Will you do me a favour and ruthlessly critique my

Personal opinion

1) Don't use organs that get commonly used on prog. It says "progressive". A lot of people in here like these organs, but if you really want to experiment and bring fresh ideas to the table, you should pick synths that don't appear on prog commonly.
2) Try mashing your music with other genres. If your band makes a fusion of this music with other sub-genres you can get something new


Edited by Kespuzzuo - December 07 2016 at 14:32

Kespuzzuo wrote: Personal opinion 1) Don't use organs that get commonly used on prog. It says "progressive". A lot of people in here like these organs, but if you really want to experiment and bring fresh ideas to the table, you should pick synths that don't appear on prog commonly. 2) Try mashing your music with other genres. If your band makes a fusion of this music with other sub-genres you can get something new

Hi there, Ben.
I've listened to your demos.
Supreme Silence is the song I enjoyed the most as a whole.

Ayana's chorus reminded me of Madonna's "La Isla Bonita" (I fell in love with San Pedro) That's all I'll say about it.

Chrysalis has a good instrumental part from 6:20 onwards and it's, IMO, the section I liked the most for a few reasons: a bit of eastern influence in your guitar work and interesting keyboards. I think the lack of overlapping helped a lot. You need to work more on this. You know, there's nothing wrong with sonic assault, but you might need to let the music breathe a bit more, use silence as an instrument instead of releasing note after note and let people appreciate the little nuances of each instrument. This section nailed it, sorta.

My two cents.
Keep on rocking

I watched the you tube video......I like the sound, reminds me of mid and or latter day King Crimson and that's ok in my book....but  the vocals just don't work for me. Her voice doesn't carry enough weight for that type of music and frankly she didn't sound that good as a singer.

The most important is that you follow your own ideas. Whatever they are. Then you will enjoy.

About mix, you have already got some advices. Keep working on it and it will be fine with time.

If you enjoy together as band, I would focus on that. Maybe some technical parts are not perfect, but it is better to work with band member who are acting together. If individuals are technically good in their musicianship, it will anyway not work out if the personal chemistry is not there. I like some parts of the vocals, but some parts need more work or to be adapted.

Now we've done the OP a favour, could he do one for us and actually contribute to the forum instead of lurking with three posts ? ;-)

It's an advert in disguise.

Overall, I like it, but trying to be super-picky, since otherwise it my comments wouldn't be helpful to you.  These are some things I'd focus on if I were producing you:

(1) I want to hear more adventurous/unusual harmonic and melodic content, especially on "Supreme Silence" ("Ayana" is far more interesting in this regard; "Chrysalis" is in between).  There's plenty of sophistication in other elements, but I still get the sense of relatively conservative and intermediate "block chord"-based writing.  In other words, it kind of has the vibe, in terms of the compositional skeleton, of someone plunking out more or less traditional diatonic chord progressions on a piano, where you play a block chord right on "1" of each bar and then plunk out some melody notes on top of it that are pretty much just the notes that were already in the chord, etc.

(2) I also want to hear more of a push/pull, tension & release with the harmonic and melodic content.  Part of it is that your cadences are so harmonically conservative--that just comes across as bland.  But think, as a rough guide, of building to a series of climaxes, via relative dissonance and consonance, inventive voice-leading, etc., as if we're traversing a hilly landscape, up and down, of increasingly taller hills.  You want some tension leading up to summits, with an "Ah--we've arrived!" moment, followed by relaxation, followed by the next hill's tension-building, etc.  There should be some surprises in that, but you still want tension leading to those "Ah--we've arrived!" moments.  "Ayana" also does better on this point, by the way.

(3) Sections of longer pieces should be related to each other in this way, too.  Sometimes it seems like you just have sections following one another because you wrote different sections and decided to stick them together.  You want to shoot instead for sections feeling like they HAD to lead to each other.  There's kind of a meandering feel to some of your sectional development. 

When you're writing, try to come up with sections that have a music-theoretical relationship to other sections.  For example, base a section on an inversion of a melody or progression, or on a similar intervallic relationship--like for example, say that a chord progression goes up a minor third then down a fourth, then up a major third (so for example, in C, it might have C, Eb, Bb and D as roots).  Well, try something like increasing all of those by a whole step.  So C to F to Ab to E.  That way it has the same shape as the first progression, but it's different.  When you're creating sections in these ways, your ear is going to be the arbiter--it doesn't have to follow some exact pattern, and you don't want it to always follow a clear pattern--that ends up being mechanical-sounding.  Change it so that it sounds good to you.  But use the pattern to suggest the next part.  This approach helps parts seem related to each other, because people intuitively recognize the abstract similarities.

(4) "Ayana", despite its assets in other regards with respect to the above points, is very rhythmically sloppy at times with respect to folks locking in with each other.  It seems to almost become a trainwreck a couple times, or, it has a bit of that "falling down the stairs (in time)" vibe.  When you're rehearsing stuff like that, have everyone use the cleanest sounds they can, with no echo/reverb, timbres that are pretty much just square waves (so no delayed attacks or long releases), and concentrate on locking in which each other so that your line up more or less exactly on the nearest sixteenth note (or whatever it might be on a particular passage).  Record it, preferably on something where you can play it back at half-speed, and then as critically as you can, assess whether everyone is hitting the same rhythmic divisions at the same time.  After you've done that, then go back to using the sounds you want to use. "Chrysalis" also has this problem at times.

(5) I don't at all like the melody on "Chrysalis". In my opinion, melodies should work in isolation, or they should be rewritten.  When you write a melody, are you actually writing a series of notes on piano, guitar, or whatever you write on?  If not, make sure you do that, or that you can at least play a melody you (or the singer) has come up with purely vocally.  Then, first play it in isolation, monophonically that is, on a guitar or keyboard, with a simple, unprocessed sound.  Is the melody interesting when you do this?  Does it have its own tensions and releases?  Its own series of climaxes?  Then play it again, this time with simple 1-3 note block versions of the chords that will play under it.  Does this make it even more interesting?  Melodies should pass both tests in my opinion.  Note that this doesn't imply that a melody has to be complex, and there are exceptions to the first part of the test.  For example, take "One Note Samba".  The verses aren't very interesting when we JUST play the melody--since it's basically an ostinato in the melody, but when we add a simple 1-3 note version of the harmony, the melody is very interesting.


Edited by Terrapin Station - December 23 2016 at 11:17

An ersatz advertisement.  A grab for unwarranted attention.   You haven't logged in since you put up your creation.   At least interact with those who showed enough curtesy to slog thru your stuff and comment.