After Hours of Careful Consideration (After Hours Reviews)

[jack]

ha, i just noticed i was the poster boy for this fight. thanks KA!

[BBABM]

first off i want to thank everyone who wrote reviews... i finally got a min to sit down and write some myself

mentone aerophone: i like your name. this is really cool. aphex twins "ambient works 85-92"is in my top 5 all time albums, and this could easily be mixed into a really cool ambient set. however, as a hit single, or for radio play, not so much. i dont know much to say other than id like it to be longer, or as part of a dj mix.

Berkeley Social Scene: listening to this song again i like it more and more. i really really like the intro, however, the transition into the verse is strange... i dont know if its a weird tempo change that works in the rest of the song, or something else that is just a little bit off. but after the first chorus kicks in i smile, and am over it. this is a really long song, but i like all the different parts, and how you bring the intro back into it. the sound isnt perfectly polished, but you can tell that you set out on a mission to finish a good song in a short time period. you succeeded.

ross durand: wow. a few weeks ago you did a one man and a guitar song, and it didn't really hit me... this one hit like a ton of bricks brother. i really like how your recording sounds. if you dont mind me asking a few questions...do you record both voice and guitar at once, or seperate? and do you record to a click track? i don't know if you do or not, it sounds very on beat for someone just playing it on their own. well done, vote.

the hate noise: i think someone said it before, for such a loud song, it sure is quiet. so i turned it up. i still have to strain to make out, much less understand the lyrics. are those live drums? if so, i have to give your double bass legs some props, cause they are going the whole damn time. i like what you were going for, i dont think you quite have it yet.
edit: burzum is pretty sweet... "key to the gate" kills, and i can totally see the influence. he still has a little more definition between his instruments, and not so many "chugga chugga" sounds.

shorty and the shetlands: i can tell that you put a lot more thought into the words than the music. you have mad heart, but you gotta switch it up a little bit more, or make the music more interesting.

sockpuppet: i love it. having worked for many years in bars, i am all too familiar with the after hours parking lot straggler who comes up (here in virginia bars close at 2am) at 2:35 knocking on the door, and needs to use the pisser. they usually try and swindle "one more drink" or "where's the party at" out of you as well. either way, it was short, sweet, to the point, brought back memories, and got a vote.

blootattue: i feel bad saying a song is boring, because my song was such a bore... but this song is boring. i feel like it should be in the background of some horrible ben stiller romantic comedy with whoever the quirky actress of the time is. meh, doesn't do it for me.

sober: i dig it... but i cant tell if that is a real texas accent... if so, it still sounds funny. pretty much all i got is that the keys need to be turned up. nice country rock diddy.

oddments: i could understand all the words, and liked them. something i have found experimenting with effects on my voice, is it is always nice to have an identical clean track that you can mix in, it still gives you that cool fuzz from the effect, but also gives you the crispness of a clean track. this song feels like there should be smoke swirling around, dark sunglasses, some chick in fur at the bar drinking (her voice)"beefeaters. up with a twist." see where im going with this? i like it, vote.

hostess mostess: this song is incredibly catchy, and is an awesome start. however, it has a few slightly large problems that it needs work on before it would get a vote. the guitar sounds really tinny, and needs less high end and more ass. the drummer needs to redo it all, pretty much every thing is a little off beat, too loud, and too much cymbal. the voice was good, but when you double them up at parts it sounds like a cheezy effect, rather than a backup singer. i look forward to hearing more from you, as this was entered late, and probably super rushed.

bad boys at bat mitzvahs: to record this song, i recorded probably a grand total of 7 sample loops, plus a drum track to make the music. i was trying to come up with with how the words would go by "nahing" along and ended up recording it as the two back up harmony tracks. i liked them alright, so i wrote some words as the third "harmony". i knew i would get totally reamed if i didn't put at least something a little different in there, so i threw an effect on the guitar part and did that lame "so get your boogie on" part because it was the first thing that came to mind. not super happy with how it came out, but im glad some folks dug it a little. i got a good one brewing for this next fight.

[Mostess]

i look forward to hearing more from you, as this was entered late, and probably super rushed.

Thanks for the thoughtful (and spot-on) review.

You are better off looking backward rather than forward. We do have a bit of a back catalog here. But since the third kid came along, recording time is scant.

[king_arthur]

ha, i just noticed i was the poster boy for this fight. thanks KA!

You're welcome! I've been wanting to include that photo in my "featuring" series ever since I started it; the right title finally came along.

Charles (KA)

[BBABM]

But since the third kid came along, recording time is scant.

ah yes, miniature human time sponges. best of luck

edit: "a bit of a back catalog" is a slight understatement.... there are like a million songs there. pretty much all of which i am way more impressed with than this weeks entry. "hit by a train" is ridiculous, i love it. i am very new here, so there are A LOT of older fighters i have not had the pleasure of hearing yet. i like to think fresh ears are always a good thing. so grats on the newest offspring, and hope you have the time to make more music!

[Ross]

ross durand:if you dont mind me asking a few questions...do you record both voice and guitar at once, or seperate? and do you record to a click track?

