MadTracker - "Fly with me" by MagnarTBL

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Fly with me

by MagnarTBL

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Inge

Originality:	7/10	Technical:	7/10
Theme:	9/10	Quality:	6/10
Arrangement:	7/10	Global:	8/10

Genre: pop (Eurovison Songfestival galore!)

This track has a huge Sky Radio/ballad-vibe going on, with MagnarTBL's own voice on top of guitars, synths and drums. It shows outstanding abilities concerning song writing. It's a pity that the voice lacks quality. The recording sounds somewhat muddy, and the voice itself isn't strong, broad (concerning the frequency range) or convincing enough to really blow me away.

The bridge at 1.38 with double vocals is very nice. MagnarTBL constantely works with two voices layered on top of each other and which are a tiny bit out of sync. This works well, but sometimes this swirling around of vocals around each other gets a bit too much.

It's a pity that the track is so short and that the voice isn't top-notch concerning recording and production. 'Fly with me' does provide proof for the mystical fable of Scandinavian hit factories: apparently, song writing is built in the genes of Northern Europeans.

Sunbuster

Originality:	9/10	Technical:	7/10
Theme:	8/10	Quality:	6/10
Arrangement:	8/10	Global:	8/10

Well well, TNK introduced the concept of vocal pop in mt2 tracked compo music, and here we have at least one artist that seems to join in. I'm sorry TNK, but this one goes a bit higher in my ranks than your efforts :)

What makes this track a bit special compared to other entries is unfortunately it's weakest point also. Yes, the vocals. Most of the time they work well. A very nice touch to have a duo almost throughout the track. Them not being quite in sync in some cases gives a nice extra. In some cases though, they're simply too much out of sync. This is especially apparent in the break around 1:40, where this total lack of sync almost kills the track. The vocals work best in the passes where the two voices are in harmony. The delay fx at 1:40 about is a mood killer also, it's almost too cheesy to be true.

One could not say the background instruments play a very complex pattern. They work very well however, since the main focus lies in the vocals which, compared to other tracked music so often, actually have a bigger purpose than fx filling.
The mixing is good overall, except for one spot. Again the vocals. They sound a bit muddy. The key to correct this I believe would be to cut the low end of the vocals (cut everything under 100Hz) and perhaps then boost the radio band a bit, in other words boost around 2-3kHz. The aim should be to get the vocals to open up a bit more. Right now they sound a bit as if they're sung in a sock drawer.

Bottom line, this is a good piece of music with a positive, summerish vibe to it. Keep it up!

TNK / ATK project

Originality:	10/10	Technical:	9/10
Theme:	9/10	Quality:	9/10
Arrangement:	10/10	Global:	9/10

Originality: 10/10 (within the MT world)
Theme: 9/10 (harsher than within other genres, as pop music is based on extremely catchy themes... but still, you manage 2 do it !)
Arrangement: 10/10
Technical: 8/10
Quality: 9/10
Global: 9/10

Inge, this one's for you ! Folk-pop, with lyrics ! Maybe Sweden's Eurovision 2006 entry ?
As I'm the jury this year, someone else had to make a "hey I'm a singer too" entry, and Magnar "Lizard" did it wonderfully (But I didn't sing... er say my last word...)

Originality : Within the MT world, real pop songs are so rare. Atleast someone risking himself into this not so easy genre. Within pop music, it's not that original. Could be some Ace of Base guitar ballad (a la "Lucky Love" / "Life is a flower"). The lyrics are unoriginal...but atleast there's someone who dared to write lyrics here. And anyway, what do you want to sing in such tracks ? You can't write philosophy books in cool & relaxed folk pop tracks.

Theme : The theme works well, is catchy, but not more. If such strong themes had been found within other genres, I would definitely have given it 1-2 more points, but within popmusic, the catchiness has to be even higher. Pop songwriting does not require you to write just catchy songs, but songs whose melody get in your head by the 1st listening. Basically, when I wrote some pop stuff, I do the following test : I make it listen to someone who hasn't heard the song for now, and as long as 3 people were not able to hum the main melody after hearing it just once, the track goes back to the reworking stages. I did the same test with your song. It didn't turn out too bad (1 out of 3 could hum it after just one listening, something that is already good!), but still to be market ready, you gotta have a 3 out of 3. Within the commercial music world, this one should make it without any problem on an album, but for the single market, some parts should be rewritten. The chorus (Fly with meeeeee) is however very catchy. Definitely keep this one ! Another song I'll pass over to a few producers I know...

Arrangement : Simple Voice / Guitar / bass / drumkit with some background synths stuff. Nothing very original here but within the chosen genre, you don't have so many arrangement options and it works very well within the genre. Everything is in place. I feel like I were listening to some stuff on the radio, nothing wrong there. The vocals are sung by 3 different lyricists (Kevin Morgan and Magnar himself). Their voices mix well together even if I prefer Kevin and Morgan's voices, Magnar having a quite thick Swedish accent (but well, when it comes to accents in english singing, I'm hopeless too...). The vocal arrangement work on this one is awesome, and therefore this song gets a 10 in the arrangement field here. Believe me, arrange such vocals is often much harder than arrange just instrumental music.

Technical : Samples are clean and work very well together, The beat, bass & synth background is very well tracked. Then why not a 10 ? Because of all those long guitare samples : This is a tracking compo and you could have tracked the guitar too. Believe me, it's possible to acheive such guitar lines with 100% tracked guitares (Listen to my "N'�teignez pas le soleil" - "don't shut the sun down" to figure this out). The E-guitars could have been tracked too... if the simulanalog plugins had been allowed. As they were not, I did not remove points for using E-guitars "big" samples. Also some samples (exemple : Powerkick.wav) is sampled in stereo but is in fact a MONO file... Isn't the file big enough yet not to optimise such things ?

Quality : Altough all the drawbacks I described above, this one is still far above the average entries and is definitely a great song.

Global : Improve it a bit (or keep on making such stuff, focusing more on making catchy melodies) and I see no reason for you not to get a record deal one of those days. Anyway, the very day the results of the compo will be released, a few mails will be sent to some producers I know, telling them to listen closely to your entry...

bigandymac

Originality:	7/10	Technical:	8/10
Theme:	9/10	Quality:	8/10
Arrangement:	7/10	Global:	8/10

incredibly happy pop/rock/intro for cheers-a-like feelgood sitcom.

originality - its not really my area of expertise but it sounds pretty original, the 2 layers of vocal work really well throughout the track where perhaps the limitations of the singer's individual voices would have shown much more clearly if there was only one layer. the drums are pretty standard fare though.
theme - its overwhelmingly happy, and equally as catchy (i hummed it when i was eating my dinner) and all fits together really nicely.
arrangement - first impression is its a bit short, maybe another minute with another verse/chorus could be added.
also, also there was a section which was nowhere near as good as the rest of the track (starting at 1:33) seemed to not flow particularly well.
technical - well it sounds very well produced. the mixing is nicely done. a saturator would give the lower frequencies more warmth which the track currently lacks. quality - is really good. only thing is that although the double vocal layer is a really good idea, there are a couple of times they sound too out of sync.

overall its an incredibly feelgood track which, other than a couple of issues with the vocals, is nicely produced and a pleasure to listen to.