Motivated Wonders[NGAP10]

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Motivated Wonders[NGAP10]

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Author Comments

None too soon, none too late, It's a great mix of Funk and Classical. for the 10th Anniversary contest.

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2013-04-27 14:05:50

NGAP 10TH ANNIVERSARY CONTEST REVIEW

You're the first to put melodies from more than one song in your track. Interesting!

I suppose I'll have to treat this as two different covers. The Motivated Suspicions cover was my favourite from the two. You still managed to retain the great chords from the original and you've got some great ideas in there too. The original is MIDI so it's nice to hear it with a beefier and thicker arrangement, rather than with crappy MIDI instruments. The other cover was not as impressive, I felt, but you still made some decent interpretation of the original in some parts.

That said, I expected a lot more from you and this was a bit of a disappointment. A lot of the samples you used just don't that good at all and this isn't mixed well. The slap bass in particular sounds bad. The sax is the only instrument in the Motivated Suspicions track which I was happy with. The second cover is also lacking in good sounds (and this can be heard all too clearly at 4:54 especially), and you didn't even vary the genre and structure that much either,. And of course, a big issue with this track is that it's just two covers squashed together. when I said I allowed composition from more than one track, I was still expecting one unified experience, since you essentially did the same thing as posting two submissions to the contest, except they're just put together in one audio file here. No good transition, nothing to join the two together. You didn't even use the same instrument set.

I love some of the ideas you have here, but I'm a big fan of some of your other works and this doesn't begin to compare I'm afraid.

SCORE: 6/10

Nimble responds:

I can agree with you with just about everything you've said here; mixing ain't my strong suit, there are a couple sounds that are below quality, and the transition didn't go very well. I wanted the transition to be sudden, e-brake style(the kind you sometimes see in film scores and musicals), but I guess it was just a bit too much of a fast change to be effective. I will argue the instrument set point though. there is a english horn improvisational solo in the Motivated Suspicions part and right after the solo section the harp and flute/eng are used along with the electric piano in the "B" section, and the harp plays along with e.pno for the rest of the Motivated Suspicions part. Also, the brass section is the same throughout both sections. I'm just being technical at this point, though.

In all, I do feel like if I had just left out the second half it would've been a lot better, due to the lack of transition and no general structural changes. To be honest, Time was one thing I was spending alot of on this contest, because for two weeks I was brainstorming and sending PMs out to artists asking for a MIDI or chords to work with. Of course then a few unexpected things happened, ended up working for about 9 hours in one sitting on this single submission, then turning it in just about an hour before the deadline. I feel terrible to have disappointed you, and will make it a personal goal to learn and fix ANY of my future mistakes and will try my best to reach a higher standard with each submission that i write in the future. I thank you for your time in reviewing this piece.

SkyeWint

2013-04-27 11:57:17

Hello.

The Good:
-You really got the funky bass down, same for the saxophones, which sound incredibly sexy.
-There's some nice variation in both sections, and it's fairly impressive that you remixed two songs in the time it took.

The Not-So-Good:
-There's a lot of dissonance in some places, such as in the first flute/harp solo.
-The drums are fairly dull and flat, aside from the cymbals.
-At about 2:35, it gets fairly muddy and hard to hear most things.
-The transition at 3:30 is extraordinarily rough for no good reason.
-The piano and most of the brass instruments are fairly weak.
-A few mixing problems from about 4:00 to 4:20 on the right.
-This shouldn't be one song. It's two different pieces remixed in different ways without even a transition between each other.

Overall: Score of 5/10. Main problems are the flat sounds of the instruments and the horrifying transition. Sorry for not having much to say in the "Good" section. There wasn't much I could think of - I'm not saying there aren't good aspects, but there were none I could verbalize easily. Also, I really wish you hadn't essentially made two tracks and then crossfaded between them. It seems dangerously close to cheating.

Nimble responds:

I agree with a lot of what you're saying- I wanted the transition to be like an Attacca, a Segue-Sudden and ridiculous. I guess I made it a bit too sudden. Thanks for taking the time to review.