ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Supercell]

I nearly fainted when I thought I heard copyrighted Pendulum snare samples -- thank God I checked the reviews and it's just a sample pack.

This is crazy in a good way. My only complaint is slight sibilance, what sounds like really, really hard compression, and relatively no sub-bass to give those drums something to lock us into. I had to turn things down a bit to enjoy fully but still can't tell if that phantom pain in my left ear is from listening to this at 50% volume or not. These ATH-M40x's monitor headphones drive ridiculously hard and have a very flat response, no bass boost, so it's possible this may sound better on some commercial gear.

I'm actually listening on 8% volume right now and it's at the sweet spot between crisp and uncomfortably loud with that perc.

Compositionally, a great piece that keeps me guessing. I'm not a huge fan of the piano -- I could have gone for a more muted, foom-y lead with some delay, perhaps even an octave lower with higher octave doubled stab synths in places for effect. It would sound much more pensive and ominous. I do love the creative approach to sound design in general though.

That descending synth at 0:11 was pretty uncomfortably sibilant to me on my first listen. Maybe supplement it with a sine or ramp bass drop.

I think the piano leads may be a bit too loud, and perhaps that's why I'm not perceiving the bass as well. I took time for a second listen -- let's be honest, it still keeps me on my toes even after a third time through; you're very good with this, one reason of many I appreciate your genre switchups. Each time I noticed the piano leads, which don't really have an overarching melody, seemed even louder than the drums and bass combined. There's really nothing in that sonic space to compete with them either, so they seem doubly loud.

Other than that though, fantastic work. Congrats on the fp!

Quarl responds:

Woohoo, adr reviews!

Lol, 8% volume?? I must be deaf. I force myself to lower from max volume because my ears don't work that well and I dont want to make them worse. 8%, you ear saving person you.

It might be time I get some new cans. I've had the same AKGs for a number of years now. Id get some decent monitors but am currently living in an RV. The boyfriend and I will be getting a house soon though and 100 spare monitors will be the first things I buy.

Copy written Pendulum snares? They spam amen breaks, they dont own those fonts XD

[Sea of Love Tears 「恋水の海」]

That opening chord tho. Also, synths sound great there.

I could do without a lot of the reverb here -- cut low end, reduce wet signal, etc.

I'm impressed you managed to emulate the koto relatively convincingly. With a bit more humanization, modulation, and a less rigid gridded attack on each note, you might have me fooled. As is, it sounds like a pretty cool soundfont. You should definitely release a little preset file for us broke kiddos who can't afford giant sample libraries, heheh.

Compositionally, this is beautiful VGM/anime-grade music. Modulations in all the right places. Traditional flourishes. Dynamic contrast. It's great. The only real complaint I have is the slight lack of contrast between sections.

Otherwise, right up my alley, but I can definitely hear the time constraint in this piece. I was hoping for a solid B section in here. Still, gorgeous piece nonetheless.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

Tennon responds:

Thanks for the review, will consider those in my VIP track

[Miston Music - Bombs All Over The Place]

Right off the bat, cool acid vibe, but that super loud reverb is doing you no favors. I almost always recommend against reverbing kicks; even when you cut the low end on the wet, damp it good, and lower the wet signal, you always get this low rumbly tin can hangover. It just doesn't sound good.

Super cool that you've gone out of the box and made your own sounds in Harmor rather than relying on samples. I just can't really make out a lot of what's going on with that reverb. If I'm not crazy, either, I hear some distorting in the right channel around 2:12.

Six minutes is also a lot of time to develop a piece. I'm unsure if this is intended to sound like a really long house set in which the DJ deliberately avoids touching anything for most of the goings on, but that's kind of what I'm hearing in between a lot of the same elements being repeated, no real deviation from the same home key, etc.

In short, I'm not really sure what you're trying to do, the super loud kick and reverb is covering up a lot of the good things you are doing, and though I actually like a lot of aspects of your sound design, it takes so long to develop, I can't enjoy it. By 4:33 I'm actually starting to get a bit of a headache from the heavy low mids.

I also feel like the melodic development there could have easily been cropped once you realized its potential, and the track condensed into the standard verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus, etc structure.

I wish I had nicer things to say about this piece other than enjoying 4:33 to the outro. This piece did eventually get my toe tapping, but mix issues made it very hard to enjoy properly. Recommend taking a bit of time to study mixing, FX, best practices, etc. for your DAW. You've clearly got an idea of what you're doing -- otherwise, you wouldn't be bold enough to design your own perc -- just need that extra nudge in the right direction. :)

Also, congrats on making it this far in the competition!

