SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Mad, Mad, Mad]

FinnMK - Mad, Mad, Mad:

The Good:
-Your singing is definitely more audible in this piece, which is fantastic! There are a lot of extra vocal flairs sprinkled throughout which make this even better. It takes the vocals you had in your last piece and pulls them to the proper next level.
-Great introduction to the main themes throughout this. Everything is clearly laid out, and clearly recognizable. It even has some really nice harmonies at the start which you can feel later in the piece too.
-All of the instruments being live is a huge bonus once again - excellent!
-I almost didn't notice the pitch shift at the end. That step up is a wonderful flair and extremely well-executed (which most aren't).
-Your mixing is *almost* perfect in this piece. That's awesome - it's really hard to get a spot-on mix, and you're as close as people can really be.
-Excellent intro and outro.

The Not-So-Good:
-More vocal suggestion: It's a bit buried in this piece. Try displaying it a little bit more if the lyrics are any kind of focus in this piece (which it seems they are).
-The little drum rhythm at the start of the piece after the first mads seems to be a little bit too complex, actually. If the piece were rhythmically focused, it would make a bit more sense. But... it really isn't rhythmic at all - it has very simple rhythms throughout aside from that one bit. I see where you're going and I like it, I just think that it could be improved with a few tweaks to make it easier to follow on the first three or four listens.

The Result: 9.7/10
Clearly the highlight of the pieces this round, I have to say. This piece took literally everything I had heard from you before and pushed it further, which is exactly what the final round of a contest should be. Fantastic! Clearly I need to follow you musically and see what you come up with next.

FinnMK responds:

Thanks so much for the kind comments Skye. I've received a couple comments about the volume of the vocals. Several months ago I had them all too loud and now I've got them too quiet! Hopefully this means I can find an in-between ground.
Thanks for noticing the key shift! I happened upon a really smooth way to pull of the transition and I was curious to see if people would notice.

The rest is all good advice too. Always improving, improving...

[/Ultraviolet Dreams\]

EverReverb - /Ultraviolet Dreams\:

The Good:
-This actually has some really awesome ideas throughout it. I particularly like the arpeggios and filtered chords.
-All of your instruments are clearly audible (except a few), which is wonderful. They're also very fitting instruments which work well together in general.

The Not-So-Good:
-It's a loop. It's not a full song.
-There isn't really any variation throughout the loop. The melodies change, but that's about it - there aren't really much of any chord progression changes, the general mood stays the same, and I'm pretty sure the drum pattern hasn't changed at all.
-The thunderclaps and filter sweep SFX in the background are pretty much entirely buried throughout. You may want to consider removing them as they don't add much to the piece other than extra unnecessary noise. The same goes for the background arpeggiated acid synth.

The Result: 6.8/10
Okay. Everything here is good. Keep doing it. Just... do it with more variation and in a full piece instead of a loop please. <3

AED4 responds:

I agree with you on everything except the last point. I did try leaving the acid and especially the thunder out, but for me at least there was a noticeable difference. Though, that could be my ears getting used to the song in production stage.

But yeah, in retrospect there's lots of stuff I'd want to do better, especially those drum patterns you mentioned, and way more variation overall.

[Freeman]

Demon-Wolf - Freeman:

The Good:
-Very nice drum glitching in the beginning, particularly with the tambourine.
-Quite good mixing throughout, I don't hear any parts that stand out painfully or just too much in general.

The Not-So-Good:
-So, there's only one thing that really bothers me about this whole thing. It doesn't do anything. It has the bass and background pad - and the development can be described with just about 5-6 words: "now it has/doesn't have drums" In your second round piece, there were some significantly improved factors such as arpeggios, background ear candy, and overall more progression. This one doesn't, which makes a huge difference.

The Result: 6.4/10
Overall, I think there's a simple description that goes over the whole piece - it's a halfway finished piece. Half of the elements are there, but the other half aren't. Once it gets that other half, you should be good to go!

