point, I would suggest developing contrast by writing rhymes for your verses, signifying the times when you have it together more, then abandoning the structure when you get to the chorus, to signify the chaos of that chaotic thought process. The impact of that decision might be more keenly felt if there’s a more structured baseline to contrast it with.
iVeg
“Kara Lost the Keys”
Man, I gotta talk about rhymes twice in a row? All right… [cracks knuckles]
As I stated above, I’m aware songs don’t NEED to rhyme. I’ve loved a great many rhymeless songs. But in my opinion, this particular song would have been better if the lyrics had rhymed. Rhyming can give a song’s lyrics the quality of playfulness that I think would have suited the humorous tone you’re shooting for. There’s a satisfaction to a line resolving on a well-chosen rhyming sound, and that could have accentuated the jokiness, making the song more pleasant on repeated listens.
I like your eye for detail in the lyrics. The list of objects and locations in verse 1 is amusing and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Unfortunately, it’s a bit below your vocal range and your discomfort is evident with several missed notes. It gets better when you modulate up for the chorus. Sadly, this just reminded me of that old joke about lead singers. How do you know it’s a lead singer at your door?
She can’t find the key.
…
Sorry.
One thing I fixated on (perhaps a little too much, to be honest) is why Kara, as the lead singer of the band and the subject of this song, gets to have a name but “my girlfriend” doesn’t. I briefly wondered whether you were trying to head off the implication that your character is romantically involved with Kara? Maybe it was just the first thing that came to your mind and the deadline was looming.
I notice that your vocal microphone is also cutting off some frequency information, not unlike Mandrake’s, but it works here because the rest of the arrangement matches the same lo-fi vibe, so it gels better. When “Kara” starts ranting over the ending choruses, I appreciate the impulse. After all, a repeating chorus is kind of anathema to a joke song, but having a character rant over the now-familiar material is a great way to inject more humor and sonic variety. However, it would have worked a lot better if you’d had a woman available to play “Kara.” In its current state, it’s clearly just the same character as the lead singer doing an impression of her, which comes across way more mean-spirited and made it less appealing to me.
Glennny
“No Fool at All”
I was smiling and bobbing my head through this whole song. I really liked the jazzy harmonic extensions and the sung melody lines. The mandolin was unexpected in this context, but didn’t feel out of place at all. I also liked the chimes, but you might have slightly overused them. I liked pretty much everything about the production. I used to think of vocals (both singing them and mixing them) as one of your weak suits, but you’ve improved on them dramatically in recent years, to the point where I don’t even have any nitpicks on that front for this song. Everything is well performed and mixed well, in my opinion.
So… I listened several times before I read the song bio, and… holy crap. The entire context changes. I’m not generally averse to the idea of hiding a dark emotional core in a bright and upbeat song, but I wonder if it’s buried TOO deeply here. The enormity of this loss flew over my head and I’m not sure even a close read of the lyrics has enough context for me to have gathered it. I do appreciate how you’ve used contradictions in the lyrics to underscore the narrator’s unreliability when reporting on his own mental state. I just wish that the literal nature of that mental state - the STAKES of this song - had been clearer without the song bio.
Cavedwellers
“Don’t Take It Lightly”
My brother once delivered one of the most devastating insults I’ve ever received: “Your approach to music criticism… is very mechanical. You seem coming at it from ‘How would I assemble these pieces?’” Devastating, but I had to admit, fair. Your song this week fits together very well from that “mechanical” perspective. For instance, is it maybe a little obvious to contrast a wedding in verse 1 with a funeral in verse 2? Maybe, but the pieces click together so satisfyingly that I can’t argue with the results. I love how the context changes the meaning of the repeated line “All the kind words kindly spoken.” I also love the structural touch of repeating the “It’s a [adjective] old world” rhyming with “go.” Then that lovely simplistic hook: “You take a life / Don’t take it lightly.” It’s catchy and concise, but its meaning is multifaceted.
And I haven’t even spoken about the arrangement and production yet, even though they’re also both highlights here. The warmth and lushness of that small brass section felt like a plush quilt to me. A previous reviewer commented that they’re “obviously” sampled, but to be honest, I couldn’t tell. The use of the brass section put me in the mind of some of Paul Simon’s work in the 80s, or late Talking Heads. And not in the “Made me wish I were listening to a better song” kind of way, either. The horns threaten to steal the show here, but I think they stop just short of doing so, providing harmonic emphasis in some points and counterpoint in others.
If I have a complaint it’s that I would have preferred to hear one of your brass instruments break out and take a solo instead of the guitar solo. A trombone solo here would have been surprising, but might have worked well, tugging the song into more of a second-wave ska direction. But if the brass section was indeed sampled, I get that a trombone solo probably wasn’t in the cards.
