Identity wash away

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Identity wash away

Author Comments

Identity wash away. (updated)

Has this seen the second phase of time.
It's gone.
My world was washed away.
Tumbled pieces of my world drifting on the sea.

Produced in Logic Pro using Roland Fantom x6, Roland SYX-3000 guitar pedal, numerous logic plug-in synth engines, custom tuned sampler synth engine (tuned by me), logic Pro plug-in compressors and not nearly enough mixing. All melodies were constructed from scratch, no pre-existing loops were used. All vocals were song and recorded by me (timbre pitched slightly up for highs, slightly down for lows, no auto tune), no 3rd party samples were used.

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FinnMK

2017-08-02 11:13:55

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Mixing, mastering and production: It's such an intriguing mix. So artsy and original haha; it makes it hard to give feedback. I think the only bits I'll say is that the bass guitar at 2:16 sounded a little campy, a little too obviously a virtual one. Otherwise, neat stuff. It's an ambitious, eclectic and intensely creative mix. It just didn't blow me away from a technical perspective.

Composition: Again, super original, super creative. It just didn't strike me as the best piece of music. I interpret this as more of a wonderful sound experiment than a song, and so while I enjoy it a lot, I didn't find myself able to give high scores for musicality.

Apologies for the not-very-useful feedback, but go ahead and continue on your strange and magical journey!

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Yeah there's no replacement for a real bass guitar. I've never been satisfied with Logic's bass guitar plug-ins. I was pleased with the melody though. If I ever got a better plug-in, I'd probably swap it out or maybe some day I'll make a patch on my eurorack and try that. Tis the beauty of midi.

I'm not surprised the mix didn't blow you away. With so little time to work on it, it's basically still a rough mix as far as I'm concerned. Really makes me wish I still had access to a studio. Bet it would sound amazing through some nice tube compressors and mastering EQ. Oh well.

It's cool dude. This kind of music is basically just letting raw creativity take the wheel and that you recognized the creative value is plenty encouragement for me. I know this kind of stuff doesn't win competitions or get to top 40.

For me, the art side of things always grabs my focus more than the production side. Raw creative melodic value always impresses me more than production value. Maybe it's because I come from an engineering background. Polishing a tune is simple math in my mind. If you have the time and tools, it's just work. Nothing special to me. I understand your job is to look at both obviously.

Thanks for taking the time to write. I appreciate it. :)

TaintedLogic

2017-08-01 11:54:58

The experimental sound design and mixing elements at the beginning get mixed results from me. They establish a cool sense of atmosphere, yet are very hard to follow rhythmically. By :25 or so, the piece feels like a series of rough transitions in an ever-meandering texture. At the same time, the piece is pretty minimalistic, and is still rhythmically all-over-the-place until around :50. At the very least, I’d suggest some more prominent drums to tie the whole thing together. It’s hard to keep track of any predominant or memorable melodies. I like the vocal samples at 2:35 and the phasing effects - they add a sense of regularity to what is often a very chaotic texture. The section at 3:44 is one of the best examples of coherent melodic content in the entire piece. Overall, though, this piece has very little cohesion. It’s really hard to keep the listener grounded in any sense of regularity in the structure with this piece. I think you just went too experimental with the composition here. There are a lot of neat ideas here, but I think you need to consolidate them a bit and give this piece more flow and connectivity. Keep at it, Midnights-Ocean. ;)

7.75/10

Midnights-Ocean responds:

I appreciate the feedback. I'd be the first to warn, this flavor of composition is more akin to art rock than the predictable EDM we are all fond of these days. It's really an acquired taste. When I create works like this, there are no genre boundaries or slave to rhythmic support. The time is solid and there. I know this because I can see the matrix when composing in Logic Pro, but it's not emphasized to the level of EDM. I understand that can be off putting. It is what it is.

I would have made a more genre appropriate piece for the competition but I basically did all I wanted to do with EDM years ago, so all those tracks were out, as far as the competition was concerned. I may post some of my older EDM works on newgrounds but I tend to shy away from doing so, because it's a super saturated genre already. Which is part of why I just don't make much of it any more. On any given site, there are a million people doing it and doing it well.

You've probably noticed my focus is a bit on the atmospheric esoteric side. Glad you liked the vocals. I was hoping to get the intro done in time too but I didn't, so I just now added it, since the competition is over for me. I wanted to have the vocal parts balanced. One upfront, one half way through and then one at the very end.

The minimalistic parts were not all intentional. I didn't have time to add more character to the sparse sections. I did so in the update. If you feel like listening again, I'd be interested if you liked the additions I made (as simple as they might be).

Thanks again for taking the time to write.

EdKempeper

2017-07-27 10:48:18

Really good work !! Some synths sound weird, and I think that's great !! Good luck for this round ;)

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Thank you so much for listening and giving 5 stars. Is there a particular part that sounds weird? or just the whole tune in general? I'd love to know details, if you have them to offer.

I'm guessing they sound weird because I purposely tweak and layer organic instruments with inorganic, so the tune has a unique sound character. Some times this works better than other times but I like each tune to have it's own identity.