SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adventure]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- The biggest problem with this track is... it has one chord progression and arpeggiation of that. This is, so far, a foundation. It could be improved quite a bit more with some additional harmonies or chord substitutions to start, but what it could really use is a melody or two. I think you might actually get some solid inspiration from another musician on this website: Papkee. His music has phenomenal melodies that keep his works engaging even when they're relatively repetitive.

- As a smaller thing, please master your track to -1.0dB when you limit it. It won't destroy your dynamics if you don't try to add too much makeup gain, and it will make sure your quieter details are audible, allowing you to add some background harmonic lines.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Your instrument development is quite nice, and creates a lovely dynamic curve over the course of the piece. Even at the end, the transition back to quiet is perfectly reasonable for a piece with one climax. I do think with some melody and even one alternate chord progression or variation in the chords, you'll take your next step up in cinematic composing and do far better in the future.

Final score: 7

[Grilled Cheese]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- You can definitely develop this a lot more and faster than what you already did in the beginning. Right now, it sits on the same bassline and only adds slightly more in the way of drums and one set of chords that then repeats for two hypermeasures before any melody comes in. It's really tempting to do this type of thing to pad out the length of music, but the actual development itself suffers as a result. Quite frankly, the melody could have come in on the third hypermeasure with the chords rather than the fifth. This then does continue on with no further development and only more chords, with the same melody playing afterwards. This could absolutely have used a break midway through with a different chord progression and perhaps even chord substitutions within the main chord progression to keep it varied before changing everything up.

- Secondly, let's look at this melody. It appears to essentially just be one arpeggio up, one arpeggio down, and a single note with one note of anticipation beforehand. It's lovely, but really doesn't do very much. Why not add a countermelody, or extend the melody with more variation until it matches the same length as the hypermeasure? This takes the previously-mentioned repetition issue and pushes it much further.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Really, this is mixed pretty tastefully. I love the bassline and do have a soft spot for simple two-chord progressions. Mainly, I want MORE of it in different forms than the same thing. The melody is sweet and the synth used for it is quite effective and floaty, really contrasting the bass and snappy little drum loop underneath. Again, I just want MORE because its already very good. I think you can develop things far further and you'll have some really nice chillout funk music on your hands.

Final score: 8.3

[Monochromatic Rhythm]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Hooo, okay, if this is electro swing, I think there's one thing you are definitely missing here. Electro bass. Those electro swing tracks don't just live off the swing and steady beat, but a really tasty, growly swing bass. Try out some saw wave based basses with some good waveshaping distortion and a bit of a filter to keep it from interrupting your mids too much. You can slap that in there with a syncopated rhythm and a sidechain to the kick drum, and you will have yourself a MUCH more groovy track near-instantly. Don't forget to have some (not much, but some) sub-bass to thicken it up as well.

- Whether or not you do add a more driving bassline, this needs to be mastered better. Your instruments honestly ALL sound rather squished and quiet, without as much impact as they should have. Try reducing your instruments by about 8-10dB and make sure they're leveled appropriately compared to each other... then put a limiter on with a threshhold of -1.1dB. You'll be able to bring up ALL your instruments, make them really feel filled out, while even keeping your leveling and mixing work intact.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Man. I love electro swing, as soon as I heard this start I was hyped for what would come out. Happily, I think I can say that you did a really good job. There are still some compositional things in transitions which you can work on, but I want this to have so much more SLAP because I can almost feel it even without that groove really pumping into my ear holes. You have great melodies and the piano almost sounds honkytonk, which is a really tasteful touch.

Final score: 9

[Perilous]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- I'm actually entirely unsure why you didn't just have this in 7/4 right at the start for the first half of your riff. This riff works fantastically for that, and it actually feels even more disorienting to have the eighth beat right at the end of that riff. Outside of the beginning, it fits... but also makes me quite sad that the extra spice wasn't added.

