ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[mountain lullaby]

Really pretty chords. Smooth. I think your pulsing gated chords could come down a bit, as could your lead, since the rest of the track is so quiet.

XenonNinja responds:

thank you for the feedback!

[Mesosphere]

Lots of really cool ideas here. I think it could be benefited by some study of song structure and more typical production -- YT is wonderful for this. But otherwise it reminds me of olskool videogame soundtracks

LeanYeenMachine responds:

Thanks for the feedback and the follow! I'm going to keep looking into the things you suggested.

[Monster]

Really cool concept for a track, and good writing, however the output audio is distorting really badly. See if you can turn it down some in LMMS, then use another editor like audacity to amplify it if needed. I really like that you used samples of your own voice. Super indie producer thing to do and keeps things interesting.

Tristanlagreato responds:

Thank you! ^_^ Sorry about the volume/distortion, I tend to listen to things on my headphones really quiet, and so I make things high volume so I can hear it. This is actually a kinda old song, believe it or not. My new songs are better, but I haven't posted them here yet, they're only on SoundCloud so far because I'm new to Newgrounds. I decided to post this on here so long after making it was because I thought Newgrounds needed more royalty free music, and also that I wanted to see how well my song would do. Thank you for your feedback! ^_^

[deltatunes - Battle in the Dark]

Really smooth tune, lots of variation and modulation I hear going on in your synths.

Only thing, your drums are hiding. Bring them out by lowering the volume of other instruments and mixing at a quiet output volume level. Then apply mastering compression until you get a suitable volume. Try out some mixing tutorials and see what happens. As far as I'm concerned, that's really the only thing this track lacks.

Great work. Keep it coming!

ItsStephJM responds:

I was worried about the drums being too loud so I may have overcompensated in lowering the volume on them.

In general I like messing with all the soundfonts and VSTs I've accumulated over 5 years, it's why there's a massive variance in the synths!

Thank you for the critique!

[Chill sad acoustic.]

Coincidentally all my favorite chords. I'd like to see you revisit this with a bit more consistency after having played a while. Last section of single picking fingerstyle grabbed my attention. :)

JimmyBiscuit responds:

I love those chords I play them all the time. Most of this is just improvised and I choked in the middle of it a little if my memory serves me well. I've been playing for almost 2 years and yeah, I need to get a little more consistent with my stuff lol.

[I Wrote]

Wow that was not where I was expecting you to go with that intro chord progression. Interesting choice.

Your mixing on your vocals is flawless.

My only gripe, I think would be the piano tone itself. I might have chosen a different instrument there, like a high bassline with a sub bass or something similar on the lower octave.

Lyrics themselves are pensive and sensitive without being overly so. Pretty great, especially for the genre, which normally isn't my cup of tea. You've got the voice of someone I imagine to be photogenic, in a guy next door kind of way. Not sure how else to put that, but it's a compliment haha.

Would love to see a process on how you manage your vocals

floorboardofficial responds:

Thanks so much for the thoughtful review! I agree I could've done something better with the bass end. I think a piano could work, but maybe a bit harder of a piano tone with better EQ, but my ears still aren't that great at perceiving these things, especially with mixing the low-end. But glad you liked it! And it's nice hearing some affirmation about the lyrics because I'm not all too confident with them.

Thanks again for the thoughtful review! I'll definitly consider putting something together to show how I appraoch my vocals if people would find that valuable.

[Devils Lament]

Amazing what can happen in seven years time. What choir is this? It sounds freaking great

The abrupt entrance at 50 or so seconds works really well. I think there could be a bit more velocity tampering on your lead just to get all the attacks sounding differentiated from one another.

1:39, those strings sound great alongside the guitar, and 1:58 sounds smooth as hell. I almost can't distinguish that from an actual guitar with how great the grungier picks sound. Fantastic and dynamic use of that synth. 2:55 similarly sounds great.

3:13 organ brings back fond memories of your earlier work. It's still surreal listening to this now and recalling you as one of the inspirations for my preteen self to start making music, to later use even some of the same software after a good decade and a half in the future. Excited to see what you come up with next :)

Lashmush responds:

This is the Dominus Choir for Kontakt. You have keyswitch syllabes/phrases of your own making and modwheel control of power, etc. You can also midi-learn a bunch of the other stuff for physical or virtual midi controllers in your DAW.

Thanks for the appreciation! c:

[LABS]

Is this made using actual spitfire LABS instruments? If so, wicked cool. It develops a little bit slower for me than I'd prefer, and some of the instruments and choir seem a bit sharp or flat relative to one another. That's not a hard fix.

I would bring your flute in the left channel up a little, or tame the reverb on the instruments with whole notes. Otherwise, pretty freaking cool.

yagru responds:

YES DUDE! user buggagumpus (below) suggested them to me! love it. i agree about the flute tho...just created this randomly last night and needed to upload so i could listen in the car lol

[Plans]

I was about to write this off, but your vocal mixing hooked me into the rest of the production. I think with just some taming on your sibilants, s and t and such, even if it's just manually lowering the volume so you don't have to spend money on a bunch of fancy programs to do it for you, that would help a lot.

Overall, your bass is just a little bit flat compared to the rest of the track, and your drums could stand to come out a few dB in the mix, but your structure is nice and strong, and you have an interesting chord progression. Nice work!

floorboardofficial responds:

YES hahahaha. I did NOTHING for sibilance control back then. The worst part is when they're not quantized properly and you get this unpleasent surprise ping-pong effect that just ruins the illusion of the overdubs. Anyways, in the years since I made this I've started doing exactly what you said and manually dealing with sibilants, but holy hell is it a time consuming pain in the ass cheek. Are there any "fancy programs" that you'd reccomend? I've tried a couple free de-essers here and there and frankly they were all pretty much unusable. I honestly wouldn't mind throwing down some cold hard money cash to save myself the pain.

But hey, thanks for the review! Much appreciated :)