Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jamuary Song 25]

Jean-Claude Van Damme is doing splits to this in my head.

[Stronger]

Sharpening the break beats during Jamuary? Another slick one Jinz. Drum velocity is a little static, if I'm crunched for time I put automation lanes on things like hihats to quickly draw up some faux dynamics for a couple bars then copy/paste. Takes like a second to fake for the hi hats. There sounds like a lot of diversity in those rhythms so it might not work out for your kicks and snares but maybe it would? Static drum velocity still gives off nice glitchy hard style vibes so it's just preference or something. Don't listen to me :p

lol, love the concept of telling a story with the album. Sick work <3

[Delighted Chatter]

Gold, absolute gold. Arps are lovely, sparse piano notes haunting, reverb and record pops sensual. Drums have a creative bop to them, great fidelity! Short track but short kings are kings too <3

Casper responds:

Thanks, quarl. This was a wip I had laying around not gonna lie, did that strat for like half of jamuary. Unfortunately I failed the challenge, fortunately i sleep a lot better now

[AnarchyJam]

Sounds like a really healthy shot at a genre you're not necessarily into and it's honestly better than some of the stuff I hear from people pursuing the genre passionately. Getting a perfect dnb mix down is hard, I've been at it for so long but I still have trouble with the genre. I actually get mad when I hear someone else's perfect nuero mix, it just shouldn't happen >:c

You're doing the Jamuary rush so I know you put what time you could into this but I'd love to hear you come back later to polish. Intro was noticeably bare-bones, you didn't waste anytime getting to the beat. Since the drums are the most important aspect of a DNB mix I'll point out a few things I noticed. I'd have panned the drum highs more. Not sure if you layer your kicks and snares at all or if you just use one sample each but fans of bass genres love hearing crisp unique sounds from the drums and more layers will help with that. Takes practice making your own drums but I usually use at least three snare samples together to make the main snare sound. From there you can pitch bend the samples, play with levels, route them into fidelity units, and send them back to the mix as one homogenous sound. I merge all my snare signals into one before sending them to the fidelity units. I hear a lot of producers now a days pitching up their snare drums. You used an old school snare sound but literally pitch it all the way up and you got that nu school tone all the kids like doing drugs to.

I get pretty weird with my synth modulations so this next section is opinion but I'd have loved to hear that reesy lead get pitch bent to higher highs every so often. It's a powerful lead but it could be a bit crisper occasionally, I often find using a good distortion unit to be more helpful than fidelity tools. I think the lead also has too much envelope release. I only automate the release up when I want to muddy up the mix or transition the song around. Usually my leads have absolutely no reverb, delay, or envelope release because they take up so much space. If I want a momentary burst of these things I can automate them in every so often, like adding a pinch of salt to a recipe.

I loved hearing this, got off to it even... but I'm not sure I want to spend all night writing up a crit. You should be proud of this track. It's always awesome to hear people branch out trying new things. I wasn't kidding when I said this sounds better than some of the neuro I hear from the upcoming and aspiring dnb people. Do another one <3

Arponax responds:

Dayum thanks for the feedback, ill see, i would like to get back to more tracks i made this month so maybe ill add this one too.

[Let the Wind Free the Leaves]

I love the sound. Those guitar melodies are lovely! Aux drums all sound like they have their own little panning settings and homes in the stereo field. I'd love to hear this with some rock & roll drums but I'm a drummer. I will always bias for harder drum sounds D:

Now for the tough part, you got a lot of work to do with fidelity tools. You need to play with some compressors, equalizers, and filters to get some pro mix quality! There's a lot of space you're not using in the mix, a maximizer can help you cut off sounds before they clip out, peak, and start causing distortion or muddiness.

