Awws, I should've gotten myself posted earlier.
1. It takes me a lot of time to give thought-out comments, and I rarely have that lately. I can usually think of something more to say than "hey I like this cool" but processing that into actual sentences takes a ton of time for me.
2. I wonder if reviews could be made more profilic than just forum posts.. maybe counting them separately (not just posts count, but also review count, why not also "workshop comment" count.. would raise their profile). Not as much to reward people who do the reviews, but highlight the importance of the comments.
I often find a lot to criticize or comment on that the panel or writeup didn't cover, and I'm sure there's a lot that can be said about my posted pieces that hasn't been said already.
This probably isn't what you mean with "what is happening in the piece", but I really like to read "readings" of pieces, what they say or seem to mean to a particular listener. You don't have to understand music in a technical/theory level to do this, which is nice (though you have to be able to write about what you think or feel)
Of course, constructive feedback for a specific piece is most useful when the piece is in progress, but I find feedback after the song has been released very useful in a more general sense, where I can apply it to current work, or just get my bearings where I am going.
Maybe it matters that my rhythm when making things is very slow. I take a lot of time to finish a piece and finished pieces stay long with me, I like to listen to them a lot. So they're still within my "active knowledge" so to speak, and I can apply feedback on them to my current work too (this is also why I don't mind the long wait on the panel etc that much, personally).
Man, you should definitely not stop from commenting. You're not pushing your views to anyone. You're making your view available to them. It's their responsibility to handle that. And if you said something controversial perhaps, more people would hopefully join in on the discussion. It should only be a good thing, right? Self-discovery in a vacuum sounds like a bad idea!
I never get that. O_o
Haha, "evktalo" and "active", I've fooled you somehow. Now this timaeus222 guy, always posts good, helpful and thought-provoking stuff whenever I post a wip myself.
The mindset I've had when posting reviews (to finished or WIP pieces) is that it's an opportunity for me to learn. If I can articulate my thoughts and feelings about a piece, it'll improve my own music making. I'll also learn to listen better and closer, and I'll learn more about e.g. mixing, about which I definitely didn't have a clue about before coming to OCR and I've improved a lot in that regard. But I try to review other people's work so that I could improve myself, it's a selfish motive which I think makes it more honest - I'm not aiming to influence others (as much) but make making music clearer to myself.
I've been thinking that we should definitely have that December reviews thing, especially noticing that the newer mixposts need to catch up with the number of reviews. Let's do it!