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Blog Post Ahead: On critiquing others' work...
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| EddieZilker |
COR VERSION: It's almost impossible for anyone of us to offer legitimate, negative criticism at other people's finished work because we lack sufficient perspective and impartiality.
I've been doing some thinking and have noticed some things in the Music Producer's Promotion forum. The next time I get ready to put up a song, there, I'm going to go review a bunch of tracks and be as genuinely harsh and honest as possible about what I perceive to be errors in the person's mixing, et al. Only, instead of posting what I actually think, I'm going to copy and paste that to a Word document and then listen to the mix I want to put up with that critique in mind.
I've kind of stopped putting down anything negative and will only legitimately critique something, now, when the following occur:
1. The person has asked for it because they're out of ideas and this is stated very clearly, such as putting up a WIP.
2. The person is clearly a newb and the mix and/or music clearly needs work and the person has asked for some pointers. At this point, I'm entirely prepared to let delusions of grandeur persist without answer.
3. The person has identified problems he believes exist within his work and wants either verification or suggestions about how to resolve it.
4. The decisions he's made so clearly contradict the quality of previous work that it would serve the person well.
The reason for this is that I've noticed a lot of criticism that's given is based, not on any inherent weakness in the person's mix that it's directed towards, but mostly a projection of the goals, preferences, and weaknesses held by the giver of the critique. Not to say that the critic is always wrong about their critique of another person's work. There have been songs I've put up which I have subsequently heard with my critic's ears and thought the feedback was spot on, "Suzanne's Theme" being a prime example.
At some point, most of us who post there, regularly, have accumulated enough experience and skill that our proficiency is beyond something that can be corrected by our peers. The quality of our work is more predicated on our consciously made decisions rather than errors resulting from a lack of skill. I might hear something I don't like, such as a four on the floor beat (and I realize that it's an outlandish example but I mean it to caricature some of the criticism I've seen offered in MPPF), but it hardly serves anyone to tell the person his kick drum is too static for me, since a four on the floor beat is particular to his style.
Furthermore, I have noticed that when I offer critique, such as the drum being too static, that when I go back to listen to my mix I hear that I haven't put enough variation in my kick drums for my tastes and that the progression of them doesn't hold my attention. I have a collection of songs that I've collected from you people when you make downloads available that I'll go back and listen to and when I do, I'll often recall what I posted as a critique to find that what I'm hearing on second or third listens doesn't line up with the criticism I've leveled at the producer on the first hearing.
I've also read your critique's of each others work and will find, more often than not, that what someone has said about another person's work is easily something that could be said about their own or worse, the criticism that they're offering would actually correct a weakness in their own work. Again, this isn't always wrong. Sometimes the best critic is someone with a shared or opposing weakness. Sometimes the critic's bass-line sits perfectly although he's rightly noticed someone else's was out of whack. Sometimes.
What I read and hear a lot of, however, is a critic who thinks a kick isn't loud enough and whose own kick is either anemic or completely overblown. One last time, sometimes the critic is right about the anemic kick drum but more often than not, I've heard the kick drum just fine from person A and critic B has shelved too much, not shelved enough, or just likes his kicks very prominent in his mix. Simply put, more often than not, it's largely a matter of choice.
The difficulty in critiquing other people's music is differentiating from our own partiality and being able to identify with what the other person is trying to accomplish. If I notice a static chord progression, is there a melodic lead I should be noticing which contrasts to that chord progression? Maybe, at the time I'm hearing it, that rhythmic chord progression is sticking out like a sore thumb because a pad I've got running in the back-ground is doing absolutely nothing for my own track. I just haven't noticed the contrasting melody lead because I'm still working on my music while listening to this other persons. Hopefully, the person reading my flawed critique realizes that I'm in my own world and that while I've noticed a trait of his song, I've yet to realize its totality.
Anyway, this is just something that I've noticed which I've been incorporating into my listening to other people's work. Hopefully, it makes sense but I thought it was worth discussing. |
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| Kysora |
EDM is just such a ridiculously technical genre that people feel like any element they feel they would have done differently is immediately "wrong". There's no room for artistic experimentation with the mix because people can generally listen to a track, find "problems" and know at least generally how to fix them.
It really is the only thing I absolutely hate about the genre. My mixes aren't bad. They're not perfect, I know that, but they aren't even close to unlistenable unless whoever's listening to it isn't going to give it a chance. But yet every track I make gets the same exact criticism about muddiness and overcompression, even though I've taken direct steps to try and avoid both of those. Hell, one of my tracks where I deliberately used almost no compression got called overcompressed by a few people.
