SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Timekeeper]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Very nice subtlety throughout this.
-You always have really good gradual buildups. I'd love to see you try to make ambient music slowly layering it - I think that actually would fit your style a lot.
-Excellent little touch at 2:20.

Points of Improvement:
-This piece is very... step-by-step. I know it's meant to be about time, and ticking and stuff, but. In all seriousness, you really need to play around with less lock-stepped melodies. Syncopation is a wonderful tool for complexity and for gaining interest. A suggestion for this piece - try leaving the ticking 'timepiece' noise as keeping the solid metronome feel going, and use the strings and other background with more syncopation for a more interesting background.
-Shockingly, there's a fair amount of mud around 3 minutes in when the climax happens. I'm sure you're surprised that I'm commenting on this. Too much choir and strings, too loud, too layered making mud.

7/10

[Battle In The Halls]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved. ***I DO NOT REVIEW LYRICS, JUST THE MUSIC***

Points of Goodness:
-That vocal processing, man. That's good. Same for the guitar.
-Excellent guitar noodling for the chords.
-Overall feel of the song is solid.

Points of Improvement:
-The growling quality of the vocals does get tiring after awhile.
-The mixing of the guitar solo and off-key sound of it really hurts that section for me - particularly when the rest of it is relatively on point.
-Ending did not feel like an ending. Definitely needs a bit more conclusion to it.
-The song seems too long and too stagnant overall. It seems stretched out further than it really needed for the ideas it contains.

7.4/10

[Codename: Tom Selleck (NGADM '17)]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Your mix is pretty darn good throughout this whole thing, which is excellent.
-The triplets around 2 minutes in are a great touch.

Points of Improvement:
-Okay, I know there's something more than thrashing in here, but the song is almost all thrashing. Throttling the guitar is fun, I'm sure, but some more finesse-focused sections would be excellent as well.
-So overall, this song just doesn't give one's ears a break. It's basically just "WALL OF DISTORTION" the whole way through. Try having a calmer breakdown in the middle - there's a reason nearly every single popular song ever has one.
-Ending leaves a lot to be desired, but mainly due to the song being a flat line of loudness.
-There isn't really much in the way of memorable melody here, or any particularly memorable moments.

6.6/10

[Mi Pasion]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Your instrument selection is wonderful, and holy crap it's a salsa. Yaaaaay!
-Also, that intro was awesome - that could have been made into its own song.
-Your rhythms and rhythmic playing is wonderful.

Points of Improvement:
-Darnit, you really really need to improve the realism of those trumpets. The ideas with them are great, but the actual samples are not there yet - try tweaking them a bit for some extra grace notes and adjusting velocities (or have round robin samples) so notes don't sound identical when repeated.
-Okay, this REALLY needs a midsection. Best thing would have been to have a midsection that goes back to the piano for a bit.
-Sadly, this starts feeling very very repetitive. It's not that the composition is bad, the feel of the music and use of the instruments is very repetitive overall.

7/10

[Last Will]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of goodness:
-Your intro and breakdown in the middle are great.
-The introduction to the guitar at 3:10 was wonderful, I really would have loved it turning into a full-on solo at that point. In fact, that would have been a great way to extend the length of the piece.
-Your overall mix is pretty darn solid.

Points of Improvement:
-The third chime note in your initial progression has some bad dissonance in it which is disruptive.
-I think you can put a better instrument in around 0:30 for a lead into the guitar.
-Phaser bit at 0:50 goes on for slightly too long imo.
-Snare mix is slightly too sharp, try to tone it back just a little bit. (though I appreciate that it's clear, most people fail miserably in metal)
-You don't really need the chimes in the background around 2:30, they seem to muddy the mix up and reduce the impact of the hits.
-This whole song could really use some countermelodies and more variation in the melodies when it's using it as the main theme - I'd love some more development in each section. The ideas have run out of their impact and run their course about a minute and a half before the end.

7.5/10

[The Afterlust]

Man. This contest was terrible timing for me to hear a song like this one. Relationship issues in my life at the same time, uff. Oh well.

Let's go!

