SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Road To Happiness]

Oh man, this one. I actually had a tricky time judging this.
Also, full disclosure: I can be a bit dry and blunt in my reviewing on occasion. I don't have any ill will or anything towards you and I'm not trying to be mean, just trying to be straightforward about how I scored things. :) Oh, also, the "not-so-good" list will be far larger in volume of writing at minimum, just because I have more things to say about things that can be improved, such as how and why.

THE GOOD:
-Right, so. You got massive bonus points for acoustic instruments, not gonna lie there. You were one of the few people who used them, and you used them to great effect.
-Excellent mastering for the most part, with some minor caveats.
-Very nice placement of your instruments overall. They were used to great effect.
-You have some fantastic drum fills in the second half - as someone who used to do percussion work in a marching band and helped with other bands, I appreciate this to a huge degree.
-Horns. Guitar and piano are fairly common in music, but... horns? Not really. That's actually quite huge.

THE NOT-SO-GOOD: Just three main things here, really - not actually all that much.
-Let's tackle composition first. It's probably the smallest and most forgivable thing, actually. This is just that your music is fairly linear. It goes up progressively until about 2/3 to 3/4 through, then goes down a bit at the end and stops, with a single breakdown at about 3 minutes in. This is kinda weird as you have a decent 4-minute length, but if you're going to make it this long I would recommend having a bit more of a first climax to establish yourself and a breakdown closer to the middle instead of near the end.
-Second main thing kinda ties into the third but not perfectly so I'll address it separately. Your mastering needs some work. Mainly, your sounds are competing for space, particularly in the higher frequencies. Their sounds start to muddle together and get a bit fuzzy, so some detail is lost. If you let the instruments breathe, you can have them be far more expressive - this is important in climax sections. One thing I would recommend is reducing their volumes until they're all at 80% or lower before doing final mastering. I've found that lets them all have decent headroom to balance out in that final step. ...on a slightly related note, your song doesn't have much bass. It's not necessary, but you might want to lower the bassline a little bit so that you can fill up some of those lower frequencies.
-Final thing is kinda funny considering I'm personally not the best at it. Singing and intonation. I could not really listen to your lyrics (not that I factor the poetry part of a song into a music review, but even so) because there were some flaws in the intonation. These are actually EXTREMELY common flaws, so please don't feel bad about them. Mainly, a lot of your singing has a similar tone and consonants aren't pronounced. Generally with singing clearly, you need to enunciate things like Ts, Cs, and... well, S more strongly. The "k" sound can become indistinct with "S" and "T". It's not as important with regular speech and solo vocal practice, but becomes far more important with other distracting instruments - those sounds need to be spot-on or they can become indistinct and messy with mixing.

THE RESULT: 8/10
This song is solid. It really is. The flaws that are pointed out are not song-breaking and don't harm it to a huge degree. There is one thing that's more intangible bringing it down, though - it needs... more. It's hard to say exactly what more it needs, but a big part is that this isn't being scored just for normal listening, it's for a contest. As a normal song, it's top-notch. As a contest piece, it doesn't showcase your skill and flexibility as a musician in being expressive over larger scales. I guess it mainly just needs more unique, standout features that show you can do more than normal - that's what transforms a really good musician and piece into a fantastic one, particularly for a contest. :)

FinnMK responds:

Thanks a bunch for the very useful review! All good points. It's really nice to get a critical outsider's eye. I won't comment on all of your notes individually, but suffice it to say I agree on pretty much 100% of them. I'll keep it all in mind for the next round.

[Walk]

Hello! So, full disclosure: I can be a bit dry and blunt in my reviewing on occasion. I don't have any ill will or anything towards you and I'm not trying to be mean, just trying to be straightforward about how I scored things. :) Oh, also, the "not-so-good" list will be far larger in volume of writing at minimum, just because I have more things to say about things that can be improved, such as how and why.

THE GOOD:
-Really nice arpeggios in the background!
-You have a really neat kick and good percussion in the beginning - it's quite fitting and does very well. Pretty rockin' bassline too.
-Very nice background fx in the breakdown at 2:40 and especially more towards 3:30-4:00.
-Excellent transition back into the melody at 4:00. I like the background pads, though I wish they were a bit more present rather than pushed back so far in the mix.
-Beautiful section at 5:10. Those plucked chords are fantastic.
-Points for bitcrushed ending.
-Excellent general composition structure all around - it has good buildups, good places to breakdown, and doesn't overstay its welcome in any particular section. This is a surprisingly difficult thing to get right, so great job here!

