Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cabin]

I'm guessing this is also coming out of cakewalk? Wish I knew more about the program so I could offer suggestions for where to take your sounds. You've got a nice young but flexible style of writing melodies that can evolve in whichever direction you want to take it. All I'm hearing right now is the limitless potential of someone finding their voice :)

Catalystl responds:

Thanks for the review!

This track wasn't made with Cakewalk, I used some other program called Brel's Midi editor, which was a lot clunkier to use.

Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 is old and outdated, and so is its sound system, but its easy to understand. It just involves using SoundFont files (which contain many .wav files) to change the sounds of midi instruments when they're played.

I kinda like old programs more than new ones because they're just easier for me to learn, even when you can't look up how to do anything in them.

[A Million Caves]

lol, this has some fun dance vibes to it. The drum solo was fire. Loved that break down two minutes into the track. This has great ideas and melodies. Will be awesome to hear you progress further with your ideas, I'm hearing super young vibes from this. Most of the musicians on newgrounds started out making stuff like this so most of us have a fond place in our hearts for the sounds of the early days. Let me know when a few years have gone by and you're making amazing future house dub step hip hop stuffs.

Haven't seen someone using Cakewalk in a good minute, thanks for providing that software tag. It's always a pleasure to know what tools people are writing with :)

[Toxic (Original Mix)]

Great tasty synths. I love the crisp sounds. Long track, you kept it interesting for a good six minutes. Again I'm noting there a minor mix quips but this track is much cleaner than the other you posted. I wouldn't even know what to do differently to get perfect tones out of this. Would probably pan aux drums and pads more, lower their levels a little, and check all my fidelity units to make sure every instrument is getting the love and attention it deserves.

Awesome sounds Kronosxl <3

[Massacre 2 (Spooktacular ENTER) [Terror Madness]]

Nice aggressive sounds. I got a few minor quips towards the mix down but this is some nice dub. You can press the panning herder on aux perc, pads, samples. That will give you a little more room for the huge synth leads. Panning an instrument creates the illusion that a sound is louder than it actually is so you can lower the instruments volume a little and have the room for other elements. The drums are nice and big but I'd spice them up with another texture layer. A big ol bass drum with a subby tone would sound nice. Not sure what direction to head in with the snare, maybe something that hits mid frequencies?

Track is awesome. Gotta get a little bit of control over the fidelity units your program has to offer but this has some really awesome ideas and elements to it. Loved it :)

[Blursed Ballad]

I love hearing stuff like this. Takes me back to an olden time when making music was new for me and every melody was an adventure to write. Great track for some background musics during an JRPG chatter scene. Relaxing instrumentation and progressions. Love it Anon Frog. Atypical rhythmic decisions. You're exploring sound <3

['Project Mystopia' Theme Song]

You're trying to get under my skin with this dark moody growling bass. Since you're also programming a game I suppose taking on the music is a fun side challenge. Future adventures could have you looking into a technique called side chaining which allows you to control the levels of one instrument with the signal from another. Helps push some sounds out of the way for short drum hits. Dance music producers usually push sub basses out of the way for kick drums. Depending on how big the drums are, sometimes I let the drums push literally everything out of the way for crisp percussion sounds :)

Panning is a more accessible technique. Panning creates the illusion that sounds are louder than they actually are. You can pan mid to high frequency sounds to far to one side of the field then lower their volume a little to make room for other sounds. Bass frequencies can get mixed mono to give the stereo sounds a good solid base.

It's an awesome track for what you're doing. Keep pushing yourself Anon Frog :D

[Sensory Overload]

A little reverb on the drums would give this an 80's synth metal vibe. Regardless, this is still super oppressive machine music <3

Layer in some bird chirping samples to contrast those heavy drums and synths. You don't have to, I'm just throwing that idea out there. Sample some birds Morty. Do it or we die Morty. Do it.

[Sawce]

I love hearing the early music that people make. In ten years you'll be producing some heavy future jazz musics and only the real fans will say "remember Sawce? Damn we're old now."

I think you got some room in this for some more instruments and techniques but the fun thing about digital musics is that you can always open an old file years later and hit it with new knowledge. There's room for basic sine wave pads, string or violin ensembles, Rhodes Mk II, saucy clavinet melodies, tamb and shakers...

That was a really interesting choice to put so much reverb on the hi hat & clap snare. That effect takes the place of potential aux percussion in the mix. I'd have traded the reverb for more percussion instruments like tambs, shakers, more hi hat layers... track still funks something nice. I'm just trying to get those creative juices flowing a little :D

DaVaP responds:

You think i know all this i just go 'tune bangin' and ship it

[Cosmic Druid]

Yooo, that snare slaps nice. Which specific frequency did you decide to amp to get those hi freq snare slaps?

Dude, get out of here with these perfect little scribbly nuero basses. Whatever drugs you are on right now, keep doing them.

Demonicity responds:

Pogo with camelphat ;)

[After Curfew]

Lol, I can picture an indy game playing along side with this. Game loops only need to be 00:15 - 00:45 seconds long though. If I were trying to get the attention of game producers I'd just keep tracks short. Gotta hand it to you, four and a half minutes is a solid investment. I have trouble past two minutes xD