Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[PixCotton]

"Frontpaged, January 24, 2021," at least you should be getting an influx in traffic. Honestly, there is so much great PixelDay content I'm getting lost trying to view it all. I'm noticing a lot of artists did the last minute thing. It's like we all collectively were like "fuck, today is Pixel Day. Time to get to work."

FYI, white people can pick cotton too. It has a racial connotation because of American slavery. I wouldn't have even mentioned the race thing if I were you, can still change that. Personally, I like Pixel Cotton, gives a really fluffy vibe. Could have alluded to cotton candy but you had to mention race and now all I can see is a bunch of sad African Americans in a field getting whipped, YOU DID THIS TO ME. THANKS CHRIS.

Track is great by the by. Has an old school funk vibe flowing to it. Arps twinkled something nice, track changed up every few bars to stay interesting. You flowed from one melody to another in regular change ups. This is some inspired work. Thanks chris :p

chrisbasso responds:

listen hereee Quarl, I was like half asleep writing that description, as soon as i thought of the title i was like what if someone misinterprets that for something it isn't but you're not wrong, i was just overthinking it, either way should've probably not put that in lol. Anyways glad ya liked the song <3

[Curtain Call on the Beach! (Pixel Day 2021)]

"Use this in your game! Please! I just really want to make music for your game!... Please! If I keep asking I'm gonna start to sound desperate or something LMAO ;^)"

I legit asked if someone would use my music in hentai themed anything. Begging gets us nowhere. I keep seeing animations and games that use commercialized music. We'd have better luck making music for newgrounds content creators if we ironically got off newgrounds. Someone might even start uploading your music for you! Wouldn't that be awesome?

TeraVex responds:

Lmao I make all this music and I just think to myself "Gee how cool would it be if I saw it in a game like this?" But now I've gotten to this point where I think to myself hmmmm maybe I'll just make a game and then make some tasty beats to put in it! Galaxy brain fullproof plan

[Chippin' Dancin' Desert! (Pixel Day 2021)]

I missed this when it was frontpaged, glad I checked out the pixelday 2021 tag. So much good chip music, I have to keep refreshing my front page to see new tunes and everytime there are more pixel day subs.

Would love to hear this unchiped as it appears in your mind. I have a hard time translating the idea but it sounds like you have a good idea where to start. I could imagine the chiptune on a Pharaoh Man rockman stage, pyramids in the background, quicksand traps, and hieroglyphic themed Dr. Wily robots.

Honestly, Wily never got enough credit for all the robots he built. Sure he was evil but maybe if he spent less time beautifying all his robots with random ass themes he'd actually find the time to make a robot that could defeat megaman. Nope, "I NEEDS TO MAKE PHARAOH MAN. HE RESEMBLES EGYPTIAN PHARAOH Tutankhamun, AND CAN LEVITATE."

[Underwater Bitz [Pixel Day 2021]]

Loved all the ideas coming into this. Breaking up the rhythm from time to time felt super organic. The house vibes meeting dubstep were nice and clean. Had some old Metroid atmosphere to it.

Mix sounded a fair bit over compressed. Might be something on the master out? Someone recently mentioned to me that the default in FL is to limit the master out. Turning off one button will give you way more room to mix with. I use Reason and when I started in Reason 4 they had a similar function. The limiter was automatically turned on and it took me like 15 years to realize that.

Happy PixelDay XTeckmo! Can I call you Teck for short? Te???

Teckmo-X responds:

To be honest this song was made in under 24 hours. I wanted to make sure I had something to present for both Pixel Day and the VGM Contest this year since I haven't taken part of these events for a while. I got the inspiration from 1788-L, Gluk’oZа (ft. ST) Ju-Ju, and "Fairy Fountain" from Zelda. As for the mix I do agree. I have always been aware of the limiter in FL Studio but I always choose to keep it on. The reason for this is that every sound in my songs goes through a huge amount of processing and with the limiter there I can finish adjustments to the master volume after I'm done. It also helps against higher frequencies that might override lower pass and high pass sounds, especially in basslines where every sound counts. I've tried a few other DAW's but Fruity Loops just hits that really good spot. Happy Pixel Day! and yes, you can call me Teck :)

[Chalice of Malice (Pixel Day 2021)]

Exciting boss music. Well written melodies. Driving drum line was hella adrenaline pumping. Those reverb saw pads broke up the tune in a way that jumps from the chiptune restrictions that a lot of people try putting themselves under. I liked that trance vibe it gave off though. It was like hearing a tuba in a metal song. Someone like David Maxim Mixcic wouldn't even bat an eye.

Writing long, droning reviews like this lets me listen to the track multiple times. By about the 15th time this track looped it became my theme song. This is now MY boss music.

You compressed the track really hard, not sure if there's a reason for that. Game coders could apply sound effects and game noises in left and right channels and it would actually be a really cool use of panning to help create space in the audio field. Again, sorry for this rambling review. 50 TIMES LOOPED, I HAVE BECOME ONE WITH THIS SONG.

ConnorGrail responds:

Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I have no restrictions, just pure chaos is my goal. I do like the idea of David Maxim Micic hearing this, love that stuff!

[Bitburst]

lol, happy pixelday!

Glad you decided to participate.
Mayhaps with less reverb you could fit all sorts of aux sounds into the mix? You could try playing with arps next time to get some more of those classic video game sounds. Arpeggiators ran at quick speeds give you nice full VG sounds. Some sweeping sine wave synths with high portamento or pitch bends could make bird like chirping atmoshpere.

I don't want to focus on that kind of stuff though because the last thing I want is to come off as critical. The track is nice and relaxing. Doesn't have the polish of a producer like Albegain but I can hear the passion in this. You got a nice waltz 3/4 tempo going. That's not a natural time signature for most people but I always love it when people gravitate to it. Absolutely lovely Ara <3

ARAMort responds:

Oh yeah I def could've done more. I kinda threw this together to cram it into the timeframe of pixel day and I didn't take the more iconic chiptune sounds into account. I'll write this down for the next pixel day lol.

[My Collection!!!]

Lol, "I'll try being more bold with the sidechain in the future." Respect, it's such an awesome feeling when you finally take the time to start sending signals all over the place to control levels. It's not always necessary depending on what your mixing but it's like cooking with chives, oils, or spices. You never stop adding them to your meals and eventually you wonder what things would even taste like without cumin. Sidechaining is like cumin.

Track bounced something nice. Drums were all perfect, melodies flowed nicely with that chord progression holding things together. Outro was smooth AF, was expecting a blocky insta cut out based off the waveshape but that reverb and long cut off pad was tasty.

Awesome groove Prutte :D

Prutte responds:

Thank you so much for your lovely comments! Made me smile like crazy! <3