SpinTunes 21 Round 1 Challenge - 'Y-Axis'

[BoffoYux]

ST21 Round 1 Challenge

Heads up! Your SpinTunes 21 Round 1 challenge is here for you to sink your teeth into. You may have to dig deep within yourself to find an idea that will make your entry soar, climb the judges' rankings, and maybe even go down in SpinTunes history. Here's hoping the challenge lifts your spirits without raising your hackles. Continue reading for the lowdown on your Round 1 challenge:

Y-Axis: Write and record a song about some kind of vertical position or movement, either literal or metaphorical: up, down, height, depth, rising, falling, tall things, short things, etc.

Examples:

"The House at the Top of the Tree" by They Might Be Giants
"Low" by Flo Rida
"Starships" by Nicki Minaj
"Short People" by Randy Newman
"The Climb" by Miley Cyrus
"Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato
"Such Great Heights" by The Postal Service

Submitting Entries:

Your entry must be received by Sunday, September 3, 2023 @ 11:59 PM EDT. Otherwise it'll be posted as a shadow. Received means that it has to appear in my e-mail inbox (spintunescontest@gmail.com) by the given deadline. I will be going by the time stamp on the e-mail. One minute late is too late.
You are allowed and encouraged to submit a draft of your song early just in case something horrible happens and you miss the deadline. Then you can add polish to your song and send in a better version closer to the deadline. The last version received prior to the deadline is your official entry.
Lyrics are mandatory. No instrumentals. Having no lyrics will get you disqualified.

SUBMITTING BY EMAIL: Send your file in a format that BandCamp accepts. (.wav or .flac) (at least 16-bit/44.1kHz) Do not send MP3s.
Name your file the song's title + your band name, without punctuation.
The subject line of the e-mail should identify the challenge and your band's name. Something like this would be fine: "ST21R1 - All the Robots".
Include the song lyrics in the body of the e-mail.
Include information on anyone that needs credited if you collaborated with someone.

ALTERNATE FILE SHARING OPTIONS: If your file is too big for an email attachment, you may email me a link to where I can download the song. The email still needs to land in my inbox by the deadline.

If you have a Bandcamp account you can just send me a link to your song if you include all the info I mentioned for emails. Info such as lyrics and song credits can be included in the email or on the song's Bandcamp page. Make sure you have it set as a free download, and have it set so that I don't have to put in an e-mail to download it if you pick this option.
You may also use a file sharing service such as DropBox, WeTransfer, Google Drive, etc. Include in the email any required information (such as lyrics) that you couldn't include in the file. Make sure I have permission to download the file, and please follow directions so your file doesn't wind up in my spam or trash folder accidentally.

SONG BIOS: In addition to lyrics and any necessary credits, you are welcome to include a "song bio", with any information you feel is useful. This could include your inspiration for the song, citations for any obscure references within the lyrics, an explanation of how your song met the challenge, etc. Some challenges may require you to supply certain info in your song bio. Since the judges are volunteers with lives outside of SpinTunes, song bios can help them zero in on aspects of the song you feel are important. However, if your song requires a multi-paragraph explanation in order to understand and appreciate it, this is probably a sign that it doesn't stand up well on its own, and its ranking may reflect that.

Side Notes:
You can send in an entry to SpinTunes 21 without competing. Just tell me it's a "Shadow Song". It will be played at the listening party, but won't be ranked and you might not receive feedback from the judges. Check the FAQ if you don't know what that means. You can even complete past challenges from previous contests. It's a nice way of playing along if you can't commit to the schedule or you just want to get your feet wet.
The only other way to get your music played at the listening party is to cover "Today's The Day" by Inverse T. Clown or "Right Again" by Mandibles.

https://spintunescontest.blogspot.com/2 ... lenge.html

[BoffoYux]

Monday's Listening Party starts at 9pm EDT on 9/4.
I'm guessing 2-3 hours, so stay hydrated with a frosty beverage!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QqKTkSGi0

[BoffoYux]

Album is up!
https://spintunes.bandcamp.com/album/sp ... 21-round-1

[JonPorobil]

Hey everybody, great opening round! Quick status update:

I think I'm pretty locked-in on my rankings, and I'm about halfway done writing my reviews. Hopefully I'll be able to finish writing in the next couple of days... And I'll hold off on submitting my ranks until then as well, in case I have any additional epiphanies during writing. I know it's an agonizing wait, but there's a ton of material to get through, and I'm hoping to do it all justice.

[glennny]

Berkeley Social Scene, Cavedwellers, and glennny thank you for the thankless task.

[crumpart]

Hey everybody, great opening round! Quick status update:

I think I'm pretty locked-in on my rankings, and I'm about halfway done writing my reviews. Hopefully I'll be able to finish writing in the next couple of days... And I'll hold off on submitting my ranks until then as well, in case I have any additional epiphanies during writing. I know it's an agonizing wait, but there's a ton of material to get through, and I'm hoping to do it all justice.

Thanks Jon! I definitely recommend holding off on ranking submissions until you write the reviews. I know for sure my rankings changed during the review process several times.

Also, I’m under the gun with some other artwork this week for an event happening really soon, so am super thankful for the extra week between rounds this time.

[DutchWidows]

Here are some reviews. It’s taken a while to do them because life gets in the way, but these are my thoughts for what they’re worth. For some reason, I’ve got it into my head that the amount of time it takes to get to the first vocal (TtFV) and the amount of time it takes to get to first chorus (TtFC) are important in some way that I can neither explain nor justify. The starting point was that I’m keen on ripping out anything superfluous and just getting to the point – what’s that phrase? “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!”. Don’t know who said that, but I like the ethos behind it. I’m not a fan of repeating a guitar intro (for example) four times round when twice will do. Or once. Anyway, they’re entirely irrelevant metrics because the time taken to get somewhere is meaningless without knowing the tempo or having an understanding of the writer’s intent, but as I’d written them all down, I’ve included them here. Do with them what you will. Probably just ignore them. I’m also trying to pay more attention to the words, because I don’t normally. It’s not that they’re not important – I love words – but normally it takes many listens for me to get beyond the sound and music into the words, so I tried to pay a bit more attention this time around.

As with all reviews, these are just opinions, and should be taken with a massive pinch of salt. Particularly if I say something like ‘I wish it had done this’ – intent is important, but as I can’t guess at the intent of the writer, it’s just an expression of how I hear things, and that’s no more valid than any other view. And apologies for typos.

[EDIT: In an effort to understand if my stupid time metrics mean anything, I've worked out the most common ratios this round between time to chorus relative to time to first vocal:

Simultaneous: 4 songs
Twice as long: 9 songs
2.5 times as long: 1 song
3 times as long: 6 songs
4 times as long: 2 songs
5 times as long: 1 song
6 times as long: 2 songs
9 times as long: 2 songs
14/36/45 times as long: 1 song each
Does not work (due to uncertain chorus location): 1 song

It probably still doesn't mean anything, but the bump at twice as long is interesting to some degree (to me).]

GFS - Vertical Vision
So, so slick. If one were looking up ‘radio ready’ in a dictionary, there would be a link to this song. The production is super high quality, the instrumentation is spot on – embellishing in all the right places, coming on strong to lift the choruses, dropping out for bridges – the vocal harmonies are brilliantly layered and work superbly. There’s a slight breathiness to the verse vocal that kinda pushed me away to start with – not the breathiness of the delivery as such, but something around the edges of the sound of the vocal – but with repeated listens, I found it bothered me less and less to the point where writing this now, multiple listens later, I can barely remember why I thought that in the first place. The lyrics strike me as good pop lyrics, which is not meant pejoratively – I love me some pop music – but they sound deeper than they perhaps are..? Is that harsh? Probably, but the song’s so good that while the lyrics aren’t exactly immaterial, they kinda don’t need to be high art.

This is not quite my favourite song of the round, but it’s really close to being my favourite.

TtFV: 0s
TtFC: 36s

Berkeley Social Scene - Atop the Sutro Tower
Not mad keen on the doubled guitar riff that kicks things off (and links some of the verses) – it’s a little proggy for my tastes, but that’s a personal thing. Though I suppose these reviews are my opinion, so it’s probably ok to give a subjective reaction, even if it’s a wrong one, no? The verses are melodically pretty nice, and while I don’t love the guitar tone, they do hang together well. But the stand-out on this song for me is the chorus, which I love. It just lifts the whole song, as all good choruses should - the backing vocals are great and that high guitar part is lovely!

Guitar solos. Hmm. I’ve probably said this before in a review, but despite having played the guitar for more years than I care to remember, I don’t like guitar solos. That’s not quite true. I don’t like guitar solos that don’t serve a purpose (that I can grasp) and just act as a bridge to nowhere. I’ve always been a Johnny Marr/Peter Buck kinda guitar player, and I like economy, purpose and arpeggios!

Having said that, the jump into the vocal-less chorus guitar chords at the end of the guitar solo is bloody lovely. Those chords hit hard like classic mid- to late-60s The Who. It’s a cool moment.

Lyrically, it made me smile – it’s nicely done and has a kinda wry feel to it.

TtFV: 8s
TtFC: 46s

Mandrake - Volume
This has a cool vibe. The verses have a nice tension to them that gets released in a really satisfying manner in the chorus, which just opens up. That rising sound under the first line in the chorus is a really clever way of lifting things further. The rhythms throughout work really well and it has a nice tumbling energy to it - I like how it feels like it’s almost rolling or stumbling forward.

I prefer the softer synthy sounds in the (first) verse rather than the harsher bleepier sounds that follow – they just kinda sit into the song better for me, whereas the harsher sounds sort of lift me out of the song.

Lyrically, I like the picture it paints, and the line “I wonder how you're able to sound so optimistic yet so down” is a good one.

TtFV: 15s
TtFC: 44s

Jim Tyrrell - A Hole In The Rain
There’s a lot of space in this song. It starts really mellowly (I’m pretty sure that’s a word), which I think would work brilliantly in an album setting, but feels ballsy to me in a competition setting. I’m coming down on the side of liking that understated ballsiness. For some reason, this song puts me in mind of The Police around Zenyatta Mondatta – I think it’s the way that the chorus is delivered. It’s a lovely chorus - catchy and sticks in the brain. There’s a really nice rhythmic synth that first comes in at around 25s, which I really like. I view that kind of incidental, supporting instrumentation as the height of good production. Not sure why, I just do.

It paints a nice picture lyrically, and as mentioned, the title and the way it’s sung is really nice. Satisfying. Weirdly, it took me a while to understand that someone is digging a hole in the ground, while it’s raining. For the first half a dozen listens, I thought they were digging a hole in the rain. Like digging horizontally forwards into water falling from the sky to try and create a hole. I thought it was an avant garde, super intellectual metaphor for the pointlessness of some activity that the singer was disparaging – “it's so pointless, it’s like digging a hole in the rain, which is ridiculous, because rain is a liquid and the hole won’t stay dug. The rain just runs round the shovel and the hole won’t be there afterwards”. I feel quite stupid to have thought that now I realise it’s about roadworks in the rain.

TtFV: 35s
TtFC: 1m19s

chewmeupspitmeout - i was just the gravity
This is my favourite song of the round, possibly one of my favourite songs of all SpinTunes. I love it. The verses have a lovely solidity to them – the vocals and lyrics are really well done and I’m surprised the bio suggests it’s a rush job - it feels perfectly realised to me. That jump to falsetto in the choruses is sublime. I love the falsetto bits.

I wasn’t so keen on the sound of the crunchy guitar in the left channel - it’s just a bit flabby sounding for my tastes – I like my guitars to sound taut and angular, or muscular. But it works fine in the context of the song, and it didn’t detract in any meaningful way from the whole. There are so many lovely details in the outro – subtle, layered parts that weave together so nicely. Is this all too gushing? Probably. But I love this song.

Lyrically, it’s really good. Using gravity and weight as metaphor (?) for a relationship is a cool idea.

This is a great song and I love it.

TtFV: 14s
TtFC: 28s

The Pannacotta Army - Still Coming Up Short
A laid back, slightly jazzy song. It all sounds so well realised – the music’s really tastefully done, and the singing has a really cool croony vibe to it. The chorus is really lovely – really strong melody and it lifts in a really pleasing way. There are lots of pleasing details in the music/production, little runs or augmentations that work beautifully. These are all well thought through and well-placed. I guess my over-riding view is that it all feels right. There’s nothing in there that shouldn’t be, and everything does what it needs to, and does it effortlessly.

I like the lyrics – a nice take on feeling inadequate and aspiring to be better. The vocal delivery really carries that feeling well.

TtFV: 19s
TtFC: 37s

iveg - Flames Descend
The doom-y sounding guitar riff really sets the scene for a sad (and in the real world, pretty horrific) tale. The vocal is much louder than the music, which makes it a little jarring when it comes in, and it does kinda over-power the song a little. I think it would have sounded bigger and heavier if the music was higher in the mix (or the vocal lower) so that the power of the music carried more of the song.

The chorus melody caught me every time – I found ‘flames descend’ part to be an awkward melody, but the resolution of ‘golden grass’ is just so lovely that it works. Particularly when the vocals are doubled. My favourite part is the end of what I think is the bridge (‘my upstairs neighbour …’) – I love the melody and cadence of that part, it just shines for me.

And so short too – 1m30s. Yet it packs a lot in, says what’s needed and ends. Smart song-writing!

The lyrics work well at conveying the story and the place names, because I’m not familiar with them, sound great in song-form.

TtFV: 8s
TtFC: 18s

Stacking Theory - One More Love Song
The mood that the intro sets up is really nice – filmic in its scope. It just feels vast and desert-y. Not sure why the desert, but that’s the scene it paints in my head. I found the slight stutter in the drum beat just before the vocal starts broke the mood a little – I would have preferred a straight build into the vocal, but I have particularly vanilla tastes, so I’m happy to accept the writer’s decisions.

The harmonies on the title are really nice, and I love the ‘silver throat’ part, both lyrically (borrowed or not) and the vocal treatments – it’s super-effective. The repetition of ‘same hill’ feels like it shouldn’t work, but it just does. Every time it comes around I feel my brain thinking ‘no, don’t just repeat the same words’, but my gut goes ‘nope, totally works. Shut up brain’, and we move on. The high guitar parts that come in are great too.

I’m not sure quite understand the lyrics - they work on an instinctive level, but I’m not sure I ‘get’ them. This is almost certainly my limitation.

TtFV: 39s (to first sung word – there are lots of vocal sounds before that point)
TtFC: not sure where the chorus is!

West Of Vine - Come Up On The Front Porch
Feels like a solid ‘American’ song – the vocal tone, the guitar embellishments all have a very American feel to them. That’s not to say that they’re not well done, just that it feels to me, a Brit, very American. The guitar that comes in on ‘bleeding money’ is really good – it has a laid-back rhythm that gives the song a cool lift. The steps into the choruses felt like they could have been refined a little – they kinda stutter a little and they possibly had one or two bars more than were needed. The song feels like it sort of falls apart at the end of the solo, which I quite like as an approach, but on repeated listens, I would have preferred a tighter ending. Lyrically, it paints a nice picture. As with the music, the lyrics have a particularly American feel to them, though there are elements to them that felt to reminiscent of Mick Jagger, maybe in the delivery as much as the words. Mick is of course not American, though has built a career out of pretending to be. Is that harsh? Maybe. I love the Stones, bits of them anyway (largely pre-1973), but their American aspirations are not subtle.

TtFV: 12s
TtFC: 38s

The Popped Hearts - You're Getting High, I'm Getting Down
This kicks off like a Dick Dale surf classic, before Fred Schneider of the B52s joins on vocals. It’s not a combination that I would naturally think of, but it works well. It speeds along for its short lifespan - I like that it arrives, it whirls like a dervish for 90-odd seconds, and then it’s done. That sense of purpose and brevity is pretty difficult to pull off well, but I think this nails it. I prefer the vocals that are sung with fewer of the leaps – the B52s-isms, if you like. The last two lines in each verse are really good – melodically and tonally I would have liked that approach to be employed more frequently. I like the lyrical details – the Guyville references for example – and having two lines with the same words in a different order (around Never Meant/Never Said) is a super neat trick.

TtFV: 16s
TtFC: 27s

nightingale's fiddle - Ballad of Susie Ann
The playing is lovely on this. I don’t know if they’re virtual instruments or real ones – I suspect real ones, a harp or harpsichord maybe – but either way it’s got great tone and it’s played with a lovely feel. The fast melodic shifts, doubled on the harp or harpsichord (?) on the verse, feel like an older style of music, but I don’t have enough musical knowledge to pin down a particular period. The vocals and the lyrical story have the feel of English folk, while the stringed instrument (I can’t decide between harp and harpsichord, but it may be something completely different) makes it feel more medieval. It’s a nice mix, and it stands out in this round as being different to the rest, which is no bad thing. Lyrically it’s a nice sea-based tale; not quite in shanty territory, but certainly shanty-adjacent. I can’t tell if Susie Ann is a sailor or a boat. I don’t think it matters, but I like that I can’t tell.

TtFV: 12s
TtFC: 32s

Ominous Ride - Vertigo
First off, I kinda like the explanatory text setting out the author’s dissatisfaction. I find that very relatable – I’m sure most of us finish our songs with a level of dissatisfaction with some of what we’ve done, and I liked having that insight!

Having said that, I’m not sure there’s much to be dissatisfied about. This is a really good and enjoyable song. The main riff with the little ascending part in the middle and the doubled vocals are both really lovely. The backing vocals are nicely done and give depth and a sheen to proceedings. The only tempo change that stood out to me was at 1m17s, which felt like a downward shift rather than up from 110 to 125bpm – the rhythm of the words speeds up, but the guitar slows down (so if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure which way the underlying tempo is going). Either way, I thought that the abruptness of that change worked fine. If there’s an awkward change at some later point, it wasn’t obvious to my ears. The lyrics and their delivery have a disorientating feel to them, which works brilliantly with the vertigo theme of the song. If it were me, I might have dropped the extended outro and just brought things to a nice end point at 1m52s. That minor quibble aside, I enjoyed this one!

TtFV: 2s
TtFC: 19s

Braylee Pierce - Dig Deep
The vocals are buried a little for me to properly hear them, or the guitar is too loud. It’s the balance between the two is what I think I’m saying. The voice is very good, really strong singing. There were elements to this that I found too repetitive or that repeated too many times, such as the guitar intro which felt overlong to me, and the chorus melody didn’t grab my ear enough to want the multiple repeats each time.

