ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Flight]

Huge fan of deep house, myself. Some recommendations right off the bat. I'd low cut up to 250 hz on your reverb and delays. They're starting to crowd out your bass signals in places. I'd also turn your leads and FX down. I really can't hear your bass or perc over them, and percussion, followed by bass, should be the loudest part of any electronic genre.

Other than that, I'm absolutely vibing with what you got going on here.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Convolve]

Really interesting approach to an intro here with that low pass. Now, I actually am not really liking your choice of notes for your chords so much as some of them seem to just port completely around with the same ratio between them -- I'm looking at the piano in the right channel on 30 seconds with 5ths. That interval is just dissonant to me.

Technical aspects of instruments in this piece are pretty good. I'd have liked if you stuck to one or two styles though. I feel the various elements don't entirely mesh, we're left with so much variation in structure that it doesn't feel cohesive, like at 0:33 which is very mid heavy, and there are so many things you're watching for in producing each genre, you end up cutting corners with all of them.

0:45, I can tell this is a build, but the introduction of that stinger on the head of the bar is more confusing than anything. It leads the listener to think, did I just listen to a drop or a verse? Then we go into another section with the same progression as the one before it -- honestly the section before 0:45 I would have skipped or rewritten. It sounds muddy and congested in the chunky low mid chords. I would open the spacing of those notes. It doesn't flow into the next section well.

The fill before the 1:00 drop here doesn't sound bad, but I would want some more high end on those tops to just know we've smacked the shit out of them rather than them being random bass notes. Here the fill works. Later, it's not having such a great time.

The mixing on individual instruments sounds a little messy. At 1:30 and 1:34 we have clipping. It sounds like everything has a lot of reverb and delay on it, and those need cleaning with low cut to 250 hz, shortening tails -- almost every nexus instrument has a metric crap ton on it because it sounds good solo, forgetting we have to fit this into a track. Turn down your wet signals.

The section at 1:45 is nicely written and flows logically from the drop, minus that heavy sidechain sounding really out of place. This is nowhere near loud enough a section, nor are there high swells that would sound good sidechained, so it ends with the kick just taking away from the sweet atmosphere you've built.

Now at 2:49 there's this chunky section that doesn't make sense in the context of your song. I think those synths just sound nasty tbh.

At 2:25, that kick has a crackle on it that makes it sound like the track is distorting. The sidechain at 2:10 or so isn't doing a lot for the track other than letting me know how much reverb you've got on everything -- and exposing that crackle. The mix is pretty muddy

The transition at 3:15 is particularly messy to the point of being an acquired taste -- I had to listen three times before I became accustomed to it -- into basses that I can't really pick out what note they're on due to the massive paper crinkling 12khz and up scratch. The struggle of getting over the hill with this transition tells me it may not even be this section itself that's messy but the ones leading up to it. So something is going on with the structure, in signalling the listener, hey, we're going somewhere unexpected.

At 4:20 we have distortion on the lowpassed portions of the outro. Leads me to suspect the whole track was mixed at peaking volumes and mastering fx were put on top to bandaid things.

Now that said, you've got some great ideas here and the technical aspects of writing nice growls always gets respect from me. You have a ton of potential to do great things. Keep on trucking. Keep writing music. Keep grooving. There more you do, the more you learn, and the better you'll become :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

entropicvoxels responds:

thanks for the review! i really do need to work on my mixing and mastering, for some reason when creating this song i thought that it would be a good idea to put on a mastering chain in the middle of creating it, so that's probably why literally everything clips. and that caused me to really not put a compressor on anything, and then everything clips.

once again, thanks for the review! i'm definitely going to continue making music!

P.S. is there any way to reply to replies on songs? that's something i've been wondering for a while.

[Nocturne]

I also think the shaker could probably come down a little bit, or edit the velocity some. It's interesting the play with the sfx in both ears.

I really think the chord progression could use more than just octaves up to 1:00. Like 1:50. That's not bad. Maybe study some music theory, lead writing, etc. There are some channels that I stand by, Signals Music Studio, Holistic Songwriting, Ben Levin, in order of least difficult to most complicated.

By 4:00 I feel like we should be reaching our outro, fade out, or something. We've heard the same bassline and chord progression. I don't feel like there's a need to drag it out an entire minute past that point. By 4:52 it's just octaves. That said, the stopping point at 5:06 on your one chord... or... note, would have been the decision I made, wherever I stopped it, given the progression repeats so many times.

