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:

- So, I'm very puzzled. This piece is extremely dissonant, but it doesn't feel intentionally dissonant. At the same time, it seems as if it would be, since other music on your album doesn't have nearly as much dissonance and detuning as there is in this song. See, there are a couple problems keeping me from feeling like it's applied deliberately. First, most of the sound is very light detuning that mostly but not completely fits the chord progression, particularly in the vocals. This is very constant throughout the track but not entirely consistent unless the lower vocal harmony is present in which case it is almost always dissonant. If it was deliberate then... secondly, I don't see the context in which it has meaning - there isn't anything in the lyrics that would indicate why (assuming I'm not mishearing - I have difficulty understanding lyrics without having them written down for reference). What this results in is a lot of dissonance but without narrative purpose, which does mean that even if deliberate... it's causing the music to be off-putting without apparent narrative purpose, which is pretty important for establishing detuning like this as meaningful.

- Secondly! The biggest other issue with this track is the outro. The intro is wonderful, but the outro doesn't really conclude anything. It just finishes the vocal line and harmony, then without even concluding the chord progression, the music abruptly ends. This can be almost immediately made better by adding a final chord, perhaps on a delay to make it feel more conclusive while maintaining the existing cut. Using the first chord in the progression but one inversion down tends to be fairly conclusive. Experimenting with other ways to end the track would easily be possible as well, given the eclectic feel of this track.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I actually like this quite a bit. It's such an odd, almost campy feeling that I really vibe with. Without the odd dissonance or with some kind of narrative reason for it, this track would feel a lot better and we could get more into the nitty gritty of reverb and vocal tone - but even as-is, this is neat and chill and... weird, in some really nice ways. I'm curious how you would tweak it after this point, and I'm certainly curious what new music you'll come up with.

Final score: 6.5

Some good stuff. :)