From what I understand, a lot of sculptors view their creative process as removing what’s not needed to leave what is. They take a big bit of rock (or whatever medium they work with) and they carve away the bits they don’t need till they find the art within. This song feels like that to me – I think there’s a great song in here, but it needs more whittling to get to its essence, to refine it to its best form, to remove the un-needed parts.

TtFV: 30s
TtFC: 58s

Brain Weasels - Root To Rise (Overdrive)
I found the frenetic vocal delivery on this, particularly in the choruses, to be over-whelming. Not in the sense of being personally overwhelmed, but that it overwhelmed the song to the point where I found it difficult to get on board. It felt to me that there were perhaps a couple too many words or syllables in each line, which added a rushed nature to what was already a dense lyrical starting point. The fast strumming guitar adds to that sense of urgency. The way the song sits back into the ‘with my shoulders’ section is so lovely, that I wanted more of that and less of the speedier main sections. Lyrically, the words have a nice uplifting message, but everything gets subsumed in my head by the frenetic nature of the song.

TtFV: 15s
TtFC: 15s

Phlub - Straight to Hell
I first listened to this one in the car with my other half, and her comment on the first line was ‘I bet he hasn’t’, which made me laugh. She took the confessional lyrics very much at face value. This kind of grungy, sleezy blues, Cramps-like in its delivery, is a cool approach, though I struggled to stay engaged for the full 4m37s each time. Despite my previously-stated aversion to guitar solos, I thought they worked well here – they break the heaviness of the vocals with a change in tone. Though to defend my aversion, it serves a clear purpose here (in my head anyway), so I can get on board. The higher guitar parts around the second solo are pretty lovely. The lyrics are pretty miserable, and I mean that in the nicest sense of the word – the narrator is pretty unpleasant, hence is destined for hell, and the lyrics just spell it out!

TtFV: 21s
TtFC: 1m03s

Jeff Walker - Solid Ground
The chorus on this really shines and top marks for Heidegger and Kierkegaard references! The verses feel a little more workmanlike to me – they move the story on and have a nice feel to them, and everything is where it needs to be. The slide guitar parts are nice and lift things when they come in. While the guitar solo’s nicely played, the lead licks in the last chorus were a step too far for my tastes – I find that kind of noodling just breaks the mood too much for me. It’s a personal thing and I wouldn’t suggest anyone does anything according to my tastes and whims, but I got opinions, and that’s one of them. The lyrics are nicely done – and as noted, Heidegger and Kierkegaard references are neat and feel natural.

TtFV: 26s (although 5s of silence at start)
TtFC: 1m10s

The Dutch Widows - Above It All
Really interesting how many people have noted in their song bio or have mentioned elsewhere how they were pushed for time this round. I was too. I spent a total of about six or seven hours on this – most of it is first take and I just ran out of time to do more… I like it well enough. I’d like it more if I could sing. The only note I will offer on this is that I tried a new way (for me) of writing melodies, starting with a keyboard and finding something I liked then trying to sing it, rather than mumbling my way to a melody with a limited number of notes in it. Think I will try it again as I thought the outcome was better than I usually manage.

TtFV: 1s
TtFC: 1s

Cavedwellers - Z-Axis
The first time I listened to the album, I put it on shuffle to (literally) mix it up a little, and the first two songs were this one, followed by Hanky Code. And they worked really well as the start of a pretty cohesive sounding, American folk rock album. The kind of thing I would hoover up back in the day.

I really like this song. It has a great feel – the rhythm guitars are the real stars here for me, very tasteful playing and more interesting than a straight-ahead strummed approach – and the vocals hit some lovely peaks, both in terms of frequency and feel. I kinda lose the plot a little from the guitar solo up to the start of the last double-chorus. The first, single guitar solo is nice, but its doubling grinds all the wrong gears for me and the (what I think of as a kind of Van Halen) chunky rhythm part just dumps me out of the song, only for the last chorus to pull me back in again. That chorus is great.

And I agree on the title subverting the prompt. I do a lot of work in vibration, and tri-axial measurements always have the x-axis horizontal and perpendicular to the source, the y-axis horizontal and parallel to the source, and the z-axis is the vertical one. I don’t make the rules, but those are the rules.

TtFV: 1s
TtFC: 45s

Hanky Code - The Bends
I really like this song – there’s something about the tone of the vocal that I really like. There’s a band on FAWM called PlushBaby whose music I love, and vocally this has a very similar tone/rhythm to their stuff. So much so, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it’s the same person. Although this singer is American, and PlushBaby’s singer is British. But either way, I like the vocals a lot. The melodies are really nice and the vocal pulls the song along at a good pace. The backing vocals in the chorus are really subtle, but lift the song in a pleasing way. The way the vocal rhythm changes over the verse/pre-chorus/chorus builds to the chorus in a really satisfying way – a simple touch, but so effective. If I was being super-critical, I would say that the intro could be half the length – once round the loop was enough for me – and while the guitar solo is short, it doesn’t do much for me other than allow a chorus to follow a chorus. A drop down into a short bridge section to change the feel would have been the way I would have gone, but in reality, the song probably would have been worse for that, so what do I know? I like the lyrics, though their rhythm feels more important to the feel of the song than their inherent meaning. Which is not to criticise them, just an observation.

TtFV: 12s
TtFC: 36s

Tunes By LJ - Beneath You / Over It
This has a nice, laid back feel. The first verse (stanza?) is particularly satisfying lyrically – I like the flip in the last line. It’s snowing, I need to clean the windshield so I can see where I’m going. Yes, that’s sensible. But I know the roads so well, I don’t really need to see them. I don’t know, I just think that’s a neat subversion of the expected narrative. I find this song really interesting in a constructional sense, in the decisions that have gone into making it. It’s quite short at 1m51s and yet it’s got a lot of space in it. Almost half the song (50s) is just groove either with no singing or singing that’s mixed so low, I didn’t pick it out as singing (in the outro) for the first multiple listens. That feels like the move of a confident songwriter. It’s useful for me to pick this stuff apart, and see that effective song-making doesn’t need to be as dense as I often (usually?) make it.

TtFV: 2s
TtFC: 28s (at least 28s to what I’m taking to be the chorus)

Hot Pink Halo - Aim High
First up – I love that the beat is made from a recording of climbing the stairs of the Eiffel Tower; there’s a natural rhythm to those kind of field recordings that are intrinsically tied to human experience, and it grounds the song really nicely. The song has a very nice floaty feel – the synths bubble and float around in a way that creates a sense of air, that particularly suit the chorus lyric. The different vocal treatment on the French lyrics in the verses lends them an otherworldly air, but also emphasises how the lush the main vocals are when they come back in. The guitar that comes in for the ‘what doesn’t bend’ section gives a really nice lift and I like how sparingly the guitars are used. The vocal in that bridge section is also great – it steps to the side of song and adds an edge that resolves beautifully on the boomerang line. It has a very positive lyric, which never oversteps into the saccharine, which can be difficult to pull off.

TtFV: 6s
TtFC: 36s

Jealous Brother - Climbing the Fascist Ladder
This has a nice bouncy country rock feel to it. The lyrics are a nice undercutting treatise on a particular aspect of modern political life, and they’re delivered really nicely – the doubled vocal harmonies in particular are great. In truth though, I didn’t engage with this one as much as some others – I think the country leanings are perhaps a little heavy for my Anglicised ear, and while the multiple key changes are a clever musical manifestation of the vertical movement prompt, I found them a little tiring by the fourth change. Were there seven in total? The guitar solo, while really nicely played, is an example of why I’m not so keen on them in general – it doesn’t take the song anywhere for me, it just fills time, then we jump up a key. I don’t know. I suspect I may be unusual in my dislike of guitar solos, but for them to work for me, they either have to serve a function in the song, or be so good that their place in the song is deserved on merit.

TtFV: 10s (including 4s of silence at start)
TtFC: 10s (including 4s of silence at start)

Governing Dynamics - Downfall
The guitars sound great in this – they have a slightly hollowed out sound, that I really like and that really suits the vocal. They might be mixed a touch high, though equally that could be my speakers. And the guitar solos in this are interesting as they’re short, interspersed with vocals and serve to move the song from one section to the next. They seem to be an organic part of the song, rather than something dropped into a gap of ‘x’ bars in length. So I don’t object to them. The singing throughout is very good and I particularly liked the held word ‘down’ towards the end. I know I’m probably taking it too literally, but I’ve puzzled over the line “from the neck up to the boots”. I’ve been trying to work out what circumstances make that direction of travel make literal sense. I suspect that there’s either a very specific meaning, that it isn’t supposed to make sense, or I’ve just misunderstood it.

TtFV: 26s
TtFC: 51s

Pigfarmer Jr - Nowhere To Go But Down
This has a good sound to it – strong vocal, great acoustic guitar tone – and lyrically it tells a nice story. I wanted the drums to have a bit more life to them – they seemed a little one-dimensional to my ear and I wanted them to cut loose a little. While I didn’t have a particular issue with the guitar noodles through the second half of each verse, I think I would have preferred the vocal melody to change up for that section instead. The melody in the first half is strong, but it started to feel a touch repetitive for me in the second half of each verse. I mean I’m not one to preach about vocal melodies – I can barely sing on my best days – but I think I’m very much in ‘do as I say, not as I do’ territory. Not that I’m telling anyone what to do, but that phrase kinda gets at what I mean. Guitar solos. If you’ve read the reviews above, this will be no surprise, but I’m not sure I understand their purpose here, other than filling the gaps. I mean, they’re nicely played and all, but they don’t do anything for me in terms of the song, at least that I can grasp. Solid song though and lyrically tight with a nice audio prompt at the end to signify a tragic ending (or at least that’s how I took it!).

TtFV: 13s
TtFC: 1m02s

Temnere - Into the Darkness
I’m sure it’s consistent with the genre (of which I know nothing), but the intro felt like it could have been half the length and given the same effect. I think where I’m getting to in these reviews is that I’m a time-fascist – I prefer things to do what they need to do, then bog off. Time (in general) seems too short to me to repeat something when doing it once is enough. Maybe I’m just getting old and feel the pressure of time marching on. Who knows? The guitars and drums all sound great, and the vocals are really good. Like Tunes By LJ, there’s a lot of instrumental space in this – the instrumental section between what I took to be the first chorus (‘down into the darkness…’) to when that comes in again, was almost 1m20s, or about 28% of the song. Again, maybe it’s my obsession with time and moving things on (and maybe it’s why all my songs are musically dull, but mercifully short), but that seems a lot to me, particularly when I’m not sure what purpose is served by it. I think I might be obsessed with time in an unhealthy way. Lyrically, it’s a neat, well-told story.

TtFV: 29s
TtFC: 1m08s (to bit that gets repeated as if a chorus) (2m to what sounded like a chorus to me)

Eric Novak - Low Road
Another song where I think the intro is twice as long as I’d like it to be. I know you’re not supposed to judge art with a stopwatch, but I do prefer it when things to get to the point quickly. I like the feel of this – it has a slight staccato feel to the verses that also wobble about a bit which all resolves into a lovely flow in the choruses. I’m not sure what the wobble is – is there some kind of tremolo or modulation going on? Or have I drunk too much tea? That is also possible. The bass parts are really nice and like the way the guitar is played – there are some really nice embellishments and flourishes. The lyrics are a first person narrative, but if I’m honest, I’m not sure what they’re about, and there are no notes to help me figure it out. That doesn’t really matter – I don’t need to understand and it’s often better that I don’t – it’s an observation (or an admission of my own lack comprehension skills).

TtFV: 18s
TtFC: 18s

Sober - On Penobscot Bay
This is quite an understated Sober. It feels solid and safe. I don’t mean that to sound disparaging, but I’m used to Sober pushing at the edges of his stylings, and this feels well within his boundaries. Or maybe I don’t understand how complex the various flourishes actually are to play. That is very possible. It’s really nicely recorded – the vocal is warm and rich, and the instrumentation all does exactly what’s needed. The slide guitar (or what I think is slide) is very nice. I kinda wanted this to let go a little, maybe get a crack in the voice. It almost breaks loose for the last verse, but it gets reined back in. Lyrically, it’s a nicely observed story, and the song bio definitely helps with context. And Penobscot is a cool word to sing. Having watched his SongFight Live Online performance, I now only want to listen to/watch Sober in video form. Obviously live, in person would be better, but Maine is a long way away.

TtFV: 5s
TtFC: 46s

Frédéric Gagné - Slump
I think I read somewhere, Discord maybe, that this is in 14edo – is that right? I don’t know what that is. I mean, I know what it is in theory, but I don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like. It sounds unnatural to me, but I guess I’m used to what I presume is 12edo..? Is that how it works? I don’t know. Anyway, I like the energy here – it has a pub sing-along charm to it. I suspect I’m being unfair, but the repeated use of “it’s time to..,” over a bouncy piano puts me in mind of the theme tune from the Muppets. It doesn’t particularly sound like it, it’s just the tone/phrasing of that bit. I grew up with the Muppets (not literally, you understand), so this gets bonus points from me, irrespective of whether it was intentional or not. I enjoyed the lyrical litany of things that can bring you down.

TtFV: 11s
TtFC: 42s

Siebass - It's Going Down
Cheesy dance number or not, there’s a lot to like here. This had me wiggling my butt in my seat – it’s got groove in spades, and the chorus has a delightfully sleazy feel to it. I loved the pre-chorus section – something about the way the rhythm of the words worked with the music, just really jumps from the verses. I admire the ambition of the rap - it feels reminiscent of Blondie’s Rapture or Betty Boo’s finest moments. Some of the guitars feel a little over-powering for my taste – I kinda wanted them to sit back in the mix a little more, and perhaps have a funkier tone, maybe a touch of wah. But it’s minor quibble with what is an enjoyable romp of a song that blasts by in a little over two and a half minutes, and makes me want to dance.

TtFV: 17s
TtFC: 51s

Glennny - Crazy Climber
A strange one for me, in that this starts with a guitar pattern that’s played twice, and my kneejerk, old man flailing at the sun kind of reaction would be “halve it, halve it”. But I think it’s a good choice here. It’s a strange, angular, Wire-esque riff that warrants the repetition. The melodies on the ‘scale up’ part are really nice, and the guitar sound in the ‘crazy climber’ parts is superb – it puts me in mind of the chorus of The Showman by U2, which has the rare status as being a late U2 track that I like. The guitar solo. Hmm. It’ll come as no surprise if you’ve read all the reviews, but the guitar solo feels too long to me and just a trifle on the indulgent side. I mean, if you’re writing your own music, why not be as indulgent as you want? I am. But as a listener, it’s not what floats my boat. I don’t know the game referenced in the bio, but the lyrics work well without any prior knowledge. My favourite lyrics are in the ‘scale up’ part – just a lovely rhythm and cadence.

TtFV: 17s (not including the ‘go for it’ at the start)
TtFC: 30s (if the title is the chorus, 43s, if ‘scale up the building’ is)

Boffo Yux Dudes - EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing)
The verses are great – switching up melody/rhythms in the second half really kept me engaged. The chorus is cool and that high vocal part lands really well – that gives the chorus a real lift. The ‘sky crane’ section – is that a bridge? That was my favourite section. I think bridges might be my favourite parts of songs anyway, I guess it’s because they’re able to be something ‘other’ in the flow of the song, and that makes them more interesting. It’s a theory. A minor quibble is that there are parts where the doubled vocals seem to be singing different words or slipped out of time with each other – ‘don’t’ vs ‘won’t’ at the end of first verse, or the first line of the second verse, for example. Lord knows I’ve done that often enough, but when the entries are as strong as they are this round, I guess the details start to matter more. Lyrically, am I getting a space travel vibe? Is that what’s going on? I’m not sure it matters too much to me, as not really understanding what a song’s about has never stopped me enjoying it before!

TtFV: 16s
TtFC: 48s

Bob Barton - American Dream (SHADOW)
A cool vocal/guitar song that’s nicely sung/played and is (if I’ve understood the lyrics) a socially conscious, cynical take on the American Dream; it’s just a dream, time to wake up. This sounds like it could be worked up into a stomper of song, should Bob Barton want to do that!

TtFV: 1s
TtFC: 1s

Jon Porobil - Frayed Elevator Cable (SHADOW)
This song throws me every time I listen to it – the start/verse is really similar to another song, and I keep thinking of that song. There’s no suggestion of this being ripped off from that other song as firstly, it would be madness to accuse a judge of ripping someone off – and I’m not that mad - but also because that other song never went beyond a rehearsal room I was in in Redditch (look it up) with a very talented, but socially unpleasant and somewhat childish singer/songwriter. His songs were great, but he was an absolute dickhead. He was in his mid to late 30s, maybe early 40s, and he was more concerned about contracts and publishing deals than making great music. That seems to have been the main theme of my life. All I ever wanted was to work with a good singer (I would have settled for adequate) and make music. But every single one I’ve worked with has been awful to work with. Unless maybe I’m the issue…? Hmm. That hadn’t occurred to me before now.

Anyway, back to Jon’s song. The lyrics are nicely conceived and the music is well done – lots going on to keep one engaged throughout. That Nashville-tuned guitar and mandolin both sound particularly good.

TtFV: 11s
TtFC: 1m11s

d667254c-6384-4ff0-8c55-75315906d518 - Rise (SHADOW)
Cool dance-y track. I don’t have much to say on this. I like it and would dance to it, if dancing to this kind of thing was my bag.

TtFV: 28s
TtFC: This works even less well here.

[BoffoYux]

Thanks dutchwidows for doing reviews -it’s a lot of work to do them and while I was attempting to do some, life has taken me a different path this week.

You are right it has something to do with space - I added this description at the end of our lyrics that might give some more insight.
+++

Based on NASA's premise for '7 Minutes of Terror' - the landings of Perserverance and Curiosity on Mars - a complicated ballet to safely travel from the Earth to a screaming stop above the surface of Mars.

There seemed something magical about the journey - scary yet exciting, and it's all done by the robot - there was no second chances, and no way to adjust the landing in real time. The probe was all on its own, and it stuck the landing!

