Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[MH16: One Last Wish]

rawr

It's a great track! I loved it. There are just a few things I'd like to say...

The first is in response to b.a.b.s review. What panning your instruments does is it emulates live acoustics. I didn't realize that for a while and I just panned shit like crazy with full blown automatons. The equivalent to that would have been someone running around the stage with an amp and a synthesizer just kind of rocking out... not necessarily a bad thing. But different speakers work in different ways. I noticed with some speakers that when things get panned baaaack and fooorth they lost their amplitude. The mastering process is a bitch. Panning is always a good thing but be careful with it. One more thang, a lot of people tend to keep the bass towards the middle. It creates a base... get it? Bass/base? It was a pun... I hate the internet.

Greater dynamics... there might have been some because when I listen for them I might be hearing them because I expect them... but who knows. Live musicians change the amplitude of their instruments over time to create tension. Play with those note velocities a bit more to really make things pop... dunno... like I said, maybe you did :P

One more thing. Play with those piano melodies more. One note at a time? That happens sometimes with the bass clef in classical music but unless your trying to drive your piano player crazy, give him a little extra. Make some chords out of those melodies. Use what you already have as the root of the melody and add some higher pitches. Make it as if he was using his second hand to add some counter melodies.

Oh! I just realized it might sound cool if you throw some reverb on those drums! Or lose them completely... dunno... play :P

Ar! You have a great song. The first two things I said were really professional tips, so I don't expect you to chase after them. After that the review gets subjective. One persons opinions will always be different than the next's, so you can throw out whatever I said. Just keep on keeping on ^_^

FairSquare responds:

I'm stunned by the awesomeness of this review. Seriously!
I'm definitly going to try some of those advices you gave in your review.
The only downside of these kind of reviews is that you can't really thank a person enough in a simple response. So expect a review on one of your tracks soon :-)
Again, thanks for this review. It made my day :D

[Piano Study No. 3 "Blocks"]

rawr!

Drummer here. Can't say much for the melody because it really skips over my head but I'll try...

The dynamics are great. I love em! Great changes.

I'm a hypocrite for saying it but play around with those rhythms. It would have been nice to of had a rest from all that action. Maybe try holding things legato for just a little longer? There's plenty of change but perhaps less would be more in certain areas. Dunno...

I'm not sure if this is digital or live but if it was digital add some more instruments in there. If not through out the piece than at least in strategic places. If it's live... why not try throwing in some digital instruments? It might be worth playing around with :P

Regardless of what the kids think, I love it man. Keep in mind that music can be just as subjective as art so when it comes right down to it, any thing I left you with is just an opinion. Meow :3

EmperorCharlemagne responds:

Regardless of what artists may say about doing it for themselves and stuff like that, everyone loves to hear another opinion, and for that, I thank you very much.

I originally wrote the piece on staff paper for piano, and to tell the truth, -this- production never had me pondering the use of different instruments. However, if I ever decided to produce this 'professionally' so to speak, just about any instruments could work. This song would work so beautifully a capella, I think.

"Less is more"... That's an interesting thought, one I have to consider a great deal. I thought the song was pretty bare bones, but I might be wrong.

Again, thanks for the review and opinions!

[{KgZ} Encounter! (Loop)]

Berklee you say?

Berklee huh? Thinking of going there? I have a friend over there that just finished his freshmen year. Great place, great people.

Since getting out of a recent car accident I'm noticing that I listen to music differently. Everything is becoming a little less subjective. That makes leaving an adequate review kind of difficult... dunno.... I feel like the dynamics could have been greater. The "expert" at Berklee might have missed that. I've worked with live violins once so I know how hard it can be to manipulate those strings once they're down but greater dynamics could have been done with a little bit of creative mixing. They could even have thrown in a trill or two. Everything sounds like it comes in at around the same amplification. Maybe some of those drums could have been brought forward. A little... dunno. I'm a hypocrite for pointing out any of this because when it comes down to the final product I get too lazy to do any of this. Besides, it wasn't really your call to make. Aw well :P

It's good, I just feel like it could be a bit better. Regardless, I can't necessarily hold any of that against you. It seems like most of my criticisms weren't your fault... you get a ten for composing in 5/4 ^_^

KgZ responds:

Thank you very much for the feedback, I really wish I could have done more with it. I actually only had 30 minutes to use live recording and 30 minutes to mix it, so I was really limited.

To be honest, I didn't plan on this being 5/4. I kept getting frustrated when I was singing the melody why it didn't fit in 4/4. I felt so stupid afterward, haha.

[Your dissolving face]

rawr!

Alright, you asked for a review so here it is. Cation to the wind, I'm a dnb producer so I might not have the best advice...

