@step bro wrote an essay 💀

This is an NGADM Round 3 Review

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Hey aliaspharow! This review is WAY overdue. My apologies; I left it out accidentally and only now did it hit me that I have yet to review this.

Anyway, onto the review. I have to say; way to go for totally upping your game! This is my favourite track from you so far this NGADM. It's got all the qualities I enjoy about your music, except now they're presented in a super coherent and perfectly-structured ~4 minutes of earcandy heaven. Seriously, this sounds so much more like a finished and thoughtfully-structured track than your other NGADM submissions. Each section leads naturally to the next, and when we finish listening to the track, there's a feeling of satisfaction and conclusion, which is certainly a mark of a well-structured piece of music. Of course, on top of that, you keep up your pace of stellar production and beautiful melodic content.

I actually don't have much to complain about in this track. It's a super solid submission with everything I look for in a drum'n'bass track. The sole problem I want to talk about lies within the second half of the track, which feels kind of static and unvaried. You lead up to 2:00 nicely, but after that the song stays at exactly the same energy level till the end. Another break before the final climax could fix this, or (preferably) you could've increased the energy levels even more, adding more layers of intricacy and melodic content.

All in all, this is impressive to say the least. Wonderful job on this!

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SCORE: 9.0/10

=== This is an NGADM Round 3 Review ===

I find it funny that everyone is all like, "bruh, you made such a big improvement over your last track!" "THIS IS AMAZING! HOW DID YOU GET SO MUCH BETTER?!?" Just between you and me, I always knew you were this good. I mean, I had to ding you a little for uploading a WIP last time, but in my mind if that WIP was stretched out to full length, it would have done just as good as this song.

Which isn't to say that you *haven't* been improving, since you definitely have, just not to a degree everyone else is saying. They're saying you went from good to great. I'm saying you went from great to slightly greater. ;-)

I honestly think that your biggest path to getting better has almost nothing to do with music and everything to do with sitting down and committing to busting out full tracks. To actually make a track with climaxes, breakdowns, you know, the stuff that keeps music varied past the first minute.

The good thing is that's exactly what you did here and you nailed it!

I am actually constantly a little worried about scoring your piece. I might have mentioned this elsewhere, but your type of music is really really similar to the style of music that I enjoy. This kind of thing makes me worried that I might be scoring your track too high, but then maybe that worry is making me overcompensate and score too low??? In either case, I have to commend you on all the awesome work you put out here, since it's right down my friggin alley and I LOVE IT.

Your melody work is awesome in a way that I personally really enjoy. It's got a slight bit of groove to it, a little bit of repetition, and a lot of small catchy riffs. So good.

Your attention to detail is great. You've got a ton of really unique sounds. I mean, right at the start of the track, there's this weird high pitched vocal noise. What the heck even is that? I have no idea how that could fit in a song, but I dunno, somehow you make it work. MAGIC.

The concept of using what sounds like a soda can popping open as a sound effect cracks me up. It fits so well!

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my last review, but a good deal of my score is an educated guess at how good of a musician you are (rather than just how good the song is). I mean, this is a deathmatch, and I want to pick the best musician (who can continue to write great songs) rather than a one trick pony, ya know?

Good musicians have a bunch of characteristics that average musicians don't have. One of the most important ones is that they know exactly which aspects of their songs work and which aren't, and they're sure to showcase the best stuff right up front, and get rid of all the crap that isn't working. This is why your music poses a bit of a conundrum to me. It always seems to me when I'm listening to your music that the parts that you highlight are highlighted completely by accident, rather than with the intentionality that a good musician would have. And yet you consistently "accidentally" highlight the best parts of your track, so it can't be an accident, can it? Or are you just the most lucky musician in the world?

I mean, listen to the melodic solos going on at :30 onwards to :48. These solos are awesome. I love them. (I think it might have something to do with how you solo in a really similar style to me. I'mnotbiased), and there's pretty much nothing else with a lot of interest going on in the song, so they just naturally receive focus. So it seems like you highlighted them intentionally, right? ...But I'm actually not so sure. I mean, you doused them really heavily in reverb, as if you wanted to hide them. And you didn't actually make the lead instrument loud enough to unambiguously take center stage, so the first time I listened to the track I didn't even realize that they should be the focal instrument.

It's this kind of ambiguity in your tracks that really nags at me. If you think it's good, put it front and center! And if you don't, just get rid of it. (But don't, since I think it's good.)

Another thing I really dig is the little 4 note riff at :35-36, :47-48 and other places. It's alright by itself, but the repetition adds a lot. You have such a talent for coming up with these tiny simple riffs that add a whole bunch of character to the piece - this was something I appreciated in your previous track as well. You kind of bury it back a little in the mix, which makes me, again, really wish that you highlighted it more! You have good ideas, don't hide them! :)

Moving on though. I was really pleased that you did a song with a more interesting arrangement than your last track. Particularly, I love the breakdown at 1:12. Alright, the fact that you clearly just pitched a single syllable up and down for all your notes rather than choosing multiple different syllables to pitch takes away a little from the professional quality, but I don't really even care all that much. I just love this sort of pitch bent quality in vocals. The pitching strikes the balance between real and artificial in a really nice way.

