ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Reflect Upon]

Sounds quite empty before it gets going, but I think this may be what you're going for. However, it stops holding my interest somewhat due to lack of dynamic contrast and very slow, somewhat uninteresting progression. The chords ported around with doubled octaves are a little predictable, and it sounds very much like something we've all heard before. However, this doesn't necessarily make it bad.

Release on your piano notes needs to be a little longer, or perhaps there should be more reverb. Cutoffs are very short and abrupt in what feels should be a spacious piece.

Your mixing is extremely muddy! Percussion sounds like it's a mile away, hiding under the piano, and FX is drowning it. Too much reverb, too long of a release, not enough highs and mids. Perc should almost always cut through, even in quiet pieces such as this, to give a little drive. Remember not to do any sort of compression or FX on the master until you've got ALL of your volume leveling down pat. It can make it impossible to make good mixing decisions.

2:15 feels less like an ending and more where the track should have been at its height. I would have shortened your intro by about half and built to that a little more quickly, held it for most of the duration of the track, then fell off into a diminuendo and stinger on the end. If you don't know what I'm talking about, listen to some similar pieces in the genre. I'm getting sadness and determination from this piece, but it delivers none of the determination until the very end, when it's too late to enjoy!

rsonbie456 responds:

Thanks for the awesome suggestions! I agree with what you noticed. I'll try to improve mixing a bit more.

Originally, this song was going to be for an animation, so I timed the ending scene with the ending melody. However, I realized that as a piece alone, it does move too slow as it does not have anything interesting in the beginning.

Yeah, I'm still trying to figure out mixing/EQ. I recently just got into the realm of actually messing with it. I'll take what you said for future stuff.

[drowning (AIM)]

I don't know how I missed this. Thought I got every damn AIM entry. Guess not. :P

Let's see, again really not liking the highpass play intro. Hi-pass play on the drums was interesting -- UNTIL naked drums came over top of the track, and then it felt superfluous. As a rule, hi-pass when you've got something under it. Low pass when it's naked. Remember the sound pyramid shouldn't look like lady Newt Gingrich.

Progression is holding my interest. Good for lounging, relaxing, reflecting. Overall, pretty sexy ambiance. Not sure if that's intended or not. Also, you're going to have to kill a hostage, because this isn't synthwave! It's closer to jazz. Listen to those solos! Now, does that fit in a genre of music that sounds straight out of the 80's?

Mixing is where this one suffers most. Nothing is particularly clashing, but that bass is very dry and is sticking out because of it. It's also a little too loud. Everything else sounds very syrupy, then along comes this bass and... I think I might hear a piano under it, but can't tell if it's that or just a really low-passed piano to begin with. I think I hear synthy pick noises. Maybe not. Everything else is all pretty sounding, but this bass sounds like it's just there chilling, waiting for the song to be over.

Also, your injection of percussion is probably not as dynamic as you want. Watch your volume leveling. Pay attention to cymbals. This one could have used cymbal rolls for its transitions specifically. There are points where some sections sound like they were just pasted on the tail of another, like at 2:00 where we get what sounds like a lightly brushed hat, but the section is so naked, it sounds abrupt! Maybe tap on a ride to get a little ring out of it first. Warm up the ears!

Good song overall. Enjoyed the listen. Did not enjoy the uncomfortable thoughts and anxiety that came with the premise, haha.

johnfn responds:

ty for the very freaking long review EDM! tytyty

[The Afterlust]

Great piece. Only problem was the slightly muddy low end. You could probably eliminate that by hi-passing the guitar to get some of those gnarly low frequencies out of the way of the drums and bass. There's never really a point where it's naked, so you don't need those frequencies in the 0-220 or even 300 Hz range to beef it up as much.

FinnMK responds:

Good tip. I did hi-pass them, believe it or not, but clearly not by enough!...I think I only did it up to 100-125 Hz. Getting good, meaty, but clean guitar is my main mixing challenge right now.