Miston responds:

Thanks for the feedback.

[Chain Reactions]

Aaaand now I'll have to start looking into East West Quantum Leap.

The opening sounds like knocking a metal drain pipe with a soft mallet. 0:19 is a fairly strong entry but could probably be louder. Later development tells me yes, volume is what I was missing here.

String arps are machine-gunning a bit on those velocities, attacks, and releases. This occurs throughout. Be sure to humanize your attacks and releases.

0:52 is a strong section. I would bring that perc there down about a dB.

1:04, nice hit there. I would bring your strings in the right channel down 2-3 dB. They're taking away from the strength and dynamics of that hybrid hit.

1:37 is a great modulation, super creepy, but driving right over that cliff -- I wish you had placed a cymbal roll with a longer tail.

Throughout, I really feel like your strings and brasses have been just too loud for the percussion to dynamically sustain. 2:36 sounds really unbalanced with the left channel. I would have placed another synth in the right just to keep things straight.

The overall sense of edge-seat is right there, but it ebbs and flows a bit with the mix itself. Overall, however, I enjoyed the track.

Thanks again for coming out to NGUAC!

lukiaffe responds:

Thank you for the feedback! I had a busy period that made composing under deadline worse, so I understand a lot of the critique. Should’nt be an excuse though and I’ll make sure to learn from it to future compositions! Thank you again!

[illbefine]

Intro synths work well together, especially that perc, although I might have liked a different kick.

Vocals could have used harder compression. You're a little pitchy here and there, and I find the instrumental starts to overwhelm you at point. However, despite the talk-singing, I find this also works reasonably well.

Mix probably could have used compressing to some degree as well, but it does sound like you mixed everything very cleanly, which I appreciate.

Initially I would have been more critical of the lyrical composition, however, your diction and overall writing actually carried them well. Internal rhymes were fairly strong, as were your end rhymes in places.

I actually was not expecting "wanted" to jive so well with "quiet," but "all I wanted was some piece and quiet before I hit the bed" might ring better after "before they even crack" as "before I go BACK to bed."

Overall though, nice structure. Really surprised me with how well this turned out as your first time working with vocals seriously. Great work. Can't wait to see what places it takes you. :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

icantpronouncethis responds:

Thank you for the critiques. Compression is a very strange area to understand. I get the gist of it, like how softer sounds get louder, and louder sounds gets softer. But really applying it gets my head spinning. Plus, there so many uses for it; like side-chaining and stuff. Any tips about learning this beast? Is there like a video or articles you recommend to learn about using compression effectively?

One thing I realized about the vocals, is that "bad" singing is so hard to work with.

[To The Clouds]

Sounds like that harp may be mic'ed a bit too close. Also noticing a lot of instruments seem to attack at exactly the same millisecond when multiple notes are played -- humanize those ms.

Dynamics of the piece are already very pleasing by 0:33.

I can't tell if that's a koto or shamisen for not ever having studied the difference much, but particularly nice job with them. They sound very organic.

I could do with a bit less reverb on your bass.

Synth at 0:46 that sounds kind of auto-filtered could also come down a lot. There's nothing in that frequency range, so it ends up sounding hugely loud by comparison -- at least to someone my age who hasn't lost that 19k-24k hearing range.

1:50, I think the reverb/low end gets a bit out of control, starting to overwhelm your leads a bit. This presents a bit throughout. I think it's mostly reverb. I'm hearing a lot of low rumble, not an organic breath from either low organs or strings.

Vocals are very clean and of course distinct. I'm pleased they don't dominate the track and are tastefully interspersed throughout.

Compositionally, this is quite a journey, though I notice a relative lack of overarching melody.

2:04 to 2:07 chord modulation was unexpected and quite pleasing, as is the following development from 2:20-2:27. I'm wondering just how far you will push us before driving off the cliff -- and am disappointed somewhat not to have had a fortissimo swell anywhere.

3:06 sounds great.

4:07 to the finish line impressed me enough I didn't really mind the slightly high reverb wet signal, which of course, as you know, is every cinematic/orchestral composer's favorite cheat plugin.

Overall, awesome work. I think I've said most of what I could possibly say aside from that.

Quick note, are you sure it's your workstation struggling with the project load, or your computer? I used to think my DAW sucked until my actual computer started failing. Subsequent upgrade fixed all the problems I was having. For your sake, I really hope it isn't computer failure.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

etherealwinds responds:

Hey ADR3-N, hope you're all good.
I used the Flageolet'd samples on the Concert SAM harp that I enjoy using ever so occasionally as it gives a more percussive feel, especially working with rhythms :) I'll definitely look at humanising the attacks to give a more human feel when I return to this piece.

