Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Righty-ho! I'd like to start by pointing out that the vocals can be QUITE a bit better. They aren't actively bad by any means, but the vocal tone is quite... off. Notably, your vocals sound strained, and a tad nasally. What this generally means is that you need to work a bit more on enunciating the lyrics more clearly, and projecting your voice from the back of your throat and top of your neck, rather than the top of your throat close to the nasal cavity. If you feel vibration in your nasal cavity while singing, it's not the best. This kind of thing substantially impacts tonality, even when you use a radio style EQ or bandpass on the vocals. Practicing your vocal range will also decrease the strained feeling, especially as you let your vocal range explore beyond the comfortable middle zone.

- The second point I'd like to make is about the repetition in this track. Progressive House is inherently repetitive, and you do definitely develop your sound decently, but there are a couple of things keeping the repetition from being unengaging in progressive house music. You have one of them down really well, actually - the drop is very satisfying, though the second drop does deserve a few more bits of variation. However, overall this track lacks atmosphere and ambience, especially at the beginning. As a clear point of comparison, try giving this a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGdDpMYS7sA Notice all of the sound effects at the start set up an expansive atmosphere for the plucks and eventually drums to flesh it out and provide the more intense pulse for the drop. Even though it's repetitive, the texture of this atmosphere keeps it very engaging.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Now, all that said - this track is *nice*. It develops, it uses bits of 'ear candy' to provide variance during the drop, solid mixing and decent sound design... and quite frankly, that drop bangs pretty hard with the bass, even if it can get a bit overly repetitive at times. I said the second drop could use some variation, and that's true, but that by no means keeps it from being very engaging either since the rhythmic bass is VERY satisfying.

Final score: 8.5

Legit love this song!!! It's so beautiful, yet so vunerable!!! PLZ SING MORE IN YOUR SONGS!!! It's a big banger... Btw, this comes from a guy who knows nothing about music. Be gentle :)

This sounds very progressive, I like it! Feels like something from a very sci-fi action movie/game or something. Sounds are extremely clean, mixing and mastering sound perfect, and I love the use of panning and other effects. This feels very thought out and I think you should keep it coming :)