Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[yatse ya!]

Great stylings, I love the emotion coming from this. Inspired shorty. I'm ready to go on an adventure now. It's perfect for what it is. I could hear this in many an RPG. I'm getting soul calibur or fire emblem vibes. I feel like the track is a little quite. I spend a lot of time listening to dance music so I guess I just expect bricks :p

[Farewell And Goodbye]

Loved the honest heartfelt piano melodies. I feel like you could have played with the note velocities a bit to get more alive sounds. I play piano and have midi controls but when I write melodies I always remember to try to vary loud and soft note velocities as if they were being played for real. Rubato also gives piano a more human sound. Some melodies can drag out or be a little off beat and that small detail can create so much life.

Track is so long, I have no idea how many times I listened to this loop. Due credit for making a five minute track. I remember on the first listen that the dubstep/DNB drums punched me out of nowhere. I'd have faded them in with a filter or something to soften that up and then introduce the full power kit at a later climax. Maybe the intro could have used a softer jazz drum kit? The drums here are so powerful. I was expecting this to go full nuero skrillex.

It's still a great track. You're writing great melodies and progressions. Drums, despite sounding like the wrong genre, are powerful and full. There are some great ideas here and I can't wait to hear more :D

TrandafirTeodora responds:

Thank youuuuuuu!

[Deeps of Europa]

Avent-garde, musique concrete. Love the atmosphere from this. Cool scifi vibes and sounds. Actually reminds me of the original Mass Effect trilogy musics. Simple synths and distant growling pads. I got nothing critical to say about this other than stick a compressor on something and amp up the sound levels a little more. You got plenty of room in the field for more noise :)

BlueTuxedo responds:

Oh thanks you, i made this after i heard a ping sound in FL studio library, and my mind after that cracked and i got flashbacks from game Barotrauma so decided to make something ambient about it. The game atmosphere itself is dark and scary if you look out of a window in submarine, if we also include scary monsters that swim around it becomes more scary.. but it all wipes out because game have a voice chat! Haha

[Calmedo]

lol, you got a fun little style evolving over here. You got the right idea for using hi fi sound samples. The drums hit nice, the bass is big and round. I'm getting some armature vibes from this but I'm also hearing good potential. A string ensemble or violin section could have sweeped in at 00:33. Another good instrument would be a simple sinewave synth with automated pitch bends and curves. Bird chirping samples is not a new or original idea but some bird songs might give this track some positive character. Wind chimes could also accomplish the same task. Some tambs and shakers could have helped tie up the rhythm into something that resembles are more contemporary beat. I love drums that are a little unpredictable but a good rhythm has a lot of different sounds working together and against each other to make a solid rhythm. As a drummer, I tend to zero in on drums. There are a lot of ideas in this track that could benefit from more aux percussion.

Thank you for sharing this with me Blue Tux. I can't wait to hear more from you :)

BlueTuxedo responds:

Thanks you for giving criticism on my song! I actually started to making music like not really long ago, like a week or so? I'm making it for fun when I'm bored, i love that someone likes my song's.

[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 (2021)]

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