Points of goodness:
- Very nice clear mix throughout the piece (with some minor mud at the climax).
- The drums have an extremely good tone.
- Overall, very nice themes and good organization for a pop-styled song, it works quite well and changes atmosphere through it.
- I know you play your instruments live - even if it's only most of them, or even just the singing in this, it sounds excellent and very live.

Points of Improvement:
- The piano doing constant chords throughout the piece gets quite tiring and really diminishes the atmosphere of the song.
- Overall composition thing: I think this piece really needs a good breakdown where you build it back up. I've commented on this kind of thing with other people before, but. Nearly *every* popular and good piece has at least one B section which breaks things down - rather than just getting more intense when it's already intense. Ramping the whole piece can fatigue listeners quite a bit.
- Honestly, the biggest issue with this whole piece, and the thing keeping it from taking the last step into high 9 territory, is that it really doesn't show that much technical expertise or uniqueness in its style. So, what I mean by that is that it doesn't really have anything that jumps out and makes me go "ok, that's definitely a song that Finn wrote". As for compositional skill, I would love to see a few more countermelodies or content that develops your melodies and ideas in a silghtly different direction. Something that sounds almost like the piece reflecting on itself and what it does - seeing what else you can explore.

Final score: 9.2

Excellent. Just needs a few final steps, and you got this contest in the bag.

FinnMK responds:

Ah, apologies on the terrible timing :p

Yes, all the instruments are live. The only synthetic thing is the little reversed cymbal near the beginning.

Good advice on all accounts! Thanks for the feedback.

[Endowment]

Ectisity - Endowment

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Really nice orchestral intro, good vocals.
-2:50 is a good mix of orchestral and electronic! Nice!
-The ascending notes at 5:10 are great, along with the drums.

Points of Improvement:
-First thing that strikes me and continues through the whole thing - this song isn't mastered that well at all. This *really* needs some compession to make it a stable and clear volume. (never thought I'd be saying that I'll tell ye wot)
-The snares are pretty poor.
-2:29 what in the hell happened here what. Okay, so, I hear what you intended to do, but what happened was switching out the instruments - NOT melding the style for a transition.
-Similarly, the transition at 4:50 was great until 4:57 where it just suddenly threw itself headfirst into the electronic again. I think it would have been better without the silence that.
-Your electronic sections are really suffering from poor mixing. They desperately need compression to solidify the mix there. This also hits the final climax bit very hard.

In the end, the mastering and transitions missed the mark very hard, which is what brought this piece down so much. You can do it!

5.5/10

EctiBot responds:

Thanks for the review :). I wanted to have sudden and surprising transitions in this, something which has become used a lot by EDM artists lately. Personally I feel like a drop has more impact that way. Agree that it's still too sudden of a change though, I should probably have looked at other possibilities. The mastering and mix is weak, I really wish I had the time to work more on it before I submitted it, but sadly I had to travel :(.

Thanks for the feedback Skye :)

[Got shot.]

significantly better than what most people upload first

Adjeye responds:

Significantly more honest than the rest of the first reviews I got

[Rise]

Hey dude, I finally got a moment to leave a review here (helps that I'm going to judge the ngadm too).

I don't have enough time to really leave too much detail, but here are some tips I'd primarily give:
- More stuff like the synth that comes in around 0:30. That's a great sound, and introduces things quite well. More development and variation with it would be a really neat touch.
- Your weak spot is your mixing still, unfortunately. Srsly dude, you gotta spend some time focusing on mixing or have someone do your final mixdown for you if you don't have time to. If you're working on it yourself, primary things I'd suggest would be (a) reducing mid frequencies especially on strings. They don't need to always be massively full, especially when everything else is sharing the same frequencies. Check a spectrometer to see the strongest overlap and reduce it until there's not as much overlap. Otherwise, make sure you don't have excessively strong reverb, try putting EQ before and after it to filter out naughty frequencies that don't do well.
-Endings. I think this one ended a bit too abruptly.

Those are the biggest things that stick out to me immediately. Pretty good piece. Good luck if you make it into the NGADM!

[Calm Craggy Area (Onefin Remix)]

So, I was inspiration for this, huh? Better give it a really good, solid review then! I won't be too excessively verbose as is my MO, but it certainly will include a lot of detail.

