| Category | Rating |
|---|---|
| Track Structure | 8 |
| Interest | 9 |
| Melody | 8 |
| Performance | 9 |
| Lyrics | 0 |
| Enjoyment | 8 |
| Recording Quality | 8 |
| Commercial Appeal | 7 |
| Overall | 8.1 |
So here I am with another review. This week, I took on a different approach of choosing who the victim/lucky person would be. I'm not being egotistical by any means. I love writing reviews and giving people a perspective of their music not thought possible. Basically; a good experience. And not just for the artist but the readers themselves. This week... I decided whoever got #1 on the weekly charts would be reviewed. This is a first for me and if it's an honor to the artist, it is quite an honor for me as well! Even if it wasn't a #1, I would be honored. I'll tell you why! This person has taken his music and made it into a Disneyland of musical splendor and compiled it all into mp3 format to post on this very site. He is known by the name's Redshirt Theory aka Aaron Jones. He might not know it but I have heard near every song he's made. Every time, he is spot on with targets. He never fails to lure me into taking a musical journey. He has a contemplative aspect to all his music. In other words... It makes me think about things. Good things. Well, enough with all my nonsense! Basically this is a good song and I want to talk about it. It's called Destroy and it's going to get an overhaul in opinions. So shall we? Alrighty then!
When the song first starts, it seems as if you have suddenly came through a dimensional portal and ended up in a place with a very peaceful atmosphere. It's not a sudden beginning because of this. It seems (I'm going to be using this word a lot here) natural. Like it was supposed to happen without disruption. It sounds like dreamy bells and a very well shaped pad in the form of a string. This combination works very well as I do know dreamy bells and strings can make you feel a bit cozy. They can do all kinds of other things, too. But here, they make me feel good. It's a wonderful feeling. Then a rhythm comes in. It sounds like a lot of fx on top of a type of zap or if not a zap, something similar to the waveform. I can hear a type of kick as well. Not with any bass, of coarse, but a kick none the less. It acts as a tremolo in a sense, to set the pace. I can hear some good percs, too. Like a tapping sound. After this, a magical melody appears in the background with some very good "ah"s in the background. Then at 1:10 an electric guitar cries out like it's saying, "Hear me, I want in the song and I want to be noticed. I'm going to be the happyness backup!". Then it transforms it'self into a wonderful, creative melody that goes very well with the dinging melody in the background. Guitar's courtesy of his friend, Steffen Davenport. I haven't heard any of his music but this guitar's first elongated note becomes part of a very natural euphoric, steady melody. Very dreamy and surreal sounding. I like it. It definitely does it's job in setting the atmosphere straight. And so the song builds into this gorgeous setting with the awesome sensation of the "ah"s. They seem so lifelike. Natural sounding. Almost as if they're not just a sound but part of the DNA strands of all the instruments. They fit better than legos! The kick is a little bland for me and doesn't have a lot of bass but that's not a prob. I don't think this is supposed to be a huge thumper to make your neighbors mad with. It fits the music, though! Definitely. It's not like it has NO bass. Just not as much as I like.
Then the song comes to a break with all the elements of the song just stopping as you can hear the delay/reverb/fx die out as if they handed the next part of the song to you. This is a brilliant idea because it doesn't seem like a break is starting. It sounds like the beak was a gift for you. As if the elements of the song were there to bring it to you! This is how I saw it. I catch a lot of things in music. In this case. It was handed to me. Anyways! The break brings in a nice electric guitar melody. Then another melody line comes in with the guitar and the guitar whales into the peaceful dinging melody along with the entrance of a strange sounding buzzing bass toned low to give it that cracky separation of the saw's frequency tops being heard. Ever wake up in the morning with a cracky voice and make a TB 303 noise? Haha! I do... That's exactly what this noise reminded me of. But it fits so well as it changes in tone in a wave like manor. Very, very nice sense of detail with this. So much to be heard in the song already and it's only half way through.
