ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[ZDK - [Vengeance BEAST]]

Хардстайл мне очень нравится. Однако думаю что надо обратить внимание на фазу басса прежде чем ставить компрессор и тщательно исправить уровни инструментов, чтобы громкость басса и бочки не уменьшилась когда новые мелодии играют. Остальное мне просто класс и ностальгия!

X-500 responds:

Спасибо за честную рецензию! Я обрачу на это внимание)

[Sunshine Lima Bean (Best Before Dec 15 2023)]

Absolutely sucks when you have a contest entry to do and your team backs out for whatever reason, and especially when it escalates to arguing.

As someone who is actually quite amazed you did this in BeepBox, I will keep my comments related to that and applaud you for even submitting. Even more so for being brave enough to speak up when you were jipped like that. If a grouping isn't working, the others imo should have publicly bowed out and allowed you to seek other collaborators.

Compositionally, my only real problems with this are that it has a lot of elements dancing on top of one another, and by that I mean it is quite busy with instruments that are in the same register, thick chords on single instruments in the low-mid range, and so on.

Perhaps this would not be as obvious if there were a synth bass an octave lower, kick and snare louder in the mix, etc The guitar that seems to be functioning as the bass is chugging throughout the outro and is jumping around a lot and doesn't function as a solid enough foundation for the choirs when they come in to not sound as if they are taking up all the space suddenly. However, that portamento glide up sounded pretty cool.

I would reduce volume on the shakers and tambourine to help them sit comfortably on the edge of audibility. I feel they stick out more than your leads.

If you want that accordion or harmonica line to stand out, you can have 2 instances of a similar instrument panned somewhat left and right and this can help. Same with your choir. You can reduce volume on that, and apply panning. It helps. Or you can pan whatever other rhythm lines you have going on opposite (I sense there are hidden instruments in here I can't pick out that could come out to play)

I also like the second half of your song better than the first.

But since this is beepbox and I have limited knowledge of this program I'll shut my mouth here and hope I gave you at least one good thing to chew on. If you have questions, just ask.

And if you ever need mixing and mastering, you can hit me up here or on discord. I enjoy that sort of thing

[At The Seams ("Deathslab!" 's BOTB ENTRY)]

Liking the motion on that synth in the beginning. Feels like brauer motion -- could be generic rhode oscillating. I would like if that were to stop at some point, though it's interesting. The accompanying nnnnnnyeeeeaow texture could oppose it in terms of panning for depth.

On the drums in that opening hook I'd like to hear a bit more dirt on the snare, some crunch, and perhaps a bit more bite on the kick transient.

Vocals on 1:24 are not bad. Don't apologize. Could just a bit of de-ess on tweety s's. That's about it. I would also potentially apply harder compression, perhaps distortion even, to it. The choral portion hard panned reminds me of Queen. Lots of layers here and interesting choices in writing -- atmospheric. Potentially bring the lead vocal up by 2 dB.

2:44 is intended to be a massive section -- I can hear it. I would reduce cymbal and kick volume slightly, reduce reverb wet, and bring up the keys. Double track another patch for what is written in piano, and pan that left. More subtle oscillation on the rhodes for this section.

Compositionally speaking however, this is great. Lots of interesting progression and tasteful use of dissonance. I wish the snare popped more throughout, and the whole arrangement was more in your face. Really, I think there is room for low-tuned, high gain rhythm guitar.

Other than that, I quite enjoyed it. The section at 4:56 is gold -- again I would take up the lead vocal and perhaps drop wet signal on it some.

Guitar solos are a high point in this piece also.

Outro sounds great!

carboluka responds:

Wish we had that idea for 2:44, that would've sounded so nice... Thank you for the feedback!

[Freefall]

The itty bitty pop in your intro might be able to be cleared with iZotope RX7's de-plosive -- to address @ChronoNomad's comment

Regarding writing, my comments would concur almost exactly with what he has written, so I will focus primarily on mix. You've done a great job on everything in my opinion except the few things I have to complain about!

Mix wise, this comes out sounding pretty flat, midrange heavy, and sibilant throughout. I think it's important to learn by example, so I recommend finding pieces in this genre, and looking at them under a spectrum. That will fix one side of the equation, knowing the overall levels you want to see when you have a finished product.

