ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bring The Heat]

I agree with most of TL's review, with the exception of width. On those big sections particularly, that shines. I would draw it back in with automation on your smaller sections to give a sense of apprehension.

Now, where the piece struggles to hold together for me is mix. It almost feels like you're afraid of your drum set and guitars. Those should be the loudest parts of the mix and clearly audible. I can barely hear them at 1:30.

The drums particularly feel cut down and mids sucked out. The hi-hat sticks out but it's very dry. This would be one case where I would say give it some verb, or pull it down. Now, your cymbal writing is moving and interesting for my ears.

Toms sound like twapping on notebooks to me. Compress those and bring out the wood resonance and that will help your sound here.

Also, your reverbs need to come down quite a bit. A reverb doesn't have to be very audible to do its job, and I feel the left hand piano in the intro would be well served to be thinned out. Cut off the low end of that verb up to 250 or so hz.

Your writing here is beautiful. I really enjoyed it. No comments there.

I will say watch your chunk chording rhythms at 1:00 for the velocity machine gun robot effect.

Also on those timpanis, the low mids and reverb to me sticks out pretty hard.

Throughout, your guitars could all stand to come out. I don't care if they sound synthy or not, the brass, when guitars are in the mix, should at least sit back farther.

I also felt throughout reverb could come down. On sustained notes, it tends to grab harmonics and overtones and just carry them to stupid levels. Not saying I'm hearing a lot of that here, but if there's mud in your sound, reverb will drag it out from under the rug, especially plate.

Overall, a great listen. You might appreciate some work of Chernobyl Studios on mixing and bringing out drums and guitars. I like this direction though. Keep doing what you're doing!

[BEST BUY TYPE BEAT]

This is so bad it's good. I'm really impressed you got Speakonia to flow!

[boom]

Yo! Glad to see you around! I don't have my monitoring headphones on, so I don't have a lot of mixing critique, but I like what you have going on here. I will say on my laptop speakers, I'm not able to hear any bass at all, so if it's there, I might recommend grabbing a distorted 808. That's really my only gripe other than there don't seem to be a ton of switchups between sections, leaving a comparatively long sounding drop and only some small bridge sections. It ends up sounding like you really only wrote a couple different 4 bar sections. A nice moving 808 with a 8 to 16 bar progression on it could totally change the feel of this piece.

But beyond that good work. I enjoyed listening :) Hope you're doing well. Ain't seen ya around in forever!

[you won't last 5 seconds after clicking this link]

It's been five seconds. I haven't killed myself yet. I'm telling mom.

Idea is pretty cool. Think it could use a lot less reverb and shorter delay tail, and no sloppy fade out at the end. Extended version over a standard house structure pls. Could really do with bringing out your percussion, too. Maybe try a transient shaper like dominion (it's free)

[Competition]

Listening to this, you've got some good writing ideas that are being held back a lot, I feel, by instrumentation. Those trumpets tend to bleed into one another. I would use a different synth say from a commodore 64 emulator, SQ8L synth, or maybe psymon. Particularly glaring is the overtone harmonic guitar and banjos.

The mix is out of balance, with bass hidden in the mix, hihat at times overpowering instruments on quieter sections like with the bass. The trumpets covering each other up. I would probably choose a different instrument for chords there just based on how muddy they tend to sound and trying to keep the texture varied.

The electric guitars at the end are still out of tune somehow. I don't know what's going on there really.

Rhythmically, the piece is pretty well written, but I would put my focus on structure and phrasing. There are some parts where it sounds just really busy for no apparent reason other than to be busy, with contrasting parts, particularly the outro, and I'm not sure where you want my attention to go. That's probably my main issue with the song actually, forgetting even clashing keys at one point and mix issues. I would recommend some laid back study of lead writing say from Signals Music Studios or Holistic Songwriting on YT. I used to have the same problem as you back in the day -- if you listen to my work from say 2017 and earlier, writing a ton of really complicated parts for no reason other than maybe cool points tbh. Watching their material helped me grow as a composer. And if there's hope for me, there's destiny for other folks like you out there -- because I was awful.

But no matter what, keep following your craft. Three years in the making, and still going -- don't ever let your memes be dreams. The more you do, the more you learn, the more you know, and the more you grow :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Wertw - You Are Not Alone]

Piece sounds great, with the exception of what sounds like over-reverbing and those double or triple kicks that I actually can't tell if they're separate percussion samples in the background due to reverb. Muted like they are, they kind of, and don't take this wrong, sound like me farting in my blankets and trying not to be heard. No offense intended. But if you have some cinematic percussion down there, bring that up and be proud of it! I have a hard time hearing both that and your kick on your smaller sections with less sidechain. Mostly just sounds like a case of other instruments being way too far up in the mix, up to a dB, and muddy verb.

