SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[X3LL3N - Higher (Mestrix Remix)]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Alrighty, if I have one major criticism about this piece, it's to do with the arrangement. Every single section of this track is really well-done. They're professionally mixed, mastered, everything harmonizes well, the sound palettes fit, etc. However, this track feels like a loose collection of ideas (three different genre drops in a row) based on the same couple of melodies and an unchanging chord progression to tie it together, with excellent transitions between them. There's nothing WRONG with this, but there are a few things that would improve it. - - Let's look at a point of comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HXCM3mmgto Camellia's idea organization is top-notch, and even combining multiple genres you can learn a lot by analyzing it. First of all, both melodies used in this track are introduced one after another in the first two minutes as it prepares for the first drop. The drop itself is used to introduce multiple types of bass design using different types of syncopation, while continuing to build energy. In the break, you're reminded of the beginning and first build as it prepares to go into the second drop. That second drop uses arpeggios that were already developed in the background, before proceeding to bring back the main melody, transitioning using some earlier syncopation. After this, it drops into a short build before bringing back the same bass design as before but in a different context, finally concluding with a background melody used much of the time, and finishing with the initial piano. - - Your track has good ideas in terms of theme and variation - but what it lacks is something to REALLY tie everything together on a deeper arrangement level. For instance, you can weave the same melodies more clearly through your earlier and later drops, and perhaps even have a final drop that combines and recontextualizes the earlier ideas. You also have a lot of space in your breakdowns and builds to bring previous ideas and instrumentation back - use the same arpeggios, use the same melodies as transposed harmonic lines in the background, even conclude in your outro with the same type of sound as your introduction. There are plenty of ideas, and hopefully this gives you some for future works.

- Just as a small second thing, let's look at some small points of critique in the sound design and mixing. Most of it is fantastic, but for example, the three kicks at 0:43 have a very nasty bit of subs and odd resonance in their initial click. In comparison to the other kick sample used in the actual drop, they sound extremely out of place. Secondly, I'd recommend being a little more careful with sidechaining during your drops. It can cause some interruptions reducing the impact and clarity of chords like the end of each hypermeasure at 1:42 and 1:54, as well as several notes in the melody embellishments during the second drop such as 2:47, 2:54, 2:59, and 3:05. After those points, it might also be a good idea to make the attack of the arpeggios a bit sharper for some extra clarity and sparkle. Last of all, reigning in the high frequencies of the delay coming in at 3:41 would be excellent since they can get a bit painfully sharp. In the end though, obviously these are basically nitpicks. The track is REALLY well-produced. You clearly know what you're doing, haha!

Compliments to the Composer:

- Okay, realisticially, it's unambiguous that this is a fantastic piece of music. Like I said, it has great sound design, mixing, handles ideas well, varies things up to stay interesting throughout all of it, and nothing feels thoughtless or just thrown in "for the sake of it". I absolutely ADORE the little glitch sounds in your first drop, little bits of 'ear candy' like that are some of my favorite sounds in music tracks. You deserve a hell of a lot more attention as a musician.

Final score: 9.7 (Congrats, you're in my top three!)

MestrixMusic responds:

Really happy you enjoyed the track! Thank you so much for this opportunity, hopefully I won't let you down :)

[Legendary L - Digital Swingers]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- This grooves a LOT, and I think we can actually get it to groove harder. Right now, the actual 'drops' of this piece feel really... really empty, and I think that's because in this piece entirely, there's a severe lack of mids and especially low mids. This brings a lot more impact into the music, which can be made more groovy with some sidechaining on the steady four-on-the-floor kick. Additionally, however, I think synchronizing your main syncopated melody (the same one introduced at the start) would work much better than the altered melody in the drop right now, if it used the kick as a type of "bounce". A legato note with the kick followed by a quick and snappy end on the higher note could lend so much energy to this melody, especially when paired with bursts of lower mid pads to fill out the frequency spectrum underneath it.

- Beyond the mixing points, I find that this actually gets... surprisingly repetitive, despite the groove. Part of this is the highly homogenous sound palette. Many of the sounds are very sharp and focused on high mids, aside from the relatively weak bass and decent kick. The reverb on your pads probably doesn't help this either, as that would certainly become a bit overly intense on lower mid frequencies. However, beyond that, there's so much time put into the same ideas repeatedly without much development, no countermelodies or harmonic lines, no drumbeat working along with the melodies, and very few fills to keep things more interesting (like the one at the start of the drop, which is wonderful).

