ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Another World (Humans)]

Lots of interesting elements here, super clean, icy percussion, and smooth chord progression.

My only comments are going to be mix related. There's a boxy low wash in your chords, particularly evident by 2:05. You can probably take care of that by low cutting up to 250 hz, or touching on it with a multiband compressor. I feel you've compensated for the wash with making your percussion somewhat tinny, but I would personally probably have taken the opposite approach.

Other than that, great work. Really enjoyed the listen. :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

PromisesMusic responds:

Thank you very much for the comment! I hope and be in the next round and I really tried to put all my effort into this song and the ones on my album to bring it my best.

[Stalker]

Interesting slapbacks on that percussion in both channels. The overall mix sounds pretty muddy though, like reverb and delay has been used to make space on a pretty dry mix, or dry instruments. What that creates is a lot of muddy attacks on sustained instruments -- which granted, I absolutely abhor synth strings that aren't hyper realistic. I'd prefer to use 80's pads or something.

Now, I do like what you've done with the human percussion. That's probably the nicest touch on your track.

Riff wise, this is a solid piece. I think you just need to find some instruments that work for you, study mixing a little, and you'll be in a good place as a producer.

If you have Kontakt, Spitfire LABS is a nice, professionally sampled free library. There are plenty of percussion instruments like mini Naal, tincan percussion, Egyptian Darabuka, Clingfilm frame drums, the E string weird string bowing library, Egyptian Ney flute. Lots and lots of free instruments and libraries. Native Instruments also released a huge starter pack of their flagships and some libraries to work with them for free. Then there are some free vsts such as Ample Sound's taylor nylon guitar and ABPL bass synth, which work pretty well for more real-instrumenty applications.

Then there's synths like Psymon (just simon says sounds, but it sounds good to me), some commodore 64 emulators, SQ8L, Dexed, tons of others. If you want a list of those I can see if I can look through what I got.

Mix wise, clarity is your biggest issue. On those instances of reverb and delay you have, I would move the low cut to 250. Getting a big low wash. And if that doesn't clean it up more, I would drop the signal down. Also sounds like there's not a lot of high end on anything, beyond your ah chants.

Beyond that, enjoyed the listen. Reminds me of oldschool mortal kombat levels.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

PandaThePanda responds:

Thank you for all recommendations! I will take a look at all of them as soon as possible. Mixing/mastering has always been something I stuggled with but slowly gotten better at, but I guess I should take a week to do some extensive studying to really get it down for my next track.

Thank you again for your in depth analysis! All love to ya <3

[I Love You]

A nice, subtle piece. Could probably use a piano more responsive to your playing, in all honesty, or sample library if you've played this into a DAW.

I don't have much critique beyond that. Your arrangement is simple and beautiful. Although watch out for chunkier thirds when you get into lower notes in the 2:10-2:30.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Ironface]

Sounds like silence of the lambs, yo! And love that it was made on GarageBand. People shit on GB a lot.

Composition wise, this is great, nice structure, cohesive sections and chord changes that don't sound forced.

Mix wise, good 80's aesthetic. Could probably use more bass, some chorus on that bladey quarter stab that comes mid-range in the right channel. Something to give it some silk.

If you haven't learned gated reverb, that would sound good on your snare, just for a little extra grit.

Really enjoyed the piece. Not a lot of other comments. Sounds great.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[-Stoopid-]

The idea for this is pretty cool, oldschool even.

Some notes. I like the sample you've chosen, and the ... sounds like either a tight delay or ringmod, but I can't quite understand it. Might compress it so that the consonants are more out there.

Your drop suffers from a thin, airy quality, though I like the idea of the tone overall. I would throw a bass under it.

Mix wise, percussion at times is buried. Make sure at all times, your percussion is the loudest element -- proportionally so, so it isn't obnoxious -- in your mix. The human ear doesn't listen to it first, so it has to work twice as hard as say, even one random piano note strung somewhere in the song. We'll hear that, but we might not notice the snare unless it's an offbeat, backbeat, or funky rhythm.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Hzrdous responds:

Thank you so much for the honest review! I love when people give me comments like these! My mixing does need a major overhaul so as of now I am practicing a lot more in the mixing scene. But I will make sure to take what you said into consideration! Thanks for the review! And no problem! I'm glad I got the chance to join!