Melodies: great! I loved em man. Maybe you could have put a bit more variety in the chord structures around 1:09, maybe the rhythms could have been different... thing is when they fist came in I was a little thrown off. Personally, I feel like electronic dance music is really hard to be creative with because of the amount of rules you have to follow to produce a track. Melodies are even harder/ near impossible to be creative with given you only have 12 tones to rearrange. A better combination of words for "creativity" in the music realm regarding melody is "self exploration." Dunno, you're a creative guy, so keep doing what you do and eventually it will all come together.

Sound quality/mix: ACE! Aside from the vox being a bit loud everything was mixed really well. All the sounds came through at good levels and with fairly good space. My only complaint here is in the dynamics. For instruments like the piano/ sounds that came in at around 00:13 there would be a benefit from slight changes in the amplification over time. Live musicians never play at the same amplification over time and in fact create tension by purposefully dropping the amplification over time. You can do it by changing the note velocities or you can find a way to automate the volumes. Dunno, look into that. It's a hard/ complex idea to tackle... in fact I'd say it's a really professional thing to try and get, but you'd benefit from it so try it ;)

Vox: If I were anyone else I'd tell you to lose them. They sounded kind of interesting when they first came in but they just don't "fit in." Granted, you might be able to change that. If you can figure out how to automate them to change their pitch over time they'll become less of just rhythmic tools and more like melodic ones. Another fun little thing I'd try is automating them to pan over time so they're not static in one location.

Dunno what else to say other than great song. It's always fun when I stop by here only to notice how much you've improved. You keep doing this and next time I stop by you'll be fucking amazing.

[Rig - Am I Cool Yet?]

mraw

When the track started up I thought you were going in this direction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQp7Id 8iRA4

Yeah! Alright! Cool!

Great bass making technique. I've heard that one before though. It's really funny to hear the different stories of how people have made effective reeces. I remember in the lifted forums, someone made a really sick reece from recording raspberries being blown on his girlfriend. Nav told me how he took a bass kick once and played it next to itself a few hundred times in the sequencer to get a reece sound. Good times, good times. Nothing I can leave review wise to be constructive. Just keep doing what you do :3

Rig responds:

I love that video. I so should've done something like that.
THANKS QUARL :3

[[ solar ]]

rawr

Hmm, it's good... but I know/love the original too much. My personal philosophy is that nothing beats the original and it's damn tough to challenge Geier. I'm not sure if I want to leave an in depth review for this because you seem to know a lot all ready. Also, one problem I run into all the time with remixes is that it's really tough to get that original sound in there while balancing it out with your own creativity, so I know how hard it can be, but this is missing so much... more modulation/ less volume on the reece might help. Maybe even just less volume on the reece. Who knows, try taking off more of the high end on that reece. Play with that reece more. I think that's half of what I don't agree with. In fact... that might be all I don't agree with. I guess I should apologize and congratulate you on such a good song then immediately tell you to work more on that reece. Sorry :P

Dunno if you've heard Misha's Remix of Solar, but check that on youtube if not. Good stuff ^_^

boney-man responds:

yeah i've heard it... i like the original better :D

and i know about the reese, now that i hear this song again, that reese needs a lot of work... maybe i'll fix it and re-upload.

thanks man

[Aboriginal Malfunction]

opinions:

lol. That amen break never gets old does it? Nice rhythms and such, just uhhh, like the guy said before me, annoying melody and too short. However, I think what's annoying about that melody isn't actually the melody. It's the synth's characteristics. Try changing it up to a double sawtooth oscilator type, add some distortion, then layer on a sub bass. That's how I'd do it... then again, that's also how everyone else would do it right?

When it comes right down to it, the tracks pretty good and I think the only things that could be changed are good/bad via subjectivity. Keep on doing :)

[-:YRX:-ChaozPhantasy RMX]

aha. not bad but...

I half agree with slip streamer but he's being way too dick about it with out being helpful at all. First off, the amen break is great for learning how to slice a beat and rearrange it, but the amen break got old back in 95. People who are just getting into dnb love it because it's pretty obvious that it's a good sound, but I kid you not when I say everyone has had their dick up in that break. Seriously, using the amen break will get you aids... well... it won't, but I'm just trying to make an analogy here that we can laugh at and maybe learn something from. What I'm trying to say is that it's just been really overdone.

