Darren-M's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[WorshipOfTomorrow-Trance]

not bad

this is one of your better songs actually

i am finally starting to pick up on your style of things.

the choirs sound cool but just before that kick started in i would have like the choir to drop and then come back in side chained.

this song was actually pretty good. at 1:05 i really liked what happened here. i like the clap it was a good addition, and the mid synth was cool. you did a good job putting in the dobro and then removing the emphasis from the mid synth .

i wasnt sure how i felt about that phaser type squeemy synth towards the end. i would have liked the notes in it to have been more similar to the rest of the song i think.

i am judging your song based on if i think A. you are improving, which you are. and B. if i believe this song is well done. so i think a 7 is appropriet, and believe me i would give alot of people a 3 for much more an effort .

good work on this one

cRAVE01 responds:

YEY! thank you much! THis one is still in the works. Doesn't have enough of a melody in my opinion. I will play with this when I am done with the project that is currently eclipsing my focus ^____^ one that you inspired, fyi ^_' (and you'll be happy to hear I've been trying to work the synths for it, so they're almost all completely original synths).

so yeah. thanks mucho for the encouragement that I am improoving! Glad you liked this one, I am pleased with how it has/is turned(ing) out as well.

I'm gonna take a gander at any new songs you might have up, try and make a review before I pop off to bed. So take a look.

[Snapdragon]

Bass too wide

the bass on this was way too wide for me and ate up some frequencies on the stereo field that i think would have really made the piece sparkle. the plucked instrument was well placed and fit in very well.

your filtering was great, and you did good at picking the reversal samples for this they were actually just the right ones insted of a random reversed crash or something.

around 4:08 i would have liked to hea that pad more and the piano wasnt "there enough" good amplitude but bad mix on that. i think it came from the bass issue again. idk.

at 3:48 smooth move on that build dropping the pad at the end was a good idea.

anyway good work on this but since this is a great work and you know what all is good about it work on making that bass more mono or something, rhythmic parts may not need to be so bold when the emphasis here is the atmosphere created by the pads and plucked instrument. also i listened to this with a sub which i put centered with my monitors and it naturally put alot of the bass in the center and the higher parts of it were on my hi/mid monitors, so perhaps try to keep the bass lower in the freqs, but not too low since trance bass is higher, and consider the common persons listening format, with ear buds or computer speakers. you probably know all this crap.

any way, great work. im proud lol

NemesisTheory responds:

i really have to brush up on my technical definitions on some of the things you mentioned, I dont know what half of this means. XD but I think i can paint a pretty good picture of what you mean, so I'll keep it in mind as best as I can.

Anyway, I'm happy you liked it ;oo, and I'll try to see what I can do next time about some things. :P

[Falling (DjD)]

oh my god!

i heard the first 4 seconds of this and knew it sounded familiar and when i realized you were covering this song i said oh my god this is awesome. this could be turned into a trance song.

anywho the detuning on your synths was really heavy but awesome. a little too much. i liked the the reoccurring part at 1:37ish. the atmosphere for this was perfect but like once before i need more reverb on this. also this song was missing nothing, very complete.

loved that game

Mad-Muppet responds:

Hehe yeah that IS an awesome song, loved it to death while playing the game :P I detuned pretty much, because I wanted it to sound a bit different from the original, maybe I overdid it... Well, anyways, thanks for a great review!

[Overclocked (DjD)]

reverb

i feel for this song to be most effective it needs moe reverb on the master or maybe just on the twittery part for the main melodic part because rvb on the master might mess up the FX kick's rvb.

at 1:16 ... awesome filter in. and it was really cool how that came in. at 2:07 was a good time for the intensity to step up but it was a little abrupt, i would have liked a build here.

at 2:49, this was a cool take on it and the snares were good that came in bt i think there should have been snares in the drum patterns after that.

good work keeping the atmosphere on this consistant.

keepworking with filters, and their envelopes and it can take you a long way.

