Cool work with the drums and rythms

Disclaimer: without the score sheet in front of me I may review this a little differently than I did in the fever pitch of trying to score everyone else fairly in two weeks. This review is just an elaboration of why I may have scored the way I did and everyone I'm reviewing today will receive this little disclaimer, kisses.

With that in mind, I'm going right in assuming I took some big points off "production." I'll get to what I liked and what you did right in a minute but that fuzz throughout the track is a little annoying. There's no excuse for that grainy white noise permeating the entire track. This song with cleaner sounds would have scored much better. I thought it was the drum kit but after listening a second time I can now hear white noise going all the way back to the ambient intro. I've seen lofi hip-hop producers use white noise generators to emulate record pops and sizzles but something like that can get really old really fast if it isn't doing the surrounding track any favors. Romantic record fuzz needs to done perfectly or else it's just noise that doesn't contribute anything. I actually love all the technical nuances to this song, the musicality is nice but I may have taken off a point or two as my attention span waned very quickly for a short two minute track. I keep focusing on that white noise, it's just too distracting. Spontaneous note, those record scratch samples sounded great in comparison.

As a beatboxer and amateur vocalist myself, I got a lot of respect for anyone that uses their voice to convey musical ideas, rhymes, or lyrics. You had a lot of spirit in that regard. Thanks for sharing those intimate feelings and ideas in your comments section. Music conveys lots of feelings, you got that down really well. That last little section reminded me of some Circa Survive indy rock. I'm sorry if I took off points for "emotion" or "spunk/personality," because you clearly have that in spades but again I'm not looking at the score sheets today. If you want a mathematical breakdown of why everyone got the scores they did, you should join a math competition instead, music is subject to opinion and bias. IMO, the brevity of your track conveyed a lack of inspiration or direction. It can be hard to hit three minutes but that's the undiscussed minimum I was looking for. I have a hard time taking off points for "composition" or "emotion" when people go as far as four or five minutes. Not everyone can write a six minute track, hell at that point I get frustrated and fidgety. A perfect song can be two minutes long but to stay competitive it might have been wise to try to write something a little longer to match the energy of your most competitive peers. There was totally room to write a longer atmospheric introduction. It looks like you have three distinct sections of lyrics, the instrumental parts in-between them could have been longer and more nuanced. I loved that sample play at 1:10 and the lyrical flow before it was inspired. You're lyrics are strong but the delivery is battling with the mixdown of the rest of the track. I'm not very good when it comes to mixing hip hop but I can point out that your lyrics are getting a little over powered by everything else. If I may focus a little on what I think might help, panning high frequency instruments like rides, hi hats, and pads off the the sides a little more might help give you some space. People often don't take full advantage of panning but keeping that sub bass in the middle with the vocals also center but lightly sidechaining the sub bass might give you some added clarity. The more clarity you can get out of your vocals the more "mistakes" we might hear but it all comes together and a good mix down will only benefit your singing in the long run with everything working together perfectly.

Aside from hiding the vocals a little that sub bass was awesome, nothing else to say about it. Loved those chromatic pitch slides.

It's obvious that you're over compressing the track while making it quieter, if only accidentally. There is visible space in the wave shape via the Newgrounds player. That is negative space in the mix that you're not taking advantage of. It took me a long time in Reason 4 to realize that there was a preset limiter on the master out that needed to be bypassed, you might be dealing with a similar issue here? I'm not looking for a huge brick but you can compare your audio to someone else's in the contest and see what I'm talking about when I say your wave shape is visually smaller in comparison. There's room in the stereo field being artificially taken out of this via some kind of mastering/fidelity tool. It's robing your music of much needed power and stereo space.

I'm actually not hearing any note worthy panning. Briefly if I may say, learning how to creatively balance sounds left vs right is a game changing nuance. Over ten years ago, Rig mentioned to me that panning sounds can create the illusion that they are louder than they actually are so you can pan a sound then turn the volume down a little which helps create space in the mix for other sounds. You can get really experimental with your panning data, sometimes people will use a stereo field to emulate live dynamics. I like to program drum fills that move through the stereo field starting on the left side and moving to the right side with each tom drum in it's own location. It creates an aggressive illusion of movement but you can emulate that with almost any instrument. Imagine a vocalist using pan data to create a back and forth conversation, a statement in the left ear followed by a rebuttal in the right. There is definitely style in how people choose to pan but when I don't hear much sensitivity to pan data I like to try and point it out. Good panning aids fidelity as much as if not more so than anything else.

Sorry if I didn't hit on everything you wanted to hear about, once more I'll point out that I'm not opening up the score sheets today to verify anything, my opinions might be more nuanced today while writing reviews. This should be more than enough to help you identify how judges might approach their opinions. We all have our own styles and ideas, never forget that the people judging these competitions are your peers regardless of their taste in music or cultural backgrounds. You have the same potential as anyone else here, just have to keep an open mind and keep moving forwards while learning new tricks everyday. Have a good one AkioDaku and continue to cherish your music like a good father <3

Holy shit, this beat is sick! Great track man! Awesome rap vocals and I love your singing voice at 1:38, works really well!

love the atmosphere!

Loving it. <3