ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[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