I’d also like to briefly touch on the challenge. Obviously you modulated like the pros you are, and I especially liked the change to the bridge. But I admit that I’d hoped, on later listens, to hear more of a connection between the emotional tone of the lyrics and the modulation in the music. It seems clear enough in the first verse - wedding in a major key, conflicted emotions about it in the minor key, but that message gets slightly more muddled in the second verse-chorus, in which the major key part concerns a funeral. This, however, is a very lost-in-the-weeds digression and doesn’t represent anything big enough to dampen my enthusiasm for your song, which was in fact my favorite of this sound. I hope you keep this up!
Phlub
“In Memory”
I’m going to get even more in-the-weeds about how the key changes in this song connect to the lyrics, but before I do, I’d like to get out ahead of this and say that overall, I truly LOVED this song. It was my second-favorite of the round, and I was thoroughly impressed with how perfectly you nailed the Meat Puppets/Nirvana Unplugged sound. The room reverb is perfect and your vocal performance both suits the genre and hits every note with accuracy and passion.
Not to pick on Mandrake too badly, but I’d also like to point out that your song also takes place almost entirely in your own mind, and your lyrics also mostly don’t rhyme, but your lyrics grab me much more, because they’re filled with unique images and observations. I love the specificity of “Don’t play board games with your enemies” and “I am in a seance constantly.” These lines are just weirdly specific enough to grab our attention and suggest other questions that you never bother answering (nor should you!).
So then: What’s the purpose of a key change in a song like this? In your song, my subjective experience of each key change was a feeling of progression. Gradual advancement toward a goal. I found this counterintuitive, because generally I’d associate that emotion with an upward modulation, and these are both downward. Maybe I felt that way because verse 2 and verse 3 also began on modulations to major mode after a minor-sounding chorus? Or maybe it’s because of how the chord shapes change as the same progression modulates? Hard to say.
But also, is progression being made, really? Your lyrics sit comfortably in the conventions of surrealist poetry, plumbing your own mind and subconscious to hopefully arrive at a deeper truth. But I’m not sure you ever arrive at a deeper truth… at least, not by the song’s end. It seemed to me that that was the point - you never actually dig your way out. No triumphant conclusion, no lesson, no resolution. Like the Cavedwellers song, I found these key changes impressive, likewise your execution of them. And it’s clear to me that these key changes do matter to the emotional impact of the song, but I’m really making a meal out of trying to figure out WHY that works the way it does.
Anyway, I’m not sure whether any of that was useful to you, but suffice to say, one thing I loved about your song was how it proposed these questions and left them for me to ponder.
Siebass
“Turn the Key”
What happened to that swaggering confident singer from last round? Your voice this time around evokes an understudy being pushed onto the stage before he’s ready. You’re holding it together in verse 1, more or less, but as soon as that prechorus hits, you start missing notes (“Give you what you ask for” seems especially discordant to my ears), and the rest of the song never really recovers.
On the positive side, I like the bass synth and the lead synth tones. And did you add a second bass in the chorus? Or just start playing the existing bass louder? Either way, that works a treat. Pacing wise, I appreciate your instinct to skip the third prechorus, and how that creates a little mini-cycle of tension and release until that last chorus hits. I like the soaring melody of the chorus, but I do think that making the song about turning a key and then building it around the key change was too much hanging a lampshade on it for my taste. I see from your song bio that you changed that from “I’ll change the key,” and… yeah. I’m not wild about “Turn the key,” either, but it’s an improvement from what might have been.
If you enter a shadow next round, I hope you give yourself more time to practice that vocal melody and really nail it.
The Pannacotta Army
“No For An Answer”
I find your production immaculate as always. Particularly, this song is a veritable master class in the use of space in your mix. You’ve constructed a groove with what feels like the barest minimum you could use to manage it - just the four-on-the-floor and the handclap on the 2 at first, then a little bit of barely audible hi-hat ornamentation (like, seriously, the sound of your fingers moving across your guitar strings are louder than that first-verse hat). In lesser hands, this might feel sloppy, but your performance and mix inspire confidence. We’re in good hands here, right?
Except… It feels cruel to put so much emphasis on a minor detail, but it’s the only flaw I could hear in the otherwise pristine chamber-pop production, and somehow that made it feel even worse. It’s the handclap. You clearly used a sampled handclap, every instance of it completely identical. No variation in volume, tone color, even grid placement. The result is that this key element of the mix feels weirdly mechanical by the end, even though the arrangement and mix otherwise feel earthy and warm. The contrast bugs me. And though it feels unfair to harp on such a detail, the truth is that it distracted me enough to knock the song down a peg or two. (Also the fact that there’s so much talent clustered at the top here, making my decisions that much harder!)
But back to the positives. The lyrics to this song touched me. This concept could easily have come across as self-pitying, but you imbue the unreliable narrator with some emotional complexity, acknowledging his shortcomings and blaming himself. “You once admired my persistence / Now it won’t make any difference” stuck out to me as especially poignant. That old romance-story trope of the guy who keeps pushing with the object of his affections no matter how many times she rejects him, it’s actually pretty toxic, and I think your lyrics do a good job of having your hero acknowledge that this isn’t great behavior. Or at least, that it’s not serving him. I love that higher strummed instrument in the third verse - I think it’s a ukulele? The modulation back to E works really well to underscore the sadness in the fact that the narrator doesn’t really change here. Maybe he wants to. Maybe he will eventually. But he hasn’t managed it yet.
