SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Panic Attack [NGAUC]]

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

-If this was all recorded live, that's pretty good - particularly if it was a one-take recording.
-Badass theme to come in at first. I like it.
-Could use a bit more syncing between the drums and the guitars - the kick drum seems a bit out of time. Or the guitars do. Or something. It's not sync'd up properly.
-Kick and snare are definitely too quiet.
-Needs a bit more of a breakdown than what happens at 1:50.
-Nice ear candy after 2:10 with the chords.
-Tempo speeeeeeeeeeeeeeed! Impressive that this is a recording for certain here. Especially if the drums are too.
-And... it ends. Abruptly. Without conclusion. :(

Final score: 7.5/10

TSRBand responds:

Thanks a lot for the feedback! Lots of good points, on reflection I'm definitely feeling more could be done with that half-hearted breakdown as you mentioned. I'm glad you're digging the tempo which is a little more varied in this round, but I will clarify the drums are programmed so it's not as flash as it might seem :) Unfortunately, I'm not in able to record a real kit at this time (especially at this speed!)

[_Clouds]

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

-Excellent windy sounds, arpeggios, and plucks in the beginning. Very pretty and sky-sounding.
-The melody in this is aaaaaall over the place, and it's pretty sweet. I like it. That said, it's a bit too all over the place, and could use a bit more consistency.
-Dem subs, man. Those are sweet. Your drums are nice and punchy too, which I appreciate.
-Not sure what the sound effect at 2:19 is, but I wish it were louder. There's a lot of ear candy here which could be louder tbh.
-Good ending - it concludes very well.

Final score: 8.5/10

trunotfals responds:

Thank for your review and I'm honestly very surprised at how much you guys liked this piece! Not that I doubt my capabilities, but this was the FIRST time I got really serious about my mixing. Most of my time spent making this piece was watching tutorial after tutorial on sidechaining, mixing with multiband compressors, EQ tricks, etc. etc. etc.

I'm glad my hard work payed off and I think I have a pretty good idea on how to master from now on. It's taken me a long time to finally make a piece where the Subs can shine, yet it doesnt drown out everything else. I'm so glad you appreciated that too. And I like what you said about my melodies to be honest. One thing I try to do in my music is well, write kind of "soloistic melodies" I guess I could take this idea and make it more clear that that's my intention, I suck at writing super catchy melodies. And when I succeed at it, it takes up a lot of time and effort to do so. SO I kind of mixed those two ideas here and tried to write a floaty/soloistic melody. I've always kind of wrote "solos" instead of melodies, inspired from FEED ME, because thats just my style i guess. I can hear a wonderful wailing synth solo easier than a super catchy repetitive melody, and I like that my EDM ends up being different because of that.

And I agree there is a lot of ear candy, the reason im so suprised you liked my mixing, is because there WAS so much going on, and i honestly got way over my head there because when it came to mixing, there was a lot of my intent that was missed. However, the final product was more than satisfactory to me. I remember after my final master (it took me about 5 attempts) I was listening with my friend about to ask their opinion, the moment the sub hits the first time, just before the chill drop, i was like DAMN. For the first time my mix sounded so full and intense, and luscious. I absically was like IM NOT TOUCHING THE MIXER OR MAXIMUS AT ALL WHATSOEVER I NEED THE SOUND TO STAY THAT WAY.

TLDR; Thank you so much for appreciating this piece. I've never put so much work into a song. Ever. I'm so happy to have made the Knockout Round.

[Aokigahara]

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

-Very nice guitar to begin. Very pretty, excellent move to stereo and a decent transition to rock.
-Only thing I don't like about the intro is that the distorted guitar really buries the acoustic playing behind it - might want to see about editing that a bit, as I could see it causing some mixing problems if there were any more detail than chords.
-I do really like how the drums go along with the rest of the piece, and the transition at 2 minutes in is very well done, especially with how it progresses to 2:20, though the snare drum is very buried.
-Whoah shit, when 3:07 hit my jaw simultaneously hit the floor. This is a fantastic blend. It reminds me a lot of Bajo el sol, sobre las rocas, by InYourDreams. You should look that up on here.
-Overall excellent blending of acoustic and rock - only things I can comment on are that a little bit more melody would be great, and the snare shouldn't be buried the way it was earlier.

Final score: 9.2 + download. Needs more flamenco.

thebitterroost responds:

Thanks for pointing me to that track, it rules! I don't think I'm anywhere near IYD's level yet, but I'll be working on it. Cheers dude, thanks for the review and mix advice!

