Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[AIM - Madonna del Laco]

Morpherence, Madonna del Laco
Composition/Structure:7 Production:7 Emotion/Atmosphere:7 Art Relevance:5

I really wish people would learn the importance of at least saying HOW the art inspired them. A couple sentences will never hurt your score unless you say something like "I sampled this entire song from a cool Youtube video." Everyone assumes that their work speaks for itself but it often doesn't. People enter the contest and fail to realize that the judges are literally their peers and we want to know more about you, your creative process, the choice of instrumentation, conceptual ideas... or at least I do. I've discovered some of my favorite Newgrounds musicians from judging AIM in the past. I love knowing more about my peers and what drives them, what motivates them, and what inspires them. I'll agree that the visual art you chose is inspiring, I'll also admit that I like your music but I'm left wondering how it really matches the art.

From a composition/structural point of view a lot of the sections could use crescendos and decrescendos to connect them together. The drums just kind of come out of nowhere initially. Orchestral drum swells might not come in the same folder as the "ethnic drums" you found but you can always progressively layer genres, time periods, and techniques to work with the fantasy imagery that you chose. Even talking about the drums you used: some 16th/32nd drum notes could be introduced via volume automation or the velocity progressively increased to make a swell. In regards to European orchestral drums, no one is going to hear a cymbal swell or a bass drum swell and think "damn, this doesn't match the medieval fantasy time period in my D&D dungeon master's guide book. Time to take points off." You can kind of go anywhere you think works in the fantasy genre but I'd love to know WHY. Looking at composition/structure and emotion/atmosphere simultaneously; this song kind of drones along in one place the entire time. You could argue the music isn't going to change much when fighting a monster in a lake but I would disagree. I'd expect a boss fight in a lake to sound intense and fast, potentially it would come in phases. The music you wrote sounds like it would better fit in a Punjabi market place with vendors wearing turbans trying to sell me rugs or butter chicken. Looking at that armor, I went down a rabbit hole looking at different kinds of tabard patterns to try and place the region and time period but found nothing... already I'm wondering if I've done more research than you to try and understand the art.

Another thing to consider is what cultures have feminine lake monsters. A quick search brought me to the Swedish Sjörå. The Scott's have their Loch Ness monster, why not use bagpipes? The Germans have their mythological Nixe... did you do any research or planning before writing this song? I'm averaging between one to two hours on each review I write, do us both a favor next time and say literally ANYTHING to help guide the listener on the journey you experienced when you analyzed the art. I'll point to the fact that I have a visual arts degree, taking apart visual art is something I paid money to learn how to do but anyone can do it. Your work is good but there are going to be entries in this contest that are perfect. I could imagine this song matching the energy of Age of Empires or the N64 era LoZ water temple... which has nothing to do with the art other than the fact that I'm not thinking of the art you choose when I hear it.

This contest is a foley artist's dream. Look at the art and think like a foley artist, how will you audibly reference everything in the drawing. I'd have sampled a waterphone for this drawing but the prices for a waterphone range about $250-450. It's a little chaotic for a judge to recommend sampling in an song writing contest but percussion instruments usually come with the DAW you purchased and no one is going to cross reference your percussion samples to a Youtube video to disqualify you for nabbing a vibraslap or a drum swell. I did notice others talking on Discord about a contest entry that sampled Microsoft sounds and some other copy-written stuff... but who is going to spend their time on Youtube listening to one-hour-long relaxing running water meditation videos to see if someone nabbed a running water sound from there? I have a field recorder to try and nab what I find in the wild. One ironic thing keeping me from buying sample packs is that sometimes companies regurgitate sample packs with sounds they acquired questionably themselves. Sampling is an art, hip-hop artists would fight tooth and nail to defend the craft. I bring this all up to give you more range and ferocity as a creative person. From using a field recorder, to buying the instruments, to the ethical quandary of sampling: these are techniques that you could employ to deliver a better final product. How does one convey the dissonant sounds of a monster in a lake fighting a figure wearing a suit of armor? Think like a Foley artist.

