ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Out of Place]

These are my shortnotes from NGADM judging -- and before you read them, I want to say besides that, this song is friggin fantastic! Great emotion, great vocal performance, atmosphere, and groove!

----

vocal could use more crisp
hihat needs to come down, it's the loudest aspect of the mix and sounds too clean relative to the rest of the mix
bass can come up a bit and have more presence
snare could use a bit crisp in the 5k-8k range
bridge has REALLY dirty mix with rhythm guitar suddenly way too heavy in left channel

----

Those are the entirety of my gripes. Besides that, perfect!

Ajtastic responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it! :)

[NGUAC2024 - Elimination]

That section around 3 minutes is crazy good writing -- what a lead riff!

With a more professional mix and master, this would make a solid 4.5 out of 5 for me. Since this is not my primary genre, I won't spend too long explaining, but essentially, what I'm hearing is a fantastic demo track. From the waveform, we see that it is not mastered, and the distrubution of volume is somewhat uneven.

In general, the drums are hard to hear throughout with the exception of the hihat which is a little too loud. The bassline could also benefit from more volume and presence. It sort of hides throughout as well. Leads and samples tend to be very pronounced to compensate for the loud hihats. Besides a few samples really jumping out in terms of volume, it otherwise isn't bad. It's just quiet.

Snare in particular really hides in the mix with few exceptions. It seems to be intentionally turned down at points like 2:20.

Great writing, great ideas. Was a real pleasure to listen to!

MutatedBacon responds:

Thank you for the feedback!
Yeah I was touching up this track when I was on vacation, which is probably why the mix is so sloppy. I'll use the points you made to revise it!

[Reclaimed Melodies: Voyage on Eerie Sea]

Approaches perfect, with the exception of some minor gripes about the growl tone of Monster Sax and a bit much reverb all round on the final chorus where you bring in a more lively instrumentation. Would appreciate a more upfront bass tone there and a little more volume on it. Writing is fantastic. Great work!

9.4

[By Default]

I like the base melody and chord progression of this track once it is developed. My problems with it would be best summed up as mix, followed by accompaniment.

The synth after the intro has very predictable stepwise movement, and the lead that comes in is too loud throughout. The track sounds as if harmonies were an afterthought or occasionally accidental, however, riffs are not bad at all.

Lots of mud in the low register. Amen is hard to make out due to lots of reverb on the track or other problems of levelling. Leads are consistently too loud for instance, and there is a lot of clutter.

2:16, the kick rhythm sounds almost out of time with itself/the track.

I like the modulation on the rhythm at 2:34 including the bit crush. However, I'm not able to determine, is this the bass? No, I hear a bass after that. The bass is hard to discern due to issues of levelling.

Rhythmically, your breaks are very interesting to listen to -- can never have enough breaks <3

4:34, the bass here is one of my favorite sounds, period. It's sounding very over-reverbed and spread out. I would place the bass squarely in the center and mono-ize it below 150 hz. It sounds like in order to achieve depth throughout, you're using reverb and delay, which is not a bad thing, but it's very easy to overdo.

If this were cleaned up a little, I would happily give my 5!

6.8

[~Time~]

My main gripes with this piece are vocal performance and vocal mix, and reverb mixing decisions. The vocal is not very present in the center, sounds like it needs to be de-essed manually or via plugin, and is not very uniform in volume. It also is somehow out of tune on lower notes with the instrumental. Whether this is because of detuning of the synths or otherwise, it's noticeable for me.

The vocal additionally may have sounded better with a doubled higher octave.

Lyrically, I'm having a hard time understanding the vocals, partly due to mix, partly due to what sounds like cramming the lyrics into an unusual (for those words) rhythm. This is somewhat common in trance so I'm willing to forgive it!

The bass also due to the level of compression, lots of reverb, and arrangement also does not shine as well as it could. I recommend reducing the level of reverb and reducing the low-mids of the reverb itself through hi-pass/lo-cut, changing the arrangement of your piano (the chords in the low register are a bit muddy), and potentially even changing out those keys for another instrument entirely.

Are those nexus keys?

Basically my entire review could be summed up to, good ideas hampered by a muddy mix. Still, the melody is catchy, and I love this genre. Really takes me back. Keep up the good work!

7.2

ImmyShack responds:

Finally, some actual criticism!

Other than adding an EQ (vocal preset from EQUO) to boost the high ends I haven't changed anything in the vocal.

