SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Racing the Sun]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Whoah this is a warm mix, though it really fits. The drums are super clear in this too which is great (aside from the toms but those are a bitch to fit).
-Once again, great chord progression and overall organization of your piece.
-Great drumming in this! It sounds extremely natural.

The Not-so-good:
-Well, this is really warm mixing, but there's one thing that could benefit from being more bright - the NES sounds. They're very much buried as-is. Heck, even the cymbals are somewhat buried as-is - it sounds almost like everything was filtered down and/or put into a lower bitrate. You even use some of the higher end sound later around 3:30.
-I think I mentioned this last round, but you could really benefit from having more of a clear melody. You also have all of that high-end space in your mix which you could use for it.
-Ending ends. Not very interesting ending and not much of anything indicating that there will even *be* an ending aside from the fact that it had been playing the same idea quite a few times and the timestamp on the music player.

Final score: 8.5/10. Very good piece, but not quite as good as your second round piece. You're a really good guitar player - some excellent electric or acoustic guitar runs in it would be absolutely fantastic and really lend some extra interest to your pieces, even as good as they are now.

thebitterroost responds:

Thanks for the review! I agree on the melody aspect for sure. My songwriting has always been in the context of a band before, so I'm not as good at writing an entire song myself yet, but that's why I'm here! Even in the band context I rarely played anything but drums (that may be why they sound natural, that's actually my kit, lol), so I'm glad that my guitar playing isn't too terrible. The warm, filtery sound is likely the tape saturation plugin I put on the mix bus to give it that 80s/early-90s rock record vibe. Not everyone's cup of tea, and it definitely could use some more high-end presence. Very good insights, I hope to put em into practice. Cheers!

[Skyline]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Very nice pad at the intro. Drums are really interesting and fairly unique compared to standard trance that I've heard.
-Cool panning effect in the open high hats.
-Really cool overall sound and great atmosphere.
-Great pad comping and rhythmic stuff going on around 4:28.

The Not-so-good:
-Not too much of a melody. In fact, not much here other than sound design. Don't get me wrong, I *love* sound design, but this is basically the same kind of sound design without much change in mood throughout.

Final score: 8.8/10. Basically, this is excellent for all the content that it has. It just needs more than chord progression and trance sound design. Melodic and harmonic lines as well as some more clear rises and falls in tension would make this piece absolutely fantastic.

PolarTrance responds:

Thank you :3

The pad is actually the most simple sound I made in the whole song and originally it was much more complex, but I scrapped that version :D

The drums are what they are, because of swing~ Most of the sounds have gotten swing added, but kicks and rides have not.

I don't know what to say about the melody thing though. That sort of stuff kinda just tends to go in to what I like and adding melodies and harmonies afterwards is hard to me(since I already made it in to something I like). I'm not quite sure if adding more is going to work for this song, but I definitely keep that in mind when working on new songs. And I was planning on working this song a bit more, so if that stuff works then it will be featured in the new song.

Thank you again for the judgings, may it turn me in to a goddamn sexual trancesaurus.

[Bamboozle]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Ah, of course. Straight classical piece. This reminds me a lot of the Invention pieces.
-Very interesting and excellent chord progressions. I very much like it.
-Good mixing.

The Not-so-good:
-Honestly, this is very well-done, but the biggest problem with it is pretty simple. This is basically a series of chords with straight runs to transition between them. It's very pretty, but very difficult to discern any kind of theme aside from the chord progression - which isn't particularly recognizable enough to make a clear theme. The biggest thing this needs is a change in mood and speed of notes. As it is, it sounds essentially like the same thing the whole way through, with 3 changes - one in instrument, and one in chord progression to something different in the middle.

Final score: 8.5/10. Gripe aside, this is a pretty solid piece - it's simply less composition competition material so much as it is particularly well-composed exercise book material. And believe me. I would absolutely love to have this kind of stuff in my old piano exercise books in order to practice my runs and finger positioning.

Phonometrologist responds:

Lol you know your classical because it's straight up an Invention piece, or did you just notice the tags? This is actually not that harsh of a review from you. I agree with the criticisms. I'm going to re-upload this with more melodic/rhythmic content from different instruments. Probably not going to change the mood or the speed, but I did find the arrangement to be a little too naked which makes the middle section a bit uninteresting to me. I wanted it to have a little more layers and therefore become chaotic to give it less of a classical feel/"exercise book material." If I had more music than 2:32, I probably would heed to the advice of changing the tempo a bit but I don't desire more of this. Thanks for the review.

[An Alternate Solution]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Interesting panning and gating in the beginning. This is definitely "miscellaneous".
-Great arps and a nice bass, though it gets very buried around 1:10.
-Overall very creative use of sounds.
-Oh, fantastic ending. I love how it shows the melody.

The not-so-good:
-Mixing is okay, but it's not anything special. Things get somewhat buried, especially around 1:47 and after.
-Not too much of a theme, though this does have a very central chord progression and ideas. Seems very much like organized chaos.

Final score: 8.2/10. Absolute biggest thing bringing this down is the mixing. Improve that and you'd have a very solid piece. Beyond that try to have things vary a little bit more, and change up the mood throughout. Definitely an alternate idea, though! Unrelated: This immediately reminded me of alternativesolution. http://alternativesolution.newgrounds.com/ maybe you two should say hello to each other.

OmegaP responds:

Thanks for the review SkyeWint! I think you really hit the nail of the head when you said the "mixing is okay, but nothing special." I felt the same way about it, it works but I didn't really knock it out of the park, so to say. I think that I tried to jam to many things into a space and I did not let all the instruments have their own little space to breath and live.

