Score: 8
"Pretty Good"
date: September 2, 2008
I don't really know if I'm qualified to review an Industrial song, as A) I don't particularly like the genre and B) I don't even know the genre, but here we go anyway.
First off, positive stuff: it builds up slowly, but well; even though this is a different genre than the one I work in, I learned a lot from listening to this closely. I need to find out how to steadily increase note velocity/volume in Fruity Loops. I also learned that I don't need to end a song by losing instruments one at a timet; building it up and just leaving it worked well in this song.
About the instruments chosen; to be honest, I hate this much distortion on instruments so I won't say anything more about that because I just don't appreciate that part of this song. I love the drums though; you only changed them (twice?) throughout the whole song, so maybe a little more variation just to mix it up a bit. I like the guitar too; it was simple, but it sounded good.
About the structure; forgive me if I'm wrong and I missed something (it's a long song!), but the way I see it is: drum rhythm A, bass, lots of new instruments with drum rhythm B , back to drum rhythm A with new instruments, back to drum rhythm B with the same instruments you used last time with B, back to drum rhythm A with the same instruments you used last time with A, and so on and so forth. There were some volume changes, sure, which helped build up the transition from A to B or the other way around, but still, not too much variation. I don't know if that's an important part of the genre or not.
Also, about the last thirty seconds being "killer"; it sounds much like 1:40 except louder :P if there are many more instruments there, they're hard to hear over the distortion.
All in all:
7/10 for instruments.
8/10 for structure, because I like the build up and ending.
9/10 for effort, because you used actual instruments and I can't write guitar parts to save my life.
8/10, 4/5 overall.
Thank you for the review!
September 2, 2008
Author's Response:
Sweet, a long and detailed review. First: I really appreciate it.
Now to the discussion part (my favorite):
I think you have a point about the drums...there are three main patterns, and then really only two minor embellishments to one of the loops used. I had versions with more diverse drums but I couldn't get it to a point where I loved how the drums sounded enough to get over the fact that sometimes it felt like variation for variaton's sake.
As for the overall sound (it is gritty and distorted, yeah) I can only say that it's how I heard it in my head, and it's how I'd outfit the scene. But I get that people have different tastes.
Structure, honestly, is something I was proudest of for this one. It had three main parts (not many, I admit) but I think there's enough variation between different iterations of the parts there...well, I suppose I could be mistaken; which is why it's nice to hear people's opinions. I do think the transfer to mp3 hurt the ending- there's alot more different there than "louder".
Anyways, I love detailed reviews like yours, and I really appreciate it tremendously...so thank you.