[End Times]

Daveisgr81 - End Times:

The Good:
-Good organization - very nice return to the first theme at the end and a very solid midsection!
-Your guitar skills are quite high, I have to say - you're really good at writing for it and playing it. I may have to commission you for some guitar work at some point, who knows?
-Your mixing is very good - it has no distortion that I can hear (aside from the deliberate guitar amping, obviously) consistently throughout the piece.
-It has a good ending! That's unfortunately rarer than I'd like - so I'm glad to hear it here!

The Not-So-Good:
-The middle section of the piece doesn't seem to have quite as consistent of an idea as the beginning and end of the piece.
-While this is well-mixed, it seems like the overall piece is just a tad bit weak. A lot of the guitars in the middle seem fairly thin, frequency-wise. I think that you could still retain your solid mix while widening their frequency range a bit and giving them a bit (or a lot) more meat. tl;dr add some bass frequencies

The Result: 8.4/10
This piece is very well-written, very well-performed, and concludes quite nicely. The thin mix is quite honestly the only issue. While I understand that avoiding distortion is important, this kind of weak mix causes the whole thing to be understated and just kinda boring in the end. That said - this has phenomenal foundations, and I'm going to have to keep up with your music in the future as I want to see how far you go!

Daveisgr81 responds:

Yes, the guitars were a pain to record!.. So I know what you mean.

Thanks for the review!

You should check out some of my other music and my website! I work a lot for other types of ensemble as a composer, guitarist, and editor.

[Pacifist]

AeronMusic - Pacifist:

The Good:
-You have some really awesome rhythmic ideas and they sound quite good in a lot of places.
-Your overall composition is fairly good - there's a solid beginning, two climaxes with a breakdown... it fits a very good curve of musical tension.
-The pitch bends sound really neat in the middle.

The Not-So-Good:
-There are some mixing issues around the climaxes - quite honestly, there's just *too much* happening at once. Try reducing a few of the background instruments or layering less drums simultaneously. Another thing that can help is reducing all of your instruments to about 80% volume or so, prior to the final mixdown and mastering. That helps with levelling balance and leaves plenty of headroom for mastering.
-Your melodies could definitely have a bit of improvement - they seem a bit aimless and could really improve from some direction being added to them. They aren't necessarily bad though, they just don't seem like they have a particular point to them.
-The ending is pretty abrupt and doesn't conclude the piece very well. It sounds almost like the end of the pattern happened and you just decided to not write any more.
-Ok, there is one thing which is the absolute largest issue here. The instruments are all really aggressive, high-frequency, and... well, they're honestly somewhat painful to listen to for more than about a minute to two minutes. The biggest instrument that's a problem here is the plucking noise that has the rise in the beginning and starts doing a rhythmic theme at 0:26.

The Result: 6.2/10
To be perfectly honest, this piece is fine. The biggest area it suffers in is the instrumentation. I think that based on your skill and musical ability, you would be able to make a much better piece with a musical palatte that has less instruments with such a high frequency. You have the foundation, and that's the important part!

[Tidelocked]

adieuwinter - Tidelocked:

The Good:
-This piece has some really neat ambiance which sounds fantastic, particularly towards the beginning.
-This has some really good organization - it shows the main climax multiple times with a solid breakdown.

The Not-So-Good:
-One of my main issues with this piece is in the singing. It sounds flat. While I know it's been overused recently in a lot of commercial music, I'd highly recommend using some autotuning to fix up the pitch a bit.
-The mixing in the climaxes has a large issue of just plain too much stuff going on - especially in the second section with the piano where there is extremely obvious clipping and distortion from this. Try taking a step back and considering what you want people to hear rather than a wall of sounds. You might also want to try reducing all of the instruments by about 20% and then doing your mixing and mastering after that. Even with a lot of instruments, I find that has helped me a ton with final clarity of my mixes.
-Apologies in advance - a lot of the themes and ideas in this, particularly in the piano, seem like they are random bashing of a keyboard in the general chord progression that the piece has.

The Result: 6/10

[Veva]

1nf1n1ty - Veva:

The Good:
-The effect processing of this is off the charts. There's a ton of background ear candy which is absolutely fantastic.
-Around 1:36, this song reminds me a ton of an artist called Chrome Sparks - if you haven't heard them, LISTEN TO THEM. They're fantastic... which says what I think about this section here.
-Excellent tempo adjusting around 2:45. It makes for a fantastic transition to the end.
-The reversed arpeggios around 1 minute onwards are absolutely wonderful. They sound quite beautiful and make for a very unique texture.

