Hm...

Well, its most definetely not your best work. Im sure you could do a helluva lot better. For a madness loop, its not bad. A good use of drums but tahts basically it. The synth is jsut pitch bended too the point of driving someone crazy. Im sure this would be good for giving someone a headache, but as music, not so much.

Darklight17

P.S This is your judging review from NGADM Round 1. I posted it for ya just cos its always nice to have more reviews.

No effort

This entire song is made of two elements. Drums and a cliche'd synth. That's it. That's the ENTIRE FREAKING SONG. What is this, a joke? Not only do you only have a single synth going on with a very random melody, you completely destroy it in random, unnecessary pitch bendings that ruin the entire creepy atmosphere that you were going for in the first place!

Good points: The intro in general, especially 0:20, which is superbly done and really does sound like a stealth track.

Bad points: Everything else. The magical moment at 0:20 is overridden by the fact that its the only redeeming quality of the entire song, which is otherwise just a glorified drum loop with a synth that's been pitch bended and screwed around with to the point of insanity. There is nothing here.

5/10
3/5

Sorry, but this didn't impress me too much...

I don't think I can consider this as your best work; I'm sure you're capable of more. Anyway, here's the review I said I'd do to the people whose opponent was unable to submit their song to the Death Match...

We'll start with the melodies. They have that stealthy feel too them, and the pitch bending was done pretty well, but firstly they were much too high in pitch, and got rather annoying TBH. I think you should add something a little more catchy than these melodies. Plus, I don't think this fits too well with the madness series. I expected something a little more action-packed than this. It sounds spy-ish, but in the madness series you don't spy around stealthily but rather make yourself seen as you shoot the heck out of all your enemies. Also, I think this is a little too short. True, it's a loop, but if I judge this as a submission to the Death Match and not a loop for a Madness flash, then I'd call it a bit too short.

The instrument is OK, but there weren't enough instruments. It was simply a pitch-bent saw synth playing along some slightly monotonous drums. A ridiculously catchy bass and maybe some piano chords are definitely needed if you're going for a spy-theme song. I know how good you are with piano, so I'm sure some chords along with a few subtle piano notes here and there wouldn't hurt. One instrument along with drums rarely sounds enjoyable to listen to. The addition of a pad would help too. I liked the sound effect at 0:05: you could add a few more sound effects here and there. Maybe if you end up aiming for a 2:45 song other than a 1:00 loop, you could add some gunfire sound effects and stuff; maybe even a vocal sample to remove some of the repetitiveness that this song has would be cool as well. Sorry for the long paragraph...

The transitions are OK, but at times the automation shifts from the drums in the background gave some weird and slightly random transitions. Also, as Peagy said, the main instrument could have a more subtle introduction, such as a slight fade in on the first note. Other than that, the transitions were decent. I liked the drum buildup at the beginning, and the drums fading out at the end too.

The structure is pretty weird. It felt as if there was a randomly transitioned drum beat in the background along with a few high random notes. If you find it hard to make a complicated but good structure, simply go for the Into - Chorus -Melody 1 - Chorus - Melody 2 - Melody 3 - Chorus - Outro or something like that. Variety is good, but a little TOO good, since it sounds quite random, and that contrasts with the lack of instrument variety leaving the song in a pretty weird state.

The intro was OK - it started the song up very nicely, with a nice automation shift, and this looped perfectly, since you matched the outro with the intro perfectly. Nothing to complain about over here, I guess, so good job.

The drums are fairly good, but a little weird. Instead of trying to get a smooth transition from one drum beat to another, you do an automation shift which completely messes up the background. This happens quite a lot at from around 0:20 to about 0:38. Also, there was a rough drum transition at 0:47, since it switched from one drum beat to another too suddenly. Maybe you could use a delayed/reverbed reverse cymbal and/or a drum roll. The samples were pretty good, if not a bit too weak, and the drums were just slightly too loud IMO. I'd suggest adding some reverb to the drums and making them a little quieter with some slightly more powerful samples, and trying to fix the drum transitions a little.

For a Madness loop, it isn't too bad, disregarding the fact that it sounds a little too spy-ish and not action-packed enough, but for a submission to the Death Match, I see it as a short loop with just a randomly automated bunch of drum beats playing along a slightly annoying pitch-bent saw synth. I'm definite you can do better than this, and I hope that for your Round 2 submission I see what you can REALLY do. Sorry for any typos, I'm in a hurry...
6/10
3/5

-Review Request Club-

Excellent work

While not necessarily something that you would hear in the official Madness, it's something that I could expect other people in the fanboy section of this site to use for their own Madness pieces.

I think that the high pitched notes are a little out of keeping with madness and it doesn't quite sound industrial enough. Bear in mind that this is going to be accompanied by lots of gunfire and sounds of people being killed in the quickest way possible as the unstoppable killing machine that is Hank ploughs through wave after wave of goons.

Here we have something that's getting close to a pinnacle of a craft. The definitive madness tune is almost within your grasp, so work a little on losing that high note section and you should be able to squeeze a 10 out of me for this ;)

[Review Request Club]

Very good loop

This is a very good loop. The backing track sounds very stealthy and creates a pretty good atmosphere. The sounds in the foreground add to the stealthy atmosphere and they also sound very good as well.
Especially that "screaming" sound.

Also, the looping is done in a very good way, nice work!

{ Review Request Club }