ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dark Rarity]

We're pretty low mid heavy in our intro, with lots of reverb throughout the whole track, which sort of gives the feeling of having the whole top of the EQ lopped off the track. However, I do like your writing, and your transitions are solid.

One area I wish I heard more of, your drums, overall they're much quieter than the rest of the mix, especially the snare. I would turn everything else down until they're clearly heard. Believe me, those chords aren't going to go missing -- they're the only instrument in the space :)

Musically you've written quite a journey, with lots of interesting twists to follow. Sometimes I am not a fan of the chords in the low mids chunked together. Other times I think they work. Maybe some theoretical study on inversions and chord voicing will be helpful to you, but that's not hurting your presentation so much as just not being able to hear what's going on.

Overall I enjoyed the piece. My biggest recommendation would be just to study mixing, particularly as we try to get this big spacious vibe. There are great shows to watch such as Kush After Hours where mixers talk shop. I would start there, maybe try some of the tricks you learn on an old project you like. My main gripes in mixing is making sure to low cut reverbs up to 250 hz, and turning down the reverb lower than you think it should be, for the sake of cleanliness. Reverb is nasty and muddy if you let it be, and takes away from the clarity of a track.

But anyway, interesting piece. It was fun to listen to. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

TheSentiment responds:

Thank you for your insight! I'll definitely make the drums more prominent. I also put a book of advanced theory topics on my wishlist, so I hope to learn more very soon.

[Every Little Issue]

I'm not sure if that's vinyl distortion, or digital I'm hearing on the sides in your acoustic. I'm going to guess intentional from the distorted vocal. There's a bit of 0-250 hz screaming on the bottom of that, sounds like. I'd cut it.

Voice wise, great style. I would take off some resonant freqs in the mids with a multiband compressor, and compress them a lot more overall. Bring them up in the mix on the non-distorted parts.

Overall really cool idea and presentation, somewhat hampered by vocals not cutting through until you distort them. Without that, they sound a little muffled.

Drums, I would also compress a lot more and cut down on the reverb some, unless you want to apply gated reverb to the snare. Could also use a stereo component to that shaker type percussion in the right channel. The reverb touches the other channel, sounds like, but you could just put a ride or something occasionally to give the left balance.

Overall, cool little jig. I enjoyed listening to it, although I did have to turn it down at points with the aforementioned peaky distorted vocal. At a more comfortable volume, it was a nice little trip into outer space :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

TheRealFool responds:

The distortion on the guitar is digital, and actually mostly the result of cutting off the highs and lows (plus a slight flanger to give it a bit of a spacy quality, but that's also present in the second part). I certainly could've done some more to try and make the distortion sound less resonant at times though, this was the first time I tried doing something like this so I'll just chalk it up to a lack of experience in making things sound purposefully bad in a good way. I'm also usually pretty hesitant with compression, but I'll be sure to take your tips into consideration for future work.

Thanks for the review and happy to hear you enjoyed it!

[Majesty]

Pretty great for stock FL only. Wow how the DAW has improved over the years.

I would say the bass has a bit too much mids. Like truenotfals mentioned, it's filling up my ears and I'm wanting to hear at least a break in it from sidechain. Maybe sidechain heavier. As we go on, the bass gets seemingly louder and louder -- but clearer as the instruments on the sides back off. Remember, your percussion, namely kick and snare, should be the loudest instrument in your track, even if sidechain is used, they should still be able to cut through without it. I would turn your bass down by up to a dB but not over that.

Otherwise, my comments would run close to trunotfals, with the exception of liking your piano lick and wanting to hear more of it. I also am enjoying your structure. Final gripe would be -- let me hear a nice long sustained i chord at the end! :P

Anyway, nice work. Enjoyed the listen. Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

ArramEggleston responds:

Thank you for the review! Yeah, looking back on the track the bass is a bit loud. I'll remember that for the future.

[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.