The lyrics are nonsense, hence why I didn't add them in the description. Just what Dooky Mackey (credited writer) had been drinking?!

The piano preset comes from nexus, I wrote a double octave piano to add background in the bridge between lead section #1 and vocal section #2.

I'll see what I can do, thanks.

[Random Number Generation]

I'd put it in DnB personally, because there are enough breaks that people there will appreciate it!

This song is really, really varied. Thus hyper LOL

It's also really sibilant, with the leads heavily overbalancing the bass and breaks. I'm still tapping my foot, but I would certainly revisit that mix for clarity and back off some of the high frequency instruments, as well as reverb wet signals.

Overall, great impression and arrangement, hampered only by comparatively minor flaws of mix.

8.5

[PARTY HATZ! - SHUTTER$HADES]

Omg. This takes me back to like 2009 hahaha. Proof that the music of that era was ahead of its time xD This sounds disturbingly similar to some of the dance tracks that I remember from back then

The lyrics are on point and probably the best part of the song

Mix could use improvement. It sounds very muffled, owing to heavy handed compression on top of levels that are loud going into the master. To eliminate this, I mix at a lower volume until I like what I hear, export, and then master the resulting wav (mp3 if I'm lazy) in a separate project file. This also allows me to slow or speed up the file if I want in audacity before mastering.

The vocals are hiding in the mix for most of the song and very widely spread, resulting in them feeling less intense and in your face than they probably should.

The instrumental in general has a boomy/boxy quality in which the low mids are over-pronounced along with the sub, and the finer details of hi-hat and lead are unclear except in sections where the compressor is not fully engaged. In short, it sounds like a combination of heavy handed mastering on top of mixing that is not quite ideal. Most of it has to do with volume levels pre compressor, it seems.

But I loved the song through and through. Great lyrics and theme, good groove. Nice work!

7.7

PARTYHATZ responds:

thank u for the tips :3 im so clueless when it comes 2 mixing and mastering but im learning every day! thanks again this is extremely helpful:))

[-AnxiousBreaks-]

Great groove to this track overall and handling of FX initially. I really think the only thing holding it back is mix -- and 1:25 the choir is distractingly lo-fi

1:44 I think it would have paid to keep things chaotic and offbeat, using samples rather than synths. You appear to mix samples much better than synths -- the non-bass synths occasionally get quite loud, are not necessarily great quality, and they also clash somewhat with your bass.

At 3:09 the initial charm which drug me into this track is somewhat lost. You're bringing some of it back for the outro, but by then I know the track is over, and this makes me sad. I do really like the wild stuff you do at the end with samples though. Bring on the confusion lol.

In short, I think you had a really strong statement in your opening, with a little lapse in the middle. It's okay. Experimenting is part of what makes music a blast. No pun intended. Good work, and thanks for coming out to NGADM!

6.5

Creeperforce24 responds:

Thanks for the criticism! Yeah, I’m probably not making it past the first round lol!

[The Fate of the Reverent]

The over-presence of reverb on your percussion and other instruments without controlling tail length and low-frequency wet signal is causing what ordinarily would be a driving march to sound very muddy. The reverb itself sounds louder than the initial attacks of each kick/bass drum.

The instruments chosen also are not the best (I understand this, we work with what we have)

What can be done to help this is to disguise the poor-man instruments by not using them by themselves -- for a string patch, I will have 5-7 similar instruments all panned slightly apart (or widely depending if it is a lead or a rhythm instrument), and I make sure that they are not immediately recognizable as a lone string synth, etc. This is hard though and I really just recommend finding better sounding instruments AND using this technique of layering.

One of the biggest giveaways that either the equipment or the arranger is lacking in this film-score/orchestral hybrid genre is single trumpets, single violins, and etc trying to carry a whole tune, or instruments with attacks that all sound the same on repeat notes or fast notes. If you want massive scale, you must provide massive ensembles. It doesn't matter TOO much what they are made of, if you are clever.

I myself struggled with this for a long time. It really came down to having to get a new PC and picking up every good free orchestral library/patch/vst I could get my hands on. If you're in need of those I just did a blog of some great freebies.

In short, good writing, great even. Just hampered by some very common mistakes in mixing and instrument quality. Don't worry. We've all been there! What's important is not that I or someone else think your piece is the best thing since sliced bread -- it's whether you're making the kind of music you want to make! Study your genre. See how it sounds, and how people make it that way, and you will be golden. It's much easier to fix mix than it is writing, too!