[sleepysilverdoor]

PHLUB’S REVIEWS:

Before I get started – I’ve been typing these up during my downtime at work. Some of these occurred on different days, and thus my mood may be slightly different. I typically favor interesting or novel musical approaches, and if I find the musical component of a song is very plain, it very often sways my opinion unless the lyrics are absolutely brilliant. If someone really wants me to rank them like a proper judge I will, but only on demand.

GFS - Gordon Food Service? Global Forecast System? No, it’s Gina Fant Simon! Something about this really is giving me late 90s pop vibes. The slightly swung breakbeat, the filter swept sounds, the overall vibe of it. If this had more prominent guitars it would remind me a lot of Savage Garden, only they were too early for this level of autotune/etc. Extremely slick and well executed, with the main complaint of mine being that the drums seem a little flat and that (fyeeeeewwww) transition is a bit overused. So many vocal layers here! Lyrics are memorable I keep hearing the main line as “looking at things, I’m looking at things”. Kind of just stops.

Berkeley Social Scene - This may be pedantic but it sounds like the bass is out of tune. At least one of the lower strings. It only really jumps out at me during that syncopated bum bum bum badum badum bum bum though. I like how this is also a song for the songfight title. The vocals seem a little muddy in the mix for some reason. Instrumental performance is pretty solid as usual. The twin guitar/synth bridge was a nice touch, I enjoyed that. The angle of qualifying for the challenge by climbing up on sutro tower fits. I dunno this isn’t really my favorite BSS song (I’ve told you countless times that’s Four Corners) but I don’t hate it it’s just kind of okay.

Mandrake - We’ve discussed this one offthread so you probably already know my general thoughts. I love the chiptun-ey sound palette going on and the whole structure is nice. I wish you hadn’t put so much distortion on your vocals, but maybe my complaint is that it sounds kind of heavy on the mids and there isn’t really any treble. I like how the squarewave synth line follows the “high”/”down” thing. I *do* wish you’d have played a bit more with the dynamics, cause when you say LOUD I wish that the track got noticeably louder. I know more elements come in for the chorus but the dynamic range in general feels a little flat and it just feels like a missed opportunity. Still a great tune and your songwriting gets continually better with each track. I especially like the melody in the verses.

Jim Tyrell - One of the most chill things in the whole playlist this round. I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about lyrically. It paints a picture. I’m assuming it’s based on some work of media, but I could be wrong about that. This is the sort of track that personally I don’t think needs the level of vocal processing that you put on it. Not that it sounds bad but a more natural sounding voice treatment might have worked. Then again the slight delay sounds good. This reminds me of something I heard a long time ago. Mix is fantastic and the flute (real or not) is a great touch. Making this relevant to the competition by adding a “down down down” to the end of your chorus is exactly what I did though our songs sound nothing alike. The field recording elements present in the background are a terrific touch and honestly I can’t find anything to complain about with this song.

Chewmeupspitmeout - The groaning guitar thing is cool. I like the idea of this metaphor, though I’m not 100% sure exactly what you had it mind with it – it’s very evocative in a way that works for me. The glockenspiel is definitely a nice touch. The grav-ii—-------ty phrasing is kind of odd, there’s so much time between the second and third syllable that I sort of lost track of what you were saying until it came again at the end (well at least on the first couple listens). While this is a little bit rushed, I still like it because it hits a lot of things I like in “poppy indie tunes”. Perhaps could have been refined a little bit more but still pleasant and enjoyable.
Pannacotta Army - I still don’t believe that you haven’t been recording for decades, your production quality is just too good. Classic “I’m not worthy cause you rule” lyrics. I’m curious who your biggest musical influences are. There’s always a certain level of sophistication to your arrangements that outshines a lot of the other competitors in most competitions I hear you in. The ritardando into the clarinet solo with those “fly like an eagle” synths is just gold. One of many songs that has zero chance of being cut.

Iveg - Is “kiawe” the Hawai’ian word for mesquite? This definitely hits hard, especially given the horror fo the wildfires over there. So much could have been done better particularly in the evacuation, it’s an absolute tragedy. I can kind of relate cause the 2016 east TN wildfires hit areas that I knew well and the footage was similarly horrific…but I wasn’t *there*. Anyway, as for the actual song…the fidelity is a little bit scuzzy and the vocals seem a bit loud/oddly eq’d in the mix. The track itself is a bit short, but then again its within the first sound so that may be a good thing. I feel like just a little bit more content would enhance the experience a bit but it’s good for what it is.

Stacking Theory - That descending i VII VI V chord progression works in most contexts I’ve heard it in. Really builds a lot going right into the “pushing and pushing”, though I feel like that “pushing pushing pushing” going into that quiet section is kind of an odd structural element…it really feels like it’s building towards something but then it drops out into the quiet. Maybe that was the point but it seemed. And that cool new section at the end, I want more! With more emphasis on that as a bridge maybe before going into a final chorus or something it would have felt perfect but something about this just feels incomplete to me? Not that it’s unpleasant, I just feel like it needs another minute. The harmony vox are well done.

West of Vine - “driving up toward salvation, got stuck down outside San Anton” is a classic country lyric if there ever was one. As it stands, I think this is a cool song. Something about the production on the rhythm electric guitar is bugging me. It’s so loud compared to the acoustic guitar but also feels kind of muddy? Maybe hi passing it would help that? Or rerecording it on the bridge pickup. As for the relevance to the song…none of the “ups” and “downs” in this song make me think of the y-axis at all…neither of them really gives me an impression of vertical movement. Not that my opinion matters, I’m not a judge just a fellow competitor!

The Popped Hearts - I love your band name, always have. This has that surfy vibe to it. The hamminess of the “YOU’RE GETTING HIGH I’M GETTING DOWN’. The Liz Phair and American Football references kind of come out of leftfield – not sure attributing those to a speedball makes the most sense, especially in the context of a dance club where I don’t know if I’d ever hear “Never Said” played, it’s kind of a mid tempo song that I’d be more likely to sit down and listen to while drinking a beer, not really dancing but then again maybe this isn’t my kind of club.


Nightingale’s fiddle - Okay the harp performance in this is delightful – I really like this kind of song (I’m not entirely sure what style to call it, does this count as a sea shanty?), and maritime tales are also something I definitely grew up with thanks to my dad being a big parrothead. Anyway, I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here, does Susie Ann survive the storm and the ending note is that she’s going to die of old age? The second verse definitely gives an implication that that’s the case based on your description of her, but she’s also mean so part of me wonders if she’s gonna die in the storm and nobody is going to look. It’s either ambiguous or I have terrible reading comprehension. Anyway, this is one of my favorites from this round.

Ominous Ride - The tempo change works really well and I know you said it was awkward in your song description but it sounds really natural to me. Anyway, an interesting metaphor – not so much a harsh take on vice, but one that just recognizes the downsides. I find myself wishing that the melody line would deviate a bit more throughout the song, because the whole thing starts to really feel a bit one note by the end of it. Vocal performance is nicely done, it just needs more range in pitch. Maybe personal preference. “Long lamenting ladders” is some nice alliteration and evocative even if I’m not entirely sure what it means.

Braylee Pierce - A rolling slow burn of a song and your sombre approach works well. I’d cut some from the start, as it seems like it takes a while to really get going. That being said, the slow build kind of works a bit. I do wish you’d deviate from those two chords a *lot* earlier in the song, because it starts to get repetitive after awhile? And it starts so quiet that I’m straining to hear what you’re saying (okay I could turn it up, it’s a metaphor!). That said, as a *word painting* the song basically describing being stuck in your self-imposed underground pit while it also stays stuck in that same chord progression is indeed appropriate, so really the biggest criticism is that it just doesn’t vary enough for the first ⅔ of the track. Or maybe it does and I’m fickle. Anyway, really my main criticism is cut it down a little…hypocritical I know cause yours is the only song longer than mine. Anyway, welcome to spintunes and I hope you stick around!

Brain Weasels - The rhythmic looseness of the unison acoustic guitar tracks at the beginning bugs me a little bit…I wish that unison was just a little tighter but that’s obviously not the focus of the track. I love the idea of write a song devoted to a specific yoga move and by and large the mile-a-minute vocal delivery works really well. I’m not entirely sure what the concept of overdrive has to do with root to rise, beyond this song vaguely being about how yoga is kind of hard sometimes? And with a zillion words going on this song ends up repeating itself a lot! If there were more obvious variations and maybe some sort of progress narrative going on in the lyrics (like gradually getting better at this yoga sequence), I would maybe like it more but as it stands it feels like we have a song that’s really about 1 minute long stretched out into 2:30 and while its listenable the lack of variation removes a lot of staying power. I don’t actively dislike this, I just feel like it needs more workshopping and progression in the song itself. Also have you passed out doing this? The bit about fading to black before the sun rises doesn’t sound much fun. Thanks for reminding me to stretch out more.

Phlub - It was suggested in the live thread on YouTube that this was the same character as the Cybertruck dealer at Valley Motors and I’m a-okay with this interpretation. Anyway, I don’t know if inserting prominent mandolin in a doomy blues rock song is standard practice but I thought it sounded dope so I went with it! Maybe someone noticed. Also the guitar solo trippiness is just solos shifted up an octave and played backwards. Apologies, I did not mean to submit the 2nd longest song. My friend Loren told me this sounded like Nick Cave fronting Pentagram and I guess maybe.

Jeff Walker - Man my kid complains relentlessly when I ask him to do something that isn’t exactly what he wants to do all the time. “I might get BORED”, he intones as if that is the absolute worst fate on the face of the planet. Now I haven’t read either of those well regarded philosophers so I can’t entirely understand your chorus without doing a bit more homework. V3 reminds me sadly of quite a few people I’ve met (and also ⅔ of the reddit userbase, apparently). It’s nice to see a tune like this. Admittedly this entire “sound” doesn’t really do much for me – it’s well executed but I find the instrumental a little uninteresting, but heck what do I know I’ve just never cared for this variety of heartland rock. The guitar solo was nice, but didn’t really grab my attention. The chorus melody is pleasant and a nice change up from what came before it. All in all I mainly like the theme of a self-righteous activist being that way entirely due to ennui. Does it relate to the theme? I mean…eh, I guess. “Comes down off that high horse” kind of works but I had to scan through a couple times to figure out how this was a y-axis song.

The Dutch Widows - “molecules kinda collide” is such a blase way of stating things that it amuses me. I like that ascending melody going into the chorus quite a bit. It’s funny, I remembered that I needed to relax my shoulders. I carry a lot of my tension in my upper back/shoulders. One thing I notice in this tune is that your vocal performance sounds good but it sounds like you’re trying to be really quiet throughout a lot of it, but on the low notes you kind of blend into the rest of the mix and you’re kind of buried. Turn up the vocals! Or just sing louder. I would like to see the vocals in though vocals be a little less one nonte. This unambiguously hits the theme of the challenge. Honestly I feel like I would like this song a little bit more if it was just mixed differently and the melody was more engaging. As it stands, while I do enjoy lines here and there, this kind of just hits my ears as “okay”.

Cavedwellers - If this was just a little bit faster I think I would like it better, because the overall vibe of it is kind of like slowed down jangle pop with a vaguely 60s psych filter. When and if you play this live you should totally speed it up! But the lyrics, I really like the lyrics. Mainly because I had the same thought you did right when I saw the prompt – Z is the vertical axis, so power to you for writing a song that pointed that out. “Wily” as a pun for “Y-ly” made me chuckle, good play on words there. This song definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome. Melody isn’t the most engaging that I’ve ever heard, but it’s serviceable. The real highlight here is the lyrics and their abundance of cartesian coordinate puns, which I’m adoring! I really find it hard to criticize this one too negatively, I just wish it was faster. And maybe in a higher key? It just needs more energy that’s all.

Harky Code - “You give me the bends/you lift me so high/that I might actually die” is a pretty brilliant couplet. There’s a part of me that wonders if this song is actually about a person – it could just as well be about crystal meth or something like that as well, especially with the bubbled brain comments and stuff. But hey, maybe I’m looking too hard into it (and used to listen to way too much 3eb). Regardless this is a pretty good, generally non-obvious metaphor. Either I’m going deaf or this could use a little bit more in the high-end EQ-wise. As for the instrumental – it’s peppy, but doesn’t particularly grab me all that much! And as with many spintunes entries, a little bit more PEP in your vocal performance would be nice. You’re talking so much about being lifted up and being high that your calmer vibe doesn’t quite mesh. Maybe going up a bit more in the scale on the “lift me so high” would add some needed oomph.

Tunes By LJ - Everyone in the YouTube listening party was saying “Jamiroquai vibes” and yeah, I totally hear it. But maybe that’s just cause they’re the most prominent jazz-funk artist of the past few decades so it’s the only reference for this kind of sound that people have. Anyway, I LOVE this instrumental, minus the fact that a song with this much swag and this short a runtime is dying to be extended…right when it gets going it’s over! I’d personally like it to launch into a killer keyboard solo followed by a reprise of the chorus with even more swag. As it stands, it’s a great start for a tune but it doesn’t quite get there for me. “So beneath you and I’m over it” is definitely a clever line for this challenge with the juxtaposition. As for the remainder of the song…the first verse seems disconnected from basically everything else unless I’m stupid.

Hot Pink Halo - Remember how I said I like musically interesting things in my intro? This aligns with my taste in that regard. From a musical standpoint I really don’t have a lot to criticize here. I guess the bass part feels a bit muffled for some reason. The walking/found-sound percussion of you *climbing a tower* is inspired and kind of brilliant. One thing that I’ve noticed in your compositions over the years that maybe could use some work is that your melodies, particularly in the verses, tend to shy away from too much syncopation…very metronomic and hangs out on the downbeat a lot? Some increased use of syncopation would really add some sparkle to your compositions! The guitar sounds a little off at the “we’ll never see the path the boomerang takes” but that’s about all I’ve got that’s critical. The atmosphere in this are great, and the bilingual upliftingness of this is great. You almost always bring great ideas to the table. A final note is that it reminds me of Vespertine era Björk sonically, and that’s a good thing (even though I’d rather listen to Homogenic over the rest of her discography).

Jealous Brother - This is a big earworm. Obviously on topic. And the “climbing” through the key changes over the course of the song is also very inspired compositionally. This is recorded super well too and is probably one of the “cleanest things” the whole round. Guitar solo rocks and is well performed. As for the lyrical content – I feel like the term “fascist” has drifted so far from its original, Mussolini era meaning of “a complete merger of corporate and state power”, which in my opinion is not really what we saw with Trump. I don’t know what the adjective would be for that man but fascist doesn’t fit imo. Arrogant blowhard? Sure! A crook? Certainly. Seditionist? Sure!. But unless I’m missing something, he doesn’t really strike me as a fascist in a strict sense. Feel free to point out things I've overlooked. I look at stuff like Desantis’s crusade against “woke Disney” (penalizing a company’s tax status for almost purely ideological reasons) or the charges laid out in Missouri v Biden (doing an end run on the first amendment by coercing social media companies to censor dissenting speech) as much more deserving of the label “fascism”, at least in the strict Mussolini’an sense of the term. BUT Spintunes isn’t really a great platform for that debate. Plus you never *explicitly* said it was about Trump, so that’s just a bit assumption on my end. All that pedantic great production quality, catchy hook, brilliant structure, I guarantee you lots of folks will like this and I do once I get past my personal hangups about the appropriate use of the word fascist.

Governing Dynamics - You have such a distinctive voice, I can pick out your songs almost immediately. I wish the vocals were a little bit louder in the mix, because they kind of get buried in the guitars. I think all it would take would be a little bit of compression to bring you forward in the mix. The chord progression here is nice and deviates from the more standard chord progressions I usually here around here. Lyrically – I don’t know, I want to like it but this just doesn’t quite do it for me? Maybe it’s just personal taste more than anything else. While I complained about the *mixing* of your voice, this completely sidesteps the issue that I’ve complained about with so many of these other songs in that you *do* have a pretty wide range melodically and you aren’t afraid to go outside of a narrow pitch range. This probably would have been played on college radio when I was still DJing.

Pigfarmer Jr - This is totally the riff from Unforgiven by Metallica featured prominently through the song. Good riff, and it’s not like there are plenty of other songs here than use riffs from other song but I can’t unhear it. ANYWAY Subject matter is appropriately heavy, and the narrative of presumably watching your alcoholic friend die/get severely injured in a drunk driving accident is dark. The flatline at the end was a nice thematic touch. Kind of wish that it had gone on longer than it did for dramatic effect but I’m sure the judges disagree with my take on things. Well structured, and you’re very confident in your performance and delivery.

Temnere - \m/. I have to do the metal horn emoticon every time I hear one of your songs. I would turn up your drums just a little bit or do something slightly different with the mix (more compression) because it just seems a little bit flat for its power metal vibe. Appropriate subject matter for the genre, really digging into the high fantasty/adventure theme. The whole section from 2:35 to 2:58 could probably be repeated just once instead of 4 times cause it kind of loses momentum without much in the way of significant changes. By the time the epic rocking out finally occurs at 3:15 it feels almost overdue cause we’ve been building to it but without much build for quite awhile by that point…this song could probably be about 3:30 with no loss in quality (or heck it may be an improvement). Still, very fun, very on brand, if I’m ever in Norman (might happen some day for work) I want to jam with you!

Eric Novak - This is so slippery and slidy in the guitar performance in a way that I really like. Are you playing a fretless guitar? Playing the whole song with a slide? I’m not entirely sure what I’m hearing but like I said I like it. The chorus has a great lift to the melody, and I like what you have going on with the chord progression. At times, it feels like you lose a little bit of confidence in where the melody is going– like aiming for high or low notes and landing somewhere in the ballpark as a melodic gesture as opposed to really landing at a concrete pitch. But then again can I complain about vocal pitchiness in a song where the whole instrumentation is kind of pitchy and your voice sounds great timbre-wise? Ending is kind of abrupt. I really dig this instrumental and I like how evocative some fo the lyrics are (the bit about tattooed vines was a good line imo).

Sober - You’re giving me heavy Colter Wall vibes in this song, mainly in your half-spoken, super deep melodic lines. Anyway, I kind of love this song, mainly because a) songs with a heavy geographic component usually appeal to me anyway b) you sound great, and your instrumental also sounds great.. I find it hard to really find much to criticize about this. The bit about the snowbirds with their 2 wheel drives got a chuckle out of me. Does having a 4 wheel drive vehicle make you a true Mainer? The guitar volume swells sound great. I know it’s kind of aiming to evoke a lap steel and I’m pretty sure you don’t have one but ugh, I’m all about this and now I want to go visit Penobscot Bay.

