Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Seasons EP Preview]

mawr

haha, rocking stuff. it's like I can listen to your best in three and a half minutes instead of however long it would take me to go through your entire body of work... and without all those annoying introductions, codas, drops, and what have yous.

kidding of course. that all good stuff. You've improved so much since the last time I went through your work. i feel like there's still a lot of improvement to be had in your work but you have a really nice sound at the moment. Now we just need to fine tune some things :)

I'll start by picking at the drums. Try turning down the levels on em a little then layer in some more drums to fatten up the sound. I honestly can't tell if your already layering your kit up with my crud night time headphones but i felt like they could have been sassier. Actually, that snare in the track 1:28 might have been too heavy for me in the context of the song... but if you want heavier sounds, layer sounds on top of other sounds to make them fatter and wider. Let the layered sounds have a wide range of frequencies. Layer low snares on top of mid and high snares. EQ the individual sounds. Instead of compressing it all at once, try and control each individual drum piece so that they all work together. I'm not sure how this will affect your CPU if your on a PC but you can always spend some time making just drums then exporting them into simpler wav files.

Let's keep talking about those drums. DYNAMICS!! Play with the levels of your drums a bit. Everything is coming in at the same velocity. You can change the levels of your instruments over time expressively. Live drummers do it all the time and it makes your sound a little more lively. Mur :3

Your work might benefit from sample hunting. It can be a tough and shitty job but if you can find the right sample to throw into a track it can really add character to a song. Gives people something to remember it by. This can be kind of tough but it's nice when you find samples that transport your music to another place.

Ultimately, you're the artist and you decide what sounds good and what doesn't. What I've suggested is in no means definitive. I just figured you wouldn't mind some opinions. I have some more space to add some stuff but I think I'll leave you with this. If you have any questions don't be afraid to send me a message. I check my newgrounds account daily. If I can't answer something for you then I can probably at least point you in the right direction. Keep on keeping on good sir :)

Jassummisko responds:

Thx! I made "Fall" a LONG TIME A GO and thats why its the worse from the album!

And BTW, OPINIONS...YOU STUPID F!@#$ B%!@#, HOW COULD YOU DO THAT, just kidding! I dont mind opinions :)

[11 oclock. (8 bit)]

alt account

well, review other people stuff and a handfull of them might be nice enough to review you back. besides, there's nothing constructive i can say for something like this other than good job. im not a fan of video game music but it sounds like you nailed what ever you were going for. kind of reminds me of dragon warrior monsters.

Calamaistr responds:

dont know that title but maybe it helps that ive been listening to this track non stop for the past hour on repeat. :]

I think people expect to much HI FI ORCHESTRA WAOEHAOH 'present' video game music in this genre and when they hear a chipsound they twitch and fall to the ground.

'what...in the world.. IS THAT SOUND?!'

'its not from this planet.. this cannot be music'

'i was born in '95 whatever happened before that .. must be FORGOTTEN'

'we need more hans zimmer in videogame'

something like that.

[A Fresh Start [LOOP]]

mur :)

you know, I can't decide won whether that snare s too loud or not. i really like it driving the rhythm the way it is but on the other hand I can kind of imagine it being a tad quieter. like I said, I can't decide. my only other complaint is how short/ repetitive the loop is. i wish this could be a full on jam. this has some serious funk to it! love it man.

bladerunner627 responds:

Oh but it is. I rarely post full tunes on Ng anymore on the grounds that abit of my stuff has been getting signed lately, that and I don't really have much of a following here anyways. Checkout my soundcloud at soundcloud.com/inkadnb if you'd to hear better previews. Thanks for the feedback!

[Underground light(notforchild)]

mur :)

"Preview of my new project.I whish that someone who actually know something about dnb tell my some advice or something."

murrrrrr, darkstep? liquid? idm? nuero? tech?

alright, there's that drop. heavy shit dude. im loving it. first thing I'm noticing is how bright that kick is. my opinion; too much. slap a filter, EQ or something on it maybe to cut those highs from something that should be mid to low.

the intro kind of got me a little bored. i think it was too quite compared to the chorus... which is REALLY over compressed. don't do that. over compression kind of ruins the sound. i love rich full sounds.

the ideas are all great! i love that rhythm and that lead, sexy. love the modulation on all that. i might just recommend taking a step back from a project for a day or two and going back and mastering it... if your not already doing that. I have that problem actually :p

great tune man! hope to hear more from you :)

kulajs responds:

Wow man thank you very much for this advices i will try to do my best,and thanks for taking time to write this review and listen my song!!Big up..;)

[Jazzman - Yet Another WIP]

murp

I'm not picking up a whole ton of audible bass. I can hear some sort of sub back there but maybe you can bring it forward a bit with some distortion/ filtering/ compression? So much of this sounds really bright to me. Great melodies and rhythms. I can hear that pendulum in there. I love that lead at the dub break down. I might say play with some more panning to help widen things up. I heard you play with it a bit during the dub break but you could probably create some more room in your mix if you widened that kit.

great song! mur C:

mr-jazzman responds:

Yeah. Some other things I noticed now too: Bad levels, and incorrect compression. =P That'll do it. Panning is good, but too much can get it to sound weak (especially if you're stereo separating). Thanks for the honest review, and glad you liked it overall! =D

[What in the Fuck? (Chromanut)]

murstep

lol. love the name man. im sure chron wouldn't at all care for this but know that I find it super sexy, super dirty and super duper. all at the same time. my only complaint is how short it is. it's like i'm listening to a strip tease. next time, take off ALL your clothes instead of just your shoes.

Chromanut responds:

if taking off your shoes constitutes a strip tease then ive been giving out stripteases for decades

[This is techno (#4)]

murp!

Nice breezy sound you got here. The mix sounds pretty good too. My only suggestion is that the lead might be just a tad too loud and that kit could use more punch but that's minor and subjective. Those melodies are mad sexy :)

johnfn responds:

Nah, I think your criticisms are valid. I'm always looking for ways to improve. It's funny though, I had worried that maybe I made the beat too loud. It seems with techno that that's never actually the case ;P Thanks for the review!

[[TJ] Drosera Ramellosa]

acsmkacmksdf

FUCK. I wrote this up twice already but I accidentally exited the browsers. AFGADFGADFGAFGFDG

ok, so I like the song but there's a few things to be said about it. The rhythm, I like it but it's not technically 5/4. I can hear how the beat fits into a sequence of 5/4 but you still managed to make the beat sound like it's 4/4.

The mix sounds kind of muddy so here's a few quick tips for your mixing.

-Pan: Panning creates the illusion that sounds are louder than they really are. Therefor if you pan a sound all the way to the left you can turn it's level down to create more space in the mix for everything else.

-Layer: Layering is simply taking two sounds and putting them on top of each other to create a new sound. Let's start with the snare. It sounds to me like mostly mid range. Find a snare that fits into the high range such as an 808 and slam it on top of the first snare. Viola. The old snare and the new snare combined make a much fuller sound.

-Compress: This one takes some getting used to but compression can do all sorts of neat things. It mostly just gives you more control of your sound. As this is my third time typing this up for you I'm just gonna link to some tutorial. Save my ass some time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd8hKh F1K4Q

That should keep you busy for some time. Keep experimenting with the sounds and g'luck with your music!

TrohnJavolta responds:

I sort of feel ashamed now that you took so much time out to write that review (3 times).

Regarding that time signature: that is probably because I'm not very familiar with "strange" time signatures yet. I basically did K----S---------K--S-- or something like that, which isn't all that different from the 'standard' drum and bass beat, I suppose.

I'm not much of a kind in abstract drum programming, but I'll work on it.

As for the other tips: I actually do know about all these, and I usually apply them as well. This song, however was "slapped together" in 4 hours and was more of an experiment, a mockery, if you will, of dubstep. I tried to fit it into dumbstep (which I seem to have failed at), because I'd like to join your little clique.

So yeah, the bad, rushed mixing and such can be explained by the fact that it was actually rushed.

Thanks for the pointers and the nice review though! (And the undeserved ten ;-)

[SR - Otamatone (Sine Remix)]

FIRST!

Fuck man that voice synth was sexy. the panning gave me something to think about too. I usually have trouble commenting on ambient stuff because a lot of it sounds the same to me. This song had some serious character to it though. I'm honestly extremely turned on right now. This song got me hard.

SineRider responds:

lol quarl u so funny thanks for the review

[Lights(wip)]

murp

nice clean sound. this isn't what i typically listen to but i really like it. the melodies are sexy. there are a few things i'd have tried cleaning up a little but I know where your coming from when you say you got too lazy. i get the same way with stuff. great track mister :)

jpbear responds:

Thanks dude! Appreciate you took the time to listen, didnt think anyone on here listened to my musics.

And yes i must say the mix is quite sexy myself!