ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Giraf- Calm Rupture]

Interesting piece, percussion heavy. Sounds like a mix between trap and dubstep.

Mix here to me is super reverb heavy -- I'd cut those wet sends down and low cut to 250 or so hz, considering we have an 808 to make room for. You could probably sidechain the kick or any really plosive FX to the bass for good measure. Where the reverb really steals my attention from your composition is in those long-tails like at 2:11 and 2:25. It's really boxy sounding there.

I would say 808 and those growls could stand to come down a dB or two. The way it is now, it pushes the percussion out of balance. Perc should be the loudest part of your mix, especially with bass music. And I would bring out more of your 12khz to 18khz there. You may have speakers that are overly representing sibilant sounds in the mix and be mixing them down to compensate, thus crunching them off on other sound systems. I'm listening on monitoring headphones and it's giving a degraded audio quality type sound.

The outro section is out of the key of your bass. I would just port that down until I could play my bassline over it and it sounded good. Once done, drop the bassline out. Presto, non-clashing outro.

Throughout there seems to be not clipping but a lot of harmonic distortion from being compressed. Dunno if you mixed this with FX on the master, but if you did, I would avoid that. Especially with trap or dubstep instrumentation, these instruments are very sensitive to work with when mixing. I would cut off your master channel, turn the computer volume down to 20%, and then mix until it sounds good to you at even that volume. It's more of a challenge, given the natural way the brain perceives loudness to be goodness, and will force you to make good decisions.

Interested to see what you come up with next. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

girafj responds:

Hey ADR3-N! I really like long, detailed replies like these because its nice to know that someone took the time to help me get better at music as a whole. Your feedback was extremely helpful in understanding more about fixing the muddiness of my mix, and I appreciate the rating.

That being said, I understand what you're saying about the reverb heavy sounds. In the sections you mentioned, there is a loud downsweep of white noise that I added to fill the high end, but didn't EQ, so the tail just sat there filling up the section a little too much.

Regarding the 808/growls, both had sidechain, but the transient still came through for some reason I couldn't figure out before I started the final master. The dilemma I had with the percs being too quiet was because they were out of tune with the higher frequencies so I had to cut quite a bit of them.

One tip I do get quite often is to listen to my song on other monitors, headphones, etc. I'm working on getting new speakers and I will take this into account.

Lastly, this song wasn't mastered because I was getting it out too quickly, I believe you're getting the "harmonic distortion" feel because the a couple sounds in the same frequency are slightly crushed, with didn't turn out well in the final mix. Thanks so much for this feedback, I will be sure to take it all into consideration in my next track. NGUAC was awesome, and it was great to see all the other amazing, better tracks that others created. Thanks!

[GearWax- Transient (Heroes Part 2)]

Some comments.

By 37, the chord progression isn't offensive or anything, writing isn't bad. I would actually change the bass note for the 4th chord instead of just -1 semitone down for the bridges, to the one you use during your chorus. There is one point I can't hear the bass for the lead in that section.

I will say by our drop, the percussion is almost totally overwhelmed by the instrumental. I would turn it all down until percussion could be heard clearly. It should be the loudest part of your track, about like in before 3:30.

I'm most impressed by how much I've watched your composition improve. This song has both and A and B, and both parts are cohesive. You've also used detuned instruments in a way that doesn't bother my ears.

I think the drop and sections through 5:10 are your strongest. Great solos.

My remaining critiques would be for mix. Reverb is insanely and distractingly heavy on your percussion. I can hear that slapback panning in a circle, which, while technically cool, when done 50+ times over, is a little maddening. Remember to go through and low cut those wet signals to 250 hz or so, turn down the wet signal a bit. Maybe shorten the tail somewhat in the case of the snare. I eventually got distracted entirely by the seasick wooshing like, am I really hearing that? I would compress the dry snare and hats/kick some more, and if that didn't bring them forward enough in the mix, maybe grab a transient shaper, and then turn them up somewhat.

Stock electric piano sounds I tend to loathe, and I would still avoid them here just because they don't contribute very well to the texture.

Pleasure hearing from you again. Really enjoyed this piece.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Iosun responds:

Thanks for comments! This is abt a year old by this point and I love when I get feedback like this, really helps (percussion has been the thing i’ve been trying to get right for years now, and comments focusing on it in particular give a good sense of what needs to be fixed.

