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160 Audio Reviews

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wow

to be honest, i accidentally clocked it, the name was dumb, your picutre made in paint makes you look like you are 12, and im impresed by the quality of this song, pretty decent eqing, the bass of one of the later clicky background isntruments is a little high for about 4 hits.
a little too much reverb on one of your lead instruments, but aside from that, i really like it, good job.

yagru responds:

i'm 4

alright

there are 2 different things you could do that could fix this, both involve duplicating an instrument

either make another copy of your low bass distorted thing, or your synth, and get rid of some of the reverb, and eq it high from 400Hx to about 2300Hz
compress the shit out of it, sidechain it to the rest of your instruments (maybe not the synth strings) and then make it come in at around 18 and fade in, to the point at around :37 where it would play that sweet lead tune you got going on there.

heck, i got time this week, i dont know if you wanna give it up, but I wouldnt mind makin a revamp pof it, asnd send it back to you to submit, just put my name in the comments? eh? eh?

i dont know how good i could do, but i think it wouldbe fun to give a try, since your composition is pretty freakin awesome, just needs mixing

LightKeeper responds:

I could give let you have a crack at it if you'd like.
However, I'm not too interested in a resubmission however. I'd probably update this current submission and edit the comments w/ credit given where due to you if you produced a higher quality result. I reall do appreciate the asking to work on this piece. It means I did something right in there.

If you want to talk further on this PM me.

alright

yes, loud is good, but i have actually just learned recently that it isnt as good as i thought (not from you, from testing multiband compressors)

so, first thing i gotta say is quiet it down. The humming buzz synth shouldnt be playing that loud 24/7
pianos in FL cant be raised in volume in any way, cause clipping happens, and clipping definately is happening on the right side of your mix (you can hear it best near the beginning, the scratchy sound)
the song kinda drifts off at like 1:30 and never really comes back, ruining the tune. I do like your drums, quite amazing really, they pull everything together and fit your song.
I dont understand, how is your open high hat so fluid and good? it fits so well
I did l;ike 3:23 on, it was awesome, but again, 500Hz was a little loud, and your phaser coulda been toned down a tad

keep up the good work, and check out my latest song too, woo!

LightKeeper responds:

Thanks a lot for the review. The clipping is something I did notice, but lowering the volume on the piano is not the solution. I'm still learning better mastering techniques and ways to apply them to avoid clipping and getting the best quality out of my music. In fact, the clipping was probably coming from a combination of the piano and that "humming buzz synth." The clipping stops at the end of the track when the piano comes back in. :P

I'll work on dynamics for newer songs. I'm not exactly sure how to quiet the song down and still keep its intensity. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by it drifts off and never comes back on. If you're talking about the new movement I can understand. The piano is really just the intro of the song and the two parts almost have nothing in common other then progression of the scale.

Once again, thank you for the comment on the drums. :) I actually used two drum sets on this song. One is a more acoustic sound and the other is a more electronic set up. I slipped on a blood overdrive and eq'd the set and that's what I get. The fluency of the high hat is mainly due to the rhythmic patterns. I'd recommend listening to Jazz, or music influenced by jazz to get an idea of high hat control, it really does help.

Thanks for the review MusiclsBliss! I'll be sure to check out your latest song. :)

holy crap

it definately sounds like megaman, smae "pew"s and everything

I gotta say, i really like the volume controlled gated reverb, definately made it sound proffesional but kept the 8-bit feel. it really made the song

Wow

I love this, it is just so epic, brings me back to the days when I listened to Kamelot, except this isn't corny.

ok, the intro instrument that is high, I am guessing it is supposed to have that squaky pitch shange, but it slightly bothers me, I belive you could find a better replacement instrument for that, seeing as it only plays 10 notes.
at 0:35, the volume fade with the blip effect happens too fast, it should just get silent just before the other part comes in, and it should be a S curve instead of a J.

at 1:16, the slowish breakdown start happening, and personally, I believe thios is too early for that to happen with such an epic song such as this. It needs to have at least 4 more bars of guitars and strings, then go into a breakdown.

