ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Didillead]

This is absolutely wilding. I'm not really understanding a whole lot of what is going on, as is probably the nature with DJing tools and anything less than a complete mastery of the tool. It sounds really cool, though.

Throughout, there are a lot of cool little motifs, but nothing super cohesive. The drums are much quieter than the synths and bass, which makes it hard to feel a real connection to the rhythms.

Outro probably could be better served as dropping the percussion and keeping the bass and ... I don't know necessarily what those keys are anymore by name. Curse my lack of genre-specific vocabulary, haha.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[A Breath of freedom]

Watch that velocity on your piano -- that bottom note sticks out as the same velocity.

Piece isn't badly written at all, but I would cut your reverb sends by about a quarter and low cut up to 250 hz on the individual sends. On your drops, it's particularly noticeable, and also covers up those flute parts that come in at 1:40.

I think those could have been better written and a bit less heavy handed with the REALLY strong attacks. No flute player plays with that intonation on every note. You can correct the volume difference between velocities with compression, as you please. But on their intro, it's perfect fifth intervals on up to the drop, then they completely drop off, as if understanding, hey, that's really intense sounding, let's chill. When you're ascending into the drop, I wouldn't make symmetrical movements. Have one of them hit a third or something. Actually, ascending thirds sounds much better than fifths. And really, if you don't have a fancy library, I tend to always think synths are a better alternative to iffy real instruments.

Also, there's a kontakt library called Egyptian Ney that makes a great flute replacer. If you want to hear it, I used it in one of my tracks, Oncoming Storm.

Piece as a whole is cohesive, doesn't have any real flops. Just those couple things that stick out to me.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[New Cyber]

Really surprised me by the drop around 28 seconds in contrast to that intro.

Some comments on mix. Your percussion is hiding a bit behind your synth line. I would take said line down .5 to 1 dB. It gradually seems to get louder at points.

The piece itself is super minimal, with one instrument seeming to take the responsibility of both lead and bass until the second drop. And I think that may even be an instance of the same instrument. The triplets are a nice touch.

There are plenty of stabs or orchestral samples, choirs that you could have laid over the second drop and following verses that would have really livened up this piece. As is I still enjoyed it, but their absence was definitely on my mind.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Dirt Dog (NGUAC Submission)]

Nice intro here. I definitely feel the biggest critique is going to be mixing. Intro is very reverb heavy -- I'd low cut that wet up to 250 hz, take down the send some.

Drop 1 is nicely done. 1:39 continues with interesting noises to enjoy. Like flying through a field of buzz saws and electric drills.

Yeah, really, mix is all I feel is necessary to comment on. Everything else is if not passable, then good. Your sub in sections like 2:53 I would bring up, maybe even compress those sections a bit more. The percussion is a bit too loud in those very naked sections, especially with a sidechain.

By 3:36 it sounds like the whole song is destructing at points. I have no way of seeing what you were envisioning writing it as it speeds up rapidly and is over quickly. Maybe append one last drop there.

By 4:06 I'm wanting to end with a nice minor i piano chunk chord.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

IAmDeadOnTheInside responds:

Bruh, thanks for actually providing opportunities like that! And I don't think I've ever gotten a review that thorough before on a track.

[The Smirking Prolapse (cool song listen!!)]

This description is probably the most interesting thing I've read in a while. This is.... Absolute death to my ears, not because the idea is bad, but because it probably could be lit with better mixing (drums with the exception of the kick need to come up), more understandable structuring and sounding a bit less thrown together, and probably better recording quality but I don't really care about that if you're going as avantgarde as this.

Also, is that a mixcraft kick? I feel like it's a mixcraft kick.

Followed because I like weird shit.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Rayne]

Not dubstep did someone say? I call bull. Just because the wobbles are reesy doesn't mean it ain't dubstep.

Now, I would say the structuring of this song could use some work, particularly where the perc comes in and we think we're going to get a drop, but we continue the verse.

You've done some really cool things with your basses. I could compress the different ones during the drop so they're about the same loudness as one another. The disparities there are a little distracting.

Also take care that your basses are not getting in the way of one another. On your later verses, I can hear the frequencies struggling to come to the fore.

Some things that are lacking here, solid transitions, as in the noises themselves, crashes. That's more or less stock to the genre. I would probably actually not use a reverbed sine bass just for how muddy they tend to sound.

But your melodic content and idea overall are great. Enjoyed the listen.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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.

[Cymbal]

Interesting. I haven't heard FL Slayer metal since 2007.

Watch your mixing, there's a lot of clipping going on. The levels are way too high, take them down!

Structure wise, this is pretty well written, and actually is great for being done almost entirely with sytrus and slayer -- drums excepted I'm sure.

I would recommend you find some more capable guitars. Ample Sounds make some freebies like ABPL and others. If you're willing to invest some dollars, the non-freebies are pretty cheap as far as things go. There are free amps and cabs like Emissary and LeCab. And of course some nice free drum vsts like Cymbalistic, Black Noh Snare, Saudade snare samples, I think what I use is Dark Kick V2. I have it saved to a preset and have forgotten the actual name, if that tells you how much I use it.

Those would be great places for you to branch out of the stock FL instruments, which sound a mess of muddy and unprofessional. Your composing skills are far beyond that, so I encourage you to take a look around and try them out :)

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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.