Reviews for T-Logic - Architeuthis

[johnfn]

Man, some of this sound design is REALLY cool! I freaking love the white noise stuff. But the melodies sound insanely dissonant with each other.

Like the bassline at :20 is awesome and clearly setting up a C minor sort of deal along with the weird instrument playing along side it. And then :30 comes and you play... A minor??? A minor clashes super hard with C minor because A minor has E natural and C minor has E flat, so you'd expect it to sound off, and it does. And then this new instrument comes in at :40 which just sounds like it's in a new key altogether.

The really interesting thing is that at points I really enjoy this atonal freakiness. Like, I guess I've just listened to too much tonal music so the only thing left is atonal, I guess. :P When stuff meshes together around 2:55, it sounds wrong, but the wrongness is actually okay (lol that makes sense) and I like it, it does indeed sound like a giant squid :D. And there's this one diminished (or something) chord at 1:01 that I really like. But atonal is one heck of an acquired taste and hoping that the NGADM judges all have it is probably not going to fly.

The A minor chord at :30 *might* have had the same effect, but by the time :37 comes and you drop another, *different* atonal chord, I just give up and don't like it. :P

Anyway though... I really like the sound design, like I said. The white noise, the weird instrument at :23 is just awesome... But I dunno about the tonality...

TaintedLogic responds:

Thank you so much for your compliments on the sound design and sweeps. I acknowledge your opinions about the dissonant melodies. I think we both know I love clashing chords, but I still often fail to consider what key all the chords I'm using are in, and I think that costs me sometimes. The thing with :40 is that I wrote it with the tonic on C (even though there are a few accidentals), but for some reason when I uploaded the track into NG's project system, it was transposed up a 1/2 step. So, I transposed it down a 1/2 step in FL Studio, and when I re-uploaded it, it sounded like this. It's still probably my fault that it clashes there (as I kind of wanted it to do so, anyway), but I wasn't really sure of what to make of how the project system transposed that riff AND ONLY THAT RIFF up a half step. DX

I'm glad you liked 2:55, and I was most certainly going for that giant squid-like sound! <3 I'm not sure what you mean by a "diminished chord," but personally I was pretty happy with the chord progression from :52 - 1:14. I understand that too much atonality puts people over the edge, like :37 did for you. The instrument at :23 is one of my weird-ass samples from TS404. >:D

Regarding the NGADM, my understanding of how auditions work is that each judge makes a list ranking their top 64, and if, say, 3 judges each want 48 people to be in the competition, the remaining 16 people are decided by some sort of scoring method. That way, I don't need every single judge to like my piece, as long as 2 or 3 REALLY like it. Still, I have 2 weeks to decide what to audition with. I might even try to make another piece or re-master one of my old ones. I should also probably PM Step to make sure this is actually how NGADM auditions work, haha...

Thanks so much for the review as always, Johnfn! ;D

[kanashibarimusic]

This song comes across quite like a collection of random patterns over a house beat. There is no real progression, and the melodies are a bit boring and very inconsistent with the rest of the notes being played, which to me, makes it feel quite arbitrary. As if rather than utilising atonality as a technique, it was just a collection of random notes thrown together that dont strictly clash, but certainly don't compliment eachother either. It might be a good idea to broaden your horizons musically, and look in to composition and tonality, so as to avoid making stuff that just follows pre-existing blueprints for vague, generic, four to the floor electro. The mixing isn't bad, if a little bit sterile, but again the sounds don't really compliment each other particularly, they just coexist and it sounds like it was mixed by going through a checklist of things you needed to do, rather than because it was necessary. Almost like the first draft, default mix you get back from an engineer after a session before you start shaping it into what you really want.

TaintedLogic responds:

Thanks for the review! I understand your criticisms about the progression and atonality. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "sterile" mixing, but I certainly identify with the "mixing checklist" thing you mentioned. XD I'll try to create something more tonal...sometime, haha! Thanks again for stopping by. ;)