- During the section of 1:48-2:22, it seems like your singing can't quite decide between screamo vocals and melodic vocals. This causes a really disorienting effect where it ends up sounding like a worse version in both respects, since each singing type is pretty diametrically opposed in character and musical function.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Yeah, okay, I think it's obvious based on my critique points that this is a fantastic djent track. While I think some of that extra spice would have pushed it just that little bit further to be a truly unique piece, everything of this strikes pretty damn hard. You have solid breakdowns and calmer sections, arranged everything appropriately, used multiple themes and developed them throughout the track, and... man, when your song started the quality was already obvious. I was really looking forward to a banger of a metal track, and you killed it. Really looking forward to your continued tracks.

Final score: 9.8 - (Top score of my reviewed tracks!)

PseudoSignal responds:

Thanks so much for the score man! And thanks for the criticism as well. Having listened back, I kinda wish I'd played with 7/4 for the intro riff now haha. Looking forward to putting together another banger for you guys :)

[Trading Sunlight]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Okay, those drums at 0:34 are super tasteful, but please do be careful with how hard you've limited the track. Notice how much of a spike there is when your drums come in, showing how much more intense they are compared to everything else. Please make sure you've limited your instruments and given their volumes decent relativity. This type of varying intensity can potentially hurt the ears of people who aren't ready for it, and the ducking of other instruments under the drums seems like they're being distorted and the ducking isn't fully intentional through sidechaining or similar.

- Each of your 'drops' is very simplistic, simply continuing the chord progression without adding anything to it but additional instruments playing the same thing. Even towards the end, when the pads are added, it doesn't add that much. In particular, the pad has some odd dissonances around 4:00 when the pad's release causes each chord to bleed into the subsequent chord.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I absolutely love the sound design of this work. It actually reminds me of a particular favorite track I have from Newgrounds, here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/272432 I think you could perhaps take inspiration from this track to play with things like different time signatures, or varying drum rhythms. Either of these would be excellent, even if you don't add a melody or anything.

Final score: 7.5

Viraxor responds:

Thank you very much for the detailed review! I appreciate it!

[Anguish]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- So, you have some very lovely orchestral samples... but only a chord progression and arpeggios supporting it. A melody would actually work very phenomenally to lend some support, especially to contrast the intense bass design in this track. Notably, there also isn't a very good build to prepare for the sheer intensity of these drops. You seem to be doing a type of reversed drop in which you LOWER the intensity prior to the actual drop, but this mainly works if the relative volumes aren't too drastic. In this case, the very small volume automation as a type of 'reverse' sound before the drop is far from enough to build into it, and this causes the impact to be a bit too much. Perhaps try to master them a little more quietly, and add a smidge more of a build or some snappy percussion to make it POP after it goes silent.

- Speaking of the drops, you may also want to bring back some of your first drop to your second. Using different types of bass modulation and sound design is good, but it's also good to have a type of hook in it to remind your listener of the first drop and how good it was before. I also would say that the high frequency and repetitive noise of the second drop is actually less engaging and intense than the first drop's, making this even more relevant.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Honestly, your mixing is pretty damn solid to make everything audible through all the noise, and the orchestral samples are quite fantastic. While there could definitely be more content and some variation in chord progression or development of your dynamic curve, this is engaging and solid sound design overall, and you could very easily tweak this to make it an even more engaging piece.

Final score: 9

[AIM Rooster's Return]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Oh, this vocal tone is so lovely. It actually makes me sad because it's so quiet relative to everything else. I would HIGHLY recommend mixing the vocals slightly louder, so that they're audible over the rest of the music. One thing that can help this is by reducing all your instruments by roughly -10dB before limiting to -1.0dB, so that you can raise up the vocals without needing to raise it above the current well-mastered instruments.