After the strange, buzzing blissfulness, a long hit sound introduces a build to the song as the dinging melody becomes backed up by a more fuller sounding instrument. Very nice and well arranged. Then the guitar comes in with a new friend! An ohhh soooo very soothing buzzing sound swaying with it. Then a very unique, early 80's horn style synth. The buzzing comes back with a great tone. I absolutely love how the last note's pitch changes. Those "ah"s are so comforting and enjoyable to hear. They truly add a lot to the overall emotion of the song. When I hear this song it makes me think of the world and how everything in it fits together to make it survive as a whole. That even though everything is so complicated, it doesn't mean it can't be simple. This song makes me feel like it's simple. Like I want to think about every beautiful thing I've ever seen or had happen to me on this planet. Or plain of existence for that matter. OR! Hahaha.... form of consciousness... Okay enough with that hole. Lets move on! The ending of the song cuts away not too slowly and not to suddenly. I really like the nasal sounding buzz of the ending melody. It's almost like a saxophone, in a sense. A very well done track.
I was very interested in this song. When I first saw the title, 'Destroy', I though... "Okay. It's about destruction and its probably a really intense song." I made a judgment. Something all we humans do, haha! I'm just as guilty. But what surprised me was when I heard the intro was that it sounded so peaceful. Then I made another judgment and said to myself, "Well, okay, this is one of those ironic title thingey songs." and I thought about it for a bit after the song was over. I wanted to contemplate why it would be called destroy. This in it'self kept my interest. I'm sure you guys might be wondering, yourselves, why would this song be named that? Well I think it was named that way because it resembles how something so beautiful can be so destructive. You look at the human race and see so many beautiful things it's capable of. And of coarse you see all the terrible things, too. Not so good, huh? Well it's ironic how this planet can be so beautiful and cause all the things that are happening now to go on. Humans are natural. But some of the things we make are artificial. But the things we make that are artificial were made by things that were once natural. So it's an embarkment on a lot of thoughts. It makes me think that the world is making beautiful things in order to destroy it'self at the same time. But this is only the surface. This planet may very well be a living thing even though there may not be anything living on it's surface. So I've rambled. Sorry! What I'm trying to get at is that destruction can be a beautiful thing. This song makes me think of all the beautiful things coming to an end. Like the planet is breaking it to us gently. Humans may not be to blame for climate change. It could just be something that's just happening for the sake of it just happening. There's a saying for that! Crap happens... Those are the things in the song that interested me the most.
On the musical side of interest. It was such a well made song. I loved the atmosphere. Aaron displays the setting of this song so brilliantly it's not even funny. The second it started, I was interested. It sucked me into the euphoria of it's sound. It had a lot of alterations, which I like to see a lot of in music. Not over moderately but enough to keep my interest. This song did that. There weren't many fills but you can hardly even notice it because the build sounds that introduce all the other sounds were all different. Not one rev was the same. So that more than makes up for the lack of fills. But why do all songs need fills? The answer to that question is... they don't! This song proves it. You can keep someone's musical interest whether or not it's filled with fills. Of coarse this has to be determined by what 'type' of song it is. There are a lot of songs that don't need fills. There are some that do. :) The atmosphere is more than enough to get my attention and for this I gave interest a 9. It's just so interesting of a song!