The production fidelity was fair and good but not mouth droppingly good. At this point I really don't want to spend much more time on this review because I have so many entries to get to but I hope it was eye opening or thought provoking. Like so many other musicians in this contest you have big potential, and I'd love to see you around: I'd love to hear more from you. I'm not trying to discourage or uninspire you when it's actually the opposite. Come back around next year spurned and ready to kick ass. Good luck with the contest, hopefully the other judges hear the things I didn't and you get a fair shake... never be afraid to share a little about your creative process. Peace and love Morpherence.

[AIM - Rampage of The Dark Paladin]

Scorched Rain, Rampage Of The Dark Paladin
Composition/Structure:7 Production:2 Emotion/Atmosphere:8 Art Relevance:9

Right off the bat I feel like this is undeniably inspired by the art. Inspiration can be very subjective so I focus on it to try and bridge whether or not the musician is legitimately inspired by the work. I like to do a little extra footwork to check out the musician's catalog to see if they're just competing to their own strengths but you have a very diverse albeit brief catalog. Wish there was more of your music I could dig into but I understand, Newgrounds is always inspiring new talent and you're competing with everything you currently got. Without getting into too much detail about the competition, AIM always delivers top tier music. I'll beg that you spend some time listening to and checking out some of the winning competitors for inspiration, there's always a higher plateau to aim for.

There is a Castlevania vibe to the work, I noticed the tower in the background of the art which helps you out for that Gothic feeling you were going for. Good choice of instrumentation. Drums go hard which arguably fits the intensity of... fighting monsters? The mix is driving me crazy though, too much reverb is making things kind of muddy. I'd ditch the reverb on the drum kit and study-up how to sidechain the melodic instruments using the kick drum or a combination of the kick drum and the snare drum. Sidechaining will allow you to control the levels of one instrument with the levels of another, in other words you can use the signal from a kick drum to momentarily push aside instruments like bass and strings to help clarify the mix. Sidechaining is easy when you learn how to, I just looked up BitWig tutorials on how to sidechain in that program. Learning how to use a compressor to sidechain will push you in the direction of learning to use your fidelity units to their fullest potential.

It feels like you fell asleep on the sustain peddle, that organ grates and doesn't relent. A feeling I've always agreed with is that good music builds up tension, then releases it, then builds it again, then releases it, as many times as necessary. Often it happens within a measure or two. That organ is just constantly overpowering in the wrong way. I'd have given it a rest every now and then to let other instruments breath. Between the organ and the drum kit there is no room. The art relies on a lot of negative space to create tension (via the black spaces), or contrast. I'm not hearing a whole lot of contrast so much as I'm hearing a constant drone. A harpsichord or a dulcimer might have punched through your mix, some of those organ melodies deserved to be transposed. That intro would have been far more inviting if the separate melodies stood out more...

...which leads me to panning and layering. I'm not certain there are two separate organs rather the first melody sounds like your just writing different parts on the same instrument. I'd take the different melodic zones and transpose the high melody to a string instrument I mentioned earlier (dulcimer/harpsichord), the low end would get it's own instrument (mixed towards the center but it can stay on an organ), then the highs and mids could offset each other with some nuanced panning. Mids might like a string section or choir. That melody deserves three different instruments but it all sounds like it's coming from one sustained organ and it's not beneficial. Splitting that melody up intro three instruments would create more contrast, give you more space to mix, hit new textures in different sonic spaces, and you could pan them to make room in the stereo field. Every instrument deserves it's own "space."