[Samouraï psy]

I like the inspiration behind this piece and the interesting directions being taken. I think what's keeping me from fully enjoying it is not knowing really what's happening structurally, not really conforming to any of the genres mentioned, and lack of super strong transitions.

As tends to be with hiphop there's not really a presence of a strong lead line, but there's not really a droning 808 bass line on those sweet offbeats to sort of suspend the listener's disbelief and convince them not to care. The lead we do have is pretty repetitive and also at times not sure where it's going, like on your big sections. Or mixed muddy, with a lot of reverb.

So before I would really think about talking mix, I would study some lead writing, do some YT research. Your ideas aren't bad. Just need to clean them up, differentiate them from the accompaniment.

But mix wise, I hear a lot of reverb bleeding. This means the wet signal is high and the low cut is below 250 hz usually. That's fine on say someone walking down a hallway but when you get lots of instances on multiple instruments, it tends to get screwy and covers up other sound in the mix, especially bass. I heard a lot of that here.

If you want to try traditional melodies, look up Japanese temple music. That shit gets wild.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

GALICROSS responds:

Thanks for th return.

[FLSM - Transitious]

Great idea. The execution is pretty rough. 1:07 we have two clashing keys against each other. It resolves by 1:30. I feel most of the sections here are very busy with melodies running against each other either too fast to really understand or without any build up to get why they're doing that.

2:16 is really messily mixed, with the very long reverb tails and sustained chords.

It's better at 2:47. I feel like if you want to use those guitars there, you should be proud of them. Bring them out, or they sound muddy. 2:47 and 3:22 are probably the best part of the song so far. The elements from there are introduced gradually, like they should have been from the beginning. But this is our outro.

I feel like a lot of the issues in the track you undoubtedly had to get used to over the course of the month. Working on something, you hear it so many times, it's hard to hear what isn't right with it just because of the way the brain works. Exposure to even something horrible sounding, like the firing mah lazer meme, will eventually become pleasure.

That's what I think happened with your intro.

So, it took you a very long time to make this -- first I would recommend studying song structures. There are good channels for that like Signals Music Studios and Holistic Songwriting. Then I would recommend taking a look at music theory and lead writing. You're at the point in songwriting where you have an idea of what you want to say, and you understand layering. You're ready for the next step :)

And no matter what, keep producing music. As you go on, you'll get better, you'll figure out what you're doing, and not only will the process get faster and easier, but you'll start producing music you and your fans like. Might even turn it into a career some day.

Best of luck, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

FL-DMD responds:

Hey, thanks for doing me a solid today. I’ve always been debating whether or not I should use forgeries or this track for the NGUAC, after reading every word of this beautiful, inspirational in depth review, I can see why I was stumbling between which one I should submit. (Regretting I used this one) but this is still the beginning of my journey as I began literally last year. I’m moved now to push foreword the longest I can




Thank you very much ^_^

[Convolve]

Really interesting approach to an intro here with that low pass. Now, I actually am not really liking your choice of notes for your chords so much as some of them seem to just port completely around with the same ratio between them -- I'm looking at the piano in the right channel on 30 seconds with 5ths. That interval is just dissonant to me.

Technical aspects of instruments in this piece are pretty good. I'd have liked if you stuck to one or two styles though. I feel the various elements don't entirely mesh, we're left with so much variation in structure that it doesn't feel cohesive, like at 0:33 which is very mid heavy, and there are so many things you're watching for in producing each genre, you end up cutting corners with all of them.

0:45, I can tell this is a build, but the introduction of that stinger on the head of the bar is more confusing than anything. It leads the listener to think, did I just listen to a drop or a verse? Then we go into another section with the same progression as the one before it -- honestly the section before 0:45 I would have skipped or rewritten. It sounds muddy and congested in the chunky low mid chords. I would open the spacing of those notes. It doesn't flow into the next section well.

The fill before the 1:00 drop here doesn't sound bad, but I would want some more high end on those tops to just know we've smacked the shit out of them rather than them being random bass notes. Here the fill works. Later, it's not having such a great time.

The mixing on individual instruments sounds a little messy. At 1:30 and 1:34 we have clipping. It sounds like everything has a lot of reverb and delay on it, and those need cleaning with low cut to 250 hz, shortening tails -- almost every nexus instrument has a metric crap ton on it because it sounds good solo, forgetting we have to fit this into a track. Turn down your wet signals.

