Critique Electronique

For this blog post I chose to review Brendan's piece, a piece described as a 'techno-style remix of “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music”,' and it is a fine piece of work by Mr. Schlagel. What stands out most to me about this piece is Brendan's mastery of working with effects in reason. Immediately, I was struck by the fatness of the bass; it has a warm tone that is not available on any of the stock Subtractor bass settings. But there is hardly time to focus solely on this well-executed bass line before you're hit with Julie Andrews' eerie vocals, also the result of some effects expertise. By pitch-shifting the vocal samples and running them through the Unison effect module, Brendan creates a vocal track with an unearthly feel, evoking the Therimin type vibrato. Speaking of the vocals, I would be remiss to not mention the stellar job that Brendan does with the Dr. Rex sampler. I can tell by listening to his track the amount of time he put into programing the Dr. Rex, and I enjoyed his use of chromatic sampling to create a more complex melodic structure using the original melody of "The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music." One small critique, however, is that I felt in one or two little instances, the timing of the samples was slightly off, but I believe that with a little more editing this could be easily fixed.

While Brendan's use of vocal samples is the focal point of this piece, it also contains some very good melodic synth and drum patterns as well. I loved the melodic line using the arpeggiator, especially since it added a nice "dancy" feel to the piece. I do believe, however, that the drum pattern, while solid, could have definitely used a little more "umph." The drums sounded pretty filtered, which in-turn made the bass kick sound a little on the weak side. I think a deeper sound from the bass could have really given the song some drive. I also liked how Brendan modulated in the middle of the song, which really mixed it up a bit, since even a minute on the same few chords can get pretty boring.

Overall, I was very impressed with Brendan's work; it demonstrates a very firm grasp of nearly all aspects of Reason and provides a cool, new take on a classic song. Well done Brendan.

-Listen to Brendan's piece here: http://pantiltshift.wordpress.com/

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