Down By The Sea by Erwin de Ruiter, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Review by Roy Elkins

Love the opening of this Erwin de Ruiter Folk Pop song, sounds a little eastern European in herea as well. Love the Folk strings and kick drum intro. Vocalist enters at 11 seconds and is fantastic. A little reminiscent of John Denver. It opens with the hook, “Down By The Sea.” I love the line, “These calm waves soothe my burning soul.” Very thought provoking and melody works well with the lyric.

Choruses and verses are engaging and strong. This is an interesting song as I think the verses and choruses are almost interchangeable. With slight production tweaks, they could easily reverse roles. This means the writer probably has a couple of different hooks working at the same time.

Down By The Sea by Erwin de Ruiter

Generally, when a singer sings harmonies over or under their lead vocal, it doesn’t do much for me. Even when it’s technically accurate, most of the time it doesn’t work. In Down By The Sea, the singer pulled it off. In this case, the producer and engineer really did a great job. I understand that this is probably a personal taste comment and others may not hear it the same way.

If it was my song, this is what I would experiment with:

The words “washed him ashore” in the second verse seem forced into a space they don’t really fit. I think the vocalist could re-phrase this and make it work a little better.

Build the bridge a little more. The melody and instrumentation of the bridge is such that maybe the first line is a capella, and then another voice and instrument in the second line and so on. That’s where I thought it was going as soon as it began, but it really didn’t build like I expected it too.

I wish I would have played in this session as it sounds like the performers had a blast doing this song. It really comes through in the mix. Great instrumentation and performances.

Great work! I love this piece and thanks for giving me the opportunity to review it. Down By The Sea by Erwin de Ruiter

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