SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fragile]

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:

- Ooh this is gonna be fun. First things first! Let's talk about your vocals. They need more compression - at the moment, they sound really thin and generally just squished inside the rest of your instruments. Some compression would actually bring them out quite a bit more, perhaps with the barest touch of reverb and even a bit of excitation to make the top end sparkle. Sometimes I noticed your voice gets strained on particularly high and low notes. It might be worth doing some vocal exercises to improve your effective range, such as going up two octaves of a scale (with a piano for reference) and do some basic arpeggios up and down one octave chords in order to get more practiced with making your pitch switches. It's also totally fine to do a bit of touching up with autotune as long as you get the notes generally correct and more importantly, stable. You have a good amount of stability and pitch accuracy already though, so this is doing pretty good!

- You have your instrument organization down pretty well, but notice how the actual volume of your waveform remains consistent throughout the entire track. This shows a couple things - first, that it might be worth trying to vary the volume of your instruments a bit more so that some can be more background at different times, especially during the intro, outro, and breakdown. This is a really standard pop track (with interesting instruments, though!) so you'll generally be looking at this format: [Intro -> Verse -> Chorus -> Verse 2 -> Chorus -> Breakdown/Bridge -> Chorus -> Outro] You can also have another chorus or breakdown inserted in there too, but generally during your breakdowns you'll want to reduce the volume of your instruments or drop out all but one or two. Intros should introduce instruments step by step, and your first verse/chorus should also have one less instrument than the later ones, with your outro fading out or dropping instruments... even concluding your themes and ideas if you want to have a good one that's not just a really basic fadeout or cut.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I really wasn't expecting such a surprisingly clean pop song, with interesting instrumentation and generally just a really satisfying groove. The syncopation in your chords is tasty, your drumbeat grooves and has good variation, your vocals aren't actively bad even if they can be improved, you have a perfectly functional chord progression and alternate sections... I'd listen to this normally, especially if it were cleaned up a bit more and the vocals were nice. Really good job, man.

Final score: 8.3

[The Last Take Away]

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 issue with this track is generally the lack of 'hooks'. You have some tasty sound design and the steady kick works, but... we can take this to the next level for sure. This type of track clearly can use some chords and melodies to enhance it, but what it really lives off of is its bass design and drums, and particularly the rhythm. Here's a track that might work as a good point of comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLiQOdtBPs4 Note that it even has a steady four-on-the-floor kick like your track, but this steady simple rhythm is broken up by the syncopated rhythms. During the builds and the particularly bass-focused section after the melodic portion, the beat is consistently broken up with little bits of modulation that I like to call 'ear candy'. This keeps engagement throughout the section and makes it far more interesting. The rest of that game's soundtrack may be worth studying for you as well!

- Secondly, your mixing is VERY bass-heavy. There isn't anything wrong with this, but it might be best saved for the intense sections, reducing it during builds and during less intense sections to give the mix room to breathe and bring the track down to be darker and heavier specifically during your drops. Your sub-bass is also VERY intense and overall, the constant loudness and bass makes this track very tiring to listen to.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Hooo I love a lot of your bass design and the drum fills whne they do happen. That initial bass rumble has such a tasty feeling to it and I wish you had used it even more - it's like a bass massage for my ears with the lower mid growl. The waveshaped bass is also very tasty, even if it's used for a little too long at times. I'm curious what you would do with higher pitch instruments.

Final score: 6

[Little Spacecraft]

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:

- Please don't separate the stereo of your snare quite as much as you did - it sounds like you inverted one half of it in oZone as well, which just makes it sound very off. Drums tend to not be wide individually, but rather their width is achieved by having each drum panned left or right to give the whole drumset a wide feeling. Remember that individual drums produce sound from a singular point in space, rather than from two totally different spaces simultaneously! This actually impacts the overall sound of your track quite a bit and repeatedly pulls me out of just enjoying the solid drumbeats.