[duality]

Can definitely tell it was made in 2 hours, but beyond that, pretty solid. The panning moving around on that arp disoriented me a bit. Would have preferred something stereo-widened or two complimentary arps, one in each ear. Probably would have also appreciated somewhat more aggressively EQ'ed percussion because on my speakers, the rest of the song is totally crushing them into the ground. Little more high end, maybe? Then again my headphones utterly destroy from about 14k and on up dynamically. They still sound so sad and small compared to the rest of the track. Compress them harder?

johnfn responds:

you had to review my WORST TRACK IN THE LAST 2 YEARS????? i mean if yer gonna review something review charge or drowning that one track by goodraccoon. Or my forthcoming NGADM tra........... oh wait huh nevermind

i mean your critique has merit but i just wish i could apply it! none of my current stuff sounds like this =p

[Turn Out So Cold 2007]

Sounds like a bar gig. Easily understood the lyrics, but it loses coherence as he loses time with your playing. Good for a demo, shows talent in both of you. I'd actually love to see the stems from this or remix it. Bluesy vibe in a classic styled track.

Only places it suffers is vocal FX, compression, and mixing the electric in with the acoustic. Sounds like a gig in a really small venue.

Manx1 responds:

thanks, yeah not bad for a 17 year old kid... I'm 28 now, haha.

[Iori Licea - Together]

The distortion all over this piece really took me out of what was a decently written, if not cliche piece. Watch that clipping. It sounds like the volume has just been ramped up to the point it's ready to red line and distort, and then we just compressed the CRAP out of it. It boggles the mind since the tack quietens down eventually -- but then ramps right back up. Fix that distorting and you'll go from a 3 out of 10 in my eyes to a strong 6.5. It pains me to have to give such a low score for a track with GOOD transitions and okay structuring, but distorted artefacts like this hurt my soul!

iorilicea responds:

So sorry! This is my first attempt of glitch-sounds!

[Invisible Women]

Before you read this wall of text, I'm gonna warn you. I didn't enjoy the track much if at all. I didn't find it very musical or fulfilling, and this review will tell you all the reasons why.

Before you balk at the score, please try not to be discouraged or defensive. I'm not trying to rip you a new one, tell you you don't know music, or pretend it should be easy to make 5 star music on the fly. I AM trying to share a little of what I know to help keep you from making the same universal mistakes all of us do at some point or another, so that you don't alienate your audience for the sake of blindly plying your craft.

I say none of this with any malice, cruel intent, or upturned-nose bs, but I have a feeling this will get VERY critical. If you're okay with that, read on. If not, well, you're in the wrong place. Try SoundCloud or YT. They'll just ignore or harass you there, though.

Now, onto my review.

Not necessarily a pain to listen to, but it shows that this is a backing track. By itself, it's hardly interesting at all. The instrumentation also crashes so wildly, without any FX to blend it more into the same sonic space. I'm also curious whether you used stock loops at some points or simply don't have any transitions going for you so as to make it sound that way.

I really don't like that octaved choir or the church bells. The lower octave on that choir needs to go. It makes what would otherwise be pretty, sound slapped together. Choirs also usually form chords. Raw unison notes is sort of unpleasant. Almost all of your instruments are not forming chords. This is fine for bass and stabs, but should every instrument really be a single note? No! You need pads!

Also, the church bells could use a lot more attention to blend in. As an instrument, they already poke out in the sonic space just as something that would never naturally be right next to a choir and a bass guitar -- or a synth trumpet and synth stab. FX, FX, FX! Reverb, delay, other modulations like EQ! Play with them. Don't just lay on what sounds like a preset!

Choir, this instrument just clashes against that synth stab, even though they're following the same progression. The choir is dry and sticky in the mix at the same time. Play with reverb. Since you're using it as a pad, it should ideally be chorded.

Percussion was dry and really repetitive. Writing was fine. No transitions. Seemingly no crash cymbals. No risers either. Risers aren't essential but they give a sense of progression in a track that's written this way.

Bells were also played in a way that didn't suit them -- i.e. fast. Those bells ring out, and playing church bells super fast like that just stands out as purely tacky. Even chimes are not played this way. Marimba and other mallet instruments are. Know your instruments before you try to use them.

Bass is dry and sticks out of the rest of the mix. Ends up sounding careless and like you dragged it out in your DAW just because. It's also very high up there on the bass. You could actually probably play this line on a guitar. That robs your whole song of the bass R&B and Hip Hop don't just ask but DEMAND.