I did record both voice and guitar at the same time - which I usually do when recording solo. I do not record to a click track in these cases.

Thanks for the kind review (and the vote).

[The HATE Noise]

are those live drums? if so, i have to give your double bass legs some props, cause they are going the whole damn time.

Ha, unfortunately, no. Those are electronic drums. I would've played it on my kit, but I thought the samples I used were closer to Varg's drum sound than my shitty drums and the two mics I have. Plus, (if I'm not mistaken) he uses electronic drums for a lot of the tracks off "Filosofem," which is the album I was mostly listening to when I made this track.

Thanks for the review!

[BBABM]

Ha, unfortunately, no.

ive played on dw 5deltas, and on cobra 900s, and fast double bass on time is so hard even with the best equipment. plus in your song those are like what, 32nds? i cant get my legs to go when i want them to with any sort of precision, especially that fast. my left leg will for some reason only go on time with my right hand. where i live and record now is in an apartment so i can't bring my kit, so i get little to no practice on the drums anymore. im gonna check out "Filosofem"... not the biggest fan of goth/black metal (or whatever sub genre this really is), more into hardcore and punk, but i like what these guys are able to do by themselves, and the "do it yourself" attitude. what do you use to write your drum progressions? and do you use the same thing to write the rap beats for some of your previous songs?

[martyr]

Sober - Folk swagger pines over drink, prison, and nostalgic stories of old. Feels familiar and a touch cliche at times, but certainly moments that are well done.

Ross Durand - Nice folk gruff messages of wisdom. I like this a lot. Really polished and great melodic vocal performance. This is BEAU-TI-FUL. Yes, very fine music!

Shorty and the Shetlands - <web player hung...>

Bloo Tattue - <web player hung...>

Sock Puppet - <web player hung...>

Mento Neaerophone - Samples abound. Nice urban echos with R&B drum grooves and car horn key drops. Stays loopy however, kind of an exotic jam, but the song aspect alludes.

Oddments - Low volume cut. Jazzy lo fi vamps to a stranger. Megaphone vox fx all over this. Drum machine too digitized at points. Was wanting a looser human improve feel to the rhythm track. The sax, keys, and bass all are authentic jazz soul however. Extends for quite a long time.

The HATE Noise - Heavy. Well named. Wall of sound transistor overdrive. Double bass and screams. Strives for a speed metal take on some NIN chorus. Started loosing interest 20% of the way into it -- wanted to hear something vastly different from the verse lick.

Bad Boys at Batmitzvahs - <web player hung...>

Berkeley Social Scene - I'm partial to this track. Ryan's harmonix intro is awesome, and I love how we got to do the hits all the ways we wanted: 2, 3, 2, 5. The verse melody timing is not as strong as I would have liked. I think we cut the music, I just did 2 or 3 verse takes, and Ken mixed the best two in (basically the verse takes you hear are the first time singing the song ever -- no refinement). I love Glenny and Ryan's dual guitar counterpoint ideas on these verses. Like the scissor line. We could have cut the first verse in half to save time and keep up the pace, but decided to embrace the 5+ min length this time. I love the chorus ideas in this song -- short, sweet, catchy, lots of musical complexity. The sour notes on verse 2 guitar distracts a bit, but soon enough the verse beauty comes through. Chorus, bridge, nice length Glen solo, the drums are so solid and sound great. After listening to this I either hit RW immediately or am left humming it.

[fluffy]

After two web player hangs, did you consider maybe trying to use a different player?

[BBABM]

I found it runs much better on google chrome than Mozilla, after the same problem

[The HATE Noise]

what do you use to write your drum progressions? and do you use the same thing to write the rap beats for some of your previous songs?

That sucks about being in an apartment. Although I'd imagine it expands your experimentation a bit. I use a VERY old prototype version of the Fruity Loops program (I think it's like 3.75 or something like that) although I never use their stock samples. The samples in this tune come from some pack of 'big rock' drum clips. I do use the same program for all my rap stuff, but I don't really write progressions in it...mainly my beats are composed of hundreds of tiny samples from records I have, and I'll take clips from a turntable, digitize them, and pitch shift them all, match speeds, cut them down, distort them, etc. Basically, I use the program like a sampler when I make beats. The actual drums usually tend to be 'old school' style, where they're broken-up pieces of drum breaks from old records. I do all the individual editing of the samples in a VERY old version of Cakewalk. I think it was you who said that you'd like to collaborate on a rap track sometime, and I'm totally game. As long as it's a fight where there's a good two weeks/week and a half to write/record stuff, as I'm an employed student again.

[BBABM]

That's cool, I never thought to do it that way with samples in fruity loops (which I use too)... And have been trying to write stuff with the lame sounds that they give you. I don't know if it was me about a rap tune, as I am almost the worst rapper ever. Though I do always enjoy yours

[Spintown]

I missed the late entry...

Hostess Mostess - Next time, finish your song by the deadline, because this was one of my favorites this Fight. Loved the music, but at times didn't care for the vocals. It still would have got a vote from me. For the first 35 seconds or so I was just "meh" about it, but then the funk came in...very cool sound.

