ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

["Lose/Lose"]

Due to how naked this song is, it's very easy for the vocal and guitar to sound as if in two separate places. Guitar playing is very clean. I would recommend changing the way you record your vocals, your setup. I can hear a lot of room tone, where that isn't the case for the guitar. The vocal also doesn't sound very compressed, nor up front in the mix. Also, the performance could be a bit more passionate, but hey.

Your songwriting is great, and so is your structure. Keep at it! The only thing holding you back sounds like is mic setup and maybe a little self-consciousness. That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things, so keep your head up!

LANPartyAnimal responds:

Appreciate you taking the time to listen and provide feedback

[The Expedition]

This track would get 100% love from me if the huge amount of reverb were cleaned up prior to the drop at 1:54. Literally almost nothing else is wrong with it except there is a lot of low frequency noise on the verb and long tails, resulting in a muddy mix.

Your drop writing and sound design is wonderful, your melodies are compelling.

Minor gripes aside from that, the electric guitar is in the center channel; best practice is to double track the electric guitar with 2 separate instances, one humanized, one not, and pan them 100% left and right opposite one another. This creates depth and a thicc sound.

I love your drop rhythm and growls

I do think on the first drop the snare is getting buried a bit though.

In short, keep all the ideas you have for this track. They're freaking great. Clean up the mix and it will be PERFECT :)

OkuuMusic responds:

thx for the feedback!

[Without]

Офигеть, рифмы и мелодии такие... Понимаешь, мне очень нравятся.

Но глюки/глитчи около 1:15 -- по моему ты ставил туда либо слишком много, либо не в то место. Мне казалось так просто потому что во всей песне, их совсем мало, только там с 1:15 до 1:20. Поэтому я их не ожидала, и мне тогда пропала (временно) атмосфера песни.

Если глюки были более распространены, я не бы заметила, и наверное мне бы понравились.

Но в общем, песня хороша. Так продолжай!

[Doppelgänger]

Indeed sounds thicc

Two things I wish:
One: that the track were mastered -- although it looks some compression may have been applied to the track based on overall waveform. If this is the case tbh I would throw it in Audacity and hit amplify and this is a quick fix for quiet waveform.

Two, the snare were more audible

Overall great groove and intonation on your playing. Love the chugs.

Also love the clunky bass tone. Sexy. I can't tell if it's been chorused but if so, I would bring the freqs below 180 or so hz on the bass into mono and emphasize some of the mids. Also, it sounds like you're quad tracking -- are you panning all the guitars hard left and hard right or no? If yes, try bringing them in a bit more. I'm feeling a weak center in the mix. Though perhaps some of that is the drums lacking presence. The snare in particular, I can only really hear the bottom rattle and the transients for a hair of a second.

Kick drum is also a bit out front relative to the rest of the kit. Cymbals are at about appropriate volume.

I also think for NG you could make a version which properly loops, or just punch in a final stinger note here and not loop the track.

I'm stoked to hear what else you come up with. Seriously great grooving.

76/100

BALDORF responds:

Thanks! And really great feedback!

I struggle with mastering and drums quite a bit, so it's good to get some specific notes on what seems to be lacking and how, appreciate it!

Indeed, I am quad tracking, at least I think lol not very good with technical terms.
But I layer two rhythms hard left/right and layer two leads just slightly left/right, generally speaking.

Oh and one last note, it isn't supposed to loop, I just thought it sounded good to go back and conclude with the opening.

[Big Bugs Middle Of The Night]

Did not like the bit crush on the intro BUT:

Great melody and overall theme, conforms to genre.

Panning and levelling is where the piece falls short. Cymbals are quiet and very centered, almost dry, bass and kick are slightly too loud, and compression may be a bit on the high side. In general on the speedcore sections, I felt that the mix was very centered and flat in terms of EQ balancing.

However, the transitions and switchups are very clean and cause the piece to flow well. Wish it were longer!

[Novenarious]

NGADM shortnotes:
Piece has a great melody and good arrangement for the genre, in 9/4 which is an interesting innovation.

Mix and master are where it could stand to improve. Master could use more compression.