For verb instances, I almost always low cut up to 250 hz and try to keep the length and amount as low as I can to achieve the sound I want. For things like snares and percussion, you can use a technique called gated reverb. I will also scoop those frequencies out of most things that aren't a bass or percussion instrument for the purposes of saving space in the mix and eliminating low mid and high wash over big sections. That would really help you here.

Also, this piece is pretty long. You could probably stand to cut one drop by half or so. I remember thinking in that midsection as I was writing critique that the same section had been playing for quite a while without much variation.

But other than that, really enjoyed the listen. Good work :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Wertw responds:

Thx for the review dude! I'm gonna try to improve all that stuff you said, glad of take part in this, hope that the next year I can do best and kill 'em haha

[Fizzy Frost Ice (NGUAC 2020)]

Some nice polyrhythms going on, everything building off of itself until the drop. I can't really say I'm a huge fan of that section or the one following. That's a little disjunct for me, augmented chords. Then we go back into the drops.

I find myself thinking, there's got to be something different with the drop we can do, in terms of lead writing. And I really think that is where you stand the most to gain from studying. You know how to use samples and structures. But we go from major chords with stacked intervals on the verses and intros to a monophonic drop on diminished intervals, to augmented stabs. I'm trying to put them together as one cohesive thing in my brain and it's not really working.

You might find some videos from Signals Music Studios on writing melody and harmony a good study -- they're not bogged down in music theory too much, so if you don't know it, it won't stop you from learning, but I think it will help you get the cohesive, weird vibe you're going for, without making what sounds like parts of three different songs and putting them together :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC, and congrats on the front page!

chris-marcell responds:

thanks for you review, i realli appreciate tht!

[Fury Dearg]

Default Kontakt drums? Not bad. I would probably recommend some freebies like X-Crash and Cymbalistic to flesh out your cymbals, or a paid library like Metal Factory Drums. There's also a few nice free kicks out there like Dark V2, and some snares like Saudade. If you want to hear all of the above, I use them on all my compositions of late. These drums, not to be rude, on metal, sound like childrens toys that someone else threw in the woods -- unless you haven't touched velocities between double hits, and then in that case I 100% understand and weep with you.

I'm also a Shreddage user -- great work on your leads. I actually want to know what tutorials you used, haha. Intonation wise sounding if not 100% real, at least very musical. Your lead writing sounds close to what a guitarist would want to play, I feel.

As for the mix, that's where the hair pulling comes in. I really want to hear a double tracked L and R rhythm throughout. Not having it sucks the power out of the mix I feel like. Compare 18 seconds to your choruses, where the way the solo and strings are mixed, and when it sounds like compression may have been applied, and the rhythm is just not there anymore, or sounds like it's been dropped in the left channel to make room for the strings like at 1:59, sucking all the power from the mix. I promise, the strings are high enough they will be heard -- more so if you cut off that gnarly ringing 250 hz and below that isn't needed to make them sit nice in the mix.

I would doubletrack your lead as well, panning up to maybe 35 percent left and right each, different heads and cabs, depending whether you're using shreddage's in the box or not -- if you are, take the shreddage FX off, pop on a head and cab of your choice on one of the instances, be sure to humanize, switch sample bank, etc. Bingo, nice double tracked lead. I'll sometimes throw delay from each into the channel the other plays on, or send both to the same reverb or delay on a send track.

Strings I would pan in more of a surround setup. But I realize here you were making space for lead. Just remember they most of the time are taking back seat in the mix, due to the nature of their sound. Listen to how bands like nightwish will mix their orchestral parts, maybe even Epica or Amberian Dawn.

And beyond that, where is the bass? I can't even really hear it I don't think.

Other than that though, fantastic listen. Really enjoyed it. Good work!

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

verjamon responds:

Thank you for the review, and sorry for not being in the other rounds of NGUAC, computer problems.

This was a really primitive project in mixing terms, i have a pair of cheap headphones and it was before attending a mixing online masterclass.

I'm glad you liked my work with the lead guitars, i actually had to make a lot of time with the guitars, i wanted something natural but uncanny at the same time, but that's just subjective, most of the sound of the lead is EQ and virtual amps in a clean sound on shreddage, i personally used guitar rig 5 in this one but now i'm into Amplitube 4.

I'll work on the mix of my next songs, and thanks again for your review. =D

[Wormhole]

Great sound on virtually everything here. Recording wise, everything sounds at least passable and fixable with a little more attention to mix and in the case of vocals, a little helping hand with compression and melodyne. They're pretty pitchy.

Mixing wise, guitars could come down about .5 to 1 dB to make room for your drums.

Beyond that, not a whole lot to say. Good writing, interesting subject matter on the lyrics, even if I'm not particularly listening to that as hard right now for the sake of paying attention to mix.

3:52 strikes me as particularly lively and worthwhile. Great work. I would probably bring out that solo some more, or rather cut rhythm by about .3 dB there.

You've done a great job writing, I can't stress that enough.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!