Mad-Muppet responds:

Thanks alot for the review! Yeah, reverb is a real good idea, I agree :)

[Catching a Cold (DjD)]

not deaf enough

so i am listening to this and thinking to myself, well this is a surprising melody, very quarky which was cool, the toms at 1:04 were actually kinda cool and a nice break from the kick, but i felt the kick was too high , and it needs to be low passed some or something. i felt the piano around 1:39 needed more reverb or delay, and the high pitched phase shifting synth ...is that a comb filter well it was just executed well enough not to kill my ears so good job on that but i was scared. its like a saw tooth wave with a flanger idk.... but in any case i am gathering like myself you have exposed yourself to dangerous frequencies upon your musical quest and you need to compensate for the loss of your high end hearing loss (its ok pro's even do this) and have others listen to it or check the amplitudes of the 4k+ region to make sure everyone is comfortable. also lower crappier speaker systems will have a real hard time pumping out anything past 18k but hey, for the most part this was a great song

Mad-Muppet responds:

Hey, thanks for an amazing review! There's alot of stuff here that I didn't think of. Like the fact that not everybody has the killer speakers I use when I mix stuff. That's something I'll have to keep in mind.

[KT. Update]

interesting and innovative

your intro shaker was at a great level and your kick was appropriate this time. i can tell you you were somewhat building to 1:17 but it was really subtle because there was not very much excitement in the transfer. that metal bang you used in place of a snare in the beginning was great, very cool great usage and it had a nice attack on it. swooped in. during the soft part just before 2 minutes it was nice, i liked how atmospheric it was. so far the song is kinda funky! here next you have what is called blue notes i believe which are notes that dont go to the key but to me they were not done right i did not enjoy the intense sections melody it needs more control and structure for right now unless you revise it.

at 2:44 the HH is way to hard and loud. throughout the piece your bass is subtle and not really part of the groove as much as the atmosphere and i liked that. the main rhythm here comes from the treble parts so try to embrace that. the melody of your pad is really weird and i dont think towards the end it match what was going on but only in one spot or two kindal like the little parts at 3:55.

i noticed you drop the drums at the end of pieces, quite frequently. this is cool but you can do that during the song more and kinda mix it up. also at the very beginning of the song you have a sample and i know it is because you dont have that crash hat anywhere else in the song.try to not useobvious samples in your drums lol. but i myself must be careful of that.

but i will say it is good that you are thinking about calling the attention right off because after you do that people are carefully listening and expect a build.

you have really shown that you improved here in this song.

i hope you are exploring the synth parameters and making original synths :)
that is something people neglect sometimes. but im bias since i love synths. anyway good work on this

cRAVE01 responds:

I'm glad I am not the only one that thought this felt kinda funky-not disco, but funky. Hmm, wish I knew which notes you were talking about w/ the blue notes. agreed on the HiHat.

[I will Always Remember You]

realistic cheating

ok there are some new concepts i think you are ready for listening to this.

this song didnt feel like it was going anywhere to me simply because none of it was familiar or i felt that it wasnt building up to anything rather. in order to do that you need a theme in the playing which is a familiar line and since the melody was so abstract and free i couldnt relate or remember it in corelation to anything. i like the synth that came in in the middle and i like how it soloed out for the end and looped, extremely smooth.

anyway now for some learn'n!

if you want to make mechanical piano samples sound more real you have to do alot of work and then export that part and reput it in as a wav.

let me explain the procedure.

ok so i have a piano sample and i want to stretch it out over the spectrum in a sampler on the piano reel. ok that fine but you forget that sound expands over the frequency field, it can sound really granular if you stretch that to the bottom notes and it spreads out so try using multiple samples for a wide scale.

anyway i am pretty sure thats not what you did here but i want to address the mechanical aspect of it. real instruments have variations in timbre and dynamics and here are a few ways to get that.

adjust the attack and velocity and releases of the notes. automating the parameters on the amp envelope can help here. also some notes should be softer or harder than others, the hard ones are known to be accented. reverb helps it covers up blemishes. sometimes instrumental samples are so raw and hard because thay are mant to be modified.

good work on this piece, it is soothing and now that it has looped a few times i can realize that it was nice to not have to think of the same melody over and over and it put my mind at ease.

cRAVE01 responds:

heheh. truth be told, what I have presented here is not something I would be particularly proud of. I just put it up fast to show a friend b/c I was excited about the beginning (which I had put together in one sitdown). But these are important issues that will need addressing ^__^ so good to know them now before I ruin the song any further lol.

