Spintunes #5 Round 3 Review: Steve Durand

Ross Durand feat. Bryanna Acosta – Apart
Challenge: Met-Nice little melodrama gong on here
Lyrics & Melody: The lyrics do a good job of putting you into the mind and heart of the characters. I love it when the bad guy shows up. I 'm picturing a big handlebar mustache. The melody fits right in with the style.
Performance & Production: Nice sweet guitar backing for the lovers. Good job ramping up the nastiness when the bad guy shows up. Good singing all around.
Rank: 1

Edric Haleen feat. Kevin Savino-Riker – Vows
Challenge: Met – This is a great wedding duet song. I don't think that I would have considered it to be a “mini-opera” without the fact of the examples that you were given. But it's clearly in that space as the challenge was persented.
Lyrics & Melody: I think that the lyrics are basically perfect for this song. And it's very melodic. A very enjoyable listen.
Performance & Production: Very nice arrangement. The singing performance was excellent. I can really find no fault with this.
Rank: 2

Governing Dynamics feat. Rebecca Brickley – Dark Places
Challenge: Met – Not really much of a story here but it falls in the realm of the kind of examples that were given.
Lyrics & Melody: I think you did a good job with the lyrics of telling the story but not just being a plain narrative of what happened. They do a decent job of getting into the mind of the characters. Solid melody. I enjoyed listening to it.
Performance & Production: Rebecca's voice just doesn't blend in with the rest of the music. I know that's a hard thing to do when you have to record things remotely and can't use the same set-up, but I find it kind of distracting. Otherwise, the productions sounds good to me.
Rank: 3

Mariah Mercedes – Dear Jeremy
Challenge: Met – Story narrative and interaction of characters
Lyrics & Melody: The lyrics have a decent back and forth of what each character is thinking. I'm not getting a lot of emotion out of it though. I don't think the jump in time in the last verse is particularly effective. It took me out of the story. I don't find the melody to be compelling the notes go up and down a little bit but thats it. (Honestly I find this to be true of a lot of legit opera.)
Performance & Production: Clearly the female vocal is much stronger than the male vocal. I don't think that the spoken word part works. It should have been sung. The music works OK.
Rank: 4

Menage a Tune – Poison, or, All of Hamlet in 4:04
Challenge: Met-Clearly the most classically operatic of the bunch.
Lyrics & Melody: Cliff's Notes opera. The lyrics tell the narrative in a fine fashion. I guess that I was expecting the entires to come up with a story of there own so I'm a little disappointed in the story for that reason. Stylistically the melody suits the work well with it's kind of medieval sound.
Performance & Production: It would have really been nice to have some orchestration other than the piano. The voices all sound like they were recorded with different set-ups. Clearly an amateur theater presentation.
Rank: 5

The Chocolate Chips – The True Way
Challenge: Met – This tells a story and the characters interact
Lyrics & Melody: I find the lyrics just kind of basic. They tell the story but there's no passion or poetry in them. So they're functional but not moving. Similarly the melody just seems kind of simple as opposed to elegant.
Performance & Production: Why the vocoder? I would not have been able understand the words if I didn't have them written in front of me. And the vocoder takes any inflection or emotion out of the singing. I guess that's OK if the characters are supposed to be robots, but, if that's the case it doesn't come across in the lyrics. I think that you have some interesting sounds in here that create a unique ambiance.
Rank: 6

Felix Frost – Lyman Boone and the Moonshine Scoundrel
Challenge: Met-You have a pretty thorough story and a fair number of characters interacting.
Lyrics & Melody: The lyrics certainly get the story across. At times I find them just pretty plain when I think that you could have gotten things across in a more artistic way. As in your other songs there isn't really much of a melody to hold onto. The notes just seem to me to go up and down in random fashion.
Performance & Production: I really suffer in your tunes of feeling a real disconnect between the lyrics and the style of music. You seems to want to tell narratives about the old west but the music and singing style does not fit at all. You do put together some interesting sounds.
Rank: 7

RC – He's Dead, Jim
Challenge: Hmm – not really. This plays to me like the final scene but not a complete story. Really only representing the view of Kirk.
Lyrics & Melody: The lyrics are certainly consistent with the theme of the song. But the way they're written they seem to be more of a recap of prior events rather than relating the events in progress. I think the melody is catchy, and , after hearing the chorus so many times, it sticks in your head.
Performance & Production: I do like the Star Trek theme interspersed here and there. The style works well. I like your voice and singing. Why did you represent McCoy with a chorus of voices? I think it took me out of relating to him as a character and more just a voice in Kirk's head. I think I would have considered it more of an opera if you had actually had the McCoy character interact in the story.
Rank: 8

Dr. Lindyke – Mr. Nobody
Challenge: Met- Enough of a story line and nice interaction between the characters.
Lyrics & Melody: The writer's lament. I think a lot of us can relate.
Performance & Production: I know that you don't really go for production values. I think that adding the drums really helps vs. just the piano. Nice, appropriate shifts in style through out the piece. The singing was well done.