THE NOT-SO-GOOD:
-The initial sound wash right at the start sounds a bit like it's clipping - could use a bit better of mastering there.
-The chopped-up vocals are cool, but they need to be de-essed or have some reining in of the high frequencies. The hissing gets a bit too loud (though I know it can be a bit hard to balance a good hissing sound with the volume).
-The distorted sound at around 0:30 is neat, but somewhat painful. This is largely due to the ringing reverb. I'd suggest turning up the diffusion so that it's less like a delay, at the very least. I might also suggest a different distorted instrument doing octave jumps instead.
-About 1:05, it really didn't need to take out the arpeggios. I think that you could have developed them a little bit more, as they fill out the lower mid end of the mix. Similarly, at this point, the mids where the distorted sound mentioned before... well, they're full. The distorted sound doesn't work very well there.
-About 1:50 is where the flaws in the percussion start showing - your kick and hats are fine, it's mainly your snares that are pretty poor in my opinion.
-Your synths also start showing their basic and lower-quality origins around 1:50. This is generally ok, but in such a fleshed-out song as this, I generally try to have a good mix of a few things: Have some simpler sounds for your basic bass and leads, but have some more complex ones for backgrounds. At the very least, let them vary a little bit more in their basic forms.
-2:40 could use a bit more than the pumping bassline in my opinion - it stays bare just a bit too long. Interestingly enough, it's also too short of a breakdown. The breakdown at 3:30 is far better, though the bassline issue comes back VERY strongly.
-I think johnfn would back me up on this one - your melody is pretty... aimless. Often it feels like it isn't going anywhere in particular, but that the notes are strung together and called a melody. Melodies need some kind of direction that they're working towards.
-Not-points for very repetitive ending.

THE RESULT: 6/10
This is honestly a pretty damn good song, all things considered. It has all of the basic elements down, but mainly fails in terms of sound quality, levelling, and some more specific compositional tweaks.

[The Prodigal]

THE BASTION IS ALL OVER THIS.

I loved the Bastion soundtrack. Shit, I would be all over doing a collaboration and putting some neat synth/dnb stuff over banjo/acoustic guitar noodling.

Please.

pls.

In other news, I think you just made one of my favorite NGADM songs. The only thing this needs is slightly more solid mixing, though that's also possibly because of the kick drum being a bit too bleh - not enough highs.

Also then I heard the section where it picks up. Oh man, yes - this is easily one of my favorite pieces of the NGADM - for certain this year. It literally *just* needs some more polished mixing/mastering. The distortion and mud is heavy, especially as it gets louder in the later section. Sadly. :( There's the only half-star I'm taking off.

bassfiddlejones responds:

Will have to check out the Bastion, haven't heard of it! Not sure what you mean about distortion/mud, I think the mix is actually pretty clear :) Glad you liked the piece man, will have to see if I can convince my buddy to record some banjo once we get some free time.

[~Fore~ In The Depths]

I thought this was pretty decently cool when I started listening to it, and then that drum fill and the awesome bass hit, and I was pretty blown away. I would love to hear this develop more.

I doubt this will win, but if it were developed more this would be a pretty damn serious contender.

obvious flaw is obvious: It's not done.

[Can't Be (ft. Popushi)]

Man, this has some cool stuff and the midsection from about 1:18 to 2:16 is pretty awesome.

But dear god what were you thinking with the bass, kick, and sidechaining. The other stuff was cool but that literally butchered all the main sections. Listening with high quality headphones is okay, but on speakers it literally shreds all the sound and makes it sound like a complete mess.

I think this could be really improved by removing some of the background echo of the lead synths, reigning in the kick a little bit (or at least giving it a bit more of a bass presence when it hits rather than the quick bruises it leaves). ...and the sidechain shredding of the sound really hurts it badly.

That said cool solos, ok voice, and all-around decently high-end production for newgrounds music.

except the solo stuff was done like twice in your other music

What happened to the really cool stuff in your rounds 1 and 3 :(

midimachine responds:

this *is* really cool and ur a dumb

real talk: i appreciate that the throbbing sidechain and donks aren't for everyone. if there's such a marked discrepancy between headphones and speakers tho that's kinda weird and i don't want to blame the config on your end but tbh "literally shreds the sound" is not something i noticed in the car, monitors, computer speaker, phone speaker, earbuds, or high quality headphones. maybe you just emphatically hate donks? :v

also why does it matter how many times i've done solos so far? rhetorical question, it doesn't :P

tl;dr waah it was a stylistic choice ur da worst reviewer ever <3

[BVYS N GVRLZ]

So this is cool. Honestly, when I first heard it I was like "well shit, I'll have to put in some much more serious effort this round to actually win". There are great solos, and the drums are cool. Also the bass is pretty sweet.