The section at 1:45 is nicely written and flows logically from the drop, minus that heavy sidechain sounding really out of place. This is nowhere near loud enough a section, nor are there high swells that would sound good sidechained, so it ends with the kick just taking away from the sweet atmosphere you've built.

Now at 2:49 there's this chunky section that doesn't make sense in the context of your song. I think those synths just sound nasty tbh.

At 2:25, that kick has a crackle on it that makes it sound like the track is distorting. The sidechain at 2:10 or so isn't doing a lot for the track other than letting me know how much reverb you've got on everything -- and exposing that crackle. The mix is pretty muddy

The transition at 3:15 is particularly messy to the point of being an acquired taste -- I had to listen three times before I became accustomed to it -- into basses that I can't really pick out what note they're on due to the massive paper crinkling 12khz and up scratch. The struggle of getting over the hill with this transition tells me it may not even be this section itself that's messy but the ones leading up to it. So something is going on with the structure, in signalling the listener, hey, we're going somewhere unexpected.

At 4:20 we have distortion on the lowpassed portions of the outro. Leads me to suspect the whole track was mixed at peaking volumes and mastering fx were put on top to bandaid things.

Now that said, you've got some great ideas here and the technical aspects of writing nice growls always gets respect from me. You have a ton of potential to do great things. Keep on trucking. Keep writing music. Keep grooving. There more you do, the more you learn, and the better you'll become :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

entropicvoxels responds:

thanks for the review! i really do need to work on my mixing and mastering, for some reason when creating this song i thought that it would be a good idea to put on a mastering chain in the middle of creating it, so that's probably why literally everything clips. and that caused me to really not put a compressor on anything, and then everything clips.

once again, thanks for the review! i'm definitely going to continue making music!

P.S. is there any way to reply to replies on songs? that's something i've been wondering for a while.

[Nocturne]

I also think the shaker could probably come down a little bit, or edit the velocity some. It's interesting the play with the sfx in both ears.

I really think the chord progression could use more than just octaves up to 1:00. Like 1:50. That's not bad. Maybe study some music theory, lead writing, etc. There are some channels that I stand by, Signals Music Studio, Holistic Songwriting, Ben Levin, in order of least difficult to most complicated.

By 4:00 I feel like we should be reaching our outro, fade out, or something. We've heard the same bassline and chord progression. I don't feel like there's a need to drag it out an entire minute past that point. By 4:52 it's just octaves. That said, the stopping point at 5:06 on your one chord... or... note, would have been the decision I made, wherever I stopped it, given the progression repeats so many times.

I just wasn't able to get into this song. The progression is very simple which is not necessarily a bad thing. Nothing sounds glaringly bad. You've even taken some pretty good steps with your percussion toward being innovative -- although those breaking noises I would take down by about .5 dB because they're louder than your snare at points. I really just feel that everything settles on the tonic of each chord, and that makes for a listen that isn't bad, so much as it's kinda meh. Absolutely no offense intended. If you listen to my old catalog, I've really been there. I've been through it.

No matter what, keep making music. The more you do, the better you get. The better your workflow will become. Take whatever composition you think is aesthetically your best, has all your favorite synths to use and samples -- delete all the midi notes and just keep one of every sample you want to use in a muted track. Save that track as a template. Then pick a song structure you like, and make markers on that template accordingly. Save it again. Work from this template as you go, adding and subtracting as necessary. It will help save you a lot of pain with guesswork and keep your focus where it matters, improving gradually until the day you can look back and be proud of how far you've come :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Vanhelyx responds:

Thanks for the review, I know I need to improve and that's why from now on I will try to do the best I can; I really appreciate your comment.

[Hidden Forest]

Really nice writing on this piece, and good atmosphere, even making those synth strings work.

Couple notes. On your reverb, that long tail, high wet signal is okay for single instruments, but if you intend to use it in an ensemble I would low cut it to 250 hz or so. It's getting pretty boxy sounding in the mix by 1:20. Textures here are sounding pretty good. I would back off a little bit on your droning bass at 1:40 and emphasize the highs on that pulsing bass in the right channel panning around.

Even though the piece mostly stays in the same vein, and I was expecting something much longer given this development, you're quite talented at atmosphere.

I do have issue with the fade out. With the ongoing nature of the piece, it makes it feel like a preview more than a theme. I would just have made a second intro with that synth and ended on a high i chord.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Electronox responds:

Thank you for the review! To be honest I have changed this slightly more recently as I have uploaded this track, along with 4 others, to spotify. I do agree with you that it sounds more like a preview and tbh I really should have gone somewhere more with it. But I'm glad you like the atmosphere!

