SkyeWint's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Dude Named Grant]

I couldn't help but alter my format for this one. I hope you enjoy your unique review.

Stuff you got from Grant:
- Solid mix throughout the piece.
- Great melodic development of your idea, regardless of its quality.
- A bouncier and more energetic musical style.
- Fairly lackluster and occasionally random transitions... like at 1:00.

Stuff you didn't get from him:
- Complex synthesizers.
- Super diverse sections, which is awesome!
- Really awesome atmospheres, like at 2:00.
- Dat SUPER fucking good bass.
- The base melody idea's quality. Honestly, this idea is just plain too complex with too many quick arps, it doesn't seem like it knows what it really wants to do. See if you can tighten it up a bit. With grant, one of the big keys is small melodic phrases that are developed well, not long melodic phrases that are repeated differently.
- 2:39.
- That really wonky ending. On the plus side, it was an ending, which you also definitely didn't get from Grant.

8.9/10

Onefin responds:

I included the sound at 2:39 just for you <3 i know you hate it

the ending uses a kick pattern that comes from the man the legend himself i knew i had to use it because he thought it sounded good and i was like "dude it's freaking 15/16" he's like "who cares bruh"

Johnfn's melodies are too sweet for me

EDIT: I just realized I got a unique one-of-a-kind Skye review

[Rushing into Deepness]

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Very nice strings and piano breakdowns, very lovely background behind it. 1:22 is fantastic.
-Your first drum loop is great, gotta agree with Grant on that.
-...and your adding to the drum loop with extra beats is also great.
-Great effects at the very end!

Points of Improvement:
-Transition at 1:07 is not good. Sudden cut out of strong drums is too sudden.
-You have a bad habit of sitting on ideas too long, I've noticed. They're good ideas and have good interesting sound design, which keeps them easier to listen through, but still. Too much. Something like 3:10 does not do enough to alleviate this - try shifting the drums up a little bit too. This is really the biggest issue this piece has.
-EXCEPT THE ENDING AAAAAH. Please, friend, please. Make an actual ending next time. ;_;

8.3/10

Adjeye responds:

Thank you for the feedback Skye :),

I just wanted to do a breakdown at 1:07, I didn't notice I made it too sudden. That is what you get when you listen to a track over and over, nothing sounds sudden anymore.

I noticed it i my tracks too, that I sit on ideas for too long, but that is because I like my ideas, and feel like I don't want to undersell them or anything.

And sorry for the ending, I too, think it was maybe a bit too lazy.

[The Afterlust]

Man. This contest was terrible timing for me to hear a song like this one. Relationship issues in my life at the same time, uff. Oh well.

Let's go!

Points of goodness:
- Very nice clear mix throughout the piece (with some minor mud at the climax).
- The drums have an extremely good tone.
- Overall, very nice themes and good organization for a pop-styled song, it works quite well and changes atmosphere through it.
- I know you play your instruments live - even if it's only most of them, or even just the singing in this, it sounds excellent and very live.

Points of Improvement:
- The piano doing constant chords throughout the piece gets quite tiring and really diminishes the atmosphere of the song.
- Overall composition thing: I think this piece really needs a good breakdown where you build it back up. I've commented on this kind of thing with other people before, but. Nearly *every* popular and good piece has at least one B section which breaks things down - rather than just getting more intense when it's already intense. Ramping the whole piece can fatigue listeners quite a bit.
- Honestly, the biggest issue with this whole piece, and the thing keeping it from taking the last step into high 9 territory, is that it really doesn't show that much technical expertise or uniqueness in its style. So, what I mean by that is that it doesn't really have anything that jumps out and makes me go "ok, that's definitely a song that Finn wrote". As for compositional skill, I would love to see a few more countermelodies or content that develops your melodies and ideas in a silghtly different direction. Something that sounds almost like the piece reflecting on itself and what it does - seeing what else you can explore.

Final score: 9.2

Excellent. Just needs a few final steps, and you got this contest in the bag.

FinnMK responds:

Ah, apologies on the terrible timing :p

Yes, all the instruments are live. The only synthetic thing is the little reversed cymbal near the beginning.

Good advice on all accounts! Thanks for the feedback.

[Endowment]

Ectisity - Endowment

Hello! Time for your review of a few points I think could be improved.

Points of Goodness:
-Really nice orchestral intro, good vocals.
-2:50 is a good mix of orchestral and electronic! Nice!
-The ascending notes at 5:10 are great, along with the drums.

Points of Improvement:
-First thing that strikes me and continues through the whole thing - this song isn't mastered that well at all. This *really* needs some compession to make it a stable and clear volume. (never thought I'd be saying that I'll tell ye wot)
-The snares are pretty poor.
-2:29 what in the hell happened here what. Okay, so, I hear what you intended to do, but what happened was switching out the instruments - NOT melding the style for a transition.
-Similarly, the transition at 4:50 was great until 4:57 where it just suddenly threw itself headfirst into the electronic again. I think it would have been better without the silence that.
-Your electronic sections are really suffering from poor mixing. They desperately need compression to solidify the mix there. This also hits the final climax bit very hard.

