How to write Good Critiquebrainz Reviews

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Introduction

CritiqueBrainz is a repository for Creative Commons licensed music reviews where you can read what other people have written about an album or event and write your own review! Writing a review is an easy task but writing a good one is little difficult. This article covers the points regarding how to write a good music review on CritiqueBrainz.

Elements of an Album Review

Before you start

  • 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.

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.

What Should You keep in Mind While Writing the review

You should always keep in mind about the person who has not heard the music/song and he wants to listen it but before that he wants to know more about it like it's genre etc.

Writing the review

Album Reviews

  • First,write a little, very short info about the song/album like it's singers, genre release date.
  • If there are many songs in the album and if you are mentioning/reviewing it one by one it's advisable to link the names of the songs to their Acousticbrainz's Links.
  • Your review should cover the points that what did you like in the song, which moment you loved the most or the song reminded you of which incident.
  • Review should also contain the things (if any) which you didn't like or things which you think could be enhanced in a better way.
  • It should also state that people which type of music taste would like the song/album or the songs would touch the heart of people whose loves music of that particular genre.
  • You should also write about the artist too , that how was his work? What type of genre is he popular? Did he went something out of the way of his genre ? or he did it the same?
  • Do the songs fit together to form a "whole"? If so then how?


Live performance (event) reviews

  • What was the "size" of the show? Where was the event? Who was the artist?
  • What was the style and energy level? Ballads? Dance-able pop? Head-banging and a mosh pit? Challenging contemporary "classical"?
  • Was there any notable interaction between the artist(s) and the audience?
  • Were the songs mostly new material? Old favorites? Were there any interesting covers or guest appearances?
  • Were there any surprising choices made? New arrangements of familiar tunes? Unreleased material performed for the first time? A wide range of styles performed?
  • Did the artist(s) seem comfortable and relaxed? Energized by the crowd's reaction? Maybe they were having an "off" night, or seemed to be "phoning it in"?
  • Overall, how was the show received by the audience?

Summing Up the review as a Whole

  • At last , You should sum up your review by writing that did the release match up to your expectations by the artist? Was he/she well in the release keeping in mind to their previous works? Would you like to look further for more releases in the particular genre by the artist?If yes/no then why?

External links

A few great review sites