SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Mad Castle]

Hi MOOOKS! Time for your VGMC II review! I have two main points of critique that should give you a good idea of what to work on next, then a set of things that I think you did particularly well and don't need to focus on improving right now.

Points of critique:

- This track's largest flaw currently is DEFINITELY the composition, so I'd like to take some time and focus on it specifically. Starting with the first portion, sounding like a type of "dance" theme, you may want to be somewhat careful with your meter. Many dances are set in groups of 3, using 3/4 time. You seem to lean into this at first, but then switch to 4/4 rather abruptly in each phrase. This has an unfortunate effect of making the piece feel almost "stuttery", like it can't quite make up its mind. For a dance section I would recommend sticking with 3/4 time as it has a very flowing sound emphasizing the start of each beat. If you listen to western classical waltz music, you'll actually notice this pattern in the bass, using a pattern of "down-up-up" for each measure to maintain a bouncing feel. You can build an entire piece around this!

- Next, let's look at the other aspect of your composition. A lot of your sections have an issue of seeming aimlessness. This isn't always present, but many sections such as 0:16-0:40 or 2:10-2:40 exemplify it fully. I think this actually doesn't stem from your melodic writing itself, but moreso your chord progressions. There are multiples ways to sketch out chord progressions, but you may be most interested in more standard western classical styles for that sweet sweet formula of "tension and release" letting you make dramatic flourishes in your music. You will want to know roman numeral notation for this (it's pretty simple if you don't know it, any basic music theory website should have it) - but [ I -> IV -> V -> I ] is essentially the formula that you can use, even using the I chord at the end to start the same thing again. Most classical chord progressions focus on this and just add extra chords between I and IV to embellish it and space out phrases. I would recommend trying to write your chords first and make sure they sound good, using classical theory or modern pop theory or just playing entirely by ear. Once you have that, you can start writing your melodies around it. Try making sure your melody includes one of the chord tones each time you play a chord, so that it still fits into your harmony. Using something like [ I -> IV -> V -> I ] will primarily be helpful for writing melodies that have a climactic point (the IV -> V) and conclude (V -> I) before a new melodic phrase continues.

Complimentary Compliments:

- I actually really dig the aesthetic of your instruments. It's super classic retro sound, reminds me a lot of 8-bit styled games. You also have some really nice themes despite aimlessness in others. Like, for example, at 1:00. That's wonderful! I'm glad you use it a lot too, actually - it provides a very lovely hook. Your arrangement in each section is also very nice overall, following a classic "ABA" type format. I think as you iron out more of the kinks in individual sections, you'll be able to make some pretty fantastic music (especially for retro games if you keep this aesthetic!)

MOOOKS responds:

Thanks for the advice, I recently started creating music and this is only my third composition. It made me realize that I might need to read up on some more music theory because my only music theory knowledge is a few years of playing classical music. I currently use Bosca Ceoil as my software so I'm basically stuck with the 80's retro aesthetic but I'm glad you enjoy it.

[From Heaven To Hell]

Hey there, DigitalProdigy! I know it's been quite awhile since VGMC II started, but it's time for a proper review of your track! Since you picked a three-parter, I'm going to be thinking of each section individually as a loop (as if it were in a game) as well as how they work together thematically. Overall, I'll be giving you two points of constructive criticism and one section where I point out things I think you did especially well.

Points of critique:

- To put it bluntly, these sections are very repetitive and drag on. This is especially noticeable in the second section as it simply stacks layers on the same repeating patterns for about 100 full seconds. The third section has a couple piano flourishes but is mainly straight quarter note chords, even in the most dramatic final section. However, your first section feels much less repetitive despite using the same chord progression and emphasis. There are two reasons why - first, it has two subsections which change the intensity while keeping the overall character of the section present. This would be very important during your "sleep" section, perhaps by lowering the intensity instead. Having an A and B subsection for each would help with making them loopable while also giving some contrast to not fatigue a listener. However, the second reason your first section works so well is how it has a type of melody to it: Four descending notes followed by three descending notes. Having a melody or 'motif' that you can develop through different situations and musical atmospheres will help tie everything together thematically while also providing something that most people will really be able to identify and focus on. Melodies are 'hooks' that keep listeners engaged, like a singular voice they can hear talking to them. This will help the repetitiveness and overall development of each section as well as the piece as a whole.

