I'm not a musician, so I can't explain myself in any sort of technical manner. For me, I enjoy a song when I can close my eyes and watch what my imagination creates from it. Here, the mental images are vague and frequently disrupted. The whole thing sounds like a small bunch of similar ideas that don't work well together. It's kinda like when I'm trying to answer somebody and my mind suddenly comes up with a second response, so my mouth ends up combining the two into a messy sentence that sounds slightly dumber than this poorly-typed review. Does that make any sense? Maybe I should have just went with, "Not bad, but not great," and quietly moved on to another song.

I'm sorry. :(

The atmospheric intro and sound design already have me engaged. I like the pacing a lot too with the spacious pauses. Sounds like furtive footsteps in a reflecting pool. I wish you had brought out the melodic content at :50 a little more clearly - it sounded very distorted and buried in the mix. I thought the generic open hat you had thrown in with the percussion was a bit of a questionable choice tbh, but it’s still rather subtle and not too distracting. I think you could’ve done more to prime the listener for 1:12 besides the reverse crash, but the melodic content there is strong. The reverb is pretty heavy throughout the piece, although overall the mastering is stronger than you made it out to be in the forums. The tempo changes and/or rhythmic elements were a little disorienting at 1:50, but I really liked the vocal manipulations at 3:00. Overall, my main problem remains the lack of connectivity in the structure. You made an attempt to bring it full-circle towards the end with another refrain and the ascending arps of the beginning, but it came off as a bit desperate in my opinion. This is still really admirable work, though - you deserve a lot of credit for the atmosphere and sound design, and certainly more credit than you give yourself. Keep at it, 1f1n1ty! ^^

Mixing, mastering, and balance

1.75/2

Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety

1.25/2

Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture

2/2

Instrumentation and sound design

1/1

Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness

1/1

Originality and uniqueness

1/1

Overall (how do the above elements interact?)

.75/1

Composite score

8.75/10

Sounds like you an I had an almost identical experience with this round. I enjoyed my piece at the start but toward the end I really struggled to do any work on it and also submitted a piece that I wouldn't have otherwise would it not have been for the NGADM deadline.

That being said, this isn't as awful as you think it is. I think it has a lot of interesting parts! I doubt you're in the mood for any types of pointers or opinions after how you described your feelings toward this piece, but I feel that this has tons of potential to become maybe two or three different songs if you ever work up the energy to return to it.

Good luck this round.

Sucks that you can't enjoy this track anymore. It's pretty nice to listen to, but I understand you can't finish it.

even though it does have some mastering issues, i still like the chords and melodies!