Regardless of the genre you write, a compressor can help you boost stuff and should also give you a sidechain input to send drum signals to if you want to move things like bass momentarily out of the way. Sidechaining is just using the levels of one signal to control or mitigate levels on something else momentarily. Most people use kick drum or snare signals to control bass and pad levels. It's really noticeable in dance genres but it's a technique every producer can make use of regardless of their preferred genre. Pro technique and super easy to execute once you watch a tutorial :)

A compressor and a maximizer working in tandem can help you find a larger sound but the EQ can do all sorts of silly things too. You can boost and cut the best or worst tones from an instrument. You can also use automation lanes to get really weird modulations out of your EQ, I've been using an EQ with quick modulations on my snare drums to get really weird tones out of them :D

I don't see that you tagged any live instruments. Impressive if it's all digital, this sounds just like a really fluid live jam session, down to the not so good mix down that always comes with cheap one mic recording set ups. Something in particular that reminds me of the live recording is that constant white noise tone going on. I'm sure it's the cymbals making the noises but it kind of sounds like the wires on a snare drum resonating because of the guitar amps. Around 1:02 it's really obvious. I'd EQ the fuck out of that sound, maybe even tap a filter onto the instrument to aggressively make it disappear :p

Not sure I want to spend all day on this crit but I saw "feedback and critique appreciated" and figured I'd just go hard into the fidelity talk. At a certain age everyone needs to get the fidelity talk, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. We all fiddle or flirt with our fidelity tools at some point or another. I remember my first fidelity tool, high school prom. Garage Band broke my heart but it was the start of a long and happy relationship with sound production that I still enjoy decades later. Wear protection.

PixxlMan responds:

Thanks for your critique! Glad to finally get the 'fidelity talk' haha.
It's really cool to hear that you thought it sounded like it was played live, that was kinda my goal, I felt like a bit of an imposter making jazz fusion purely digitally lol.
You're right about the cymbals making that white noise, should have tamed that!
Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!

[Oscillator]

Hella techy, that second half around 2:20 grooves so hard. Loved the slow down burn, finale is tight :3

[The Court of Defeat]

Big bass, creative melodies, loved the atmosphere synth patches. Two and a half hours? Efficient use of time, takes me about that long to get snares I want D:

[Curse of The Wicca]

High energy drum and bass, sick breaks. There are certain things I could nit-pick but it's the rough edges that make dnb such a cool genre. This is making me want to throw down some breaks, I've been having creative issues with the dnb genre as of late but it all starts with a killer drum kit. Your kit is killing it PandaPanda :3

PandaThePanda responds:

Wowow! Thank you so mush! Yess there are a lot of problems or thing that I would probably do a bit different now. I remember being really happy with how it sounded so I got on a high after I finished the song and couldn't wait to release it so because of that I was a bit to fast with quality control hehe :p

[Daru925 - Who drank my coffee?!!]

Wonderfully epic Daru. Powerful percussion, high quality horns, massive strings. Only problem I had was the song length but there was so much variety that I didn't really care. This song went places. That section at 1:56 contained so much frothing rage. This track isn't a boss fight so much as a boss victory. I started writing up some weird scenario where your enemy is trapped under a burning pillar in a dojo while you monologue about a master plan but the action sequence @ 1:56 changed my vision up. Maybe the hero got out from under the burning pillar for one last hopeless sword bout. He totally loses though. This is season finale music and I'm gonna have to tune in next season to find out what happened to all the characters you didn't kill. The hero you're torturing is gonna be so bad ass in season 2. We might have to start out season 2 without the hero only to reveal half way through that the building collapsed under the stress of fire and the hero was swept up in a river, found by a small tribe of forest sprites, and nursed back to health? Or maybe you just decapitated him and his younger siblings are taking up the sword to avenge him? I don't know but this music deserves to kill every hero that fights against it :3

Daru925 responds:

Nice, i'm glad that the music evoked you all this. Very interesting. I like it.
I wanted the final chords to sound like victory, but then merge into uncertainity.
You know, for the sequel when evil returns^^

[Let me feel it deeper]

Very creative, loved the glitchy leads. Bass is coming through my lame tablet speakers demanding me to give it more listens later today on my computer! Viscous grooves, brutal melodies :3