Hello Iconoclast,
Considering my taste in music, I feel my opinion might be useful to you. Background: EDM has been the main musical style I've been listening to for the last 20 years of my life. In the late 90s, I was listening to classic synths like Jean Michel Jarre, turning to more modern composers like daft punk, and then to melodic/white trance like van buuren, tiesto, corsten, etc, of course through references like the immortal Sensation White compilations.
Early 2000s I mostly switched over to liquid DnB and dark trance (Sensation Black introduced me to the genre and then slowly to psytrance (early style as in first few albums of infected mushroom, not the later formulaic/soulless sped-up dark dnb that is now called psy). That led me to deeper styles like psychill around 2005, which is about when I discovered chiptune/8bit and started listening to this fulltime - masters like Nullsleep, Bitshifter, Trash80, Sabrepulse, GiveUpNewYork, Unicorn Kid, Jellica, She, and many more. Then around 2010 I skipped right past dubstep and right into the early glitch, moving into a variety of very creative and masterfull branches from glitchfunk to chillhop, always maintaining a preference for glitch our soulful chill that integrated chiptuny aspects.
This being said, let me share what I hear when I hear your song. First, your song reminds me most of early-90s demoscene music, with an engaging but essentially simplistic melody. The production value is much more modern, with a depth of detail in every note that belies your attention to detail, but the lack of supporting arps, arcs, chords and sub-melodies brings the attention to a fundamental lack of harmonies to fill and sustain the main unfolding melodic sequence. Masterclass and SomehowArt are definitely worth checking out despite them not directly relationg to the style you are going for. Anyways...
An early 90's demoscene song for reference:
_https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZIK2OZU1EM
To compare with the melodic depth of early 2000's chiptune, I'll refer you to one of my favorite classic chiptune artists ever, Trash80:
_https://youtu.be/m7sEkhBvREA
Now, I'm not saying that your concept is bad (to the contrary, both the topic and quotes you selected are awesome. However, without supporting arps and arcs, and the glaring lack of a bassline, the music fails to stand up to the importance of the topic you selected.
Mostly, the ambience is not there. Considering the sheer maleficience of the subject, the candy-style melody feels out of place. You would need to masterfully integrate some more grimy elements, not only melodically but rather to shape a musicality that introduces the quotes with proper somberness and also creates a drop which opens dramatic intensity for the words.
As an example of what I mean, here's one of the most masterful of chiptune and dubstep I've ever heard (chipstep/bitstep) which, despite lacking any lyrics, guides us through a journey of innocence, celebration, nostalgy and sadness:
Unicorn Kid - Dreamcatcher
_https://youtu.be/jknlhDgzRDQ
Hopefully by now you get a better feel of what I mean. The thing is, you selected an imposing topic to feature as the core of your piece, and anything less than what it deserves will feel like something hastily thrown together/beginner experimentation, which does not honor the subject.
I would also recommend that you look up glitch composition. Right now, the rhythm is a steady 8/8 which does not allow for any play on the musicality, staccato/time translation of rhythm that makes for interesting dancing. I am not a composer and thus do not know the specific jargon, but as a retired pro dancer (10 years and 2 teaching, now only dancing for personal passion/soulful expression) I can say for now that the absence of musicality (not the melodic tone, but rather of learnable/foreseable rhythmic improvisation) prevents the emergence of play and exploration with the song (not only of the dancer but of the listener as well) forces the song into a monotonic vibe.
I noticed that you created for yourself the opportunity for a few drops, but failed to exploit them. The first sequence is also notoriously disconnected from the rest, with no discernible melodic or rhythmic resonances to link the it with the following sequences, which themselves have a droning quality because of the failure to explore the overarching melody through different rhythmic variations.
To illustrate this concept, here's an exemple from one of the early trendsetters in Glitch, and then an eapplication of glitchy musicality into more soulful styles:
glitch Mob - Warrior Concerto:
_https://youtu.be/-lszdEZ0-74
Somehowart - Bewitched:
_https://youtu.be/71yW2MiB17U
Llusion the Reviver - Value Life
_https://llusionthereviver.bandcamp.com/track/value-life
I have many more examples, but this is already a lot, plus I am not at home and this phone has had memory wiped recently, so I cannot necessarily refer to the best titles I wished could illustrate my meaning (especially regarding rhythmical glitch use in chiptune). Nevertheless, I will leave you with a live performance from another 8bit artist I re
spect very much, which I hope will inspire you with what can be done - live, mind you!
Skipcloud - While She Sleeps
_https://youtu.be/rR2lItT_KtM
I recommend you keep working on that song. You already have a strong foundation set - what's left is to flesh it out. Hopefully you can find inspiration in what the masters of 8bit, Glitch and Chillhop have achieved. Blessings.
