Emanon - My 8 1/2 minute epic

[Darkend Feeling]

I have worked on this song for a little over a week now, and it's not exactly where I want it, but I think it's ready to be heard. Unlike my other song, I actually spent a little time on this, so I hope you enjoy it a lot.

This song reminds me of something like off of Opeth's Damnation album (the soft one). It is 9.6 MB and eight and one half minutes long. As always, everything you hear was done by myself. I need a drummer... badly. If you live anywhere near me, give me an email or something.

Ok, so here goes: http://www.angelfire.com/music5/musicbymyself/Emanon.mp3

Any comments/suggestions are more than welcome. Enjoy!

[Matteran]

i has a nice ambient feeling to it. But once it ends, i seemed to feel dissapointed. I wanted it to go somewhere. Maybe get a little louder. Or introduce just a new riff that contrasted the main one (if there was one, i didn't really notice it). If it's meant to just be an ambient piece of music, and you play with the speakers low, and while doing something else, then it's pretty good. But when paying attention to it, it just doesn't seem to go anywhere. And yes, you need a drummer.

[Darkend Feeling]

A few people have told me that my songs go nowhere. Do you think that maybe if there were vocals, that would be cleared up? For me, when it's just instrumental and no vocals, and I don't have any lyrics in mind, there seems to be no where for me to go. Does anyone who plays music without lyrics know what I'm talking about and know a way to get "somwhere" with their music?

[Choler]

song is temporary unavailable.

Yes I am in a band without a singer, we do just fine without one, everything seems to flow and the transitions are perfect. If we actually get a singer, I think it would ruin our sound and what we are trying to convey. But if I listen to the song, I might be able to give tips as to what to change or transition into a new place.

[Darkend Feeling]

Alright, thanks Choler. If youre able to wait an hour or two, it should be back up. If not, just check back in the morning or whenever you come on again.
Because of the size of the song, only about 2 or 3 people will be able to hear it every hour or so, sorry for any inconveniance, but it is free...

[Matteran]

I'm also in a band with no singer. you can download some of our songs on our website (in my signature). Preferably download a few of the jams. As they are more mellow, and could be related to your music more. It's just two instruments, and i think while it does take a little while (due to our jamming) the music does go somewhere.

Basically, I think your problem is there is no variation in your dynamics. The whole song is fairly calm, and quiet. It doesn't get louder, or faster, the whole song seems to "flat-line" as my music teacher would put it.

[Choler]

Very smooth sounding peice, very calm and repititious, and like Matteran said, I think the problems is the lack of dynamics and color, also the constant drum beat doesn't help, some fills or something different would be nice, I know you said you are looking for a drummer. Now there are plenty of opportunities to play with the riffs you have going, just subtle changes are always nice, and when you go into the solo for the first time, that would be a pefect time to play with the color change that you have going on, possibly go into s harder part after the solo, or into a breakdown section with a bass melody. but in order for all that to happen there would need to be a change in the drumming pattern. This song has potential, and I understand it must be hard doing all of it by yourself, but you have talent, keep working on it and mess with every possible angle of the riffs you can, look into some distortion possibly, and I hate to say it but some structure, such as a possible chorus that you can branch off of into tangents, because I always find that to be pretty affective. Anyways, I really enjoyed, thanks for sharing.

[Elgyn]

Ok, just listened to it.
I was thinking before I heard it, that it would be difficult to sustain a listeners interest for 8½ minutes. Although I like the idea behind the song, I think eight minutes is way too long considering (as far as I could hear) that there are no major changes are made to the bass or drums. My ability to write a sentence does not mean I will write a ten page dialogue to convey something which could be compacted to five paragraphs. What I'm saying is that simply making an eight minute song isn't going to make it "good".

As I said, I like the song, but after three or so minutes, I was a little bored.

Consider other eight minute songs you may know. Why do they work? Does your song incorporate any of the elements which make them work?

Don't take this too hard. You could definately spice it up by adding some other elements to your song, and by consciously using drums to build up musical energy. I'm no musical messiah though, and concepts of a 'good' song will vary from one to another. It definately has potential, but try to think about what you're doing with a song and what purpose it might serve in the overall running of the song.

[Dirty Sanchez]

The link doesn't work. Can you get another host?

[Hurter Vileslay]

I dont know if youve thought of using any PC (or Mac) music software, but if you can get a copy of 'Computer Music' (British mag, but sometimes available in USA I believe) they give away free software. That could be used for drum parts with as many variations as you want. They also give away a drum sampler with some good sounds (OK mostly dance music stuff but it could sound quite interesting to use a crazy techno kit...)
I always enjoy programming blastbeats on my computer :)

I do agree with comments about the lack of variation. Maybe kicking in with some heavier guitar-maybe only a few notes-would improve things? If done well the laid back atmosphere could be maintained

Edit: OK just read your other post and didnt realise you were using Pro Tools and Reason-better than any of the crap software Ive got ;)

[Narcasist]

Just posting my critique to try to help you out a bit, don't mean to be harsh but here goes...

First, I'd like to say I liked the song. I think it could be alot better though. If you listen to any major non-vocal group, you will notice that the way they keep their music interesting is major volume pickups and digressions. If you "flatline" as the guy above called it, it makes it sound like you're just playing a bunch of riffs together. It doesn't have a feels of flow from one part to the next.

So basically, I'd recommend you listen to a few songs similar to your style, you could try GYBE, or Sigur Ros, for starters, and compare the layout of their songs to your song. Of course, you don't want to make it exactly like their's, but you could look to them for guidance on the molding of song layouts.

Once you get a feel for what we're talking about with song layouts I'd really like to hear more from you, I think you do have alot of talent. Thanks for posting it.