- Okay, common amateur producer issue time. Please reduce the amount of reverb you're using on your instruments and especially reduce their volume. Reverb makes each individual instrument sound good, and thick, and wide. However, remember that you're making a music piece where they all fit together. Individual instruments don't actually have to sound good when played alone, but instead they need to sound good when blended with other ones. When you have this much reverb (especially in more bassy frequencies), the mix suffers. Think of it like taking a picture and blurring every single line on it. It won't typically look as good unless the entire piece is based around that idea - most art with blurred textures uses it for specific things, like the background of a piece focused on a single character. Reverb in music is like blur in art. Excellent for ambiance, but not as much for the parts of your piece that need sharp focus like leads (try a delay instead!). Your instrument volumes are actually a simple fix: I'd simply recommend reducing all instruments by -10dB (to have headroom) before limiting your full track to -1.1dB (normal volume). That should be the final step of your mixing process, and I think it'll do some magic for you in terms of clarity and keeping the music from sounding overcompressed by mp3 conversion.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I love your slightly-awkward melodies, your sound palette is lovely, and you obviously have learned quite a bit about production. Your drum fills are good, all of the composition is just plain tasteful. Once you fix up the mixing, any continued composition issues should become more clear and easy to handle, and your overall music will absolutely sparkle. This is such a chill track.

Final score: 7.8

[En Dans Av Mørke]

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:

- Hoo boy. This track isn't badly mixed, but it has one BIG exception to that - the distorted electric guitar. That guitar is WAY too noisy and has far too much reverb. Notice how the waveform INSTANTLY explodes outwards whenever this instrument plays even a relatively quiet chord, and further how the details of its strumming are so muted. The volume is because of all the noise in the distortion (it sounds like you added a lot of raw noise to the signal so it sounds more distorted, but it's mixed so loudly that this can be painful to the ears) pumping it up more than it really needs. The reverb, on the other hand, masks the beginning of each note and makes it have less impact. It sounds like you're going for a 'wall of sound' approach, but even in other particularly intense tracks this doesn't drown everything else out. For reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8KjwP22x2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw3UygAi2oo Notice how these two tracks achieve their walls of sound - it's actually largely through really tightly mixed DRUMS. (also damn, Fleshgod Apocalypse's drummer is a god hahaha)

- The second major issue is clearly impacted in part by the guitar mixing problem. Especially during your most intense sections, there doesn't sound like there's much of any variation. The guitar is simply playing the same riff over and over again, and while I can sometimes hear other instruments coming in, I can barely tell because they're so drowned out. Even given that, too, listen to those two reference tracks. They show how variation, drum fills, and little additional guitar riffs are used to enhance the really intense sections. (Also, honestly, I'm psyched that I can use them as references for somebody in this contest!)

Compliments to the Composer:

- Underneath the distorted guitar and repeated riffs, you have some REALLY solid foundations, jeez. Varied instruments, the actual melodies and riffs aren't bad by any means, you know how to organize a track to have an interesting story, and have your chord progressions stay interesting too. Even with reverb on a lot of other instruments, it doesn't sound bad (though do be careful with reverb!), it only affects the distorted guitar really intensely. I'd love to hear what you come up with next!

Final score: 6.5

[other]

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 very puzzled as to why this piece is so quiet. It's perfectly fine to have calm ambient music, but most music tends to be mastered around -1dB, so that people don't have to change the volume of their device once it's set to something that works for them. I would highly recommend limiting the track to -1.1dB (so it doesn't exceed -1dB, limiters aren't perfect) as people can change their volume appropriately with the music.

- This track doesn't really develop. Now, ambient doesn't have to develop all that much, but it does tend to do some things. Even minimalist music evolves and changes over time with varying textures. Since you seem to be going with a more minimalist approach it might be worth checking those out. Here's an example to show you what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApnbymNz9dE It's a tad more intense than your track, but shows how sound washes in and out over time, making engaging textures that last over a full HOUR. Another example would be the music of Jani Rantanen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhNgQoAHbU

Compliments to the Composer:

- This has some really really nice ambience, and I actually adore good atmosphere in music. The pad patch you're using is soft, gentle, and seems to almost 'caress' my ears with its sound. That's actually part of why I think having it limited up to standard volume would be wonderful - there seems like there's a lot of detail in the sound that's lost, and I want to hear MORE of it because it's lovely. I would love to see how this piece develops over time if you plan to continue it.