[The Faceless Man - A Clash of Kings]

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

-Nice little intro. Some nice distortion on the guitar, though I think there's a little bit too much. More of a personal thing there though.
-Excellent drums there, though the kick definitely has too much high end and not enough low - the reverb really brings that out too.
-While there's a lot of content here, there are three main things I want to point out. First, most of it is thrashing without too much melodic or thematic content. Second, a suspended chord is the most common transition you have, where you could easily have done other things with some other pedals. This includes the ending. Third, your mixing definitely needs work. The bass is pretty drowned out by the thrashing, and the cymbals are pretty destroyed by both the kick, but also the guitar thrashing.

Final score: 6.2/10

[Mockingbird]

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

-When I saw that this was general rock, I was not expecting strings and piano at first. Some cool dissonant ideas, though it could use a bit more open sound. Open dissonance sounds much better than dissonance which is really close together. I *highly* suggest looking up jazz theory and listening to some music which uses it if you're going to go down this path - jazz is all about dissonance, and knowing its theory will help you loads with this.
-Really neat guitar effects with the hollow atmospheric sounds. I like 'em a lot.
-Overall this piece doesn't really change too much aside from Intro -> Middle -> End. Ending is a bit odd as well, leaving it on the dissonant chord.

Final score: 7.6/10

IndustryStandard responds:

Yeah I wasn't sure what genre to put honestly. I don't think it quite counts as electronic since a majority of the sound is definitely guitar-heavy, but the lead riffs are synthetic instruments, and "Atmospheric Nonsense" isn't a genre yet so general rock it is! haha

I probably should look into some theory in general, both for my compositional skills and my own general curiosity, it's just a time thing; between other local music projects and work it just hasn't happened, but I'll definitely take the advice to heart. I wouldn't say dissonance is a "path" I'm going down so much as a tool i like to use, but it's a tool I use frequently and it's probably about time I actually learned what I was doing.

I desperately wanted(and still want/plan on) to add lyrics to this, which is partly why the song is a bit samey aside from the beginning middle and end. I recorded a few takes of my own voice but couldn't get a take I was happy with, and then I saw the 6 hour notice for submissions to the contest, so i decided to just try and mix and master something with what i had. That, and my interface straight up blue-screen crashed my computer twice while i was working on recording guitar and vocals, so that's frustrating. I have a local singer with an amazing voice coming over later this week to see if we can get something recorded though, hopefully that fixes the samey-ness, and i can also use that opportunity to fix some mixing issues too.

This whole project of mine, "Industry Standard" is basically my attempt at stamping a little bit of my brain onto an audio file. My life's a bit of a mess right now, hence the dissonance, but it moves forward anyway, as a song does; a beautiful struggle. at the end, though, the struggle still isn't over, and so i end on dissonance. It want's to resolve, but can't. not yet. Someday, though.

[Ravages of War]

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

-That sound almost like an electric piano there at the start. I feel like it's a plucked instrument, but I'm really not sure. Or at least, I wasn't until after 30 seconds in.
-Excellent use of the flute. Very well-done.
-Fantastic background pad.
-The melody in this is extremely beautiful, and very expressive.
-The strings in the second half compliment the melody very well, and they don't sound fake like a lot of orchestral instruments seem to end up doing.
-Very nice, bringing it back to the flute. Only thing I can say here is that the transition from strings back to flute could have been much better than just having the strings cut out. Perhaps a string/flute duet here at the end would have been better.

Final score: 9.0/10, and I would have downloaded it if I could. :(

DSykMusic responds:

The plucked inst. off the top was a cimbalom. I wanted to use a renaissance lute.... but didn't have the samples!

Thanks for your comments, and suggestion about the transition.

My final NGAUC song will be downloadable! Stay tuned.

[Amarelo Preto (Blackanese)]

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

-Aw man, the first thing I notice is that nice low-fi piano. I thought it was bad that it was buried at first, but it started working a bit more afterwards. It does start getting more battered later as more instruments come in, so I'm gonna have to ding a mixing point there.
-Cool drums, though they cause a few issues in mixing.
-That super clear voice contrasts the rest of the piece it's almost not even funny.
-Really nice-feeling chord progression, honestly. I like it a lot.
-The shaker could have been done a bit better. It definitely shows that it's just one sample as it's played and brought out around 2 minutes.
-This song desperately needed some kind of melody and variation throughout. It sounds nice, it's just not particularly interesting to listen to overall. More the kind of thing I'd imagine as background music if the piano were mixed a bit better.

Final score: 6.4/10

DeadlyAlchemy responds:

All of this is so true :(

I seriously need to learn how to mix things better, this is causing me serious issues with my scores xD