The 1st Draft of an album!!

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SAEDOM9L

I've put together what could be roughly called an 'album.' The whole thing needs to be retouched, but I'm not sure exactly what to work on. So....I'm just wonderin, what anyone likes, dislikes, or simply advises to me. Well, happy listening!

K I'll jot down some notes for ya...

1) Pretty cool as an intro... tension building... atmospheric

2) This is a cool song but after the build up of the first track I expected this one to be more... explosive... sorta... or at least more of a release of tension. But I really like it anyway, cool quirky little thing, could work well as a little middle of the album thing to break things up a bit.

3) This would sound pretty sweet after the first track, the pretty intro melody would be a nice release from the build up of grimy nasty tension on the first track. I really like the melodies and the song structure, although it meanders too much at the end (this song could be a minute or so shorter, also should probably be a bit more climactic at the end). I didn't like the drums much at all, sound a bit slapped together, there doesn't seem to be much groove to it if you know what I mean

4) Very cool intro. As far as I can tell... what you are going for here is a kind of old videogame music meets new electronic sound. If this is what you intended I think there's a few things you could work on... I love the bleepy acidy bassline, it's awesome, and I kinda expected that breakbeaty kinda beat... but it should have come in WAY earlier. Make the drums more lush, more layered and funky, and make them way cleaner and sharper sounding. Make the strings even more lo fi and videogamey, and maybe add in some other 8 bit sounding stuff. That was you have a cool contrast of lo-fi and... hi-fi. Also lose the end section... it was boring... maybe replace it with something extra funky to go out on a good note.

5) Nice short little interlude, well placed

6) The beginning is really pretty... but those tuned drum sound stuff kinda wreck it... I think this could work well as just a melody by itself with a bit of work

7) Again the beginning is really cool, cool build up... melodies are really lovely. Shifting to a minimal dance beat is kinda cool but I didn't like the change in the weird wonky drum sound (which was really cool BEFORE). The other drums that come in aren't particularly striking... it could possibly have worked without them at all. I can't say I like where you took the melodies to after a while at all... and that bell sound is too midi-ish sounding. First half or so was really cool, work on the second half

8) Hehe... this is cute... I like it, adds a bit of variation.

9) There's some interesting aspects too this song... but I found it a bit too repeatitive to warrant 6 minutes of time. I like that it was long... but I think it needed more happening. I wasn't particularly keen on the tune but I sorta got into the feel of it after a while, I nice kinda trippy smoky feel

10) This is the best thing on the album so far, awesome jazzy little tune!

11) WOAH creepy voice, sweet... ok that whole thing was pretty creepy... pretty cool as a part of an album... wouldn't like it as much if it wasn't wedged between two songs that I really like...

12) This is really nice, very cool tunes pretty good beat. The mixing could do with a bit of work... it's all very muddy sounding. Also the song is way too long... could be about half that length. But still very cool.

13) WOW pretties! Good stuff! Flows nicely from the last song and into the next one

14) Awesome stutteryness at the beginning. These are by far the best drums so far. Very nice tunes too. That high pitched thing that starts about halfway is a bit annoying but I like how the song sorta morphed into it... maybe just adjust the filter or eq a little bit so it's not quite as gratingly high pitched. There's some nice variation in the mix, sounds like you're starting to learn how to make it not sound all muddy with this track. Very cool.

15) Ok... that was weird...

16) ... didn't really like much about this at all... some of the samples and atmospheric ambient textures are alright... but yeah... I think the album could do without this song.

17) Woah... thats weird. I like it... but I probably wouldn't wanna hear more than 2 and a half minutes of it :P

OVERALL: There's alot of potential here. The BEST thing is that the album is very eclectic. I think the best albums are the ones that are all over the place but still manage to pull together into one unified whole, and I think you've done well in that respect so far. Alot of the songs themselves on the other hand need work... almost all of them start out really good but kinda fizzle out really quickly. Try slowing down a bit... don't just accept the first I idea you think of... if the song isn't working try taking the good elements and building completely different things on top of them.

Also alot of the mix sounds really muddy... which sometimes could work well intentionally but too much of it makes it hard to listen to.

I think another strength you have is melody... at least some songs show that. And I personally think that's a really important thing, so that's cool too.

i don't have much to say about this except that i enjoyed it

SpringyMajig, thanks for all the commentary! It gave me some things to look at.

Whoa --SpringyMajig gave a pretty awesome thorough review. I'm downloading the album now, will listen on my studio speakers later. My feedback will be a lot less thorough though, hehe.

*the password megavideo wanted from me was "wnk" -- sounds like megavideo is trying to dis your music in typical watmms fashion by referring to it as "wank"... gave me a chuckle. PS I will not refer to anything as "wank" in my review. Also, I don't think being wanky is necessarily a bad thing (otherwise I'd be in trouble much of the time). /end of Zephyr's stupid tangent.

  Salvatorin said:

SpringyMajig, thanks for all the commentary! It gave me some things to look at.

S'alright... I was bored... and I'm a big "album" person so I was intrigued.

no offense salvatorin, but i just wanted to say that the reason i even came into EKT was that i saw that springy had posted in a thread called "1st Draft of an alubm!!" and thought maybe he'd put one together.

i still have a rough copy of a track springy was asking for feedback on that i think is pretty stellar.

i'm a dick for hijacking the thread though, so now i'll download the album and give some feedback. promise.

c

anybody else take a listen?

this is my super honest & uncensored & fast review of your album

i'm not tender when it comes to music so please don't take it personally

1) pretty mr bungle ish. personally i don't like long ambiant intros to albums. nothing particular to say about the track so it flows well. are you using a tape recorder (revox ?)

2) same thing as previoulsy said : were did all the tension go ? when will it start :) . skipped at the middle of the track

3) kick = too boomy. sounds are a bit cheesy / sega genesis-ish. a bit too random for my tastes at the beginning. production is quite amateur-ish. skiped at 2:00

4) hum... i'm starting to wonder if i'd better do something else. bass is way too loud at the beginning. skipped

5) useless interlude

6) at last melodies. still poor production. but i'm already bored. skipped

7) voice loop. bass played on a m-audio midi usb keyboard with 2 octaves skipped

ok i'm going to stop this track by track thing and quickly check if there's anything i like in the rest of the album

- make a track with that mr savage melody

- ok this is work in progress not songs to me. it reminds me of my early cds where i was just having lots of fun with my machines and doing shit stuff and really not giving a fuck about who-ever might think about it. good memories.

sorry for being harsh but i think this could be informative. i would have preferred saying nice things but nice things don't make you evolve sadly.

keep going anyway !

Didn't listen too in depth, but first impression is a of good ideas that need to be tied together a little better.