Tunes by LJ
“Modulate Me”
As with your Round 1 entry, your spacious groove impressed me. I had no issues with the balance or any arrangement choices. It’s maybe a little less showy than “Beneath You/Over It,” but that’s okay; this song can be its own thing! Trouble is, I wasn’t as enamored with the lyrics this time. As with Siebass’ entry, the overt lyrical reference to the key change bugged me. You did build your lyrics in such a way as to attempt to justify using the word “modulate,” but I thought it felt forced. I don’t think this would play as well outside the context of the Spintunes prompt.
The modulations themselves, however? Ooh, that’s tasty. Very smooth - they stand out, but don’t feel forced at all. The arrangement changes you make when the key changes emphasize the emotional change you’re experiencing in that moment of the lyrics. I think I even hear the reverb change when the key changes? Man, that’s nice.
Sober
“The First Will Be The Last”
The crux of this song - its alpha and omega, if you will - is your take on the “key change back” concept. You have a very clever implementation of that challenge (in retrospect, I noticed that Phlub did something similar, but I hadn’t actually clocked it in his, perhaps because his lyrics didn’t reference it as overtly?). I admit, I was a little torn on how you did this. In the judges’ discussion of this challenge, I had argued that we didn’t need to tie the key changes to sections, but it seemed important to the other judges that this not just be “incorporate a key change,” which was admittedly a little basic, but “incorporate a key change AND BACK.” With that having been said, I think it’s arguable whether you actually came “back.” Yes, your last verse is in the same key as the first verse - as prophesied in your title and lyrics - but you’re singing a full octave higher, so it actually FEELS like a continuing progression rather than a return. (Extremely impressive vocal range, by the way!).
In the end, you won me over anyway. The cryptic, quasi-Biblical lyrics, the passion in your voice, the chord progression, the perfectly-executed bluegrass licks and turns all wore down my defenses. And most importantly, the transitions between your verses. You found some really striking ways to usher in each new key and keep each verse interesting in spite of the lack of variation in harmonic structure. Between verse 1 and 2, we have that quick broken chord of the diminished figure then the chromatic walk-up to the new key. Then between verse 2 and 3 we have that mini guitar solo and another chromatic walkup. Then between verse 3 and 4 we have that really fascinating full-ensemble arpeggio. I don’t understand how, but it still sounds idiomatically bluegrass, even though that musical figure is basically romantic/classical. Each transition so far has been building up the intensity level a little more, but for that last transition, you pull the rug out from us, bringing the band into a tense pause while the background vocals herald the final verse. When verse 5 launches in the original key (an octave up), THAT’S the explosion in intensity we missed from the final transition. It’s a real show-off move, but it works amazingly. Glad I was along for the ride.
GFS
“Ready”
The production, while overall very clean, has a couple of minor things bugging me. There’s some minor background hiss in your voice, such that I wondered if you could have just left it in the gaps. I didn’t notice it at all in my studio monitors, but I did hear it in my earbuds. Your piano sounds gorgeous. I wasn’t surprised to read that it's a real grand piano performed live. As a piano player myself, I kind of wished that you had written more for the piano to do, but upon further reflection, that probably wouldn’t have served the song. I really liked the abbreviated third verse as a pacing move.
I’m reluctant to invoke outside context, but your repeated lyrical references to vampires brought to mind a recent Billboard charting song - “Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo. It’s also a theatrical, piano-based slow-burn ballad with some judicious uses of the word “fuck” throughout. It’s possible that I wouldn’t have been tempted to make this connection if you hadn’t written the song so soon after Rodrigo’s song was on the charts, but here we are.
To be honest, I’m not even sure the vampires in your lyrics are helping you anyway. You’re breathing in toxic air WHILE vampires suck the life out of you? Granted, you may have juxtaposed both of those images so closely in order to drive home the point that life’s stresses are piling up on you. But as a listener, my immediate reactions is that we’re only two lines into the song and the imagery is already trying to guide me in two different directions. Later on, in verse 2, you’re a superhero, and you rise above so “the vampires disappear,” but the toxic air I guess is still there? I see that you’re incorporating a running motif of images from different movie genres, but I think it makes more sense to move on to a different example than to try to tie the superhero imagery back to the horror-movie image from the previous verse.
And since I’m nitpicking, in your first line, I disliked the phrasing of “air that’s toxic.” You phrased it awkwardly so it would scan, but the unnatural phrasing bothers me just as much as lyrics not fitting the meter. Also, I’m not against profanity in lyrics on principle, but I do think your two uses of the word “fuck” in the lyrics aren’t really pulling their weight here either.