In the end, the mastering and transitions missed the mark very hard, which is what brought this piece down so much. You can do it!

5.5/10

EctiBot responds:

Thanks for the review :). I wanted to have sudden and surprising transitions in this, something which has become used a lot by EDM artists lately. Personally I feel like a drop has more impact that way. Agree that it's still too sudden of a change though, I should probably have looked at other possibilities. The mastering and mix is weak, I really wish I had the time to work more on it before I submitted it, but sadly I had to travel :(.

Thanks for the feedback Skye :)

[Got shot.]

significantly better than what most people upload first

Adjeye responds:

Significantly more honest than the rest of the first reviews I got

[Calm Craggy Area (Onefin Remix)]

So, I was inspiration for this, huh? Better give it a really good, solid review then! I won't be too excessively verbose as is my MO, but it certainly will include a lot of detail.

Good stuff:
- Phenomenal intro. Your atmosphere here is on point. Percussion is great, arps are great, backing pad is great too.
- Tempo increase for the start fits well, especially with the fresh percussion. It really brings the intro into the next section.
- Speaking of that next section, one thing that I really latched onto was the syncopated keyboard chord hits in the background. They're really solid but smooth, very good.
- Nice chord shift at 1:37, it fits well and provides some excellent contrast.
- Great piano at 1:45, too. I like the background notes from the same keyboard instrument in the last section. (at least, that's what it sounds like)
- Really neat percussion around the 2:20 mark.
- Great background stuff around 3:20, I seriously need to study your reversed synthy stuff.
- 3:42 is a really really nice transition to the main melody. I recognize it clearly. The chord shifts here are stellar too. Very underwater feel, which I like a lot.
- Piano outro is indeed wonderful. I do like, very much! Particularly the final bit around 5:30 for the 'true ending'. That was well done, nicely played.

Not as good stuff:
- I think the synth at 1:54 comes in too harshly. I think it would have been better more in the background. Similarly, sudden transition at 2:00. I think even a bit of low-frequency rumbling with a filter sweep upwards would have fit there.
- You can bring your low bass frequencies out more if you compress them well. Give it a shot! :)
- Pad sidechaining at 2:00 through 2:28 is way too harsh, dude. Put a cap on it.
- Very strange transition at 2:36 with some weird reverb percussion in the section after it. I'm not sure what to think of it, but at the very least I think the transition could have been done better. Maybe. I don't know, it moves to something VERY different.
- Similar criticism around 3:18, though less so. I think the bit in between these two transitions could have been a bit more similar to the rest of the piece. *just a bit*
- 4:05 to 4:18 smells a bit too much like arpeggiator for my liking. This could definitely have had better arpeggios, this sounds a bit too much like random notes.
- Criticism of 2:00 to 2:28 comes back at 4:42. It actually fits in before that with the build to the higher intensity.

So. It was good, as evidenced by my review score and my normal scoring curve of a pretty damn even distribution from 0 to 5. I think it had a few bits that could definitely have been better, but the parts that were good were phenomenal. I really, really like this and I love the direction I'm hearing you go in.

Glad I helped inspire such a piece, as it still earns a vote of 5 and a download from me. :)

Onefin responds:

Hey, Skye! Thanks for dropping by :)

I'm going to hit a bunch of the "not as good stuff" here because frankly

- I agree, I agree. Wasn't too sure how to go about fixing that synth; I think I stopped production on that section prematurely, which is why a lot of the transitioning crap sucks. Especially since that particular synth just cuts.
- To bring out the lows, I usually use fast distortion followed by a high cut. Haven't really tried compression yet, mostly because I don't really know how to use compression (other than presets, of course) :/
- Note: don't go overboard on the chords
- So there's a section in the original piece that just dives into chromatics and whole tone stuff, so that's what 2:36 was :/ It's a pretty big jump to get there, so I tried a whole tone scale in the piano to get there. It's just really, really different.
- And then the section after the whole tone stuff is not whole tone stuff. Thus, same problem I guess.
- That's funny, the 4:05-4:18 arp comes straight from the original thing. It's the melody in a section of the piece, although it goes a lot slower (twice as slow, actually) and has actual distinguished chords behind it. Each of those notes is a direct transcription of that melody in the original piece, which is also all eighth notes.
- Of course it does :P I think of all the sections, the 4:05-4:18 one is the most empty and least developed. Perhaps I should have spent more time refining it, but it did sort of seem like random notes and I had a hard time touching them.

