Wow, this is for sure the hardest song I ever worked on. Now, probably none of you know, but I was planning on doing a collab album with Scooter-16, but since he was too lazy to make songs for it (:P), we were only left with the songs I made for the album and two collab songs we intended for the album. This is one of them. It's a mixture of five different genres (thanks goes to dj-Jo's song 'Contingency of Music' for inspiring us). Here are the genres:
0:00 - 0:39 - Drum'n'Bass - This is the worst genre for us IMO. Wait for it to pass before it gets better. Scooter did the melody here, and I did all the drum work and he used my bass sample, so we can say he did 60% of the work and I did 40%.
0:40 - 1:31 - Dance - Dance is one of our prominent genres, so naturally this came out well. Scooter did most of it though - he invented the melodies and a bit of the drums, while i made the bass for the song and added a bit of the drums too, so I'd say he did 80% of it and I did 20%.
1:37 - 2:28 - Classical - We're pretty good at classical too, so this came out rather well. Mastering is a little off, but IMO the melodies are great. Over here I found out my love for pizzicato strings. I did most of this - Scooter only did 3/4 of the part from 1:37 - 1:50, and I did all of the drum work and the rest, so he did around 10% and I did 90%.
2:35 - 3:34 - Cookie to anyone who can guess what this is :3 (hint: look at my current most popular song of 2009) - Scooter-16, after trying out this part himself, gave up almost instantly, so it was up to me entirely. I did 100% of this, leaving Scooter-16 with a 0%.
3:39 - End - Medieval - Well, this is sort of a mixture of medieval and tribal, and in my opinion this is the best. I'd say we worked 50-50 on this, since I did the melody from 3:39 - 3:48 and the melodies from 4:27 till the end, along with every second of the drum work, while Scooter invented the very nice melody in the middle with a rather awesome fugue, and the whole idea to do Medieval was his. By the way, totally unrelated note... the melody I did at 4:27 sounds stolen. I don't know why; after I finished it, I said to myself 'Hey, this sounds really familiar' and now I'm almost certain I stole it from somewhere. If anyone could tell me from where, that'd be a huge help, and you could make me start sleeping again at night.
We seriously worked very hard on this. It was practically half a year of on and off work. We worked really hard on the transitions from one genre to another (OK, *I* worked hard on them; he did nothing *cough*) so I hope they came out OK (I have no idea how I came up with the 4th genre last genre transition at 3:34). Here are some song statistics:
Key - C Minor, but occasionally does some skips to the major of Eb.
Tempo - 150 BPM (Except the last genre where it skips to 100 BPM)
Pitch - Weird, but the whole song sounds much much better when the main pitch is shifted down to -200 cents (except the fourth genre where it goes to +/- 0 cents).
Patterns - 90 (we were thinking of doing more because we thought we could do Ambient and Hip-Hop after too, bu we decided it was enough)
Channels in the Step Sequencer - 69...
Time Taken - Lost count.
Fun facts:
This was originally called the Genre Thingy.
The decent-sounding classical instruments are all soundfonts (except drums).
The fourth genre which I made all myself is dissonant :P.
I ate bread once.
Oops, long authors comments. Anyway, thanks goes to Blackhole12 for giving a lot of criticism on it when I sent it to him, and any one of my friends who heard and enjoyed this! I really hope you guys enjoy this, we worked so so hard on it. Remember to review, I respond to all reviews and review back if it's helpful! We'll be submitting our collab song Supernova a little later, so stay tuned! (heh, I always wanted to say that). Enjoy the song!
I dunno how I got here but I'm giving you 5 stars for the experience of reading this after listening to the first 30 seconds:
"Yeah I thought "how to make a drum and bass song...", and then the idea occured to me that I should just add drums and a bass. I was an idiot :3."
Funniest thing I've read all week.
Cool, that's an interesting theme for a song. Nice to see you're getting out of your previous comfort zone and trying a bunch of new things.
DnB: it's okay, nothing much DnB about it though.
Dance: terrible. Fix the fucking synth. Piano melody was kinda neat.
Classical: yeah, not that great. You seem to be better at the electronic stuff than at classical at this point in time, odd.
Windows: hahahaha fuck you
Medieval: Cool, the melody was a bit neat. Flute is okay actually.
I know it's inevitable with the theme you chose for this song, but it's pretty scatterbrained and disconnected and pretty impossible to enjoy in full. No recurring elements across the different parts.
Also this is half a year on and off? Well, it's practice I guess ;P
"Cool, that's an interesting theme for a song. Nice to see you're getting out of your previous comfort zone and trying a bunch of new things."
I used to love doing that and still do!
"DnB: it's okay, nothing much DnB about it though.
Yeah I thought "how to make a drum and bass song...", and then the idea occured to me that I should just add drums and a bass. I was an idiot :3.
"Dance: terrible. Fix the fucking synth. Piano melody was kinda neat. "
Ugh yes, awful synth. I do like the piano melody here too though.
"Classical: yeah, not that great. You seem to be better at the electronic stuff than at classical at this point in time, odd. "
Without East/West my orchestral songs were horrible. When East/West came along it was a massive improvement!
"Windows: hahahaha fuck you"
LOL.
"Medieval: Cool, the melody was a bit neat. Flute is okay actually."
I STILL like the melody at 3:49. I want to remix it sometime... it's totally different from the melodies I usually do. It's got a very solid structure and it's super catchy. I quite like it. I think this medieval part is the only audio of mine pre-2010 I can bear listening to.
I enjoyed it, especially the last part.
