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.
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.
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 :(
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
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!
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.
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!
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.
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!!!
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.
Hey! Thought I should quickly review this before work. :)
The Good:
-Excellent rhythms at the start.
-Fantastic pad at around 0:23 coming in. It's quite beautiful, and works just fine with the low-fi piano in the background. I'm actually surprised the piano sounds good, because it sounds like FL Keys or something - but then, you've always been good at taking lower quality instruments and making them build a ton.
-Great rhythms and patterns at around 0:47.
The Not-So-Good:
-Some of your percussive hits stick out like very sore thumbs. I'm looking at you, 0:16, 0:39, 0:54, 0:58, 1:04, 1:10, etc. Those are definitely a bit too loud and too raw to fit into the rest of the piece.
-Mixing gets fuzzy around 0:30 where the piano is buried. Same around 1:05 where the drums are loud.
-Plain delay fadeout ending. I thought this was going into a reverb wash, which would have sounded a bit better.
Overall: I like it. And I'm glad to hear you making more music! <3 I've sent an email as well, so I'll definitely talk to you more!
I like your piece - it has a lot of energy, and that midsection is excellent. The little detuned metallic noise is awesome.
There are only a few things I don't really like about it - while it has great melodies and ideas, it's still pretty repetitive in the way it's written. The lead is a bit overly grating and could easily be smoothed out by covering up that raw (saw? rounded saw? Not sure what the name is for it) waveform in the lead. Only other thing, and this is the biggest, is that this is really, REALLY muddy from all the instruments and all the reverb on them. I hate to say it but it honestly doesn't sound like you tried to mix the piece pretty much at all. :/ I think lightening the amount of reverb and cutting back on a few of the instruments could clean up the mix a ton without it losing its power.
Hopefully my inner music judge wasn't too harsh, but she was screaming in my ear half the entire song. :(
I hear your points, and I thank you for your honesty.
On the contrary, I disagree with you about the nature of the lead instrument, which you described as "grating", and argue that I use a similar sound in many of my tracks. You are the only one who has taken exception to it, despite having run the track past many colleagues since its release.
As for a repetitive melody, I believe that is a matter of opinion, and again see no problem. Many famous tracks of nearly every genre are extremely repetitive, far more so than is to be found here, I believe.
Finally, having spent a great deal of time adjusting levels and EQ on individual instruments as well as the track as a whole, I can assure you that I did, in fact, spend time mastering the track.
Thank you for your review; I wish you the best of luck with your entry, though I'm sure you won't need it, if your inner music judge is correct in her assessments.
Slightly funny that my song is all about bass and yours is all about the high end, despite being called "future bassy stuff" with "bass" as a tag.
Also dear god that's a lot of layered chaos in the high end. You've got a pretty cool melody on top of all the insanity. It's pretty neat.
Love the little nintendo-y transition thing at around 2 minutes. This song might not be my thing really, but it's definitely got its charm and I enjoyed it a lot.
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 pretty piano here. I'm getting a very chilly viking feeling from this. This is the kind of stuff I'd imagine in Skyrim (haven't played it ^_^').
-Nice subtle reverb around 0:40.
-Fantastic stringing and vocals, though the vocals are fairly buried.
-Excellent ending.
The Not-so-good:
-Why do you bury instruments? :( You make me sad. It doesn't fuck up the mix but it feels sad to know that there's detail in there which is lacking. And in pieces with more instruments, this would cause much more serious problems.
-To be perfectly honest, the biggest problem with this is probably that it's too short. All the ideas are there. All the composition is there. It just ends before it could really be taken somewhere to tell a full story.
Final score: 9.3/10. I can't really give this much of a lower score. It's fantastic. Just mainly too short, and instruments are buried, causing detail to suffer.
Thanks a lot for your review ! This really means a lot to me.
You really point out something interesting, when saying some instruments are buried - and it's true, and sometimes wanted as well. For example, I didn't want the choirs to prevail in the part beginning at about 0:45, mainly because they were supposed to stand out more in the next section, and because I felt it would detract too much from the feeling I wanted to convey in this particular part. But actually, you're right, I maybe lowered the volume a bit too much on these instruments.
About the track's length... well, I suppose this is what I get for restarting 4 days before the deadline ? :D
I fiinished the composition with only some hours left before the deadline, and, as I already told TaintedLogic, I almost had to sum up some of my ideas in the end.
Thank you again, and thank you for this amazing contest. ^.^
Electronic/ambient artist. I started making music more than random scribblings in the fall of 2010, around the end of November. I think I've come a long way since then!
The Prodigal 
Can't Be (ft. Popushi) 
BVYS N GVRLZ 
Vanquish the Night 
Threnody for Innocence ![[IV]The Offering](https://img.ngfiles.com/defaults/icon-audio-smallest.png?f1707337412){kind=icon}
[IV]The Offering 
Machines 
NGADM'15: Limitless 
