Freedom Of Choice ~ Getthim and Dapianokid

Ladies and gentlemen, the first collab between the GAP brothers:
Freedom Of Choice


Finally.

The passage and time and develpoment of style throughout the months of this project led to an enteraining presentation. This was not attacked in a stream-of-consciouness manner, but we didn't plan so precisely and craftily as some other teams do. We had ideas, and we had boundaries. We started out with XY because at the time, both of us were even in skill at it. It was a middle ground to start with, so that we weren't throwing our own contrasting styles back and forth as each other. We only had as much of a plan as we had motivation to progress further. The fact that this track is in sections happened almost accidentally. As each of us had an idea, we asked the other to expound upon it. Each of us learned a great many new things about the game on our journey. This is the longest track either of us have ever been a part of to date. The monument, expediently drawn by Master Scener Getthim, is a testament to the concepts presented by the lyrics in the first song, and also a symbol of the attitude we had when making the track. We knew what we were good at and what we were bad at, and we let the other make up where we lacked. Both of the authors are extremely proud of the end result.

i have 1 freedom boner

edit: this was seriously my favorite track of the year, I know its only a month in, but this will be hard to beat imo.

Also, the recording. 20 fps might be my new recording medium after seeing how good it made this track look

To be perfectly honest, if this track was reduced to the parts from 0:55 to 1:38, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. The XY just felt really unnatural to me, whether due to odd rotation or just some je ne sais quoi factor, and while the manuquirkish stuff after 1:38 fit the music to an extent, it felt way too slow and wasn't up to par with the rest of the track.

This said, the parts that I did like were amazing. The flanuals/granuals throughout the track were very well done and somehow didn't come across as overused; the flanual-integration section at 1:17 to 1:22 has to be one of the coolest things I've ever seen done in LR, and it was executed flawlessly. Had this skill and innovation persisted throughout the track (and I'm not saying you guys got lazy, because I know you didn't, this couldn't have been an easy feat), it would've been an irreproachable masterpiece. Regardless, you guys have every right to be very proud of this track; you've both learned really fast, and this criticism I'm offering is simply due to the fact that I consider you guys to be right up there with the pros. This track definitely reaffirms my belief that you're both quickly rising stars.

that quirk, those manuals, the loveliness that is that monument, the sweat between my balls

/sees cool track released
/gets ignored over highspeed battle
/bumps a little later

cheers efraz =)

This was hella swag

the xy was my favorite

efraz I love you. I was afraid to bump because that's just be poor sporting of me. the two giants deserve their spot! they just happen to cast the darkest shadow known to man XD

#uberlate

First, a few miscellaneous things:
- Recording felt pretty choppy to me and I'm surprised nobody else felt the same. The first few seconds were the worst.
- Not sure what you're trying to say besides that this was a pretty typical collab when you say that you have different styles, you started with a style you both knew, it wasn't planned, and you learned a lot.
- This collab is pretty long! (>2:30) What kept your guys going after you hit the 1:30 mark? Usually for unplanned collabs that is where people call it long enough.
- Did Getthim copy the monument off something? Even if he did, it's still good, but just wondering.
- Was there a reason you had so many short parts? The .sol has to be passed back and forth a ton, which is unusual.
- I am wondering why chugs called it his favorite track of the year. Wish he had elaborated.

Okay, actual review (typing this for the second time so I hope I remember everything). This track had a lot of moments that I thought were really cool, but the general impression I get from it as a whole is a feeling of style whiplash. Part of this is the unplanned aspect, part of it is that you two have styles as disparate as you can get, but part of it also has to do with what I think is an underrated ability in trackmaking - making your part blend and match the style of someone else. On the one hand, you guys obviously struggled with this, but on the other hand you did seem to get better and better at it as the track went on. So even if the track suffered because of it, it was good practice for both of you. But I would like to challenge you

As each of us had an idea, we asked the other to expound upon it

To actually do this. When I watch this track, I don't see parts expanding on the ideas of other parts, I see a new idea every few seconds that is thrown in without much thought to whether it fits, or whether there has been enough of what came before the change. I think that this may be a symptom of a track that wasn't really trying to do anything in particular, and so the two of you got tired of something before the viewer did, but I could be wrong. But there's some general thoughts.

