That's some good stuff...
Reviews for "Flashbacks"
MtM0201 responds:
Thank you!
I like the atmosphere of this piece. It's chill, meditative, and relaxing. The mix is clean and your samples sound good.
My main concern, as noted by others, is that the piece meanders without a sense of direction. There is no melodic material to create a line, only improvised sounding guitar tones. I understand that ambient often evolves slowly and does not necessarily focus on melodic material, but this piece is still really stagnant. The chord progression is the same throughout and the sonic texture remains basically the same for nearly four minutes.
I think that if you took some steps to create more tension/release and development, this could be a much more interesting track. Shifting the harmonies, developing a melodic idea, working with motifs, morphing the underlying pad, changing registers more...Basically adding more variety and sense of building to a climax. Also, the ending seemed out of place.
Production is great, but the piece doesn't seem to reach its potential. I loved Shaolin, but you probably also spent more time working on that. I hope to hear more of your music in the future! :)
Here is your personal review for your round 1 submission! Remember that the score might be a little lower than I would normally give, I'm being a tad harsher than I'd normally be for the NGADM.
The Good:
-First, I love that percussion you have before the drumkit.
-Second, I love ambient guitar, so thanks for that.
-Don't really hear any mixing issues.
The Not-So-Good:
-The bass initially is really hard to hear, and stays difficult to hear, mainly due to the bassy element of the pad you have.
-I don't like the drumkit loop you used, it's fairly boring.
-There doesn't seem to be any real 'idea' in mind for this, and the chords stay the same throughout, so it's rather boring.
Overall: I'm really disappointed, to tell the truth. Your audition song was REALLY good. This is pretty meh in comparison. I'm giving it a 6.8/10 because the percussion and ambient guitar is good.
I can see forever... (I'm running out of things to say!)
I found this song to be actually quite interesting, as it has no real discernible melody and sounds a lot more like a live improve you'd hear at an open stage bar or something. I also found it quite unique, it doesn't really sound like something you could listen to and say, "Hey, this sounds like...." Which I found to be a big plus.
I was quite fond of the slightly dirty guitar sound throughout, gave the song some character and overall carried on the theme of the song without devolving into technical wankery.
Also very easy to listen to.
Downside... this is very, very repetitive. The "drums" don't really change at all throughout the entire song and kind of amplifies the repetitiveness. I also think a little more could have been done with the pads in the background, from what I can tell, they don't really move beyond 2 notes the entire way through, which again, added to the repetitive nature. Honestly, after a while, it became quite boring to listen to.
I also take issue with the ending, it doesn't really build up to the end... the end just... Happens. It's like, I'm here one moment, gone the next. Feel like something more could have been done to make the ending feel a bit more natural and less abrupt.
Overall, cool to listen to the first 2-3 times, but after that, the repetitive nature makes it more of a chore. 7/10.
I thought this song had decent production, but the melody was somewhat contrived or improvised sounding.