I just take the useful criticism and ignore the rest while still acknowledging it. I don't put my hands over my ears whenever I hear something bad about my track but it's really hard to take people seriously sometimes when I know how biased their opinions can be
Life's hard for an uplifter around here. :rolleyes: |
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| derail |
I've also blogged about giving and receiving feedback. I've also seen people's tendencies to project their own biases onto other people's songs. As long as the person who is asking for feedback knows what to pay attention to and what can safely be ignored, they'll be fine.
http://fabianaldersey.blogspot.com/...d-feedback.html
For people who don't want to click the link, here's the relevant bit:
To varying degrees, many of us are holed up in our studios for significant amounts of time. We can achieve a lot by ourselves � developing our mixing and listening skills, maybe playing a few instruments, creating great sounding music.
At times, though, we're too close to our music and can lose objectivity. After we've set the room reverb for our drums and have listened to the mix a number of times while we're working on other areas, the reverb can simply become part of the way the song sounds � it's easy to not reflect on it further if it's not really pushing for attention. This is where a fresh set of ears can come in handy � another person may comment that the reverb is too bright, may provide a perspective we hadn't considered. Of course, they may not comment on the drum reverb, which could well mean it sounds fine (depending on who the feedback is coming from).
As with many things, clarity is important. Which aspects of your song(s) do you want input on? Who is going to provide this input? The ideal person to provide feedback on your mix is:
A very experienced producer/ mix engineer
Someone who is very familiar with your specific sub-genre
Someone who cares more about great sounding music than tending your ego
Someone who, in addition to criticizing, will suggest specific techniques to improve the mix
Friends and family, even if they're �easily accessible�, are often not the best sources for self-improvement, since many times they don't fulfill many of the above criteria. There's not much you can do with comments like �Wow, it sounds like real music� or �that's a cool guitar sound!�
Music Forums can be a good source of feedback, though there are drawbacks. Sometimes nobody may bother to provide feedback. Sometimes the only feedback you'll get is of the �friends and family� variety. Some forums are too broad � it's rare to find a forum dedicated solely to a single sub-genre. This means that you may be aiming for a particular type of, say, Death Metal, but get feedback from people who are into a different type of Death Metal. This can make it hard to work out whether their feedback is relevant to your song, or whether it reflects their personal biases. It would be great if every �feedbacker� provided examples of their own work so this could be taken into account. This would certainly help to find out which people are only just beginning to create and mix their own music, who have a lot of development ahead of them before they begin to make halfway listenable music. Frequently these people have no qualms about providing a lot of feedback about many aspects of your mix, as well as suggestions as to how things could be improved. Taken at face value, this feedback can be downright dangerous and actually set us back in our progress. In the end, it's up to each of us to decide what to do with the feedback we receive. If a consistent pattern of feedback emerges, it's more likely there's an issue there (though not necessarily, some people will only comment on something when someone else has already mentioned it). If only one person singles out an aspect, potentially it's not so serious (though again, not necessarily � maybe this one person just took more time to listen to your song in detail).
As important as the person providing us with feedback is the way we ask for this information. Sometimes it may be fine to say �Here's my new song � any comments?� People may reply along the lines of �Cool Hendrix wah on that guitar, dude� or �wtf is up with those lyrics, lolz�. Those comments may well be helpful (and may well stop us from writing lyrics for a while if we were already a bit insecure about them) but if we actually wanted to find out whether our bass sounds okay, since we're a bit unsure about it, then we should be more specific. We could either ask directly about the bass, or (if we feel that shining a spotlight on it before people actually hear the song may lead to skewed opinions) ask if there are any instruments which don't fit quite right and see if the bass gets mentioned. Maybe we'll find out our bass is fine, and it's just our dreadful kick drum which is making it sound like that.
In terms of getting specific, there are a few main areas we could be seeking feedback on:
Engineering (how the mix sounds � relative instrument levels, panning, EQ)
Arrangement (whether the song is too cluttered, or too bare)
Structure (the flow of the song, how it transitions from one section to the next)
Production (Instrument selection/ sound design, automation, special effects)
Composition (Melodies, chord progressions)
Playing technique (where relevant)
Maybe we want feedback on all of these, in which case a broad request for feedback may well suffice. But it pays to think about which aspects of our song we're most unsure about and direct our feedbacker's limited attention there.