A better technique for drum programming is to layer different sounds to make new drum kits. In order to get a really good snare, layer around four other snares on top of each other. As you get better at this, you'll understand what makes a good snare. Typically try to get sounds that hit different areas of the sound spectrum. Start with a really typical jazz/funk snare for the mid frequencies, then get a really low sound (sometimes I use a bass kick and hide it in there.) Then get a really high sound like a 909 snare (sometimes I use cymbals instead but that takes a little modulation). Then I'll throw on an additional snare for character. Then use a compressor/ equalizer to cut/boost specific frequencies. You can do all this to your kicks as well.

Now for your description of paragons track as "breakbeat" and this as "drum and bass." Well that's sort of right, but paragons song was within the average bpm of a dnb song and was in fact dnb, specifically trance step. Now if I really wanted to be a dick I could say that this track isn't really dnb. It's breakcore. But all this is genre admiring is worthless shit. Adhering to genres will only help you improve at making said genre. When it comes right down to it, music is music and genres only muddy things up and get people to argue over and over again about meaningless shit. Take indy for example. Indy isn't really anything new. It's just rock music. Plain and simple. The term indy came from the idea that a band was independent from a label and therefor had to pay their own fucking bills. For some reason though people misunderstood that idea and started calling all music that sounded like rock "indy." Then "indy labels" started poping up. A complete fucking paradox. You see what I'm getting at? I'm pissed at how indy has come to be and it really doesn't matter at all. Fuck genres.

Ok, back to the review. Not a bad reese you have going. It's sounding really simple though. Modulate that beast. Pitch bend, automate the frequencies to cut over time, layer it with another less typical sounding reese. Make it shine. Experiment. What you have here is classic, but there's so much more that can be said and done.

A few little things that got to me: your voice at the beginning of the track. I can read thank you. I knew what I was listening to before the track even loaded up. It just sounds silly. Get rid of it. I listened to a few of your other tracks too... stop announcing your songs. The only reason I can think of why some one would do that is to protect their stuff from getting stolen, but I really don't think your good enough for that to happen to and for it to even matter if it did. Those crowd cheering samples were also really silly. Those belong in trance genres and they always sound really cheesy. Drop em.

Now, I know this may have seemed like a hard review, but I'm only leaving this because I feel like you have a lot of potential. There so much to learn, you just have to be active in your quest for knowledge. I'm sure you do this, but you have to try something new in every song you make. Keep learning sir and I'm sure you'll be able to cock slap slip streamer next time he stops in on one of your tracks.

Peace sir.

YouriX responds:

Aah! Now this is a review! I can learn from! Anyways! I didnt know i made Breakcore! That sounds pretty cool!

But back to the review as i read thru your comment you really put some attention to my Drum sampeling. Well I guess i should go back to the books as one would say, and do some seriues drum layering. But since i am kinda of a newbie to the DnB world i like hearing the Amen drums. But your right if i keep using it i might get aids :( *aids of unoriginalty!*

But uuuh i like anoucing my songs it sounds cool :P
Also the cheering effect i hardly never use it and i thaught it would be cool to add it.

But i am glad you took i mean really took your time to review and not be a dick about it and also since i kinda know you because like me your a Audio forum Elite a older one wich makes you more elite then me :P
I respect your opinion and will try to improve. I do want to be original so making my own drumloops would help me achieve that!

[/M: Floating on the Lawn]

rawr :3

aha, le sound art/electroacoustics/ sonic/ whatever you want to call it. I felt like I owed you for your kind words so I went and listened to all your stuff. I chose to hit up this one with a review though because I'm an art major and this kind of work tickles me more than the over saturated over produced typical dance tracks we've all grown to love and create. This kind of work is more honest to me. It's experimental. It hits a vibe that you really can't scratch with a melody.

I really like whats going on here, but I agree with rig. I'd like to hear some more out of the sound spectrum. OVerall it has a bit too much of that hi fuzz. It's good for a bit but like rig and I are saying, a bit more variety with those sounds. While the entire track was generally a bit of an experiment, perhaps you should consider going back and adding things intentionaly. A sub bass might be a nice little addition. I notice some infrasonic sounds, but some more would be pleasant.

Overall, great! Keep playing around. Keep sonic art alive!

Mich responds:

Thanks for the nice review and the tips here!
I'll keep those tips in the back of my head if I go for something like this again :)
This time I just used the standard 4 samplers in FL, so yeah
I'll add more variety with different samples, and perhaps add some synths too next time.

Thanks for reviewing! :)

[Nav - The Chimes (NG Edit)]

meow

Sure is a lot of zero voting going on lately. Good thing we have millions of fans and are untouchable gods on this tiny website called newgrounds. Peons will bow before our might and hand over 10 fives for every zero. Yes sir. Gods.

Since you can't be arsed into making a full dnb track I won't feel arsish to leave a blatantly non-helpful review. Besides, you know more than me. I just look prettier.

Nav responds:

lol