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Topic - Review Etiquette and Rationale Posted: 28 May 2012 at 2:41pm By UMUR |
I found PA by chance in 2007 and started writing reviews almost imidiately. My first reviews were for "...and then there were three (1978)" by Genesis and "Into the Everflow (1992) by Psychotic Waltz. I had never written a review before and actually had no writing experience whatsoever, so basically I just read a lot of reviews and tried to take the good ideas I found and use them in my reviews (not sentences but ideas on how to write). To tell you the truth there are only few of the first couple of hundreds of reviews I wrote that I�m still proud of today and I try and go back when I have the time and edit/re-write the worst of them. I started out writing reviews for my favorite albums and artists I knew something about before trying my hand at releases I listened to for the first time. A hard challenge bearing in mind that English is my second language and the words don�t necessarily flow easily when I�m writing about things I don�t know too much about, but also an important challenge, which has helped me broaden my musical horizon but has also made me a more skilled reviewer. After writing a couple of hundreds of reviews, I started to get dissatisfied with my writing style and also my at times disrespectful/better knowing attitude. So I said to myself: "What is it You want to read when you read a review?" And I soon came to the conclusion that the below review "skeleton" is basically what I want to read when I read a review and therefore that�s basically how I write reviews and have done for a couple of years: 1. Introduction to the album: 2. Description of the music: 3. Musicianship: 4. Sound production/mix 5. Conclusion That�s basically it. It�s a formula, that I�ve come to appreciate. A formula is especially good to fall back on if you are having difficulties getting the words out. Then it�s nice to have some basics you can talk about and then boom you have a review written. I try and keep my reviews between 200 and 500 words. My own attention often wanders when reading reviews that are more than 500 words long. I simply start skimming them instead of giving them proper attention. Some reviews take me 10 minutes to write, some take hours, some take countless hours spread over the course of years. Sometimes the muse is there and sometimes it�s not. I have a notepad document I carry with me all the time, where I have drafts for reviews. Sometimes I write a sentence on a review and then go back to writing on an entirely different review. Depends a lot on my mood what kind of music I want to write about. I only write about albums I have very recently listened to though and that goes for albums I know very well too. Edited by UMUR - 28 May 2012 at 2:42pm |