[A New Future]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Very very nice guitar initially. It's super chill. Same can be said for the piano. In fact, this is just an all-around excellent intro.
-0:37 Aw yeah. This is so pretty.
-1:50 has excellent delays on the guitar. They're extremely beautiful.
-Overall all your instruments are seriously really clean and lovely. Excellent atmosphere.

The Not-so-good:
-Well, the mixing starts to suffer at around 1:05 due to being overcompressed and just generally overly stressed. This is pretty clear that it'll happen a little before. Every mix that's overcompressed seems to have the common trait of seeming to "wobble" a little bit, particularly around the extreme panning sides.
-You have this main melody. And a lot of meloddic content. But the flute is basically just soloing over the entire thing. If you had one recognizable melodic idea which was reiterated towards the end and the beginning, this piece would be absolutely fantastic.

Final score: 9.0/10. Only points of improvement really are the mixing and having more of a theme than the guitar arpeggios. With good mixing and a good melodic theme, this could easily get a 10. A bit more ear candy bits wouldn't be out of the question either. Excellent job.

NyxTheShield responds:

Mixing was a bit rushed, i admit it (i finished the track like 10 minutes before deadline HAHAHAHA) but i can swear for the love of everything that's sane that i didn't use a single limiter or compressor in my mix aside from the acoustic guitar :CCCCCCCC

Thanks for the feedback <3

[Breathe]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-Well, this is certainly in your style. Very cinematic, and nice mixing.
-Fantastic choir effect and usage.
-Excellent classical atmospheres, and overall excellent instruments.

The Not-so-good:
-The strings sound much more like soundfonts in this piece, for some reason. Perhaps it's that they basically always use the same velocity and are fairly quantized. One suggestion I have for classical music, especially if you're without a midi keyboard, is to turn off the snap-to feature (automatic quantization) and instead put them in without rigid beat markers. That way, things can sound far more organic and realistic. Also try to vary the dynamics so that they're more natural. You do this in the second half, so I'm somewhat surprised at that.
-I'm really wondering where a theme is in this. In terms of displaying fantastic compositional capability, you definitely show your stuff with harmonies, but I can't help but notice the lack of any consistent idea throughout all of this. In classical music, and in most modern music, the most impressive pieces tend to have an ostinato that repeats as well as some kind of main melodic theme. This theme can repeat in multiple transpositions and with alternate harmonies (major -> minor or vice versa is insanely common). This would improve the quality of this piece dramatically.

Final score: 7.0/10. This piece has excellent mixing, excellent harmonies, and generally excellent instruments, but really needs more realism in the strings (some other instruments too, but the strings are by far the most obvious) and a solid thematic element.

DSykMusic responds:

Thanks for the review SkyeWint! I'll be paying more attention to dynamics/velocities as I move forward.

[Some of My Foolishness]

So, you've made it to the final round. You've clearly proven yourself. Time to judge by NGADM standards - scoring will be harsher as a result. In any case, here are some pointers for improvement.

The Good:
-THe fact that you made this in one afternoon is excellent.
-All acoustic lo-fi instruments are awesome.
-Excellent mixing and recording of vocals. Everything is crisp and clear.
-Very beautiful guitar solo.
-I actually really like the lyrics. Unfortunately, it's hard to pay attention to them in the face of...

The Not-so-good:
-There are a LOT of off-key notes in the singing. And I do mean a lot. Given you didn't have much time, that's somewhat forgivable - but it would be excellent if you could go back over this and touch it up.
-During the guitar solo, try panning one to each side rather than having them overlap on the right. While that was nice, it covered things up.
-Mixing starts to fall apart around 2:08 simply because there are so many instruments. THe strings are fine, by the way. They're basically just an underlying pad.
-Ending is meh. It just ends. This could really use a bit more of a nicer ending.

Final score: 6.5/10. Incredible for the amount of time you had. Not quite as good for a contest, though.

Ceevro responds:

One does what one can, I'm afraid. Yes, given more time, I probably would have gotten to all those little things...and I realize how those little things can add up. What you heard was a simple, honest track.

[Redline]

Hey there. Some general commentary on your song for NGAUC.

-0:07 dry vocal sample is dry as fuck. Definitely needs something more underneath it musically.
-Nice reverb on the vocals around 0:40 on. Unfortunate that growling is nearly impossible to understand in terms of the words.
-Nice effect at 1:23! Great guitar playing.
-At this point I'm mainly looking for more of a theme aside from general chords. There's not much of a melody in the chords either.
-Big plus in the syncing up of the overdriven guitars and drums.
-Nice extra melodic bits around 2:30.
-Pretty good break at 2:52.
-Ending is alright, though the echo effect seems a little bit heavy-handed. Certainly not a bad ending though.

Final score: 6.7

[Raining on diamond]

Hey there. Some general commentary on your song for NGAUC.

-This reminds me a fair amount of the Face Shrine from Link's Awakening - at least, the background.
-All of your instruments for the first minute and a half seem to have too much attack time, it's a bit jarring with the loud drums that have an instant attack time.
-Mixing once the drums come in gets fuzzy, downright muddy with the piano.
-Definitely needs more than one sample for each drum if it's going to be

this kind of drumbeat - and once again, they need to be quieter.
-The melody around 3 minutes before it goes out seems to be out of key with the background.
-Cool glitchy sounds after 3 minutes, but I think they could be integrated better as ear candy rather than as their own instrument.
-After 4:30, the main chord instrument is definitely too loud. It overpowers the already overpoweringly loud drums. There really needs to be better levelling and mixing in this piece. It's possible to make something stand out as a new instrument without killing everything else.
-And the song fades out. This is one of the most important things, as it's the final impression a piece leaves - fading out with no conclusion generally isn't the best parting note to leave.

Final score: 5.6/10