--NGUAC '20 Judge Review--
This is definitely a pretty decent EDM song! You’ve got a great sense of how to keep a listener interested throughout a song, and there are a ton of awesome details and ideas scattered throughout a well-transitioned piece that make it an entertaining listen.
Compositionally speaking, I do like the main melody you’ve got going through the entire piece. It was definitely a good idea on your part to feature it on multiple instruments to establish it as a main motif. It’s also certainly very catchy, since it’s so heavily based on the chords and a standard rhythm—but perhaps this is what also makes it feel like it sometimes overstays its welcome. Because it’s such a systematic melody, its effect on the overall piece becomes very predictable throughout the song, leading it to become slightly boring at times. This is especially because, aside from some good transitional sections, there’s very little rhythmic or melodic change and virtually no harmonic change for the whole track. You do have that middle section where you play a new melody for a moment, but it’s still set to the same chords, and when the same melody is playing for the rest of the song, it starts to get a bit tedious. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to fix this! One way could be to have different melodies/chords in different sections (e.g. having a progression for buildups, one for the breakdown, etc) or even to change up that main melody more often throughout the song (perhaps by changing the underlying chords or overall contour of the melody). That said, it IS a good melody! You just want to make sure that the listener doesn’t get too tired of it to appreciate it.
In terms of production, the whole track seems to be mastered pretty consistently (albeit a little quiet for Newgrounds), but really, it’s the mixing and sound design I’d recommend taking a closer look at—specifically, the relationship between the volumes of the different sections. Imo, the most crucial thing to get right for songs like this is not just the drop, but the impact created by the drop. Right now, in parts like 0:56 and 2:23, the drops are fine on their own, but since the buildups leading up to them end with solo synth lines that are at about the same volume as the drops themselves, the impact is lessened and the drops become weaker as a result. In an energetic song like this one, the drop is what the listener is really waiting for, and you’ll want to make them as effective as possible. Besides that, there are a few other, smaller production nitpicks throughout the song—for example, the crash at 0:28 is too loud, the pad needs more of its low end EQ’ed out, and that synth line is kinda shrill when it plays on its own. Still, if you’re planning on doing something similar to this for the next round, I would say that the biggest thing to pay attention to would be the power of impact! Don’t underestimate the amount of control you can have over a listener’s attention.
Finally, for structure, I actually thought your song had some pretty great transitions (aside from the aforementioned production thing)! 1:10, 2:07, and 2:35 were some favorites of mine. You also had a number of well-arranged, distinct sections, which is a good thing (although, as mentioned above, some different melodies would be appreciated). I only have a few small nitpicks for structure, such as that 0:42 took me aback at first since it seemed to be a climactic buildup into another buildup instead of a big new section, and the return to EDM drums at 1:38 was too soon given that we’d just entered the more organic-sounding breakdown. On the whole, a well-structured song!
All in all, your grasp of structure shows that you’ve got a great sense of the big picture, and the small details in the song (pitchbent transitions, automated noise sweeps, etc) show that you pay attention to the little things, too. All you need is some more experience fine-tuning things like leveling and melodic variation, and I’m sure you’ll improve in no time. Best of luck, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you put out for the Knockout Round!
Composition - 22/30
Production - 20/30
Structure - 8/10
GSM - 23/30
Overall - 73/100, adjusted to 6.2/10
Synfang 
