Still Alive - Portal by Jonathan Coulton

Songs
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#1

This is my first project to feel free to give constructive criticism. :smiley:

3 Likes
#2

bad

#3

that’s not constructive criticism. You’re not doing much better in my opinion. If you wan’t I could explain why.

#4

Not bad. The overdrives could use some fade outs for the long notes.

1 Like
#5

way to go. thanks for the tip

#6

for one of your first projects, this is pretty damn good in my opinion

#7

I don’t know enough about music to give you constructive criticism, I just know it’s bad.

#8

This is pretty stellar for a first song. I’ll over some tips first and then talk about what I liked.

  1. The biggest issue I had was the sections with just the acoustic guitar (plus drum and bass backing) had a dead sound to them (mostly due to the repetition). The way to overcome this is to apply a bit of fade to the notes, not a lot, but enough to make the music flow a little bit more.
  2. The bass slides were a little bit ugly (most noticeable in measure 23). Just needs to be cleaned up (take the fade out of the short notes).
  3. I personally didn’t like the harmonies in measure 35 on the whistle, the highest ones grate a little bit. I think they should just be toned down a bit to make them more supportive of the main note instead of distracting from it.
  4. The ending is abrupt (I don’t know offhand if the original is supposed to fade out at the end or not). Just have a fade out or something at the end.

Some things I really liked:

  1. The drum work was top-notch, it has a really good sound to it.
  2. The staccato notes, wherever they were (whistle or electric guitar), were very well timed and work perfectly.
  3. All of the instrumentation really was spot-on, I didn’t hear any rhythm or melodic mistakes personally.

For reference, here’s a version of this song done by a more experienced user, I’d compare it to yours and see what you take home for the next song (the biggest difference is how qoby used panning to really make everything pop out but still support):

#9

lel then don’t critisize

#10

I can’t believe you just went and quoted me like that

#11

i get now that people like panning, but i find it distracting how like only the hi hat would be coming out the left ear

1 Like