ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Release]

I'm quite literally without any meaningful critique, maybe beyond preferring a little less reverb, no thanks to absolutely flawless libraries. I had to look that one up.

I do find myself wanting a more spacious string sound. They're pretty thin throughout.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

potato-stick responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I wanted the brass to be the main element of this song, which is why I didn't end up using a full string section. That might have brought out the more spacious feel you were looking for, so thank you for the feedback in that regard! Reverb and mixing is something I've been working on striking the proper balance in and I agree that I used a bit too much in this mix, so thanks for pointing that out as well :)

[Kingdom of Justice]

Liking the tune so far up to 30 seconds in. One thing I'm noticing, trying to mask the synthy sound of the strings with lots and lots of reverb. Sounds like you might be using Nexus as well which is known for putting reverb on everything.

I'm not sure what that guitar synth chug was doing there. Didn't sound bad. Actually a lot of things I'm noticing with transitions, it seems to be just one instrument moving in a different way than we're used to. I would recommend taking a look at some structuring techniques on YT, and a video I'm fond of, Kush After Hours "rule of pairs" for good transitioning practice. It's only about as long as your song last I recall. The basic concept is to add 2 new elements and remove two elements for every transition. Keeps things fresh.

Throughout the reverb gets pretty intense. Cutting the wet signal down, shortening it, and low cutting it up to 250 and sometimes 400 hz helps keep it from getting overbearing.

3:04 has a wrong note. There are several instances like that where we just have clashing. Not 3:12. That's fine. I mean intervals of 13 semitones.

Other than that, the piece has a lot to offer. sometimes feels like two or three different songs put together, but when it works, it works together well.

Enjoyed the listen. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

LtFS responds:

Well, sad, but fixable. Thank you

[Mountains; We Were]

Good use of SFX here in your intro, and lofi piano is holding my interest with its writing. I'm wanting maybe a little crisper sound out of that rather than the crunch. Polyrhythms are nicely written.

I actually think your auxiliary percussion could probably come down. It's just the only instruments in that space. 2:17 by contrast everything sounds perfectly in place. Beautiful. Your transitioning was somewhat muddy to this point, but this is perfect. I could use a little more clarity and less reverb between your instruments, but it's all sounding good. Ghost notes on the drums are sounding good. Still could use more clarity.

The piano chunk up high after that section distorted a bit the first time I heard it.

Great work here. I really enjoyed listening to this piece.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Glassedhouse responds:

Haha yeah! I make music on an extreme budget so my sound/production with realistic sounding instruments is somewhat limited (Like the piano you mentioned). Composition is my true passion! And I've been learning how to use the more technical side of Ableton for about 3 months now. Regardless, these are all pretty fair criticisms, and I'll definitely take them onto future songs I do in this style. Thank you!

[Ghost Warriors - Мы Есть Сшеньсиане]

You get a favorite from me just because I never find any music with Russian lyrics here! Unfortunately I didn't study music production in Russian yet so I can't just leave this review полностью in Russian, но постараюсь, чтобы вы лучше меня понимали.

Мне очень нравится стиль и текст песни. Очень четко выражаются мысли, и мне понравилось читать как вы их переводили. Круто. Хотя, я бы переводила "твою мать" как "fuck!" or "Dammit!"

Иногда мне трудно слышать консонанты в речи, из-за и методов по которым создали записи и миксинга -- сведения. Я бы наложила эффект компрессии. Вокалам вот здесь очень нужна компрессия. Без того, уровень громкости увеличивается и падает, и быстро меняется. Итак, слова станут непонятными. Я нашла для вас видео на русском языке. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ceQFe9iX_A

Гитары мне кажутся слишком тихие. Надо увеличивать может быть до 1-2 децибела. Если вам не звучат круто звуки гитар, то нужно найти другие синтезаторы. Честно говоря, инструменты, которые использовали мне звучат немножко ... недорогие, мягко говоря. Я бы советовала попробовать синтезаторы например Ample Sounds. Они запускали несколько лет назад два бесплатных гитары -- одну бас-гитару, и гитару бренда Тейлор. Возможно, это вам поможет. Я помню другой инструмент -- Junk Guitar, если у вас такая удача имееть Контакт... Это напоминает о том, что Native Instruments запустил бесплатные версии их самых популярных программ. Стоит проверить))

И так продолжаем.

