I would not call this blues though. Blues has a chord progressions that this song does not have. I would just call this bluesy. Anyways, this sounds cool.

I like the smooth, organic vibe at the beginning. Nice and spacious mix, too. I wish you had done a bit more with the instrumentation here, but I like the flowing arpeggiated part at the 1-minute mark. Given that this is a solo instrument piece, I also think you could’ve done a bit more with dynamics and phrasing. The texture has a little more space by around 2:15, but it wasn’t quite enough to mask the effects of 3 minutes of otherwise near-constant energy level. I also didn’t think the piece sounded particularly conclusive by the end. In fact, you just seemed to be arriving at a moment of tension in the piece when it ended. Overall, this is admirable and entertaining work. You’re clearly a talented guitarist - it just needed a little more effort on the composition. Keep at it, MintyFreshThoughts! ;)

8.25/10

== This is an official NGUAC Review ==

So first of all, that is an awesome and great sounding guitar tone! I dunno how you recorded it so well, but I'd love to. It sounds crisp and clear, it's a great tone (though maybe lacking slightly in bass?). Furthermore, I noticed that you have this big heavy reverb on it, but amazingly the reverb does not clutter up the mix at all, it's almost like the reverb is sidechained to the input channel or something so that it only comes out when everything is quiet. But then every now and then I hear a bit of high reverb even when the guitar is going full speed, so whatever you did must be more complex than that. In any case, the reverb makes the guitar sound really really cool, like it's in the middle of space or something =D (Okay, that makes no sense.) If you've ever seen Firefly, this TOTALLY reminds me of the soundtrack to Firefly.

Furthermore the bluesly playing on the guitar is totally excellent. You hit a bunch of awesome notes and the overall vibe that you give off is just great. There's not a lot to complain about on the compositional front, except perhaps that this song would have been better with a clearer main melody to bridge together your sections of improvisational playing.

However, there are a few problems I have with this track. The biggest by far is the arrangement. The song is great, but it would have been MUCH better with breakdowns that switch up the energy of the track. Add a section or two that go at half time, or switch up the style of chords to maybe just arpeggiated chords, or perhaps just baselines, then bring stuff back. Right now the song is a steady barrage of notes. It needs to be organized.

Second of all, the song is so /bare/. I get that that is sort of the point, but I can't help imagining this with some sort of acoustic or maybe electric bass - it would be awesome!!! And imagine it with a fiddle breakdown... alright, maybe I'm asking for too much there hehe, but I'm just trying to give you some ideas. Again, the bareness can also be fixed simply by improving the arrangement so that the arrangement itself carries the song.

Finally, there are a few issues so minor they're almost not worth mentioning. One is that there are a few places where the reverb goes wonky. One is around 1:40 to 1:45 - the volume of the song jumps up and down without any reason that I can detect, and it just sounds wrong. Be sure to put a comb through your song for weird issues like these before submitting! There's also a little bit of a stutter at 0:07-0:08 that should be fixed.

All in all, great song and great blues improvisation, let down a little by the lack of an interesting arrangement.

Mini-scores (not used to calculate final score in any way - just so you know what needs improvement):

Arrangement: 2/4
Composition: 3+/4
Sound Design: n/a
Production: n/a

Overall: 8.7

Finally a none dance track in this round! Damned nice dark country stuff! I hope you like Woven Hand because your music reminds me a lot of them! Keep it up!

It's Positive 5 Stars in this Space.