So, here's my review. Have fun reading it :p
DnB:
Like you said, this is the worst part in the song. It's good that you started with it though, because then the song only gets better :p
But yeah, the drums are way too weak and the bass is too smooth and repetitive. For this part i give you a 5.8/10
Dance:
Here's where things get better.
First of all, the kick should be way stonger. I like the bass though and the piano is really good. The sound of the piano sounds a bit muddy though. Muddy as in, it could be much clearer.
This part gets a 7/10
Classical:
My favourite genre :3
The pizzicato strings have too much bass compared to the rest of the song. I would consider letting them play an octave higher, or finding a different soundfont/vst for them. I like the sound of the flute though and what it's playing too. But yeah, my biggest problem with this really is the pizzicato strings and how bassy they are, drowning out the rest of the instruments.
This part gets a 7.5/10
The Windows part:
I liked this part, except the melody :p
When the melody comes in (at 02:49) it really sounds out of tune to me. It just sounds.. wrong. I don't know if that's dissonance, but if it is.. then i don't like dissonance :p I'm not sure if that's intentional though, so if it isn't intentional then it just sounds out of tune. The rest sounds ok though :-)
This part gets a 6.5/10
Medieval:
I really like this part the best.
The flute melodies sound so nice and the drums are very good on this too.
I'm looking for something to criticise on this part, but i can't find anything.. good job :-)
This part gets a 9/10
Overall:
The transistions are good and i enjoyed listening to this.
For the transistions i give you a 8/10
Score:
5.8 + 7 + 7.5 + 6.5 + 9 + 8 / 6 = 7.3
+ 0.2 for the effort = 7.5
:-)
Keep it up!
7.5/10
4/5
MH16
Wow, so this is how it feels like getting long reviews! :D. Thanks a bunch man, it's not everyday that you get a dedicated reviewer like yourself giving so much constructive criticism other than hearing the intro only and giving a 10 or 0 depending on if the intro is good or bad, leaving a useless one-liner...
Anway, since it's only fair giving a long response to a long review, here we go:
Drum'n'Bass:
I seriously hate composing drum'n'bass strangely. Maybe it's lack of good samples, maybe I just don't have that talent to make DnB songs sound so dirty and crazily awesome, maybe it's just me, but DnB IMO is really boring to compose... Oh well, you're completely right - the drum samples were simply random sounds I got from the Net, and the bass sample isn't really made for DnB where bass is almost the main instrument, but rather just as a background instrument, so I suppose I might have done slightly better with some better samples.
Dance:
We made this ages ago, now are kicks are so heavy that they increase the listener's heartbeat to thrice as much as normal xP. Seriously though, you're right here too (are you ever wrong?? :P). The kick was actually a very heavily edited FL Sytrus Preset called Hydronium - I removed the other drum sounds, removed the synths that were playing in it, leaving only the kick, and used that. As for that piano, at the time I didn't have a good enough sample, and I know exactly what you mean by muddy. Now I have a piano sample that sounds almost like a real piano, so I'm fine xP.
Classical:
Heh, same here. Songs like Danman87's, MaestroRage's or DavidOrr's songs are the types of classical songs that really impress me, you know the crazy epic ones XD. Anyway, I never thought the pizzicato were too bassy, but maybe you're right; I should move it up an octave. The sound of that flute came from a soundfont (and a free one at that - Unison), so I never expected it to sound so good, and the first time I heard it my eyes widened :P.
Windows:
I found out it's dissonant ever since Blackhole12 told me it was :P. Well, you're right about this too. TBH I worked harder on the drums in this than I did on the melodies - I may redo this part with better melodies, and maybe add some harmony :P. I think this is my worst attempt at an XP song - maybe my best is All Hail Windows 1 or 2. Oh well, I should work harder on Windows next time :P.
Medieval:
I'm actually quite surprised that people liked this part so much when I showed it to them; maybe if you want and if it doesn't bother you, I can send you a PM if Scooter-16 and I make another Medieval song ;).
Overall:
Aww, an 8 on the transitions? Why not a 10? :P Lol, joking. Admittedly, there are some transitions that I worked only a few seconds on, namely the part from Drum'n'Bass to Dance.
Score:
Hehe, I like it when people round up the 7.5 to an 8 how it's supposed to be and not down to a 7 :P. Thanks!
Anyway, thanks a LOT for the review; these are the kind of reviews I need to improve my work, and if I ever edit this song and it ends up reaching something like a Top-5/frontpage, I'll credit you for being the reason why I made it up there :P. Oops, my response ended up longer than the review xP. Oh well, thanks again for the great feedback and advice!
*Goes to review one of your songs*
Wow
I just looked at your first 5 reviews and found out that I was right about all your reviews being that long :S
I lol'ed pretty hard at window's part. 4:27 might be some melody from Pirates of the Carribean or something? I'm pretty sure I've heard it before too.
Lol, my reviews XD. Sometimes I even wonder to myself how I'm able to come up with so much to say about just one song :P.
About the windows part, yeah, I made 4 other windows songs, so I found it pretty easy :D. Also, I finally found the melody. It's a faster version of a BG tune played with an echo-ish flute in the game Patapon, where you have to fight a big plant boss called a 'Shookle'. Go to 0:40, turn the volume up and try and listen to the flute in the background (remove spaces):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCXpMe xJ83c&feature=related#movie_player
In other words, I can finally sleep at night XD. Thanks for the review, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
That unknown genre is
windows. Noticed it immediately. Now I deserve a cookie ({}).
Your music has always been creative and unique
Oh, lol I knew you would XD. Sorry, but I'm out of cookies :\. Oh well, thanks for the great review and compliments, and I hope you got my PM XD.
Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.
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