Final score: 5

[Cs - 'EDM_2']

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:

- First things first, this track has way too much reverb. This is audible right from the first moment, and becomes much more apparent once the bass comes in. Generally, reverb dulls the impact of a sound, which is part of why the snare/clap seems far weaker. However, the bass and kick ESPECIALLY get hurt by the reverb, because of how bass frequencies work. They tend to be somewhat 'foundational' for audio, and also have a wider range of notes which sound dissonant with one another (high frequency notes have the lowest range of dissonance by comparison, since the hz values are further apart). However, bass frequencies also take up a large portion of sound and can distort higher frequencies significantly.

- Second things second, let's look at the levels and 'intensity curve' of your track. See how your waveform in the newgrounds player is a slightly spiky rectangle? This is because the overall dynamics of the piece are the same throughout it. Notice how the volume of most of your instruments stays exactly the same over time. Varying this with the intensity of the music is a good thing! It might also help to change the chord progression during the breakdown, commonly called the 'bridge' in most popular music (including dance). The most basic reason for this is that music without any variation - even music intended to be fairly repetitive - is fatiguing over time and starts losing listener interest when there aren't any hooks and breaks from the most intense, engaging sections.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Honestly, you have some really nice melodies in this and clearly know how to keep things in the same key. It's pretty satisfying, and I think with some better mixing especially, you'll be able to weave your melodies in and out through the music to keep things interesting and engaging for listeners. Good work, keep it up! <3

Final score: 5.5

[Beatdown (HARDCORE)]

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:

- Ow, my poor headphones. Okay, first things first. Please for the love of god turn down the volume. Use a limiter, reduce the levels outright, it doesn't even matter how at this point, just that it is not actively clipping all the time from how much you've pushed up the volume. Hardcore is a music genre, but it does NOT mean "turn up everything by 5dB". Mixing in general is based on reducing the volume of problem sounds, not raising up the volume of other sounds to match, as there's only so much information a waveform can fit. Note the clipping distortion on your drums at the moment your hypermeasures end and you transition into the next one such as at 1:18. Not only that, but importantly - doing this can actually damage your hearing and the hearing of listeners if you have the volume set too loud.

- Quite frankly, the volume is far and away the largest issue this track has, but while we're at it, here's one other thing to look at. A lot of this music is actually very repetitive - notice that for the vast majority of the time you have a constant high hat pattern and four-on-the-floor beat with minimal variation throughout almost the entire track. The melodic sections don't actually have much more variation to them. What might be a good idea is listening to an existing music track you really like by a published and/or professionally licensed musician, and listening to how frequently musical phrases are repeated. There's actually quite a bit more variation than you would think, even in dance, hardcore, and high bpm EDM in general.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I'm really impressed this came out of FL Studio Mobile. That thing is a pain in the butt to use, haha! While I think this repeats ideas a tad too much, you do actually have a good amount of ideas that you can pull from and it would work pretty decently if this track were about half the current length - even including a breakdown in the middle! I think you can definitely do well in the future, just make sure to keep your instrument levels a tad bit more in check.

Final score: 3

coolssh3 responds:

Oof... You know, I have been told that the volume is a bit of a problem by someone else. But in all honesty, I appreciate that you went through the trouble of typing this! I'm constantly looking for things to improve on.

[Mean]

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, I'm very puzzled. This piece is extremely dissonant, but it doesn't feel intentionally dissonant. At the same time, it seems as if it would be, since other music on your album doesn't have nearly as much dissonance and detuning as there is in this song. See, there are a couple problems keeping me from feeling like it's applied deliberately. First, most of the sound is very light detuning that mostly but not completely fits the chord progression, particularly in the vocals. This is very constant throughout the track but not entirely consistent unless the lower vocal harmony is present in which case it is almost always dissonant. If it was deliberate then... secondly, I don't see the context in which it has meaning - there isn't anything in the lyrics that would indicate why (assuming I'm not mishearing - I have difficulty understanding lyrics without having them written down for reference). What this results in is a lot of dissonance but without narrative purpose, which does mean that even if deliberate... it's causing the music to be off-putting without apparent narrative purpose, which is pretty important for establishing detuning like this as meaningful.