- Second and much more minor, let's have a listen to the sound design. First section is fantastic, no complaints there. The second section has some more issues, especially as a "sleeping" section. The guitar sounds are very crisp and forward, while the choirs pause every 6th guitar note. This gives the section much more of a driving feeling, especially with the constantly building set of sounds. While it is calmer than the other sections, it doesn't quite sound very "sleepy". Your third section depicting the dark and ruined castle has wonderful atmosphere at 3:12, but you may want to reign in the percussion a bit as it cuts through the atmosphere VERY sharply. It would also be good to pan the centered percussion some more as well as it sounds mono during those bits, but this isn't quite as important as making it less sharp.

Your compliments, friend:

- Okay, all that said. This captures the atmospheres VERY well despite my nitpicking on the sound design and critique of its repetition. I absolutely love that first section and would honestly love to hear it developed into a full piece on its own as a type of faux-medieval dance. Your mixing and overall levelling is also very nice and has minimal mud even in the more densely layered sections. I might have thought the guitar was a bit too crisp, but I absolutely adore the tone of that acoustic guitar. Excellent work!

DigitalProdigy responds:

thank you so much for that awesome review. I agree with everything you said and will make sure I implement all those suggestions in my future works. My mistake I made was not thinking to much of the music during gameplay, but maybe during cut scenes, or the beginning or the end of the game. Have I was thinking more of the music during gameplay I could have used some of those pointers in my music. But this project was fun to do and I would love to have a chance to do it again.
Again thank you so much for well thought out review!!

[Rolling Tanks FT. CRY HARD (pico day 2021) (updated)]

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:

- A big problem plaguing this track is the lack of any consistent key. At the very beginning, the alarm sound effect is out of tune with your chords. However, even after that, your synth arpeggios underneath the singing and chords are entirely out of tune with the chords. This happens for quite a bit more of the piece.

- Secondly, the mixing on this is rather poor as well. Many of your elements are buried underneath the raw waveform arps panned to opposite ears, including both the vocals and backing sound effects. I think a full mixing tutorial would be extremely helpful for you. But, regardless, essentially what you want to do is make sure instruments have their own frequency areas. Mids can be more dense, highs can be close together, and bass needs to essentially have only one or two instruments so it doesn't distort the rest of the waveform.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Man, I can clearly hear how hard you're trying for this. And honestly, the vibe with the drums and bass works pretty well. I think by enhancing the vocals a bit, while also quieting down those arpeggios and bringing them in key, you'll have a really tasteful track in full. I think you'll be able to bring everything together with a bit more work and experience in the future, for certain.

Final score: 5.8

ZRKA responds:

Thank you for the review, sorry I responded to this yesterday but felt like I didn't say what I wanted right so I deleted it but I really appreciate this, I will definitely work on the mix, this is not the final version by any means and I do have a little bit of a learning to do but this is my first time mixing something like this so I can definitely see where I need to do some improvements, thank you so much!

[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!

[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.

[W A R P E D]

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, this appears to be organized into a series of 8-measure hypermeasures with the same loop being repeated. It tends to be at least consonant aside from the rapid notes starting at 1:37. In this case, they become very disconnected from the chord progression. However... the larger issue here is really that this is 'speedcore' only insofar as there is a note on every single 16th note. I think perhaps you might find it useful to look up other speedcore tracks or Camellia's high bpm music for inspiration on how to keep this type of high bpm music engaging.

- Secondly, let's look more specifically at the sound design. First of all, each individual instrument doesn't vary in terms of volume. You can perhaps use a psytrance bass instead of filtered saw waves and similar in order to maintain a higher bpm bassline with this rhythm. However, using different rhythms to express more variable points of emphasis will help tremendously. The way the kick drum is used here is rather basic and could certainly be used along with a snare for tension and release.

Compliments to the Composer:

- At the same time, this DOES keep energy up throughout the whole track with the constant hits. I simply think that it could do so far more effectively and dynamically to create a piece of developing music. You can definitely improve from here and have plenty of your musical journey left to go!

Final score: 3

ThePhoenix25 responds:

Very much thank you for the criticism, i will continue my journey of a musician and improve my music. Good luck to the others!

[Complete Darkness (TGP ver.)]