I don’t want to come across as too negative here. I did like the song - heck, I had you in fifth place in my ranks. I especially liked your use of the key changes. You kind of lampshaded that key change with a reference to “tak[ing] this fucking song off repeat,” which threatened to be too meta for me, but I think you landed on the safe side of that, and the key changes do appropriately signify an emotional tonal change for your character in the song. I also noticed (though it’s subtle) that you resolve the song back to the verse tonal center in A-flat, implying that this character isn’t really branching out into her own journey as much as she proclaims. I have a lot of quibbles about your lyrics, but I think it’s all first-draft stiffness, and the bones of this song are very strong, so I bet it’d be really fun to revise if you wanted to revisit it.
The Dutch Widows
"A Moderate Alligator"
Well, this is a challenging song to judge! I couldn’t wrap my head around your lyrics. You don't have that low-end boominess like last round, so at least this time I understand the words themselves without too much effort. But syntactically? Maybe a stressful week has gotten to me, but I couldn't make head or tails out of what you're actually singing about. And then I couldn't decide whether that's a problem with the song, or whether I need to just quit fighting it and hang on for the ride, as I did with Sober's and Phlub's songs.
So I checked the song bio and read the context of the alligator DNA. This gives me the story you intended to tell, but I really don’t think enough of that actual story ended up in your lyrics. Definitely not enough for us to pick up on without reading the song bio, which you can’t assume every listener will do. In your song’s lyrics, you’ve condensed the entire premise into the first line: “A catfish injected alligator blood.” But because the phrasing is so dense, the meaning is lost. And by the end, I’m still not sure what you mean by “A moderate alligator.”
Focusing so much on your lyrics has made this review really murky and uncertain, so let's focus on the music and production, where I have better news! I really like the musical tone you've set here. I enjoy how your key changes bolster the song's momentum. I really like that French Horn at the end. And the song isn't long enough to overstay its welcome. All these are great! I didn't feel like the music or the song were getting in the way of your message... Just wasn't clear on what that message WAS.
Ominous Ride
"Drift Asunder"
I understand that your name has "Ominous" in it, but that doesn't mean that all your guitar tones need to be so dark all the time! I encourage you to turn up the treble or presence knobs on your amps, or to experiment with EQ on your guitar tracks. Try centering a band at, say, 5k and boosting it by a few db. See if the parts sound a little more full and satisfying. Then slide the center of that band a little to the left, then a little to the right, and see if there's a spot where things kind of come to life. You can try this on your vocals too, and even the full mix bus. I think your songs will have a lot more energy and will be a lot more compelling to listen to if you can utilize the spectrum more fully. I can tell that there's a good song in here, performed passionately, but I feel it's playing in another room while I'm listening from underneath two weighted blankets.
You included a lot of production touches I enjoyed. The whispered "Get back up" grabbed me. And I really liked that flanger on the rhythm guitar. (But also, I wonder if the flanger felt so good here because it was sweeping up to some of the frequencies that you've been otherwise neglecting! Okay, I'll stop harping on EQ, for real now.) And your guitar performances are fantastic - on pitch, in the pocket, well played and compelling throughout.
I also thought you nailed the challenge. Willing yourself to get back up and keep going is the exact kind of concept well-suited to be illustrated with the emotional shift of a modulation, but I didn't think it was annoyingly obvious or meta about it, either.
If you continue entering shadows, I'd really love to hear what you can do with that level of passion and musicianship with a better-balanced mix!
chewmeupspitmeout
"you don't belong to me"
I like the pacing and timbral choices in this song. Last round, your mix had some issues which I attributed to clashing intonality between your synths and your guitars; this round you opted not to use guitars at all. I don't think this song hurt for lack of guitar, but I'd still love to hear what you can do when the guitars and synths aren't clashing so badly.
You've made some unexpected choices with your percussion but they work really well, remaining understated but interesting. The lead synth, the one playing the arpeggio, has a few notes that hit "piercing" loudness levels. It sounds like you're using a filter sweet on the synth, and these piercing moments happen when the note happens to line up with the boosted frequency of the sweep. Examples at 0:04, 0:10, 2:34, and 2:39. You might fix this by chasing the filter sweep with a static EQ cut at... I don't know, sounds like maybe 5k? Try a few spots and see if you can keep the loudness of that synth instrument from jumping too badly. Alternatively, you could just use volume fader automation - make the synth part a little quieter during these offending moments and then put it right back.
In terms of lyrics, I'm having a bit of a hard time following the "plot," so to speak. Emotionally, I'm getting vibes of longing and regret. Especially in that cadence from a major chord to the same-root minor chord (about 1:10) - instant pathos! There's a lovely sentiment in combining that emotional timbre with the idea of "You don't belong to me but I belong to you," like your narrator feels ambivalent about his relationship. But then I'm not clear on what the "victimless crime" is supposed to be. Reading your song bio actually just raised further questions. I never guessed that this was about technological singularity or whatever Lovelock calls it. There's a hint of it in the line "If our species has a future / Would you like to spend it with me?" That's a killer lyric, the kind of thing you can build a whole song around! But I had a lot of trouble connecting the sci-fi aspects to the interpersonal feelings in the title, and I didn't get any connection at all from either of those things to the novocene theory.