Bass and synths should be sidechained to kick and snare a bit harder, enabling turning the kick down. The kick is creating a pumping feeling under the master compressor, telling me it is potentially a few dB too high. There is also a bit much reverb, and the lead is spread slightly too thin.

Besides that, great groove!

82/100

MrSpud8 responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

[Feel free to freestyle.]

A fantastic laid back beat to freestyle on. Only thing it lacks is a hard master. Meaning it's a little quiet. And the 808 could come up in volume a bit

The 808 sounds like it might be out of tune by one semitone on the tonic note of the beat, but I kind of like it actually. You could open the midi back up and play around with leaving it where it is at the start of the bar and lower it by one later in the bar -- hard to explain over text but transpose it up 12 semitones and you'll hear what I mean -- it doesn't match the bottom note of the piano chord.

Either way, more like this please

TonyaBROWN-LIFFORD responds:

Thanks, I've been trying to produce better, and I love hearing people's honest response about this.

[Like a Funk Machine]

Nice to see another mixcraft 10 user out in the wild. I don't have the time to leave a uber detailed review, but I wanted to say this is really catchy. What stops me from leaving a full 5 is the track appears unmastered, for one, and the levels of different instruments are a bit off, including some of the panning.

The kick and snare, as well as the bass for at least some of the track should be centered. Otherwise, things are going to feel quite unbalanced. Hihats and other instruments like being spread out, but on most speakers moving the bass around creates phase issues, or just doesn't sound as pleasant.

Your breaks also should be nice and loud, followed by your bass.

Then there are issues where the high freqs are a bit over pronounced. I know you said you're a deaf musician in your tags so I get it if you have severe tinnitus (I do too)

Maybe send your tracks to a friend for their thoughts on balance and EQ, or find a reference and try to match it by eye and ear? There has to be a way. I know Andrew Huang adjusted his monitor headphones with an EQ to compensate for his complex hearing loss.

Anyway, nice little groove. Keep doing what you do!

music69012 responds:

Thank you so much for commenting on this song, I really appriciated it and I also love the comment and what needed improving.

Yes, I am deaf, but wears hearing aids which is a slight problem with it. But I have just got a new plugin that can read the eq and also improve the sounds a little more better.

I can't wait to release a new project which is it upcoming soon! (no matter what, if i got through or not) I will already love to release new music and get good ideas on what should I do next.

The next project I am working on which I don't want to give a spoiler but can give you a genre. Cyberpunk style.

See you next time!

Feisty Fennekin

[Why Do They Build The Walls Like That?]

The master could be louder, and the vocal could stand to be more present overall, along with the rhythm guitar, but the playing, delivery, and treatment on the production is great. A little Youtube university on cleaning up mix mud and mixing in-your-face will solve 110% of that.

Overall I felt the mix/master was a bit muffled and held back but certainly an improvement from your previous works. Fantastic to hear you grow and change as an artist <3

92/100

Mischa-head responds:

Thank you!

[Remember To Stretch]

The quality of instruments selected combined with mixing decisions and quiet master prevents me from being able to give this a great score. It's a good piece melodically and in terms of structure. With a good mix, the instrument quality wouldn't even be an issue, since there are plenty of videogame songs that use such instrumentation.

I will say if you're going to have lots of repeat notes, you can stand to use velocity modulation to differentiate them.

I won't go too far into the details of what can be done to mix this better. That can be done via Youtubing -- lots of free education out there to get you on your way. What I will say is that the hihats and cymbals should be somewhat offset from the kick and snare, the kick and snare should be centered, and perhaps add a bit of reverb to the kit overall to help it mesh with the rest of the instrumentation. The bass should also be centered and at or near mono, and quite a bit louder.

The illusion of space can be achieved by taking your rhythm synths and pads, finding patches that sound similar, and panning them slightly separate from one another in opposite chanels.

Besides that, not bad!

66/100

ZuwerWS responds:

Thanks for the review, I'm kind of shocked you still gave it a higher score than I would, I know the mixing is really bad here, since there's basically none present, just some basic audio leveling, disabling or lowering some specific frequencies, and that's about it. I'm glad you liked the melody though, I still think it's my best composition that I did for jamuary.