Frederic Gagne - Sorry about the lack of accent marks! Anyway, during the listening party I totally forgot that this was fredg from XA and thought “wait what on earth, microtonal stride piano, who is this?” And then I remembered it was you and kind of felt dumb. Anyway, this is terrific! I love the delivery and commitment to the theme. It made me sit up straight in my seat! I’ve got a bad habit of slouching for prolonged periods of time during my work shifts and I always regret it whenever I don’t sit upright for most of these shifts…upper back/neck end up hurting, I get this soreness in my sternum from this rib issue, yep, good reminder to have good posture! I think it’s brilliant and I love what you’ve done with it. From a production standpoint maybe a different piano timbre would have been a bit nicer? The whole mix feels a little lacking in low end, and while I know you used Pianoteq (the best VST I can’t be bothered to afford), there has to be some way to flesh out the mix a little bit more EQ-wise. Regardless, I liked this a lot (but of course I would, I’m the one always trying to get more XA people into Spintunes). One final parting note – maybe this song was only big in the US but the line “My Neck! My Back” is shared with a very much NSFW song that was huge here about 20 years ago so I couldn’t help but giggle when I heard it.

Siebass - Well…this has the word down used heavily but not in a way that I usually associate with any actual vertical motion. But that’s for the judges to work out. The “WHEN YOU MOOOOOOVE” line has a lot of swag and I love it. I wish there was just a little less distortion on the distorted voice because at times it kind of interferes with intelligibility. The pseudo-rapped part is great, and the groove is groovy and infectious and this is the rare entry this round that actually got me grooving a little bit in my seat. I feel like the endless noodling guitar clutters up the mix in places and could afford to be a little less prominent? For as many things as I’m criticized so far, they’re all minor blemishes on what I consider to be one of the strongest songs of the fight. Or at least one of the most fun and enjoyable. This just GROOVES and you get a million points for the grooviness.

Glennny - Man this has some wild syncopation going on at the beginning, accentuated by the panning on the guitar tracks. I think this would sound very slightly better if there was a bit less chorus on the guitars, it just feels laid on a bit too thick? Anyway, I never played Crazy Climber and this really makes me want to track it down and give it a play! The ascending repetitions of “crazy climberrrrrr” are very appropriate and kind of brilliant, cause y’know…climber. I like the chorus of this one a lot. Since I’ve never played the game, the references fly past me but it gives me a good idea what I’m missing out on. Something about the mix here almost seems too compressed? Or maybe too loud? Idk. The vocals feel like they need to be a bit more in the foreground but they kind of get swallowed by everything else that’s going on. Mainly just the higher softer lines (scale up the building, etc). All in all a fun tune, I liked it.

Boffo Yux Dudes - Oh my goodness it’s the final proper entry! I did not know the first thing about the Perseverance rover…I don’t usually follow space news that closely until I find pretty pictures of alien worlds and drool at them mouth agape in amazement. This is a pretty great synopsis of the landing process, and man if I was a NASA employee I’d be sweating bullets hoping that all my hard work didn’t go the way of the Mars Climate Orbiter. Ok I know that was a metric/imperial units issue, but still, you want your expensive projects to go right! Anyway the instrumental is simple, not overly complicated but the lyrics and story delivery here carry the tune and made me want to read more about Perseverance. Ending a little abrupt, I feel like it needs more of an outro of some kind but I don’t know what I’d do different.

Bob Barton - MURICAAAAAA yeah the American dream maybe was a real thing for a whole lot of people at one time but it certainly hasn’t really seemed that way as long as I’ve been around. While it seems like everyone disagrees on what/if to do anything about it, I don’t think most people will make an argument that upward mobility is still anywhere near as easy as the “American dream” would suggest. This is simple and heartfelt. It’d be nice if rising up and helping each other out would help, it’s nice but feels like kind of an empty platitude when the reasons for the decline are so utterly complex. Anyway, this is well written and makes me wish my country was better so yay. Another abrupt ending.

Jon Porobil - Lost my dad in December, shit sucks. I miss him all the time. So I can totally relate to this. I’d never really known anything about Nashville tuning, but now that I look into it I want to get a designated guitar for it! Feels interesting having both the trebly chiming guitar and mandolin doing on concurrently, as they really occupy a similar sonic space (but a sonic space that I really like). The build in the “anticipation…hives” bit is terrific and one of the most memorable musical moments in this round. Shame this is a shadow, cause if you were this would have been ranked as one of the best songs. Great use of dynamics and musical tension. I hope you felt better at your dad’s funeral…I had the worst headache the whole time and it was completely overwhelming, especially with the number of people that I’d not seen since childhood. Great tune, A+.

d667254c​-​6384​-​4ff0​-​8c55​-​75315906d518 - (okay it’s me). This was actually the first idea I had before going straight to hell with my other idea, but I ruled it out cause come on, did this actually stand a chance? No of course not. The tuning is Carlos Gamma, which subdivides a perfect 3/2 (perfect 5th) into 20 intervals, so 11 steps is a pure 5/4 major third, 9 steps is a pure 6/5 minor third. I just stacked major and minor thirds from the lowest they’d go to the highest and increased the pitch each step of the rhythm. Or decreased, after I said “fall”. There’s a gradient with the volume so the lowest and highest notes are soft and the volume peaks for the ones in the middle. The “drum breakdown” was just random notes in a drum machine. A lot of this was procedurally generated using the ChucK programming language…I just piped all the MIDI output into FL studio through loopMIDI and recorded it and then played with the synth/drum sounds after the fact.


7278584d​-​ced3​-​4d64​-​80c2​-​972ab564a757 - This. Is…So…Empty. The solid minute of gentle clicking in the background over the faint recording hiss is a very bold move in th least bold way possible. It’s like a John Cage power move. Excellent use of your vocal range. The ambiance here is very oppressive in its minimalism. Did you ever play the first few Pokemen games with Lavender Town? This feels like something that’d play over the intercom in there. I could zone out to an entire album of this…spaciness. The only artist I can think of that does vocal works with this much space is Khanate of all people, but they’re like..terrifying. This is straight up dissociation in audio format (and maybe it’s my avant-garde self here but I actually slightly prefer this spooky emptiness to your proper entry, not that I would expect the judges to feel the same way). This is art, man. I know this anonymous but the synth timbres kind of give you away lol I’m not telling.

[JonPorobil]

Jon Porobil - Lost my dad in December, shit sucks. I miss him all the time. So I can totally relate to this. I’d never really known anything about Nashville tuning, but now that I look into it I want to get a designated guitar for it! Feels interesting having both the trebly chiming guitar and mandolin doing on concurrently, as they really occupy a similar sonic space (but a sonic space that I really like). The build in the “anticipation…hives” bit is terrific and one of the most memorable musical moments in this round. Shame this is a shadow, cause if you were this would have been ranked as one of the best songs. Great use of dynamics and musical tension. I hope you felt better at your dad’s funeral…I had the worst headache the whole time and it was completely overwhelming, especially with the number of people that I’d not seen since childhood. Great tune, A+.

Why, thank you so much for the kind review! I appreciate the empathy. And I'm sorry for your recent loss. My dad passed away last June (2022). Some days are harder than others, and

It's funny you should mention that you had a headache the whole time, because I actually cut half a verse about having a headache. Note how the quiet verse at the end ("Icarus in flight") doesn't segue into a prechorus like the previous ones do? I had a couplet there:

I've got a pounding migraine
My brain trying to break free from a coffin

But because verse 4 is quiet and ends on a pause, this couplet killed the pacing dead in its tracks, so it had to go. This also broke an intra-verse rhyme scheme ("coffin" rhymed with "often" in pre-chorus 3; the first two pre-choruses also rhymed with each other across verses) and the motif of each verse referring to a bodily organ. But it was worth the trade-off. Bigger picture stuff, you know? Pacing outweighs subtle motifs that nobody else even consciously notices.

Anyway, I very much appreciate the kind words about my song. I've already earmarked a spot for it on my next album (AFTER the one I'm currently working on, which is coming out in February!).

[Evermind]

Before I get into reviews and rankings, I want to mention that I have a personal scoring rubric for rating and ranking songs based on five categories, where each category receives a score from 1 to 5 which are then added to produce a final score. I will not be publicly posting individual category scores, but if you contact me privately via Discord, Slack, or Song Fight forums, I'll give you your score's breakdown. Here are the categories:

Concept: This is what I think you were trying to achieve with your song and how clever, adventurous, unique, poignant your overall vision was (setting aside how close you got to your goal).

Songwriting: What choices did you make in instrument selection, arrangement, structure, and lyrics to support your concept? Did they serve your goal, or detract from it? Are your choices cliche?

Execution: This is about how the song was performed, recorded, and produced. How well did the singer convey emotion? Were there pitch or timing issues? Was there an argument and an air conditioner in the background of the song? Did you use the oil barrel snare drum from St. Anger? Were these choices appropriate for the style and concept or did they distract from it?

Challenge: How well did you meet the challenge? Was your approach to the challenge ambitious or unique? How central was the challenge to your song? How much would the song suffer if you changed the bits that met the challenge?

Subjective Enjoyment: Let's face it. Music, like any form of art, is subjective. There's some things that just match my personal taste better and this category measures that. If you've got a great concept you executed well on while meeting the challenge, I still might not care for it.

One last thing to mention is I'll be giving some general advice after all the individual reviews to address problems that are common across a lot of entries.

With all that out of the way, reviews!

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Boffo Yux Dudes - EDL

A song about NASA's "7 minutes of terror". That's quite a lot of up and down in a very literal sense, and it's a unique approach to the challenge, as well as a fun concept to work with.
The lyrics are perfect rhyming couplets all the way through, but sometimes this comes at the cost of the quality of the lyrics, such as in the weird "making sure in the dust we don't drown" line. In general if you would never say it that way, I don't think it should be that way in your lyrics.
The piano is mixed too loud, it dominates everything else.
There are some performance issues here, some wrong notes like at 2:31, some pitchy vocals, there's a flubbed vocal take at 2:19. Vocal timing issues ex. 0:58. See my "General Advice" section for this one.
The piano sounds like all the notes are at the same velocity, and feels like it's superimposed on everything else. Consider using a single reverb send for everything to give sonic consistency, and using a humanizer (or manually programming velocities for notes) if this is programmed. If this is performed, it sounds like maybe your keyboard doesn't send MIDI velocity data, or maybe you've got the settings set such that everything sends at the same velocity (aka "midi compression")
Nice atmospheric delay guitar sounds in the intro and outro.
The chorus vocal melody suits the theme, and your falsetto provides a nice contrast for the chorus.
The ascending piano line in chorus is good, a nice little musical representation of vertical movement.

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Phlub - Straight to Hell

The challenge is met through a figurative downward journey of morality and somewhat literal descent into hell.
Guitar is made of fuzzy goodness. A treat for the ears. Is this a physical fuzz pedal or a plugin?
Bend at the end of the intro is lovely, really matches the vibe (and the challenge).
Vocal performance is a little bit overly nasal, feels like maybe you're not relaxing your tongue enough while singing.
"only visit my mother to take all her pills" I know you said this wasn't a Trevor Moore reference but I can't help but take it as one.
Vocals are a bit pitchy on the long notes.
Pronunciation of "hee-ull" is odd. I haven't docked you points for this or anything, it's just I couldn't not mention it.
Guitar solo feels a bit rushed in places and lagged in others, could have used some more takes or treatment. I know you know your way around a DAW so I'll skip the advice cuz I think you were probably just pressed for time.

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Jim Tyrrell - A Hole in the Rain

Concept is construction work, and maybe something about the tedium of work and the boring cruelty of bosses, or maybe sisyphean tasks.
E-Piano, jazz drum kit and breathy woodwind sound create a chill, loungey atmosphere.
Construction noise ambience is a nice touch and never feels like it gets in the way of everything.
Challenge feels met pretty weakly. Yes, they're digging down but it feels like if they were doing some other construction task the song would not really change.


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Pigfarmer Jr - Nowhere to Go But Down

Great acoustic guitar sound. Very bright and percussive.
We never really establish why you were "up" in the first place, so it doesn't feel like much of a journey down. Very little is spelled out about the situation except drinking, driving, accident, anxious in the hospital.
Great use of the stereo field. This feels very wide.
"I'm heading to the emergency room" is very weirdly paced, especially when so much of the rest of the vocal hits strongly on downbeats.
The inclusion of the EKG beep as a rhythmic element is REALLY cool! Only problem is it's strongly tonal and not tuned to the rest of the song so it ends up sounding distracting. A little pitch shifting could make it fit better with the rest of the song.

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Eric Novak - Low Road

The slapback on the vocal is a little aggressive and distracting.
Pitchy vocals such as at :30, :34, 2:40. Guitar track feels a little loose, some muted notes and buzzy fret noise at times. Timing falls apart at 1:10.
My best guess on the concept is class strata, how those who are not privileged do not have time to see the greater picture, stuck dealing with daily struggles. Don't know if this is what you meant, but this is what comes across to me.
I like the use of non-standard time signatures, shows you put some thought into how this song comes together.

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Glennny - Crazy Climber

Concept is about the game crazy climber, with what I can only assume are recordings of that game's audio, though those SFX could stand to be way louder.
Clean mix, nice guitar tone, but your vocal tone is super muddy.
The ascending line in the repeating "crazy climber" is a good musical nod to the challenge and the concept.
Nice countermelody in the bridge
Very catchy repetition in the chorus that isn't overstaying its welcome.
The pause and instrumental drop before "fall" puts a ton of focus on the word, and you spend a lot of time making it really obvious that's the word to come, to the point where if you didn't say it the listener would know what was there. It makes a great ending!

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Cavedweller - Z-Axis

Concept is UM WELL ACKSHUALLY. Sadly, Z-axis being vertical is by some conventions only; in some popular video game engines like Unity & Source, Z axis is vertical, though notably in Minecraft the Y axis is height. Having your song based around what is (paraphrasing your liner notes) a pedantic snarky correction when your correction isn't quite right is potentially an intentional choice, but when the pedant of the song isn't being questioned or criticized in any way I could see, it comes across as a mistake.
Feels vaguely like an educational TMBG song a la "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas", which is charming.
Drums feel buried and lack punch, would love a 60s psychedelic slapback drum treatment or at least a little transient shaping (or maybe just slow the attack on your drum bus compressor a bit).
Vocal harmony is lovely.
Song ends kind of abruptly, feels like you could have found a better way to end it.

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Hot Pink Halo - Aim High

Concept is being inspired by Paris and the Eiffel Tower to "aim high". Aspiration and accomplishment as vertical movement is a cool take.
The strange percussion is really pleasing to my ear.
The twinkly repeating four notes for the whole song outstays its welcome by around the 2 minute mark.
The stumbly, oddly timed kalimba has a real groove hidden in there somewhere but it's hard to tell if it's just a little too much swing for my taste or if it's just loose performance. In the context of the other production and performance blemishes I think it's not intentional.
Vocals are a touch too loud compared to everything else.
Everything feels very on-grid, everything lands on either quarter or eighth notes, makes it feel very stiff, doesn't make me want to move at all.
Vocal performance feels like you're struggling to catch a breath inbetween words at times, there's a breathing trick that may help where you expand your ribs as best you can and then breathe exclusively using your diaphragm ("breathing from the stomach") until you are running out of breath and then compress your ribs to get the last little bit. Breathing control is tough, though, and a lot of it is really just learning when in your song you can afford to take a big breath (or cheating with production and recording phrase by phrase
Vocals are way rushed ahead of the beat from about 2:10 to 2:20.
Some of the words get cut off (maybe again because of breath control issues) such as in the phrase "refuse to die" which comes out like "refuse to dah".

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GFS - Vertical Vision

Very 90s eurodance intro, has a Savage Garden "I want you" vibe.
The vocals are mixed SUPER loud, the sibilance is HOT. I know pop and dance are supposed to be very bright but you gotta tame the harshness a little bit, maybe with some multiband compression targeting the high end, or a de-esser (which basically does the same thing) or maybe just turn the highs down a little bit.
Challenge met by self improvement as vertical movement.
Whole song could kind of be summed up as "I no longer waste time on things I can't control and I am better for it", not much information or nuance relayed, but then again it's kind of a dance / pop song, lyrics are more for vibe than to tell a story. Not every song needs to be more than vibes, and this one has some pretty specific vibes.

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Mandrake - Volume

Concept is volume as Y-Axis.
Vocals sound like they're clipping. This might be happening at your microphone, or in the recording, or in your DAW, but either way they've got a very digital clipping edge to them. This might be an intentional choice to invoke the idea of extreme volume, but given the low fidelity of the vocals it comes across as a mistake.
Nasal vocal tone, sounds like maybe you need to relax / lower the back end of your tongue while singing, or maybe it's just weird EQ / treatment of your vocals. Listening to the spoken part at the end makes me think a part of it is just a cheap stick mic being used to record vocals, which CAN be made to sound good but needs the right processing. See my General Advice section for getting better sound out of cheapo microphones.
Claps are loud as hecc.
Vocals in the chorus sound kind of bored but it kind of works with the song so if it wasn't intentional hey, serendipity. If you didn't want to sound bored you might try exaggerating your facial expressions as you sing, which alters the resonance of your mouth and throat as you sing and will be audible to the listener. I've heard it said that "you can hear what the singer's facial expression looks like" and that rings true to me.
Your bleepy interlude is very loud. This may be because square waves are perceived as being a lot louder than other kinds of sounds, and you were mixing with your eyes instead of your ears.
In the phrase "even in my deep sleep" you stress the unstressed syllable of "even", like "eVEN" and it's odd.
Seems like the master is clipping around 2:10 (or maybe you're pushing into a hard clipper at the end?) anyway, everything is distorting a la BOSS Metal Zone but not wildly enough to make it clear this is an intentional choice (if it was). See the General Advice on intentionality.