You're a good musician. Honestly, the biggest things I think to improve would be the voices, which sound pretty low quality - lowering the pitch of the same vocal sample has always sounded pretty bad to me, though.

I like the syncing of the chord hits and the melody. It's a pretty cool effect.

Good ending, too.

Honestly, this is a pretty solid song with some decent melodic content, a nice solo, and a neat breakdown with some nice use of drum machine samples. Overall, not really much of any complaints. Great job!

midimachine responds:

cheers man! i'm hype af about the voice sample melody thing in all music nowadays; i blame pc music and vaporwave :P

[Vanquish the Night]

My, that's a lot of reverb at the start. That explosion is totally the end of a sample of a big impact with a timpani reversed and then played forward, isn't it. I used to do the same exact thing all the time. :P You might want to take the second of higher noise.

I'll focus on the time signature changes because I don't know the exact sound of different keys by ear. Just how they sound relative to each other.

0:00 - 4/4.
0:39 - 5/4 followed by two measures of 4/4 or a 5/4 and a 3/4. You dick. I knew you were going to pull some stuff like that the instant I saw you did time signature changes. It's easy to count because of the constant high hat, though.
0:50 goes back to 4/4 for a second.
0:56 back to the 5/4 plus 3/4 combination thing.
1:06 - 4/4, and it stays like this for awhile.
2:17 - ...fuck, hang on. Give me a minute. That's either 3/4 or three measures of 4/4 in a row. Also holy shit that guitar.
2:27 is two measures of 4/4, which is a change if it was 3/4 before.
2:31 back to whatever 2:17 is.
2:37 is the same as 2:27.
2:40 again the 2:17 thing. Can I just say at this point that this section is easily one of the most badass parts of this song. Like, by far. Flamenco-style guitar is INSANE.
2:45 is again the 2:27 thing, and then the section ends. :(
2:52 is the 7/8 section, OR STACKED 6/8 TO 4/4. But I'm pretty sure you meant that as 7/8 unless there's a more obvious one later.
3:03 is back to 4/4, and fairly obviously because it's the same melody. Later it turns into triplets, which are *not* 6/8 unless you say that you changed the tempo to just perfectly fit triplet form of your 4/4. But I doubt that. Or at least I did until I fully counted 4:10 which is not actually 6/8 either and the piece stays at 4/4 until the end.

I really, really hope that you didn't mean for triplets to be 6/8. I really. Really. Really hope not. ...also 3/4 is 6/8 just with an emphasis on quarter notes instead of eighth notes and so it has a slower feel.

Anyway, other technical stuff. It's ironic, all of the orchestral brass is what sounds the most fake. That and the explosion effect at the start. Everything else is great. Also, I'm not sure what your main melodic theme is in this. It sounds like there are about four you intended to be the themes, but then only appear once in any kind of thematic fashion.

Whatever. It's still an awesome piece. Period.

bassfiddlejones responds:

Skye! Thanks for taking the time, I still owe you a review (I promise it's coming!). You were right about time sigs for the most part. 2:17 is 6/8 with breaks of 4/4. (and yes, triplets and 6/8 are very different, haha. the part you're referring to is in 4/4)

Glad you liked the piece man, hope you'll enjoy the rest of what we put out for this thing!

[Threnody for Innocence]

Making a track with real meaning, that you love and care about making, is what makes a track good.

I plan to write about this in the future, but IMO that's what makes pieces truly great - you can have a track which isn't the best production-wise, but it can be made with the love and care of the artist, and that makes it wonderful.

Some tracks have this quality, while others don't - this one has that feeling. I probably wouldn't talk about this if you hadn't said this track had a lot of meaning. At this point it reminds me a lot of Trois' tracks, albeit with better mixing than the ones from her first time in the NGADM (...sorry, Trois, but it's true ;_;). They were full of emotion just like this, and while some people apparently can't feel this kind of emotion put into a track - it was very clear to me and quite a few other people I spoke to, that they did.

