Score: 10

"Amazing"

submission: Morning Adventure

date: September 7, 2009

It is too good for me to really point out any flaws. If I were too try and critisize you, I would say that the first part went all over the place a little too frequently, it didnt have time to hold its theme before it jumped everywhere. But as a soundtrack to something this could work depending on the situation obviously.

Anyway, keep up the good work, and are drums really the instrument you think you should be playing? You may wanna learn something that can play notes, just to use your full potential.

Score: 9

"Alright, im here a review"

submission: My Quiet Place

date: April 25, 2009

I'm gonna be kinda harsh here even though i gave you a 9, because know you want a review, not a compliment.

First thing is first, the bass instrument. Yes it is a nice bass, and yes it is low, slightly too low in my opinion. It suffers from the Fruity Loop Effect (kinda just made it up right now, but I think I'm gonna try to use it more often) The bass is a little too strong, as in, it is always playing at that amount too strong. Because of this in no longer gives off the punch it intended for because it is always playing. If you were to tone it down a bit and perhaps be that loud for certain notes and parts, the other instruments could be louder and the song could be more full. this also occurs with the kick, it is too loud too often, maybe make every 4th kick (well, the initial of the 4) harder than the other 3, because i have found that a lot of professional mixes actually have very quiet kicks compared to what I would make them. to move back a bit, the fruity loop effect is merely having an instrument way to loud in the lows, and EQing out the highs too much.

The next main topic is the clap. its gross. layer claps, pick 2 claps that fit toether and sound right, as well as a snappy snare, and play them all together, compress and EQ to your liking, and probably actually reverb it and lower the volume, so i may take back the mention of compressing in that case.

the low bass should have a synth compliment with it while other instruments arent playing.

also, when you have the buzzy synth come in, i would have it play the same notes as the violin for about 2 bars before that, and just have it fade in, cause it comes out of nowhere, but once you are used to it, it is really awesome.

My favourite instruments are the saw and the violin through, and they fit really well together too, sometimes the piano reverb is too much wile these play, and you may want to sidechain the reverb out from one of the two instruments, could help the m essyness from all 3 instruments at the same time.

also i love that arp, or an instrument pretending to be an arp, whatever it is, don't change it.

in quieter part the violin may need a bit of EQ'd reverb that makes it fit the synth a bit more at 2:52.

all in all, this song is pretty awesome, i love what you have done, but you really need to proffessionalise that bass you have, it is killin it

Score: 5

"hahaha"

submission: Brick socks

date: March 10, 2009

WALK SMASH WALK
i like it, obviously its not gonna be as good as the original, but i guess using other tunes for ideas is a good start i started with mario, as well as a lot of copies of the amen break)

alright, first off, i gotta say, this reminds me alot of then i was newer to making music, and as well as others.
the first thing i needed to realize what to do to get better, was that bass isnt everything, and , in fact, as much as i love to add a deep kick with a bass and play them low, its not that good to do, so.

for your kick, dont have it all bass, and dont make them overlap. I know you are using fruity loops, so i can say, go into your kick properties, and go to INS, and control the volume time stretching, set it so that it just looks like a rectangle, and then sequence your kicks in the piano roll, that way, you wont have two kicks overlap. I also suggest layering your kicks, aka use your current kick ,but also use, well, my favourite is under Realdrumkits, RD_Kick_2, it layers quite well with any of the dance kicks to give a good overall feel.

next up, the string sample you are using, yes i love to use it too, but you gotta layer it, as in run it alongside another string sample, just play em together and it kinda hides it, you can also put them into their own channel, and add some heavy chorus to blend them, but i dunno if you are at that point, i do hear reverb, but i not sure if that is an instrument preset or not.

i guess thats enough for now, please keep in mind, you want more treble, use some sytrus instruments, they are godly, i suggest looking lower in the list, there is a group of presets with some good saws and other sounds, aside from that, the string part under sytrus is good too

Score: 10

"Wow, now the hard part, critisizing"

submission: -Control: Mind-

date: March 10, 2009

So, wow, the song is awesome, not really a surprise seeing as your music has been awesome for years since, well, i guess when i first heard sky runner.
back then, i never really used the audio portal, and you and cornandbeans were the only two people i really listened to. Slowly that thought me to go deeper into the (very confusing and scary) audio portal, where i learned about more music. cornandbeans kinda dissapeared, but you have always been here, creating more and more awesome music. then i remember people always referencing anything good to space pirates, heck, they even used that as an example for the CC mac contest, didn't they, and then you know what, it turns out all these new songs you made were either for, or just ended up in, castle crashers.

anyway, tome to review this beast of a song.