Compared to the organs, the drums are very contemporary. I would never take points off for choosing contemporary drum rhythms but where are the orchestral sounds? They'd have fit the mood of the art. You can build tension and release it with orchestral drum swells; crescendos and decrescendos. Cymbal swells and bass drum swells usually come with orchestral sample packs and since Bitwig seems to make a big deal of it's internal samples and instruments I'd spend some time getting to know all of your orchestral options that came with the program out of box. They also sell lots of extra goodies as far as that's concerned but I've been using Reason for 20 years without buying new instruments or tools. As a DAW that contends with all the best, it will come with proprietary orchestral sounds, find them and make use of them!

Hopefully this review doesn't hurt, you have a lot of potential and I'd love to hear you grow into that potential. I took a lot of points from production because your sound is "young" and seemingly uninformed. I'd recommend looking up classical composers such as Vivaldi or Bach to emulate or inspire a more authentic/classic gothic sound. I'd also recommend spending some time on Bitwig tutorials to learn all your fidelity and mix tools proper. Would also look up some information on panning so that you're not going too wild with it but instead are making informed decisions on where to put instruments in the stereo field. I'm giving a high score for art relevance because it's obvious to me that you put in the effort but took one point from it because I felt like there was more you could have done. That also kind-of offsets the production score which I went super critical on to drive my perspective home. You got some great potential scorch, let's live up to it next year! Good luck with the other judges, by the time I post this the competition will likely be over but I'm serious when I say "next year," AIM is consistently annual thanks to Annette. You can improve a lot in one year, time flies. Cheers ScorchedRain!

ScorchedRain responds:

Thanks for reviewing!!

[AIM - Nurture]

Latadenata, Nurture
Composition/Structure:7 Production:8 Emotion/Atmosphere:10 Art Relevance:7

Respectably unique, loved the song. Unfortunately the inspiration could be brought into question. It's always a little dangerous to pick a piece of art that is predominantly lone figure surrounded with negative space because you're essentially writing a theme song for the character. The image can convey all sorts of ideas to you: the musician, but you're banking on the idea that the judges will hear the things you saw and feel the same things you felt. I'm glad you wrote about what you did because I can't say you weren't "inspired," that was brave and respectable, but this music might as well work with a lot of other works of art: it's interchangeable. I want to hear music that is so unquestionably inspired by the music that I can't separate the audio from the visual. I'm not tasting fruit in my mouth from this song. That is the one immutable feeling this art provided: fruit in mouth.

Subjectivity is always a tough cookie but this contest is going to put a ton of serious contenders in front of me and I focus very heavily on subjectivity. You've kind of shot your shot with a very specific character drawing. Aside from how well drawn the image is (it's beautiful), it doesn't convey a lot of musical ideas past putting a mango in my mouth. You could have just as easily wrote reggae, calypso, ska, salsa, or some other world genre and claimed that the image inspired you.

I'm going to focus on the yellow background because it's obviously a picture of a forest ran through a filter and the colors were all changed to yellow. You didn't seem very confident in what the background was (again, thank you for sharing your feelings). I can see ferns, a tree trunk, and vines hanging from the top of the yellow square to the bottom. It's not a "(kind of?) nature background," the background is very obviously a rain forest. Given that, you probably could have included more samples from nature? I gave you one extra inspiration point for that babbling brook sound towards the beginning but the score sat at 5 for a while because I just couldn't tie the work to the character in an indisputable manner. Though a babbling brook conveys a rain forest nicely, the image has no discernable moving water in it. Samples of birds singing are a very popular means of conveying a natural setting in a musical composition, they live in trees. Might seem cliched though, no one wants to sample birds for the umpteenth time but it might have helped you? I never hear anyone sample a rain-stick, an instrument literally invented to convey the sound of falling rain. That white noise towards the end almost hit that vibe, there were some percussive sounds that may have expressed the character eating fruit? It took me two to three hours of listening to this song on repeat to actually pick up on that though.