I just wasn't able to get into this song. The progression is very simple which is not necessarily a bad thing. Nothing sounds glaringly bad. You've even taken some pretty good steps with your percussion toward being innovative -- although those breaking noises I would take down by about .5 dB because they're louder than your snare at points. I really just feel that everything settles on the tonic of each chord, and that makes for a listen that isn't bad, so much as it's kinda meh. Absolutely no offense intended. If you listen to my old catalog, I've really been there. I've been through it.

No matter what, keep making music. The more you do, the better you get. The better your workflow will become. Take whatever composition you think is aesthetically your best, has all your favorite synths to use and samples -- delete all the midi notes and just keep one of every sample you want to use in a muted track. Save that track as a template. Then pick a song structure you like, and make markers on that template accordingly. Save it again. Work from this template as you go, adding and subtracting as necessary. It will help save you a lot of pain with guesswork and keep your focus where it matters, improving gradually until the day you can look back and be proud of how far you've come :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Vanhelyx responds:

Thanks for the review, I know I need to improve and that's why from now on I will try to do the best I can; I really appreciate your comment.

[TEACH ME HOW TO LOVE AGAIN]

Great opening chords. I think they're too loud relative to your perc though. Turn them down by about .5 db.

That dry kick also could do with a lot less sub. With such a busy kick line, it just doesn't sound pleasant with an olskool type beat. Speaking of, I moved this to olskool. Modern is probably more of a trap sound. This is more Kanye TLOP.

Now that said, I feel you could have done a lot more with this. Take some nice horn stabs, trumpets, some crashes, actually if you have a sampler like kontakt, there's the free Spitfire LABS libraries that you might find really useful. There's plenty of unobtrusive little melodic hooks you could write just to kinda pull into the next bar. I'm thinking jazz inspired.

But what I do like is the samples you've chosen give a kind of regal feel, one that's high up but still touchable and real. Great job with that. Work with your mixing and you got it made in the shade. And great fills. Really like your sample choice.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Hidden Forest]

Really nice writing on this piece, and good atmosphere, even making those synth strings work.

Couple notes. On your reverb, that long tail, high wet signal is okay for single instruments, but if you intend to use it in an ensemble I would low cut it to 250 hz or so. It's getting pretty boxy sounding in the mix by 1:20. Textures here are sounding pretty good. I would back off a little bit on your droning bass at 1:40 and emphasize the highs on that pulsing bass in the right channel panning around.

Even though the piece mostly stays in the same vein, and I was expecting something much longer given this development, you're quite talented at atmosphere.

I do have issue with the fade out. With the ongoing nature of the piece, it makes it feel like a preview more than a theme. I would just have made a second intro with that synth and ended on a high i chord.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Electronox responds:

Thank you for the review! To be honest I have changed this slightly more recently as I have uploaded this track, along with 4 others, to spotify. I do agree with you that it sounds more like a preview and tbh I really should have gone somewhere more with it. But I'm glad you like the atmosphere!

[Dancerave World (Dance Edit)]

This does sound like 00's rave music. I would say the lead at 0:28 could probably do with a slightly more varied lead line -- maybe hit the 3rd of the chord too instead of two of the same note.

Most of my critique will be on the mix. It's really hard to pick out the vocals here. I would put more compression on them and bring them up in the mix. We come closer to audible at 2 minutes, but it sounds like they've just been turned up a little. The overall ratio of them to instrumental makes them really hard to understand. 3:21 is a little better just because it's more open, but still not loud enough. The bass is approaching too loud there.

At 4:00 even despite being pretty quiet, due to the synths being in the same range as the vocals, they're hard to understand. By 4:26, totally unintelligible. The track is also starting to clip a little bit, but sounds like it's got a limiter on it. 4:58, it's pretty noticeable. Rather than turn them up, I'd turn everything else except percussion down.

Now beyond that, it's an absolute rave banger. Instruments are good, percussion is standard, SFX are well placed, structure is good. Enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[This is not Even Something]

Really cool that you recorded this in your own studio.

Vocalist is good, could probably use some improvement on diction with words like between.

The mix itself is pretty muffled sounding, sounds like it was done with live dynamic mics almost. So past about 8khz there seems to be a big rolloff on every instrument, including vocals. That's where it's particularly noticeable. There's no saturation there really to hide that rolloff as distortion.

Cymbals and snare are another spot where I see that high rolloff. This makes it sound like I'm listening in lower kbps almost. Drums all around could be louder, with the exception of that hard right panned crash.

I would probably compress the vocals harder and bring them up by a bit if that didn't improve where they sat in the mix. And there's always room for a nice heavy chorus.