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chewmeupspitmeout - i was just the gravity

Concept is being a burden on someone else and them freeing themselves of you, "moving up".
Vocals are very ahead of the beat and drowned in reverb (intentional for an underwater vibe?). Out of key at :44, :50. Timing from the bridge onward is really rough.
Lacking some nuance in this, song can be summed up with "I was bad for you, you found someone better for you, I'm feeling bad about it"
Love the breathy vocal delivery.
Keys has "machine gun" effect, could be really cool if emphasized but comes off as maybe unintentional
The loose timing, off-key notes, and short measures (like the one at 1:10) could all be used to help express the distressing emotions the narrator is experiencing but mostly they don't feel like they're used intentionally. One way this could be more intentionally done in this song is to use off-key notes, short measures, and loose timing for one specific part of the song, like the phrase "I was just the gravity". If everything else is relatively tight and neat until that moment, it becomes obvious that all of these were intentional choices, not mistakes. See my General Advice section on intentionality.

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The Pannacotta Army - Still Coming Up Short

Acoustic guitar, vocals, snare are all boomy.
Concept is about aspiring to meet the perceived standard of someone else, possibly a would-be lover? There's a lot that could be explored here that isn't, a lot of missing nuance. The line "It feels like I ought to deserve something more" feels like it's hinting at Nice Guy Syndrome. Here's this narrator obsessed with another person and feeling like if they put in the effort they deserve romantic compensation, mistaking relationships for transactions. But we fall short of any introspection from or criticism of the narrator.
Everything hits on the downbeat, feels a little too self assured and stable for a song about self-doubt, the music is nice enough but the vibe does not match the story.

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iveg - Flames Descend

Concept is the fires in Maui. Timely, but it feels like that's not really vertical position or movement. It kind of works because the fire is on a mountain, but it feels like if all mention of vertical movement were removed from this song nothing would be lost.
Vocals sound like they're disconnected from the rest of the song sonically and too loud to boot. Feels like maybe it was going for a "voice over an intercom" vibe which would have really fit the theme well, but isn't pushed hard enough to sound intentional imo
Everything feels very straight-down-the-middle, no discernable use of stereo field.
High feedback delay on vocals can be tricky, I recommend doing the delay on an aux track and ducking it against the vocals so that the delay doesn't muddy up the vocal track and make it unintelligible.
The mix is muddy, need to pick a few tracks to carry the bass and low shelf cut or high-pass everything else.
Very hot sibilences, f, ch, s. If you've used something like Ozone to automagically master your track, it will often crank the highs to fit the "right" EQ profile, but this will often make sibilences too harsh. Instead of adjusting the entire track's EQ in big moves as Ozone is wont to do, adjust individual tracks to contribute to the overall spectrum of the song's frequencies. If you feel like a track needs to be brighter but start to run into harshness issues, you can apply a de-esser (I really like the free DeBess from AirWindows) to take the harshness out while maintaining the brightness.
The whole song feels like a buildup to nothing, I would have liked something more to come at the end.

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Stacking Theory - One More Love Song

Intro reminiscent of Gregorian chants, which oddly enough reminds me of childhood, then suddenly Black Sabbath.
You've done a great job creating texture with stacked vocals. It's really endearing.
Concept is a love song about a Sisyphean relationship (with a Camus "we must imagine Sisyphus happy" sort of angle), vertical movement is the boulder going up and down. I love a good Sisyphus reference.
The lyrics are kind of vague.
Soft muted trumpet outro? Yes. Yes yes yes.
Outro, as great as it is, feels like a different song tacked onto the end for 20 seconds.
Performance and recording and production wise, this is stellar.

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West of Vine - Come Up on the Front Porch

Concept is traveling great distances across the south, going "up" or "down" the country. Removal of all vertical movement references would not change this song a bit.
You've made the references to San Antonio (even calling it San Antone), front porches, western highways, New Orleans, Houston, but none of it serves to do anything but make the listener aware that this is very much A Country Song. I think this song would be better served if there were fewer references to Very Country Things and more storytelling.
Timing is fairly loose, and with both the acoustic guitar and drums being punchy, they should really be well aligned with each other or else it all feels sloppy.
Bass is pushed into the right stereo channel, for historical and equal loudness curve reasons this makes a lot of people feel uncomfortable and should be avoided. Or, at the very least, use a bass monoizer to make the low end of the bass mono and let the high end get panned.

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The Popped Hearts - You're Getting High, I'm Getting Down

Vocals are way too hot for everything else and arguably too reverb soaked, though the reverb does lend a little psychedelia to this new-wavey psychedelic surf rock track so that part is not out of place.
The stresses on the phrase AMerICan SPEEDball are odd, it feels forced and there's no discernable reason for the odd stresses other than you couldn't figure out phrasing and pacing to get it to fit the rhythm better.
Love the Devo esque vocal delivery.
Feedback whine at 1:02, not enough to feel intentional. See the General Advice on intentionality.
Concept is being in recovery and having a run-in with an addict.
Challenge approach is intoxication as vertical movement.
There's some nice little nuance to the storytelling here, reference to affluenza, and points for the rhyme with credenza. I had to look up the Liz Phair reference to Guyville and Never Said, not sure if the irony in the addict's favorite song having references to being "clean as a whistle" was intentional but it's a great touch whether or not it was.

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nightingale's fiddle - Ballad of Susie Ann

Sounds like this was recorded on a phone or laptop mic in an untreated room, it's very boxy and lacks both high and low end. See my General Advice section for how to make a cruddy mic sound better.
The bouncy 6/8 composition in combination with the harp-like sound of the guitars is a ton of fun and very unique. It feels like it would be perfect at a ren faire and I mean that in the best possible way. It almost feels like a sea shanty, with a fair number of hard consonants on the 1/3, like: "the Kiss of a breeze on the Back of her neck" and "Batten the hatches and Brace for the storm". Not sure if this was an intentional choice leaning in the direction of sea shanties and other work songs that do this on purpose for strong rhythm, but very cool nonetheless.
Some percussion is sorely needed here, even just a tambourine or a shaker would go a very long way. Based on the recording I wonder if this is a limitation of your recording setup, that you don't have a multitracking software you're comfortable with, or if you were out of time, or just going for minimalism.
Great vocals and performance, though there's a little fret buzzing that blemishes the performance.
Good imagery throughout the song.
Ripperonis Susie Ann ;_;7

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Ominous Ride - Vertigo

Dark mix, sorely needs brightness, especially the guitar.
Has a 60s Mamas and the Papas vibe to it, unfortunately this is also true of the sound of the production, stereo field is barely used, seems like the only reason there's any use of the stereo field is maybe some panning on background vocals and/or a stereoizing reverb
The background strings add a nice vibe.
Could really use some percussion or a more percussive treatment for the acoustic guitars to give a stronger rhythm.
I did not at all pick up on the concept of coming down from a high from the lyrics, I had to read your song bio for that.

---

Braylee Pierce - Dig Deep

Starting off with the sound of touching/moving the mic, which is understandable if all you have to record with is a phone, but there's plenty of free tools out there for editing audio and all of them could have cut that off.
Vocals are very quiet in comparison to guitar until you start to sing louder, some compression could have kept the quiet sound without actually being a little too quiet to hear. Not saying squash the dynamics completely out but some parts are hard to hear.
Great vocal and guitar performance throughout.
The recording sounds boxy.
Concept is being trapped in a life of coal mining both with the coal mine as literal place and metaphor for a bad situation.
Timing is a little bit spotty at moments, but not too noticeable.
Could really use some percussion.
A little too much repetition of "dig deeper", it wears by the end of the song.
Take a look at the General Advice section on recording without a nice mic, and basic DAW recommendations.

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Brain Weasels - Root to Rise (Overdrive)

Timing issues starting right in the intro and continuing through the song.
Vocals feel rushed, it's possible to go at this pace and not feel rushed but this wasn't achieved here, you might need to do some more takes to nail it or possibly just need to slow the song down.
Highs are a little much here, the pick noise of the acoustic guitar and tambo and shaker start to wear on my ears after a while, could do with just a little pull back on the fader or maybe some multiband compression to take a little punch out of the highs for listener comfort.
BG vocals are not well aligned and it feels very messy.
The vocal melody and some other elements repeat for the entire song and it outstays its welcome.

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Jeff Walker - Solid Ground

Electrical noise in the intro, need some better recording or at least some more time spent editing.
The phrasing of some of the lines feels like you didn't have time to change the lines to fit the rhythm of the song.
The song feels kinda condescending and know-it-all and maybe we're not supposed to like or agree with this narrator necessarily, but if something is presented and never questioned or criticized it comes across as default positive or at least neutral.
"Down from a high horse" is a clever take on the challenge, though.

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The Dutch Widows - Above it All

Vocals sound like you're lying on the floor mumbling, and not in a good way. In contrast with the really upbeat song it clashes. Even when I read the lyrics along with the song I lose track because of how mumbly it is.
Boomy vocals but with your vocal register and the delivery it kinda works
Docals really need different treatment to stand out. exciter? parallel distortion? heavy compression? octaved up double?
I don't really understand what this song is about.

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Hanky Code - The Bends

Nice production.
"so fast that gas forms in my veins" feels oddly timed and the stress on "in" makes it feel like you could have given a little more thought to how to deliver and pace this line.
I give you the award for The Catchiest Chorus.
The "sharks is (sharks are)" line is cute.
Concept seems to be a contrast between a lighthearted silly fun song and a seriously awful way to die and the contrast is enjoyable.

---

Tunes By LJ

Your sound selection is immaculate, everything sounds really great.
Some good groove, and the piano cadence smells of Jamiroquai's Virtual Insanity.
The song is over relatively quick, it doesn't outstay its welcome. I kind of wish there were a little more of this song, which is a relatively good problem to have.
The "blame" section has oddly quiet vocals that seem to waver and not be very present. some weird phasing issue? Either way, little balance issue there.
Some sibilances are a little harsh and could use some smoothing out.
Really good falsetto tone, great vocal performance.
Good imagery, setting the time of year and the place and giving some character exposition, you set the scene but what happened? We never explore anything that happened, we're just looking at a picture of the aftermath.

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Jealous Brother - Climbing the Fascist Ladder

Concept is how fascism takes hold (has been taking hold?)
I like that you have two refrains but no chorus, a really unique structure here and I really appreciate that you've been daring enough to approach this song with a structure other than the modern verse-chorus style. It feels like an old AABA kind of structure and it works well with the sort of timelessness of the shift towards fascism being tied to the cult of strongman personality being old as time
I appreciate a nice guitar solo.
Bet you feel silly doing all these key changes one song early, huh? The effort to write something with some movement is well appreciated.

---

Governing Dynamics - Downfall

Very reminiscent of Death Cab for Cutie's "We Laugh Indoors".
Would have liked your vocal delivery to change to match the growing intensity of the guitar. You do this in the bridge already, going into a more belty delivery but I would have liked a little more oomph to match the guitars in the chorus.
Some rushed bits, like the guitar intro.
Great drum sound, guitar sound, balance. Production wise this is nice.
Some fantastic lyricism stuffed into a single couplet here: metaphor, imagery, internal rhyme: "With one hand on the wall of a hall of clanging clocks / And hanging twisted keys that never knew their fated locks".
Halftime bridge feels great and matches the vibe of the bridge lyrics.
Intentional subversion of cliche "from the neck up to the boots".

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Temnere - Into the Darkness

Galloping metal guitar!
Drums, vocals, bass feel anemic compared to guitar, esp cymbals.
Drums are suffering from the "machine gun" effect.
Mix severely lacking brightness.
The BG vox are barely audible.
Challenge seems shoehorned in, nothing about this relies on or relates to up or down movement.
Concept is "let us gallop across the hills in a very metal way" a la Maiden as applied to the game Dark and Darker (I tried it, I got rekt every single game, that doesn't reflect on your song or its ranking in any way tho)
This comes across as a fun 80s metal romp but without a lot of substance and with some poor production.

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Sober - On Penobscot Bay

Vocals are mixed a bit hot but otherwise the performance and production are immaculate.
Challenge met but feels like a pretty weak connection, you have things like boats rising and falling, sun coming up, but remove the up and down and the song is still intact, and if I didn't know about your move I would not know one of the most significant connections to vertical movement.


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Frederic Gagne - Slump

Concept: trying to keep motivation in a demotivating world
Nasal vocal performance, or maybe just nasal vocal tone. Maybe intentional for old timey feel? Might be the recording or treatment. Consider giving a look at videos on mouth / throat posture for singers or the General Advice section below for recording without a nice mic.
Microtonal oompah 2/2 composition seems geared toward unease, which fits the concept.
Lyrics at time feel like they're forced into perfect rhyme couplets for the sake of rhyming couplets, at the expense of intelligibility, like "make you slant" does not make any sense that I can tell; other times the rhyme is discarded, like with stand / trend.
Scansion problems: sometimes you stress some phrases strangely, like "do WE truLY have A choice". If the unstressed syllable of a word lands on a downbeat, it sounds weird.
Exposed cut at 1:00, this is the curse of minimalism. see the note on minimalism in the General Advice section.
Instrumental repeats for the whole song and gets really old.

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Siebass - It's Going Down

Putting the bass in siebass! Bass is overwhelming everything else until the prechorus.
The weird fader change of the synth horns from :10 - :15 sounds awkward.
Radio voice is overwhelmed by everything else in the first verse.
Concept is outlandish D I S C O (wait, is it DDR?)
The curse of disco is that motown set the bar very high on production, disco doesn't sound right unless it's SUPER polished and this is kinda rough.
There's a weird Waluigi duck sounding "hah" at 1:13. I don't think it works. I think it only sounds quacky because of the "radio voice" treatment.


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Berkeley Social Scene - Atop the Sutro Tower

Vocal tone is dark, except the sibilence which is really harsh.
Guitar takes are kind of loose in places like the guitars from 0:43 - 0:44.
I think the "rainbows and robots" line could feel a bit more fader love.
Concept is a robo-utopia in San Francisco, I feel like there's a huge missed opportunity to address how automation is only further leading us to dystopia (especially in a tech-obsessed hub like SF), and I think the song walks directly away from that point. Maybe that's intentional, portraying an alternate reality or what could, should have been. Anyway, it's nice to think about a technological utopia could be like.

----

General advice for everyone:

- I have a great trick for working with phone/laptop mics, which is: duplicate the recorded tracks twice, pitch one down an octave, pitch one up an octave. Pull the faders on both the pitched duplicate tracks down to the point where you just barely can't hear them. Bounce all three tracks down to a new track and treat the result as a raw recording. You can get some of the warmth and richness of nicer microphones this way without having to buy one.
- Minimalism can make it less work to arrange and perform and mix, but it also creates new challenges: Any small mistake is suddenly VERY exposed and everything has to be pretty immaculate. You also have to make sure there's enough detail and variation in the few parts you have in your song to keep interest.
- Learning to use a free DAW like GarageBand or Reaper (or even just a multitrack audio recorder / editor like Audacity) can notch up your ability to arrange and produce by a ton, giving you the ability to record more tracks than you can play at once and combine the best bits of each.
- Punch-in recording is your friend. Mess up one small part of an entire take? No need to scrap and redo the entire thing, just re-record that part.
- If you're making an intentional choice that could be misinterpreted as a mistake, consider providing extra context and contrast to make it more clear that this is a choice. For instance, if you're going to sing sloppily and out of tune on purpose to make it clear that the narrator is losing their grip on reality, make sure to have some (or most) sections well timed and performed.
- Manual pitch correction. I'm not talking auto-robo-Cher-T-Pain-tune, I'm talking subtle tasteful correction. This is a contentious topic, but it's hard to disagree that when a singer does not hit the notes it doesn't sound as good (though everything has exceptions, it's art after all).
For free pitch correction, MXTune (win/linux only), ReaTune (Reaper only, but Reaper's unlimited free trial never stops working), Flex Pitch (Logic only).
Paid, and probably the best, Melodyne. If you're going to buy Melodyne Essential ($99), consider buying a UAD Volt 2 interface ($169). It's a crazy good interface and comes with a free copy of Melodyne Essential. Alternatively, a copy of the DAW Waveform Pro ($139) also bundles in Melodyne. It also frequently goes on sale in June.

[crumpart]

The stumbly, oddly timed kalimba has a real groove hidden in there somewhere but it's hard to tell if it's just a little too much swing for my taste or if it's just loose performance. In the context of the other production and performance blemishes I think it's not intentional.

Thanks for reviews! I don't know what the kalimba sound you're referencing is though.

I've uploaded a mix here with everything bar the electric pianos and some chopped backing vocal texture. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t3OJjz ... sp=sharing

There's one track that is an electric guitar picking high notes occasionally with Logic's "Experimental Guitar" "Cascade" preset on it, which has all sorts of weird delays and ring shifts. I think that might be what you're referring to, but I'm not sure. There's also a gradually building Supermassive effect on the main twinkly sounding electric piano loop (not in the above bounce) that could be what's throwing you. Either way, both are intentional with a good dash of chosen chance.

I'm not hearing the vocals you also referred to from the bridge section as rushed; I think maybe we're just feeling the beat a little differently from each other perhaps?

[Evermind]

There's one track that is an electric guitar picking high notes occasionally with Logic's "Experimental Guitar" "Cascade" preset on it, which has all sorts of weird delays and ring shifts. I think that might be what you're referring to, but I'm not sure. There's also a gradually building Supermassive effect on the main twinkly sounding electric piano loop (not in the above bounce) that could be what's throwing you. Either way, both are intentional with a good dash of chosen chance.

I think that's it, I don't hear the "kalimba" in the cut-down mix you're talking about. It enters the track at 0:05 right? It sounds awesome and adds a ton of life to the track. On another listen it seems like the stumbly rhythm of the instrument is not consistent through the song, after the first two measures it stays on beat, but for the first two measures there's this REALLY cool groove to it where the first measure and first note of the second measure are pretty on-beat or a little behind the beat, and then the last three notes of the second measure rush the beat, and it makes this cool push and pull groove. Note the position of markers 5-12 which are the notes of the (electric piano?) in comparison to the grid lines, which are set to 8th notes:

I'm not hearing the vocals you also referred to from the bridge section as rushed; I think maybe we're just feeling the beat a little differently from each other perhaps?

I took a look in my DAW to double check and it looks like you're about 134ms ahead of the beat on the "if" in the line "if we just sit here eating cake". I've marked the words "if" and "we" as markers 1 and 3, and the drumbeat and guitar strum that follow those words as markers 2 and 4. People tend to hear sounds that occur more than 40-50ms apart as being two separate events, so this will likely sound ahead of the beat to the average person:

[crumpart]

I took a look in my DAW to double check and it looks like you're about 134ms ahead of the beat on the "if" in the line "if we just sit here eating cake". I've marked the words "if" and "we" as markers 1 and 3, and the drumbeat and guitar strum that follow those words as markers 2 and 4. People tend to hear sounds that occur more than 40-50ms apart as being two separate events, so this will likely sound ahead of the beat to the average person

Ah, the vocals there being offset from the guitar stabs there is deliberate.

