adieuwinter - Tidelocked:

The Good:
-This piece has some really neat ambiance which sounds fantastic, particularly towards the beginning.
-This has some really good organization - it shows the main climax multiple times with a solid breakdown.

The Not-So-Good:
-One of my main issues with this piece is in the singing. It sounds flat. While I know it's been overused recently in a lot of commercial music, I'd highly recommend using some autotuning to fix up the pitch a bit.
-The mixing in the climaxes has a large issue of just plain too much stuff going on - especially in the second section with the piano where there is extremely obvious clipping and distortion from this. Try taking a step back and considering what you want people to hear rather than a wall of sounds. You might also want to try reducing all of the instruments by about 20% and then doing your mixing and mastering after that. Even with a lot of instruments, I find that has helped me a ton with final clarity of my mixes.
-Apologies in advance - a lot of the themes and ideas in this, particularly in the piano, seem like they are random bashing of a keyboard in the general chord progression that the piece has.

The Result: 6/10

This is an official NGAUC Review

My personal rating for your piece is as follows:
Production: 20/30 (Average)
Composition: 16/30 (Average)
Instrumentation: 11/15 (Above Average)
Originality: 9/10 (Great)
Interest: 9/15 (Average)

Giving a total of 65/100, or 3.25 (rounded to 3.5) stars. ('Average')

Please view your rubric for comments-
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I like the atmosphere at the beginning. The pads at :04 kind of disrupt the flow a bit, though. It’s a little hard to follow the rhythm, and they seem a bit stuttery in a way that doesn’t positively contribute to the texture. The synths at around :11 seemed a bit hollow. You seemed to be going for a really expressive quality with the vocals, but at the same time they’re a little dry. You also don’t really articulate the consonants clearly, which results in the vocals sounding a bit drunk and incomprehensible, to be honest. The lyrics themselves were enjoyable, but I only really know that because they’re written in the author’s comments. I really would’ve liked to see the vocals mimic the atmosphere in terms of the volume of reverb and harmonic depth. Perhaps some chorus effects would help. You also overdo the delay effects at times, such as 2:00. You tried to add a sense of climax to the piece, but it fell flat a bit when the texture got too busy at 2:09. I think it’s the arrhythmic piano that’s really dragging the piece down there. The mood of the gentle vocals and dreamy pads clashes big-time with the punchy piano, and the drums get a little lost among the chaos, especially the kick. The piece doesn’t sound very conclusive either. It also lacks some strong melodic content, and overall the structure doesn’t really appeal to my emotions with any phrasing, build-ups, or dynamic contrast. Sorry man. I hope this review helped, but I think you were right when you implied you had some work to do on the “development.” I’d encourage you to keep working on this, though. PM me when you finish and I’ll give the final version another review. I know you’ve put out tracks 10x stronger than this before. Good luck! ;)

5/10