This leads me to the enjoyment area. What I enjoyed about this song so much was that it sounded so peaceful. It made me forget about all my troubles and helped me realize even though I struggle every day of my life to live, it's well worth the effort. I'm going to be honest and tell you that I think there is more after this life. Look at how complex everything is. I'm not trying to start a cult or drop my belief on you like the sexy girl in the library who wants you to hold her books. No, no, no. Just to take another look at things. This is a great song to do that. When I sit back and listen to this, I enter my "zone". It's my own place in my mind where there's no trouble. I usually see it in my dreams or my meditations or even when my morphine kicks in too fast but I saw it in this song. And without any effort. Is this "zone" where I'll go after this place? I don't know. I see all these particles being discovered by atom smashers and science is at a peak at the moment. The mission to find the "god particle". What force is it that makes us feel so attached to things? A chemical reaction in the brain, yes. But why do objects do that? Look at music. It's frequencies moving through the air. The very particles in the air bring us this sensation. Is it the particles that give me the peaceful sensation? Or is it the frequencies from the song? Is it from the artist who took his brain and thought of making this song? Where did his ideas come from? The sounds that Aaron made went into my brain. It doesn't matter how it got to my brain. The fact is that it DID! But why? Nobody will ever know. It's so complicated, yet so simple. I like this song and it makes me feel good about not only everything around me. But about everything inside me. I enjoyed this song a lot because it took me to that "zone" where I can be free. It's not about the technical stuff here, folks. It's about the way this song made me feel. My level of enjoyment (1 being the most terrible thing that happened to me and 10 being the most incredible thing that happened to me in the world of music) was an 8. It felt so good when I heard this. Aaron really relaxed my bones.
The melodies in this song are so mesmerizing and euphoric. They are brought together brilliantly. I noticed that the instruments worked in pairs. Almost as if the mix was balanced with two sounds in mind at a time and then mixed in together later on. It seems that way. When the song first starts out it begins with a bell sound and a string. Two sounds. One having a melody. But two sounds, none the less (second time I said "none the less" in this review, lol). When the guitar comes in, it's so beautiful sounding. Nothing's off note or anything. It's a pretty straight forward melody and doesn't change much but it's the type of melody it is that makes it sound so cool. It almost seems like it's trying to tell you everything is going to be okay. Like it's cradling you in it's arms. Such an awesome feeling. The buzzing doesn't really have too much of a melody but it's very tone based. It's more of a sound that would become part of the overall melody. Like the heart of the song. It's not 'thee' heart. But it adds to it. Detail, people! Then the other high pitched buzzing synth melody that changes it's pitch at the end of the score. That's very creative and I like that. It adds to the comforting guitar. The melody I liked the most, though, was the dinging melody that happened almost thought the entire song. It didn't change but it sounded so dreamy and affectionate. It gave me the sense of guidance through my mindful journey. Like it was my spirit guide through my "zone". There are a lot of melodies in this song but not too many. Just enough to keep you occupied. They all sound wonderful. I think this area deserves a nice 8 as well. Yes! The melodies are awesome. But they don't change much. They do! But not in a sense of alteration towards the melody. It's a bunch of melodies mixed together. It may seem like a simple approach to making a song and I'm not cutting anything down at all. I have no (knee slapper coming up) axe! It's just that things could have had more dexterity to them. Even though it's an awesome song and it sounds cool and everything, it was kept very simple. But that's not the reason why I took points away. I actually didn't take any away. The melody aspect is just an 8 to me. It's the level of enjoyment and creativity I thought the melodies had. More creativity in the overall structure of each melody far exceeds a lot of others expectations. But I've seen better, I can't lie about that. Can't discredit them for that either! Very cool melody's.
It's hard to say how good a performance is in this type of music as it's more limited to how good the artist can make the tunes sound. Or how good they can program the items they used in their song. Whether they used hardware, software, both or what. I don't know what Aaron used and I'm going to tell you that I'm not a professional at reverse engineering. Could I make all those sounds that Redshirt Theory did in this song? Sure! Could I have arranged them in that way and got the results he did? Only if I had the same brain. Even then, it still might be hard to do! lol Performance in this area of music can also be based on the artist's knowledge of how to put the sounds together. Such as creating their own sounds with their synthesizers. Sound engineering! And I think the performance is based more around that. I'm going to blatantly say that performance gets a 9. The ideas that were used here are awesome ones! The pitch changes, tonal changes, creativity of the fx and the overall thought of the song transforming into emotion is simply brilliant. This guy knows what he's doing! Sure 9 is a high number for me but I like this song! I picked it out because it was #1! I'm not giving it a bunch of high scores because it's #1. It's just how it's working out. You get back what you put in. And Aaron definitely put in a lot. So did his buddy, Steve. I'll give Steve credit in that number as well. What a cooooool riff, man. Very cool. I hope the condolences go around with that, too! Great performance done here. Programming is top job with the rhythm. Superb thoughts went into that. Lots of time, I'm sure, too. It's a very detailed song.
