Official AIM Review!

This feels very 70's jam band-y. Lots of different phrases. Very hard to follow what's going on due to the seemingly improvised nature of the entire piece as a whole. 1:46 was your strongest section.

2:25 was also pretty interesting and I was hoping that progression would go on a bit longer before devolving completely by 2:49.

3:00 was also a nice section.

Essentially, this piece sounds like several different compositions stitched together. Can't really tell what's happening and thus can't give good critique.

I will say the bass was up far too high in the mix, drums were hiding behind your piano, except for your toms. Do like the FX on your piano. Gave a nice texture to the piece. If I had to say this piece needed anything, definitely a little more instrumentation. Between drums, piano, and bass, there's just not a lot of options you have musically to convey your ideas. Even if it's just adding a lead, rhythm guitar, or some strings for some riffs, unless you're writing a solo instrument piece, probably best to give yourself a little more room to play.

Thanks for turning out to this year's competition!

---Official AIM review---

The distorted guitars and bass blend really well together. You have a pretty good sense of harmony, too. Unfortunately, the rhythm is really hard to follow for most of the piece. I suspect you used some sort of MIDI function to record this and then didn’t quantize the piece properly. It’s really worth making sure that the underlying rhythm of the piece is consistent. If you want there to be an ebb and flow to the pace of the piece, usually tempo automations are a better way to accomplish that. I also think that the piece didn’t have any discernible harmonic framework. There are isolated riffs and sections that sound harmonically succinct, but overall this piece has a very loose, meandering structure that’s quite jarring. Obviously, over-repetition isn’t a good thing, but I think you have the opposite problem here. There’s just very little content that keeps the listener grounded in common themes, riffs, melodies, or effects. For your next piece, I’d suggest choosing a chord progression of no more than 4 chords, and then laying out harmonies on top of that. That way, your piece will probably have more cohesion. Then you can create variety with more sophisticated techniques, like dynamic contrast, phrasing, and automation. Sorry if this review isn’t very reassuring. You have a good foundation in harmony and sound design. All of these isolated sections just make the piece sound really disjointed and sometimes arrhythmic. Hope that helps. Keep at it, Rockossss!

4.5/10