Compliments to the Composer:

- Outside of those points of critique, I do really want to say - I *love* so much of what you're doing here. I love the groovy melody, I love how bouncy and swung the feel is even if it doesn't punch as hard as it could. You have some really nice variation and I love the kind of relative emptiness in the breakdown starting at 1:18. More of this for breakdowns would be fantastic, especially if there was more content outside of it to really contrast with its sparseness.

Final score: 7

[Jump Drive]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- I am SO surprised that this is mastered so quietly. This is actually really solid overall, and I think it would be much better if the dynamics weren't quite as squished as they are, but also if it were mastered to around -1.0dB like most tracks. That would allow for more audible depth and detail to the sounds you use (since there would be more audible variation in volume, especially letting you have more of a break in loudness during the calmer sections). This would also include making the lyrics far more clear since the enunciation could be heard better.

- I would say as well that the... articulation and enunciation of this could use some work. The vocals are very difficult to understand since they don't stand out on TOP of the rest of the music. The pad used for the chords and harmonies throughout this track is also really... "blobby", for lack of a better word. It has a bit too long of an attack, since a lot of what helps vocals in hip-hop is the really crisp, clear, and snappy sound of the instrumental.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Man, regardless of the critique up there, this track is satisfying as heck. I really appreciate the inclusion of vocals to begin with, as they keep the track satisfying through the different sections of music. The fact that you have a really solid B section makes me enjoy this SO much more as well, and the final outro is tasteful through the slowdown, even if it's a bit basic. I really like this, and hope that you get through to the next round as I would love to hear more.

Final score: 8.2

[Mikel Battle]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- The FL Studio Pattern influence is strong here. I would highly recommend having a bit of a different chord progression and certainly a second drum & bass loop. Even in a looping, having a smaller single loop for the entire thing often results in the music getting tiring after a fairly short time period since there isn't any break or contrast to enjoy.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Really, there isn't too much to comment on. There are some nice melodies, the chord progression built on top of the bassline is decent enough, there's nothing wrong with the mixing either. It honestly feels very much like classic old flash game music, or even a bit reminiscent of old SNES games outside of the normal classics. ...or also Duck Game, the bass is pretty much identical, haha!

Final score: 6.5

[sun soldier]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and... yeah, there's no way I'm gonna be able to do the same review format here as I did with everyone else.

The thing is, this... is a very difficult track to critique due to its extremely experimental nature. After having listened to some of XoArK's work for comparison, I can say that you've essentially achieved the style you wanted to create. Since the style is so firmly intended towards atonality and fast, sporadic drum loop changes at uneven intervals, there isn't really anything to criticize in the composition as it's not based on being listenable to more than a highly specific audience. To look further into this style you may want to research atonality, or alternatively you might find some inspiration from older music genres such as serialism or even microtonal experimentation since the actual notes used don't matter, as long as they exist and repeat enough to be recognizeable as a theme.

At this point, my scoring essentially needs to come down to what I value in a piece of music. What I value tends to be harmonicity, narrative value, and clear intent in decisions made. This genre of "advanced dnb" is, evidently, intentionally fairly "random" and deliberately disregards concepts of harmonicity. I find that this results in a surprisingly bland style of music, where atonality is pushed so far with minimal contrast that it doesn't have much of any impact in the end. Similarly, the "random" shifts in drums are... interesting, but not very impactful as there isn't much of anything to cling onto there as memorable either, aside from it feeling "random", as is seemingly intended. It reminds me far too much of music that is avant-garde for its own sake rather than to serve an emotional or narrative purpose.

That said, I do appreciate the atmosphere in this, and a lot of the specific drum loops have some pretty tasty samples in them. The reverb, while perhaps a bit too intense at times, does add a lot to the atmosphere, and there's some really neat space to this track. It honestly feels like the type of theme I would find in a similarly experimental video game during a jungle-themed level.

