ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wertw - You Are Not Alone]

Piece sounds great, with the exception of what sounds like over-reverbing and those double or triple kicks that I actually can't tell if they're separate percussion samples in the background due to reverb. Muted like they are, they kind of, and don't take this wrong, sound like me farting in my blankets and trying not to be heard. No offense intended. But if you have some cinematic percussion down there, bring that up and be proud of it! I have a hard time hearing both that and your kick on your smaller sections with less sidechain. Mostly just sounds like a case of other instruments being way too far up in the mix, up to a dB, and muddy verb.

For verb instances, I almost always low cut up to 250 hz and try to keep the length and amount as low as I can to achieve the sound I want. For things like snares and percussion, you can use a technique called gated reverb. I will also scoop those frequencies out of most things that aren't a bass or percussion instrument for the purposes of saving space in the mix and eliminating low mid and high wash over big sections. That would really help you here.

Also, this piece is pretty long. You could probably stand to cut one drop by half or so. I remember thinking in that midsection as I was writing critique that the same section had been playing for quite a while without much variation.

But other than that, really enjoyed the listen. Good work :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Wertw responds:

Thx for the review dude! I'm gonna try to improve all that stuff you said, glad of take part in this, hope that the next year I can do best and kill 'em haha

[Fizzy Frost Ice (NGUAC 2020)]

Some nice polyrhythms going on, everything building off of itself until the drop. I can't really say I'm a huge fan of that section or the one following. That's a little disjunct for me, augmented chords. Then we go back into the drops.

I find myself thinking, there's got to be something different with the drop we can do, in terms of lead writing. And I really think that is where you stand the most to gain from studying. You know how to use samples and structures. But we go from major chords with stacked intervals on the verses and intros to a monophonic drop on diminished intervals, to augmented stabs. I'm trying to put them together as one cohesive thing in my brain and it's not really working.

You might find some videos from Signals Music Studios on writing melody and harmony a good study -- they're not bogged down in music theory too much, so if you don't know it, it won't stop you from learning, but I think it will help you get the cohesive, weird vibe you're going for, without making what sounds like parts of three different songs and putting them together :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC, and congrats on the front page!

chris-marcell responds:

thanks for you review, i realli appreciate tht!

[Fury Dearg]

Default Kontakt drums? Not bad. I would probably recommend some freebies like X-Crash and Cymbalistic to flesh out your cymbals, or a paid library like Metal Factory Drums. There's also a few nice free kicks out there like Dark V2, and some snares like Saudade. If you want to hear all of the above, I use them on all my compositions of late. These drums, not to be rude, on metal, sound like childrens toys that someone else threw in the woods -- unless you haven't touched velocities between double hits, and then in that case I 100% understand and weep with you.

I'm also a Shreddage user -- great work on your leads. I actually want to know what tutorials you used, haha. Intonation wise sounding if not 100% real, at least very musical. Your lead writing sounds close to what a guitarist would want to play, I feel.

As for the mix, that's where the hair pulling comes in. I really want to hear a double tracked L and R rhythm throughout. Not having it sucks the power out of the mix I feel like. Compare 18 seconds to your choruses, where the way the solo and strings are mixed, and when it sounds like compression may have been applied, and the rhythm is just not there anymore, or sounds like it's been dropped in the left channel to make room for the strings like at 1:59, sucking all the power from the mix. I promise, the strings are high enough they will be heard -- more so if you cut off that gnarly ringing 250 hz and below that isn't needed to make them sit nice in the mix.

I would doubletrack your lead as well, panning up to maybe 35 percent left and right each, different heads and cabs, depending whether you're using shreddage's in the box or not -- if you are, take the shreddage FX off, pop on a head and cab of your choice on one of the instances, be sure to humanize, switch sample bank, etc. Bingo, nice double tracked lead. I'll sometimes throw delay from each into the channel the other plays on, or send both to the same reverb or delay on a send track.

Strings I would pan in more of a surround setup. But I realize here you were making space for lead. Just remember they most of the time are taking back seat in the mix, due to the nature of their sound. Listen to how bands like nightwish will mix their orchestral parts, maybe even Epica or Amberian Dawn.

And beyond that, where is the bass? I can't even really hear it I don't think.

Other than that though, fantastic listen. Really enjoyed it. Good work!

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

verjamon responds:

Thank you for the review, and sorry for not being in the other rounds of NGUAC, computer problems.

This was a really primitive project in mixing terms, i have a pair of cheap headphones and it was before attending a mixing online masterclass.

I'm glad you liked my work with the lead guitars, i actually had to make a lot of time with the guitars, i wanted something natural but uncanny at the same time, but that's just subjective, most of the sound of the lead is EQ and virtual amps in a clean sound on shreddage, i personally used guitar rig 5 in this one but now i'm into Amplitube 4.

I'll work on the mix of my next songs, and thanks again for your review. =D

[Wormhole]

Great sound on virtually everything here. Recording wise, everything sounds at least passable and fixable with a little more attention to mix and in the case of vocals, a little helping hand with compression and melodyne. They're pretty pitchy.

Mixing wise, guitars could come down about .5 to 1 dB to make room for your drums.

Beyond that, not a whole lot to say. Good writing, interesting subject matter on the lyrics, even if I'm not particularly listening to that as hard right now for the sake of paying attention to mix.

3:52 strikes me as particularly lively and worthwhile. Great work. I would probably bring out that solo some more, or rather cut rhythm by about .3 dB there.

You've done a great job writing, I can't stress that enough.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Rairiku - ビッグスピードマン69]

Oof, loving your chords.

