OOTD - Reviews 12 and 13.

"I liked it immediately. Nice tonality. great voice! great keys work. kinda billy joel -ish...in a good way =) very catchy tune. good levels in the mix. man you really nail those notes!! great melodic line here. nice harmonies, and very original harmonic directions. so full! good work here!!!"

Now that's a review that makes you humble. He's the kind of guy that could turn into a crazy fan. Folks do seem to either totally love this stuff of mine or absolutely can't stand it. I like that polarity. Indifference is a killer.

Here's the next one.

"Not the ordinary jelly donut. Nice vocal opening. I like the drum programming in the background, it's very effective. Piano sounds might be a bit high in the mix, but they're good, if basic. When the song kicks in about :50, it moves very well. I like the vocals and vocal layering. This is kind of a 50's/90's combo, in a way. Good lyrics and not the ordinary jelly donut melody-line wise. Nicely done."

Let's look at a couple of points.

"I like the drum programming in the background, it's very effective."

Haha. That cracks me up. I thought the drums were a bit loud and bombastic actually. 'Effective' is a neutral word. Even the most awful thing you ever heard is having an effect.

"Piano sounds might be a bit high in the mix, but they're good, if basic."

Who is they? I wouldn't call thousands of dollars worth of Korg Triton basic, so I can only assume he means the playing. So this raises the issue about how so many people (mainly beginners) seem to think you must play to the utmost extent of your ability all the time. This is hogwash and something you grow out of if you have the opportunity to play enough in your lifetime. I play piano better than I do anything else, but you wouldn't know it from listening to this song. What reason would there be to play clever piano shit all over this track? It would ruin it. If anything, the overall arrangement is over-embellished, but he didn't seem to notice that. I get off the hook for knowing if I'm doing it though, right?

So even though it is a positive review, it is a good example of why reviews largely are unreliable. The majority of these people are filtering their opinions through their own personal tastes at best, and at worst they're musicians themselves, filtering through their view of the way they think things ought to be done. In a case like that, positive comments can often only be considered to be a coincidence.

The public now gets merely a personal viewpoint of music, even in magazines and newspapers where you'd hope reviewers would actually know their topic. I've got news for you - Very few of them do anymore. And in New Zealand there isn't even one music reviewer that knows his topic (except for some of the classical ones because you can't fake it there - it sorts the men from the boys). Prove me wrong. We used to have Gary Steel. That guy was a smart cookie. But he's now the publisher of a high fidelity magazine and I bet he threw his arms up in the air when he made the shift.

But I digress.....