Hopefully the above information is also helpful when it comes to providing feedback. All the same concepts apply, just from the other side of the equation. We should be aware of our own biases, the kinds of sounds we prefer. We should refrain from providing extensive feedback in sub-genres with which we're unfamiliar. When we are unfamiliar, we should admit this, to give our feedback some perspective. The same goes for when we have limited experience in mixing a particular genre, or we're aware that our own music has serious limitations. When we criticize a song, we should be able to offer suggestions as to how the song could be improved. This is much more helpful than simply criticizing. It should rarely happen that we say something like �those background vocals just sound odd, but I can't really think how to improve them, or what they could be replaced with�. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Kysora
EDM is just such a ridiculously technical genre that people feel like any element they feel they would have done differently is immediately "wrong". There's no room for artistic experimentation with the mix because people can generally listen to a track, find "problems" and know at least generally how to fix them.
It really is the only thing I absolutely hate about the genre. My mixes aren't bad. They're not perfect, I know that, but they aren't even close to unlistenable unless whoever's listening to it isn't going to give it a chance. But yet every track I make gets the same exact criticism about muddiness and overcompression, even though I've taken direct steps to try and avoid both of those. Hell, one of my tracks where I deliberately used almost no compression got called overcompressed by a few people.
I just take the useful criticism and ignore the rest while still acknowledging it. I don't put my hands over my ears whenever I hear something bad about my track but it's really hard to take people seriously sometimes when I know how biased their opinions can be
Life's hard for an uplifter around here. :rolleyes: |
I've always liked your stuff. :gsmile:
That's the thing. There's been tracks I've heard which sounded just fine, but I've seen people just slam the out of them, sometimes, and it's kind of unwarranted. Stuff I've critiqued as wanting, I've heard much, much later and thought it was genius. The opposite can be said of songs I thought highly of, at the time, and that everyone else thought were great, too. I'll listen to those tracks which seemed like easy aces and think, I don't really like this as much as I thought I did.
There have been songs of my own that I've heard after a while and spotted something that I think I should have changed, but I'll go back and look at the critique and it's not even mentioned. It's noticeable to me, to an obvious degree, but no one else spots it. The part about that which frustrates me is that I'll hear the "errors" my critics spot for months after I'm done with the track.
If someone says my hi-hats are too loud, when they weren't loud before, I'll hear them like a sore thumb and sometimes I think it's like an anorectic with their body weight - that there's some hyper-critical sonic dysmorphia which amplifies features to grotesque proportions. ing frustrating, really.
Then there's times when you get feedback like this:
"Hmm? not sure what you're going for here. Sounds like a beat with some pads for 8 minutes. I guess it's chill or something. Cool, I'm chilled. "
I put hours into tailoring a layered synth/horn section consisting of five different instruments playing different chord voicing and it gets completely undersold. Hours, trying to tailor nuance which is dismissed as something I would consider to be a beginner's creative bankruptcy. Not that I harbor resentment against the guy. He's quite an accomplished musician. I'm happy he took the time to listen. The other side of the coin is that a good song is like a good joke - I shouldn't have to explain it for someone else to 'get it'.
Still, I know your pain.
EDIT: Nice blog post, derail. Definitely takes into account an ideal as far as giving and receiving feedback goes. |
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| Beatflux |
| quote: | Originally posted by EddieZilker
COR VERSION: It's almost impossible for anyone of us to offer legitimate, negative criticism at other people's finished work because we lack sufficient perspective and impartiality.
I've been doing some thinking and have noticed some things in the Music Producer's Promotion forum. The next time I get ready to put up a song, there, I'm going to go review a bunch of tracks and be as genuinely harsh and honest as possible about what I perceive to be errors in the person's mixing, et al. Only, instead of posting what I actually think, I'm going to copy and paste that to a Word document and then listen to the mix I want to put up with that critique in mind.
I've kind of stopped putting down anything negative and will only legitimately critique something, now, when the following occur:
1. The person has asked for it because they're out of ideas and this is stated very clearly, such as putting up a WIP.
2. The person is clearly a newb and the mix and/or music clearly needs work and the person has asked for some pointers. At this point, I'm entirely prepared to let delusions of grandeur persist without answer.
3. The person has identified problems he believes exist within his work and wants either verification or suggestions about how to resolve it.