Final score: 6.5

[watchful eye]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- Okay, so, really. This track has two volumes. Low, and high. There isn't really any change, as it's extremely repetitive in structure and composition. The arpeggiator is lovely, but neither it nor the drums really vary in volume at all, with fairly minimal changes overall. This is absolutely begging for some background pads, additional rhythms in the drums than a near-perfectly straight rhythm of single beats, melody, changes to the chord progression... quite a few possibilities. In general, the reason you want variation like this is for engagement - when the music is roughly the same in feel and structure for a whole piece, it tends to lose engagement, interest, and memorability unless the sound design is absolutely stellar (in the case of genres like ambient or progressive house).

Compliments to the Composer:

- Quite frankly, there isn't too much to comment on beyond the repetition. Since there are only really two instruments (arpeggiator and drums), the mix is perfectly clean, albeit a tad loud. The drums are decent quality, and the synthesizer is perfectly reasonable.

Final score: 2.5

[Flock]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- I'm really... kinda impressed that you have a bass which is so steady and consistent that it makes a solid rectangle through almost your entire waveform. It would probably be a good idea to give it a break sometimes though, outside the second section with a different bass (even some lighter sidechaining would be neat). Which relates to this overarching point - this track is really repetitive. Hip-hop tracks often run into this issue when they don't have singing or rapping over them, where they lack much variety. In this case, the little plucky sounds repeat nearly the entire time, without much variation in the drums or chord progression at all. Without a singer/rapper, it would help this piece a ton to have some melodies, changes in chord progression, addition of new instruments to weave in and out of the track... generally, keeping it variable and engaging over the full runtime.

- Secondly, let's talk about the mixing. As it is, the drums stick out quite a bit but don't really sparkle like they're often intended to in hip hop. You can actually enhance the treble freqeuncies a tad in the snare and high hats (though careful with the hats). However, the rest of the instruments could also be a tad louder relative to the drums, especially without a singer. Lastly, this is mixed somewhat quietly in general, and it would be worth simply putting a limiter on the track as it exists now, with a threshold of -1.1dB to make sure it stays at roughly the same volume compared to other music.

Compliments to the Composer:

- So, this might be repetitive and have a few mixing improvements to make, but don't let that get you down. You have a really cool atmosphere here with those little plucky sounds, the filtered pad in the background being gated during the drum sections, and a generally chill drumbeat. This is really chill and enjoyable overall, and I'd love to hear something with more development but a similar vibe.

Final score: 7

[Glowing Up]

Hello! This is a review for the NGUAC competition.

I've gone over one or two general categories of issues specific to your song, and one section of things I think also deserve complimenting. I prefer being very direct with my critique, none of it is meant to offend. Thank you for your understanding!

Constructive Criticism:

- A couple of production quality points. First of all, you seem to have mastered this to -0.0dB, whereas -1.0dB is the typical standard. This can result in some distortion and far more potential concern about distortion from clipping. Additionally, many audio platforms will mix the volume down to try and keep the loudness roughly the same as other tracks. Secondly, you have quite a bit of reverb applied to many of your instruments, seemingly including some of the bass modulation. Definitely be aware that this can make it harder to include other details in your drops and can result in somewhat 'flat' sound as reverb essentially blurs the frequencies around it into a more homogenous sound.

- Second point I'd like to make is in regard to repetition. Most of your drops and climaxes in this track tend to be mixed at the same dynamic volume, and the chord progression doesn't change throughout the entire track, nor does the melody. While dubstep doesn't always need constant variance, it is typically better to have a bridging chord progression or at least some alteration to the rhythmic emphasis of it. Similarly, countermelodies or melodic variations help add continued interest for long pieces, and making the final drop your most intense dynamically and rhythmically will make it feel like the song has really been building the entire time, helping people enjoy the ride and feel a really powerful dopamine hit as the building tension of the whole piece is released in that final climax.

Compliments to the Composer:

- Honestly, for all those points - you do have some really neat bass wobbles and variation in how you use them. The melody is solid, production quality is solid, nothing is painfully loud despite the high volume mastering, and the reverb doesn't cause too many issues. I really enjoyed this track, and think that as you develop as a musician and work more variety into your mixes, you'll be able to get some really high quality dubstep out into the world.

Final score: 8.2