By the way, your piano doesn't sound that bad. It's just the strings, which sound like they're one sample transposed across an entire soundfont. I've a suggestion for you - add a gradual attack to the instrument if you can, so that the lower the note the greater attack it has. That way it will only be the loud notes that come in instantly, and the quieter ones will slide in more naturally.

Other than that, this is very well-written in its technicalities. I can hear the recurring ideas among all the emotion. The dream truly does not end - rest assured that your emotion and caring that you put into this piece was not in vain.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Cool! I wasn't expecting a review from you right now, so it's a lovely surprise to get a review from one of the very best reviewers on the site! :D

I really like the track you uploaded for this round too. I plan to go back and review several of my favorites from the competition once it's over (pretty sure it will be for us after this round, because Cadmus's track is great), and your latest track is definitely on the list, and already among my favorites :)
Almost tempted to take up that melody challenge too, but I think I'll skip that, hehhe.

And yes. No track speaks to me as much as a track that has a real meaning and intention behind it, especially not if it is played with emotion. That is why I always tend to love the works of Phonometrologist.

I couldn't agree more that the honest feeling that the composer(s) put into the piece, is what really makes a track great. That said, the production is of course an important aspect as well.

It's wonderful to read that it shines through that this track has that meaning behind it, so I'm very glad you mentioned it in your review.
Trois makes some really good stuff, so it's nice to be compared to her. I'm glad that the mixing is okay too, even if I did it in a hurry. You see, the intention was for this to be produced by dem0lecule, who also composed most of the strings (even if I tweaked them to fit in the whole). But he thought it was due monday night, and he was away camping during the weekend XD
He did send me a version before leaving for the camp, but it was more unbalanced than what I knew I could achieve in the hours I still had left on Sunday, so we decided that great samples aren't the most imporant for the track. We wanted the different aspects of the composition to be the main focus instead.

That said, I totally didn't have time to edit the attack at all. I barely had time to edit the velocities, but I did so for every note. The volume dynamics are okay because of this, but unfortunately, as you said, the attack is the same for all notes (like you, we uploaded the track very close to the deadline, because of this). We'll probably end up producing this anew after the competition, with dem0lecule's stuff :D
I'm glad to hear that the mixing is still a pass in your book though, as you're NOT known for NOT knowing what you're talking about ;)

And yeah. For the piano, I used Piano One, which in my opinion is probably the best free piano VST out there, if you know how to mix it. That said, I'm sure that what really makes the piano sound good is that it's played for real; I could never achieve the dynamic sound in the piano by just tweaking notes and values. This also gives the track a very free tempo and movement in general, which I prefer much to a stale and constant one.

Still, thanks for the tip with the attacks! I'll do my best to follow it in the future when I have more than 2 weeks on me to compose ;)
I'm totally having dem0 make the entire base for our next collab, especially if we miraculously get to the next round (I figure there must be some alternate universe where this happens, right?).

It's nice that you notice the recurring stuff even in this ridiculously long piece. We did have a clear idea for it after all, so though we didn't want to be repetitive, we definitely have a planned out structure.

Also, the "dream" never ends is also a bit of a play on words. While the first section is called "Dreams of Sadness", the final one ties to that. However, a very important note. The name is also self-aware that "dream" can mean your hopes and aspirations. So while the sad dream never truly ends, neither does your will to move on and work on what you love despite what's going on around you ;)
("3deep5me" - LunacyEcho).

Dude, thanks a huge deal for the quick feedback! I'll make sure to review your awesome track later, but I've just responded to about 8 reviews, so I wouldn't be at my best. Best of luck in the competition!!!

[[IV]The Offering]

Great atmosphere at the beginning with the reverb in the pianos and the probably-a-celeste-or-something doing the main background undertone.

Honestly, overall, this track is a really really cool background atmosphere that doesn't really do anything. There are some cool ideas but it's a RPG background. Oh, it also loops at about 1:45 with some minor changes like the drumset. Don't tell me you didn't expect nobody to notice that everything but the drumset is almost exactly the same. (though admittedly it does add something to the copied section unlike your last track which literally copy/pasted the second half except for a few minor things).

Other than that, the mastering could use a bit of work. The quiet parts are quiet, which is nice - but it doesn't really have any part which comes out. It's all just background. You could easily put a limiter on with a very basic setting - no brickwalling or even significant compression at all - and bring up the presence of the track by miles.

That said, great atmosphere! I do really like the atmospheres your tracks have. Did at the start, still do now.

IglicaV responds:

Thanks a lot for this review! I know what I need to work on, and I will really keep all this in mind!