ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Smirking Prolapse (cool song listen!!)]

This description is probably the most interesting thing I've read in a while. This is.... Absolute death to my ears, not because the idea is bad, but because it probably could be lit with better mixing (drums with the exception of the kick need to come up), more understandable structuring and sounding a bit less thrown together, and probably better recording quality but I don't really care about that if you're going as avantgarde as this.

Also, is that a mixcraft kick? I feel like it's a mixcraft kick.

Followed because I like weird shit.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Rayne]

Not dubstep did someone say? I call bull. Just because the wobbles are reesy doesn't mean it ain't dubstep.

Now, I would say the structuring of this song could use some work, particularly where the perc comes in and we think we're going to get a drop, but we continue the verse.

You've done some really cool things with your basses. I could compress the different ones during the drop so they're about the same loudness as one another. The disparities there are a little distracting.

Also take care that your basses are not getting in the way of one another. On your later verses, I can hear the frequencies struggling to come to the fore.

Some things that are lacking here, solid transitions, as in the noises themselves, crashes. That's more or less stock to the genre. I would probably actually not use a reverbed sine bass just for how muddy they tend to sound.

But your melodic content and idea overall are great. Enjoyed the listen.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Giraf- Calm Rupture]

Interesting piece, percussion heavy. Sounds like a mix between trap and dubstep.

Mix here to me is super reverb heavy -- I'd cut those wet sends down and low cut to 250 or so hz, considering we have an 808 to make room for. You could probably sidechain the kick or any really plosive FX to the bass for good measure. Where the reverb really steals my attention from your composition is in those long-tails like at 2:11 and 2:25. It's really boxy sounding there.

I would say 808 and those growls could stand to come down a dB or two. The way it is now, it pushes the percussion out of balance. Perc should be the loudest part of your mix, especially with bass music. And I would bring out more of your 12khz to 18khz there. You may have speakers that are overly representing sibilant sounds in the mix and be mixing them down to compensate, thus crunching them off on other sound systems. I'm listening on monitoring headphones and it's giving a degraded audio quality type sound.

The outro section is out of the key of your bass. I would just port that down until I could play my bassline over it and it sounded good. Once done, drop the bassline out. Presto, non-clashing outro.

Throughout there seems to be not clipping but a lot of harmonic distortion from being compressed. Dunno if you mixed this with FX on the master, but if you did, I would avoid that. Especially with trap or dubstep instrumentation, these instruments are very sensitive to work with when mixing. I would cut off your master channel, turn the computer volume down to 20%, and then mix until it sounds good to you at even that volume. It's more of a challenge, given the natural way the brain perceives loudness to be goodness, and will force you to make good decisions.

Interested to see what you come up with next. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

girafj responds:

Hey ADR3-N! I really like long, detailed replies like these because its nice to know that someone took the time to help me get better at music as a whole. Your feedback was extremely helpful in understanding more about fixing the muddiness of my mix, and I appreciate the rating.

That being said, I understand what you're saying about the reverb heavy sounds. In the sections you mentioned, there is a loud downsweep of white noise that I added to fill the high end, but didn't EQ, so the tail just sat there filling up the section a little too much.

Regarding the 808/growls, both had sidechain, but the transient still came through for some reason I couldn't figure out before I started the final master. The dilemma I had with the percs being too quiet was because they were out of tune with the higher frequencies so I had to cut quite a bit of them.

One tip I do get quite often is to listen to my song on other monitors, headphones, etc. I'm working on getting new speakers and I will take this into account.

Lastly, this song wasn't mastered because I was getting it out too quickly, I believe you're getting the "harmonic distortion" feel because the a couple sounds in the same frequency are slightly crushed, with didn't turn out well in the final mix. Thanks so much for this feedback, I will be sure to take it all into consideration in my next track. NGUAC was awesome, and it was great to see all the other amazing, better tracks that others created. Thanks!

[GearWax- Transient (Heroes Part 2)]

Some comments.

By 37, the chord progression isn't offensive or anything, writing isn't bad. I would actually change the bass note for the 4th chord instead of just -1 semitone down for the bridges, to the one you use during your chorus. There is one point I can't hear the bass for the lead in that section.

I will say by our drop, the percussion is almost totally overwhelmed by the instrumental. I would turn it all down until percussion could be heard clearly. It should be the loudest part of your track, about like in before 3:30.

I'm most impressed by how much I've watched your composition improve. This song has both and A and B, and both parts are cohesive. You've also used detuned instruments in a way that doesn't bother my ears.

I think the drop and sections through 5:10 are your strongest. Great solos.

My remaining critiques would be for mix. Reverb is insanely and distractingly heavy on your percussion. I can hear that slapback panning in a circle, which, while technically cool, when done 50+ times over, is a little maddening. Remember to go through and low cut those wet signals to 250 hz or so, turn down the wet signal a bit. Maybe shorten the tail somewhat in the case of the snare. I eventually got distracted entirely by the seasick wooshing like, am I really hearing that? I would compress the dry snare and hats/kick some more, and if that didn't bring them forward enough in the mix, maybe grab a transient shaper, and then turn them up somewhat.

Stock electric piano sounds I tend to loathe, and I would still avoid them here just because they don't contribute very well to the texture.

