ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Goam]

Oh this feels olskool. I dig it. Remembering when I didn't have anything but a sampler to work with.

I think that distorted bass can come down a dB or two.

Before I dive in, I want to say that I LOVE this kind of music. If you keep improving your mixing and sound design, I see a wonderful future for you as a very creative electronic music producer. This is raw and out of the box. I don't have a ton of tips for you, as the track is quite minimal, but having said this I will now listen again and do a more thorough pass.

I really enjoy the chopped guitar samples. On the same note, they give great atmosphere. I would recommend for lower octaves you have a separate track with low tuned guitar samples. I also recommend learning to double track with samples.

Doubletracking - two tracks, one panned 100% left, one panned 100% right, playing the same or very similar melodic content (and may include different FX like different amps and EQ) to give the illusion of a fuller sound. It's used in rock and metal for the rhythm guitar, where usually the guitarist will play the stuff twice and pan one take L and one R, with slightly different settings.

YOU on the other hand can just find two samples of guitar chops (if it's not the same note, you can change the pitch in the sampler) to make this illusion. I think it'd sound really cool here.

For your bass, I would not actually choose that note at 0:32, at least without writing a moving bass line. I'd pick the tonic (usually the bass note) of the guitar chords you're working with, just to keep it simple. Some other instrument can play that nice little dissonant note there.

I'd like if that section with the bass was repeated elsewhere like a chorus -- learning to write with a song structure will speed your development drastically as a producer btw, highly recommend.

I like your kick but I'm having a hard time hearing it over your bass. I think it would sound nice if sidechain was applied. I'm missing snares, hi-hats, and cymbals/transition FX.

Those spoopy melodies toward the end are SICK and really tie your piece together. Will be stuck in my head!

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This concludes the actual review portion

I don't know whether you're working with a PC or mobile app given the track complexity. However I have some recommendations for you for free synths and samples, which I will try to list here.

Free drums: Elsita soviet drum machine, MT Power Drum kit (super simple rock kit), Adreanaline sample pack (in my news posts), Bedroom Producer's blog has tons

Free FX: KSHMR Essentials Kick -- for processing percussion essentially all at once, DIABLO Lite by Cymatics, also for percussion

Free synths: MeowSynth can do crazy shit if you check my track LUCY. I'm sure you can figure out how to do more with it if you can make samplers sound this good. I also recommend Basic65 which is a commodore 64 synth

Free mastering: Soundcloud mastering, Bandlab, Music gateway

Hope you find something here to chew on. I'm excited to see what you come up with in the future.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

AVKid4 responds:

Oh wow, jesus man thank you so much! That's all incredibly helpful

[Liquid Lullaby]

I may have a bit of hearing loss, but it sounds like the left channel is a bit heavier than the right.

As a composition, this is wonderful, coherent, and pleasant to listen to! I may have some qualms with mix choice or instruments, particularly the bells, but other than that your talent and knowledge of music theory is clear to see. :)

I will dive now into nitpicking below.

First item of nitpicking -- overall volume. I think a free internet mastering service could be of great help here, or if you are not a fan, apply compression to your taste before you mix down your track. Audacity will also allow you to amplify an MP3 just under the point of damaging clipping, if you prefer no compression at all (and that's perfectly okay)

The piano is somewhat muffled in comparison to the ride bells coming in your intro. If you desire them to be that way, I would bring up the volume. I also think the leads through 1:06 are a bit loud. I would take them down by up to 1.3 dB. I hear an octave hiding underneath the lead around 36 seconds to 1:00 and on. Might be two octaves. You could either bring that out and pan it, or layer it in the same octave. I think it should sound better to bring it in on for a final chorus, where it is not hiding, as I can hear the lead cut off, and the accompaniment hold the same note for half a second longer.

The piece itself has great choices in instrumentation and arrangement. No complaints there. It manages to sound both classic, somehow Christmasy, and belonging to a cheery videogame/anime shopping scene at the same time. However it is quite mid heavy and low-mid heavy on the mix, leading to a boxy sound. I want to hear some more of that 8k-18k!

