Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Apartments on Fire]

Easy listening. Fo sho. I liked the chaotic vibe here. Dissonant and all that. That mid song climax around 1:19 was tight.

You need to figure out how to get dynamics from garage bands midi piano so you can play with the levels/note velocities and make the piano sound more human. Help the thing breath a little. As it is right now that constant level pf anxiety becomes claustrophobic. All my tracks suffer from that too but you'll notice I'm a massive hypocrite ;)

All in all great work. The time you put into that notation is apparent :)

[Ambient II]

Great ambient! I loved that really low piano back there and the drone reminded me of something from Mass Effect. Maybe I'd have had a few more piano hits through out the track to add some more flavor to the drone but over all the track carries a lot of weight for something so simple. Cheers :)

NekoMika responds:

Thanks for the helpful remarks Quarl!~ Quite helpful, <3

[dat kick tho]

I'd fuck to this.

Sequenced responds:

weiners. look at my longer 1min wip for this

[Glue]

I've been watching Katie over her shoulder. Not a fan of garage band but it's fun to watch the learning process in action. I should show you some drum sampling tricks next time I'm over. You can chop a sample from youtube using a browser based application, trim the sample further using audacity, then layer the new sounds in garage band. When you have a few sounds you like in garageband you can then export those sounds, resample them and keep layering sounds until you have all new sounds from old ones. Layering 101. It's a great way to get nice full drums.

I also recomend you invest $300 in a pc and just build a decent desktop to do work on. My cheapo can run circles around your Macbook. Back up you're data and I'll show you how to transfer it from mac to pc.

[No Smoking]

lol, slow core. You kids are too hip for me. Great timing for atmospheric rock, I'm just getting back into Explosions In The Sky. This doesn't quite have the same explosive climax that their work features but it was still really good. Not everything needs explosions and climaxes btw.

I'm one of those people that detests fade outs though. And it was just when the guitar was like "I'm here guys! Hold on, let me plug in my amp... wait... where is everyone going??"

SineRider responds:

But Slowcore is from the early 90s maaaan

Thanks for the review Quarl, I may go back and make a better ending. I couldn't figure out a good way to end it so I just did a fade

[Gentle]

Really cute little ditty. I love hearing music box textures and plugins. Great stuff Dev. Killin it.

[Kill you all.]

Moving Shadow circa 2001. I swear this takes me back. That bass sounds like early Calyx for certain. Love it. I can't critique this at all because it just tickles my nostalgia just right. Really stand up job chozz :)

[Arcadium]

Loved that laid back atmosphere. Really conservative wubs. Forgot you existed LJ. Glad to see your still playing with some tunes. Just looked at the catalog, you've slowed down a lot these last few years but hey; at least this. You doing any other alts, or gigs I should know about?

LJCoffee responds:

no alts - only other gigs are for the man... I'm currently thinking about performing a live-set somewhere - most likely an hour or two of pretty straight-forward house in some little known club somewhere. I'm almost ready though. Thanks for the remarks!

[idk to be honest]

hahaha, crunchy. I had a number of disagreements with the mix from a standard producers point of view but the artist in me was really digging it. Those breaks were fun to jive to. Really simple mix concepts. Just a drum a bass and a pad but hey: simplicity can be beautiful.

For future inspirations: being sick is no excuse. The old surrealists used to intentionally deprive themselves of sleep until they hallucinated to inspire their work. I'm not sure about where your production skills stand at the moment but to clean things up I'll usually merge a few different drum layers into the same channel so that I can really keep things clean. As in: I like to send three kicks into a merger to make it all one signal and send the signal into an EQ, then a compressor, then to a mixer...

I like to have an entire mixer dedicated to drums which get's eventually gets chained to the main mixer where I put all my instruments and samplers. It's slightly convoluted but after doing it for so many years it's just basic. Need that extra control over those drums. Like I originally said, I was really digging the crunch aspect from a creative point of view but I might have wet myself if this was a cleaner track. There are some seriously good ideas in there tonally and rhythmically. It's just lacking that mix quality to make it sound professional. Much love yoshi <3

[liquid messabout]

Awesome old school vibe. This takes me back to some of the sounds that came off of the Violence label. Gridlok and Hive <3

AeroMusic responds:

yess its nice to see someone know their dnb round here :P I've got such a love for that era
happy you enjoyed it mate