Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Botched Break]

Despite wanting to move away from dnb I always find myself moving back towards it. It's a tough genre to move away from for some reason.

That drum kit sounds like it could be massive with more side chaining forward. Kicks sound pretty clean, but I'd toss a snare signal into the sidechain too to help those snares pop a bit more. Maybe the snare can be crispier with an 808 layered in? Your breaks are going so hard but with some cleaner fidelity this could rock as hard as anything else out there. I'm really feeling those breakneck drum lines...

Last crit, maybe a tamb or shaker rhythm panned to the left or right a tad would add some action to those drum rhythms?

A friend recently mentioned that the master out in FL has a limiter/compressor default turned on. I only point that out because I ran into a problem with Reason where 90% of my tracks were getting needlessly compressed and the problem was fixed with one button. Default fidelity units can ruin you.

I only mention all of this because I want you to experience the same second guessing and self loathing that I feel every time music happens. I want you to write music that kicks so much ass that you have to keep making it to appease the inner demons. Do it for the demons Morty. Do it for the demons D:

larrynachos responds:

"Do it for the demons Morty" made me laugh so hard, thank you for that.

I'll try layering the snare and sidechaining it, thanks for the tip. I always start an empty fl file so it doesn't throw a limiter on the master or anything, but I did throw ozone 9 elements on the master with the default preset because it does a good job of evening things out and bringing out the best in each element.

I guess my main problem is that it takes too much setup to hit my musical flow state. I always start each track like "what" and usually either fizzle out or diddle with a neat preset or drum pattern until I eventually slide into it. Coming back to a project gets harder each session, and I can only do 3 or 4 before I just start duplicating and call it a song. I try to watch tutorials and music production videos, but I don't really take much away from it or use it in practice. I guess I'm very aimless when making music. Right now my inner demons are like "make music, or a game, or something else, or don't. But also you have to do something right now MAKE SOMETHING MAKE MONEY"

Thanks for stopping by and listening :)

[Icryke]

Cool amen break chops. Voice pad was tender. This had a nice ambient vibe to it, despite the eccentric drums. The mix needs some work but the rhythmic and tonal elements are working for you. It's awesome when people can take the harsh sounds of the amen break and make it into something loose feeling or happy. The sub bass really helped give it that ambient feeling.

I guess if you want to try filling up some more space you could add some extra pads or samples. There sounds like a lot of room for more mid frequencies. Maybe some water droplets, bird songs, chirping sine waves, arp pads are just a few ideas that came to mind. Panning synths, leads, piano melodies... this mix has the room for it :D

Rakshal responds:

Thank you for the advise! I do tend to make things a bit too on the minimal side. I am probably going to try to use songs I like as references for how to fill out a track better. ^.^

[BJ - Bleeding Nature]

Woof, nice loud mix. Bass could be fatter/subbier, drums a little smaller but you def got that loudness thing down. The drums don't seem to hit as hard when I use low fidelity speakers like laptop or phone, so the mix problems just come down to whatever speakers a person uses. I happen to have wasted a lot of money on speakers, amps, and headphones to master tracks. Seriously, despite minor mix qualms this rocks hard. Loved all the jazzy down tempo vibes. Horn sounds were sublime <3

GhostlyDoobies responds:

thanks man, i'm glad you kinda picked up on what i was going for here. struggled with the bass, since i fitted so much, so relied more heavily on the kicks.

[Galaxy knag]

Great track. Only crit is that I'd love to hear some jazz sax or trumpet on top of this. If anything this could have used some glassy pianos melodies. High reverb piano sounds, simple melodies, off beat octave chords, off key jazz jangles, stride triplets :D :D

[Bossfight x Ephixa - Subside]

Perfect mix down, amazingly creative ideas. Dank intro, kept the beat, kept the attention going from start to finish. Clean synths, dank drum builds <3 <3

Everything that followed the 2:11 break down curled my toes, all nine of them.