I'm not a huge french core fan, so my critique in that area is virtually zero, but your fusion of various genres makes the cacophony at the very least interesting for me. Plus on that. Probably any critique I would have would sit on wanting some cleaner highs and a little more balance between your blitzing kicks and that snare. The snare sounds much, much louder.

Great work, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Endless Innocence]

Great playing. Any critique I'm going to have is probably going to sit on mix or recording. I would probably compress your guitar and cut out some reverb. That low end is really boxy sounding, particularly when the bottom E is resonating. I also catch the occasional contact with the body of the guitar.

But sounds absolutely great.

I would back off here and there with the twittering of the birds. It doesn't feel like it's in the same space as the guitar -- feels like a very dry, possibly not even stereophonic foley. So it clashes somewhat with your playing.

But fantastic work. I have a lot of respect for lyrical acoustic :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Thomastique responds:

Thank you for the review!
I'm still learning a lot about mixing so I agree with you on that.
But I couldn't do anything about the birds because I recorded it in the forest so all of those sounds got caught in my microphone 😅

[The Zatesee- ANOTHER MAU5? You can't be serious!]

I think that piano might be out of tune -- until, wait, what happened to it? Velocity?! Was velocity not being edited that whole time?

Interesting touch with the acoustic guitar. I would edit that velocity and humanize just a little more. Sounds really surgical here.

Elements coming in and going here have been either super smooth or REALLY jarring. I question the choice of that fantasia like instrument we hear through 2:27.

Also, quite a feat to get someone to listen this long without a drop. I would caution against it most of the time. The clap build is really dragging on. I would have no more than 8 bars, then get to the point. We've gone through so many sections by now, we can have that nice spacy warble on a bridge or something :)

Bass here on that drop is noice. Smooth, happy boi noises. Mixing is a little dirty. I might compress it harder, maybe sidechain somewhat to make way for the little clappy. I do feel the drop drags on about twice as long as is time efficient for the piece. Maybe three.

Nice use of the sample, and guitar section. Writing isn't even that bad actually, for it, needs probably some actual mute noises -- or a palm muted eighth note between those chucks. That ringing sounds awful as a guitar player ngl.

But compositionally, piece aint bad at all. Nice work :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

TheZatesee responds:

Thanks for your review. I could have done a lot better with this, but I kid you not, I pushed garage band to its limit with this one. I lost track of time when making this which is why its so long. And the guitars are actually built into garage band somehow. Again, thanks for the review.

Zatesee

[Empty]

I don't say this often, but I think your snare might be too loud when it's first introduced

Also, not really liking your hi-hat sample that much. I would use a soft 808 for a subtle composition like this.

Probably the biggest thing here is levels. You're getting some distortion and clipping when those strings come in at about 2:10, which are much too loud.

This track is super long, also. I feel there are sections which could be cut, such as that first one with the strings. But I'm at 3:33 atm, so I'm not sure what else you're going to do with it so far.

The piece overall is quite relaxed, with a lot of sections like 4:50 and the surrounding 30 seconds that are just almost dead air. 5:17 I would have completely faded out. By 6:46 you have a nice cool little section that would have gone well. I would have gone into that, skipping over our big empty sections since there are not a lot of moving elements here. By 8:50 we've gradually been getting more and more naked. I probably would have completely faded out again maybe even a minute earlier. 8 minutes is still a real whopper of demanding attention from a listener.

Cool that you can do stuff like this on mobile though! :)

For improvements, I think the best thing you can do is find a song structure you like or composition you like, and create a template with markers, then work with that for a while until you feel where pieces will naturally want to move and breathe. Maybe some lead writing. I like the elements as you brought them together here, but building up to them felt like a long slog of fade in and fade out, and I ultimately just lost attention. I had to refocus more than once. At one point I wondered had you accidentally rendered a kick line from that naked section I mentioned to close. Thankfully no, haha.

But anyway, thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

TheSMMusic responds:

Wow, I can see you know a lot about music production. I don't know very much about producing. Actually, I just put instruments together until I like the result. I also don't pay much attention to the details. But I'll try to follow your suggestions in my next songs :D

[NGUAC 2020 submission]

Intro sounds like some of the dinking around on keyboard I would do back in the day before I took time to study music theory, hehe. Good times. I would take down the reverb send all around and low cut it to 250 hz if you want to work with it. The same play around the tonic repeats after the drop.

Definitely would recommend for you some channels like Signals Music Studios for lead writing and mode study. But I will say I like how you brought the bassline back in and completely altered the feel of the sus chords. Good move. There's just so much more you could have done with that, solely by playing with your bass note!

Overall, enjoyed the composition. I would do some things though, pull that bass line down just a bit. Your percussion and other instruments are getting crowded out. Additionally, I would probably end where the bass line ends. A fade out, depending on how it's done, can sound lazy, even if not intended that way.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[AIM2020 - Rainy Night]

I think my comments would fit in line with those left by @Troisnyx almost completely, with the exception of production and mix.

Your articulations and use of varied texture keep the piece exciting, but also from being super intelligible. I realize this isn't your intent so much as to suit the art, but I'm judging without art in mind. There are some decisions I think still to be made, that would help things along, namely compression on the drums, which aren't always to the fore in the mix, probably also changing out that cello/clarinet soundfont for something less obviously an emulation of a real instrument. Any synth just about will do.

I also feel the bass line on verses is quite busy for me to understand what function chords are serving. However the piece is brave enough to make most everything work, only sacrificing professional polished sound for an eerie amateur Steam game vibe.

Thanks for coming out to NGAUC!