Please post reviews and thoughts on Senjutsu here

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Mega said:
I haven't listened to your edit, prowlergrig, but I did read the blog post, and it does seem that your edit is very aggressive.
This messes with the artist's original intent and comes off as disrespectful, especially in this environment.
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disrespect was never my intent. I just hoped people would appreciate an experiment.
If I were to make a fan edit of this album, I would shave off maybe 2-3 minutes of repetitions, but I'd never cut an idea completely out.
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let us know if you ever give it a shot, I'd love to see something like that

EDIT: Ok I did listen to your Time Machine edit. The cut into and out of Days of Future Past is EXTREMELY abrupt. It doesn't work at all in my opinion.
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yeahh that's probably not the best place to start. It's the one bit I'm still struggling with - structurally I like it, harmonically it doesn't fit but you get used to it, but the aspect that's always jarring is the difference in tone/mix between the two, which I can't do much about...

i'd say Celts or Senjutsu are nice examples of cheese/fat removal that, to me, improve the songs without significant drawbacks

Zare said:
Lazy because there is zero effort in taking a scissor tool in a freeware audio editor and just cutting out parts you don't like.
If these were tape days I'd give you a point for persistence, but it is too easy to cut out a part of the song today, there is no better word than lazy.
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i did a bit more than that, but you're obviously too upset to judge me fairly.

i did anticipate criticisms of my editing choices, what took me a bit by surprise was the opposition to the concept. There are a million posts on this forum where users nitpick or criticise certain aspects of every song. But taking the scissors to them is a bridge too far, heh

actually let me go on just a bit about artistic intention and all that. Everyone knows how this album was made: songs were written in the studio, sometimes learned and performed on the fly, and recorded in parts which were stitched together. I think most would agree that if Martin Birch (or the technical means of the 80s) were still around, a lot of the material would be edited out or not even recorded... which isn't necessarily a good thing - I like new Maiden! But let's not kid ourselves: these songs (with a couple of exceptions) did not come fully formed out of the minds of Harris and Smith, they're the products of band dynamics, in a studio, working on a deadline. If they had one more week to mess with it, it would've turned out different.

tldr: songs are not set in stone, bands edit and reinterpret them all the time, fans are not passive recipients of gifts from above, it's OK to ask "what if?"
 
RoundOnTheMill said:
Unfortunately still struggling with the album. Must admit that it has grown on me, but a little less than I had hoped for. Can agree that BOS has more highs and lows than SJ, but maybe those highs make the lows seem lower than they actually are...While revisiting BOS the last few days, it strikes me that it has so much more energy and inspiration. Well it's not the end of the world, the positive fact that the band is still around after all that time weighs more than the disappointment.
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I think that's a fair assessment and i share that opinion. Its solid and the lesser songs are better than the lesser songs on BOS but the stand out tracks on BOS (Empire, BOS, IESF) are better than the best tracks on Senjutsu imho
 
prowlergrig said:
[…] I think most would agree that if Mtldr: songs are not set in stone, bands edit and reinterpret them all the time, fans are not passive recipients of gifts from above, it's OK to ask "what if?"
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It is possible that the songs evolve when the band plays them live. Patience is no sin, I will wait for that and see if they do.

By the way, Bruce said that Steve had come to the studio with concepts for his songs ready and had been very afraid that someone might change something about them.
 
Christopher Baines said:
I must admit i agree. You can prefer one to the other but they are much of a muchness to be fair
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Yep, and I don't mean to single you out by replying to this post, but a lot of the discussion after my post has been caught up on TBOS v Senjutsu, so for clarity, I was merely using them as an example of two albums, I feel any pair of albums from the reunion era stacked against each other would still work for my point.
 
The music is what it is and should be taken as it is presented by those who created it imo. I find it strange why someone would take the time to edit some long songs and make them shorter and then say "yeah thats better." What do you do with a long movie you feel is stretched? Things are the way they are. Its like all the stuff on youtube, putting base on Metallicas And Justice For All. I find it kinda pathetic to be honest.
 
Patrick92 said:
The music is what it is and should be taken as it is presented by those who created it imo. I find it strange why someone would take the time to edit some long songs and make them shorter and then say "yeah thats better." What do you do with a long movie you feel is stretched? Things are the way they are. Its like all the stuff on youtube, putting base on Metallicas And Justice For All. I find it kinda pathetic to be honest.
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Not to mention it’s pretentious as hell
 
Patrick92 said:
putting base on Metallicas And Justice For All.
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This is not the case. Fan edits are arrogant because they change the arrangement with their own one, here where we're talking about different mix of original stems, it's purpose is exact and it doesn't have anything to do with the choices of the 'fan'. Here the purpose is to show off Newsted's playing and help out people who are trying to learn by ear.

If there weren't people ripping off stems and fans making various combo versions of the songs, you wouldn't have a chance to listen to this :

 
Iron Lurker said:
Not to mention it’s pretentious as hell
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Yeah, it truly is

Zare said:
This is not the case. Fan edits are arrogant because they change the arrangement with their own one, here where we're talking about different mix of original stems, it's purpose is exact and it doesn't have anything to do with the choices of the 'fan'. Here the purpose is to show off Newsted's playing and help out people who are trying to learn by ear.

If there weren't people ripping off stems and fans making various combo versions of the songs, you wouldn't have a chance to listen to this :

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Yeah that stuff is fun and cool to listen to. I was more thinking of people wanting to change the album from what it is. Changing the history of it
 
Zare said:
This is not the case. Fan edits are arrogant because they change the arrangement with their own one, here where we're talking about different mix of original stems, it's purpose is exact and it doesn't have anything to do with the choices of the 'fan'. Here the purpose is to show off Newsted's playing and help out people who are trying to learn by ear.
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It's not Newsted playing though, its some fan.

EDIT: any excuse to hear 2 Minutes to Midnight's rhythm track is great appreciated, metal's best.
 
I thought some of those songs are the original stems, taken from some game (Guitar Hero...). I forget which ones, I think Blackened is one of them.

Anyway, all of them sound like 10x better to me, even with some fan playing
 
Beholder, Harvester, To Live is to Die are missing, rest are in either Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
 
Christopher Baines said:
I think that's a fair assessment and i share that opinion. Its solid and the lesser songs are better than the lesser songs on BOS but the stand out tracks on BOS (Empire, BOS, IESF) are better than the best tracks on Senjutsu imho
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Thanks for your reaction. Actually what I meant to be saying was that I even find the lesser tracks on BOS sound more structured/inspired/energetic and less drawn out/monotonous than most of SJ. Surely it has some nice ideas and a couple of outstanding elements & parts (Steve's bass playing & Nicko's drums, Darkest Hour--Adrian) but few and far between. Will put it to rest and won't be complaining about it anymore as a lot of you out there are enjoying it so much. Looking forward to British Lion's live album now, really liked their first two albums ;)
 
Apologies if this one has already been posted:

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When Senjutsu came out, I played it a lot. Heavy rotation for a few weeks. But then I took a while (at least two or three weeks) and didn't play it at all. So now, I just gave it a fresh listen, and I notice that it doesn't seem so imposing. The three closing epics don't feel like "drowning in Harris riffs" anymore, now that my brain knows what to expect. The whole album flows better when I don't think of it as "new".
 
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