Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Path Of The Forgotten]

This sounds beautiful Casper, no surprise there. Instruments are awesome, I love that percussive melody. The sound effects are pro and gorgeous. IMO, track is perfect. I feel like 100% of the tracks you put out are quality. Prove me wrong, I dare you.

Casper responds:

Thanks, I've been having a hard time producing this month, made a lot of WIPs that I am not likely to come back to. I was listening to some of my older songs that I have uploaded on newgrounds and i feel like I rely way more on my tools and samples now. As for the track being perfect, I think the drums could have been cleaner lol. I pitched the original loop down like 6 semitones and tried compressing and cleaning it as much as i could, also has a tiny bit of reverb decay so it wouldn't end suddenly but I guess the crash fixed that anyway.

[loser]

I'm gonna slip this into the ol' love making playlist. It will sit alongside songs like "Leave the Door Open" by Silk Sonic, "Fuck You Like Animal" by NIN and "Rollercoaster Of Love" by Red Hot Chili Peppers. I hope you're excited to share a playlist with these music legends, you're going up in the world Vurb.

Hella fun dance track. Creative melodies, awesome use of samples. As someone that often uses dnb switch ups I was genuinely happy to hear one in this. Totally unexpected, those kinds of tempo switches usually feature some kind of synth riser or a slow noticable automation change to the BPM. I love how that spastic break just hits out of nowhere. 10/10 dear.

vurb responds:

thanks mom

[You're so Cute]

Oof, loved this. Loved everything about it, pro take. Hella nice leads, the super saw pad playing the chord progressions was surprisingly strong and shared it's space with the lead elements creatively. The arrangement is full, good use of your stereo field, but it's not crowded at all. Everything has purpose. The groove is very real, surprising syncopation from everything "melodic" but the track still keeps that obvious 4/4 EDM pulse. Samples are all energetic, I think I've found a new favorite song. Great stuff Softable :)

softable responds:

OMG you are so kind...... really you made my day. Thank you so much!!!

[The Rains Have Ceased, And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To S]

I love uselessly long song titles. I still don't know the full title, even tried viewing it from your profile page. Still cuts off the full title. Priceless, don't change it. I like to include long song titles in the author's comments when this kind of thing happens but it always feels like a small defeat.

Love this Indy rock sound, hope to get something nice like this one day. Percussionist, my fiance just got a guitar and bass for the studio. Gotta train him to love stuff like this so we can jam as a team. This has that Explosions In The Sky waltz crescendo structure going on. Loved these climaxes. These guitar licks are so piff. Amazing music Bulrog!

popolamusic responds:

The full title is "The Rains Have Ceased And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To See It." Empire Empire song titles are usually very long video game quotes so I wanted to keep the theme going. And big Explosions in the Sky fan, so thank you!

[Peace]

This music is wonderful. We're watching the news in Colorado. I respect your outward display of optimism for peace. Here's hoping for the best in a totally unprovoked war. Uncontroversial opinion right now: fuck Putin. I'm so sorry for you.

Thank you for sharing this, the instruments are very gentle and soothing. It's actually so moving I started crying but then that crash cymbal at 00:41 made me smile and laugh. Broke the spell a little. I associate cymbals to fall on certain beats, I play the drums. It's probably a bias. I'd have sooner expected a soft cymbal swell or some kettle drums, but I like getting taken by surprise. The best word I can call that crash is "distracting" but I think that the act of smiling and laughing still means I enjoyed myself. Thank you.

edit, damn I wasn't finished. Since I dissed that crash a little, I will say that I very deeply enjoyed that brief toy piano/drum kit jam. The whole track is so lovely.

Couplex responds:

Thanks for the nice words. The whole essence of this composition is divided into 2 parts, the first piano (slowly sad, and bells - fast and fun)

[Space Epopee]

Chill, atmospheric, full. Track has that Herbie Hancock funk, you could have just copy and pasted another 4 minutes and I wouldn't notice or care. I can respect a shorty though. Those pads and textures, pro <3

[/Tilt/ - <b>p-horizon</b>]

I love these melodies, the perc is amazing. Cool fills and that's a very dank bass line. This track is awesome, it really goes all over the place. I know this is labeled under "video game" but it feels like a prog genre, so many sounds are getting merged together in this.