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:

- Be careful with how intense your bass is! Notice how large your waveform is the whole way through. This is because your bass is VERY BIG from the beginning and all the way to the end, with essentially no variance. The kick's reverb also contributes to this, as it generally floods the lower frequencies with the main intense bass and causes other instruments to have their volume reduced unnecessarily. If you wanted to add more elements, it would be essentially impossible without fixing up the bass. This also gets very fatiguing to listen to over time due to the bass frequencies. Here's a comparison of another synthwave track: https://soundcloud.com/pong-man/gravitation In listening to this, you can hear how much room and space there is in the mix, due to the relatively minimal bass.

- Continuing to compare to Gravitation, notice how there are some main themes such as the delayed pluck with phasing used to maintain a steady evolving texture, along with a very clear and clean melody sticking out through the rest of the track. This is arrangement, and very important to keep your track memorable. In Gravitation, these elements are VERY present and immediately come to mind when listening to the piece again. Having something like that for this piece would improve it quite a bit.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Honestly, I do love synthwave. This does feel very synthwavey, and the drumline's high hat loop smashes. With some more interesting textures and clear melodies, this type of basis will let you make some pretty tasteful synthwave tracks! Analyzing other tracks like what you want to make will give you some good inspiration and ideas to use to great effect.

Final score: 6.5

TheGoldenProof responds:

You may not ever read this, because I'm sure almost everyone replies to their reviews, but I'll put my response anyway.

All criticism has been taken constructively, so I really hope this doesn't sound like I'm arguing back, because I have a tendency to do that.

First, the bass and the waveform: I really don't know much about mixing, just things I've heard here and there, but all of my techniques are self-discovered. One of the things I heard at some point was that a flatter, more consistent waveform sounds better. I used to have issues with this, and it was very obvious my lack of mixing. All of my songs sounded quiet, even if it got to the point the audio was clipping. Then, just recently, I figured out how to use compressors to make the audio fill the entire space and my songs sounded fuller. I have other synthwave songs, most incomplete, that have much more room in them but for this song I was going for a very full, high energy synthwave. This brings me to the bass. One of the first places I heard synthwave about a year or two ago was Carpenter Brut's "Turbo Killer". When I made this song, I hadn't listened to much synthwave. All I had to go on was the album I linked and what I could remember about Turbo Killer. I loved the sound of the super powerful heavy distorted bass, and its something I've been trying to recreate for a while now.

Next, the part about themes and memorable stuff: I had a hard time deciding what song to submit for this reason. This song is a remix of a song from a game, Touhou 2. The size of the Touhou fan base is absolutely massive (though not so much in america), and the amount of artists there are that have hundreds of songs that are solely remixes of the near-700 song ost probably outnumbers any other game fan base. And as such, to the listeners, a big part of the experience of listening to the song is to hear how far the original can be taken. So to an average listener, the song may lack something that sticks, some theme or something, but to someone who has heard many different versions of Complete Darkness, they would immediately feel the familiarity and memorability as soon as the recognized the melodies.

Thank you for the compliments. I'm leaving for college tomorrow, and I doubt that I'm going to have much time to make music over the next 9 months, but if I do, I'm glad to have these tips here.

[Ascend]

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:

- Honestly, the pitched notes here are all over the place while they sit on top of the looped bitcrush drums. I don't think there's too much specific critique I can give, because any individual point I can make won't really teach you what you need here. Instead, what I would highly recommend is to check out this textbook (it's not just dry, it's meant for you to read through and test out the things it describes): http://openmusictheory.com/contents.html Alternatively, I would highly recommend first looking up chord progressions and meter, as they'll provide the firmest foundation for you to start building music effectively. If you have an instrument like a guitar or melodica, you can also look up how to play those instruments and start getting a solid grounding in feeling out harmony and melody. As one last option, I would also highly suggest trying to listen to other pieces of music you like, and pick out the notes in the chords with really any instrument, as long as the pitch is clear. That will help you feel how harmonies and melodies are constructed.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I really appreciate the attempt here, and how you definitely have some sense of how to keep everything consonant. While the specific notes are a tad random, there aren't any dissonances that make this unpleasant to listen to - it simply isn't very developed, as it sounds like you've just started to make music. I want to make sure you know, too... it's worthwhile. Keep learning, keep listening, keep working on music. You'll find so much to appreciate in the music you listen to which you would never have even noticed otherwise!

Final score: 2

Taka responds:

I'm glad that I joined the competition and even tho I probably won't go to round two but I'm happy for the criticism I got out of it to help me grow. Thank you for that and happy judging :3