- The first section does get a tad repetitive despite trade-off between the harmonies and vocal chops. Regardless of lyrical changes, it would be phenomenal to even have something like small melodic solos for variation and additional expression to break up the similar harmonies.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I... This track is great. There's not much more I really even want to critique here. The sound design is unique, the lyrics are fresh, the general vibe is just... different. I REALLY like this, and quite honestly will gladly add this to my music library. I greatly look forwards to seeing and hearing what new works you'll come up with in the future!

Final score: 9.7 (Congrats, you're in my top three!)

vermeen responds:

o.o omg, mixing has always been my bane, so the fact that it scores that much despite the flaws is honestly so motivating.
i'll keep in mind all what i could've improved upon. whether or not i make it through the rest of the competition, i'll do my best, this will be such a great learning experience for me! thank you so much!

[Jordi]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Really, one of the biggest things this track needs is SOME difference to the chord progression and melody. The fact that they remain the same the whole time tends to make the track get old very quickly. The changes between instruments are fairly minor, so they don't provide that much variation. You can have a secondary chord progression with a different melody for a B section in advance of your drop bringing back the main theme, speaking of which...

- The dynamics and sound development honestly don't do anything. You can master the track quite a bit louder without distortion. Try using a limiter with a threshhold of -1.0dB, then raising the makeup gain until a bit before you hear any distortion. Secondly, however, the drop doesn't actualy do anything. It would work far more if you had a raise in dynamics here by adding more bass-heavy kicks rather than maintaining the same type of hip-hop percussion. You can also add a bit more bass and perhaps use some filtered supersaw pads to enhance the impact of the drop as well.

Compliments to the Composer:

- The piano chords are actually lovely, and the bell synth fits them very nicely. Your lead into the drop also felt like you were preparing for a much more intensive drop. I think you have a good sense of harmony and melody, and once you've worked on arrangement you'll have some very satisfying music. It might even be worth looking into more hip-hop inspired rhythms for your backing tracks rather than working quite as much on making something into trance!

Final score: 6.5

V1ZION responds:

Hey, thanks for your review. I know the melody is the same throughout and the drop is a bit underwhelming. There are still a lot of things I have to work on as I’m growing. I haven’t put bass in a lot of my tracks, but I’ve heard it’s something really essential when making one, so I will surely look into adding some bass when I’m making a new song. Thanks for the compliments; I really appreciate them. I will take all of this into consideration, and I will definitely use bass in my songs more often.

[Good Trip]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- This track is really satisfying to listen to, but it doesn't have any change to the chord progression until 3:36. Given there's essentially no melody, it's really important to have this be reasonably varied. A clearer melodic theme or use of more vocals as 'hooks' would also help enhance this song and make it more memorable. You can also use sound design, but that doesn't tend to be quite as effective or used as frequently in synthwave music.

- Honestly, only other minor critique I have is that this could be mastered to -1dB to give more dynamic space for finer details in the audio to be audible.

Compliments to the Composer:

- This grooves real hard, has a balanced decent mix, and the vocal samples really add to the vibe a lot. The little sound of an audio tape being taken out at the end is great too, haha. Very solid effort, I look forward to seeing more tracks of yours!

Final score: 8.3

[BACKWOODS 3 OST- Just Noise]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Okay, the biggest piece of criticism I have for this track is definitely the repetition. At around 0:36, the bassline starts repeating and doesn't stop for the entire rest of the track. Quite honestly, once it reaches the 0:36 mark, it seems like you ran out of ideas. The only changes are adding the same drum loop back in or turning it off until 2:24, but this doesn't really change much about the character of the track.

- Otherwise, the second issue I'd like to point out is how overblown the mixing is here. Especially towards the start, everything can get to be a little too much when all put together. Try making sure that your bass and kick aren't interrupting each other too much by EQing them in a way to give them different frequency bands.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Legitimately, while this gets repetitive and has some mixing errors... that first section up until 0:36 is REALLY tight. It feels super satisfying and really works effectively as a type of drum & bass breakbeat. With some more distinct sections and a calmer section to really contrast the intense breakbeat, you would take this and make it a real banger.

Final score: 4