Drums. The basic kick and snare seem to stay where they are, throughout all filters and progressions, except when there is no kick or snare. i guess that is necessary for such a long song to keep its momentum. I really like all the different things you did with the drums, filtering was amazing, your hi-hat, what is it?it almost sounds like, well, not a hi-hat, but does sound too much like the snare at points, i admit. at around 5:00, i don't like the how you can here the reverb of the snare, it kinda gets hurt, from compression, or just cause of the sample, I'm not sure. also, sometimes the kick looses itself in the low saw, maybe a little of sidechain is in order there, just a wee bit, like a few dB. also i like the initial snare with the little bit of compressed reverb, sounds sexy.

General instruments. I pretty much like all of them, don't know what to comment on, umm. some of the high instruments kinda forget their boundaries and flow into the bass, but not too much, i guess it is inevitable with the constant change of instrument patterns and so forth. some of the 8-bit seems really outta place, i know you like it, but you may need to reverb it and EQ back a bit or something to make it seem natural to the song. the main instrument kinda gets repetitive, i believe thats where any of the feeling of repetition comes from, it overlaps both the bass and the treble at any given time, so it tends to stay lead the entire time, which also i guess may be necessary, but that is why the song feels a little long (well, ya, aside from the fact that it is long). I also really like that funky bounce in instrument you play from 4:06-4:12, what is that, and what did you do with it? The strings later on are quite good as well, very unnoticeable at first, which is great for strings. the synth after these strings is nice too, EQ'd perfectly, like wow, my only complaint about this is that pulling it in and out doesn't really give you the potential to build with it, you just seem to go back to the strings and alarm buzzing synth.

Random hits: Plentiful and beautiful, the dentist drill sound, the fade ins and outs of random instruments, all the background noises, all the little IDM hits of quick repetition. Any good song has lots of little random sound sin it, and this has that, how do you choose what to put where, and how are you able to fill the whole song with little things like that without making anything take over. again the only thing at this point is the 8-bit sounds, but still, fantastic job.

Random vocals. apparently you like the "i like you" "i like me too" the most, because it is used most often. I really enjoy the parts with the quick sinusoid panning, or LFO, or ping-pong, whatever you feel like calling, kinda takes a bit of presence in the song, but sounds amazing. The EQing of all of the vocals are great too, they are hidden behind the song, but are still audible, and you can tell what they are saying, HOW DID YOU DO THAT SO WELL? was it the samples? was it the compression? was it the EQing? was it a combination, please let me know!

sorry that the review turned more into just observations, but this is WAY above my level. I don't really care if you read it all, but please, teach my anything you can. oop, well im out of tex

Score: 7

"well"

submission: Waking (rev. 3; synth)

date: March 10, 2009

to be honest, the first minute conveys no emotion, that low note kills it everytime anything gets good, its just eq'd so out of place

the next 30 seconds just kinda run around in a circle, and the song continues to go nowhere.

no offence, but this just doesnt really, well, fit anywhere

Score: 7

"well"

submission: In Between Shots

date: March 10, 2009

its pretty good, BUt its really quiet, which kinda makes it crappy.
you need more power, equing and such
unless you just had the volume knob down, why is it so quiet?
if its cause you dont like your voice that much, use Gsnap, pitch autocorrector
if its simply due to mixing, EQ the piano down at 5kHz, and your voice up at 5 and 20 kHz
also, is that mulitple recordings of your voice? you should pan em out a bit, like one leftish, one rightish, and one mid
and if its your programs, use Audacity, its free, easy, and really useful ,i love it for recording,