Барабаны практически скрываются в песне, особенно во время припева, когда другие инструменты и певцы сами громче играют и поют чем малый барабан, том-том, итд. Тарелки тоже чуть нехорошо мне звучат. Я бы посоветовала найти другие. Есть синтезаторы, такие как Cymballistic, X-Crash, итд.

Сама мелодия движется по квинтам и октавам. Возможно было бы лучше добавить иногда терции. Мне не очень понравилось, что вокалы следовали ту же самую мелодию, как все остальные инструменты. Может, это точка вашего вскуса. Но я как музыкант бы предпочитала больше разниц между аккордами.

В общем, мне понравилась песня -- наверно из-за того, что я учила русский язык и всегда желаю практиковать слушание. Но обычным нашим пользователям Ньюграундса она наверно немножко трудно слушать. Не могут ее понимать на слух, и поэтому все красивые фразы не помогут голосовать... Имею в виду что они голосуют чуть пониже, просто потому что песня им звучит неразборчивой, и поэтому неприятной. Если вы группа Т.а.Т.у, и у вас хорошие мелодии, которые все бы хотели петь, хотя бы они не знают ни слова русского, то это не считается, но из-за того, что я здесь заметила в комментарии, это действительно вам важно поминать, когда вы исполняете песни.

Ну, думаю что наконец после полчаса написала все что могу. Желаю, что вам полезно будет. Пожалуйста спрашивайте, если кое-что вам непонятно или вопросы есть. И спасибо огромное, что вы поступали в соревновании NGUAC! Мне было прекрасно от вас слышать!

GhostWarriors responds:

Благодарю! Очень рад, что Вам в чём-то понравилась данная композиция!
Да, Вы правы, мне - как и многим другим начинающим музыкантам (композиторам) ещё предстоит многое изучить и многое понять, прежде чем достичь желаемого результата...
Но именно благодаря такой критике, какую Вы подробно описали, я могу учитывать свои недочёты, стараясь их свести к минимуму.

[Dakota Rineer-Bloom]

Chord progression is nice and smooth. Transition noise is just a little loud.

Nice work with portamento here. I would take down your saws by about 1 to 2 dB, cut off an sidechain the sibilant frequencies more, and take down the reverb sends on everything by a lot. Low cutting them to 250 hz also helps a lot in making room for everything to lay in with the bass. As is, it's really hard to hear the bass and percussion.

Hi-hats and or shakers, I can't tell, are very sibilant and could use much less reverb. They create a high wash that makes the track a bit hard to listen to. Harsh sounding. If you want to keep the same reverb, I'd gate it pretty hard. There's just so much sibilance in this track, it's hard to listen to your drops.

I may have mentioned already, but the accompaniment -- non-melody -- synths are covering up your other elements, especially the bass. It's a tendency I suffer from a lot too in trying to make massive sounds. Try just spacing them out more. It'll help. Your percussion should be the loudest part of your mix -- kick and snare. Those carry you through. Those massive sides, they can be up there, but here they're probably 1 to 2, maybe even 3 dB too loud.

Writing wise, this piece was pretty repetitive, but nothing offensive. I would recommend taking a minute to study transitions -- there's a great video, the rule of pairs, by Kush After Hours, that I think you should watch, and I say this because nothing was inherently wrong with anything you wrote, or boring, but it felt like a lot of the same. I think you may benefit from less is more -- rule of pairs, take away two elements, add or change two elements transitions. Because by the end, even though we had a big wall of sound, I felt like we had been sitting at the height of your piece for basically the whole track after the intro. There were no real peaks and valleys, not a lot of tension. Feel me?

Still good work pulling through to this stage of the competition, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Drak02 responds:

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not surprised by a lot of your comments, especially about mixing, as thats something i'm still very, very much learning. I had a lot of fun participating in the NGUAC, and I'm glad I joined.

[Displacement]

Right off the bat, liking your chord here. It's unusual. I'd like maybe some filter on that bit crushed whole note synth.

Interesting, spacy vibes going on. I would take that bassline you have and take it down about half a dB or more, and bring the drums out. They're bit crushed so they're going to have a harder time cutting through the mix.

Overall, I'm not really sure what's going on, if we're ever coming to a chorus. Saying this as we've gone about halfway through without moving away from the tonic note of A and the run of A, G, C, to say, F, E, G and back to A. There just seems to be no B section to your A section, figuratively speaking... and literally speaking. That's really the only thing keeping me from jiving to this piece. Otherwise it's not offensively mixed, and the instrumentation isn't bad at all. Just lays there is my thing.