And I think I get what you are saying about sound expanding over time, and using multiple samples to resolve the issue. I will keep that in mind.

Thank you so much! this is something that I really have wanted to make a full and decent piece!

[10SEH Brando - So Far So Good]

good luck

good luck on your submission! we will pit our songs against each other in battle!

by the way i love vengeance stuff! they sound great.

nice use of the vocals

your lead is cool.

Dj-Brand0 responds:

Hey Dazza,

Thanks heaps man. Yeah we'll battle it out ;D lol XD
Yeah the vengeance vocals are pretty nice.

The leads are a mix layered 3xOsc channels. I'm trying to tie that into my new songs since I really wanna get good at creating my own sounds.

Thanks for the review.

-Cheers Brando

[Underpulse]

filtered

the distorted filtered thing in the song that occurs in the beginning needs peak limiting or something. its crackling. the pad is lushious. good work here. the piano fits and sits well. the kick isnt too prominent but i like where it is at.

i felt the distorted part may subtract from the song. if you have good monitors that make it sound ok, try listening with some crappy speakers or ear buds, you will see.

the off beat bass at 3:37 was weak. the track is so saturated i almost couldnt tell it was there. but it wasnt, bad sounding. i just didnt notice it until it was done with.

for the most part good work on this. :)

Phoxxy232 responds:

Well you have to keep in mind that i made all my songs using 4.1 surround sound 2 of which are my stereo speakers which have built in subs and the other 2.1 are computer speakers (Small sub included) so when i make all of my music its intended to be listened to on a decent sound system not headphones or small speakers, give it a listen on a nice stereo i bet the song sounds diffrent

[Dkc2 - LiquidHotMagma]

mixing style & etc...

i have been wondering who my 101st review would go to!

so i am realizing this is the most "traditional" mixing style i have heard in a while, such as instruments & voices being on left only and right only. this is very important in mixing but you might want to automate the paning to go back and forth on some things like sweeps for example. one thing you accomplished well in this piece was separation within the stereo space, which is something i get onto with people alot because they cant hear how mono everything is.

i hear something interesting. side chaining on a pad! i like this.

the boiling, bubbly, rainy, samples you have in here are really cool! great idea.

you did a great job making this song sound complete, it all seemed very full. i would have chosen a different kick but for the kick you did have, you made it sit nicely in a different spot than your bass frequency so it sounds distinct still. great mixing & eq.'ing on this song for the most part.

interesting stuff :)

keep up the work, this is good stuff i gave you a 4 :D

cRAVE01 responds:

HAHAHA! your review has made me all smiles:D

I sat down and read the PM you sent me a while back and i FINALLY (after all this time) made the connection that the Peak Controler was just as important to EQing as the compressor was! Glad to hear that I got it right! Now I get to go back and re-EQ my other DKC songs ]:\

I really didn't want to go back and touch this song up again b/c I've already put 12+ hours into it in the last 2 days, but you've convinced me. I am gonna work on the panning - and I know just the spot.

I am glad you liked the drips. I knew the second I heard a drip in my head that I HAD to have it for this song. Glad to see it was well recieved.

I want to say to everyone that is reading this that this guy right here ^^^ taught me, and helped me make this song awesome. SO GO CHECK OUT HIS STUFF AND GIVE HIM LOTS OF REVIEWS! haha. I appreciate all your input Darren-M.