[jast]

Harsh reviews day! See my signature for details about my review system. Listened to in random order.

Bad Boys at Bat Mitzvahs -- The many-tracked vocals don't line up very well. It would sound appropriately "drunken choir"-like but not with just one voice layered a couple of times. Melody drags on and on with few changes. Yawn. Distorted speaking repeated a zillion times. Yawn. Rinse, repeat, fall asleep. I guess the bad intonation in the vocals sort of fits here, but it doesn't really sound intentional.
C:1 L:* F:1 P:2 M:3 Total: 8/15

Berkeley Social Scene -- That's called flageolet, right? Cool. Stereo imbalance plus headphones equals headache returning. Vocals are quite buried, though they otherwise fit like a glove... if not for the straining on the higher notes. Fantastic guitar/drum work as usual. The tempo change comes across as completely random and jarring to me. I like the verses here, quite a lot even; the rest is perhaps a bit too BSS for me, ifyouknowwhatimean. Gets a bit long.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:2 M:3 Total: 11/15

BlooTattue -- Proven formula, I guess. Nice piano. I like the vocal work, too, though a bit of wobbliness leaks through (or is that overzealous pitch correction? Eurgh!), and it detracts quite a bit from the otherwise shiny finish of this song. I'm sure I'd like it lots more if I hadn't heard pretty much the same song so often before.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:2 M:3 Total: 11/15

The HATE Noise -- Did someone say noise? Amazingly it doesn't annoy me... yet. Yeah, around 25 seconds into it it starts getting a bit tiring. Is anything going to happen here, except for super-long intro? Ah, some vocals that are impossible to make out. Shrug. A part with lots of machine-gunny splashies. Double shrug. This whole thing doesn't really have any contours or contrasts. It's just one big blob of noise. I'm getting a headache. Made it through to 4:00. Next!
C:2 L:* F:1 P:2 M:1 Total: 8/15

Mentone Aerophone -- That's one weird soundscape. In a good way, perhaps. I dunno. This doesn't go in the "song" category for me. A bit too collagey. The droning notes in the left channel are annoying.
C:1 L:* F:2 P:2 M:2 Total: 9/15

Oddments -- I like the jazziness and that some small thing actually happen in this. Regrettably, no larger things happen, but it's still pretty enjoyable. Yay vibes! On the other hand, the weird low-keyness and distortion and boomy quality of the vocals takes a lot off this for me, and I'm not quite sure whether I like how the vocals are more speaky than singy. Great instrumental break. Outstays its welcome a bit.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:3 M:3 Total: 12/15

Ross Durand -- Verses are very wordy. I haven't decided whether that's a good thing. This... is it the chorus? The melody is full of jumps. Yes, clever of me to notice, isn't it? It adds to the busy quality of the song which I'm pretty sure doesn't fit very well at all. Hard for me to get into this, though the vocals and guitar are definitely up to the high standards I hold you to.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:3 M:3 Total: 12/15

Shorty and the Shetlands -- Slightly pitchy vocals. Pretty standard G&G so far, admittedly with above-average singing. The right-channel guitar turns this from completely unremarkable into sort of not a complete waste of time, I guess. If that sounds harsh, perhaps it's because I still have some headache left over from HATE Noise's track. Your performance and stuff is good, but there are just so many songs like that. It's hard to care.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:3 M:3 Total: 12/15

Sober -- Proven country formula. Vocals are very slightly pitchy. I find the rather noisy sound of rhythm guitar a bit annoying (and it dominates the arrangement in a bad way). Vocals have more life in them than I might have expected. Hmm, still formulaic, and you adhered to the formula pretty much perfectly.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:3 M:3 Total: 12/15

Sockpuppet -- Bouncy! Guitar slightly out of tune. This is the archetypal one-off song. Can't say much about it, but somehow I do like it a bit.
C:2 L:2 F:2 P:2 M:2 Total: 10/15

Hostess Mostess -- I wouldn't have expected this kind of sparse arrangements from you. Uhh, if you hold a note forever, please nail the pitch. Seriously strainy high notes make me cringe a bit. Nice bridge and structure in general. Okay, arrangement starts building up more now. Nice bass. Hmm, I think this song might have been better (or at least more enjoyable for me) with pad thingies in the arrangement, or at least add them somewhere along the way. Apart from that I quite like the composition. Very nice use of suspended chords.
C:2 L:* F:2 P:2 M:3 Total: 11/15

I'll be voting for: nobody. That's a first for me. That means all of you can just pretend that I didn't criticize your songs because I'm effectively not influencing the fight results at all.

[Mostess]

Hostess Mostess -- I wouldn't have expected this kind of sparse arrangements from you.

Thanks for the review. Since we got the drumset (I have never played drums before), I've been trying to sound less like a guy in a home studio and more like a rock band. It's not easy. Our last three entries have been wildly disappointing. We'll keep at it, of course. And try to pick the key after we write the melody.

[jast]

I've been trying to sound less like a guy in a home studio and more like a rock band. It's not easy.

You don't say.

[Ross]

Wow!! How cool is that? Thanks folks. Who knew GnG could win a songfight?