[This is not Even Something]

Really cool that you recorded this in your own studio.

Vocalist is good, could probably use some improvement on diction with words like between.

The mix itself is pretty muffled sounding, sounds like it was done with live dynamic mics almost. So past about 8khz there seems to be a big rolloff on every instrument, including vocals. That's where it's particularly noticeable. There's no saturation there really to hide that rolloff as distortion.

Cymbals and snare are another spot where I see that high rolloff. This makes it sound like I'm listening in lower kbps almost. Drums all around could be louder, with the exception of that hard right panned crash.

I would probably compress the vocals harder and bring them up by a bit if that didn't improve where they sat in the mix. And there's always room for a nice heavy chorus.

Anyway, great song. Really enjoyed it. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

dude2312 responds:

Definitely not a single rolloff on 8k anywhere that I can recall. It was more of a "stoner" rock what we were going for. I really wanted to get that muffle on it because rock isn't pretty or as nice recorded as Electronic Music.
Thank you for your review. I appreciate it! Nice having you back as a judge!

[Importance]

It sounds like your bass for most of the piece is completely out of tune, either flat -- I actually just usually recommend against using a sine bass. It's hard to hear most of the time, it doesn't really have a lot of character, it gets louder and softer based on its pitch so you have to constantly keep an eye on your volume level. And that's just the beginning of problems.

The mixing on this isn't too bad, but even if it were, that is the least of our problems. Aside from the percussion not cutting through, it's fine. I would just turn everything else down until it sounds more balanced. Percussion should be the loudest part of your mix.

I can't really pick out a definite melody with this piece, or countermelody. And by that I mean I have no idea where they are going, or where we will land. I would study lead writing. And music theory. Just knowing scales and chords in one mode will help you make decisions on the fly as opposed to noodling around and hoping it sounds good, which is what it sounds like you're fighting with here.

The good news is, keep writing, and you will naturally start to get better at it, find what sounds good, and move up. If you study hard, you can skip years of going through compositions like this, where you don't really know what you're doing, but you keep trying.

If you have the funds and you think you might keep at music making, why not invest in a midi keyboard?

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DjGrahnstetto responds:

Thanks for the response, I do have one question tho.
Do you think the melody / chord writing was too 'messy'?
From what I'm reading here, it seems like its my writing skill
that is the thing I need to work on.

Otherwise, the bass (A F DX10) does work but the velocity needs to
be set to each frequencey / note.

Again, thanks for the response and I'll try to work on that.

[Two Thousand And Twenty Dreams]

Lead writing isn't bad on your intro, but I think for your backing chords, you could definitely write something other than the same chord down one semitone, then three, etc. I feel that sucks the vitality and the cheery mood right out of the song itself.

Hihat open at 1:33 could use some velocity controls on it, like a hard, soft, hard, soft pattern so it doesn't sound like the same thing.

Throughout, the song isn't badly structured, but that drop at 2:41 is hard to enjoy just for the way the harmonies are written to begin with. It also sounds like the lead is mostly in the right channel -- unless I've gone deaf overnight -- I leave that as a possibility considering I just woke up. I would probably take your lead down by .5 dB. It's pretty out there.

The soft outro is a nice choice.

Really what we're lacking here is that extra cherry on top, harmony. Individual sections aren't bad, and I really want to get into it, but I can't. You might look up some channels like Signals Music Studio for lead writing and harmony on YT. Maybe Holistic Songwriting. Also something I notice is common in the house genre, buzzing the lead line on high saws an octave up or down from the lead itself, or just plain doubling it on other instruments. Throughout I was struck by how naked your lead sounded to me.

Anyway, I still didn't not enjoy the piece, and nothing was particularly offensive to my ears. Don't worry. The more you make music, the better you'll become. It's only natural when you start out to take a long stroll through the dark forest of not really knowing what you're doing at first before you start finding your groove, and it sounds like you're just now starting to peek through the leaves. Good work, and thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

DJ-DG responds:

Thanks for the detailed review!
This piece, I was more focused on the production and sound design of things... I usually make my melodies and musical composition a lot more complex than this, but I wanted to focus more on the technical aspect of producing which I feel I am really lacking in...
I will take whatever you've said into consideration, and keep improving my craft :D

-DJ-DG