**********Some things I recommend, in no particular order***********
-take those cymbals down a notch and vary the velocities some more
-avoid extremely hard compression that makes the entire track as loud as your choruses/hooks
-before you compress your track, make sure it is not already peaking
-if a track is meant to be rhythm backing, think about having 2 separate instances of similar instruments panned left and right respectively
-rhythm guitar in most situations should be double tracked and panned hard left and right rather than chorused, as well as louder than you think it should be
-kick and snare should be the loudest in the mix, or at least cut through (on snare you got this but the room tone on the snare is quite heavy)
-avoid "cheesy" obviously computer drums, if the genre does not ordinarily call for them

If you're looking for good drums, there are plenty of free libraries. For rock, I actually have released Saudade Drums Remastered, a totally free pack that was orphaned and cleaned by me, released as a SFZ instrument so it is lightweight. Drum samples and cymbals can make or break a song's replayability, so make sure they are quality. The ones you have I personally would not have chosen. Cymbalistic may be a good free option. I think I hear also that you have X-Crash in the mix. Am I right?

Somewhere there is also a library of free cinematic percussion by ... Spitfire labs -- it will come in handy if you don't already have it. You shouldn't be afraid to use one shots either, but be mindful not to use them in a way that you can hear you've got multiple hits of the same cymbals -- combining two of them at different velocity and with varied panning can help give the illusion of multisampled cymbals. Occasionally I will even employ ping-pong delay on a cymbal track.

When mixing drums and cymbals, volume levels are as important as EQ and compression, maybe even more. Those cymbals are quite in your face throughout and I would take them down by as little as 1, as much as 2 to 3 dB. It's hard to tell due to hard compression what effect that would have on the mix, but if you find you can't do this, do take and EQ and try to de-harsh them above 15khz a little. TISSSSSSSS is not exactly what we want out of a cymbal.

I'm not immune to any of this stuff myself, also. It's hard to hear things like this in your own mixing. One thing you can try to refresh your ears is to come back in half an hour and listen to it again, or to swap the left and right earphones if you're mixing on those.

Also, some of this stuff will in fact blow your mind if you swap to a different speaker system. My mixes did not sound much different before I started listening to them on my headphones, my phone, and the car. I later found the culprit to be my audio driver was compressing the outputs by default, so I couldn't tell the difference whether a song was properly mixed or not. Check if your audio driver is the default HD Audio Driver, if you're on Windows, and if not, try it out. Make sure nothing is coloring the sound on your mixing PC, basically.

Anyway, in short, I would double track rhythm, take down reverb wet signals slightly, bring up rhythm guitar and bass somewhat, and bump mid range on bass slightly, drop cymbal volume, bring up kick, and potentially drop synths by .4 dB. You could also widen the stereo field of the lead guitar just a tad.

And as I say this, I realize I've written you both a book. If you'd like me to take a look at the premaster and see if I can approximate what I'm talking about, I'll be happy to!

[Zucchini]

From your plugin list I immediately knew we would be on the same wavelength. Sounding great. I would just do a little bit of hi pass on those guitars and perhaps push the FX wet down just a bit on them. I can't hear on my phone if we have true double tracking but this helps as well. Otherwise, sounding sick!

[Lesznowiak]

This is short but actually sounds pretty cool. I would prefer a different kick, with a bit more grit. The bass is what really makes this track though.

Do cut off the silence at the end! An additional fade out from 1:19 to 1:21 and a cut will do.

[Nobody Will Listen To You]

I actually love the drums you've made. In BeepBox no less. I think the pads could come up a bit, but the sheer variety of wild sounds I've NEVER heard anyone do with this tool amazes me.

Once again I'm left with sounds I want to sample -- those drums are YES

JimmyTheCaterpillar responds:

thank you adrean :)

[napalm/hopscotch loop]

It looks like this is a bit quiet on the waveform, however going to turn it up for the sake of review. I think where this shines is actually in your percussion. It is quite dynamic for such a limited range of frequency. I think something could be done to get a bit more punch out of the kick, perhaps find a frequency that doesn't clip out so much at the bit rate.

As far as melody, the portamento shines atop the almost lackadaisical up and down arrangement. I think the supporting countermelody can get a bit busy, particularly at 12 and the repeated section -- largely because we already have fast moving hopscotch percussion and the melody is quite slow.

I would like to hear more of the bass on this piece, if you have the possibility to turn that up in I assume beepbox. I'm not very familiar with this tool. I also think that you could maintain this internal loop and change the break before 18-20 seconds leading into the new section. It sounds better as a true finale stinger before the swooshy transition, as opposed to leading into a B section. I hope I am able to make this clear.

