ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[Star Buster (King of Synths)]

Piece has a nice mix between synthwave feel and oldschool electronica for me. My only real complaints are mix related, as phrasing is good, builds are nicely placed, samples aren't crap. There's just the issue of lots of distortion in the mix at various points and clipping.

At 0:08 particularly noticeable but also through 0:28. I could probably name more points of reference but it just sounds like your track was mixed at a volume that was already quite loud before mastering FX, if any, were applied. The rest of the track suffers from similar issues of loudness and mix clutter. I would additionally recommend cleaning up your reverbs with low cut to 250 hz, as well as any synths that are not your bass. These frequencies make up a ton of extra loudness without adding anything to the actual music itself.

Other than that, great piece. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DawMii responds:

Thanks for pointing those out. I couldn't figure out how I will fix the distortions. I really need to work out my mixing

[You And What Army (40 Days of Struggle: Day 35)]

Takes me back to the days of Megaman X command mission. Nice soaring chord progression, solid bass, 4 on the floor groove.

I feel it was a bit early for a naked 0:50 groove panned out like that, but the lead that comes in at 1:23 takes my attention again. Nice, slow, deliberate writing there.

I think the weakest point here is arrangement of sections. I would have probably inserted one more 0:29 before our sections at 1:50. Those are very clearly bridges. Then I may have cut each of those following bridges to 1 a piece, then I would have gone from those bridges directly to 2:28, then to 2:14, and then to the last sections you wrote up to 2:57, where I would have faded out with 0:28 for 2 repetitions, and a third for a fade-out.

Mix wise there seems to be some distortion here and there, like it was mixed too loud and compressed anyway. In places, I can't really hear your bass, and the percussion is hidden in places where we have leads. Try turning your computer volume down as low as you can stand to mix at, turn off the master FX, and mix until you feel you can hear everything clearly. The drums should be the loudest part of your track, followed by lead and bass, then any aux or FX you want to stick out. Be aware that not having a strong low cut on reverb sends going up to 250 hz, having a high reverb send, or not cleaning up those frequencies in your leads and other synths can lead to a boxy low wash that will crowd out your bassline and kick, especially high bass like you have here.

But overall great job. I really enjoyed your writing, and it's great to see there are people out here pushing themselves and pushing the art form. Keep at it, and don't let anything stop you. Quantity will become quality, if you let it!

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DaveSlayer responds:

Thanks for such a comprehensive review! I'll try to keep all this in mind when making stuff in the future. Glad you liked it!

[Virtual Menace]

Nice intro groove. Would prefer a lot less reverb all around, a low cut on it to 250 hz so those frequencies weren't so muddy.

The rest of the mix is pretty sibilant, with hihats very much in your face compared to the rest of the song. I would turn down the synth we're hearing at 1:26 by a couple dB.

You've got some kind of sub hum absolutely out of control on your drop, and it's clashing with your other bass frequencies. Either tune it to the tonic note, or I would say just do away with it. It doesn't sound attached to your kick.

By our B side of the song at 3:01 I'm a little bored with that pattern. I feel we could have entirely skipped that section and the song been just as good.

3:47, I feel like we definitely could have used a different synth for the drop. This one is very familiar already. By 4:09, that sounds good, but not so much as a drop but just a rhythmic portion. Like 4:24 for instance. You probably could have done more with something like say CS One bass vst, which has a nice LFO feature for growls.

Overall not bad. Has some mixing problems and some weak points, but the piece holds out, and I appreciate what you've done rhythmically with the bass. Keep on writing and producing, and I have no doubt you'll only continue to improve. :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DanTheCoolGuy responds:

Wow! Thank you so much for that review, i'll definitly try and improve from that! That was very helpful!

[Hell's Halls]

I came across this after looking at some of my first reviews. Gotta say, wish you were still around. This is some old school vibing shit. Great work! Here's to hoping all is well with you, wherever you are. :)

[Glimpse of a Dream]

I would prefer a lot less low mid on that piano, especially on the reverb frequencies, below 250 hz, and some more talking range frequencies, like 8k and above.

I might also cut the intro down by about half since it repeats the phrase 4 times. Same with the strings. Though you do differentiate them a bit more.

I might have made the entrances of each new phrase a bit more subtle, possibly used different string patches. If you don't have Kontakt, LABS, Pocket Blakus, etc., you may appreciate those slightly more realistic string libraries. A good flute alternative would be Egyptian Ney for Kontakt, also free last I remember. The temptation with soundfonts is to add superfluous reverb, which doesn't really add or take away from the obviously synthy sound.

Overall the piece is pensive and relaxing, but not quite subtle. There's a ton of reverb on instruments that naturally want to be a bit more dry -- like with those scratchy cello harmonics, and a flute melody that naturally would probably be best written for an ensemble with much, much softer intonation. Things that are very noticeable when we don't have extremely flexible instruments at our fingertips, i.e. soundfonts of real instruments. There's not a ton of harmonic movement or lead -- the piece doesn't lend itself to stepping out of the box of phrase A.

Overall, I enjoyed the listen, just some technical aspects to improve on. Don't worry, keep at it. The more you write, and the more you revisit your work, the better you'll be in the future. :)

Congrats on making it to the front page, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Cs - 'Baptism of Fire']

Right off the bat, I like your writing, but the mix is very, very dirty. Turn down that reverb, turn down that delay -- low cut those FX and every instrument that's not a bass to 250 hz or so. Right now all those frequencies are in the way of your kick and that octaved bass so that I can't hear it on phrases where we have that low saw. I feel like we're relying on sidechain to make sound mixing decisions for us in keeping that low end tight, and that's just not its strongsuit.

I would also say our leads are somewhat too loud. Or rather, everything else is so much louder than the percussion. I would turn all that down until you can clearly hear kick and hihats. It sounds like you're trying to get more overall loudness out of the track than it wants to give by compressing, as the outro is about as loud as the track was 30 seconds before it, despite subtracting elements. Try not to mix with any compression on the master. In fact I would even recommend turning your PC volume down as low as you can tolerate while mixing, in order to stimulate mixing things with clarity. Be sure to leave -6 dB or so of headroom before applying compression or mastering effects it will make life much easier.

Anyway, enjoyed the piece. That's a really catchy line you have in the low saws. :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Csucskos responds:

Thank you! Without any modesty, I think this song turned out pretty cool melodywise and I'm also happy with the variety I managed to pull off, but it was just really lacking the punch. (It was boring.) I did not know what to do, and I wanted an experts review on it, thus I entered NGUAC... I guess I'm a real bum.

I applied your advice and it seems to be working. Now I just have to readjust the volumes, but it sounds more interesting as before (turns out, it wasn't as good as I imagined it to be). So thank you!

I'm not really sure about everything though. I wanted this song to be punchy and loud, as usually my songs turn out to be too quiet even on max volume on my phone :/ and this tune should bang! I don't know what the delays do (in terms of muddiness), I did not use them too much in the song, but just to be safe I turned them down a little. I like to use reverb on almost everything, as without it they just sound too sterile. So I usually slap it on every percussion and main melody element.

The hihats though should be in the background, as they are not at all interesting, I don't intend to change them. (Ohh, and why should I mix quiet? Don't I need to hear everything? I guess I can give it a try.)

Just to sum up: Massive thank you for the useful advice, it already helped a lot. I don't aggree with everything, but compared to before, when I just know something was wrong, but did not know what, now at least I have some leads to follow. Cheers!