Hot Pink Halo
"Shape Shifter"
In my review of your Round 1 song, I commented on some inaccessible sonic textures that made me feel uncomfortable. This round, you've rallied with a high-energy shot of power pop explicitly inspired by XTC. To be honest, I kind of feel pandered to, but by all means keep it up! I think the key changes mostly work very well in your song, with the possible exception of the repeating lifts on the last choruses; it sounds like your voice wasn't quite up to some of those high notes. You could probably have gotten the point across with half as many lifts (rising to only F major) and ended the song a little bit earlier. What I like about the key changes in this context is how the changing key signals a shift in emotional tone. Your verses seem... For want of a better word, I'll say "ambivalent," emotionally. You're describing artistic inspiration, but not necessarily the fun part. "I pull everything out of you / You pull everything out of me" honestly sounds horrifying as much as it sounds artistically fulfilling, and yeah, I've been there! But when your chorus kicks in, that ambivalence gels into pure enthusiasm.
I think the choruses (at least until those last couple of lifts) also demonstrate a much more confident vocal performance. The verse melody isn't as strong, and you sound a little less sure of yourself during the verses than during the choruses. This might be because the chorus melody is so catchy that it comes more naturally to your voice. Or it might be because you wrote the choruses earlier in the week and the verse later, leaving you with less time to get your voice familiar with the verse melodies. Either way, I'd recommend rehearsing your vocals more before recording. On my first couple of listens, I actually thought the melody might have some notes clashing with the instrumentation, which makes them difficult to sing. That *might* be true, though I'm less certain on subsequent listens, and I really think the missing ingredient here is simply practice.
In terms of arrangement choices, you did a great job of both emulating XTC and maintaining interest with ornamentation (I think in doing the former, you made the latter inevitable, really). Your buzzy bass tone is perfect for this material. Gizo's backup vocals under the choruses add some fullness in the lower-midrange which makes the choruses feel more energetic. I really like that guitar with the synth-like filter sweep in the sections between choruses and verses. I especially love that simple guitar lick in the high register that comes in for verse 3. It's just enough to build and maintain interest, but not so much as to become distracting. That extended drum break (starting around 1:55) also feels very XTC, but might not be the right choice for this song, especially since the drums are clearly MIDI. I suspect that the drum solo served the purpose of getting you back to the root key, so maybe you need a better way to accomplish that transition.
None of these production flaws were enough to suppress the material here. I ranked you #3, but with more confident vocals and a cleaner production, it would have been a strong contender for #1 with me. Great work!
The Popped Hearts
"Hey Jane"
Just like with your previous song, you went all-in on a genre convention, albeit a totally different one. Instead of going absolutely ballistic on a crazed vocal performance, you jam-packed your lyrics with puns and references to classic arcade games, settling comfortably into novelty-song territory. The resulting song is cute, high-energy, and gets out of the way long before it has a chance to get old. I also like how it sounds like an actual band, particularly in how the drums do that stutter-break when the synth stops at 0:05. But one question - why the heck didn't you do any mixing to your lead vocal? It sits inconsistently with the rest of the instruments, sometimes getting buried ("invade" at 0:19, "token” at 0:29), sometimes poking out too much ("Hey Jane" at 0:52), sometimes sounding clipped ("Hey Jane" at 0:52 again), sometimes too distant ("What do you say?" at 1:11). And there doesn't appear to be any reverb applied either, so it sounds pasted over top of the mix, not blending at all. It's a pity, as there are a lot of elements in this song that make it fun and engaging, but that amateurish vocal mix makes the piece harder to connect with than it should be. I assume the deadline forced your hand here. I strongly recommend a generous helping of compression and a dash of reverb on that lead vocal.
Lyrically, you set the scene beautifully, and just in case your words alone didn't get the point across, you incorporate a ton of ornamentation in the form of classic arcade cabinet sound effects (or soundalikes). I love that first couplet "I was on my knees / Paper clip, coin slot at the Chuck E. Cheese." So much said about these characters and their milieu very quickly! And I laughed out loud at the "Waka waka waka waka walking back" bit. The half-time breakdown at 1:15 was an inspired arrangement choice, making the song feel like it's covering a ton of musical ground in under two minutes. I love the synth and guitar tones you've chosen. That lead synth is a little dark, but then you fill in the high-frequency space with those arcade-cabinet ornaments, and it all clicks. You've got me wanting to hear more from you, so I hope you enter a shadow!
Nightingale's Fiddle
"Chicago"
I applaud the ambition it took for you to take on such a radical genre change, while still only having your own voice and the harp in the arrangement. I don’t want to lay too heavily into production issues, but I wanted to shine a light on a problem with what I think is a gate? Your arrangement has a huge dynamic range (more on that in a moment), so the loud parts come through clearly, but the quietest parts have audio drop-outs, where it literally stops playing sound. I'm not sure if that was caused by something on your microphone or input bus, or an effect you added later in the chain, but either way it's not the right tool for the job. You can hear this especially around the word "Joy" at 1:03 (that long melisma pops out and in, like a bad cell phone connection), the word "time" at 3:47, and the end of the song, where we lose the ringing-out of the final chords. If you used a gate plugin, I recommend removing it completely.