Pleasure hearing from you again. Really enjoyed this piece.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Iosun responds:

Thanks for comments! This is abt a year old by this point and I love when I get feedback like this, really helps (percussion has been the thing i’ve been trying to get right for years now, and comments focusing on it in particular give a good sense of what needs to be fixed.

[Cymbal]

Interesting. I haven't heard FL Slayer metal since 2007.

Watch your mixing, there's a lot of clipping going on. The levels are way too high, take them down!

Structure wise, this is pretty well written, and actually is great for being done almost entirely with sytrus and slayer -- drums excepted I'm sure.

I would recommend you find some more capable guitars. Ample Sounds make some freebies like ABPL and others. If you're willing to invest some dollars, the non-freebies are pretty cheap as far as things go. There are free amps and cabs like Emissary and LeCab. And of course some nice free drum vsts like Cymbalistic, Black Noh Snare, Saudade snare samples, I think what I use is Dark Kick V2. I have it saved to a preset and have forgotten the actual name, if that tells you how much I use it.

Those would be great places for you to branch out of the stock FL instruments, which sound a mess of muddy and unprofessional. Your composing skills are far beyond that, so I encourage you to take a look around and try them out :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Samouraï psy]

I like the inspiration behind this piece and the interesting directions being taken. I think what's keeping me from fully enjoying it is not knowing really what's happening structurally, not really conforming to any of the genres mentioned, and lack of super strong transitions.

As tends to be with hiphop there's not really a presence of a strong lead line, but there's not really a droning 808 bass line on those sweet offbeats to sort of suspend the listener's disbelief and convince them not to care. The lead we do have is pretty repetitive and also at times not sure where it's going, like on your big sections. Or mixed muddy, with a lot of reverb.

So before I would really think about talking mix, I would study some lead writing, do some YT research. Your ideas aren't bad. Just need to clean them up, differentiate them from the accompaniment.

But mix wise, I hear a lot of reverb bleeding. This means the wet signal is high and the low cut is below 250 hz usually. That's fine on say someone walking down a hallway but when you get lots of instances on multiple instruments, it tends to get screwy and covers up other sound in the mix, especially bass. I heard a lot of that here.

If you want to try traditional melodies, look up Japanese temple music. That shit gets wild.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

GALICROSS responds:

Thanks for th return.

[Chill'd (V.I.P)]

Totally predicted that chord progression, but I dig it. I was really hoping for a different genre drop here around 0:38, maybe a future bass style. But the aesthetic you have here works for you.

I would take those strings in the back and bring them up maybe a dB or two. That's a large part of the atmosphere of your track. Bass I might take up a bit too.

The track as a whole sounds really sub heavy. Those aux percussion at 0:37, I actually can't tell if they're a melodic synth with just a metric tone of click. If that's the case, I'd take that down a bit, maybe sub some sample in like -- actually I remember a free woodblock percussion for kontakt that was good for tribal perc.

Enjoyed the listen. Piece is subtle and infectious.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[FLSM - Transitious]

Great idea. The execution is pretty rough. 1:07 we have two clashing keys against each other. It resolves by 1:30. I feel most of the sections here are very busy with melodies running against each other either too fast to really understand or without any build up to get why they're doing that.

2:16 is really messily mixed, with the very long reverb tails and sustained chords.

It's better at 2:47. I feel like if you want to use those guitars there, you should be proud of them. Bring them out, or they sound muddy. 2:47 and 3:22 are probably the best part of the song so far. The elements from there are introduced gradually, like they should have been from the beginning. But this is our outro.

I feel like a lot of the issues in the track you undoubtedly had to get used to over the course of the month. Working on something, you hear it so many times, it's hard to hear what isn't right with it just because of the way the brain works. Exposure to even something horrible sounding, like the firing mah lazer meme, will eventually become pleasure.

That's what I think happened with your intro.

So, it took you a very long time to make this -- first I would recommend studying song structures. There are good channels for that like Signals Music Studios and Holistic Songwriting. Then I would recommend taking a look at music theory and lead writing. You're at the point in songwriting where you have an idea of what you want to say, and you understand layering. You're ready for the next step :)

And no matter what, keep producing music. As you go on, you'll get better, you'll figure out what you're doing, and not only will the process get faster and easier, but you'll start producing music you and your fans like. Might even turn it into a career some day.

Best of luck, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

FL-DMD responds:

Hey, thanks for doing me a solid today. I’ve always been debating whether or not I should use forgeries or this track for the NGUAC, after reading every word of this beautiful, inspirational in depth review, I can see why I was stumbling between which one I should submit. (Regretting I used this one) but this is still the beginning of my journey as I began literally last year. I’m moved now to push foreword the longest I can




Thank you very much ^_^

[Embers of a burned friendship]

Writing here is not bad at all. I like your chords, I like the lead writing. Probably what's holding you back is instrumentation more than anything, maybe a little of structuring, just taking structuring with percussion.

I actually don't have many comments on your writing. Can't say a lot about mix other than that you could stand to have more instruments between different parts of your piece, just to hear what's going on. You could probably stand to write more than a standard four on the floor kick throughout most of the piece, but even then we're so minimal that it doesn't really affect much.

If you have Kontakt, there are lots of free instruments out there like from Spitfire Audio, LABS, pocket Blakus cello, etc., as well as some neat freebie vsts such as psymon, SQ8L, Dexed, CS One Bass. Cymbalistic is a nice velocity sensitive cymbal library.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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!