(disclaimer: AIM judge review here! these are just my opinions and thoughts, you can take from them whatever you like! music is subjective and all that. <3)

dark stuff! i generally feel the mood of the artwork coming through in the musical picture you're painting. the industrial-y kinda drums and heavy synths are a good fit here. this one seems kind of challenging in its abstractness to represent with music, but i think you made some good choices.

some aspects of your sequencing could be given more focus and detail to really bring out the ideas you've got going on and let them flourish - chief among them to me is paying attention to the note lengths. rather than letting all the notes run their full length until the next note happens, leaving some space inbetween them, especially the longer held notes, would add some room to breathe in the piece. the synth bass especially i think could stand to have some space between the notes, as it winds up playing over the top of some of the other stuff, like the low arpeggio and the drums. it only serves to muddy up that frequency range. also, especially with the arpeggios, some variations in the note velocities could help it feel a little less robotic, like not using the same ones all the time and lowering the values that aren't on strong beats.

you already mentioned in the description that this was a quick tune and called it repetitive, so i maybe don't need to bring up that some things could definitely use more variation, like the main eighth-note rhythm lick that grounds the song. it could be doing other stuff sometimes or just cut out in some parts i think, since we're already pretty familiar with it as the song goes by. if it's gone for a section and then comes back though, we can go "ah! that thing from before, it's back, cool!" that's much more satisfying! some more development in the form of a 'B section' to contrast with your main idea would also really help; but with all that said, i think you've already got some good ideas about pacing, as there are still ways you bring in variation or new lines to add on top or focus on.

AIM 2023 Judge Review

You do a fairly good job at building this track around a single idea. I like the combination of the light, high bells with that low acid bass. The faster high chords pair well with the repeating melodic bassline and I like how you build upon the intensity towards the end. The piece feels off-putting but it also manages to be quite flowy with those high bell sounds and given that the character in the art is also bleeding profusely, I think it is an appropriate enough fit.

The part of the track that didn't work for me was the drums. They just seem to enter in at the start and then suddenly leave, then come back again. It didn't feel like there was any rhyme or reason for them to be in the track and their sound just doesn't mix that well with the rest of the synths.

I also think this track could have explored its art inspiration a lot further. When I look at the art and its description, I read about a very harrowing scenario and I think this track was a missed opportunity to delve into that narrative and find ways to express that musically. I guess the idea behind this entry is that the repetition reflects how the "bleeding doesn't stop", though I think this art and the story behind the character provided a lot more in-depth grounds to form a very bleak and emotionally driven track. I'm not sure if that was taken into account here, but from what I hear, it didn't seem like that was the case.

Overall, I don't think the repetition is bad nor is that the issue. It's about how the repetition is used and the role it plays in the composition and the reflection of the art inspiration. This entry does at least have a sense of flow and its intensity shows that it was at least pointing in the right direction.

the main riff sort of reminds me of king nothing by metallica (its a stretch ik). I REALLY recommend investing in a DAW in the future though. If you like garageband then i recommend Logic Pro the most, but ableton, pro tools, and FL are all good to.