Score: 9

"wow"

submission: [S:C] Gigantic Pentameter

date: March 10, 2009

To be honest, I want to see this complete, because it has potential, and if i ever finish my xbox 360 game, i could see this going into it (no promises though).

alright, first, the good. I love the little background-pan changing squaky things, that remind me of DJ disk revolving, what the hell are they?
and all those other background sounds, wow, i think thats what makes me like them.
Personally, i would classify this as amience with new wave and hip hop incorperated, if anything. and the little hits at the beginning are nice to. I know you want this to be MC'd over, but face it, we are on newgrounds here, and this is too happy and backgroundy for rapping.

k, what I believe could fix it:
that first loud hit, a little too loud, its very interesting, but the first time it really caught me off guard. the intro should be a little longer or so, but now that it sbeen made, i dont know if something like that could be changed, after hearding the intro 3 times (i kept rewinding), i cant see what i saw at first, making that a problem.
you really need to make your operal horns come an octave higher at points, and your arpegetoring synth could be a little louder.
perhaps afte rthat hit, repeat the intro part over again, a bit louder, instead of what you play.
and at :26 it goes into the beginning of a nice riff, but then just fades away, i believe that could be a potential spot to place another hook to your song.
1:00 for a while is more like a breakdown than anything, so I would suggest putting something a bit more epic before that, and then at 1:25 and onward, that is a good second part/bridge, probably would want a little change, but i cant really see what.

all in all, i see this as in some sort of creepy marsh/forest, and I would love this to become an amazing song, so I could use it for that exact thing (again, no promises)
also, you could probably make those strings louder, at least in the high end.

thats all i got for now.
if you ever come out with a remade version of this, please let me know via pm

Score: 6

"hmm"

submission: Brave heroes on the edge

date: March 10, 2009

first thing i noticed was that after every bar, the instrument goes to being silent, is this due to the program you are using? because it really hurts your song.
second, it was too quet, you need to EQ your stuff and compress your drumsso that you can make everything louder, also when you did the transfer between moods at 1:20, you coulda carried some of the instruments through for a bar or two, just to not jump from one tune to another.
asife from this, it is quite interesting.

Score: 7

"wow"

submission: Barbarian

date: March 10, 2009

well, the mixing is abesolue shit, but there is some serious potential.. well, it also gets boring really fast, you need more diversity more often, this song shoulda been about 1:40-2:00 in length
mainly, you gotta mix your instruments, sounds like many things are samples, and that limits your mixability, if you were to use instruemnts, you could get more outta your song, but i do really like the riffs, and if this were done better, well, would have to be by quite a bit, i would probably use it.

sadly, i know very little about this type of music so i cant really give you too much advice, um, you need more stuff filling the high end of the frequencies, and your kick has that heird high hum at the end, like people, it kinda isnt good, compress the shit outta that sample

Score: 10

"wow"

submission: MH16: Hopes And Dreams

date: March 9, 2009

oughta say, this song is pretty fuckin epic.
last time i felt bad that a 16 year old was way better than me at making music was cornandbeans (well, he was 15 or 14 at the time) but ANYWAY, back to reviewing.

this song is very impressive, not quite minimalistic, but uses very few things at once, and does it amazingly. the first strings are awesome, and that background string instrument at the beginning, is it strumming every eighth note? cause that really adds to the power at the beginning. your riffs are so simple yet so full, and all done in the key of C, wow.
when the drums come in, i gotta say, both the snare and the kick/boom thing seem distant from the rest of the song, i am guessing this is both because of the reverb on them, as well as the EQ'ing done to them. the high-hat seems a little distant too but that is more natural for the high hat, otherwise it would stand out a lot (which it is on the verge of)
wow, just the way your instruments come in and out, and each part of the song, it is just so good! the only part that kinda bothers me is when you have that riff where the last 2 notes in it are the same, but oh well, not much you could probably do there.
also, your crash is really well done, it is quite powerful, but i didn't really notice it the first time i listened to the song.
all the strings are perfectly mixed, everything fits where it should be, i really dont know what to critisize in this song for the instruments, its out of my league.
ya, i got nothin
that drum roll half way through is amazing too, very soft, but takes control