Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Witch In The Clocktower]

Saw the "synth witch" tags and immediately thought of my old friend Devyn. She's Djing in Missouri Springfield under the alias "Cyber Witch" but used to go by the name EchozAurora.

Got nothing constructive to add, just wanted to say hi and good work :)

[Mega Arcade Buster]

By contemporary standards I wouldn't necessarily call this "fast paced" but with those classic punchy full bodied DNB snares I'd shrug if this was 150 BPM and just let it happen. We can call it fast paced, I accept it.

Radical guitar solos are a mainstay of newgrounds producers, you'll fit in perfectly here. Was a little surprised to see you've been doing your thing for 17 years but your account has only been around since last year. Witch In The Clock Tower is my new jam <3

I've added you to my follow list, hopefully I'll keep seeing your name pop up :D

[Villain Redux (feat. ThatJohnnyGuy)]

lol, "mad dark nuero roller." Whose been teaching you dnb slang? You have to be from the UK to use the term "roller" in that context. I didn't make the rules, blame Ishkur.

Didn't realize you were in New Mexico, where in? I've been fantasizing about getting a midwest newgrounds meet up together once covid fucks off. I'm in the southwest corner of Colorado. I'm not 100% certain where a proper midwest meet up would go, would probably open that up to conversation in the forums or on my blog?

But your track, it has a lot of that grimy energy from early darkstep. John's vocal samples reminds me of Powerman 5000's late 90's romp "When World's Collide" without the grungy guitars and high energy chorus. Crunchy drums remind me of a Sonic Adventure 2 stage called White Jungle. Track mix could be nit picked a little but that's just a given. Humans have such garbage ears, I wish I could transform just my ears. Become a cat girl. Move into the woods, sleep in the grass and eat fish heads. Yeah.

Sinthology responds:

Thanks, I had fun with this one. It could be louder, I tried pushing the master track more but it started to sound squashed so I left it be.
I feel like a lot of these little genre jargony words are like "squanch" and "smurf", you just say what's in your squanch and people know what you mean.

I'm in Las Cruces but I'm fairly mobile and like to drive to visit people. I have all of the antibodies from my vaccines so I might be making some trips soon. It would be cool to meet some fellow NGers :o

[Extrapeculiar]

Pretty good sound from garageband, I wonder how that program has evolved since I used it last in High School. Very well written track, guitar solos gave off a David Maxim Micic sound. Creative genre switch ups kept the track hella interesting. Almost a full 9 minutes, that's not easy to do. There are probably four or five separate tracks you could have pulled out of this but you refused to get repetitive and just kept going. Awesome work Chord C:

ChordC responds:

I assume that garageband was not as advanced as it is today, it is relatively easy to use, at least for me.

Yess, I generally don’t like monotone/repetitive songs, I prefer listening to songs that are ‘out of the box’. I was inspired by the band Dream Theater when making this song.

Anyway, thank you for coming here, have a good one ;)

[modus - Displace]

Clean, refreshingly unique modus style. You have a way of making an arp sound fierce, and those leads... woof.

iammodus responds:

Thank you! <3

[Feeder!]

Lol, I played with beep box a while ago and couldn't force music noises out of it. Sounds cool to hear someone using that tool to write some actual tunes with. I'm not sure how far you can take an app like that but I'd look into some other software to start boosting your repertoire of noises...

*looks at catalog

You've been using Beepbox since 2019? Woof, that's some dedication right there. Working on an artists budget is tough but there are plenty of apps out there that are affordable in a weeks pay. Please, no pressure. I just wanted to try pushing you towards unlimited fidelity, sound banks full of professionally recorded instruments, and unlimited synthesis. God like power could be YOURS. UNLIMITED POWER >:D >:D

[Master]

I'm happy you posted how old you are on your page. A lot of us legacy newgrounds users started at a ripe young age too. This totally takes me back to early jam sessions with the bands, friends, and rouges in highschool. It doesn't necessarily have a very polished or professional sound but it's honest and that's what I like about it. I'm practically in tears over here thinking about my old band mates. We would get stoned, hang out, and just make things. Had no idea what those early days meant, we were just scratching our instruments and yowling our songs aloud. It can be hard to pull a full band together but get a percussionist and this could turn into an Explosions In The Sky vibe.