- Secondly! The biggest other issue with this track is the outro. The intro is wonderful, but the outro doesn't really conclude anything. It just finishes the vocal line and harmony, then without even concluding the chord progression, the music abruptly ends. This can be almost immediately made better by adding a final chord, perhaps on a delay to make it feel more conclusive while maintaining the existing cut. Using the first chord in the progression but one inversion down tends to be fairly conclusive. Experimenting with other ways to end the track would easily be possible as well, given the eclectic feel of this track.

Compliments to the Composer:

- I actually like this quite a bit. It's such an odd, almost campy feeling that I really vibe with. Without the odd dissonance or with some kind of narrative reason for it, this track would feel a lot better and we could get more into the nitty gritty of reverb and vocal tone - but even as-is, this is neat and chill and... weird, in some really nice ways. I'm curious how you would tweak it after this point, and I'm certainly curious what new music you'll come up with.

Final score: 6.5

[Molten Sugar REDUX]

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 is a weird song. It took a little bit to figure out how it could realistically be improved, but I think I got it. First things first, I love these arpeggios, but there really should probably be some more ideas than just the arpeggios, as neat as they are. You very much almost pull off the arpeggios being the main focus, but this track needs just a little bit more variation in ideas to really maintain interest, and the sound design doesn't quite reach it, as neat as it is.

- The transitions between your two chord progressions are REALLY jarring (0:38 and 2:58 each). See, the problem isn't that the chords change, but rather that there isn't any progression transitioning between them, and that they do NOT work with each other harmonically. It essentially sounds like the new tonality is just shoving the previous one out of the way unceremoniously, and that feels jarring and violent. Having a chord progression to transition between the two (and more progression in general) would help, or... simply leaving the transition out might actually be the best policy here. You could also use a slightly more similar chord progression with some dissonance but not quite this much.

Compliments to the Composer:

- This is seriously a weird fucking song, haha! Unironically, despite what I've been criticizing, I actually REALLY dig the vibe of this. The variation in sound design is neat, while it's a bit overly loud at times it isn't too bad, it even has a quiet section just after halfway into the piece, which is great. I more than happily listened to this on loop while writing this review, which says quite a bit of good about it! You did a really neat job and I'd love to hear more of your interesting ideas like this.

Final score: 7.8

[Neon Night]

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 has two common errors I see with amateur producers. The first of which is that you only really use one melody throughout the entire track. This is also the case with the chord progression. You do have very small amounts of variance, but the actual content and mood of them is the same. Specifically - they maintain the same notes on the same rhythms with added notes in them, and those all fall into the same chord progression. This feeling of sameness is enhanced by the lack of variety in your sound palette. It's all generally the same type of sound - constant four-on-the-floor beat, basic drums, sidechaining to each beat, same pad without much modulation, etc. It's all very... inoffensive - but at the same time, nothing particularly sticks out because of how similar all of it is.

- The second is some... very odd harmony. Specifically the chord progression at 0:08-0:11. This... is odd. Specifically, while this piece's style is based in classical western harmony, this chord progression doesn't quite work in that theory. See, western music styles are based on the idea of tension and release. In chord progressions, the most basic form of this is V -> I (something like a G major chord to a C major chord). This doesn't happen with your chord progression, and it's noticeable in how actively awkward it ends up sounding. The major problem with this in your piece is that this is the conclusion of your chord progression - it causes your melody to do some very weird things and fail to feel conclusive, or really even achieve much of a point of 'arrival'. What I would highly recommend doing is looking into chord progressions in music theory, and perhaps tracing out the chord progressions of some of your favorite songs, recreating the harmony with your own midi instruments to see how they do it.

Compliments to the Composer:

- This track is honestly pretty solid. Aside from the chord kerfluffle and some of the monotony, it's generally very nice and chill. In fact, the monotony isn't actually that major an issue - it's just a result of the factors I stated in that piece of criticism. Otherwise, this is really nice and easy on the ears, feels decent to listen to, and isn't even mixed all that badly. I think once you tweak a bit of your chord progressions and add a B section that changes up your chords and melody, you'll have some really solid little tracks on your hands, even more than this is already!

Final score: 5.5

CatConet responds:

Thank :3