Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Amnesia Drumstep VIP]

slslslslslslsslslslsls

damn man, I feel like a dick. You review all my music and I rarely comment on your stuff. This is a retribution review for great justice.

Awesome track man. That bass was incredibly full. The drum kit, also fucking awesome. Really, the only problem I've got is that your using too much compression. Over compressing the track squashes the fidelity and creates massive distortion for the worst. Go back into this and ease up on your levels a little.

One more little thinga-ma-jig... background intangibles. Background intangibles are just sound effects and noises that don't really contribute to the melody or the rhythm but add atmosphere. Maybe some vocal slices, some fun synth stabs... dunno. Play wit it gurl. Really though, aside from those tiny tid-bits this track is almost pro :)

Jassummisko responds:

Well thx. And you cant be a dick...ur not male :P But being a bitch is possible though!

[<MWA> Skittles on Crack]

durms

you think this comes close to skrillix? From a rhythmic/ melodic and structural outlook yeah. This is a really sexy song. The one thing you're missing out on is mixing/mastering. You've made some really sexy classical stuff in the past so I'm guessing this just isn't your genre so congratulations on branching out :)

If you want those next level beats you need to learn a few tricks for drum programming. First of all, where are your drums? In dance genres the drum kit is the most important part of the mix. It sounds like you might be playing a bit with layering but in case your not I usually have up to five differnt snares playing simultaneously to make a new sound. Slap a compressor on your drums to help get more power out of them. If you have the ability to merge all the snares into their own channel do that before EQing it all to get a super sexy snare. You can follow that trick on the kick too. Layer your bass kick, compress, EQ and experiment.

Since the drums are so important I usually make a drum kit BEFORE I go and make and entire song around them. Nothing sucks more than to make an awesome melody, pad, or lead only to turn around and not make a fat enough drum kit.

Either your sidechaining or some of your instruments have slow attacks. Both ways are good strategies :)

Some of your synths and pads sound a little lo-fi. I would have hidden them by turning some of the levels down on them and letting the drum kit rip... but seeing as how the kit was as it was I wouldn't have been able to hide them.

I guess to recap my review: DRUMS. Everything else is sexy as pie :)

mjattie responds:

Hey Quarl,

I think this comes kinda close to skrillex apart from mastering yes ^^

I've been making a lot of electronic music though, but nothing more "agressive" than light-minded trance (like "in search of sunrise" and so) , which means that the bass does not have to be in your face and all.

I totally agree with you about the drums. It has been quite a hell for me making the drums and still the outcome isn't great, I've used about 4 kicks in this song tried a lot of EQ and effects and I believe tried to layer the snares too but I failed, and tbh I failed with the kick too. I started with the drums before doing anything else ;)

Every instrument has a side chain with very fast attack. It would probably be better if I turned up the attack on some instruments. Every instrument has a limiter too to pump it up to 0db...

All the synths are made from scratch so I guess you can say that I didn't make them the best possible, because that would've cost me even more time, especially since I don't do this style often.

thanks a lot for the review and tips! I'm currently doing something a bit similar and the kick and snare tend to sound a lil bit better. :)

[NGADM r1: f4p;f4c]

xckvdfkbdfkb

oh my god. this shit was fucking nasty as hell. that melody at the end in the same key as that first note at the beginning of the song was a really nice touch. I got nothing else to say man. really creative stuff :)

[LO - Bang-O-Rang (MD2011)]

slurp

Mur, returning a requested review. I really love a lot of the elements in this shiznit. Alright, first thing I notice is that those drums need a bit more presence. Compress and EQ the living hell out of em until they punch you in the face. Maybe even play with some light distortion? That voice sample was sex.

All the melodic/rhythmic elements of the the track were insanely sexy. Maybe the hi hat/ crash sample was a bit too messy. I'd clean up the mix a little by switing in a different hat and maybe a shaker. Some tambs might slip in this track really well. Aw man a cow bell would really make the rhythm pop a bit more.

I think the bass could stand to be a little rounder if you know what I mean.

Really other than those few points this track is mutha effin cool as shit. Really banging :)

Oakwood responds:

Hihats and cymbals might sound messy because I increased the higher frequencies when I mixed this for speakers. Also I can imagine a tamb, but a cowbell? Dunno...
I don't know what you mean by round bass. If mean more like a sinus, the bass is a pure sinus so that would be pretty impossible xD

Thanks for the review!

[{dj-N} TransformR]

maw

I've been listening to this for a while but I failed to drop a review for lack of something to say. Then I remembered I could always just say "good work" or something like that. Really clean track man. I'm loving the variety in those synths. Aside from a nice full kit and an awesome lead the track is really spacious. Not a lot going on in the background but no one ever said that was a bad thing. The few pads you left lying around did the trick.