C'mon, change that part, and you guys could pull off something better at that part, then you could actually keep doing with the song, you are 2 of the best audio artists on newgrounds!

also, the open high hat sounds silly, and sounds like it is from the set of dance drums in FL library

AWESOME SONG; keep it up

Rig responds:

Thanks for the long review!

Keep in mind that this was the first-of-the-first draft put together a year ago, when we were both still n00bing around. Maestro had just made that thing for fun, and I had added drums unannounced. So yeah, later versions were much more polished, but I can't find my copies :C

That S curve is in the later versions, I know that. I don't know what you mean by "intro instrument that is high"...guitar? Anyways, the intro should be longer, I agree.

The open high hat IS from FL, as this was put together at a time when the FL drums were the only drum samples I had ;P

Thanks for the encouragement!

Alright, here goes

Freakin awesome song, very well mixed in every way, stands out exceedingly well for something that doesnt fill up the audio specturm to 0dB
I am going to try an critique as much of the song as I can.

Birds, wind, flys, bongos, and reverse bongos:

I gotta say, the birds really complete the song, they give a high end fill for the background of everything else, and just help get that loudness effect across, the fact that you actually made them sound good with the rythm is amazing, but then again, you are RIG: the guy who does crazy shit with sounds. What did you do for that wind sound that the birds seem to hide in the background with them, this also has the same effect, and does it if not better. Were the birds by chance just added to hide people from noticing the wind?
I like the random fly buzzing, it adds to the ambience and character of the song. I doubt the song would be the same without it, even if it seems to contribute little.
bongos are an instrument I have never been able to simulate or use ever since I pucked up FL (like 3 years ago now). I have tried many times, but I can never get the feel of them, or figure out how to utilize their dynamics. You have demonstrated how awesome they really are and that I must learn to use them in music. There was one note of the bongos that I didn't like, at around 0:03.90 or so, it was much higher than all preceding notes, and sounded sharp, but then again, I am not a bongo expert. The reverse bongos really add to it, I have always liked reverse snares in music, they really pull you into the beat without distracting you from the melody, your drum arranging skills are amazing.

bassline, drum progression, trumpets, piano:

I love the bassline, it is quite, not generic, but as if it could fit into any genre of music if it felt like it, i quite enjoy it, and I can tell the EQing of it has changed from your original version, now it seems to onl;y be around 90Hz opposed to over more bandwith. I really enjoy how well the bassline fit into the existing bongo beat, i love it.
The drums coming in are quite nice, I guess because they were the original beat from the song. The drum roll into it was pretty good too. The kick sounds low, but it it really takes up alot higher frequencies than that, That was probably the first thing I noticed about this song. Also, the snare has alot of power, yet doesnt stand out of the mix, I'm guessing this is a result of good EQing, compression, and use of chorus (maybe not chorus, might just be the sample used) But I would really love to know what eq range you used for the snare and kick. The high hat, is pretty high and loud for what I would expect as well, because I didnt even notice it for the longest time, it is quite there, just unnoticable, I cant figure out why, maybe cause of the bongos?
I've never really thought into trumpets either way, but listening to this makes me realise how awesome they are, I downloaded soro's trumpet packs. It sounds quite awesome, but is also pushed just to the point of clipping, but I guess that is what has to be done in such a case. The paino was also vvery well done, in a great minamilistic adding way, I have never been much good with pianos, as I always try to turn it into techno.

breakdown, and further progression of the song:

I gotta say, my favourite part of this song aside from the bass, is actually the rim hit in the breakdown, it has its little introduction beat, and then oncorperates itself into further parts of the song, in a very beautiful pattern.. that has only 3 hits, I always overdo all my beats, so I always add to much, but this showed me how less can be more, I really gotta work on that.
Coming back to the original trumpet tune was quite nice as well, but I havce a major complaint from this end part, which is actually what inspired this review, here goes:

THE CRASH, it bothers me.
Ok, so Im out of characters remaining, lost my last paragraph, so i will be blunt.
The crash is going on too long, and the compression has too quick of a return, causing it to fade in off beat......

Rig responds:

Wow, thanks for the amazing review! I'll try to respond to all your points.

