Reviews for Simple (ft. Michelle Kim)

[SkyeWint]

Time for your lips, open 'ide!

Stuff that's great:
- The chord synth has a really really nice mellow attack to it, it sounds excellent.
- The vocals are generally excellent, especially Michelle's singing.
- Reeeeeally chill for trance, which is pretty nice.

Stuff that can be improved:
- There are some weird things with the male vocals at parts like "take you there". It seems like part of the male vocals are cut off at the start - "ake you there". Enunciation of the beginnings of words is really important for cleanliness.
- Careful with overloading your mix at 1:35. The additional high hats are fairly buried and the vocals are burying the mellow attack of your chords.
- The background melody isn't particularly interesting, and it's repeated *a lot*. I wish the background melody were used more effectively than being repeated. (On a related note, the chords seem to be repeated throughout the whole thing - some variation would be excellent).

Overall this is a pretty chill piece without that much variation, just a couple breakdowns in the middle and some nice changing up of the vocals towards the end. More variation along with just a bit of tightening up the mix would make this fantastic.

8.6/10

[TaintedLogic]

I like the tranquility at the beginning. Nice warm atmosphere and reassuring mood. I still think you could do a better job at getting out the consonants, especially the first one in each word. Whenever you say “hide,” it sounds like “eye.” I appreciate the structural contrast at the 2-minute mark when you stripped the beat away. The production is also really strong here. I think the pacing of this piece is a little slow. Even during the chorus, there was a lot of space between the vocal lines, although perhaps that fits the character of the piece. I thoroughly enjoyed the call-and-response between the two vocalists at 3:35, which in turn leads into the final refrain really well. This is probably your strongest work yet. I love the warm synths and mastering - everything sits really well in the mix. Keep up the great work, Steelside! ;)

Mixing, mastering, and balance
2/2
Structure, transitions, phrasing, and variety
1.75/2
Melody, tonality, harmony, and texture
1.75/2
Instrumentation and sound design
1/1
Emotion, atmosphere, and catchiness
1/1
Originality and uniqueness
.75/1
Overall (how do the above elements interact?)
1/1
Composite score
9.25/10

steelside responds:

Yeah I have a weird habit of dropping certain sounds in my vocals that's really hard to unlearn. Feelsbad.

[frootza]

Dude, this was. Brilliant. Need to check out your other work. Chill. Catchy. Simple. Just what you need in a solid song. I'm happy that I caught this thing and stumbled upon this. Don't let the lack of community involvement get you down man. There's a niche for everyone, somewhere, I haven't even found mine yet, just keep writing music you clearly have talent!

[Spadezer]

Love it!

The mastering is beautiful and the flow of the music is well thought out. So nice.

Good luck

[johnfn]

wow, fantastic! i don't know how i missed your music earlier and now i feel bad, i REALLY like this!