On the other hand, I feel like the climax-esque section that comes after that breakdown stays a little too high energy for a little too long. It doesn't really vary it up at all, and aside from a few simple synth arps, there's nothing all too fascinating going on here. This is actually probably the biggest issue I had with the track - a strong lack of variation in the 2nd half. I feel like the song does not really go anywhere after the 2:30 mark. I mean, just imagine how much more compelling that section would have been with a synth solo similar to the idea you had around :30 coming in after a couple of bars of climax.

(And now, listening to the song for the umpteenth time in a row, I come to find that you do in fact have a solo buried in that second half! I'm leaving the above here anyways, because I think that for the solo to be really effective, it'd need to have more of a focus on it from the rest of the mix.)

All in all, great song. Keep at it!

Score: 8.50

This is an NGADM 2015 Review.

Ahh, here we are. This feels like the song I’ve been waiting to hear all competition. I don’t say this simply because I’m a sucker for DnB, and I promise I’m not biased, but dude, this is fantastic. Great production, awesome composition, exciting sound design (I love the use of the can opening sfx) and just all around face-melting. This is the kind of thing I’d expect to hear on a large YouTube promotion channel or something like that, honestly. It’s extremely high quality and potent. It’s not without its flaws, but few tracks are. I’d just like to get out the way that I think very, very highly of this track.

The subtleties in the intro are great. I love the heavy chord synth stabs, and the sliding lead. The dirty, gritty, distorted bass you bring in is great as well, and very appropriate for the song. Great buildup as well, the melody here is just awesome; especially when you bring it up an octave. Love the phaser on the percussion at points, the vocal chops, the bitcrushing you automate on them, and the saw plucks in the buildup.

The drop/chorus was way better than I expected it to be. That distorted saw is just perfect, it’s so incredibly aggressive and strong. It fills up what would otherwise be a pretty empty mix, and I love the way it does so. The melodies are still pretty good, though I think the chorus is a little aimless in comparison to the buildup. One other criticism I have relates to the mix at this part, but I’ll probably get into the production side of things a little later in the review simply for the sake of intelligible structure.

I like the switch-up at 2:50. The decision to change the chord structure and drop the heavy distorted saw definitely kept things pretty interesting, and it worked well as an outro; but I feel the song lost a lot of its purpose as a result. The decision was still an interesting one and I enjoyed it, but I definitely enjoyed the first half of the song a lot more.

So, I think your snare is great, but I’m unsure about your kick. Your percussion is definitely pretty clean and I like how punchy it is, but the kick really doesn’t have the power it needs. I can hear it somewhat well, but it needs a click, a high-end transient of some kind. The low end transient it has is great, but it just doesn’t punch through the mix well enough to be satisfying, in my opinion, at least in the chorus. Outside of that it sounds pretty good, it’s nice and short and strong. The fills are great as well, nice and jingley :P I do think they might be a little on the high side of things, though - at least, they definitely sound that way in the intro.

So speaking in a more general sense, I think your mix is pretty good (talking about the chorus mostly), but that the heavy distorted saw’s harmonics are just a little bit too brutal when you really take the lowpass off it, and they end up interfering with the percussion a little. The lead seems relatively fine and audible, but I do feel as though the percussion could definitely be punching through more than it is, and that the saw is probably to blame. This is a pretty minor complaint, though. I just think the low-mids to mids on the saw are a little too harsh.

Mastering-wise you’re fairly solid, but I’m pretty sure I can hear a bit of that master limiter. It’s not too bad, and I could just be going crazy, so who knows. Your song is definitely fairly loud - I can’t download it to check, but I’d guess it’s under -10RMS, so we’re all good. I think you did a pretty solid job production-wise.

I think the first half of this song was better than the second; it felt stronger, had more direction, had more subtle FX and was structurally fantastic. I’d be lying if I didn’t think the whole thing was awesome, though. Great work, I’ll definitely be checking out the rest of your work when I have time :)

NGADM Review:

YES! This is exactly what I was looking for from you. Your compositional skills have always shined in this competition, but your production has been off. But in this sound you NAIL it on the mixing side. Again, you create a wonderful soundscape for me to fall into, with tons of expression in the synths. BEAUTIFUL drums. This is what I was concerned for you with in earlier tracks, but I'm so glad that you've improved on it so much.

In terms of composition, this fell shorter compared to your other pieces. For example, the ending felt a little repetitive and it could have been pushed to be prettier in my opinion. This could have been done simply by changing the chords first, and then adjusting the melody accordingly, or even layering more pieces on top of it. Otherwise, transitions and everything is really nice. Tons of variety in the drums and synths. I guess I just felt that the transitions and everything could have been moved a little more than just variation in the sounds that you use, and more in the chords themselves. Dynamically I think the track was fine, but I do feel that towards the end some slight dynamic changes from the 2:00 mark and onward would have been nice. GREAT work. Congrats on making it to the next round. You've definitely shown the most improvement in this competition than anyone else. Awesome awesome awesome work.

8.9/10

-Ryan