And what the heck how about the good stuff:
- Awesome
- A lot of people tell me they hate the tempo changes. This further complicates the issue, because I have an equal lot of people telling me they like the tempo changes. I'll stick with what I like
- Note: syncopated hits = good
- It's not the same, unfortunately, but close enough
- That's the same loop as the one in the intro, chopped differently
- Literally you just take a riff, record it, and play it backwards. Slap a bunch of reverb on it and maybe some delay and bam, you got a texture for free.
- Awesome (that's actually funny because I was asking one of my friends for good album art suggestions and he mistook this particular dungeon bgm for an underwater one)
- AWESOME (true ending? heh) I really gotta thank Gareth Coker for rekindling my interest in the III chord :P did you think it was played? heh

[Popcorn]

Hi! You deserve a review now, so here you are!

The Good:
-Very nice 8-bit. Probably from using an actual 8-bit plugin, but it certainly works!
-Very nice intro and pause, this is well done.
-There's a solid organization of your ideas in an ABA format. It's simple, but effective and better than a linear wall of ideas.
-Very nice arpeggios throughout, along with the fading chords.
-The background pad sound is pretty good. Very solid backdrop which would work well to go together.

The Not-So-Good:
-The low saw bass sounds really grating and not at all good.
-After the intro sequence, the background bass and drums are almost exactly the same the entire way through. This typically isn't a good thing - some variance is good, even in two minutes.
-I don't think the sound effects starting at 0:59 were particularly good. There are far more fantastic 8-bit sound effects, and these just don't really work.
-There isn't a very solid ending - it seems to just remove elements until it stops.

Overall: 5/10. Pretty good for a first track, but definitely could use more variance in the overall piece and especially the sound palatte. There just aren't enough differing sounds to make it feel different throughout - that combined with the repeating background don't quite do it.

THAT SAID: This is a seriously solid shot at this style of music if you're trying to get into game music. It seems like this could use a more solid idea of what it's for, as well as a bit more difference in the sections. I think you can definitely do it with a bit more work!

Postchord responds:

Cheers man, some solid feedback there. I'll smash out some new attempts soon :)

[3MBER - Strawberry Sky]

x3MbeRx - Strawberry Sky:

The Good:
-Absolutely fantastic introduction! The supersaws are strong in it, but they're very pretty along with the background piano and sfx!
-Very nice clean plucks! I like.
-I feel some Porter Robinson influences in the main climaxes. Those arpeggios are pretty neat.
-Really cool background SFX in the climax sections as well.
-Very nice soft melodic-ish sounds around 2:20 on.

The Not-So-Good:
-Not sure about the actual transition at 0:28. I feel like it could use a bit more of an ending to the intro leading into the plucks.
-Fairly big audio glitch is one which sounds like it's coming from some sidechaining at 1:12 and around 1:15.
-I'm not sure what exactly you were going for in the drop. Was this meant to be some kind of anti-drop? The problem is that after the arpeggios and quickening drums, the drop ends up being really underwhelming in that it has very dramatic sounds and then just drops the tension like a hat without doing anything with it. Part of it is in the way the bass/kick and pads work together to leave gaps - these gaps make it feel like there isn't really a point to the piece in those sections. The high-hats do improve this a lot though!
-In the second drop, there's a new lead - which is a decent improvement, but it doesn't really seem like it knows what it's trying to do melody-wise - it suffers from the same lack of direction that the first drop had. Unfortunately, it also seems to throw off the mix in that section, making quite a few details far less distinct.
-There isn't an ending. The climax reaches the point where it stops timing-wise, and it leaves a bit of reverb and subtle delay from the beginning, without any conclusion or finality to the piece.

The Result: 7.8/10.
-Overall, this is a really well-produced piece with an excellent midsection and drops. The main issues are the aimless climaxes and the ending. Your sound design is top-notch, especially among recent popular EDM. I think that with a few tweaks to the climaxes, a bit to really finish the piece, and just a bit more direction to your composition, your pieces will be absolutely fantastic. Good job!

x3MbeRx responds:

I'm glad you liked my sound design for the most part, since it's what I spent the most time on. As I've said previously time constraints led me to kind of improvise transitions, which is why theres no ending and some parts may seems to not flow into eachother that well. I'm afraid I don't really understand what you mean about the drop? That it's underwhelming? These pauses are pretty typical of future bass tracks and I felt like they added some relief after the first heavy hits of the drop. I struggled coming up with decent leads for both drop sections, honestly. Also, the "audio glitch" you noticed was completely intentional believe it or not, and you're right it's a side chain to a ghost track.

Thanks for the in depth review :)

[Memories]

Sebastien01 - Memories:

The Good:
-Extremely good and expressive playing.
-Very nice and well-developed themes.
-Some really nice rhythmic/time signature changes like at 0:38 and 0:42 - I felt that extra beat or two you had in there!
-Oh my god, those arpeggios are amazing. I know how stupidly difficult arpeggios can be as well, so this is extremely impressive to me.