I also wanted to point out that your rhythm got a little sloppy in the choruses. Sounds like your left hand had a hard time staying in the pocket for the rock rhythm. Some more practice would make repeat listens more palatable as well.
Back on the positive side, I appreciate how you implemented your key changes. I don't know much about composing on the harp, but one of the other judges does, and she mentioned that you chose two keys that required you to use all seven pedals. I understand that's no mean feat! The two different keys also played a pivotal role in your song's structure, heralding both a tonal shift (emotional tone, I mean) and a genre shift, and also signifying an emotional catharsis. You delay that catharsis about as long as you possibly can; the first chorus begins almost two full minutes into the song. Given the structure, I think this was probably a smart move. Holding back the song's true intention until you're ready to tip your hand, so to speak, works well as a gimmick, as long as the opening two minutes are also compelling enough in their own right to keep us from getting bored and turning the song off. Your emotional vulnerability in these verses works to keep us on the hook. And the elegance of your harp performance. Then the EXPLOSION of blunt-force emotional trauma comes, shifting the key, the rhythm, and the emotional tone all at once with a salvo of unexpected profanity. I laughed the first time!
I wouldn't necessarily call this a joke song, but that first key change has the rhythm of a punchline. Keeping the "twist" a secret for so long, then suddenly releasing all that tension and becoming so emotionally blunt trigger (in this listener, at least) a similar emotional reaction to well-executed comedy. But that leads to a potentially fatal flaw with the song: Where do you go from there? How do you maintain interest in the song after the initial "joke" has been revealed? Even more importantly, how do you maintain that interest for subsequent listens? I would argue that one of the biggest things you can do to keep the song from getting stale would be to make it shorter. Once you’ve revealed that twist, the second chorus isn't as surprising anymore. It has a sense of inevitability, so the listener ends up waiting - somewhat impatiently - for it to come back. Accordingly, I'd recommend shortening your second verse. I think you could remove more than half that second verse without hurting the message or emotional impact. I also think that your second verse should take more advantage of the fact that we know the stakes now. Let some of that bitterness seep through the subtext. Allow some sarcasm into your vocal performance, or introduce more tension into the harp part to reflect the context of that changed emotional state. You already do this to some extent, particularly the line "Anyone who says different is an idiot or a liar." The whole section between the two choruses should have that energy, and it should make that point quickly.
To be as clear as I can: I really don't mind the "You're such a fucking asshole" hook at all. I think the profanity and the bluntness both work well for what you’re trying to accomplish. And I really like how it contrasts with everything that comes before it. But what this song needed was another ingredient. Either a new element to come in after (see, for instance, the "Kara" voiceover at the end of iVeg's song this round) to keep our interest, or some way of synthesizing the two moods together elegantly. As it stands, your song gave us pretty much all it had to offer by about the three-minute mark, and it's five minutes long.
Jealous Brother
"Time Has Its Orders"
As usual, I find no fault whatsoever in your production. I really love that subtle swelling instrument in the background - is that a pedal steel? Or perhaps a conventional guitar with a volume pedal intended to simulate a pedal steel? Either way, it's a really nice addition to the arrangement, barely present enough to consciously hear but contributing a lot to the song's emotional quality. You've chosen the rest of your guitar tones well; they don't clash with each other or your vocals, and they sound consistently exciting and interesting to my ears. Another choice I'd like to praise is the background vocal continuing under the guitar solo, which continues the emotional arc of the song and adds some lovely texture to that section. I also love your lead vocal performance; there's a ton of passion in your voice, but you never slip off key, either. The consistent higher-up vocal doubling works well, but I noticed you did that last round too, so I'm wondering if you could manipulate the impact of your vocal tone by picking moments to remove that doubled vocal for emphasis. Not that there's anywhere this song strikes me as lacking emphasis - this is more of a speculation on my part.
Yours is the only song this round for which I wasn't totally certain I heard the key change. You marked it on your song bio, and with that context I can hear it, but it's so smooth it barely registers. Whether that's a compliment or not, I'll leave to your personal taste. However, I don't think key changes really interface with your subject matter at all. Is there a narrative or emotional reason for the change, and for the change back? Your lyrics come from a place of heightened emotion throughout, which isn't a problem, but I don't think there's any different quality to the higher section, and the return doesn't feel like a return.
Even so, I really appreciated the clean production and the high emotional stakes of your story. Great work!
