What do you think makes a good reviewer?

Title says it all.  You can rank these by whats most important to you when you receive a review of your music or come up with your own:

• Gives good advice
• Knowledgeable and able to provide examples from existing repertoire to compare your music to
• Gives good reasons why they like or dislike parts of your music
• Gives supporting evidence for their opinion from music theory/history
• Attention to detail and points out errors or improvements to the score
• Has a good ear for catching errors while listening
• Imagines their own programmatic content for your music
• Meticulous about playability of your music by human beings
• Knowledge about instrumentation/orchestration and how you can improve it

And anything else you can think of!

1 hour ago, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

Attention to detail and points out errors or improvements to the score

Meticulous about playability of your music by human beings

I think, if anything, this is the most useful thing. But then, I don't know, it's really hard to talk about music.

On 2/19/2022 at 3:08 AM, PeterthePapercomPoser said:

• Gives good advice
• Knowledgeable and able to provide examples from existing repertoire to compare your music to
• Gives good reasons why they like or dislike parts of your music
• Gives supporting evidence for their opinion from music theory/history
• Attention to detail and points out errors or improvements to the score
• Has a good ear for catching errors while listening
• Imagines their own programmatic content for your music
• Meticulous about playability of your music by human beings
• Knowledge about instrumentation/orchestration and how you can improve it

I think all of these are equally important, if you're counting arrangements you did when you say "your music". I wouldn't say one or two or three of them are the most important. If I were to take one off, it might be the one about existing repertoire just because I only really feel a need for this with my arrangements of other composers, I don't feel a need for this in my compositions. If there's a comparison to be made between my composition and preexisting repertoire, I probably already know about it before I'm even finished composing the piece.

Since we're talking about reviewing aspiring composers (rather than just being a music critic which in my book is vampirism) you need to have worked through the problems of composing, be empathetic to the aims of others; be aware of their current limitations; be an adequate orchestrator able to read a score and construct the work in your mind, or at the very least have some knowledge of instruments (compass, tessitura, complexities, strengths and weaknesses etc); be eclectic in musical taste and be able to see through a rendering to what a digital rendering might sound like live. Above all you have to be neutral and encouraging without raising false hopes - not be afraid to say when something doesn't seem to work.

About reading scores - this is an absolute pain on a computer screen unless the ensemble is small, keep having to scroll up and down, left and right! to even see the thing, so it can take time. Reviewees should do all they can to minimise: condense scores where possible etc.

Probably a few other things I've missed but those are my first thoughts.

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Controversial opinions ahead as always. Consider this your "trigger warning" =P

In the context of helping n00bz: 

A "good review" is one which helps the composer improve and achieve their goals for the piece or the next piece. I would say that's all there is to it on what makes a "good" critique. This is entirely context-dependent. People can leave walls of text that are totally useless and one guy can drop a one-liner about how "you need smoother voice-leading to make these chords work; move each note only the shortest distance possible to the nearest chord tone" and that could be more helpful in improving the piece than anything anyone else wrote.

However, and this is the biggest problem frankly with internet feedback: Many people, also being noobs themselves, can recognize that something is off, but they often do not have the knowledge and skill themselves to tell you how to, using music theory instead of abstract/subjective descriptions, to adequately solve problems, which in most novice compositions and recordings, are simply too numerous to address in detail in a forum post, and most experienced composers are not going to put in that kind of time investment into a stranger's music on the internet — harsh but true. It's mostly going to be n00bz giving you feedback and this has really quite limited utility.

Ending on a related note: The above is why I recommend people don't rely much on forums and such to improve. If you compare your music to music which is better, and then study that music, the relevant theory that went into it, etc. top to bottom, imitate, and so on — you will keep getting better provided you're making a serious effort at it.

Most great songwriters and composers from at least the late 20th-Century onwards had little outside critique on their music unless they had a mentor, and many didn't even have that. Most were just aesthetes and perfectionists who never stopped never stopping at picking apart their own music against music they admired until theirs was sounding at least as good, and in time better than their heroes. 

On 2/25/2022 at 10:30 AM, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Most great songwriters and composers from at least the late 20th-Century onwards had little outside critique on their music unless they had a mentor, and many didn't even have that. Most were just aesthetes and perfectionists who never stopped never stopping at picking apart their own music against music they admired until theirs was sounding at least as good, and in time better than their heroes. 

My own feelings are that many in their early stages could do better just with their renderings: pay attention to dynamics, to an appropriate duration of notes, not to try to bluff themselves at the mixer to try to make good deficiencies in their attempts at scoring. 

Some cheaper notation software makes a pathetic attempt at balance. To me, so much comes down to balance. So the original score with its official dynamics needs copying for presentation with the dynamics exaggerated to get a decent audio balance. 

I'm disinclined to respond to a wannabe who says "I threw this together this afternoon. What d'you think?"  Maybe I'm being unfair because such a person might come up with a beautiful melody or something else interesting. I'd be ready to comment if they said what they were aiming for and to have their own honest feelings about it. I'd also be happier if they'd allowed a little time for reflection - so often even a week gives a composer time to stand back and view it through fresh ears. 

However, we also need awareness that we aren't the composer and/or hearing the same as the composer. All is subjective (with certain exceptions) and our comments are based on our views. Plus, the media through which we listen won't be the same as the composer's. We try to make allowances. My tendency is not to review a genre in which I'm not versed although listening is always a good idea to expand a reviewer's auditory horizons. 

And it doesn't need reviewers to say that all artists should aim to be self-critical. Being honest (about one's own work) isn't always easy but trying is necessary so when they present work for review it's as close to what they think they want - won't be perfect, there are always limitations - but at least as good as their current experience allows.