4. The decisions he's made so clearly contradict the quality of previous work that it would serve the person well.
The reason for this is that I've noticed a lot of criticism that's given is based, not on any inherent weakness in the person's mix that it's directed towards, but mostly a projection of the goals, preferences, and weaknesses held by the giver of the critique. Not to say that the critic is always wrong about their critique of another person's work. There have been songs I've put up which I have subsequently heard with my critic's ears and thought the feedback was spot on, "Suzanne's Theme" being a prime example.
At some point, most of us who post there, regularly, have accumulated enough experience and skill that our proficiency is beyond something that can be corrected by our peers. The quality of our work is more predicated on our consciously made decisions rather than errors resulting from a lack of skill. I might hear something I don't like, such as a four on the floor beat (and I realize that it's an outlandish example but I mean it to caricature some of the criticism I've seen offered in MPPF), but it hardly serves anyone to tell the person his kick drum is too static for me, since a four on the floor beat is particular to his style.
Furthermore, I have noticed that when I offer critique, such as the drum being too static, that when I go back to listen to my mix I hear that I haven't put enough variation in my kick drums for my tastes and that the progression of them doesn't hold my attention. I have a collection of songs that I've collected from you people when you make downloads available that I'll go back and listen to and when I do, I'll often recall what I posted as a critique to find that what I'm hearing on second or third listens doesn't line up with the criticism I've leveled at the producer on the first hearing.
I've also read your critique's of each others work and will find, more often than not, that what someone has said about another person's work is easily something that could be said about their own or worse, the criticism that they're offering would actually correct a weakness in their own work. Again, this isn't always wrong. Sometimes the best critic is someone with a shared or opposing weakness. Sometimes the critic's bass-line sits perfectly although he's rightly noticed someone else's was out of whack. Sometimes.
What I read and hear a lot of, however, is a critic who thinks a kick isn't loud enough and whose own kick is either anemic or completely overblown. One last time, sometimes the critic is right about the anemic kick drum but more often than not, I've heard the kick drum just fine from person A and critic B has shelved too much, not shelved enough, or just likes his kicks very prominent in his mix. Simply put, more often than not, it's largely a matter of choice.
The difficulty in critiquing other people's music is differentiating from our own partiality and being able to identify with what the other person is trying to accomplish. If I notice a static chord progression, is there a melodic lead I should be noticing which contrasts to that chord progression? Maybe, at the time I'm hearing it, that rhythmic chord progression is sticking out like a sore thumb because a pad I've got running in the back-ground is doing absolutely nothing for my own track. I just haven't noticed the contrasting melody lead because I'm still working on my music while listening to this other persons. Hopefully, the person reading my flawed critique realizes that I'm in my own world and that while I've noticed a trait of his song, I've yet to realize its totality.
Anyway, this is just something that I've noticed which I've been incorporating into my listening to other people's work. Hopefully, it makes sense but I thought it was worth discussing. |
I thought we had this conversation already. Solution: OP outlines goals, posts up reference tracks as applicable. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by Beatflux
I thought we had this conversation already. Solution: OP outlines goals, posts up reference tracks as applicable. |
That's not really the point. I get what you're saying but I've noticed this on tracks which were ostensibly finished. It's also not really asking for anyone to modify their behavior as much as it takes behavior into consideration. |
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| Stu Cox |
Completely agree there are loads of flaws in asking for feedback.
One of the biggest problems is that as soon as someone is asked for feedback, being helpful they try to find flaws and often 'find' them where there might not be one... being asked to give feedback instantly changes our approach to listening to a record. Things look different under the microscope. This is something I've seen myself doing as much as other people.
The classic example is with fairly progressive / loopy music, when it often draws the comment "It needs something more" or "It could do with doing something else"... when actually it's no more repetitive or monotonous than a lot of other tracks around which both the producer and critic would say they like: club music can be very repetitive, and that's fine!
I'm generalising a lot here, but here's my view of the pros and cons of each of the 3 'categories' of critic:
Producers:
- Good for technical feedback: levels, EQ, disruptive frequencies, synth quality, etc
- Often over-scrutinise and look too closely, so judgement of musical and arrangement aspects of the track can be biased
- Tendency to aim for 'perfection' and give "I wouldn't have done it like that"-style feedback
DJs:
- Good for arrangement feedback: structure, groove, builds, drops, melodies, sounds and 'playability'
- Also good for some technical feedback, although DJs who aren't producers may lack detailed knowledge and advice on how to fix problems
- Can be biased towards their own genres and quite subjective
- These guys are really your target audience for sales so this can be the most valuable feedback!