I think close to the outro, the high bass clashes somewhat with the rest of the arrangement 1:45

You could bring that bass down there, or bring it down one octave. One thing I notice, the bass seems to have some formant shifting going on, as well as a delay, and sounds very, very soft on the attack -- is that a frequency comb or bit crush that I'm hearing? I think those would sound much nicer without any delay or reverb of any kind, to just let your bass unapologetically be itself. You want as little noise muddying those low frequencies as possible, or each time you hop to another note, you're going to get clashing frequencies.

All the considerations I mentioned above would bring the bottom end more to the forefront and vary the timbre more. You may also try bringing the sub down in volume. I notice that also is quite loud relative to the "head" of the bass, and it makes the rest of the track sound out of balance. To get more presence out of a bass you can experiment with distortion/amps.

Your percussion could use a bit of a facelift with some light transient shaping -- kick/snare. The cymbals would benefit from playing with width. You may also play with humanization on those velocities a bit more and thin out the lower mid range on what seems to be functioning as a ride cymbal at 1:28. It's quite loud relative to the bells you have going on. Personally I would take it down and crescendo all the way through 1:59, maybe with slow motion panning around, because motion is everything.

The bells on this section, while adding Christmas spirit, are muddying into each other, making individual rhythms on the same key hard to hear. Playing with accents, reducing reverb and reverb length, and decluttering the piano roll of multiple notes can help with that. You may also take the harmony you want and move it to a separate instance of the instrument with slightly different panning. I use this trick frequently.

I think your crashes could actually use long reverb tails and the occasional reverse crash leading up to them for transitions. I'm super fond of that and think it would work wonders for the big transitions in your piece to make them more dramatic.

As I listen more and more, I start to focus on your kick. I'm not sure if you designed it yourself -- have you considered tuning your kick to the tonic of your track, and tuning the sub? You can accomplish the first with a simple guitar tuner plugin and the pitch wheel of your sampler, if used. Following that, KSHMR Essentials Kick would be a nice quick fix to choose a sub note, fix transients, widen, etc, to your liking. It seems boxy in the 250 hz range to me.

The snare by itself does not sound bad but seems to be having issues cutting through. A little more processing would probably do the trick, focusing on transient shaping, saturation, bit crush, width, clipping... You may also think to tune your snare accordingly.

Overall, it's a great listen, a very whimsical, fun piece to sift through. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

314leafcutterant responds:

Thank you for this very in depth review. I'll try to implement some of your ideas in my future work. Do you think I'll make it past the tryouts?

[MAKE ME]

First of all, the album cover is fire.

Second of all, I was not expecting a sausage case file to sound anything but offensive. It's hard to really hear the bass on smaller speakers, but it's audible on my headphones. That may be the industrial elements -- it's very much an acquired taste.

I love the chords used and the leads aren't half bad. I would take down the initial spreaded pitch bending instruments down a dB or two. Occasionally they sound to me like a malfunctioning ambulance siren. I think more sparing use of these would give the composition more variety.

Considering it's a genre fusion that I tend not to listen to, and my first thought was Grips, it is certain to be enjoyed by someone out there. I would recommend more taming of your low frequencies prior to applying distortion, and emphasizing high mids. Make sure everything cuts through before dirtying it up, essentially. I'm also a fan of using distortion and saturation on every single track in the mix. There are tips and tricks to making things layer nicely. With an 808 and a kick running along similar frequencies, you'll want to do that or subtle sidechaining to achieve a "clean" chaos.

But this will certainly be an earworm of mine for a while. Even if it isn't my favorite, it's very catchy. I can only imagine someone who really enjoys the genres. They'll be overjoyed.

Also, thanks so much for listing your plugins in the descrip. I found another distortion I didn't have!

[No One's Gain]

I really think you should link the YT video for this here. Together it is a masterful presentation. I love it. No critique, just love.

LexRodent responds:

Been thinking about linking the videos I've made for my tracks on the author comments.
I usually leave them for my news post, but might as well give it a try.