Screenshot 2023-09-17 at 23.13.09.png (454.53 KiB) Viewed 908 times

Because that bit is the crux of the song, and one of the perspectives is engineering, I wanted that part to feel like it was breaking, especially as the rest of the song is very structural. Whether I was successful in that is highly subjective.

[Evermind]

Because that bit is the crux of the song, and one of the perspectives is engineering, I wanted that part to feel like it was breaking, especially as the rest of the song is very structural. Whether I was successful in that is highly subjective.

Got it! Now I see what you were going for there but I didn't pick up on it without you telling me what your intention was. I think if the rest of the song had really tight timing, or if you had leaned much harder into it, like the timing going completely out the window and the tempo changing and introduced some gradually more severe detuning over a few measures I would have picked up on what you were doing there.

[JonPorobil]

I wrote reviews! Some of them are long!

GFS
"Vertical Vision"

Your slick recording and production make a great first impression. The performance is competent and impassioned, and the synth tones are well chosen. Everything is balanced well and sounds super clean.

My hesitancy with this song regards the lyrics. That line about taking the Lord's name in vain made me wonder if you had intended this as Contemporary Christian or Praise music. I'm not Christian myself, but I wouldn't want to hold that against you if it's the genre you're working in. However, I did identify something about the lyrics that isn't clicking with me, and it's something that a lot of praise music has in common - the lack of conflict. Or perhaps it's a lack of complexity. Whether the theme of your song is "I'm happy" or "God is Great!" I find it's missing some of the drama I often connect with in my songs, unless you're able to infuse it with some uncertainty, some complexity of feeling. Your song only kinda does this, with your bridge acknowledging "I don't know how to explain it." But I wanted more engagement. More conflict. Maybe answer: What has this new outlook helped you overcome? Or perhaps, are you worried about losing this new perspective? Are you afraid something or someone might take it away? Engaging with these questions may have given the song that missing ingredient that would make me want to return to it for repeat listens.

Dang, that "Looking up" hook is catchy, though. And I appreciate a clever bit of wordplay.


Berkley Social Scene
"Atop the Sutro Tower"

My impression after my first listen was one of confusion. I couldn't figure out whether you were telling a near-future science fiction story about literal robots in San Francisco or a present-day story about metaphorical robots. So thank you for providing an explanation in your song bio. By the way, I'm curious why you changed the title of this song from its Song Fight! iteration. "Rainbows and Robots" remains a fitting title, and in my opinion a more compelling one. But anyway...

I might have had less trouble parsing your lyrics if they'd been easier to make out in the mix. I think the lead vocal is in a similar frequency space as one of your guitars, and they're conflicting. The volume of the vocal itself is quite uneven and might have benefited from some extra care with normalization, vocal riding, compression, some combination of the above, or whatever else your normal vocal process entails.

When the second guitar comes in at the start of verse 1, I thought the mix felt instantly muddier. But actually, is one of the guitars playing something wrong in the first verse? I think I'm hearing notes clash from about 0:08 to about 0:11. That might be a big factor in the "muddy" feeling. Verse 2 doesn't seem to have this problem.

Guitars are very important to this arrangement and mix, so let's talk tone. Your guitarist(s?) are definitely better at this genre than I am, and probably know more than I do about dialing in a really good tone. So I'm not trying to hold myself out as an authority figure on this, but frankly I thought the lead tones in the main riff and verses were a little un-exciting. I wanna say it's a little mid-heavy and could stand some additional "excitement," maybe more distortion or fuzz? Or possibly just a high boost? This really isn't my forte; I just know it's not working for me in its present state. However, in your chorus, the guitar's register gets higher and it suddenly works better for me! I'm not sure whether you switched guitars, or turned on a pedal, or if the existing settings just responded better to the higher register, but I had a "Ah, that's more like it!" reaction to your guitar tone as the transition to the chorus happened.

On a more positive note, I love the drum part. I really like how your drummer rides the hi-hats with the lead guitar riff and then eases up on them when the guitar part gets a little faster. Then those same hats gradually crescendo with repeated iterations of that main riff. Makes the band sound really tight.


Mandrake
"Volume"

I wondered whether loudness was a valid interpretation of the given prompt. We talk about the volume being "up" or "down," but it's idiomatic, so I was looking for some other way in which this song engaged with verticality. I mean, I guess it's a pass.

Unfortunately, I'm not finding this very engaging or pleasant otherwise. Your vocals aren't consistently on pitch, which is a huge distraction. You've also slathered your voice with a generous layer of distortion. In the listening party, I asked whether you had applied a bitcrusher or something similar to make your voice sound more "8-bit," but you replied that it was just distortion. I'd like a little more insight on what kind of distortion you applied and how you achieved it, because it really doesn't sound like traditional distortion to me. Your voice is dulled, but I'm not hearing the high-frequency excitement that distortion should lend it, so it feels like an approach between too stools, as it were. A bit of a half-measure. My recommendation would be the play around with the settings on your distortion plugin a little more and find a vocal tone that really takes advantage of the way that distortion can add new frequencies to a dull tone. Maybe try an amp simulator? There are loads of free ones online. I also think the distortion on your voice would be more effective if it varied throughout the song. Let it go more distorted for some parts and less for others. In particular, I think that short spoken-word ending bit would have been more effective with the distortion removed entirely.

I do like how the chorus follows so directly from the verse... Er, I mean, the steve. I do like the warm sine-wave tones in the verses, and how you allowed it to give way to a square wave tone for the solo section. If you were interested in developing this idea further, my advice would be to focus on the different sections of the song (name them whatever you need to for this to make sense), and think about how much you want each section to reflect the loudness that your narrator is complaining about, and how much you want it to reflect the peace and quiet your narrator wants but doesn't have. Managing that tension better could provide a much more compelling through-line for a song like this.

Jim Tyrell
"A Hole in the Rain"

Your performance and production are utterly flawless. Best in class, really. Everything in the pocket, all levels set right. I love that flute, and this whole cool jazzy vibe with a pinch of psychedelica. My only nitpick about the arrangement (and boy, it's a minor one) is that you used a rain stick to signify the rain, but actual field recording of the construction equipment. It's a tiny thing, but the juxtaposition of the real recording and the symbolic sound effect kind of bugs me. Otherwise, this arrangement and performance are superb.

However, when I realized what you're singing about, I felt disappointed. Lyrically, you're coming across like a middle class guy complaining about construction in his neighborhood. I believe that the best songs are expressions of heightened emotion, but this isn't really heightened; it's more like mild irritation. This echoes a bit of disappointment I felt when I realized what was going on with the title. "A Hole in the Rain" suggests some fantastic, vaguely psychadelic imagery, and the tight jazzy vibe seemed to tease out this suggestion. Like here's some rain, and there's somehow a hole in it? Cool, tell me how! But really I'm just parsing it wrong; there are some people digging a hole, and the diggin is happening while it's raining outside. Ha, I guess you got me.

The song isn't bad overall, not by a long shot. But it feels to me like more of a writing exercise than a fleshed-out idea worthy of the level of polish you gave it.

chewmeupspitmeout
"i was just the gravity"

On my first listen, this was one of my favorites of the round. I really like the central conceit, the self-loathing of comparing yourself to a sandbag to your partner's balloon. You have a strong emotional core tied elegantly to an equally strong image. That's like catnip to me! And then that groove shift for the coda... Chef's kiss.

However, on repeated listens, some of the cracks became more evident. For starters, the timing on your vocals is way uneven. "Ballast" in the first line comes in early. "Weighing" is on time, but "Down" is early again, and then the whole line "A burden to you, bound to the ground" feels rushed. You're in and out of the pocket. I'm chalking that up to the tight deadline and assuming that more time to practice would have helped.

Then there's the guitar. The distortion muddies up your mix, and it doesn't sound locked-in well with the bass. As a musical bed, it's functional enough, but it's hard for my ear to pick out individual notes or chords, and that dissonance doesn't serve the song well, in my opinion. Similar to the Berkeley song, I think the guitar serves a lot better in the chorus. And just as in that song, I can't be sure whether you've changed something about the amp settings there, or if the existing distortion just plays better in the higher register, but right now it feels inconsistent in a way that I'd argue should be fixed. In the verses, maybe adding some mid-high frequency would give it some of the definition it lacks?

Also, I'm not against the glockenspiel/chimey synth on principle, but I think there's too much of it (maybe save it for the second verse?) and also... Is it in a different key from the rest of the song? It really is a shame, because this song is so conceptually strong, I wish it hadn't been so difficult to revisit due to these discordances.


The Pannacotta Army
"Still Coming Up Short"

It's going to frustrate you that I don't have this song ranked even in my top five, even though I have very few (and very minor) nitpicks regarding composition, arrangement, performance, and production. What can I say? Sometimes you don't do anything wrong but still don't quite come out on top. Or, as Jean-Luc Picard put it: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life."

In terms of production choices that I disagreed with, I have to reach pretty far. For example, I'd have preferred the room reverb to be a little bit lower in the mix. Not shorter, mind you - I like that your reverb has a lush long tail; I just think it's a little loud compared to the instruments. Also, I wish there were a little more humanization in the drum part. But these are such minor problems, it's not like I "docked points" for them, nor can I blame them for this song not being #1 on my list. Maybe it could have used some more dynamic variation? Like, one section a bit louder and more forceful than the others? But probably not; that would have undermined the song's lonely, melancholic emotional core.

So, overall this is a very very strong song. It feels to me like you successfully created exactly the song you set out to make, and I can find almost no fault in it. I just liked several of the other songs in this round better. Can't wait to hear what you've got for us in the next round!

iveg
"Flames Descend"

In a couple of reviews already (and more coming up later), I've discussed what I perceive as "tensions" or "dissonances" in the music or production. I often bring this up when I feel like those tensions don't suit the material of the song. Since it's something of a recurring theme in this round, I'd like to highlight your song as an example of musical tension working really well with the material. The immediacy of the emotion in the song grabs me right away - you're afraid, you're grieving, you're angry. And the music bears that out. The bass and guitar split a minor-chord arpeggio in 3/4 time with a tense flat-sixth while the drums keep us disoriented by playing in 2/4 over this apparent waltz. Before you've even sung a word, these instrumental elements capture the emotional core of your song to a T.

I understand that you're singing about recent real events, and these feelings are incredibly raw and personal. You have my sympathy. To be honest, it makes this song a bit difficult to critique. You're baring your soul for us in describing a tragedy that remains ongoing, and whose devastating effects continue to impact you directly. I'm no stranger to this type of situation. I have a song about Hurricane Katrina, less than a week after the New Orleans levees broke, and it's intensely personal to me, such that I'd probably get indignant at someone nitpicking the song on me, even almost two decades later.

So I ranked you where I ranked you, and I'm going to opt not to add insult to injury by pointing out what I perceive as problems in this song. If you actually want to see more of the "negative" feedback, please let me know and I'll be glad to share my full thoughts. It didn't seem right to include that by default, given the situation.


Stacking Theory
"One More Love Song"

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Camus

This one rose a lot in my rankings with repeated listens. At first I didn't quite get where the concept was coming from. The emotional timbre of the music clashes with the lyrics in a way that I initially struggled with, but it's clear to me that this was part of the point you intended. Eventually I just stopped worrying about the mismatch and enjoyed the ride. I'm not really a fan of the synth-heavy 80s alt genre that this seems to aspire to, but your production is pitch perfect for it. Except for your de-esser. I think you pushed the reduction a little too hard, and the "lisping" effect is distracting.

The coda section elevated this a lot for me. From a practical standpoint it serves as a changeup in a moment when the song really needs one, and also brightens the overall tone which had threatened to veer off into "dirge" territory. It works on the thematic level too, signifying the psychological breakthrough, allowing the happiness to emerge from the monotony. I wish the coda had been a little bit longer, but it's great how it is.


West of Vine
"Come Up on the Front Porch"

Right up front, I'll admit that I found your accent distracting. I couldn't tell whether it was genuine or an affectation, but I ended up thinking it was exaggerated for effect, and that the exaggeration is a little much. I apologize if I've inadvertently criticized your actual voice and accent.

I mostly like your arrangement. The change-up in the guitar between verse 1 and verse 2 is a nice touch we don't see often enough. The spot harmonies add some juice where it's needed. But there was something missing and it took me several listens to figure out what: cymbals and hi-hats! Why don't you have any high-end in your drums? Once I realized they were missing, I felt their absence overwhelmingly. Essentially your mix's only high-end presence comes from your acoustic guitar transients and your backup vocals. Neither is quite up to the task, so the mix overall sounds darker than you probably intended.

There are some gems in the lyrics. I love "Drinking all my dreams," and "You said that I stole your heart but it's not the kind of crime that pays." Unfortunately, these lyrical gems have a hard time shining through because of how unevenly the voice sits in the mix. Vocal editing can be time consuming and tedious, but it can also make the difference between a so-so mix and one that sounds really polished. Let me know if you'd like some more practical advice on what I mean by that.


The Popped Hearts
"You're Getting High, I'm Getting Down"

Really love the dark-surf vibe. The extreme reverb on the lead guitar contributes to that vibe and works really well. On the vocals, less so - they come across as a little washed out. It took longer than I'd like to admit before I caught the wordplay in the title. I also really like how densely-compressed your lyrics are. I can imagine that first line reading something like "You've got a chronic case of affluenza" or something like that, but condensing it down to "Chronic case: affluenza" makes this feel a lot more polished, and the elliptical result suits the subject matter really well.

I really like that bridge, with the "You know that I don't do that shit anymore" line, and I've been wondering whether it should come up more than once. This is a short song and you do have a little runway to stretch a part out if you want. Or maybe you could extend a solo section to illustrate the frantic party-out-of-control atmosphere. Or maybe it's just fine at the length it is; who am I to say? The length and lack of repetition certainly didn't hurt you in my rankings.


nightingale's fiddle
"Ballad of Susie Ann"

I had this second-to-last initially, but I eventually heard a lot of details to like here. The character study and narrative are paced nicely, and I like the subtle syncopation in the left hand for keeping the flow of the song from getting sluggish. However, I find the vocal melody too "notey" in a way that makes it difficult to follow the words, and probably made it difficult to sing too. This results in a shaky vocal performance that is somewhat masked by the right-hand harp part mirroring the vocals, but that ties up the right hand and keeps it from doing anything more interesting. It would have been nice to have the right hand play something different at different times in the song, but alas.

The left hand is too loud and overwhelms both the delicate right hand melody and the vocal melody. I don't know anything about how to set up microphones on a harp, but maybe you can practice more to get the left hand playing softer? Or maybe some EQ?

As a last note, I wish you had performed more dramatically when the narrative involved a sea storm. There are some techniques like rolling glissandi that the harp excels at, and would have helped unify the performance with the story it's telling. I acknowledge that this might not have been possible during the time frame of the challenge, as it probably would have required a lot more practice on your part. But if you ever play out, this would be a good song to develop over time. Little flourishes tend to come naturally as you get more comfortable with a song over time, and I think they'd add a lot of pizzazz here, which the song could use more of.

Ominous Ride
"Vertigo"

You have some nice lyrics in this song. I really like how the lead vocal melody comes to a short stop at the end of each third line, and the first time this happens, the lyric accompanying the change fits it really well: "And it seems like the trail is gone." The abruptness of the melody line ending suits the surprise of the image. This works well in the third verse, too, with "I guess it's irrelevant" - a train of thought has ended as abruptly as the literal trail from earlier. This is great craft.

On the performance and production side, I think you're lacking in energy. There's no percussion, and the bass it muted. Turn your bass up!

And as for the treble... Well, there doesn't seem to be much sound outside the midrange, so everything sounds kind of bleary and poorly defined. I tried a little experiement in my DAW. I loaded in your song and put a multiband compressor on the master bus. Then I solo'ed the midrange (effectively eliminating all audio lower than 150 Hz and higher than 4,000 Hz), just to see whether this impacted your song much.

The difference is audible, but I would hope for a much more dramatic difference than we've got. The way that EQ curve just peters out at the higher end of the spectrum comes across as murky, and it's fatiguing to the ear after only a few seconds. Eventually you just kind of yearn to hear something brighter, with a little more high-end information.

If you're unwilling or unable to add drums to this song, then some of that higher-end could be made more interesting with distortion - dialing in a guitar tone that does more to excite that high frequency range would have helped this song a lot, I think. Or maybe having that MIDI string section play higher up? Again, as an experiment, I tried adding a high violin section in my DAW and I think it helped a bit. Let me know if you're interested in hearing that demo.


Braylee Pierce
"Dig Deep"

I love how you compose with the ukulele, using a small and stereotypically bright instrument to create dark soundscapes. Your strong instinct for songcraft shines through here in the way you modulate the song one element at a time - first dynamics, then vocal range, then the chord progression - until you end in a completely different place from where you began. I also really like that your approach to the challenge was to dig instead of to go up. However... let's "Dig Deep," shall we?

In the first chorus, you sing a low note (E3) for the word "deep." Would I be correct to assume that that note is at or near the very bottom of your vocal range? You're shifting out of your comfortable range for the chorus, into a contralto voice, and it's audibly not as comfortable or confident as your natural mezzo-soprano. I get that that's kind of the point. Going literally deeper in a song about digging deeper, as well as pushing yourself out of your comfort zone in a song about being uncomfortable. But my ears don't lie to me, and they're saying that they would much rather hear you confidently ring out in your natural mezzo-soprano voice than struggle in the contralto range. So then what's the takeaway here? "Only sing in your natural range and never stray from your comfort zone"? Hell no, that's terrible advice. But I can't avoid the fact that this song really comes alive when you start belting out in your normal register.

To be honest, I like this song a lot better if I think of it as a deep cut on a Braylee Pierce LP, rather than as the opening salvo in a song contest. I think it might be a good idea to shorten the buildup a little bit. Maybe cut one verse, or half a verse, to get to the belting-out parts a little sooner.