The Not-So-Good:
-In the middle climactic section, there are a few mixing blips which could be improved. There's a bit *too* much going on. Try reducing the db level of all your instruments to around 80% prior to the final mixdown and master.
-It seems like there's a little bit too much ear candy throughout this. Even if you want this much, try having fewer samples in the piece as SFX.
-As an overall organization suggestion, I might suggest having a smaller climax earlier in the piece, or extending the piece by about a minute or so to have a final climax (even if it's a smaller one for the end of the piece). That would help conclude it slightly better, not that the ending in this is poor.

The Result: 8.8/10
This piece clearly has a lot of work into it. It's good. The comments for improvements are really all I can think of - not much else to say. I think that you have a very refined style, but you can improve it quite a bit from here too, which is awesome!

Onefin responds:

Hey! Decided to take a walk back through here and noticed I never left something in response.

That's a bit odd, as well, because of all of the judges who could have examined my work, I was the most excited about hearing your opinions. I feel like a lot of your work is in the same sort of vein as part of what I was trying to accomplish in this piece.

Anyway, let's have a look. I listened to some stuff by Chrome Sparks and I definitely liked what I heard, although I didn't end up seeing an explicit connection. I remember making those reverse arps - I was all like, "Let's try rendering this melody into a wav file lul" and then I ended up speeding it up and playing it backwards somehow :P

Mixing is always an issue with me in the climactic sections of my music. I do basically no final mixdown or mastering with any of my music because in my experience, anything I try to do just doesn't end up sounding good. And it seems in my efforts to include a ton of ear candy, I included too much :P

TL said the same thing about the organization, which I had originally planned for, but the sections didn't quite end up how they were originally meant to be.

Hey, thanks for such a kind review! Especially coming from you, the praise is appreciated, and the criticism appreciated as well. <3

[IV]

Sup! It's been awhile since I've reviewed your music, and I saw this came out. So, why not?

THE GOOD:
-Excellent arpeggios at the start, and a fantastic intro overall in general.
-Good percussion and excellent use of background instruments.
-Good progression with the shift to a darker idea around 1:40, particularly with the tempo changes shortly afterwards.
-Your bitcrushing and FX processing is actually quite fantastic.

THE NOT-AS-GOOD:
-The singing is excellent, but the solo voice seems a bit out of place for this music (if not your music in general). I think part of it is that it feels very weak here. It also has some mixing issues towards the end of the track.
-Overall composition organization-wise, this might have benefited from a harkening back to the beginning arps towards the end.
-The arpeggios at around 0:43 seem to be dissonant and out of tune with the rest of the piece at that point, though it's a background issue.
-2:12 seems like an awkward transition, though I get that it would be a hard transition to make considering the different chord progressions and moods. I just think it could have been done better there is all! :)

THE RESULT: 9.7/10
A fantastic medley, good sir. Your music never fails to impress. As always, I could only find smaller nitpicky issues in the piece. A good solid download for most anyone, particularly people who like metroid.

Take care, man!

Step responds:

Hey Skye! I almost forgot how much I enjoy your review.

I'm happy with all the good stuff you mentioned, but especially pleased that you like the FX processing. It's a big deal coming from someone who morphs sounds like playdough hahaha. I definitely had a lot of fun playing around with the synths here. Passing them through guitar amp distortion gave some of them some really nice grit.

I'm gonna swap to a blow-by-blow format for the criticisms because I have something to say for each of them.

"-The singing is excellent, but the solo voice seems a bit out of place for this music"

I know what you mean. It's something Darren (the singer) and I both agree on. I think he definitely did a great job on the vocals here, but even he was a bit disappointed that he didn't sing with more power. These are actually a separate set of takes that you hear in the song; the first set came out a bit too weak and he redid everything. They're better now, but I agree that the singing style could be a bit more powerful.

"-Overall composition organization-wise, this might have benefited from a harkening back to the beginning arps towards the end."

That was actually the original plan, but I had such a hard time transitioning from the first half to the second half that I had no idea how on earth I could smoothly get it back to the first half haha.

