ADR3-N's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[Chill'd (V.I.P)]

Totally predicted that chord progression, but I dig it. I was really hoping for a different genre drop here around 0:38, maybe a future bass style. But the aesthetic you have here works for you.

I would take those strings in the back and bring them up maybe a dB or two. That's a large part of the atmosphere of your track. Bass I might take up a bit too.

The track as a whole sounds really sub heavy. Those aux percussion at 0:37, I actually can't tell if they're a melodic synth with just a metric tone of click. If that's the case, I'd take that down a bit, maybe sub some sample in like -- actually I remember a free woodblock percussion for kontakt that was good for tribal perc.

Enjoyed the listen. Piece is subtle and infectious.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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 ^_^

[Embers of a burned friendship]

Writing here is not bad at all. I like your chords, I like the lead writing. Probably what's holding you back is instrumentation more than anything, maybe a little of structuring, just taking structuring with percussion.

I actually don't have many comments on your writing. Can't say a lot about mix other than that you could stand to have more instruments between different parts of your piece, just to hear what's going on. You could probably stand to write more than a standard four on the floor kick throughout most of the piece, but even then we're so minimal that it doesn't really affect much.

If you have Kontakt, there are lots of free instruments out there like from Spitfire Audio, LABS, pocket Blakus cello, etc., as well as some neat freebie vsts such as psymon, SQ8L, Dexed, CS One Bass. Cymbalistic is a nice velocity sensitive cymbal library.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[Flight]

Huge fan of deep house, myself. Some recommendations right off the bat. I'd low cut up to 250 hz on your reverb and delays. They're starting to crowd out your bass signals in places. I'd also turn your leads and FX down. I really can't hear your bass or perc over them, and percussion, followed by bass, should be the loudest part of any electronic genre.

Other than that, I'm absolutely vibing with what you got going on here.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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.

[TEACH ME HOW TO LOVE AGAIN]

Great opening chords. I think they're too loud relative to your perc though. Turn them down by about .5 db.

That dry kick also could do with a lot less sub. With such a busy kick line, it just doesn't sound pleasant with an olskool type beat. Speaking of, I moved this to olskool. Modern is probably more of a trap sound. This is more Kanye TLOP.

Now that said, I feel you could have done a lot more with this. Take some nice horn stabs, trumpets, some crashes, actually if you have a sampler like kontakt, there's the free Spitfire LABS libraries that you might find really useful. There's plenty of unobtrusive little melodic hooks you could write just to kinda pull into the next bar. I'm thinking jazz inspired.

But what I do like is the samples you've chosen give a kind of regal feel, one that's high up but still touchable and real. Great job with that. Work with your mixing and you got it made in the shade. And great fills. Really like your sample choice.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!

[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!

[Dancerave World (Dance Edit)]

This does sound like 00's rave music. I would say the lead at 0:28 could probably do with a slightly more varied lead line -- maybe hit the 3rd of the chord too instead of two of the same note.

Most of my critique will be on the mix. It's really hard to pick out the vocals here. I would put more compression on them and bring them up in the mix. We come closer to audible at 2 minutes, but it sounds like they've just been turned up a little. The overall ratio of them to instrumental makes them really hard to understand. 3:21 is a little better just because it's more open, but still not loud enough. The bass is approaching too loud there.

At 4:00 even despite being pretty quiet, due to the synths being in the same range as the vocals, they're hard to understand. By 4:26, totally unintelligible. The track is also starting to clip a little bit, but sounds like it's got a limiter on it. 4:58, it's pretty noticeable. Rather than turn them up, I'd turn everything else except percussion down.

Now beyond that, it's an absolute rave banger. Instruments are good, percussion is standard, SFX are well placed, structure is good. Enjoyed it.

Thanks for coming out to NGUAC!