There is a lot I can say about the art and there is a lot I could say about this song but almost none of those thoughts happen simultaneously. We have a great song, a great piece of art, and they feel somewhat smashed together via questionably subjective ideas. I do love this song, it's very well done. tbh, mix is a little thin. There was plenty of room to boost some sub bass. I noticed that the song doesn't really climax either, it's one energy level the whole time. In a way, it's very plain and repetitive. Maybe the art is kind of plain too? I don't know, I've now listened to this song enough times that I'm starting to judge whether or not the image is even remotely inspiring in of itself.

I didn't volunteer to be a judge to have to nitpick the art that people choose but you picked a very plain piece of work and delivered a very plain piece of music. Coming to that conclusion hurts to say, so I'll toss in that I'm very sorry for saying it. No one wants their work to be called "plain." I gave some of your catalog a listen to see if your style changed to suit the art and I think it did. Maybe next year pick a work of art that has more going on in it so I can't sit still; typing up a confusing review for three hours. I tried my absolute best honey, I think you have a lot of talent and I'd love to keep hearing from you. Your style is beautiful. Force judges to hear the connections you hear, force us to feel what you feel. Eliminate "maybes" and deliver a work so confidently inspired that no one can question anything. That might mean that you have to pick a different kind of visual next year but you now understand some of the pitfalls better.

I think I've said everything I wanted to say so thank you for keeping me very busy today. I was averaging one hour per review, you just destroyed that record several times over. Stay unique Latadenata <3

EDIT: this was added at the moment I posted this, I've started calling certain sounds "low hanging fruit." The imagery didn't provide you a lot of low hanging fruit, you were banking on "a vibe" instead of finding the sound effects and conceptual ideas that would have compelled a higher score. Comparatively, this is still a good score but it was also one of the first songs I judged and one of the first reviews I wrote. Hope it doesn't hit any nerves, best wishes Latadenata.

Latadenata responds:

Please take no worries on how your review made me feel, because I found it FANTASTIC!!

I'm so glad and happy you took so much time on listening to my song (I don't think even myself could be put through listening it to THREE hours repeatedly!) and it means a lot to me.

I'm also really glad you focused on the things that could have improven and not the ones you could have felt were already "done right", since what I always seek is for improvement and criticisms like yours are definitely a big help on making me improve!

It is very fair indeed to say the original art wasnt really inspiring, but personally I just fell in love with it and wanted to dedicate it a song.

I felt a lot of love and attention coming from your review, and I think the part I appreciated the most besides just the fact of taking so much time to review the song is telling me how unique you find my music! It is really one of the compliments as an artist that I have recieved that have made me most happy!

Thank you so much for this and I hope you will find my next submission even a lot better!

Best regards!

[AIM - Pyromancers Village]

Artist Lost, Pyromancers Village
Composition/Structure:6 Production:6 Emotion/Atmosphere:8 Art Relevance:10

Getting right into my review, I totally felt the relevance to the art work. Your song suits the illustration perfectly well. Instrumentation echoes the vibe; the song and the art practically belong together. I had to go full screen to notice the figures in the drawing but it looks like a peaceful community of exotic creatures spiritually in-tune with nature. Your choice of instrumentation seems notably intentional, it really sounds like the society in the drawing has it's own folk sound that they come together to enjoy communally. It's as if this is the tone of their tribe, 10/10 art relevance.

Production and structure got hit hard when I scored. I can hear a consistent pop from what I can only assume is where your looping something? I've only ran into that exact sound when chopping samples where the sound wave is anywhere other than 0.0 but apparently you can also get it while recording if bursts of air hit the diaphragm of your recording apparatus full-on. Whatever is causing it, you gotta fix it. It was so consistent that it kind of ruined the experience. It's a very repetitive song which is well and ok if the media is being made for a game or movie but I'm left wanting so much more. Every community has one musical try-hard that dreams of becoming the next Mozart, where is that try hard soloist in this composition? A single powerful instrument or voice punching through the drone could have been colorful. The song feels almost sad and monotonous, like this community has been droning along to this sad tune for a millennia. Most indigenous cultures develop a drone like style of music but it often relies on voice, think Gregorian chant or mantras. A simple MIDI chior could have peacefully droned in the background, there's a space in the mix for it. Wouldn't have helped the monotony too much but a climax might have benefited from something like it.