Glad you enjoyed it !

[AIM . Requiem for an Astronaut (Ft. Marie Ork)]

I am genuinely shocked by your progression through the years, Lex! This is beautiful, melodic, and haunting, yet also comforting. I found it through the recommends on my own latest, using Marie Ork, which I'd love to hear your feedback on, but back to the piece at hand! Despite having to read the lyrics, I enjoyed it very much. She is such a versatile instrument. Sounds good out of the box even. I'm even impressed you managed to make the Power Drum Kit fit without sounding like velocity machine guns. It doesn't really have a GUI as far as I remember. I would like to reengineer it.

The chord progression is what got me. Very smooth!

LexRodent responds:

Thanks a lot for your words.
It's always nice to confirm by the ears of a fellow musician there's been some advancement in my music making. Marie Ork it's indeed great for a free vst, if she had a slightly better pronunciation it'd be an absolute killer. I got the Power drum kit a couple of years ago, this version has a good GUI as well as some base patterns which are very useful to modify to your song's needs.

I'll drop by to hear what you did with Marie Ork.

[Death Moon melodic metal cover]

I would take down your hihats some and play with velocity values a bit more, but otherwise, nice work!

I think some work could be done mixing your drums. A free plugin such as KSHMR Essentials kick could handle most of the needed processing to help them cut through no problem. Make sure you're mixing each drum or drum type in separate channels and tame any frequencies that would make them sound muddy.

I work with fully electronic instruments too, so I know how hard life can be haha. You're off to a great start!

[KEK]

Lyrics and delivery are on point. The mix of the instrumental leaves a little to be desired. It sounds almost as if it's mono on the instrumental, and there isn't a lot of space in the mix. A simple fix I think would be to experiment with panning on some of your samples (autopanning maybe) and a distortion or saturation on your bass tied to an LFO on the parameter. That would give a feeling of movement and energy, which I think at this moment is what it lacks.

Other than that, loved it. Wholly inappropriate, as it should be <3

Hit me up if you're looking for free music production stuff. This is what I'd be making if I were anywhere near as creative as a lyricist... and didn't have writer's block

[INK 20 [FULL MIXTAPE]]

Getting closer and closer to that clean ass studio sound. I would take the instrumentals down just a little bit -- at least Listerine in particular -- maybe add a chorus here and there to pump up your vocals in the space. Sounding better and better every time I hear from you, diction is slick.

Thanks for featuring me. I don't have time to give a proper review for the full mix but it's an honor <3

guyfromKillerRAT responds:

It's always an honor with CyberD.

[Last Battle]

UwU that intro tho, and those arps! I might take them down just a tad in the first bar they come in -- they're just a bit strong

Absolutely love what you've done with the bass. SUPER DETUNE! Wonderful arrangement and variety, sweet key change in the middle. I wonder how you manage it -- I get so attached to the same key haha

This is a bop. Looking at the waveform, I'm not sure if it's making the most of loudness, but that doesn't really matter unless I play another track after and have to turn everything down

I might take your bass down about .2 dB -- it sounds quite loud relative to the track even for dnb, but other than that, absolutely lit :3

Dieswyx responds:

I'm such a fan of detune and loud basses. :>

[Lotus Apparition]

Absolute fire

I didn't expect that harp to come in -- at first I thought it was dissonant to the intro, maybe outside the key

The vocoder coming in hits very nicely

A little bit of sibilance on the vocals -- might manually duck the s's

Occasionally the mix feels a bit hi-passed and low-mid heavy, perhaps over reverby. However I really enjoy the writing itself, and that makes up for a LOT. The detuned sound of literally everything and the motifs tying in together are perfect. Happy boi hours

May take the hi-hat and shakers down 2-3 dB

But other than that, masterful. Doesn't get old for 8 whole minutes. I have a short attention span. That's saying something

@cyberdevil absolutely killing the flows as always <3

S3C responds:

thanks for the great review! Appreciate the sensitive ears noticing the detuned sounds and the specific mixing suggestions- will def keep them in mind for new Cyberdevillian collaborations