"-The arpeggios at around 0:43 seem to be dissonant and out of tune with the rest of the piece at that point, though it's a background issue."

Hm... possibly. Come to think of it I am hearing a few weird major 2nd clashes between the arpeggios and the melody. However, those arpeggios and chords are copied pretty much verbatim from the original track, so I think that dissonance is probably present in the original track too! Might check it out properly.

"-2:12 seems like an awkward transition, though I get that it would be a hard transition to make considering the different chord progressions and moods. I just think it could have been done better there is all! :)"

Argh, 2:12. You're not the first to point it out. I didn't know what else I could do to smoothly transition those two sections. They're in a different key, different time signature, different chord progression, and different mood :(. I figured that the buildup would accumulate a bunch of tension which I could then release with the bit at 2:12, which would justify the transition, but I definitely agree it's not smooth.

Anyhow, it was great getting a review from you again! Thanks a million for dropping by.

[Silent Hours]

Hello hello! As I've done before, full disclosure: I'm very blunt in my reviews, please don't take offense to things, I don't mean to be cruel or mean - just very clear and simple to understand without sugarcoating. The not-as-good section will also be longer than the good section, if only because I have more to say for how to improve there. Thanks!

THE GOOD:
-This has a very nice lo-fi feel to it overall. Lo-fi and peaceful dnb is fairly rare, and it's very appreciated.
-There's a good and solid progression of climaxes and breakdowns. The flow may be much more even than most pieces, but it's audibly there.
-The instruments you have are used well.
-While it could use some improvement, you have a pretty decent ending.
-Your mastering is actually pretty good.
-I like the little background sfx that you have. It's very subtle and much appreciated.

THE NOT-AS-GOOD:
-Starting with the smaller things, I would say that your mastering can use a little bit more in the high end from a lot of your instruments. Try reducing all instrument channels to roughly 80% of their normal volume to leave plenty of headroom for mixing and mastering. It helps a surprisingly large amount.
-Your ending can use some conclusiveness to it. While your filtering reduced the impact, it still sounds very much like you simply stopped repeating the patterns that were going. A simple way to improve this would be to have the lowpass filter go entirely to 0, so that the sound fully fades out. A better way to do it would be to have some kind of compositional technique to conclude your ideas.
=There isn't really a melody. There are arpeggios, and a few riffs which are decent, but no actual melody for the piece that I can put my finger on. This actually makes the piece fairly forgettable, which isn't a good thing.
-Now for the elephant in the room. You used the instruments well, but the instruments themselves are, well... garbage. First things first, your kick drum needs more of a thump and shouldn't have as much reverb. The high click of the kick is also fairly low-quality as well, particularly for a dnb song (even a lo-fi one). The snare is better and works in this instance, but still feels a bit weak. The biggest problem are the instruments around 0:48, which I will address separately.
-0:48 onward is the biggest issue with the piece. It has too much reverb, which makes the mix muddy. The instruments are fairly indistinct here as well due to their overlap in frequencies. I would try to have fewer instruments here in general, but have them used to flesh out the mix more evenly. The bass is a problem in its own right, as it is extremely muddy on its own, and better suited to longer held bass notes. That would improve this section significantly on its own.

THE RESULT: 5.5/10
So, this piece is pretty decent in some respects, and falls flat in others. The instruments were not very good, but the concept and the usage of them is generally quite good. I'm sorry if the last section of the not-so-good portion seems harsh, but there isn't too much of a way to clearly say it more nicely. In the end, though - instruments can be fixed. Your basic ideas and skill at using your instruments can't be improved nearly as easily, and those are solid. You have a great foundation to make future music, so go for it!

Hallow responds:

Blunt reviews are great because it means I actually know what I need to fix. And the not-so-good section should be longer, as you have to be specific :P
I'll probably ask a few more questions; if you can PM me the answers, that would be greatly appreciated.

Glad you like the peaceful feel to it. That was exactly what I was going for.
Good to know I had a decent progression - the drop was very different and I was slightly worried about how it fit in.
The background percussion was something I spent quite a lot of time working on, and I'm happy with it as well.

