Forum Member Album Reviews

[MicShazam]

Firstly; thanks a bunch for the effort!

Originally Posted by Frownland

MicShazam - The Hunt [EP]

The Hunt: The MIDI is going to make this one hard tbh. I'd love to hear this in the context of a live band or some more focus on how your keyboard/launchpad/computer program/whatever you use sounds so that there's more dynamic and it sounds realistic. Definitely dug the keyboard lead at the end.

No doubt I'm holding myself back by still using OpenMPT (an old-school tracker type program, but for Windows) but I just love working in that program. Old habits die hard. Very hard.
It isn't MIDI per se but .WAV samples, although some of the drum/hihat/cymbal samples might originally have been sampled from MIDI or keyboard presets.
All non-percussion instruments are ADLIB sounds (pre-MIDI sound card technology) that I created myself in Reality Adlib Tracker for MS-DOS. So... yeah... real state-of-the-art tech!

Originally Posted by Frownland

Connect the Dots: My same advice from earlier still applies, but it's certainly an improvement on the opener. You do have some cool melodic ideas in the middle of the song and I dig your structure, especially in the beginning of the track.

I'm glad you liked the intro, because I almost cut it. I felt like it was maybe a bit of a non-sequitur, considering what goes on for the rest of the track.
I chose too keep it and feel like it was the right decision now

Originally Posted by Frownland

Tarot Card: The intro is kind of unnecessary imo, but once it takes off it goes to high places for sure. The first two tracks had me worried that this whole album would be formatted off of a base of very straightforward beats but this subverted that so good work. Definitely the highlight of the album so far.

I'll do more detailed drums on my next thing. I was kind of intentionally keeping things simple this time, with fewer layers, more looping drums, simpler structures, focus on hooks, etc. My own favorite part of this track is the lead harmony early in the track.

Originally Posted by Frownland

Tigris & Euphrates - Ja this builds on the other track in that it's the best track on the album, but the drums do bring he plasticity back into the picture.

Thanks! I wrote the tracks in the same order they appear in the playlist, so maybe I'd gathered some momentum for the final one. I wasn't sure if it would feel complete with such a simple structure, but again, the idea with this mini-project was to do something very straightforward.
Mixing is sort of bare bones. A bit of chorus effect and reverb, very little in the way of background tracks.

Originally Posted by Frownland

Final thoughts: At first I was pretty skeptical but it turned out quite well and if you formed a band to play this with you it would be pretty incredible, especially if you could expand on them. Great work for sure. 7/10

I'm totally happy with my 7/10. I'm only just starting on learning to play keyboard, so a band isn't gonna happen for the next couple decades. If someone else stole my music and played it live, that would be the coolest thing ever!
I will try to make something that feels more fleshed out next and see what I can do to make things sound nicer.