That brass thing is gratingly bland and does nothing for the melodic progression of your phrases. It just sort of lays there and pretends to be adding something of value to the track. Yes, it may be completing the i (1) chord sometimes, but it's way too low to be a trumpet and way to blah to be a decent bone. I know brass VSTs are hard to find in decent quality, BUT if you can't find a good quality synth and the genre doesn't demand it, just don't use it! That line would have been 100% more satisfying if it were a simple melody an octave higher.

Your writing suffers for letting the fact this is a backing track get in the way of making truly great music to support it. Learn some theory. Listen to some R&B. Dissect the way people do things. When you try to do everything your own special way, you forget that there is so much shit you don't know.

Lygometry -- the study of what you don't know -- immerse yourself in it. This doesn't mean spending years kissing the feet of the great and wonderful. It means advancing your craft through eliminating the things you don't know. You can never know it all or do it all, but you can learn to do better. Based on your response to TL, I'd strongly suggest you pull your head out of your music producing butt long enough to see that you could be doing much better, potentially making much more money from your craft. If you allow yourself to think your work is above critique for ANY reason, you're shooting yourself in the foot.

But enough about that. Back to the song.

I just didn't like the chord progression or really anything about this piece. Felt forced, non-resolving, disingenuous, etc. The choir is the worst offender with a stepwise ascent into a fall, then another stepwise non-resolution. Music likes to flow the opposite way -- the last measure or fill falling into the next repeat!

Even the stabs seem to dislocate rather than accentuate the thematic direction of the song. It's just a lot of jumbled instruments that are spammed in the Hip Hop and R&B cult on top of one another, and it makes no sense!

Anyway, take my word with a grain of salt. Once upon a time I was standing exactly where you are with not a whisper of direction or even decent critique. Hope you glean something useful out of what I had to say, if nothing else. If you'd like another review some time, shoot me a PM!

JourneyJaybeats responds:

As declared: This is an incomplete song.

My atylng is intentional.

It is clear that this competition as advertised isn't the same as I would expect.

Assessing your review, it seems likely that my deviation from your expectations, not the rules, has lead to the critical nature of your determination.

I can concede to a few of your thoughts, but I lack faith in your ability to understand pillars for any assessment based competition.

I am not disappointed in your review, it provided some helpful input. I simply sense some opinion over fact.

[Kalais]

Really not liking the almost atonal, random piano and strings going on here. The progression feels neither here nor there. HOWEVER, the drums are pretty well spliced. Love me some breakbeat. Panning is what takes all the fun out of it for me though, and I'm not really able to enjoy the track. Outro and intro are also strange. Sounds like two decent pieces unfortunately laid atop one another.

sapoman responds:

One of my big influences is Aphex Twin. If you get them, you get me. Thanks for the review!

-PS Random? It is a clear progression to me.

[Cs - 'Ambistep']

Those bells are really harsh in the higher octave at the beginning. They are however a nice foundation melodically for your intro. Your drum loop is absolutely killing my attention span, and that pad is far too loud, however. Your drums should cut through your piece just slightly -- enough to drive it rather than stand on top of it. To accomplish this, make sure you compress them well and get a solid sound that doesn't bleed everywhere when you apply FX to it. Believe me, you will want to use FX.

Volume leveling and compression is your biggest issue here. It makes an already so-so track sound very imbalanced and slightly boring. Bring that pad into balance with the rest of your track. As open spaced as the arrangement is, we WILL hear it! ;)

Overall, this would be a much more interesting and satisfying piece if mixed better with an overarching melody rather than just harmony and arps. It ends up sounding more like a backing track and less like a competition piece!

Csucskos responds:

Thank you for your opinions. And I have to say this was my whole target when I entered the contest. Getting opinions of other people.
I believe that in music: Familiar=Friendly=Safe=Good and Unknown=Strange=Scary=Bad. Because I have been listening to this track for quite a long time, it has been familiar to me. So I thought it is a quite nice piece and good for the competition. I had some doubts about the track so I entered to the Death Match with this piece to get further advices how to improve it. (And I didn't count on winning.)
All in all thank you for the tips. I am now working on this piece to improve it. EQed a little, but not too familiar with compression so that needs more researching. Lowered the overall volume and hopefully balanced the pads, the drums and everything. The pads and the bells were the main "melody" resources so this is the reason they were harsh. So added a new quite strange melody line. Maybe it will fix most issues. Not too sure about adding a chorus because of the slow pace of the song, but would love to hear your opinion.