Ambience:

I never had any intention of lining up the birds with the beat, I suppose that's a nice little side effect. The birds and the wind are separate samples (with the flies coming in the wind sample) and I did some high pass filtering and stereo separation to both, to blend them in the background. I added birds not to cover the wind, but to set the ambience.

Bongos:

The bongo loop is another sample, actually, and I ran it through an automatic drum arranging plugin called SupaTrigga, an extremely popular free VST. Some more stereo separation and EQ gave it its own place in the mix.

Bass:

The bass, again, is another sample loop, pitched down and eq'd into obscurity. I tried to recreate the sound with synthesis, but the bass plucking has a live feel that I couldn't reproduce. The bass in Mihai's trumpet solo part was arranged by him, actually - he sent me .wavs of that whole section and I mixed them into my instrumentation.

Drums:

The drums are a mixture of my own sample arrangements and a couple drum loops to fatten it out. So the snare is actually four or five different samples, run through extensive EQing. All the drums run through the same compressor - Compressive Pro (free!), on the "Punchy" preset, I think.

Trumpets & piano:

The samples Mihai sent me were clipping, so there wasn't much I could do there. I did EQ a lot of the highs to give a warmer sound and to take the edge off the louder parts. And yeah, Mihai's piano arrangement is amazing, eh? I wish I knew how to do it :P

Breakdown & crash:

Thanks for the info! Yeah, that crash was giving me trouble - it's part of a different drum loop, and I didn't want to take it out because the rest of the loop really worked well with the song. So I tried my best to do EQing and stuff, but I guess there's still work to be done.

Thanks for all your feedback, it's really amazing to pop online and see stuff like this. :D

hmm

isnt the original by scooter?
shouldt you credit him? guess you cant edit it now.

WELL..

to be honest, the original version is better in my oppinion.

then listening to the other version, I was thinking "ya, this song could use a bass"
but then i hear it with the bass in, but hearing it, its too compressed, and ewed too high, in mym oppinion it shouldnt actually be able to be heard in this song, just subconciously. and maybe just make it play half notes, well, might be whole notes at 200 bpm. Also, the one of the guitars seems a little sharp, so alot of the parts i liked dont seem as good, cause they sound off key. the reverb in the stopping part also ruined its little effect, which suprised me, because in the original, i was thinking "something should be here as a little filler, maybe reverb, maybe it just filtered out alot.

the sharp sound might actually be from the bass. probably is

ya, sorry man i like the original, though i hate the feeling that a song i remixed is worse than the original version i did.

wow.

I remember downloading your songs when you only had 7 or 8, and havent really been on newgrounds since, but I always remembered you as the ng audio artist with the best metal, and, now looking over the portal again, you still are!
(dont really wanna bad mouth the other metal guys)
actually, the only reason I am on newgrounds audio right now is because I am currently working on an xbox 360 game for the community games (aka not a real company) and I wanted a really good metal song that would fit the game, and this would have to be it.

Im not making promises or anything, but when I actually get to the point where I will add music to my game, I will probably want to use this, and maybe request a compy where you make the end and beginning fit together so they could loop (aka, make the beginning of the song where it pauses at 1:02) but ya, good fuckin stuff man!

guess I should actually review the song too. well, cant diss about the guitar, it is delicious and crispy. drums are pretty beef for not stealing anything from the guitar, got that compressed punch, but arent too loud, well, kick is too loud for the breakdown, but not too much. also, what effects did you put on the left guitar, just a crapload of chorus?

nice

great side-chaining on that subsynth reece
kick was well eq'd too.
theme changed too suddenly
the random breaks you got are too idm, and remove the beat from the song, this kind of genre cant have that happen, or it destroys the constant support it builds.
the slides you dont on some of your filters and pitches are quite nice, over all it was a well mixed song, one of the higher instruments at around 1:20, then plays again at 1:40, needs a multiband compressor. just 2 bands, probably splitting round 1300hz
um, thats about all i got

clap has a funny pullback, as if the release is too fast on its compressor, but i am guessing it is a sample you have, so all i could say to that is make it fade out a bit.

poop

Shane Jensen @MusicIsBliss

Age 35, Male

Student

Whistler, BC

Joined on 2/20/06

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