How to write Good Critiquebrainz Reviews

General guidelines before writing a review

• Read some good reviews!

  You can find lots of great reviews on CritiqueBrainz, or search the web.

• Write in a comfortable voice.

  A good review probably won't sound like an academic paper, and probably won't sound like a Youtube comment, but it should sound like you.

  Reviews don't need to be in English. If you're more comfortable in another language, go for it. Choose a language in which you can express your emotions/thoughts freely.

Writing a well formatted review

The editor in the review column follows Markdown so you can always beautify your review using the formatting styles because a well formatted article/review makes it readable and it becomes a little easy to understand what you have written. You can use the following link to learn markdown.

Writing the Review

Here are some tips for getting started as a reviewer :-

• Writing short description - Give your review a short context as to what you are reviewing.
• Follow your thinking/feelings - A good reviewer is one who always review a particular thing based on what he feels rather than what others.
• Good reviews are not too short or too long - It's better not to make your reviews too short or too long. Try to make it something which gives the readers a clear image as to how the work is and at the same time it doesn't bore them.

More tips for specific review types

Here some specific tips for each review type which might help you to strengthen your review :-

Album Reviews

• Listen the album from starting to end - Some listeners doesn't know that album is aligned in specific order so its better to listen the album thoroughly when you start reviewing the album.
• Tell about how you felt after listening the album - Music is an emotive art. It's meant to move the listener. If you feel happy or sad, angry or calm, the emotion only matters that you pass it on. Readers will want to know about that before buying (or not!) a particular album.
• You can tell about lyrics and the recording quality -

  Lyrics is what which makes a song/album meaningful. You can always right about how were the lyrics? Was it meaningful? Did it match the music?

  Recording quality matters a lot. If it's good it's good but if it's bad it will flop the whole album. It's always better to note these things and mention about it in your review.

• Write about the strengths of the album, go easy on weaknesses - Can write about strengths which you loved or liked. Don't be too rude/harsh on weaknesses but you can mention what you disliked. These things strengthen your reviews.
• Try to cover most of the songs in the album - If you are reviewing an album which has many songs the reader expects you to review most of them.
• Be clear with your conclusion - If it's a must hear album give it some direction. It's always nice to mention people of which music taste will love it or people of which genre will like it. You can try to compare it with some other album which has been already released which will give the readers an idea as to what they can expect.

Event Reviews

• You can describe about the event, band/artist, where was the event taken place, what made you to attend the event etc.
• Describe the event place - Event reviews are enhanced by description of the event place as to how big was the place? Was it enough for the crowd? or How well the band/artist sound in it?
• Writing about the music played there - You can describe which songs were played in the event. Which were your favourite songs played, you can write about the staging of the band. Were there any stuff which you didn't like? If yes, then why?
• Special moments, effects, surprises - Often there are special moments in every event, you can describe such moments that took place. You can also write about special guests(if present) any special effects in the event which caught everyone's attention
• Writing about Event atmosphere - You can always describe about the crowd, how well the artists/band were able to entertain the crowd? Was the crowd exciting or it was a monotonous atmosphere?

Place Review

• Description about the location - You can describe where the place is located, whether it's located in the heart of the city or is it located on the periphery.
• Writing about the architecture - If it's a musical stadium people want to know about how many people can the place occupy, how well the artist sounds in each corner of the place etc.

Note: Try to be honest while reviewing, simply don't follow the trend. Review the album as to what you felt and not what others felt. And try to follow active voice.

Common mistakes people do while writing reviews

• Writing long reviews that lack specific details.
• Forgetting to check the factual information in the review after finishing the writing process.
• No proofreading the review after finishing it.
• Mistakes such as punctuation, typos, capitalization etc.
• Writing in slangs - Try to write in proper English (or whatever language you prefer). It's better not to write reviews in slangs.

External links

You can read some reviews from these sites before writing your own :-

A few great review sites

• pitchfork.com
• exclaim.ca
• nme.com