Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rapidash SpeedTech]

lol. rapidash?

When this song evolved from ponyta was it originally 200 bpm? Lame joke aside, cool song. I love this kind of trance. It takes me back to when I first started listening to electronic music. Most of it came from newgrounds. Let me get you aquanted with one of my favorite guys here on ng...

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/liste n/296234

There might be a space in that link you have to remove. Rawrthaas has a swell library of different electronic sounds. You'd probably like his work.

Now to try and be helpful. I'm not sure what program your using so I can't be too in depth in terms of how to do this but I'd recommend fattening up that drum kit and giving it more emphasis in the mix. You can make drums sound wider by layering different drum pieces. Find a few snares that each hit different areas of the sound spectrum. Get some mids, some highs and some lows all in one sweep and balance them. Layering can take a while to get a hold of so play around with it. One thing that can help when your layering sounds is to pan things up a bit. Panning gives the illusion that things are louder than they actually are, so when you pan you can turn the levels down on everything a little to give you more room to boost what you want.

One thing I really love about this song is how it loops. The melody the song starts with is something I'd expect to hear in a second measure in response to an initial melody. When the track looped it was almost as if the end was just a slight rest to create and resolve tension. The tempo stayed in time too. Funny mistake :P

All said, great song mister! Keep at it and you'll be great.

KillForChaos responds:

Thanks, that was the best review I have ever received.
I use FL studio as my main DAW and a few others occasionally.
I checked out the song you sent its really cool : )
I will try out the advice you gave thanks : )

P.s. yes it was 200bpm when it was ponyta

[That's How [preview]]

mdamaaaasss

ha, I hope you finish this one. That piano melody is fucking tight in there. The vox sound a little weird at times but that's really the only thing I have any sort of problem with. After hearing the song a few times, the vox work better and better. Really, I want to hear this one through sir! mraw!

Rawrthaas responds:

yeah i think around 00:08 it sounded off but i fixed it in the full version :D

[White X-Mass]

abababababa

haha, it's nice to hear you play with more electronic sounds. Those bass lines were pretty funky. Those flutes worked well with the environment. If there was anything I'd tell you to do differently it's to layer that kick drum at the beginning with another kick that has more mid to high range. I tested the song on my lap tops speakers and the kick wasn't audible until the jungle section. Nice fake guitar solo. Even for a fake guitar, it sounds really damn good. The vocals are perfect :)

I just realized that this was submitted last year. Play with dnb again! It's always a lot of fun to hear people work outside of their comfort zone with genres they don't normally play with.

sorohanro responds:

Voices mstly by Citrina http://citrina.newgrounds.com/
I'll probably play more with the electronix but for now I'm in a Rock period (two projects running).

Thanx for review, greatly appreciated.
Happy Holidays !

[Gatekeeper of the Necropo]

First!

Really creeptastic chords and melodies. Seems to suite the seasons weather with how damn cold and eerie this sounds. I'm loving that chorus. Everything sounds really full. The only little thing that I can think of doing is to have the attack on that chorus set slightly lower so it crescendos a bit like a real chorus. It's a dumb little thing, but since everything sounds so perfect I have only dumb little things to nit pick about. Another thing I like to try out sometimes is setting up two chorus pads then having the attack of one slightly off from the other one. Sometimes I'll layer several chorus pads over and over then de-quantize. Dunno. It really doesn't matter. The only reason I've gotten so finicky about chorus pad attacks is because my music major friend at berklee is always telling me that he hates the sound of synthetic chorus's. My ultimate goal with voice pads is to make jack cry with joy. Really though, this song is amazing.

S3C responds:

thanks for the review man! this is actually the third track you've commented on about mah choirs ;D. good advice about the attacks, but my attentions with this one were to make the choirs be a synthetic organ/keyboard sound, hence the instant attacks. I suppose during the second half it would sound better to adjust the attack levels so it meshes with the strings more nicely. But anyways, thanks for the review bud! helpful advice, and by jack you wouldnt happen to be speaking of candlejack because you know that's it's very dangero

[=Trampling Onwards=]

haha, reminds me of frank zappa on metal.

I loved the idea of the one riff thing. Electronic composers do it all the time though... it's actually kind of become a staple of the popular electronic genres. Find one cheesy melody, let it fly for a while, then do a break down and do it again. The drums in this song make that one riff work really well though. You really went all out with finding those syncopations while keeping the flow of the rhythm going. The composition was really cool. Great C:

Hades responds:

Yeah, I guess that it is a rather frequently appearing aspect of certain genres, which definitely isn't a good thing, but I can't really say I related it to those genres until now. :P Anyways, I'm glad you liked the drums enough to live through the single riff thing and thanks a lot for returning the favor of reviewing! ;D

[Awake - Supernova]

raaaawwrrrr

ahaha, 190 bpm? I only go to 180 when I'm trying to be dramatic and 182 is my tops to date. The track is insane, not for the casual dnb listener. The sounds are all interesting and clean. Honestly though, this tempo is fucking crazy. I'm gonna have to try it out sometime. You do it so well.

This song makes me really fucking happy. Nothing else to say :P

Rawrthaas responds:

:3!

yeah the song I mentioned in the comments is actually 200 bpm :o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1kGyO 83HiU&feature=related

[Awake - Raven Song (preview)]

I've been hearing a lot of dubstep lately too...

Personally, I think it's just a passing trend. Don't get me wrong I love dubstep, but I feel as if the entire genre is just the introduction to a really crazy dnb track.

That aside I really liked this. The sounds are great, as are the background intangibles. The atmosphere is cool, the melody is cool. Really slick sir! There's just one thing I could have used. Slightly crazier drums... which I know you're awesome at. Seriously, you held back on this one. Para's smog step was nothing compared to what you're capable of :)

Rawrthaas responds:

I remember when I use to incorporate glitchy idm breaks into almost every single one of my tracks... I don't know what happened but I stopped doing it altogether after a while hehe.

You're right, I need to bring it back with the chopped beats :D

[SR - Shinra Corp Dub]

puppet...

haha, not a complete flop. It's a cool loop. It's got that original ps1 sound brazing elbows with that dub step sound. I'd like to hear this finished :P

[[TheDimension4] Wooden Town]

rawr

I'm actually not a fan of impressionism. I'm thankful for what it did to the art world in the long run. I'm just not a fan of the style. This is a cool piece you have here. I've just been getting into romantic composers so this is really the kind of sound I'm craving at the moment. There's really nothing I can say that could be even remotely helpful... curious though, what did you use to compose this? The dynamics gives off the impression that you played this but the sound quality gives off the impression that you're probably using a daw and midi controller?

floccari responds:

I use a Kawai Stage Keyboard with a Edirol Audio Midi Interface. On the software side I use Reason. The interface I use is a more high end one so you can use high quality instrument sampling in real time. So basically you get to have your surreal quality sound and still play it like a traditional piano. My compositions usually never make it to paper. Like the others on this album, this started as an idea in my head and improved through improvisation.