Yes, this is a Japanese Koto - good ear! I love the sound of them - perhaps I'll own one someday.

I'll take a listen to 0:46 with some different headphones when I get my hands on them. I don't use the best headphones or have access to the best speakers, so it's good to get some other perspectives on how the sounds are coming through on their end! Thank you.

Originally, I was aiming to compose something completely different and unexpected - a comment I read from Frootza on a previous thread in reference to my last submission was 'it's nice, but is it something new from him?' - I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and not rely on my go-to methods of composing that I know work for me. That said, as it was all coming together, I wanted to beef up the choir with some layers of real voice to add to the organicness of the piece. The ethnic vocals also seemed right and actually fitted with the piece so I kept them in!

I think Xuvero put it well in the last review when they said it was an 'orchestral exploration of different elements'. It wasn't intended to be that way, but I think I was just exciting to really be tackling a genre I've never tackled before. I've still yet to attempt a fully cinematic piece - I don't think I have quite the quality of libraries needed to make something to the quality of realism and emotion that I would like but I'm more inspired to take my music down a more orchestral route. I think my lack of overarching melody and my taking it to so many different places but I did try to keep certain melodies scattered throughout - for example, the melody played by the Koto, the vocal lines at 1:25 and 3:22 and the brass part, also making sure to scatter that flageolet harp part appropriately. I think I quite like it this way for what the track is, which is really my first foray into a track that is most heavily orchestral :)

Yeah, everyone's mentioned about the fortissimo! I think in my journey of exploration, I wasn't super aware of how far to push the fortissimo but there's definitely room for more. Ask and you shall receive. That's mainly what I'll be going back to fix - I wanna take this piece to the level it deserves.

Re the high reverb wet signal, I didn't know it was but I'll be sure to remember it in the future!

Probably miswording, it's definitely my poor l'il laptop or something with the soundcard. I kept having to restart and purge all the samples and sometimes the project became pretty much unplayable. I'd have to turn my laptop off and on and hope for the best! Luckily during the end days when I really wanted to work on the track, it was kind to me.

Thanks for your review and I'm glad you enjoyed the track! <3

[Pretentious]

It looks like the track is brickwall limited to -6 dB. I'm also hearing some distortion, though not as much as your last piece -- this is an improvement. I'm not sure if I explained in my last review that it's best practice to leave about 6 dB of headroom BEFORE applying any master FX. I can hear past 3:45 especially that this track was mixed past that, then compressed/turned down. Subtracting half a star for mix issues.

That said, the composition itself is some solid @$$ bar rock, and leveling issues that were present in your last work don't seem to be presenting themselves here. I could still do with more kick and snare -- about 1-2 dB more of them, but you would be better off turning everything else down by that amount at least.

Solid production other than that. Nice to hear a thick bass line here, and your use of FX is wonderfully atmospheric. I do hear the Foo Fighters influence, and I definitely appreciate the gritty high tenor vocals.

Now, I get that this genre in particular isn't very critical when it comes to lyrics, but some things I'd like to note.

This is farewell is fine -- a lot less cheesy than saying "goodbye" actually, but "Pretentious on the outside, forget my errors inside" is sung a bit strangely -- could have accented "inside" a bit more. "Errors" is also not generally a word people associate with the insides of ourselves, either. "Forget my failures inside" or some derivation could have worked better.

"I'm still trying to meet the social trend" is awkward phrasing but still works. Better phrasing, "I'm still trying to keep up with what's trending," "with the trends," "to be so trendy" or something similar.

"I threw my clothes as they came".... Threw them on? Threw them away?
"Still I think it's getting kind of lame." This end rhyme feels a little lazy. Tbh I don't know what I would have done with it either though. "Every day it's more of the same?" The "getting" and "kind of" are already a bit wimpy when it comes to English phrases, and "think" isn't a really strong verb, so the whole sentence comes off as a bit melodramatic.

"Mirrors tell me what the fashion is." Witty.
"Don't get the point, well, I don't get this" Also witty but sounds on the verge of trying too hard.
"Social move I am living in" ... not really sure what this means. "Culture that I'm living in" may have worked better.