Clubber / Casual listener:
- Good for purely emotional feedback
- Will be highly subjective
- Will often miss terrible production quality
- Will often have little understanding of 'context': e.g. they might dismiss a good rolling or warm up track as it doesn't kick their 'anthem' senses, or criticise a track for being too repetitive when in a club environment it would be fine
Make sure you trust your sources. Use a few different clubbers to 'balance' their respective subjectivity. Use good DJs who play the music similar to the track you've produced. Use producers who have a proven track record and who you trust.
I try and give feedback as all 3, which I probably shouldn't do, but it's hard not to! Maybe picking one viewpoint depending on the genre would be the best way to go? But anyway...
When I give feedback now I first treat it as if I've come across it in the new releases: that basically means skipping through it, scanning over the whole track in about 10 seconds. This might sound really harsh and unfair, but that's how long I give any other track on the shelf and gives me a first impression of the feel of the track: the groove, the sounds, etc.
This nearly always gives me a positive or negative response which is purely emotional: I haven't given it enough time to decide whether it's well produced yet, or even if I like the melodies, just if I wanted to hear more or not.
I'll then pick a few spots, such as dropping out of a breakdown, to get a better understanding of what the track is about, only listening to 10 or 15 seconds at a time. I still try not to focus on detailed technical aspects yet, because as soon as I do that it can warp my view of the track.
I then listen through from start to finish and put together any technical, structural and some further emotional comments.
Of course as has been said, you can always ask a critic to try and listen to a track in a particular way, particularly if they could fall into any of the categories above, but bear in mind that it can be hard for DJs and producers to turn off that part of their thought process!
Of course no one can be completely objective and neutral, but feedback's something we all need in one form or another so we'll all just have to try to both give and get it as best we can! |
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| Raphie |
That's why i just post a track every noce and a while, try not to make excuses or explain the conditions and just await feedback.
sometimes i hear something i know myself, sometimes i hea the complete opposite.
And then again opinions are like s, everybody has got one. |
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| EddieZilker |
Nice post, Mr. Cox.
I was just thinking about a few times being at raves and listening to the music, stone cold sober, and there were songs that would have this one part come in and it had a sort of life to it with an expiration date. It would come in, at the beginning of the tune and would be interesting then be pulled back, in the mix, as other parts were gathering around it. The part could be the hook on a TB303 or a vocal cut or something, but eventually, it would get to be nagging and the other stuff that had gathered around it would be holding the song together, enough, that it would keep my interest.
And, here's the thing: That nagging quality, I think, for all intents and purposes, was intended because, eventually, the producer would do something with that part which made it all cool, again. He may have expanded the part to take on the new elements he'd added, earlier, or tweaked it to the point that it sounded cool but the point is that the relief experienced from that was part and parcel to the song.
The song wouldn't have been what it was without that part being an irritant in the beginning, in the first place, and really, its stasis was part of the movement. If it hadn't have been there doing exactly what it did, the track wouldn't have been what it was. I've found that when I've critiqued work, in the past, I've forgotten to look at intent and there are so many producers, now, that not everyone can be counted on to either listen to or produce songs in their totality.
It's easy to say that you don't like something about a particular track. The question (I'm raising with this post, really) is, were you supposed to like it in the first place? |
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| MSZ |
wow there is a lot to read here, its too much now, just skimmed through.
I like to let music be, even if its not up to perceived industry standards, because music is not about that at all. It is something I learned over the years, I can tell by how i used to give feedback and how i do now. Not saying this is the correct way at all, just my 2cents. Something that bothers me however, is when people give a lot of advice both technical and vision wise but i take a listen to their work and its like really? dont mean to be an ass but there is something not geling there. The person is having trouble themselves but they seem to know the answers. Well maybe they do, maybe they're more objective on other work, who knows but I simply dont relate, its a personal thing most likely; but its also my filter. this is from the producers pov. |
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| EddieZilker |
| quote: | Originally posted by MSZ
Something that bothers me however, is when people give a lot of advice both technical and vision wise but i take a listen to their work and its like really? dont mean to be an ass but there is something not geling there. The person is having trouble themselves but they seem to know the answers. |
For not having read it all, that's pretty on point to what I'm getting at. If people would apply their own criticisms of other people's work to their own work, the music we'd hear in the MPPF would be much different. |
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