Okay now let's go through it bit by bit.
- XY at the start was pleasant, and then the pinches felt sudden/abrupt, and the quirk near them crashed pretty hard with the relaxed xy at the start and after the kramual (also, not sure how I feel about the airtime before the kramual, especially since it was used again later)
- giant slow X tail manual...why? I feel like this is gonna be a theme, like there are lots of different things that happen and often my reaction was "why is this happening?" instead of "oh cool" and I don't think I can fully explain why. And then the fakie airtime into a kramual - already done once so now I'm like "why is this happening again?"
- holy asdfs out of nowhere. why?
- scratch that, make it one asdf followed by manuals. why?
- really liked the manuals in 1:03 through 1:08. nice rotation, pressure, direction, or maybe other stuff iono.
- messy high pressure flatsled all of a sudden. why?
- crazy granuals and quirk. granuals are super cool, I like them a lot, and they're super varied and creative, but this bit, even not looking at the bits before and after it, feels really disjointed. like why is there a crazy quirk bit at 1:15, followed by no-quirk manuals?
- at 1:25 were you going for smooth manuals or manuquirk because it just feels awkward.
- And then at 1:38 the whole thing just slows way down and is suddenly boring, and the speeds back up and then slows right back down again. It would feel like you are going for a disparate flow except that there are other sections where it feels like it's all trying to flow. I guess this is the whole "do whatever" vibe of the track but it just leaves me wishing there was some structure :/
- tiny quirk section at 1:53 to 1:59? why?
- another one of those slow X tail manuals at 2:09, and then more quirk? why?
- XY again I think I understand because you are segue-ing back into the XY that you started with and you're in the same area. But again we have the long pinches and the relaxed compact stuff giving me whiplash. I guess it's consistent at least

Now I'm gonna watch the color replay to see who did what! (I haven't watched it in a couple weeks)
Whoa I id not guess dap did that first part! or that bit at 3:37. ...and all the manual parts I complained about were by Getthim...
After watching the parts, it looked like Dap was actually really good at blending with Getthim, when he tried to. But a lot of the time (more and more as the track when on) he just seemed to sort of do his own thing which was faster, more intense, more quirky, more messy, more difficult, more weird and creative, and then would hand the .sol back to Getthim who would then do some slow manuals or some slow xy which was basically all he could do.

There are two ways to solve this issue here. Getthim could get better to match Dap's styles, or Dap could scale everything back to match Getthim's style. From what I saw it seemed like Dap was able to but just didn't want to, and Getthim either couldn't figure out how dap was doing what he was doing, or wasn't prepared to put in the time necessary, or wasn't able to be critical enough of his own work and push himself enough. But in the end what I saw was a really disjointed track in large part due to the difference in abilities, and it in fact got worse as the track went on after examination of who made what

I am sorry for how blunt this whole review turned out. I think part of it is just my own personal preference for making some kind of plan or having some kind of idea that is then executed - even partway through a track - instead of just making stuff and seeing what happens. Nothing against that style of trackmaking, I just find that it rarely results in anything more than a "cool track " response, and if it does it's usually unintentional.

I do hope to see more from both of you. I have had a long and hard day so that may have made a lot of this overly harsh and also less articulate than I would like, and I also have no way to wrap up this closing paragraph. And writing these reviews is putting off the release of driftwood more and more but it's been so long since this track was released I felt like I really needed to sit down and write a review. But I don't have a nice concluding paragraph so this one will have to do. take care.

first comment after rabid's post, no being mean to him guys he was being honest, and i like that,

I do see what you are getting at rabid, everything was a bit unjoined,but I believed that this collab was one where we do best is what we wanted, so it was fun, I did try to get a bit better at quirk but it's so confusing for me

to how it got so long, the plan was to finish in the xy zone, and we had worked away from it, so when we both started of thinking of wrapping it up, we directed bosh back to the xy, other than that it was a fun track

I think instead of an elaborate project, the next thing I want to do with Getthim will be a literal quirk tutorial. We will work on his quirk entirely and do it in the same process we used to produce this track, but not try to present it as a whole finished planned doohicky.

I really liked your review There was a lot of depth and you looked well into what was going on as we made the track. We probably had so much motivation because we weren't asking for longer parts, we allowed each other to make as short or as long a part as we liked without being unreasonable. It ended up being I think 25 parts in all (including the monument which was a clipart getthim exfrickingpertly copied. He gave me a choice of three and I picked the hardest one)

Well, this is like the ultimate in "Plan better" looking at it from rabid's perspective
And not surprising because this is what happens in all of the tracks I am a part of

Yeah, mainly the biggest issue was pulling Bosh back without it seeming so obviously directed towards the start (can you say Techdawg influence)

The idea was that perhaps the sync would provide a musical addition  to the suddenly asdfs and manuals. The sync didn't happen but I wasn't about to complain. This was a learning experience