Awesome work, like always <3 <3

dj-Nate responds:

You da mayne

[Dunno a name yet! WIP]

burble

Hell yeah, thats a nice full kit. That bass is mad slick too. The only thing that currently getting me down is that chorus/string sounding pad. It just kind of sits there and doesn't really do anything interesting. You could play with modulating it a bit and that would turn out the entire project. Really nice stuff man :)

Jassummisko responds:

well yeah...I just put it in for shits and giggles, ill probably change it.

[=HaruSong= [RMX]]

mawr

lol. haru song is perfect for remixing. I really liked what you had going on here. It was an incredibly simple remix but it really made for an interestingly clean experience. If I were to do anything different here I'd say that this track could use a nice subby bass tying things together and a slightly heavier drum kit. After reading the artist comments it sounded like you tried really hard on this.

If you need help getting bigger sounds I got just the advice for you. I think I type the following up like six times a day so I'll just copy/paste this from another review...

"First thing I notice is how thin that snare sounds. Add some salty layers. It sounds like you're using just one snare. Throw on some more snares to fatten up that sound. Lets get a 909 on it to give it some air, throw on some distortion/ EQ to get the tones out of it. You might even want to just start out with some better samples... "

More on layering...

"It doesn't sound like you know the miracle of layering yet. Have you ever tried stacking your drums to make new sounds? It sounds like your just using some nice samples. Next time around, get three to four different snares and three to four kicks and make new kits by layering old sounds. This will really widen up your sounds and lead to a plethora of new ideas!"

After you have layering down, look into compression, equalization and sidechaining. Those techniques will help you out butt loads once you have them perfected.

Peace and love <3

Daydream-Anatomy responds:

Thank you for the critique:3

I learned a lot about drum compression, eqing, etc from trancecrafters tutorial vids, but he has a whole new set of tutorials and deleted the old ones, I need to watch them, because he goes into a lot more detail about eqing drums.

I wanted to keep this track simple because I thought the song stood up pretty well on it's own. I didn't want to over do it.

thanks again^.,.,.^

[=WannaDance?=]

murp

My opinion is that the intro could have used a softer drum kit, perhaps even some reverb. Everything is punching through just right but that doesn't mean the intro can't have it's own unique drum kit. 1:31 could have used some really high freq pad just mellowly doing it's own thing. Even some crash cymbals would have been nice.

This is a really good start for a really ace production but it falls a little short for me. Melodically it's perfect. The rhythms are nice too. This track needs more mid range background intangibles to really stand out and be unique. G'luck!!!

Daydream-Anatomy responds:

Noted:3

I went lazy on the crashes and stuff until I figure out what I wanna use to transition the parts, tbh all I got is FL stock drums, and like, 5 samples, I edit them like crazy though. I'm gonna strongly consider at least using a different kick in the intro:3 A different kit would really set it apart, which I'm thinking would be good, or making a copy of the drums, and making it softer or something, I'll experiment.

I'm pretty proud of a lot of melodies, usually I try to have simultaneous/dueling leads if it can fit without hindering the other. A lot of times it's just one arping, or something like that, and one playing a melody, but I make it complicated sometimes:3

On the other hand eq'ing, mixing, and mastering are my vice:/

dude you know what's weird, I was listening to your hania remix, before I even saw your user nameO.o coincidental huh? I remixed Haru song too, but your's is a lot cleaner and polished, imo. I really like hte part where the vocals are dropped out and it's just dub.

Thank you for the kind and helpful review^^

[martialmichael126 character]

spot on.

Some times the background sounds wreck the vox but you seem to have a good mic and your ideas are top notch. I'd recommend you for the right project in a second. Also, in response to background intangibles being too forward and front, that's probably a problem for whoever is working the sound on a project, not you.

Good job on the demo reel. G'luck on finding projects'!

[Sheep Herder--_--]

Your style transcends normality.

I never see you in the forums so I kind of forgot about you over here man. You've always had so much integrity when it came to your own style. This really does sound like a zenon track and nothing else ever comes close to sounding like it. If I were a stick in the mud I'd say you've always had really lo fi drum sounds but seeing as how it contributes to your flavor I can't take it away from you. Some people still make love to the amen break. Can't knock something that works :p

sexy man.

PERVOK responds:

Haha, I don't have the amen break anymore :( Those are just samples that I grabbed from a few websites off the net... was getting sick of using the Reason sounds :p

Thanks for the review, fellow!