i do like the message behind this piece, but the main melody could use some work (not sure if dissonance was what you were going for, but it kinda ruined whatever atmosphere you were building, if that makes any sense)

the rest of the piece is excellent tho

maybe try a few lessons in music theory, that might be of great use to you

anyway cya

edit: i do appreciate you trying to be different with this piece, and invoking feelings (of some kind), but the lack of a coherent melodic "tone" gives me feelings of discomfort (if that's the right word for it) so a way to improve (and sorry if i come off as pissy) trying to stick to some kind of scale and experiment in a way that doesn't bring down the rest of the song

all of the above is just my opinion based on what I have learned from composing stuff myself

also if you're curious i found this song using the enby tag (this was the only other song on there besides my own lol)

This is a NGADM Round 2 review.
Each score is out of 10, for a total of 50.

COMPOSITION: 7

I mention a good bit of what I perceive on a visual / emotional level regarding the composition in Emotion below, but for what I haven't spoken of, let me deal with it here.

The percussion is driving and high-energy and evocative of a lot of imagery that I talk about to my right, and the synth pads are comparatively static. I mention my qualms about the accompaniment below.

There is some occasional bass that grounds the piece, and sometimes it's not there; fair enough.

The melody and chords dip in and out of tonality on a regular basis, giving me some occasionally discordant, and occasionally pleasant, and often unexpected, twists and turns. This is not something I would mark down, though what I would mark down can be summed up below:

There is a lot of purposeful dissonance, though it feels like there's so much missed potential as it is really truly only done in the leads and very occasionally the chords. Even syncopation, blipping in and out, and even bass patterns and different accompaniment styles could lend to this feeling of dissonance and discord that I speak of below. There is no one way to write leads or accompaniments -- deliver on this more. Experiment more. It currently feels like the atonality and nonconformity are restricted to some parts of the piece.

PRODUCTION: 8

The synths feel quite thick to begin with, but the strings feel like they're lacking a warmth, a fatness, and so do the percussion. A thickening of the mix could certainly help here.

Outside of this, everything is balanced and has its place. It's quite wide, it's quite lush.

EMOTIONAL IMPACT: 8

I'm feeling a very gritty and sombre, but also flamboyant and flighty feel to this piece all at once. The melodies and shifting scales lend themselves to that flamboyance. I get quite a few visual pictures of people expressing various different outward signs of the gender and sexuality spectrum, whether through selfies, through everyday writings, through living their lives, or through protest; I feel like the way the leads go, dipping in and out of tonality, bring to mind these various images.

There is an anger about it, driven by the percussion and the hi-octane feel, almost as if to say, we will not conform. There is a sense of protest about this piece.

Parts of this piece feel quite discordant and jarring to me -- but perhaps on-point for the title and its description. It's musical allegory. Just like there's no one set way to be, there's no one set way to write leads. My main emotional complaint, that gashes the score, is that I would have loved to see this explored a lot more, beyond just the leads -- because there's certainly more than one way to write accompaniment sections, too, to add to the diversity that no one sees outside. Because as is, the hi-octane feel of the accompaniment could fit some sections, but it felt long and drawn-out by the end, still giving a feeling of 'samey-ness.'

The ending is actually pretty fun by comparison (I know that it draws on a previous section that you've done beforehand), and reminds me of multi-coloured bubbles rising in the water and into the air.

UNIQUENESS: 10

It's original, I'll certainly give it that. I'm hearing a fair bit of the OST to Mirror's Edge in terms of the high-energy percussion and things, but going as atonal as you have on a piece like this is not something we hear everyday. In fact, I daresay it's not something we hear almost at all.

MEMORABILITY / REPLAYABILITY: 7.5

I remember everything about this piece -- which is not something I generally do with more atonal, discordant pieces. Everything, from the flow of the leads, to the energy of the accompaniment, and the emotional delivery -- I remember it all. I remember initially not remembering it fondly, but it seems to have grown on me since.

Will I be listening to this again?... Strangely enough, yes. I mean, I'd also love to listen to this with added changes, but this one has a strange charm of its own, aside from the statement you're making. Will I be recommending this to other people? Yes, but only to limited audiences perhaps -- this sort of overt atonality is ostensibly not for everyone. For it to reach wider audiences I imagine that this piece needs to not stand on its own, but instead have visuals to accompany it for example, things that could actually drive it home. As a standalone, I remember it reasonably fondly -- I don't know if others would share what I think.

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TOTAL: 40.5 / 50

Official NGADM '20 Review for Mooke

Composition and Structure:
What are scales, am I right? Honestly I'm left confused by the end of it. What gets me is that you don't really stick to anything in any certain way, except the feeling of being frantic. Like the percussion, the high energy, and tempo are the only constants in this whole shindig. Aside from that I can't tell if you want to say screw it to the idea of having sensible notation or not, because there's a lot of phrases that start off as something I could latch onto and make sense off. There is something of a chord progression that you use so it makes me think that there is a scale I should be able to pick out, and you start using it. Than halfway through the phrase you do a 180 and just go chromatic in whatever direction you want. I guess that's kinda what you're going for trying to tease the listener along and then throwing it back in their face, but that comes across as bipolar and aggressive. The lack of energy dynamics too also gives a sense that you really don't have any sort of story, you're just trying things and then giving up on them before they get to completion.

Production and Sound Design:
I was a little dissapointed with the sound quality of this song. It sounded overcompressed and crowded which made it tiring to listen to a couple of times through. Individually I like what you have. I like the percussion and they positively add to the feel of the song, and the synths you have going here I think fit with the sections that they're in. There's a couple here and there that sound dry or too flat, like you have some basic sytrus presets and cranked them up a bit, but the mixing as a whole doesn’t leave very good space to be able to pick out things very well.

Composition: 7
Production: 6.5
Sound Design: 8
Structure: 6.5
Creativity: 8.5
Total: 74/100