Brain Weasels
"Intervention"
And the award for most improved goes to Brain Weasels! You stuffed this song to bursting with melodic hooks and energy, and it works amazingly. I love the counterpoint vocals and the abrupt halts. In "Root to Rise (Overdrive)" I criticized the rapid pace of your lyrical phrasing and how that got in the way of your vocal delivery. This time, note where the emphasized syllables are elongated in your chorus, and where there are gaps for you to natually breathe. "THIS IS not an IN-ter-VEN-tion [pause] / Just another way to SAY I'm SAD [pause]." I could quibble with how this leads some emphasis being placed on inappropriate syllables, but in all honesty, I think this is a case where the scansion doesn't matter quite as much. I'm not sure why; normally I'm a huge stickler for making sure lyrics scan naturally. Maybe the incorrect emphases work for me because they're kind of a genre convention of emo music, so here they help establish the context? Or maybe because your character is so emotionally fraught that they can't be expected to line up their words correctly in the heat of the moment? Anyway, the elongations and rests in your vocal delivery make this feel MUCH more musical than your previous entry. I was probably a bit hard on "Root to Rise (Overdrive)," but I genuinely liked this song a lot.
Your key changes work well too. I admit, I was surprised when I read your song bio. It feels to me like you're modulating up, not down, so I wonder if perhaps you misinterpreted which key you're playing in? Or maybe my ears were tricked because the modulation from minor to major just "feels" like a lift, even though the tonal center is technically lower. Not a huge deal to me; either way the change is obvious and you clearly modulated back and forth. Furthermore, the subject matter of the song justifies the key change well, as your character vacillates from depression and bitterness to defiance, which anyone who's ever been dumped can surely relate to.
From a production and arrangement standpoint, this is another one of those songs where everything sounds a bit lo-fi, but I don't mind because it's consistent across all elements in the mix. Everything is balanced within tolerance (maybe the drums could come up a LITTLE? they're not distractingly bad where they're at, but I wanted to feel the kick and snare a little more), sounding well balanced and musical. Special props for the balancing when multiple layers of vocals come in, as that's a tricky thing to manage, especially in a noisy recording environment like you appear to have. But everything here sounds intentional and correct.
I did want to comment on the time feel in your verses. There's a ragged quality to the acoustic guitar and the vocal melody. At first I thought there was a single measure in a different time signature, but when I started counting, I realized it does all count out correctly in 4/4. However, you have a phrase with an abrupt ending built into the melody (instrumenal at 0:05 and 0:11, "end to this story" at 0:17, "Not for me" at 1:14), so I'm reading it as a couple measures of 4/4, one of 3/4, and then a "makeup" measure of 5/4, if that makes any sense? I think I'd like this even more without the makeup measure, if you could get comfortable with dropping that one beat from the measure in the verse and starting the next measure more abruptly. It would be a little "show-off-y" musically, but totally appropriate for the genre and subject matter. Try it out!
I was very sorry to see you didn't make the cut this time around, especially considering how much I disliked your round 1 entry. I hope you get a shadow in; being reinstated twice would be remarkable!
Jim Tyrrell
“The Fall”
We all have that one effect that we use probably a little too much, right? I'm a little overly fond of the vocal throw - that sweet delay on the lead vocal synced to the 1/4 or 1/2 note. I don't think I've heard you use it much in your recordings, so it surprised me to hear it here! It does add a nice satisfying emphasis to certain lines, but I think it would have worked better if the send on the delay had been triggered mid-phrase. For example, let’s look at the first prechorus (0:50 to 1:03). You have the full line “We’re just gonna take that fall” echoed at the 1/2. But because of the length of the line, the echo of “Just gonna” clashes with the first instance of the word “Take.” I propose that this would have sounded cleaner if you had kept the send muted until the exact instance of the word “Take,” so instead of the full line echoing, you’d have gotten “We’re just gonna take that fall (take that fall).” I also think the sixth line in the prechorus, “We’re just gonna lose it all,” shouldn’t have had a delay at all, because the echo ends up making your melisma on the word “it” sound messy.
Okay, nitpicking time over. This is a really sweet song with some warm classic textures. That Carpenters-ish brass section feels very comfortable, especially over those lightly tense suspended chords on the piano, and furthermore I love when you let the brass and piano drop at the end in favor of the percapella harmonizing, then gradually layer them back in. You’ve jam-packed the song with clever rhymes - my favorite is “When you are distant / I seem nonexistent.” The key change does a great job of signifying the emotional shift from lament to optimism, and doesn’t feel forced. Oh, and I love the lines: “Come join in the dance with me / I can’t really dance, so please be forgiving.”
Pigfarmer Jr.
“Say Goodbye To The River”
On my first few listens, I assumed this was a song about leaving a partner. “Free Bird” redux, if you will. I didn’t register that it was from the perspective of someone dying until I read your song bio. Though in retrospect, I admit, the clues were there. I just missed them. So my initial notes were focused on things like “What is the river symbolic of here,” and wondering whether it was a mixed metaphor if you were saying goodbye to the river, but also presumably floating away on the river? Pulling back and seeing the lyrics from a metaphysical perspective, they take on a transcendent beauty, rising above my petty concerns of literality.