Good stuff:
- Phenomenal intro. Your atmosphere here is on point. Percussion is great, arps are great, backing pad is great too.
- Tempo increase for the start fits well, especially with the fresh percussion. It really brings the intro into the next section.
- Speaking of that next section, one thing that I really latched onto was the syncopated keyboard chord hits in the background. They're really solid but smooth, very good.
- Nice chord shift at 1:37, it fits well and provides some excellent contrast.
- Great piano at 1:45, too. I like the background notes from the same keyboard instrument in the last section. (at least, that's what it sounds like)
- Really neat percussion around the 2:20 mark.
- Great background stuff around 3:20, I seriously need to study your reversed synthy stuff.
- 3:42 is a really really nice transition to the main melody. I recognize it clearly. The chord shifts here are stellar too. Very underwater feel, which I like a lot.
- Piano outro is indeed wonderful. I do like, very much! Particularly the final bit around 5:30 for the 'true ending'. That was well done, nicely played.

Not as good stuff:
- I think the synth at 1:54 comes in too harshly. I think it would have been better more in the background. Similarly, sudden transition at 2:00. I think even a bit of low-frequency rumbling with a filter sweep upwards would have fit there.
- You can bring your low bass frequencies out more if you compress them well. Give it a shot! :)
- Pad sidechaining at 2:00 through 2:28 is way too harsh, dude. Put a cap on it.
- Very strange transition at 2:36 with some weird reverb percussion in the section after it. I'm not sure what to think of it, but at the very least I think the transition could have been done better. Maybe. I don't know, it moves to something VERY different.
- Similar criticism around 3:18, though less so. I think the bit in between these two transitions could have been a bit more similar to the rest of the piece. *just a bit*
- 4:05 to 4:18 smells a bit too much like arpeggiator for my liking. This could definitely have had better arpeggios, this sounds a bit too much like random notes.
- Criticism of 2:00 to 2:28 comes back at 4:42. It actually fits in before that with the build to the higher intensity.

So. It was good, as evidenced by my review score and my normal scoring curve of a pretty damn even distribution from 0 to 5. I think it had a few bits that could definitely have been better, but the parts that were good were phenomenal. I really, really like this and I love the direction I'm hearing you go in.

Glad I helped inspire such a piece, as it still earns a vote of 5 and a download from me. :)

Onefin responds:

Hey, Skye! Thanks for dropping by :)

I'm going to hit a bunch of the "not as good stuff" here because frankly

- I agree, I agree. Wasn't too sure how to go about fixing that synth; I think I stopped production on that section prematurely, which is why a lot of the transitioning crap sucks. Especially since that particular synth just cuts.
- To bring out the lows, I usually use fast distortion followed by a high cut. Haven't really tried compression yet, mostly because I don't really know how to use compression (other than presets, of course) :/
- Note: don't go overboard on the chords
- So there's a section in the original piece that just dives into chromatics and whole tone stuff, so that's what 2:36 was :/ It's a pretty big jump to get there, so I tried a whole tone scale in the piano to get there. It's just really, really different.
- And then the section after the whole tone stuff is not whole tone stuff. Thus, same problem I guess.
- That's funny, the 4:05-4:18 arp comes straight from the original thing. It's the melody in a section of the piece, although it goes a lot slower (twice as slow, actually) and has actual distinguished chords behind it. Each of those notes is a direct transcription of that melody in the original piece, which is also all eighth notes.
- Of course it does :P I think of all the sections, the 4:05-4:18 one is the most empty and least developed. Perhaps I should have spent more time refining it, but it did sort of seem like random notes and I had a hard time touching them.

And what the heck how about the good stuff:
- Awesome
- A lot of people tell me they hate the tempo changes. This further complicates the issue, because I have an equal lot of people telling me they like the tempo changes. I'll stick with what I like
- Note: syncopated hits = good
- It's not the same, unfortunately, but close enough
- That's the same loop as the one in the intro, chopped differently
- Literally you just take a riff, record it, and play it backwards. Slap a bunch of reverb on it and maybe some delay and bam, you got a texture for free.
- Awesome (that's actually funny because I was asking one of my friends for good album art suggestions and he mistook this particular dungeon bgm for an underwater one)
- AWESOME (true ending? heh) I really gotta thank Gareth Coker for rekindling my interest in the III chord :P did you think it was played? heh