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Patience

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Author Comments

This song makes me think of the following things:

-Expectations
-Frustration
-Confusion
-Endurance
-False hope
-Cracking under the pressure
-Rebounding
-Small victories
-Looking ahead

...and of course, patience.

Not sure about this one tonally. More bass? Maybe it's just volumes? I don't want to fiddle with it anymore -- this is basically it. I'm gonna jimmy-jam my way over to the next song, whatever that is. Toodle-loo.
___________________________________

Please don't rustle my jimmy-jams

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== This is an NGAUC Audition Round Review. ==

Let's get it out of the way - some of your instrument samples sound AWFUL. I mean, right from the opening notes, that synth bass just clashes horribly with the organs, because it's just not a good synth bass - at least, not in that context. I *know* you can find better ones - heck, we even have 3.5gb of not-too-crappy samples just lying around on Newgrounds - but it’s also a matter of properly choosing instruments that go well with others. And while I'm complaining, quite a few transitions come out of left field, like 1:05.

And yet you'll notice that I'm still here talking, which is because although this piece is definitely flawed, it has a lot of very interesting ideas. It goes through so many different, varied sections, and it has a lot of really cool solos that show some real creativity! I want to hear more of those next time. So yeah: flawed, but compelling. Score: 7.5

Mini-scores (See http://johnfn.newgrounds.com/news/post/936953 for what this means and how to improve)
* Composition: 3/4
* Arrangement: 2/4
* Mixing: 3/4

Birdinator99 responds:

Thank you for your honesty, John. I often underestimate the importance of a good arrangement, thinking "it's all about the mix", being the technically oriented person I am, but I know that the arrangement is very much part of the mix -- I have yet to drive this point home to myself, but please know that I am aware of it as a weakness of mine. Your complaint on the transition is valid as well.

That's my trouble. Some decent ideas, but poor execution... I need more practice, which is precisely why I have come to this contest -- so I can have a deadline, and therefore force myself to improve, lest I succumb to the competition!

Glad you like the solos. Thank you for taking the extra time to write this; I appreciate it!

What I told you before is still true today. When I first listened to this song, I felt it captivating.

Coming back to it, I was listening to my downloaded copy while trying to find newgrounds, and was worried that I had misjudged it, my distracted ears weren't finding what had interested me before. But after giving it a good, focused listen, I realized why I had liked it.

Some songs seem only to be good as background music, such that when you listen close, all you hear is a dull repetition of some sequence. But this song does not bear that quality at all. Even when listening closely it reinvents itself frequently enough to keep me listening intently.

And neither does it fall into the same trap as some of your previous songs, which changed too much and ended in a way that seemed entirely unlike their beginning, this song has an identity and keeps it all the way through. Additionally the changes themselves are interesting, the transitions make sense, and sections feel well-constructed musically.

So it's interesting, and it's self-consistent. That's awesome, and I think you've done a great job.

But it's not perfect, and I've got two ideas as to why. The first is that the instruments just don't feel as polished as those I hear in professionally-created songs, and the songs in recent OCR albums. I know nothing about song-polishing, and I know you're working on it and you've been improving steadily, so I don't think I've got much to worry about on this side of things.

The second thing is more interesting to me. The song is interesting, new things are happening, there are a lot of "I've never heard that before" feels going on inside me when I listen to it. And that reminds me of a certain web novel I've read a few chapters of recently. In it as well plenty of things I've never seen before have happened, and that was really cool.

But what made me feel like that? Was it because the prose was good? Maybe, I was reading in Japanese, so I can't be sure of that. However, it could be that I was interested only because the author was repeatedly making cool things happen, and making sure the transitions between them were smooth, without actually trying to convey anything deeper. Maybe a reader more experienced with the themes involved would have scoffed and dropped it after a few chapters, calling it more <some-trope-here> fluff.

Basically I'm trying to say is, when you're making new songs, and thinking about how you can improve as a composer, it's good to think about the technical side of things, i.e. "How do I make this sound good". But also think about how to convey something deeper with your songs. I honestly have no clue how to do that, and think it's probably something that just comes with experience. But I also think that it's a good thing to be conscious of as you make your way forward.

Regardless, you've made a lot of progress up to this point, and I enjoyed listening once again. I look forward to your next work!

Birdinator99 responds:

I'd just like to point out that this review is so long that I have to open up a second copy of it in another window to write the response and still be able to see the review at the same time...

I think of this song as a good attempt. A really solid attempt at trying to make a complete, polished song, while throwing some new stuff in there too so I can keep learning. To me this song is a success in the way that I need to make 1000 more like it (in terms of effort level), but while steadily improving each time, so that I can finally get to the stuff that I can really be proud of. It is by no means the best I can do -- even though I feel like I have great ideas sometimes, translating them in to the digital realm is really challenging sometimes, and it never quite turns out how I envision.

Part of the instrument polish you're talking about is literally sample quality. I've been using instruments all straight from Mixcraft lately, because they're easier to edit with regards to note values, placement, and volume (i.e. I don't have to record through my keyboard every time I want to change something), so it smooths out the workflow a bit. However, they don't all sound great to begin with.

Neither do many of my keyboard sounds, though, so the other part of the polish would be mixing/mastering. This is what I'm most interested in -- as you said, it's an ongoing process. I always want things to sound as good as I can get them, so you can rest assured that I'm always going to be working on that.

Your second point, about conveying a deeper message, is in my opinion mostly about good songwriting. This stems from musical theory knowledge, of which I have just enough to get by, but not really do anything very interesting with. I feel like I get the comments, "This sounds like game music" or "This would be good in the background", etc... a lot because the way I construct songs is never very complex. Key changes are really rare -- I never know what key I'm working in, what chords will naturally make sense with each other, or what direction a song should go to have the most impact. I'm always just feeling things out; "dicking around" until somethings sticks, but the result is still not grounded in any theory. It's just what makes sense at the time, and sometimes it can come back to bite me. I need to take some piano lessons, so I can get a better appreciation of songwriting and theory, which will lead to more interesting arrangements and structures in my songs. The deeper messages will come along with that, I think.

This song is trying to not be background music, but it's not well produced or composed enough to resonate and really stick with me as a "front and center" piece, you know? I'm not saying it IS background music, it's just not a very good "regular" song.

I don't know how to end this response. I really want to say "Yeah, I don't like this song as much as I thought I did the first time around", but I do that too much. That is how I feel though. I'm glad I'll be able to come back to this song later, but for now I'm looking forward to the next one, so maybe I'll go do that instead.

Credits & Info

Artist

Listens
1,077
Faves:
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Downloads
23
Score
Waiting for 1 more vote

Uploaded
May 8, 2015
5:54 PM EDT
File Info
Song
12 MB
5 min 15 sec

Licensing Terms

Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.