Brain Weasels
"Root to Rise (Overdrive)"

You've got chorus problems, my friend. The absolute torrent of words in your chorus makes the song difficult to follow, and results in a vocal performance that sounds like you're barely hanging on. Maybe with a ton more practice you could get this sounding more natural, like a musical theater patter song or something, but I think even then it would still sound unnecessarily dense. When the chorus gives way to the verse and actually gives the melody some space, it feels like taking in a deep breath after being underwater. Contrasts can be good; they can drive interest in a song, but this tension was deeply unpleasant to me personally.

Phlub
"Straight to Hell"

Brilliant lyrics, and the arrangement/production don't let them down! I love the layers of sludgy guitars all over this song. It's a fine line to walk, because all that smeary distortion could just as easily have come across as dull an undefined, but you'd been able to find the right levels of distortion to get your guitar tones to build without clashing. Your vocal performance doesn't just hit all the notes, it nails the performance from an "acting" standpoint, too. You've inhabited the character perfectly. My main criticism of this song is the guitar solo and third verse. The solo feels like it runs a little long, or it lacks a sense of progression. Perhaps the length wouldn't bother me if it felt as though the solo were building on a theme and reached some kind of natural climax, but it doesn't really. Or maybe I'd be more tolerant of the lack of momentum in the solo if it were shorter. And then it segues into a third verse which, while well written and performed, doesn't really tell us anything new compared to the previous two verses. The end of a solo is a great time to shake up the dynamics or narrative of a song. Bring us a different perspective, or sum up the message in a way that feels like a natural conclusion. Overall, though, these gripes aren't enough to drag down (no pun intended) such a fun and well-executed song. Very well done!


Jeff Walker
"Solid Ground"

I admit, on a first listen, I was very impressed with the production values, the quality of your singing voice, and the effortlessness with which you began your chorus, "She's read Heidegger and Kierkegaard." I really liked the metaphorical conceit - solid gound as the antidote for a high horse. Head in the clouds, and whatnot. The lyrical conceit hangs together elegantly and it's a unique take on the round's challenge, too! However, I found that on repeated listens, these lyrics left a sour taste in my mouth. I try to give the benefit of the doubt, but I can't shake the feeling that you're trying to imply that social justice and those who protest for it are pet issues motivated by boredom. There's a sneery dismissiveness to it - as though reading philosophy is the hallmark of someone who has too much spare time on their hands and not enough sense to know what to do with it. The use of "high horse" in the chorus amplifies that sense of judgment - ironically. Maybe you didn't mean that to be a general message; perhaps this really is just a character study of one person. But the extrapolation from the specific to the general is part of what makes a song resonate. And the fact that you did this in the country genre, which has itself been a bit of a social-issues battleground lately... Well, let's just say, I don't see any fire, but I'm smelling a lot of smoke. The judgmental tone and the (in my opinion erroneous) dismissal of social protest eventually kind of ruined this song for me.


Dutch Widows
"Above It All"

This song's vocal performance distracted me badly from everything else going on in it. For starters, there's a low-mid frequency buildup that pervades every sung line of lyrics and overwhelms the mix. This is likely caused by the Proximity Effect, and can be mitigated by keeping the microphone a little farther from your mouth during recording, and/or by using an EQ on the vocals to attenuate some of those lower frequencies throughout.

Once I forced myself to get over that distracting problem, I found that I still had trouble following your lyrics. I guess it's kind of a vibes piece? A little more enunciation and emoting in your delivery might have helped in this regard. I wonder to what extent the somewhat monotone delivery was intentional, symbolizing your feeling of being "above it all?" I can see that being used as a post-hoc justification, but I don't think it sounds like you sang it that way on purpose from the outset.

Everything else besides the vocals is really lovely. You play guitar well and had the mixing restraint to really rein it in and make it fit better with the rest of your arrangement. Your synths are tastefully chosen. I appreciate your "don't bore us, get to the chorus" approach to songwriting. That mode change from major to minor when you switch from the chorus to the verse hits hard! I try not to harp too badly on recording/production stuff, but in a situation like this song, it's a genuine barrier to the listener being able to receive the message you're trying to send, so that poorly-mixed vocal ends up being all I remember about it.


Cavedwellers
"Z-Axis"

Speaking of vibes... The lyrics to this song are practically cubist. I do appreciate how your lyrical approach serves as a bit of a "correction" about which axis this challenge is actually about - in a three-dimensional space, that is. It took me reading along with the lyrics sheet before I understood that there's a human emotional core to this song, which the geometry and wordplay belie. I'm gathering some narrative about an arguement between partners (romantic, I'm assuming?) where the narrator thinks their partner sees themselves as "above" the narrator. I really want to connect on a more emotional level with this conflict, but the wordplay seems to have taken priority over narrative coherence, making the lyrics hard for me to follow. I do understand the impulse not to be TOO straightforward, but this feels like an overcorrection to me. Ultimately, I think the playfulness of the puns doesn't just mask that emotional core, but actively works against it.

On the arrangement/performance/production side of things, this feels like a complete product. The vocal is clear and on key, even on those falsetto notes. Your guitar tones are a little muddy, but in a way that feels intentional and serves the garage-rock vibe. I love how the solo spans across the bridge and the transition back to the verse. The tight harmony guitar part is cool when it comes in, and even cooler when swerves into counterpoint. Then the acoustic signals a switch back to the verse structure, but we still have a little solo left in a different guitar tone. This part of the song feels extremely intentional and confident. In fact, given my quibbles about the lyrics, I think this solo is my favorite part of the song!


Hanky Code
"The Bends"

Great concept. I love how little build-up there is to the fun part of the song! The call-and-response vocals work well with the playful mood. I really like your vocal delivery for your choruses, especially the overarticulation on "I might actually die." In a more serious song this might have come across as stilted, but it perfectly suits the semi-comedic tone of this song.

I feel like rhyming "darkness" with "where the sharks is" shouldn't be okay, but your arrangement and performance make it work for me. I gotta just go with it, I guess! In terms of critiques - some of the vocals get buried in the mix a bit, mostly notably in the second pre-chorus, around 1:20. Probably just some riding the lead vocal fader would have helped; maybe some compression if you wanted to get fancy with it. I don't really have much else to say; this was a really well-realized slice of pop sugar perfection!


Tunes By LJ
"Beneath You/Over It"

This is the only song out of 31 that I genuinely wish had been longer. You have two sections, and I don't think either has quite enough time to do it justice, but you know what they say: Leave 'em wanting more. The composition, arrangement, performance, and production are all spot-on here. The piano when it comes in oozes confidence, but leaves a lot of space for the rest of the arrangement. The comparisons to Jamiroquai were made in the listening party so I won't belabor them - not that I find it bad to wear your influences on your sleeve anyway. Everything fits together neatly, nothing seems buried or "poking out" in the mix. You're confident in the arrangement, plus it has groove for days. I really liked the vocoder at the end, or whatever that effect was.

I feel like there's some additional story hinted at in your lyrics and I would have liked a bit more of it. This is part of the disadvantage of having such a short song. Here's how I interpreted it... The narrator and his partner, who both grew up in Denver but then moved away, are visiting home and had a relationship-ending fight - do I have that right? But then in the second section the narrator talks about "the culture here," so I'm a little confused about whether one or both of these characters is a fish out of water, so to speak. I really like the hook/title "Beneath you and I'm over it" as a way to engage with the challenge of the title, but it feels like it works better if the partner character is in Denver and the narrator isn't - being literally "beneath you," maybe? Or else the specificity of the Mile-High City feels like it's just there to tick the box of the challenge? It just feels to me like this song had space to flesh out the situation a little more and I wish it had. The execution is truly impressive, though. Top-notch pacing and production.


Hot Pink Halo
"Aim High"

There's an uncanny-valley quality to this recording that made me weirdly uncomfortable, and I wasn't able to put my finger on it for a while. I think maybe it's coming from the distortion you've applied to the sound effects that you're using as percussion? There's a squealy scraping sound in at least one of the samples - I think it might be aliasing from distortion? I don't exactly feel like it's a "problem" for you to fix, per se, but I'm not enjoying the feeling it evokes in me. To me, that discomfort is at odds with the encouraging tone of the lyrics. "For the peace / Find a piece of the place / That you trust / This city has you by the heart." These are beautiful words, but I have a hard time accepting that message when the mix has so much tension and dissonance in the margins.

I also think part of that discomfort comes from the vocal performance itself. I hear some parts in the choruses where I think you fell a little flat of your intended melody, ran out of breath, or swallowed a syllable. "For a change / Find that change in the streets" (about 1:06) is noticeably lower than the other vocals and I needed the written lyrics to understand what you were saying. "You can do it" (about 1:37) feels like you had to ease up into the note a little; I think it would have been more effective if it had landed on the right note more squarely.

And then there's that bridge. I applaud you for trying something different with the vocal cadence - I think it sounds like you're singing the vocal melody in an implied 3/4 time without changing the time signature of the instruments? If I count in 4/4, each word falls on the same beat of the measure with each repetition, but you're changing the stresses with each pass, so you've kind of simulated the effect of a polyrhythm. But I think the melody would have worked better if it had been given more space. A slight rest between each repetition, letting the message sink in a little better. Similar to the juxtaposition I noted earlier with the discordant arrangement; these lyrics are kind an encouraging, but the delivery is relentless. I'm sorry to say, but this mismatch didn't work for me. If this conflict was intended to imply a deeper meaning, then I'm afraid I didn't pick up on that meaning.

There were parts of this song I really liked, as well. The gentle arpeggiation on the electric guitar served well as an understated musical bed. I like the quavery tone of the high percussive synth. I liked how you had the power chords in the bed drop out and back in for emphasis during the second half of the bridge. But sadly, that discomfort and tension I've been trying to describe end up overwhelming my perception of the song, and these musical flourishes aren't enough for me to latch onto.


Jealous Brother
"Climbing the Fascist Ladder"

I initially resisted giving a high ranking to a song this straightforward. It's exactly what it says on the tin, basically. By the end of the song, you haven't actually said anything that wasn't already in the title. And yet... The execution is pitch-perfect here. The composition, arrangement, performance, and production are all slick as can be. The lyrics make their point clearly and elegantly while also scanning absolutely perfectly with your melody, giving the whole thing a repeatable, catchy quality. Those vocal harmonies are so tight and effective that I didn't even notice them on the first couple of listens. The jangly piano and all the guitar solos are perfect. You're in the pocket throughout, everything in place, and those guitar jams are so sweet and pleasant. I especially like the chromatic builds at the end of certain sections, one in particular leading to a key change, literally climbing the ladder. I also liked how you introduced a new guitar for the first solo, but in the subsequent verse that guitar hung around to provide ornamentation in between the vocal lines. Hanging back, out of the way, but still present, a permanent addition to the arrangement's buildup.

In the end, I stopped resisting the straightforwardness and ranked you #1. Try not to go mad with power now.

Governing Dynamics
"Downfall"

Your mastery in this genre gives the arrangement and performance a surefootedness that few other songs in this round have. The song has several layers of guitars, and their tones are all well chosen. From an arrangement standpoint, you know exactly when each part should enter and leave, and what each guitar should do to stay out of the way while you're singing and to shine when it's solo time. I like how the lead guitar line in the intro gives way to a more subtly saturated line an octave higher during the verse. And then the layers all synchronize on the chords for the chorus. This is REALLY well paced... And yes, I'm aware that I've criticized your songs for their pacing in the past. This song is a dramatic improvement from last time I heard you.

I'm curious whether you used pre-made drum loops, or if you made this loop yourself. The intro and verse pattern feels somewhat ragged. There are two snare ghost notes between the 2 and 3 of each measure in this section, and three ghost notes between the 4 and the following measure's 1. These ghost notes all feel a little off. My first instinct was that they're being played slightly out of time, or maybe have some swing when the rest of the beat is straight. But on listening closer, I think it's probably just a dynamics issue. One of the ghost notes is significantly louder than the others, and it feels like it's pulling the rhythm lopsided. This is honestly the biggest thing standing in the way of my enjoying the song.

When the guitars line up for the chorus, it overwhelms your vocals, and I have trouble making out your lyrics in the choruses. There's a raft of intermediate-to-advanced mixing techniques that might ease up on this issue, but to be honest, I bet you could just boost the vocals by like 1.5 db in the choruses and that would solve it. Another small mixing note: your bass gets briefly overwhelming at around 2:51, just at the onset of the last chorus. My guess is that you left the bass fader in one place for the whole song, but that section gets louder because the bass is trying a busier lick or fill here? Again, this is probably solved easily just by automating the volume.

Your lead vocals sound mostly fine throughout. They're not spectacular, but they're appropriate for the genre, and never off-key, so it works. I will say, thought, at the end of the last chorus, when you kick that "laughing all the way down" line up to a higher register, the voice sounds noticeably thinner. My quick-fix suggestion is reverb. I assume there's some room or plate reverb on your voice for the whole song, but in that moment at the end, it could use a touch more of whatever you've already got on it. And maybe consider adding a tiny bit more reverb to your vocals throughout? You could easily overdo it, of course, but I think you have some space to try inching it up a little bit more without the risk of drowning your mix, and a little more spatial dimension definitely wouldn't hurt.



Pigfarmer Jr.
"Nowhere to Go but Down"

This isn't the best-produced or performed song of the round. Your vocals are consistently on key, but sound a little thin. It has some lyrics that don't scan quite right. It probably runs a little longer than the performance merits. BUT! You actually have something real to say here, and you convey that message with earnestness and urgency. That gets you far.

By the end of the first verse, we can already tell where this song is going, and that sense of dread is palpable. Good writing! Line by line could use some tightening up, but the overall narrative is clear and emotionally impactful.

Here's an example of what I mean about tightening up: Take a look at your third and fourth line. "The waitress wants to cut us off when / We both say we're doing okay." The way you've placed this line break puts disproportionate emphasis on the word "when." The phrase doing the work in this line is "cut us off," so that should be where the line ends. It should be pretty easy to move "when" to the next line, and in fact I'd also recommend changing "when" to "but." So it would become: "The waitress wants to cut us off / But we both say we're doing okay." It's a small thing, but I think it would hone the impact of the story even more.

I like that second guitar that introduces itself in the second half of the first verse. It's doing just the right amount of work, and it's mixed exactly right against the vocals. I also like how that guitar is already in place in the beginning of the second verse, but plays a higher, more urgent pattern for the second half of that verse, timed to the lyric "I hear sirens." Dang, man. Finally, that guitar takes center stage for a very well-crafted solo. I like how your solo has a mini-narrative of its own. Excellent phrasing. I think I'd like to hear a little more bite on the guitar tone during the solo. Really let it shine when its turn to take center stage comes.

I'm pretty lukewarm on the use of the heart monitor tone. I think if you're going to have it here, the flatline should directly follow the rhythmic beeping, instead of being separated by a chorus. But I also think the beeping doesn't fit well with the rest of the arrangement and the story is clear enough without it.


Temnere
"Into the Darkness"

Full disclosure - this sort of high-fantasy heavy metal isn't really my jam. But even if it were, I think this song would fall short in a number of ways. The subject matter and performance suggest that this should be energizing, driving, and operatic. I'm not really getting any of those. The drums are mixed too low and don't punch through the way they should, so they sound dull instead of driving. Some mixing on the individual pieces of the drum kit probably would have helped, too. For instance, I think this mix calls for a more thumpy thickness in the kick drum in particular. When the kick starts playing those sixteenth notes on the double-pedal, shouldn't the listener feel that, like in their chest, as much as they hear it? Even in my car stereo with the volume cranked, I'm not getting that pull it needs.

The vocals don't punch through the mix well at all, so they get buried. When you get to the chorus and transition from minor to major, this should absolutely soar, but it just doesn't. I'm not sure if this is an EQ or compression problem, or if they're just mixed too low. For starters, raise the vocal volume, but I think you may need to look at other techniques to make the vocals jump out more. In particular, doubling the vocals for certain parts of the song, maybe even quadrupling for the chorus. Make it sound like a raucous banquet table at Valhalla, you know? Actually, out of curiosity, are you triple-tracking your guitars in the chorus? Left, right, center? If so, maybe try turning down the center guitar by like 5-6 db, that might make more room for the vocals.

The mix gets in the way of your message pretty badly, but the lyrics and melody are actually pretty good! I like the juxtaposition of "life is cheap" in the opening line with the promise of riches from a dangerous mission. And you're the only entrant this round who incorporated verticality in the form of venturing into a sunken castle. You're playing those guitars really well, and the solo in particular has a great stucture to it. Normally I'm not a fan of when the solo takes up a whole verse AND chorus, but here it really works - that soaring quality of the modulation to major gives it a narrative climactic quality. However, just like your vocals, I think your guitar tone in the solo needs to stand out from the mix more. Turning up the treble might help. You might have the instinct to crank up your distortion to make the solo cut through the mix more, but in this case, the musical bed already has a lot of distortion, so maybe try a cleaner tone for the solo? I can't promise it'll work, but it's worth a try.


Eric Novak
"Low Road"

I like the use of slides in the guitars, but it seems that the flexibility in the pitched instruments left you on shaky ground, vocally. There are several points in this song in which your voice hits a note badly, or quavers a lot when it lands there. I sympathize, having been there before. I seldom write my melody lines down, myself. I count on myself to remember them or my voice to find the right note naturally. Sometimes this gets me into trouble if the melody doesn't quite sit the way I expected it to. Then I end up plunking the vocal melody out on my piano and tracing it note by note to see where the conflict is. I recommend you try this too. If you have access to a keyboard, pick a tone that cuts through your mix and play the vocal melody instead of singing it. Then sing the lyrics along to that track, then cut the keyboard part. The obvious benefit is that you have a concrete part to sing along with. The less-obvious but equally important benefit is that playing on the keyboard will make you actually think about what the melody REALLY IS. Because I feel like there are vocal notes here where you genuinely didn't know what the correct note was, such as the word "night" at 0:35. Or the word "my" at 2:08.

It's a shame the pitchy vocals get in the way here, because I think there's a lovely lyrical sentiment here and the arrangement is unique. And I think you did as good a job as anyone else at mixing your low end - the drums and bass sit really well, which is more than I can say for many of the other songs in this round. Of course I try not to turn this into a production-values-only contest. But when you record a song, you're trying to convey an idea to your listener, and if we're too distracted by the sour notes to hear what you're singing, you gotta fix that.