[Where did it all go EDM]

Interesting touch with the overtone strings. I would probably pull down the reverb some, just to keep things clean for that bass coming in. Probably low cut to 250 hz on the sends so that through 55 seconds sounded cleaner.

As is, the combination of elements is sounding good so far up to 1:11. By 1:48 I'm expecting the drop you give us at 1:59.

Some mixing critique, sidechain isn't doing a lot to make your percussion stand out. The instruments themselves are muted, particularly hihat and snare. Before applying sidechain, I'd make sure the instruments themselves, hihat and snare, could compete with those big chords in the space. So you can either take the leads down -- I would recommend that to .7 dB or so. A lot of the lack of contour between sidechain and instrumental is that volume difference. Then I would compress and possibly gated reverb your snare, and bring up the hats about .3 to .6 dB.

Other than that, I really feel we could have used another drop, but the composition otherwise is a great listen.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Love - Native Maker]

Feels like sort of layering a new line every few bars or so. So, eventually, we get a chorus, but by then we've gone through the idea enough times to more or less have exhausted it. Nothing sounds too bad or out of place, but nothing sounds exciting either.

I would look at some song structuring tutorials on YouTube, pick one you like, and learn to write with it. You know what you want to say, and we eventually get there, but the song ends up feeling a one trick pony. Feel me?

Some channels I can recommend you are Signals Music Studios and Holistic Songwriting :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[NaNo - Grey Sky]

Wow, this is so loud! The lead is way up there. I'd pull it down about .5 to 1 full dB

There's not a ton of critique I have other than some mixing decisions, such as the very, very thick sausage fattened sound. Great for drops, makes it hard to make good mixing decisions. Also not a giant fan of that super boxy transition noise wooshing drop offs from the sidechain. That's a nice touch in its own way, I figure. Hopefully it's a sample and not what the mix sounds like without sidechain on! lol. You can make that sound prettier by playing with low cut up to 200, or even 250 hz. Those frequencies are pretty boxy.

I also found on intros and builds that I was wanting a bit softer of a sidechain since our kick is loud there already. We just end up with a dry sound there that isn't super pretty in the middle of a nice mesh. Might drop the amount to say like a 70-90 percent range rather than complete dead wall sidechain.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Exoverse]

Intro is sounding good.

Coming into 20 seconds, I'm wanting a bit less sub on your kick, and some more space on that backing drone. I might actually bring that up about .5 dB or so.

By 1:29 we have fantastic rhythms. But I want more bass. Give me some of that tasty 8khz to 12khz, so I can hear her character.

It actually sounds like the song as a whole may have been clipped off in that range -- through bass boosting and compression. Bass will stand out on its own without boosting. Make sure you have a sound system that accurately represents sound, without artificially boosting or clipping off any ranges of sound.

Also, nice Russian sample. Enjoyed it. I'd like to hear more of your samples over all. They're very quiet in relation to the track itself. Hard to understand.

Here is what I heard -- don't know if you are Russian speaker... перед мной в любой точке земного шара, определенной заранее с большой точности. Excuse whatever the first syllables after pere are, because I know it's not pered mnoj, but that's about what I heard. I know enough Russian to work in professional capacity and the mix has me really working for it, is what I'm saying. Meaning the sample is not doing its job of getting me hype. If you are Russian speaker, lemme know what that first word is please!

Beyond that, great piece, really enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Michamadman responds:

Oh hey thanks for this great review! Fun fact is that I changed this song few times and last one seemed to be best. Who knows maybe in future I will remix this or make something like this but in different genre... For now I dont think Im some great and professional musician. I got some inspiration from other songs and used FL Studio and Audacity to make Exoverse. Also I am not Russian, Im actually Serbian but yeah we are slavs too.