I'd nit pick the shy vocals but it honestly feels really good to hear young unspoiled energy. It almost feels like I'm in the room with you all, I would totally be beat boxing to this. You've got an acoustic sound and another year of highschool? Force one of your friends to start beat boxing right now. It only takes a week to learn how to "BFFF" a good bass drum, "KAH" a good K snare and "TISS" a decent hi hat. Simple 6/8 rock rhythm would go "BFFF, TISS TISS, KAH, TISS TISS" or bassdrum, hi hat, hi hat, snare drum, hi hat, hi hat, then repeat one million times. Look, you don't have to learn how to play the drums. Just force the Asian kid to do it. That Asian kid is going places and you need to make friends with him right now.

FOUNDDEADINLA responds:

I should note that my music is all me—most my friends find my music too expiremental—and I've got fuller sounding peices as well (expecially on my blackgaze inspired earlier works), but this was an amazing read. I do hope in college I befriend a percussionist and form a band :). Ill have to try beatboxing on a future track too.

[Just Move - First Upload in 15 years :)]

Had to look into your older work to see if I recognized anything. Was happy to see those early experimental noise tracks. During my short time as an audio mod in college those tracks might have got you banned from uploading spam. Every mod had their own style but it's basically impossible to tell how someone is going to grow and evolve. Just Move is a far cry from those humble origins.

I didn't actually recognize any tracks from your catalog. I'm guessing you remember a time when the audio portal exclusively played ParagonX9 samples on the front page? Was looking for something from that era but you seem to have sidestepped the larger EDM phase that hit newgrounds at that time and stayed true to hip hop. There's some seriously great stuff in here. Newgrounds let another good artist slip through the cracks. Not that it's anybodies fault. There are so many social circles here it's common to have two similar artists writing music for each other without any notice to the larger moving and happenings around them. Hope you stick around Miggles :)

Miggles responds:

Yes, I think I will. Thanks fams! I remember how lively the community was and I'm glad it still is thriving. There's a ton of talent here that definitely needs to get more shine.

[yesno, you will won't]

I grew up on Squarepusher, get as "ballsy" as you want. Experimentation is the spiritual origin of the drum and bass sound. Not sure if you're using straight break samples but if you use sliced drum kits you could get cleaner drum sounds. Every individual piece of the drum kit could have it's own fidelity units. Heck, if you really like the classic uncut sound of popular Jungle samples you could make a midi drum kit that emulates the general rhythm of the breaks, keep it mute, but use the drum signals to sidechain pads, vocals, and basses to help give some glitter and pop to the fidelity of those uncut drum breaks. You'd be using a silent instrument to sidechain with. It's kind of an advanced idea but worth playing with just to make those breaks pop a little more. Drums are always the most important part of any EDM genre, make them the cleanest you can :D

Alot of the sounds seem like they're coming from the center of the field. You can pan things like aux percussion, sound FX, and pads rather hard which will create the illusion that those sounds are louder than they really are. This will let you turn the levels down on those instruments a little to give you more room in the field for other sounds! Panning is love. Panning is life! Keep bass frequencies to the center but play with all sorts of things to find those sweet spots :)

I'm not familiar with Mixcraft but it looks like it has everything you need to get some good fidelity out of it. Would love to see your jungle style continue to evolve milk p!

[Critical Meltdown]

Track bounces nicely. I think you guys had a little more room to boost the sub bass with a compressor but aside from minor mix down nit picking this track rocked both styles in a way that didn't sound out of place or strange. Would love to hear another collab like this :D

spiritmusic responds:

Thanks Quarl, Im always looking to improve as an artist and take advice whenever I can

I appreciate the feedback <3