Since I was just talking about programming, lets go on to the structure of the song. It starts out simple but gets very complicated as it goes along. It is a builder and things pile on as the song goes. It doesn't sound like it was just thrown together either. I can tell a lot of thought went into this. What would you do if you had a buddy over for some jamming and he came up with something you thought you could work with? Would you build your song around that or would you only use it if it just happened to go along with a song you were making? I think the other ladder here. I think that maybe Aaron's friend might have heard what was going on before hand and jammed to it. I think Steve was like, "Wow, that sounds cool but it would sound cooler if I *guitar plays*." Don't know if that's what happened but I'm willing to suspect it enough to think that's what happened. Because there so many other things in this song! There are so many melodies in this song that its near impossible to think that one guitar line would be the soul purpose of this song ever being posted on this site. So now I got that out of the way. Lets go back to the structure. Like I said before. The melodies always seemed to start simple sounding and then had a mate to back them up to make them sound vibrant. I think that's what makes this song not only sound euphoric but also SMART. It's been done thousands of times but you have to be really creative to pull it off right. I do it a lot. I'll make a melody and then back it up with a thousand other things and BLAMO, it sounds cool. You have to have a full sound in you song's, people. It's a must. Your sounds have to have a way of reaching those ears. What better way than to add some depth to those sounds. That's how this song seems to be structured and I'm going to go along with that. It wasn't just thrown together. It was arranged as time went on. By what ever came about at the time they were made. That can be quite a task. I give Aaron an 8 for that. It's a simple structure, even though it sounds complicated. Too simple? Naaa. Just not... I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. I think it's because it's been done before and even though it takes an extremely creative and unique mind to do it... It's not an arrangement that's going to make me run out the door screaming about how cool the arrangement was thought of. It has a beginning, some builds, a peak, a break, some more builds and an end. But it's the amount of effort that went into it. This is why it's worth an 8. Nothing was out of place and everything came together nicely. It turned out to be a wonderfully arranged track! Thumbs up for sure!
Recooooooording qualityyyyyyyyyyyyy. So how good was this recording? Aaron would probably be like, "What are you talking about?", if I asked that question because when it comes to synthesizers, you don't exactly put a microphone next to their speakers and hit record. Haha! BUT! And this is a huge but. He did have one recorded sound in here. Stevo! Steffen Davenport. Remember? He made that really cool guitar melody line in the song. He sounds like someone I'd like to have play for me. That guitar line is to die for. It's what gives this song such a cool sound. Aaron makes it sound so euphoric and dreamy. Maybe not like the guy is playing in your room as in it sounding live, but in a way that sounds like it's definitely a part of the song. With good measure, too! It would be hard for me to tell if the recording of the guitar sounded good or not because of all the effects and layering in the song. Kinda hard to make out. But since it sounds so cool, recording quality probably wouldn't even bean a factor. To an extent, of coarse but none the less (3 strikes. your outa theeeerrrrrrrrrre!), it sounds great. So maybe I could emphasize how well the production quality of the song sounded. Which is what I usually do! It sounds very good. I do have one thingey thing, though. When I did the d/l I noticed the bit rate was only 192kbps. Sure, it was done at 44 kHz, which is pretty good but 192kbps? Why? I don't know. I noticed it sounded a bit off in the brightness areas but very good on the depth areas. Again, I don't know what all Aaron uses and I'm sure there's a good reason why he used 192kbps. Now I'm not dissing the song because of that but I would NEVER in a million years use this low of a bit rate on a final cut of a song. Especially in the electronic side of music. A side where digitalness (is that a word?) is a must, almost. Not always. But a lot of the times. Even though, this discovery... the song does not sound bad! It sounds great, in fact. But I wondered for the life of me why it wasn't as vibrant as I would have liked it to sound when the fullness of the song would be at it's peak. Could it be a factor? Well It would make me say yes but what do I know? I don't know what was used to make the song. But I definitely have to point the kbps out. It makes a big difference when you're making an mp3! .wav files don't degrade in bits, which is why you don't see too many people trying to convert an mp3 into a .wav very oftennnnnnn????.... *weird whacky face to make you laugh*. : \