Overall though, pretty solid piece. I personally think the lyrics are a bit weak, but this is excusable for the genre. Grunge/punk are generally not known for their eloquence so much as their nihilism and misanthropy, which this nails. Mix is the weakest aspect of the piece. Fix that alone and you'd have a solid 9/10.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

dude2312 responds:

Phew, that was quite a review! Trust me when I say I really did try my best to keep it at -6 db before the master. I try to EQ, compress, master, and everything else differently for each track depending on what I feel it needs. Either way, these tips you're giving me are helping quite a lot. As far as the lyrics... The competition gave about two weeks to write the new song, I had about 3 days due to health issues, that's including orchestration, lyrics, etc.

Either way, thanks a bunch for making this review. As always, I appreciate any feedback given.

[Emotion Creator]

I've gotta say, I'm not a huge fan of the opening lead -- I'd have liked a portamento. Right now, it sounds almost like a synth brass.

Steven Slate drums are being used to great effect here. Great tom rolls and organic snare sound, and those rides and bell hits are gorgeous. I'd have liked a bit more volume on your kick.

1:30 section is great. I'd have liked it condensed into about half its current length. 4:43 is a bit long for the very little lead/solo we hear here. Each time you repeat a section, perhaps think about having an overarching melody like you do at 2:45-ish. That was very well executed.

Bridge section after is a great transition as well into your chorus. Though the section itself feels empty with that thin lead, you do manage to pull it off, and the song retains a strong sense of purpose throughout. If I were not writing this review however I might actually have time to get bored. Watch that.

Level wise I could probably use a bit more on your kick and snare, as well as possibly the bass, but I feel the mix is already being pushed somewhat. Maybe back off the lead and rhythm guitars about 1 to 0.5 dB and see if it does the trick. Rest of the mix sounds pretty balanced.

Overall, great work and solid composition. Having just finished the first listen through, it's still stuck in my head... along with imaginary solos, which are what I think the track is lacking. That stabbing lead isn't as creamy as your alto lines on that lead guitar, so instead of processing it as a lead instrument, my brain is hearing accompaniment, wondering where the lead is, if that makes sense. Also, it had the same sort of rhythmic texture as the rhythm guitars, which is something to think about. Notice how your lead guitar licks flow over the rhythm rather than into them, then contrast that with your opening synth lead throughout the track.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

MisledSatellite responds:

Thank you! I'm glad to hear that)

[Sugar High]

Nice atmosphere on this piece. It does sound fairly upbeat.

My gripe, the the drums are pretty buried in the mix -- and they kind of sound like stock FL drums. Very thin and tinny. That said, their arrangement is pretty solid. Kind of reminds me of old 70's music in that way. Your drum panning is pretty good, though I personally would have panned hats to the left channel in this piece since you've got your crash rolls on the right.

Thematically, this piece keeps a steady pace, and I like your bass line -- though I'd have loved to hear a bit more of it throughout.

I would pull your leads and pads down a tad and raise the overall volume of the piece. You may even take advantage of side-chain compression on your choruses some and/or compress the piece. Right now, it sounds unmastered.

Overall, enjoyed your work. I'd have liked to hear maybe some mallets (bells or w/e) now that you mention it, but I think the fantasia synths work well enough on their own. Keep it up!

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

ColinMuir responds:

Hey thanks man. Yeah i can understand what you said on mastering. I'm usually in a weird mix of thinking it needs to be edited, compressed, etc. or just sound how it is with the peaks. I'll hopefully figure out how to do my songs better that way, thank you for the input. :)

[Forever Jazz]

This is midi? Man, someone is really pushing the envelope.

My complaints can mostly be reserved to over-reverb and hearing a lot more of the subby thud on the upright bass than the actual notes themselves. 1:41's reverb is a huge example of reverb overhang.

Overall, however, nothing necessarily sounds bad, barring maybe that snappy doot-doot lead trumpet, un-muted.

I would probably recommend a different e-guitar than Halion's admittedly not bad jazz guitar. Ample Sound's AGG2 and others are far superior after having done some demos.

Compositionally, this is a treat. Starts off with some sweet swing -- great ghost notes on that perc. Sax solo through 0:37 is blazin', almost sounds human, which is a testament to your writing. Cannot say the same for jazz guitar. Drum and bass solos are great with the exception of the aforementioned subby frequencies on that bass being out of control.

Around 2:04 I would have gone with a bit more relaxed releases and probably humanized those chords a bit more. Bass writing through that section is wonderful.

I'd have liked a little bit more of a hold on the final note of the outro.

Overall, great piece. Really enjoyed it! Only wish I had more to write, haha.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

AzulJazz responds:

Thank you so much ADR3-N, for this really helpful and detailed review!!