What I typically do when I am making a short drop like this is start with 4 bars, copy. Change bar 4 and leave bar 8 as the final fill. To extend to 16, I do the same process, change bar 4, 8, 12, or 16 accordingly to keep the illusion I did NOT just copy and paste everything. And I generally make changes in the bass or the harmony instruments before I touch the lead. It keeps things fresh.

There is another principle to building a song structure -- add 2 things at a transition, then remove 2 things. Keeps things dynamic. Can be done with one element at a time of course, but it helps keep things shifting ever so slightly, and is a great exercise in creativity. You are already doing this to some degree in your guitar knots pieces, I see.

Again, great to hear from you, and happy to see you improving each time!

JimmyTheCaterpillar responds:

Yeah I think i'm starting to get a sense for when repetition is utility and how to organically sort out how to keep things moving.

i think your second paragraph really sums up where i faulted this song,,, i really just made it so busy and then i was like!!! shit!!!1 what now!!

mixing in beepbox can be weird, some instruments just want to be quiet. I have a method worked out for more specific mixing in the program, that being to just export every instrument individually to audacity and then mix and match from there but i think i'd have to really either like the track or be expecting something from the track to make that extra credit effort essentially lol

thank you so much for your continued support. i didn't always understand some of the things you meant abt production and stuff when we initially started talking, but i think i'm starting to click a couple things. i'm grateful!

[tinfoil & the window sink]

That droning intro is something I would love to sample. I'm impressed you've managed to record something like this on a cellphone and it sound entirely intelligible and manageable!

The gating at 39 seconds is sounding great, as well as what sounds like playing in harmonic minor. There are a few clicks and clips as cuts come in, but those can be eliminated by crossfade and micro fade in. I found this while editing in Mixcraft.

I think this is the most beautiful piece you have ever sent me. It has the same haunting quality I've come to know you for but also an air of tranquility. My favorite part surrounds 1:21. This is a great transition and a theme I wish would have been continued longer or repeated. The reverberation in the background almost sounds like a choir.

Take your goofy pride -- a single sample is an achievement!

The very few flaws I see in this piece as a whole, the clicking I mentioned as samples come in and out. You can either overlay a vinyl sample to play into this, or get a copy of izotope RX 7 to remove it (or just ask me and I'll do it in a few minutes). Beyond that, using Audacity's amplify feature to bring this up to max possible volume without clipping would be helpful. You can also chose to apply compression if desired.

I think a lot of these operations are in fact easier to do outside of audacity, though its pitching and scaling functions to me are about unmatched. For instance your gated guitar at 1:14 would sound even better if compressed and chorused, with modulated FX (changing over time). This is a bit unwieldy still in Audacity.

Otherwise, fantastic experiment. I encourage you to continue in this theme! You're really making me want to commission you for some of these wiiiild samples like at 2:15.

JimmyTheCaterpillar responds:

for the cellphone.... i honestly just set it directly in front of the... sound hole (poets have failed the guitar if that's really the name for it!!!!) and it picks up pretty clean. I neeeeeeeeeeed a tascam though I really wanna start implementing outside environmental noises into my work soo sosososo bad. I have an unfinished pure rhythm track that's been tossed in the back shelves that is the clicking of my electric scooter i have alongside passing cars and rocks and pebbles and stuff. lol i got stumped really quick on that one but i think there is sincerely something there once i figure it out....

i'm really glad you liked 1:21, that's my favorite part of the song too, and I really wanted it to be a little longer too, but that was a mechanical failing of me from the recording, as I was building around the sample and made that I scoured the sample to find ways to keep it pushing but nothing else sounded clean that I felt could continue in the same vein with. i definitely need to be better in my technical play and am slowly working on that as well lol.

as far as using another DAW.......... grahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i just want to do everything in audacity it's so accessible to me bc i've used it since i was 12 years old making whatever the fuck i was making on this site ten years ago lmao!!! i'm making excuses,,,,, i should probably get a new one but for the moment i honestly remain stubborn ':0

I do appreciate the advice on the clipping issue,, that was a big problem with this track, and while i'm satisfied with the level i was able to get it down to, it is something that will plague me until i get it right, so thank you for that as well.

as always -- the biggest appreciationz 2 you!!!!