Sober
"On Penobscot Bay"

I really love your approach to the challenge. So many of us thought about climbing, flying, falling - dramatic height changes. But your song takes inspiration from the gentle rising and falling of boats in the water, and sets the arrangement as a gentle bluegrass lullaby to match the vibe.

I confess, I like the choruses more than the verses here - I think your deep bariton register struggles a little bit as a lead vocal, but the lift in the chorus puts you right in the sweet spot.

In terms of arrangement, performance, and production... I've got no notes. I guess that makes this a short review. Awesome job!


Frederic Gange
"Slump"

This was confusing to me. How does a MIDI piano have such tuning issues? Thankfully, Phleb was there in the listening party to talk about which microtonal tuning you used. Aha. Unfortunately, I'm pretty unfamiliar with this type of harmony, so to my ears it still sounds like a bunch of mistakes in the vocals and the piano.

I appreciate your approach to the lyrics, but the chorus is a little confusing to me. "Do we truly have a choice," you sing, but I'm not clear on what the supposed choice would be and how it relates to your posture. Then it's about raising our voices and how that can "pull us higher," which I see ties back to the idea of standing up straight. But it feels like the connection to posture is intended to be a second meaning of that line, a clever metaphorical connection, where the literal first level of meaning is hazier to me. I do like the "set the record straighter" wordplay earlier in the chorus.

Overall, however, the unusual harmonics you used turned out to be too much of a barrier for me.


Siebass
"It's Going Down"

This is a fanstastic rock-disco-dance song. I love Electric Six, and your song reminds me of them a lot, especially in your vocal performance of the "fire/desire" rhyme. The rhythm section clicks really well here - your drum machine grooves with those syncopated hi-hats pushing it along, and the bass is locked right in. The chromatic fall in the bassline is a great illustration of the downward movement and builds tension as it goes.

(Btw, if anyone else is wondering what that bass line reminds them of - it's "Cake by the Ocean." I couldn't care less about the similarity, though. It worked well for the Jonas Brothers and it works well here!)

As great as the drums, bass, synths, and guitars are here, it's your vocal performance that absolutely makes this song. The timbre of your voice suggests that it kinda shouldn't work, but you sell it with a crapload of conviction. I especially appreciate how you handle the vocals' approach tones. Appearing to miss the note until you bend up into it is another great way of managing tension and it complements the chromatic lines in the bass.

Your approach to the challenge didn't quite land for me. When we say "It's going down," that's idiomatic, and I believe the challenge called for some engagement with literal verticality. The lyric "Steamy ghosts rise up through the dance floor" probably ticks the box, but it seems kinda incidental. I wondered whether the bit of sound design you had in your intro was intended to represent the dance floor moving vertically on an elevator? Or was it the perspective of the ghosts, hearing the dance floor distantly through the ceiling at first? Then the sound clarifies as the ghosts emerge into the dance hall. I'm kind of talking myself into this interpretation, but I'm not 100% there's enough in the song for me to be confident in your intentions.


Glennny
"Crazy Climber"

It's weird I've never heard of this video game; it sounds like the kind of thing I'd have eaten up. Anyway, your song about it rocks. That "scale up the building, don't get caught" hook with the different call-and-response answers has been stuck in my head all week. Your vocal range especially impressed me, jumping from those falsetto highs in the prechorus to the bass vocal in the bridge, which also lodged itself into my brain and wouldn't dislodge.

If I have a complaint, it's that the verses are a little lacking in that same energy. The verse vocals get lost in the guitars a bit, so they're harder to make out, and the melody in those sections feels a little less distinct.

Gotta love that guitar work, though! You're three for three on awesome guitar solos this round.


Boffo Yux Dudes
"EDL (Entry, Descent, and Landing)"

Most of the instruments in this song are clearly MIDI or synth equivalents, especially the piano, and while that normally doesn't bother me much, in this case I think it clashes with your chosen subject matter. This is a song about a high-stakes dangerous situation, but I'm not feeling that drama in the music, which I think is a shame. You don't need to have real acoustic instruments for everything you want to include, but there are higher-quality sampled instruments available all over the web these days, and you can often use MIDI expression fields to get realistic-sounding performances out of fake instruments. Some extra effort in this regard would have gone a long way for your song.

From your title, I kind of expected the song to have distinct phases. Maybe this is what the critics call an "intentional error," expecting something from your song which you never even intended. But I thought it would be cool if the different phases of landing each had a distinct musical sound to them, different "movements" of the song, so to speak. As it is, the song sounds kind of samey throughout. And also, that first verse is about takeoff? Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if the title had been something else, who can say?

By the way, it wasn't clear to me until late in the judging process that the ship was descending to a different planet. I assumed it was a shuttle coming back to Earth. Even a shuttle returning to Earth can be exciting and dangerous with no margin for error, but setting down on a different planet sets the stakes EVEN HIGHER - I would have appreciated that being clearer earlier in the song.

I really like the slide guitar sound and the delay you put on it. That evokes the movement of the spacecraft and the vastness of space well. The vocal performance is spot-on too, and all the instruments are balanced well against each other. I just think the "fake" ones distract from the story you're trying to tell, which is a pity.

[JonPorobil]

And here are a couple of appendices that I omitted from my original set of reviews because they were either too long or involved screenshots that I didn't think would paste well into Blogger.

Appendix I: Shadows

There are four shadow entries, and one of them is me. I hadn't completed reviews of them before the reviews were due, so here they are now:

Bob Barton - Your lyrics are poignant and angry (and on a personal note, I agree with your points), but I don't think they hang together well as poetry. The scansion doesn't have a clear structure, which makes the melody formless, and they don't rhyme. I'm aware that many good songs don't rhyme, but I mention it as an example of something that might have provided some structure. Melodically, your voice is flat a lot of the time, which might be a knock-on effect of the melody lacking clear form; perhaps you'd have hit the notes better if the melody hadn't been such a moving target. I believe you can tighten up your lyrics, which will make the melody more clear and easier to sing, without losing that passion informing the song. Good luck!

"Rise" - I get what you're doing from a musical experiment standpoint, but it doesn't speak to me on an emotional level, so I can't imagine ever actually wanting to put this on and listen to it for its own sake. I do appreciate that you pulled out all the stops to keep your percussion track varied, so the song does have a sense of progression and doesn't just repeat the same technique over and over again without variation.

"Floating Away" - I did most of my listening from a playlist of files that I downloaded the morning after the deadline, so this wasn't on the list and consequently I've listened to it the least. So you may take my review with a larger-than-usual grain of salt. I like the space in the mix and the emotionality that it provides, but the vocals are WAY too muffled and buried. My suspicion is that this was motivated in part by a lack of confidence in your own singing voice; "If I mix it low and really transform the tone with this EQ, they won't hear how bad my voice is!" My main problem with this approach is that it doesn't really work. I can still hear parts where your voice is thin and some where it doesn't quite hit the notes you were going for. Practice more, get confident with the melody, and don't hide behind the mix. Even though this isn't an emotionally-confident song, it still helps for you to have control of your voice as you express that.

Appendix II: Braylee Pierce

A word on macrodynamics. You begin this song pianississimo, and it builds dramatically to a forte. This kind of dynamic range is generally a good thing, but it does mean that parts of the beginning of the song are very difficult to hear. In the listening party chat, Evermind talked about this in terms of "normalization," implying that your song just needed an overall volume boost to be more listenable. If we could just run the whole song through a limiter to keep it from clipping and then boost everything by a few db, it would be easier to listen to, right?

So I tried that. Here's a screenshot of the result. The green track on top is the version as downloaded from Bandcamp. The light orange is the same track with a limiter set to a maximum of -1db and the signal boosted by 2 db. The darker orange below that is set to a maximum of -1 db and has the signal boosted by +4 db. And the red one below that is set to a maximum of -1 db and has its signal boosted by +6 db.

Braylee.PNG (140.92 KiB) Viewed 717 times

You can see on the red version that there's a lot of visible clipping. This also presents audibly as very unpleasant digital clipping, but I'll spare you the aural demonstration. The orange versions have somewhat less, but the digital clipping is still present, even on the +2 version. And the volume boost in the +2 version is otherwise not subtle enough to fix the problem of the quiet sections being hard to hear overall.

Admittedly, this is all done with just the stock Limiter in Cubase, which isn't the most sophisticated tool for this kind of work, but you can see the problems that arise. A more high-end limiter might have been able to accomplish this with more subtlety, but I maintain that the problem would be visible and audible regardless. I suppose this experiment is, more than anything else, an argument for multitrack recording, proper mixing, and mastering. With even a little bit of mixing, you can have quiet sections of a song that sound quiet without actually being so quiet that a listener can't hear them.

Appendix III: Ominous Ride

In my review, I alluded to an experiment I did in my DAW to check on the frequency range in your song. To be honest, this difference wasn't as illustrative as I had anticipated it would be, but here is the screenshot of the the frequency curve before and after solo-ing the mids:

Ominous Ride experiment.png (199.98 KiB) Viewed 717 times

Interesting audio phenomenon here... Clicking "solo" on the midrange should (in theory) completely mute all sounds below or above that range. However, you can still see some bass information in the EQ curve, and some higher frequencies up to 5k. These might be harmonics that the master bus allows to build after the signal passes through the compressor, or it might just be that the "solo" function in my multiband plugin "rolls off" those frequencies instead of muting everything at a hard wall. I might try researching that a bit more later, but anyway. The point I was trying to make was that there's not a huge difference between your song in the form it was published, and your song with all the highs and lows rolled off. Visually, this doesn't come across nearly as strongly as just listening to a comparison; let me know if you'd like to hear that.

Appendix IV: Governing Dynamics

When the guitars line up for the chorus, it overwhelms your vocals, and I have trouble making out your lyrics in the choruses. There's a raft of intermediate-to-advanced mixing techniques that might ease up on this issue, but to be honest, I bet you could just boost the vocals by like 1.5 db in the choruses and that would solve it.

I'm going to detail a recommendation here for you. I use this technique or something like it in nearly every song I mix. I know you're pretty experienced with recording and mixing, so I apologize if any of this information is old news to you. I've split this technique into four levels of difficulty, from easiest to hardest. They all begin with identifying the most important frequency space for your vocals, which is probably either the fundamental (root frequency of the notes you're singing) or its first harmonic (usually around 800-1,000Hz-ish?). This is the area to make other instruments duck out of the way.

Level 1 - Simple: Use any EQ plugin to slightly (say, -2 or -3 db) reduce the volume of the identified frequency in your guitars.

Level 2 - Easy: Switch to a Dynamic EQ (or one with a "Dynamic" feature). A dynamic EQ turns down the frequency you select, but only when that frequency is already louder than a threshold set by you - kind of a cross between an EQ and a compressor. This keeps the signal intact when it's not too loud, but tamps down the frequency in question when it gets too loud. This should also empower you to make a deeper cut without it being too conspicuous in your mix. Your profile says you use StudioOne, so I looked up the stock EQ that PreSonus provides. Unfortunately, it doesn't have this feature. If you don't already have a dynamic EQ, I recommend TDR Nova, which is completely free, uses the VST standard to be compatible with almost every DAW, and is probably the best dynamic EQ you can get without paying any money. In fact, I'd argue it's better than many non-free plugins! It also has a mid mode and a side mode, which will be useful shortly.

Level 3 - Intermediate: Use an EQ with a mid/side mode. (TDR Nova doesn't have a mid/side mode, but it does have "sum," which is exactly the same as mid-only, and "difference," which is exactly the same as side-only.) Since lead vocals are, by and large, mixed center, you can achieve more vocal clarity by only reducing the identified frequency in the mid space, while leaving the sides intact. In fact, when I do this, sometimes I add a corresponding boost to the sides. Since the plugin I recommended doesn't allow for mid and side modes in the same instance, you'd have to use two instances of it in sequence (one set to "sum," the other set to "difference") to accomplish this mid-cut-and-side-boost technique, and probably the mid cut alone will get you the results you want.

Level 4 - Advanced: Sidechain! Just like a compressor, a dynamic EQ can be fed an input other than itself to determine when that competing frequency should be reduced. Instead of setting the frequency to only reduce when the guitar gets too loud in that range, you can configure it so that the corresponding frequency band in the guitar reduces only when the vocals are active. That way, any time you're not singing, the guitars automatically resume their full-bodied frequency range, but they'll duck discreetly out of the way to make room for your voice when needed. To minimize the risk of this effect being audible and conspicuous, use the sidechain reduction in mid or sum mode only as I described in level 3.

All right, that's it for this round from me. Congrats to Glennny for a well-deserved solo win, and condolences to the those who didn't make the cut. I'm looking forward to hearing your round 2 songs!

[jast]

This is getting a bit off topic but I figure it's kind of important to know...

If we could just run the whole song through a limiter to keep it from clipping and then boost everything by a few db, it would be easier to listen to, right?
[...]
So I tried that. [...] You can see on the red version that there's a lot of visible clipping. This also presents audibly as very unpleasant digital clipping, but I'll spare you the aural demonstration. [...]
Admittedly, this is all done with just the stock Limiter in Cubase, which isn't the most sophisticated tool for this kind of work, but you can see the problems that arise.

First, what's the difference between a compressor and a limiter? Really just the compression ratio being used. A compressor with a high ratio is a limiter. So, the limiter in Cubase is really just a compressor with a fixed high ratio (unfortunately they don't give you any details which makes it kind of a bad plugin to use). However, with any ratio below infinite you can still get clipping: if you compress the dynamics by, say, a factor of 10, but the resulting peak is still above 0 dB afterwards, it will clip. With an infinite ratio, the compressor/limiter will compress the dynamics as aggressively as necessary to still keep you below or at your desired threshold. (If the compressor's/limiter's attack is too slow, that can still cause clipping in both cases, but that's a different story.)

There is a more specific term for a limiter with an infinite ratio and fast attack: brickwall limiter (and Cubase happens to have a plugin by that name). By using a brickwall limiter instead of a "weaker" limiter, you can completely eliminate clipping. In the Cubase plugin, you just set the threshold to -6 dB and everything will get limited to -6 dB and then amplified back to 0 dB (not ideal for mastering because you typically want a little more headroom, but that's just a downside of this particular plugin). However, the more the dynamics get compressed, the more likely you'll get pumping artifacts (for an obvious example of pumping, listen to Eric Prydz's Call On Me where it sounds like everything gets dialed down every time the kick hits, especially in parts where lots of things are happening at once). Some fancier brickwall limiters will do additional processing to try and mask pumping (if that's what you want).

Finally, specifically for the purpose of louderizing your mix, a specific type of brickwall limiter is the maximizer (yet again, a plugin by that name exists in Cubase, though unfortunately the UI doesn't let you say, "make this louder by 6 dB" so it's a bit crap), which lets you specify how much louder you want the base level to be, plus some details to affect how the brickwall limiting works etc. Some maximizers use other tricks, like doing multiband limiting and maybe a side of soft clipping or whatever.

For your experiment here, a maximizer is the most straightforward plugin to use: just set the threshold, final output level (to keep some headroom) and you're good. This is the type of thing you really want to use for making a mix a little louder, instead of a more basic limiter. An example of a good free basic maximizer is LoudMax.

I took the liberty of repeating what you did with REAPER's ReaLimit, another really basic plugin, after first manually fixing the panning so that everything is a little more centred. The limiter doesn't even kick in very often, and the resulting wave forms don't really look all that squished (it looks much worse in your image because you didn't adjust the panning so the left channel is a decent bit louder than the right). In any case, none of the peaks result in digital clipping. In the image, "Original" is after panning correction:



Final remark: usually bringing up quieter sections is best done with volume automation curves. You might add a limiter and/or soft clipper on top to deal with the occasional transient but by doing the bulk of the work with automation, you avoid having unpredictable changes in levels throughout the track.

Interesting audio phenomenon here... Clicking "solo" on the midrange should (in theory) completely mute all sounds below or above that range. However, you can still see some bass information in the EQ curve, and some higher frequencies up to 5k. These might be harmonics that the master bus allows to build after the signal passes through the compressor, or it might just be that the "solo" function in my multiband plugin "rolls off" those frequencies instead of muting everything at a hard wall.

Band filters hardly ever achieve (nor target) perfect separation. Typically when you solo a band, you hear exactly what goes into or comes out of that band's processor. Some plugins might allow you to customize how the band filters work, but filters with near-perfect separation are quite expensive to compute and might have other undesirable properties like introducing phase issues, so I suspect you won't see them too often.

[JonPorobil]

Thank you for the additional detail, jast! One thing I notice different between our two experiments - besides the nature of the plugin used, of course - is that the waveform you used appears to have been turned down a bit prior to having the limiter applied. To be honest, this would have been a smart thing for me to do before applying the limiter, but hey, live and learn.

I'll be honest, I never touch Cubase's "Brickwall Limiter" plugin, because I've never understood what use case its developers made it for, distinct from the regular Limiter. And for that matter, I only use the Limiter to louden up mix previews that have a bunch of headroom because they're unmastered. I guess technically I've been using it as a Maximizer, but have you seen Steinberg's actual Maximizer?

maximizer.png (174.22 KiB) Viewed 649 times

Their documentation doesn't help much either. "Optimize determines the loudness of the signal." ...as a percentage? Gee, thanks.

Their Limiter, on the other hand, functions a lot more like how you described the simplicity of a Maximizer:

limiter.png (127.76 KiB) Viewed 649 times

One knob tells it how much to boost or cut everything by, and the other knob tells it what volume threshold to start clipping. (Plus the self-explanatory Release knob, which I seldom adjust at all.) I should probably get some better plugins for dynamics control, eventually, but in the meantime the Limiter does fine with what little I ask of it.

(Oh, and just to make things EVEN MORE blurry, Steinberg released a fourth dynamics plugin, Raiser, with Cubase 12. I'm still on Cubase 11.5, so no screenshot for that one. Steinberg describe Raiser as a "versatile limiter plugin" which can "increase the loudness of audio material." Sigh.)

I guess the real point here is that it's a bit much for anyone to expect a single plugin to fix such a huge dynamic range automagically.

[jast]

No, a single plugin can do this sort of thing just fine, it's just that Cubase's Limiter sucks, and Cubase's Maximizer sucks for different reasons.

One thing I notice different between our two experiments - besides the nature of the plugin used, of course - is that the waveform you used appears to have been turned down a bit prior to having the limiter applied.

That's the panning fix that I mentioned. I would still get output with zero digital clipping if I hadn't done that.