A personal feeling, that snare patch is kind of heavy on the highs. I switched my headphones knowing the AudioTechnicas I have would accent the highs more, and they were painful. Literally, physically painful. A high end pair of headphones has more bass tones that could cover them up but that snare really hurt on something cheaper. It's not always affordable to carry more gear but I splurged a few years ago on something $300+. Recently my fiance got a $115 pair of AudioTechnicas and I'm realizing how harsh highs can be on his pair of headphones. I've seen a lot of people on Newgrounds recommend AudioTechnicas so I'm kind of surprised. People that listen to this might get turned off because the song is literally hurting them. The track is really great on a better pair of headphones but consider saving up and treating yourself to a different pair of headphones to give your mix some more diversity.

Love that synth section at 1:07 <3

I really hope this review doesn't come off as critical. I only share this with you as a peer, with utmost respect. Different speakers or headphones will have diverse results and it's my least favorite part about making music :C

EDIT: I switched back to my Sennhiesers, then back to the AudioTechnicas to make sure I wasn't crazy but unfortunately those highs pop so harshly on the ATH-M50x that they physically hurt. I'm sorry to break this to you, no one wants to unknowingly hurt people visiting their page. Audio can be dangerous and this is probably bad news, but mastering requires diverse monitors D':

[Let's Go! Neko-chan]

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! DID YOU WANT A SERIOUS REVIEW POINTING OUT ALL THE FLAWS? WELL IM NOT GONNA DO THAT. THIS IS SUCH ADORBS AND I LOVE IT. I WANT TO CUDDLE THESE MELODIES. DID YOU INCLUDE THOSE LAST TWO SOUNDS JUST TO MAKE ME GIGGLE LIKE A BABY? I GIGGLED LIKE A LITERAL BABY, GOOD JOB :D

Sorry about that caps lock, something about the tune is affecting me. Maybe if I try listening to it again...

OH MY GOD ITS SO CUTE. WHY DOES THIS SONG MAKE ME WANT TO WATCH ANIME AND DANCE? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? AM I GROWING WHISKERS? FUCK, THIS SONG IS TURNING ME INTO A CATGIRL. I GUESS I'LL JUST LIVE WITH IT, IM A CATGIRL NOW. MEOW
(=^ ◡ ^=)

[Different Story]

Clean, smooth, relaxing. You got such nice style Casper. One of these days I'll have to download some lofi tone generators and make some white noise. I love how the distortion caused from playing a record has become an entire genre despite that being literally the worst aspect of vinyl records. What was once an annoyance from over-playing your favorite records is now a romantic fizzle that belongs to hip hop at large.

Sorry I don't follow rap/hip hop, are there contemporary acts that are really dipping into the lofi sound? Honestly, if I called myself a rapper in this day and age yet never touched a lofi track I'd probably hate myself D:

Casper responds:

Thanks for the review:)
I've noticed that in the hip hop industry even lofi beats lean more towards trap. I know cymatics have this problem with some of their drumkits, the snares sound like low-ish quality trap snares which doesn't make them lo-fi (i have about ~50 gigs of drumkit so I'd know lmao). Even the sad guitars I hear in a lot of tracks can be made into regular trap beats if you take away the detune and the various fx, without having that big of an impact to the overall song in my opinion. I remember in 2015 when ChilledCow (now the infamous LofiGirl YT channel/music label) started making the 24/7 livestreams and heavily popularized the genre. Nowdays It's hard to distinguish between what it was supposed to be and what it is now since It's so oversatured and a mix of other genres that now include vinyl crackle and tape saturation and labeling it as "lofi". It's something I struggle with since I do want to have my own style of it but can't help but feel that there's no use in even trying when the competition is 500 times bigger. Whenever I scroll through artist's news or on hip hop subreddits it's discouraging seeing all the new albums and new releases while my interpretation of this genre is in no way unique and sometimes I wonder if what i do is too effortless and too simple. Lol, kinda deviated from the topic there. I guess rappers hop on lofi beats because that's what the cool kids listen to these days and it's really easy to make in most cases, with free plugins being very high quality.

[2022 NG Skank Podcast (mixed by CRY.NN)]

I'd have made a version of my track minus the voice monologue if I knew it would end up in a mix but I'm still happy to hear it in there. There's so much talent on this mix, hot damn <3