Say we throw out the bit rate. Actually. Lets do that. Forget about that stupid thing. Lets actually hear the song. It sounds good. The highs aren't too high. The lows... well, I could use more thumpitty thumpitty. Something you have to consider there, though is the type of main kick used. Like I said before with the kick style. To me, it sounded like a late 80's kind of U2ish sounding kick. Something to make you feel like you're jumping and skipping around. If the song was meant to sound that way then I can understand the lack of the kick's strongness. Even though it's my opinion... it surely doesn't take away any enjoyment factor. Enjoyment got a really good score. As far as the mids... perfect. Well as close to perfect as you can get. It wasn't hard to hear the background melodies and sounds at all. They seemed to stand out the way they should and nothing seemed tooooooo distorted. I found a couple distorted areas but not bad distortion. You have to have a little bit of it to make things sound a bit more full. Maybe just a noise adjustment with either white or pink. No problem at all. I think the overall sound production style, to me, sounds very... Natural. It seems as if everything sounds the way it does because that's just how it sounds. I can tell effort went into it but it sounds very natural. There actually is a place where the clarity is actually very good. In the beginning and in the dinging melody. Very clear sounds there. I was impressed by that. Would I change the master and re-engineer it? Of coarse I would, hahaha! I'm a sound freak. I love noise. I would probably give it more punch in the kick and take away some of the pressure in the low range to open it up a little bit. I could be wrong but I sensed a LOT of compression here and I would put more of the compression in the master than the mixing but that's just me. We're all different and who knows, it may have sounded the same either way. Balance is balance. It can take a lot of time to get your song to sound the way you want it to. I can tell Aaron spent quite a bit of time in the repetition area and I feel he was very pleased with the results. Another thing to consider is that everybody uses their own monitoring techniques. Even on a regular stereo sound system it's not all going to sound the same. So it's a hard score to give here. I'd say I'm teetering on an 8. It sounds good but with the lack of punch, I just can't score higher. It doesn't mean it's a bad song. Not at all! No wayyyy. This is one of the best song's I've heard on MP3U for a while now. Carol's was good. Mark's was superb. Aarons is very strong. So everybody's different. Excellent job on the production side. Lots of effort. I'm very excited about it. After all... It got #1!!! :D
If Aaron wanted to put this song on a site for a charity or on a d/l paysite and that was the ONLY way I would ever be able to hear it again... I would buy this song in an instant. It's worth waiting 5 hours in a line, to me. I would like to see this song in an Anime movie. I think it has massive potential in the Anime business. Not in video games so much... Maybe for the beginning cinematic for a game... but not for in-game action. Too calm of a song. I wouldn't think MTV would have too much to do with this song either. But would you WANT MTV to? I wouldn't. But then again, I have different views on my songs. I wouldn't ever sell them or make profit from them. I'm just weird that way. I could also see this song making some bank in a Discovery or National Geographic documentary or a nature show. Something to that order. I've heard some pretty cool songs on those shows. Definitely could be in the nature scene. I wouldn't use it for an action show unless it had some part in the show where someone discovered something like "The City of Life" or something like that. As far as making a clubbing profit, I really can't say how well it would do in the world of DJ's. It would be a good cool down song to get peeps to relax after a build song and a couple energy songs. This would be great after some of those songs. That's what I think about the commercial appeal. It's a very appealing song in the areas I just spoke about. I think that if somebody from those aspects of the commercial scene heard this song, it would do pretty darned good. I'll give it a 7. To me, that's a high score. It's hard to get noticed in this type of community and if you can be noticed at all, it's totally awesome.
Listen to this song at least once in your life time. I highly recommend doing so!!!
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