Writing a music-review

Since I was unable to think of a good topic to write about I started to listen to some songs to review. While listening it struck me how "different" reviews can be. Some aspects that one person hails very high, another person totally ignores, or just can't see as worth mentioning. Some reviews are highly "objective", while others just contain the feelings of the writer. And as I review a lot of songs, I'd feel it's more "honest" if I let the musicians know how I think while I review. And perhaps make somebody else interested in reviewing songs.

Getting started

Selecting what to review isn't an easy thing. You simply can't review everything. That's why you have to set some guide-lines for yourself on what to review. I for instance only review musicdisks and whole compos. I don't do single reviews, because I find reviews of single songs boring. To make a review of a single song "long enough" to make any difference you have to describe the song in words. Like this:

"...after the small break the song enters a calmer part with a C-based moll chord that sounds really moody, then smoothly changes to a E-based chord that sounds a little weird... etc."

If you don't know much about music theory this is pure Greek (and as you know not even the Greeks know Greek). This is just nonsense. You can't describe exactly how a melody sounds or how a crescendo is built. You might as well describe a colour. Go ahead and test it. Describe the colour green for me. Impossible, yes. (And that's not because I'm an idiot.)

So you pick a musicdisk, and you download it. Now you have to decide how to listen to it when reviewing it. Personally I prefer to just listen to the songs at first, not caring about how they are done. This is best done with just a player, and not a tracker. If you play the song in a tracker you often take a peek at the patterns and the samples. I don't want to do that. I just want the audio at first. The rest can be saved for later.

So fire up your favourite player, in my case XM-play. This is because it plays all formats really well (I've never encountered any problems with it), and it has a clean sound. It plays XMs cleaner than FT2 does.

Usually I listen to every song two times, and while listening I write down my first thoughts of the songs. This is important if you find something you don't like or something you really like in the song. If you write down your thoughts you can take a look at them later to see what it was you didn't like (or liked) and then check it out in the tracker.

Checking it out in the tracker

When I've listened to the songs in a player I'm often curious on how it's done and I check the samples out. A few things are really important to me here, and that is:

1. No unnecessary samples. Unused or extra samples that could be solved with one sample and added effects provided by the tracker is simply something I hate. This just adds "shit" to the file-size. You might say that the file-size isn't something to complain about, and that's up to you. But I'm kind of a perfectionist here. Besides this I hate spending expensive online time downloading big files that easily could have been made smaller.

2. Technique. Has the tracker used the effects provided by the tracker or has he/she relied only on the samples? This bottoms in on the fact that it is a tracker we're talking about. You should use what it provides rather than adding extra samples. You might be very good at "sampling" and editing samples, but when you're using the tracker use it to its maximum. Do not add extra "fancy" samples if you can solve it with tracker effects.

3. Does it look good? A track should look good as well. Be pleasing to the eye. If you for instance lower the volume on a sample from 40 to 20 in FT, don't write 20 along the whole channel. Just write 20 "by the sample". The rest is "unnecessary". And it looks bad.

This is kind of what I look at in the tracker. But of course I listen to the samples as well. If the samples are brilliant I'll of course give the author creds for it. It's not like I hate samples or something.

Writing the review

While I write the review I make sure to have the "current" song playing. If you write the review of the song "Trouble in a trench-coat" by Sir Fairytale of Dreamcastle don't have "One week" by Bare Naked Ladies playing in the background. This way you'll get the "final" touch of your feelings for the song.

Don't try to describe in words how everything in the song is done. I usually try to describe the feeling of the song, and perhaps draw parallels to well-known songs or old songs by the artist I'm reviewing. That makes the review readable for people who aren't as gifted in music-theory. (Myself as an example.)

One important thing is not to try to review songs which are in a style that you hate. I've encountered that a few times. When reviewing musicdisks you can pick which style you want to review, but when it comes to compos there are a lot of styles, and most probably some song that is in a style you don't like or hate.

At the least, you'll have to try to be fair. If there's a great technique and originality behind the track you must admit that the artist knows what he's doing. And make sure to point out at least once in the review if you don't like the style in question. But, sometimes you just can't find anything you cherish in a track... and then you'd better say it out straight. That's at least what I do.

Have in mind that there are NO objective reviews, but at least try to be objective while looking at things such as technique. Good technique looks the same no matter what style the song is.

One more thing. I don't usually give songs any "score" or rating. I don't like giving songs a grade, as a "number" doesn't say anything. Really it doesn't. If I hate a song because of the style and I give it a "1" (of 5 where five is the highest) it probably doesn't reflect the quality of the song. Then it's better not to give it a rating and just explain why you don't like it. More fair I think.

Makke/Visuale/Hugi