Anyway, great song. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

dude2312 responds:

Definitely not a single rolloff on 8k anywhere that I can recall. It was more of a "stoner" rock what we were going for. I really wanted to get that muffle on it because rock isn't pretty or as nice recorded as Electronic Music.
Thank you for your review. I appreciate it! Nice having you back as a judge!

[Importance]

It sounds like your bass for most of the piece is completely out of tune, either flat -- I actually just usually recommend against using a sine bass. It's hard to hear most of the time, it doesn't really have a lot of character, it gets louder and softer based on its pitch so you have to constantly keep an eye on your volume level. And that's just the beginning of problems.

The mixing on this isn't too bad, but even if it were, that is the least of our problems. Aside from the percussion not cutting through, it's fine. I would just turn everything else down until it sounds more balanced. Percussion should be the loudest part of your mix.

I can't really pick out a definite melody with this piece, or countermelody. And by that I mean I have no idea where they are going, or where we will land. I would study lead writing. And music theory. Just knowing scales and chords in one mode will help you make decisions on the fly as opposed to noodling around and hoping it sounds good, which is what it sounds like you're fighting with here.

The good news is, keep writing, and you will naturally start to get better at it, find what sounds good, and move up. If you study hard, you can skip years of going through compositions like this, where you don't really know what you're doing, but you keep trying.

If you have the funds and you think you might keep at music making, why not invest in a midi keyboard?

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DjGrahnstetto responds:

Thanks for the response, I do have one question tho.
Do you think the melody / chord writing was too 'messy'?
From what I'm reading here, it seems like its my writing skill
that is the thing I need to work on.

Otherwise, the bass (A F DX10) does work but the velocity needs to
be set to each frequencey / note.

Again, thanks for the response and I'll try to work on that.

[Two Thousand And Twenty Dreams]

Lead writing isn't bad on your intro, but I think for your backing chords, you could definitely write something other than the same chord down one semitone, then three, etc. I feel that sucks the vitality and the cheery mood right out of the song itself.

Hihat open at 1:33 could use some velocity controls on it, like a hard, soft, hard, soft pattern so it doesn't sound like the same thing.

Throughout, the song isn't badly structured, but that drop at 2:41 is hard to enjoy just for the way the harmonies are written to begin with. It also sounds like the lead is mostly in the right channel -- unless I've gone deaf overnight -- I leave that as a possibility considering I just woke up. I would probably take your lead down by .5 dB. It's pretty out there.

The soft outro is a nice choice.

Really what we're lacking here is that extra cherry on top, harmony. Individual sections aren't bad, and I really want to get into it, but I can't. You might look up some channels like Signals Music Studio for lead writing and harmony on YT. Maybe Holistic Songwriting. Also something I notice is common in the house genre, buzzing the lead line on high saws an octave up or down from the lead itself, or just plain doubling it on other instruments. Throughout I was struck by how naked your lead sounded to me.

Anyway, I still didn't not enjoy the piece, and nothing was particularly offensive to my ears. Don't worry. The more you make music, the better you'll become. It's only natural when you start out to take a long stroll through the dark forest of not really knowing what you're doing at first before you start finding your groove, and it sounds like you're just now starting to peek through the leaves. Good work, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DJ-DG responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!
This piece, I was more focused on the production and sound design of things... I usually make my melodies and musical composition a lot more complex than this, but I wanted to focus more on the technical aspect of producing which I feel I am really lacking in...
I will take whatever you've said into consideration, and keep improving my craft :D

-DJ-DG

[We'll Meet Again]

This does indeed remind me of the 80's synth. Nice, upbeat. I don't really have the same complaint about development of the bassline -- it seems pretty standard. There does seem to be a bit heavier of a sidechain or LFO than I'm used to.

One thing I would recommend is gated reverb for your snare to get that nice DSSSH. If you're already doing that, I'd shorten the reverb tail and up the wet send a little, pop on a compressor and maybe a transient shaper.

I also personally am not a fan of the overly reverbed sound, at least without cleaning with a low cut to 250 hz on the wet signal.

The mix as a whole is a little treble heavy. Feels like the bass and mid were sucked out at 2:05 of so. I would say the snare needs to come way up in the mix. Kick is sticking out just fine, maybe even louder than it should be, but not by much. At 4:02, the synth coming in on the right channel is just a little louder than it should be.

Also, I see that chopped off kick fade. Render that boi, or just chop off at the last little key note! :P

Otherwise, great piece. Really enjoyed the listen. Probably could benefit from some harder compression on the master, just to get that more modern oomph and stand up to other pieces in the genre, but the structure was great, so was the arrangement. You seem to have a real understanding for the style. Dig it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Ditchy responds:

Amazing feedback - will take it on board! :D