MadTracker - MT2 Compo

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A Space Rock I Found in a Tin Can

By David Swain

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Yannick

Originality:	8	Technical:	7
Theme:	9	Quality:	8
Arrangement:	7	Global:	8

+ Style, guitars - Mix

Inge

Originality:	8	Technical:	2
Theme:	8	Quality:	4
Arrangement:	8	Global:	9

Sounds like: Radiohead after they striked Tom York dumb. Or: Godspeed you Black Emperor in a rush.

Good:
-I love this song. Fact. Beautiful melodies, melancholic bridges, good structure of the song, professional blend. I would even like to see this track being played live in my favourite local pub. David: do you come to Holland for three beers and a sandwich with cheese? A glass of milk is optional.

Points of attention:
-The drums could use some power, although on the other hand lofi drums tend to be quite cool in this Indie/emocore rage of these years. I personally would make the drums more powerfull. EQ them to make a better distinction between hihat, snare and bassdrum. You furthermore pitch the bassdrum to simulate a different bassdrum from time to time. I would simply eq the original one, and cut off some high to make it sound more like an 'in between' bassdrum.
-It's MadTracker. It's not a studio. Make advantage of the possibilities that it offers you by adding samples or effects. Check for instance the Notwist (neon golden), or the remix album Versus by Kings Of Convenience to convince yourself that mixing traditional guitars with electronics can be highly interesting. The mark I gave for technical and quality is thus very low, but that's only because I rated it for your MadTracker usage and samples.

ps: check out what this narcissist did on pattern ff (line 16 till 31) ;)

Sunbuster

Originality:	8	Technical:	6
Theme:	9	Quality:	8
Arrangement:	7	Global:	8

A instrumental spacey rock ballad I'd say. I like the theme here though. It's relaxed, but a bit sentimental. Like the vibey intro of the track. Some of the melody is somewhat familiar though. Especially when listening to the part that's played in pattern 1A for instance I get a very strong sence of having heard this before.

From a tracking point of view this is not a complex track at all. Basically Madtracker here has been used as a tool for playing the live recordings of instruments. The size of the download gives a hint as to how things have been solved here. The artists has decided to pretty much record everything live except for the drums, which are tracked. Ok, nothing really wrong with that as it's the resulting music that really counts, but considering the large filesize (74MB unpacked) I think it could have been a bit more optimized. Several of the guitar passes could have been cut down into shorter pieces and the pieces reused for different passes for instance.

The drums then, otherwise good but I think the kick needs more punch, and a lot of it. It sounds like someones hitting a pillow with a stick. In general also I miss the bass in this track. Think a really powerfull bassline could have done wonders to this one. Now it sounds like I'm listening to the track through the kitchen radio, even though my speakers should go all the way down to 60Hz easily.

Sample quality is excellent though. Appart from the kick, I wouldn't change a thing here.

Overall, a very good track. Very enjoyable to listen to this one. The bassregion needs more attention though, and if you (as the reader/listener) want a track to learn tracking from, I'd suggest looking at something else.

mindplay

Originality:	6	Technical:	7
Theme:	7	Quality:	7
Arrangement:	7	Global:	5

Beautiful theme, very good quality sounds, well structured song (although some would claim the latter can be a bad thing). The low end of mix seems to fall apart in some passages of the song. One or two samples are audibly out of tune - although I can't say whether this is intentional, I think for most people, it will bump down the global score a notch.