I do still have notes on the mix, because there’s a lot you can do to get that point across to the listener, emotionally, through sound design. First, it’s the vocals. They’re pretty high and pretty dry. It’s good that your vocal level is consistent through the song and never gets lost. But I think it’s sitting a little too loud over the mix, and not enough reverb. It sounds like you used a decent amount of compression to get that consistent vocal level (either that or you have exceptionally good microphone technique!), so you’ve bought yourself the ability to turn the vocal back down without it getting lost in the mix. Some reverb will give it more a sense of space, and I think a pretty generous tail of reverb in this case would be merited, given the subject matter.
I also wonder about that instrumental section. It sounds like you had intended for a solo to go there, but maybe didn’t have time to record one? I’d love to hear a fiddle there, with some expressive volume swells and vibrato, but hey, beggars can’t really be choosers, right? Just anything that can convey a strong melodic idea in that section.
I’ve always admired how thoughtful and well-crafted your songs are, so you keep being yourself and I’ll look forward to hearing what you bring us next round.
Governing Dynamics
“Where’s the Fire?”
I’m not even much of a fan of shoegaze style rock, but you really have a flair for combining your guitar tones compellingly and layering that impassioned vocal over the sonic bed in a way that just fits. On repeated listens, I especially liked that pad which fades in as the first thing we hear, and works as a bed for the rest of the song. I also like the contrast between that rumbling rhythm guitar and the chorused lead guitar in the right speaker.
One quibble: since that lead guitar is hard-panned right, and there doesn’t seem to be a corresponding element panned left to balance it out (at least, not one I was able to pick out), the mix feels off-balance. If I take out my right earbud, the whole mix darkens a lot. If you want a quick-fix for that without adding anything new, you could check on the drum panning. I seldom touch the default panning options in Superior Drummer, but I’m pretty sure they have a one-button “flip the stereo field” control somewhere in there. “Pan from the drummer’s perspective” vs. “Pan from the audience perspective,” or something like that. If you flip the drums’ stereo field, the hi-hat and crash cymbal will be in the left speaker, which may counterbalance this (admittedly minor) issue that I’ve just written 150 words about. You might also try a stereo delay or ping-pong delay on the lead guitar… That might backfire and make things TOO busy, but I’d be excited to try it, at least.
Another minor issue - the vocal level goes a little off-kilter in the chorus. You’re 100% in control for the verses, but when you hit that higher register in the chorus, it sounds like your guitars overpower the voice a little. This could be a simple volume-automation issue, but I had a bit of an a-ha moment listening on my car speaker. Disregard if this sounds wrong, but here’s my hypothesis. Are you stepping back from the mic when your voice gets louder? Recording the verses with your mouth really close, but then giving yourself some distance for the chorus? I ask because I think I’m hearing your room sound encroaching on your voice in the chorus, which would indeed make it harder to mix. It’s tricky because the way you wrote this song calls for the vocal dynamic to change really suddenly. That’s not a fault of the songwriting, either… though it is a challenge for your mix to work with it. Here’s what I would do: Two vocal tracks, one for verses and one for choruses, mixed identically at first. I would keep my face in roughly the same position, pretty close to the mic, for both tracks, and keep from clipping by adjusting the input volume on my interface. And I would sing the last line of the verse before the chorus part, and I’d sing the first line of the chorus after the verse part (it’ll clip, but that’s fine because you won’t be using that part; it’s just to make the verse performance sound more naturalistic). Then I’d cut out the first line of the chorus from the verse take and cut out the last line of the verse from the chorus take, and find a spot to make that transition as seamless as I can manage. Hopefully then the change in vocal level wouldn’t be SO conspicuous and it’ll be easier to compress the chorus vocal without that room sound getting in the way.
So now I’ve spent nearly 500 words focused on correcting two relatively minor issues I’m hearing. Really efficient review writing, Jon.
Moving on… I’m trying to decide whether I like your “twist on an idiom” approach to the lyrics of this song. You take “Where’s the fire?” to mean what it normally does, which is to say “What’s your hurry?” or “Slow down,” but then I sense your pivot to a meaning more akin to “Where can I find a fire like that to motivate me?” I think I talked myself into liking it. I also noticed (approvingly) the contrast between the “fire” in the person you’re singing to, and your own pace compared to an “ice floe.” Yep, I see what you did there.
I also wanted to point out how much I love your three-part bridge. Starting with the slower “I turn to poison” part, then you double the pace of the vocal cadence as the snare starts hitting those quarter notes over “I was putting up a fight,” then leading into the key lift for the guitar solo. It’s changes like this that keep me interested through even a longer run time. I used to harp on your songs for running too long, but both of your entries in this Spintunes so far have felt very well-paced (even though they’re not actually much shorter!), so I really appreciate the effort you’ve been putting into maintaining interest throughout the lengths of your songs. It’s a pity you got cut on this one, but I’ll happily listen to a shadow if you’re working on one.
No comments:
Post a Comment