Hi, here's my subjective comments to each song.
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J I L L I A M, ApocAlypto
Great intro: very catchy melody with delay.
All through the song the music part is very interesting and promising. But I would like to hear better the words. Now - with the overdose of effects - the vocal is more like a background texture. But as there is real lyrics with soulful and touchy content, one should hear them better. Now it leaves my mind to a state without focus: should I listen to the texture or the instruments?
If you want to keep vocal as bg-texture those inhale breaths should be edited away.
If we had a second round for submissions, I would love to hear a version where your voice would be quite dry on that beautiful instrumentation with or without bg-texture. That would create a nice 3d effect. It could be just spoken, or altered with effects, but it should be something comprehensible. For example David Bowies ”Man who sold the world” could be a good reference for the use of effects with vocal part.
Overall, you clearly have a talent to turn your innermost feelings directly to music (that’s rare), but during mixing time I think you should have a courage to leave yourself exposed and vulnerable, not masked by effects. If you find a solution to that problem, you’d be a winner and you would find yourself a dedicated audience. How about asking one of your music friends to do a vocal mix for you?
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AFutureInNoise, SjundeVaagen
Beautiful melody and chord progression, also nice build up with arrangement as organ, bass and drums are introduced gradually. This old time arangement is also just suitable for the song, keeping the focus naturally with lyrics. Those of us who listen old ”folkmusik”, surely appreciate your music.
But the room/reverb sound is filling the space badly, and it is competing with singer by diminishing the role of lyrics. So, in arrangement there is elements for a nice build up, but that reverb combined overwhelming bass sound eats all the space. So mixwise there’s no room for those musical arrangement ideas to flourish.
Evert Taube’s old recordings could be a nice reference of how to keep the the lyrics and vox proudly as leading element. In his records there’s happening much behind, but still the music part only enhances the vox part.
1:18 onwards, great idea when female vox part is repeated by male voice like a delay.
Overall: ”väldigt bra”, great old time song with great lyrics, and I would love to hear it with better mix.
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becsei_gyorgy, Resurrection
This is huge classical composition, perfect transitions from part to another. It has complex harmonies, perfect melodies and interesting chord progressions. No mistakes. I have nothing to add to it. You have gone through an extreme developement in a short time. One month ago you said ”I don't know yet how to develop a good melody or a good idea into a whole song.” So, if you continue to progress with the same speed, you’ll be soon a big name in music business.
BUT when it comes to this competition, this is a total opposite of the genre of this contest. Citat from Wikipedia: ”Singer-songwriter" is used to define popular music artists who write and perform their own material, which is often self-accompanied generally on acoustic guitar or piano. But in this case we have:
- no lyrics
- sung by a big choir
- accompanied by symphonic orchestra
So from that point of view, despite huge compositional merits and flawless sound, I think this song cannot compete in this ”Singer-songwriter" category.
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Thelace43, Mike Dorsey, Pictures on the Pages
Cool ambitious song. Love it.
0:00 Strong piano opening
0:20 Nice melody, rhythmically nice lines
0:40 choir feels to be too big element to be presented with so small role
1:08 Drums come in nicely
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1:30 Wow! Tempo change,
1:50 nice guitar solo, but drums start to feel a bit clumsy
2:50 Vocal rhythm maybe not working properly with drums
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3:10 back to normal
Overall, I like very much those parts where’s there only piano and vocal. It feels confident and strong. But after tempo change I’m a bit worried if the band can make it to the end. I’m quite sure that current drum part doesn’t have the needed groove, if you listen it in solo mode.
Words are very lyrical and maybe too full of metaphors for me. Although I understand each word and line, I have problem to figure out what was just said. On the other hand, english is not my native language.
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donkey tugger, empires
0:00 Direct opening, guitar could have played a little longer intro.
0:01 First verse work nicely with guitar
0:35 Second verse, I expected something to happen, drums or bass or both. Now the guitar starts to bring fatique
1:15 B-part could be a bit stronger melodically, now the song starts to drag
1:37 Cool change, now it happens what I waited before, nice change, jungle feeling,
Feels like birds or insects are attacking me.
1:55 This part is not melodically strong enough.
Over all, this song has potential to be much more than what it is now. Arrangement is maybe too monotonoes, somehow I expect something more to happen earlier. That constant guitar riff dominates too much. In a second verse some other instrument could take up the main role. But the final jungle riff is very cool.
If we had a second submission round in competition, I would suggest you to listen: America, A Horse With No Name. There could be some ideas to steal and develop for your song. And listen that smooth guitar sound. It’s constant with nice drive, but still it doesn’t take a focus from the singing.
► Show Spoiler
01 (10 pts) AFutureInNoise, SjundeVaagen
02 (9 pts) Thelace43, Mike Dorsey, Pictures on the Pages
03 (8 pts) donkey tugger, empires
04 (7 pts) Jilliam, ApocAlypto
05 (6 pts) becsei_gyorgy, Resurrection