I'd love to hear you experiment outside the box with some chord progressions.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

BrandonTurner responds:

I definitely agree with you, I should've had more of a chord progression to make it more interesting. You're right about it needing a B section as well, a more unique verse in the middle to cut down on the repetition would have been a good idea.

Thanks so much for the critique! I appreciate it!

[Abendland - Featherblade]

Writing and scoring is good. It's being smushed up and muddied with a lot of reverb, but I very much appreciate what you're doing.

Those claps I would stereo out very vide and perhaps ensemble. That way you get a choir clap effect. Same with all of your higher percussion.

Really, you could do with taking reverb down on every sustained instrument and finding a way to create a spacious chorus effect with more instances, different patches, etc.

Your choir however sounds very appropriately spacy.

Your percussion and most everything sounds very centered.

Dynamic wise you have a handle on the piece and it follows naturally. The lower strings especially could use 0-250 hz cut on their reverb sends. I recommend this on every reverb, unless it's a solo instrument on a naked section, but it resonates especially on bass instruments.

Really the only problem I have with this piece is intonation of the synth instruments on repeated notes (velocity may fix), and the very, very heavy reverb. Otherwise it's a fantastic score.

Great work.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Abendland responds:

Thanks a lot for your constructive feedback ADR3-N. This Track was all way to rushed and I wished I had a bit more time to work on it, but I had to submit early due to personal circumstances. Your inputs are extremely valuable and I appreaciate them a lot. Cheers and have a nice evening,
Chris

[[NGUAC 2020] claustrophobia]

You know, I had a song called Claustrophobia back in the day. I think yours is better, haha.

I like that opening chord. It almost sounds like a ringtone.

Ah, now that everything's come in, I understand what you're doing with that.

I have to say, the mix is super mid heavy here. Does Amplitube come with a cab? If not there are cabs like NadIR or Kefir for free. Tames that fizzy noise on top.

Writing wise, this piece is great, if a little shaky in structure. I would not have repeated your breakdown at 2:40 twice -- I would have gotten back as quickly as possible to a final chorus. It sounds like you actually have two breakdowns one after the other, and the section you end with, right before the outro, I would have put where your distorted synths at 2:20-ish are.

Those synths by the way, I can't tell if that's a ring mod or something like Saturn distortion/saturation thrown on, but it's pretty sibilant and could probably use compression to tame it and take it down a bit.

Your modulation of effects throughout was very nice and adds touches that a lot of producers would have let go to waste. Some nice spicy moments.

The main issue to fix would be the mix. So I'll just try to parse out commentary by instrument

Drums, are not standing out in the mix when all instruments come in. This tells me either the drums are not very compressed, or the track is too compressed. I can't see the waveform since it doesn't like to display in my browser, but it sounds like there are actually just guitars covering them up, tbh.

Guitars, I would recommend something other than FL Slayer, or at least modulate velocity more. For guitars, you'll want something you can actually doubletrack without phasing, and that isn't going to sound so boxy in an amp. There's a lot of 250 hz range noise it sounds like, trying to mix in that aggressive tone. I recommend for mixing guitars a quick search on Chernobyl Studios on YT. He uses reaEQ to cut out everything on that guitar send to up to 250 hz. It helps.

This said there are good uses of Slayer, and it does not ALWAYS sound bad, but those are when the instrument is played to its strengths, which is obvious synth keytar solos, not rhythm guitar. There are lots of free guitars on the net. I would at this point even recommend something like Ample Sound's free Taylor, if you can find a way to cut off the reverb. Then I think there's a junk guitar for Kontakt, among others. Look around, I'm sure you'll find something. I think there's a Kontakt factory that offers freebies, and you can work up enough kredits doing reviews or product demos with that to afford instruments, if that's your thing.

Mix wise I think the drums and bass need to stand out more. That mostly just means turning everything else down until you can clearly hear everything. Some people recommend mixing in mono to achieve a cleaner sound profile and cutting down on reverb as much as possible.

When I was working at this stage I would then render the file at -6 dB and see if I could find a free mastering service. Helps if you want the raw product out without spending a day on the master channel.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

4203 responds:

Yeah, I struggled a lot with the mix, and my instrument choice is not that great xD
I considered a lot at the breakdown, thinking it's a good idea but now it seems not quite... well, at least I got something good out of it.
Thanks for the tips!