Reviews for Market Day (KindLing A0S1)

[FinnMK]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Oh yeah, one of my favourites! Really cool, innovative piece of music. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering and production: The most impressive thing to me with Market Day is the number of sounds you weave together successfully. I've commented on some other submissions how they have an 'everything but the kitchen sink' syndrome, where they attempt to use tons of different instruments, but it ends up sounding like a mish mash blend. You've used an eclectic but very effective group of instruments and made them work together.
From a production standpoint, having many different types is tricky and mixing them together is no small challenge. There are some issues here, particularly in the synths. The tricky part is that most of Market Day is grounded in real instruments (or real-sounding instruments) which means the obvious synths are always going to be the odd man out. Therefore, they have to be mixed really masterfully in order to fit in (as opposed to just another orchestral instrument, which you could plop in and it would fit more effortlessly)
The synth bells at 2:05 are pretty tinny and cut a little painfully through the mix. The bells at 3:18 are much better, but of course they're not TRYING to be a synth effect so much, so they fit in better.

There are some other points where I can tell pretty obviously I'm listening to a virtual instrument. Some of the violin lines, the acoustic guitar, and some piano bits especially. The best answer here is to actually record those instruments, but in lieu, one thing you can do is pay very close attention to editing the velocity of the MIDI files that the instruments are playing. When a pianist plays a piece, they're not going to press every key with the exact same amount of force. They sweep, certain notes are louder, and perhaps just as important they ARE NOT ALWAYS ON TIME (I wish I could italicize). If you're aiming for a 'real' instrument feel with a virtual instrument, know this: nearly zero musicians have perfect rhythm. So a 'real' instrument recording would reflect that. Just little tiny 'errors' here and there would improve the realism of an instrument line.

Good use of EQ, good use of panning, and for the most part good volume balancing. Very clean mastering as well - I only feel like it could have used a bit more umph. The kick drum and the orchestral bass drum were sort of underwhelming. There could have been a little more bass overall.

Composition: Awesome. Great chords progressions and very smooth changes between keys, not to mentioned tempos. Heck, if you had switched through time signatures as well you could have had the trifecta! I have very little to say except for very minor things. I enjoyed the structure and progression, but at the same time it wasn't inherently catchy, which is as valuable as a well-thought structure. The lack of distinct repeated main sections (there are two distinct instances of the chorus, but as they're in different keys there's still a degree of difference between them) docked half a point or so from the structure.
My same critique would extend to the melody. There are lots of interesting, well-thought out melodies in Market Day. But sometimes, all you want to hear is one really solid one repeated a few times so the listener can appreciate it. A little bit of structural repetition would solve this.

Overall, really great piece. I'm super looking forward to what you'll come up with in the finals.

Miyolophone responds:

Thanks for the help, Finn! I appreciate the tips on humanizing the instruments (you're not the only person to note the pure mechanical-ness of my writing), and yes, structure structure structure, I've had so many notes on it that it would be pretty shameful of me to not have that in the front of my mind for next round.

[johnfn]

== This is an official NGUAC Review ==

Jesus, this is not an easy track to review. It's like, 6 tracks in one or something lord almighty

Can we just talk about your composition a little bit? Because every time I start thinking that the composition is faltering, you hit me with a jawdropping progression or melody line, but right when I get into it it's gone and it'll probably never appear again. Like, let's just listen to the first 30 seconds. We start out with a little piano arp idea, and then this music box which is playing a really nice progression but the melody line itself doesn't really do anything all that interesting and kind of goes around aimlessly... until suddenly HOLY F- that chromatic descent thingy at 0:24 is out of this world!... and then it goes away and isn't repeated or anything. (At least you brought it back later in the song.) And this is basically how I feel about the entire track, like you have a bunch of melodically OK stuff and then suddenly BOOM when you least expect it an amazing idea hits.

Or like the idea at 2:24, which is totally beautiful, but then instead of sitting there for a while and fleshing it out, you just speed up the tempo and go onto another section instead. WHY??? Let your good ideas play themselves out!

A bunch of people mention 1f1n1ty in the reviews, so may as well address the elephant in the room. You two definitely have very similar styles, basically sounding like you both just glued multiple songs together with snazzy transitions ;-) I certainly am not opposed to it, and it's definitely preferable to the opposite thing where people will just write a single pattern and loop it for 5 minutes and submit it to the NGUAC. ;-) However, the multi-part song glued together is a hard balance to strike for anyone, because IMO songs just can't transition between ideas endlessly: they actually have to feel like the individual sections can stand on their own rather than moving between place to place so fast. And that's what I feel like the biggest problem of this song is - it's so many different ideas that are each great but you move between them so quickly that I can never properly sink my teeth into any one.

While I'm griping, I figure I should briefly mention the mix and sound design. While obviously the focus of this track is on the excellent compositional work, other judges will probably hammer you for these two things. First, a number of the instruments just sound flat out fake, with the guitar at 0:55 being a prime offender, especially on the trills - try varying the loudness of it. The violins in faster sections are also a large problem - try to use legato if possible. Furthermore, the mix often threatens to go into a 'large' section, such as the rapid violin idea leading into 1:13, but the mix never really backs it up, so it's kind of a letdown.

So overall, excellent work that is unfortunately let down by a rapidly shifting arrangement.

Mini-scores (not used to calculate final score in any way - just so you know what needs improvement):

Arrangement: 3/4
Composition: 3+/4
Sound Design: 2+/4
Production: 2+/4

Overall: 8.4

Miyolophone responds:

Thanks for the detailed review, johnfn! I'll try to make my final round entry less frantic and dismissive with its melodic material, and I'll do what I can to work around the fake-sounding instruments.

[MooseMoo]

Just going to be straight, it's not your best song. Trust me. However, just because it is your worst doesn't mean there's nothing good about it. Like what a lot of people said, very Ifinity like. (Too lazy to add the #s). Like Dark Matter Suite for some reason. But really, it's not your best. Don't take it personally though :). Also I really like the Ouverture! *sarcasm*. Also what next. European revolts and documenting various uprisings all over the EU? :P.

-MM

Miyolophone responds:

Ok, I respect that, but I could use a bit more feedback then "t's not your best song. Trust me." If you'd like to hear something improved next time, I'll need constructive criticism, not just criticism.