I actually turned down the high end on a few instruments to make a bit more room for the lead and percussion - thanks for pointing out that it was one of my mastering issues. I'll make sure to use those tips as well.
In regard to the ending, I was trying to add a little final showcase of the percussion. Maybe the lowpass didn't fade out quite quickly enough - I did have it go to zero, but not until the end of the phrase.
I tried to make the main melody - being the one near the start and end - as memorable as possible, so it's disappointing to hear that it didn't work... I decided against using it at the drop because I didn't want the piece to feel repetitive.
This was my first go at synthesizing percussion, so I'm not too surprised that it didn't work. How should I bring out the thump in the kick more? Also, what frequency ranges should the clicks for the kick be in? I wasn't very happy with the kick in general, so I'd love to know how I can make it better. Does the snare just need a bit more noise? I tried to make it a bit more of a note but I may have overdone that a bit.
I tried to get the mud out somewhat when mastering, but I guess it didn't really work. I had taken a suggestion to add more reverb to a lot of it, so I probably just needed to work harder to get out the mud for those instruments; meanwhile, I wasn't very happy with the bass but just tried to get it to work. I think it was a pretty hard key to be working in in terms of the bass, as I found myself stuck between the kick and the mud zone.

It's fine that you were a bit harsh - it helps me understand what's wrong.
General questions - which instruments in particular (besides the bass) could have been improved, and how? What do you recommend in terms of adding reverb (how much, on what, etc.)?

In the end, this piece was really all about improving. I was pretty sure I wouldn't make it through, so I'm really happy to have all of this feedback now, and I'll be able to make better music in the future, as you said.

[Glide Reflection]

Easily one of the most unique pieces out there, certainly for this contest. I'll spare you my usual disclosure because you know me, I'm blunt, please don't be oversensitive and offended, ok thanks.

THE GOOD:
-Holy fuck all the arps. That is really awesome. Their chord progression is impressive as always.
-Your general originality and odd-ness pretty much is worth a point all to itself.
-The background noises and progressions are incredible. General sound quality and instrument quality is top-notch.
-Please for the love of god teach me how you do your foley processing to make percussion and stuff. You always have the most impressive instrument/noise processing I've heard for music.

THE NOT-AS-GOOD:
-Really, this piece just suffers in one thing. Composition. The arps are great, but they have very little variation in the end - mainly background and not any kind of melodic progression. There is very little melody, and sadly precious little difference between each of the A sections and B sections. Uniqueness alone only works the first time, sadly - when repeated it loses its effect greatly.

THE RESULT: 7.5/10
I mean, what can I say? There's not really much to - it has absolutely fantastic everything... except composition. Unique composition, but not fantastic. This is also one of the things your music has suffered the most from in general, unfortunately. I think that your song Rain/River/84/415/8 is one of the best written pieces in this respect - it has more significantly evolving differences in sound as well as multiple different distinct sections, whereas in this piece the differences are mostly background. The background differences are important too, but something in the foreground is also important!

secantwave responds:

I have to say, hearing what you have to say about originality and oddness, along with the other "this is weird, but cool" types of feedback I tend to get on Newgrounds, is a wonderful compliment -- it's great to know that I'm managing to convey what I love about this sort of music, odd though it may be.

I'm also super flattered by what you said about my sound processing. It's often just a matter of messing around with ideas without necessarily knowing how they might sound, and then whenever something has potential, listening to it over and over again and fine-tuning the parameters. (In this piece in particular, I discovered the Klank generator in Supercollider, which makes for some neat resonance effects.) If you ever want to talk more about it or want to know how I made something, let me know--it's a major passion of mine.

In general, I tend to focus more on sounds and patterns than melody when making music, and I'm heavily influenced by artists like Autechre and Monolake for whom melody plays less of a role. So in a time-limited competition, composition is often the first thing to fall by the wayside. That said, I was actually pretty pleased with the variation between sections of this piece (in my mind, the arpeggios _were_ the melodic progression)--the aspect I thought felt incomplete was the transitions, which nobody seems to have brought up. Regardless, there definitely could have been more variety in the last section.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoy my music (it was a pleasant surprise to see "impressive as always", given that I don't think you've reviewed anything else of mine), and I'll definitely continue to work on composition in the future.