The Not-So-Good:
-I think that the biggest flaw in this piece is expressed in the middle of the piece - you really stuck with that *one* thematic idea throughout a lot of it without much development until the end.
-What happened to the theme played all the way to 0:56? It just kinda vanished for the rest of this.
-Honestly, I think that it would be excellent to introduce another instrument or two into your music to really show how detailed and skillful you can get in your writing. While this isn't generally important, I think that would have expressed far more of your talent in your music for the contest, which could easily have pushed your piece that extra step to victory.

The Result: 9.3/10.
Okay. Confession time - my primary instrument was solo piano for about 8-9 years, so I really hope I haven't been biased in this. But really, this is a fantastically well-written piano piece, and very well-played as well. Please, definitely continue on - you got this!

sebastien01 responds:

Thank you very much for this review!
I'm really glad you appreciated this song :D Thanks for the good words, and the details about what you appreciated in this composition. For these time signature, it's cool you noticed them :) I like to introduce some on a lot of my piano or classical songs, like a waltz with some 5/4 on it. Break the rules! :)

For real, I thought the same thing the day after the final day about this second theme. I should have made (And "will make") it shorter for the second theme, then repeat the first one, then a third theme, and a final. Someday I'll post a remake of this one.

Yeah adding some orchestral elements would be nice too :) I think I'll go all piano on this one, and when I'll get a good orchestral soundbank, I won't be affraid anymore of these midi'ish sounds I have on my computer so I'll revisit some of my older tracks to add some strings and brass to them :P

Your confession is making your comment value level up X 3!! Consider yourself highly considered! ;)

[At Peace]

papkee - At Peace:

The Good:
-Oh, very tasty guitar at the start! I love your guitar work in this - if that's a VST, I wish I could use it.
-Ahhhh, similar instrument quality thing at 1:46 - those low strings sound extremely nice, particularly with the guitar up above it.
-Your overall organization of this is fantastic - it rises and falls in a very natural and organized manner, which just plain feels wonderful. Excellent job!
-I love the delay on the piano which becomes audible right at the end.

The Not-So-Good:
-There seems to be a bit of an odd ending to the main melody (isolated at 1:12). It ends on a passing tone to the chords, which makes it sound a bit awkward. Even if it had a final note at the end of it one step down for a conclusion, I think that would improve it a lot.
-Very nitpicky thing: I think that at the end, with the final note of the guitar, a beautiful way to end the piece would be to wait for the end of the piano delays where the guitar lifts, and instead have a slow downward strum of a chord to finalize everything.
-I think it would be awesome to have a second theme throughout this which is developed a bit. That would be awesome.

The Mixing: Oh yeah. I isolated this thing, simply because of your response to TL. Here goes!
-First, that air noise in the background of the guitar. I feel like that needs to be isolated if it isn't - and if it is, it should really be slightly more apparent at the start and end so that it can more clearly show that it's part of the piece.
-As always, your strings are a tad bit too strong - try turning them down about 5-10% lower than the rest of the instruments pre-mastering. They're starting to get in the way of the other instruments around 1:15, and get in the way of everything else far more around 2:20. (other possibility - check a parametric EQ and turn down some of the mids and lower mids a bit)
-Weird bass rumbles at 2:02, 2:19 (panned left), 2:34, 2:49, 3:07, 3:23, and 3:39. Pretty sure that's a bass drum, but... there's too much in the low frequencies from the strings already - it just causes weird interference that doesn't work too well.
-All in all, this is fairly well-mixed. The absolute biggest improvement is: TURN DOWN THE BASS TO MID EQ ON THE STRINGS.
-Also, a comment I've made before - if you aren't, try turning down all instruments to about 80% volume prior to running them through mastering to give your piece some good headroom to work with. Otherwise, mastering can and will make mud.

The Result: 8.2/10
Biggest issues are the melody and mixing, honestly. For the melody it's partially the odd ending, and also the lack of a second one. All in all though, a solid effort and one of the best pieces I've heard from you!

papkee responds:

Yep, that's not a live guitar. It's an absolutely incredible sample library for Kontakt. PM me for more details.

A second melody was something I just didn't have time for. This piece was rushed because I was slated to move the day the songs were due for the contest. I had about half the time everybody else did to compose the thing.

Mastering for me has always been to get my piece sounding pretty much how I want it to pre-master, then throwing it through Ozone 5 with a preset I made. Seems to work well; better if the song is well-mixed prior to that. Is that a good way to do things? Not at all, but it works and saves me from having to spend a full day trying to master by hand. I'm sure if I was really dedicated I'd take the time and learn how to master properly, but knowing myself I'd get way too burned out from it.

As always your reviews are spectacular and give me a lot of good ideas. Cheers!