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Beat But Breathing

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Author Comments

My Round 1 song for NGADM 2015, this one's tuned down to Drop Bb. Enjoy!

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Legendary

this dude is fucking legendary, it's sad how he's unactive here

*Jaw Drops To The Floor and Drool Just Flows Non-Stop*
Ok and as far as my review goes...Neon-Bard took the words out of my mouth...AGAIN!
The hit-and-miss is noted, but it does add identity to this piece...not everything is smooth and polished...be sure to run through this again and take a closer listen, and maybe space some stuff by a few miliseconds or so?
The strings...uh....well, I have nothing to really say other than what Bard has stated.

You have some serious talent, and it shines here. But no artist is flawless!
You need to dig a bit deeper into your soul and push that forward into your next piece...make it trashy, thrashy, and LOUD!

5/5 5/5 :-)

This is a NGADM Round 1 Review.

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Good:
- Instruments blend incredibly well!
- Interesting theme, coupled with great guitar work (bass and drums included).
- Cool transitions (though sometimes a bit blurred -- see below).
- Great pacing!

First off, this track would be right at home as a final boss theme in a fantasy or RPG title! It has that flow and intensity to it, you know? Especially when you consider that you begin with that softer introduction, piano playing, strings floating on in the background and then WHAM -- guitar, drums and bass! I like how there are noticeable differences in the different sections of the song, none of the instruments fall into a pitfall of repetition.

What to consider:
- The mix is a little hit-and-miss.
- The strings are missing that sense of realism in some places.

It's already been pointed out, and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'll leave a few comments about the mixing. During the introduction, the piano sounds slightly stifled and it sits a little awkwardly in the mix, especially when the strings start playing and the synth portions join in. I think that by adjusting velocity levels of certain piano notes and carefully equalizing each instrument during this section (and others) would allow for a clear(er) mix!

Solid track, well done man!

Score: 8.4/10

I love the emotion at the beginning. Good idea with the dissonant notes during the piano solo. I think the strings were a little too loud when they first came in. It sounded a little abrupt, and by around :30 the strings are clearly distorting the piano a lot. I also thought the transition at :41 was too sudden. This piece is very fast-paced. The soundscape is a little too complex to keep the listener grounded. The instrumentation during the first :45 seconds or so did not prepare me for the loud, high-pitched and in-your-face sweep at :51, yet another rushed transition IMO. You tried to smooth it over with the chord progression at :48, but instead that just served to overwhelm the listener. I will say that I liked how you created space for contrast early on in the piece, but you needed to spend more time to flesh out your ideas or, more realistically, condense your ideas to those most relevant to what you seem as the theme of the piece. I liked your work with the guitar and drums, although I think the kick could’ve come through a bit more. You really need to work on your transitions. There’s a rapid mood shift at 1:32 that needs some smoothing over. That said, I appreciated the structural relief that 1:32 offered, and the part at 1:51 was also really cool. This is a really long piece, and I think it needs to be a bit more coherent. You’re using a lot of cool ideas here, but you seem to struggle to connect them at times. The structure is a little overly convoluted. You repeat sections, like at 3:18, yet in ways this piece comes across as a lot of different isolated ideas. I really liked the solos at 4:38. Other transitions that need work: 2:57 and 4:08. As I see it, your main problems here are the pacing, transitions, and concision. I’d challenge you to make a piece that repeats more sections. It’d help if it was shorter. A casual listener should usually be able to analyze the structure of a piece pretty well. Connecting all the various ideas you have starts with condensing them. If you want to create a contrast in moods, you need to connect those moods with meaningful transitions, transitions that are constantly taking the piece in the direction you want it to go towards. And you often need to take it in that direction gradually, by building up textures throughout entire phrases, etc. Master those 3 things (and learn to be more concise with the ideas you pack into a piece), and this would be a really solid track. Hope this helped, man. Keep at it. ;D

6.5/10

This review was written for the Newgrounds Audio Death Match 2015.

Credits & Info

Listens
2,294
Faves:
8
Downloads
96
Votes
21
Score
4.53 / 5.00

Uploaded
Aug 14, 2015
7:10 PM EDT
Genre
Heavy Metal
File Info
Song
9.2 MB
6 min 41 sec

Licensing Terms

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