very neat vibe very cool

banger

Love the prominent bass and jazzy flair of this one. The drums are a bit flat, and could use some more compression or something to make them “pop” in the mix more. Otherwise, the production quality is fine, and the groovy synth melodies and slidey bass riffs seriously get my foot tapping. Overall, you’re right that the mixing isn’t perfect, but it’s hard to go overboard with synth melodies in my book. :D Thanks for coming out to the NGUAC this year, Crysstal712! Been a pleasure having you.

Mixing, mastering, and balance
1.5/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1.25/1.5
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
2/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1.25/1.5
Originality and uniqueness
1/1
Overall (how do the elements above interact?)
.75/1
Composite score
8.75/10

This one is really cute. The mix is indeed a bit off as you suggest. Hard to hear the kick. Bass is nicely up. Chords on the side need to come up about .4 dB at least and potentially be double tracked or spread out otherwise in the stereo space. Beyond that you've got such gorgeous writing on the leads I hesitate to score much lower than this. I especially enjoy what sounds to be like meow synth and would like that to be just a bit ... wetter! Otherwise I feel like cutting my critique here. FinaLee has a lot of great points!

I'd say that if you were going for a retro game menu/shopping/safe zone kind of sound, the essence of it is very much there. The grooving bass and melody slides, the "heel/toe" kicks of the drums, the brief use of chromatic scale; all of these really tie together for a pretty cool vibe!

For me, my main issue is how conflicted I feel about the mono sound. It certainly adds to that retro quality that you may have been going for, and I could easily picture it coming out of a very old radio. Despite this, I think even an additional splash of subtle panning could give it some much-needed dimension. I already hear some slight panning in the snare, and while I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, if you considered that then maybe look at something like the hi-hats as well. Your lead synth opened things up a little bit, but in totality I don't think it was quite enough for me.

You mention in your comments that you went a little overboard with the synth melodies, but in my opinion you could have added more melodic interest with an additional lead instrument noodling around after the synth and piano took their turns. The division between the synth and piano taking the lead was really neat (and that solo fill at 00:53 was easily my favorite part!), so why not grab the listener again with a third instrument butting in?

I say these things with the spirit of your piece in mind, and I don't believe they would conflict much with the style you have going on here. Good luck at the competition!

From one amateur to another,

Lee