[Rain Dance]

I second the "I just wish it was longer" feeling from wilbert. This track has a great breakbeat vibe to it, just ends way too soon.

You can always fluff up a track 30-60 seconds with an ambient intro. Just take what you already have, copy & paste it, then subtract the drums and move it to the front. You can also drop those ambient pads minus the drums at the end to earn another 15-30 seconds of track.

Bonus round, add another 30 seconds by copy and pasting the second half of the track but add a 2 OSC lead or another pad of somekind. A decent 2 OSC could be a high portomento gliding sinewave and the other OSC a quite triangle, square, or sawtooth. That pitch bending effect from the portomento would sound great in this.

I seriously have no idea how you manged to write something so cool and then only let it loop for a minute :p

St0mpy responds:

Wow I really never thought this one would be felt this way. I'll take your notes and consider them for the future on other tracks like this. You have all inspired confidence in myself to make more songs like this with longer "storytelling".

[Inception]

In an attempt to avoid the hypno animation, I focused my attention on the tags instead. Giggled at the "not-chiptune." I listened to so much chip music and looked at so much pixel art, I went to the bathroom the other day and shat a perfect cube.

Dank breaks, funky dial tones, seducing amen drums. I swear this reminded me of an Evol Intent track but I couldn't find it scrolling through my files. It's not fair, I found other Evol tracks with dial tones and amen cuts but the specific one eluded me. Toss in a few NWA samples and this would get lost in that playlist too.

[Stormy Soul]

Can't believe I favorited this but didn't leave a review. This track has the melodic DNB vibe that got me into producing in the first place. Look up "Just a Minute" by Ben Sage. Got those breezy pianos, some grinding reese bass, driving breat beat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ1exshtORw

I've noticed over the years how many DNB fans immediately get turned off by piano. Never made any sense to me. The instrument is made for the genre, timeless sound fighting new age grooves. I love how you decided to turn the second half of the track into an ambient breakdown. Literally, three minutes of sweeping pads and atmosphere. That was a power move.

[Poppin' Pixels]

"my CPU is dying"

Time to backup your files and folders to an external to free up some space on your hard drive? You running any background programs you could stop to free up memory? Hard to believe a short song like this could overload your machine. How potato of a computer is it? Maximum potato? Wall-Mart potato? I had to use my mom's laptops in my mid 20's, I had no idea why anyone would even buy machines so cheap. She had two extra laptop I could use and they both sucked. Literally upgraded the situation by spending $300 and building my own machine, ran Windows XP. Handled Reason just fine, no slow downs. Ran on it for years.

Money can be tight, sorry if you're in that stage of life where paying rent and chasing dreams collide. It can be a fatal combination that feels depressingly challenging. Keep in mind that music can always wait, survival can't. Feel free to hit me up Nacho.

The melodies had a cool progression. Starting with that driving bass line, into the reverb lead, followed by the soft attack and decay sawtooth, and working into the arpy saw progression... perfect. Only critical feedback I got would be that final saw lead, it's the same at the end as it was when you first introduced it. An easy direction to go would be to jump some of the notes higher an octave or experiment with a few pitch slides. The last four notes on that lead melody could echo into higher octaves...

I'm sorry your machine held you back but I'm glad you got to join in on the pixel day festivities darling. Track bangs <3

EDIT: my pc was lagging a lot during games. Was caused by my desktop wallpaper, set it to change every five minutes. Turning that off fixed my problem, wish I thought about it sooner...

[tree ~ keeping up the good fight!]

WOOHOO, track has some solid upbeat vibes. I'd have embraced the fakebit more and used a high resolution jazz drum kit. This has some high energy anime drama to it. The drum fill into a key change at 1:25 made me want to weeb cry. Chiptune purists might sad-about but I prefer genre cross ups. Newgrounds artists take the old school video game vibes to a whole new dimension.

God I love your melodies in this. Ditch the over-compression and deliver a version of this with more fidelity. I'm a fan.