This is brillant 5/5! I love it <3
Reviews for "Vanquish the Night"
bassfiddlejones responds:
Thanks!
NGADM Review:
Dude, this is so cool. The number of times which you changed time in this song is absolutely ridiculous. The attention to detail in the layers and arrangement is freaking awesome. Like when you add (what sounds like) taikos right before the part with piano at 1:25. It's pretty far buried in the mix, but I think that's a really nice place for it honestly. The acoustic guitar solo is freaking awesome dude. The only thing I have to say about these solos is sometimes they go a bit into randomness and not really melodicness. As in, it's cool that you guys are playing pretty fast stuff, but I'm not really feeling anything from it, that's for the some of the part anyways. Other melodic theme played throughout the track are beautiful.
Excellent excellent excellent composition. My favorite part being 3:43, it's awesome how seamlessly you were able to change the pace of the song and make it sound good. The part following that is really awesome too. You're drums dude, they have so much emotion and feel to them. The final ending is beautiful as well, where those horns come in playing staccatto bits.
A few other complaints: I realized what it was last time that sounded "cheesy" to me, I think one of the judges cleared it up, but it's your samples that seem to bother me. The piano sounds very bright and although that can be appropriate at times, I feel it hasn't worked in this or the last track. Same with the brass, the brass work GREAT compositionally, but sonically I felt it could use some work.
Again, send me a message if you need any clarification.
9/10
-Ryan
bassfiddlejones responds:
Ryan thanks for the review man. We went back and forth with which piano sample to use and ultimately decided on several, but I hear you. When constrained to two weeks one of the biggest hurdles of a piece of this magnitude is spending time fine tuning each individual instrument to sound perfect - I agree the samples weren't really up to par with the rest of the piece. Gotta cut your losses at some point and forge ahead! We might revisit all this stuff later and adjust the minute details. Thanks for the review again, your feedback really does help!
My, that's a lot of reverb at the start. That explosion is totally the end of a sample of a big impact with a timpani reversed and then played forward, isn't it. I used to do the same exact thing all the time. :P You might want to take the second of higher noise.
I'll focus on the time signature changes because I don't know the exact sound of different keys by ear. Just how they sound relative to each other.
0:00 - 4/4.
0:39 - 5/4 followed by two measures of 4/4 or a 5/4 and a 3/4. You dick. I knew you were going to pull some stuff like that the instant I saw you did time signature changes. It's easy to count because of the constant high hat, though.
0:50 goes back to 4/4 for a second.
0:56 back to the 5/4 plus 3/4 combination thing.
1:06 - 4/4, and it stays like this for awhile.
2:17 - ...fuck, hang on. Give me a minute. That's either 3/4 or three measures of 4/4 in a row. Also holy shit that guitar.
2:27 is two measures of 4/4, which is a change if it was 3/4 before.
2:31 back to whatever 2:17 is.
2:37 is the same as 2:27.
2:40 again the 2:17 thing. Can I just say at this point that this section is easily one of the most badass parts of this song. Like, by far. Flamenco-style guitar is INSANE.
2:45 is again the 2:27 thing, and then the section ends. :(
2:52 is the 7/8 section, OR STACKED 6/8 TO 4/4. But I'm pretty sure you meant that as 7/8 unless there's a more obvious one later.
3:03 is back to 4/4, and fairly obviously because it's the same melody. Later it turns into triplets, which are *not* 6/8 unless you say that you changed the tempo to just perfectly fit triplet form of your 4/4. But I doubt that. Or at least I did until I fully counted 4:10 which is not actually 6/8 either and the piece stays at 4/4 until the end.
I really, really hope that you didn't mean for triplets to be 6/8. I really. Really. Really hope not. ...also 3/4 is 6/8 just with an emphasis on quarter notes instead of eighth notes and so it has a slower feel.
Anyway, other technical stuff. It's ironic, all of the orchestral brass is what sounds the most fake. That and the explosion effect at the start. Everything else is great. Also, I'm not sure what your main melodic theme is in this. It sounds like there are about four you intended to be the themes, but then only appear once in any kind of thematic fashion.
Whatever. It's still an awesome piece. Period.
bassfiddlejones responds:
Skye! Thanks for taking the time, I still owe you a review (I promise it's coming!). You were right about time sigs for the most part. 2:17 is 6/8 with breaks of 4/4. (and yes, triplets and 6/8 are very different, haha. the part you're referring to is in 4/4)
Glad you liked the piece man, hope you'll enjoy the rest of what we put out for this thing!
Awesome stuff here. I really like when musicians make signature changes. I love it.
bassfiddlejones responds:
Thanks man, glad you liked it!
This is bladdy awesome! I'm such a sucker for non 4/4 time sigs :D
If you ever want me to record some guitar for one of your tracks in the future, I'd be more than happy to!
bassfiddlejones responds:
Crab battle! Hey man, your track rocked. It was an honor to be up against you in this. It would be sick to collab sometime, I will have to hit you up man! I think we could make some pretty awesome stuff happen :O