On that note, energy levels stay the exact same from start to finish which is where the composition/structure score suffers most. This song is 100% drone with no build ups, climaxes, surprises, tone changes, solos... I can listen to it a few times but I couldn't live in this village with this music constantly murmuring along. I would pack my bags and find a new furry community somewhere else.

I hope you find this review helpful in anyway. Your music is fine, inspired, and beautiful. Since it's a competition I'm leaning hard on the crit but I still loved listening to this and you nailed whatever it is you set out to accomplish. Just keep this review in mind for next year because there is so much potential in your skills. Good luck and stay strong.

[AIM 2024 - the emo machine with a side of cigarettes]

Yoshiii343, the emo machine with a side of cigarettes
Composition/Structure:6 Production:6 Emotion/Atmosphere:10 Art Relevance:10

Happy to hear your work, glad you're still kicking your indy-rock stylings. Right off the bat, full scores for relevance. Looking at the art I'm perfectly imagining her playing the first 2/3rds of the track. I've been learning guitar for a little while and that whole first section sounds like a little loop peddle jam. Having grown up around a lot of that sound it's just romantic AF to me. Unfortunately the genre can sometimes encourage a lo-fi mixdown. I'm taking particular offense to the fact that the last section sounds like a highschool 3 piece post hardcore band recording on a cheap 8 track mixer that was gifted to you when your parents realized the equipment they bought to make mix tapes for their spin-classes could better serve their kid's music endeavors. Gotta make what you love any way you can but you're not in a highschool anymore. You've been doing this sound such a long time that I'm wondering why you don't sound like David Maxim Micic by now (totally unfair comparison, his stuff is mixed tip-top.) Your drum rhythms are powerfully written but the mix makes it sound tiny. You might have been better off for this contest dropping that last section in favor of something else. That last section will inevitably effect production scores across the board and you know it... but it's also the section that's giving me massive emotion, contrasting with the slow build up. It's almost like the girl in the drawing is imagining that section in her own head, what she might sound like if she had some friends to play with. SAD EMO FEELINGS YO D':

Dude, "how i wished i could go back to those days." I know that feeling so hard at this stage of my life. While I don't wish I could go back, I just want to find some random people to make a shitty grunge band with and it's impossible. I would play any genre on drums or piano right now but the creative process has become a lonely, self-reflective grind into a computer screen. Your entire creative process and the songs you've made are relatively existential to my own experiences. I feel lonelier having listened to your music which is a very powerful confession. I just want you to improve your mix techniques at this point so your ideas can go even harder.

One last section because it feels like I have to explain the composition/structure score. You have always been very experimental with structure, it's kind of a Newgrounds thing. Alot of artists here aren't writing to formats, formulas or popular expectations and it's inspiring to have that sandbox feeling when you're structuring a song. That last section powerfully comes out of nowhere though. In EDM you have something called "risers" which are sounds that help transition sections into each other. In post-production you could have used some guitar feedback or a cresendo to help change the vibe from section to section. At one point or another you loved Explosions In The Sky, DON'T LIE TO ME YOSH. YOU LOVED EXPLOSIONS. RECALL HOW THEY CRESENDO INTO POWERFUL CLIMAXES. WE BOTH KNOW, THOSE MOFOS HAVE THE BEST CRESENDOS D':

Ultimately, I know you have it in you to write some of the most romantically powerful indy vibes. This isn't your best work but I don't want that statement to hurt. Your mixing skills have plateaued for a long time, I share that issue in that I haven't looked up new production techniques in ages. We all have our comfort zones but I'd love to hear you punch through this invisible fidelity wall that's holding you back. You're my hero Yoshi, now eat this senzu bean so you can come back even stronger than ever. We're going to teach those anime villains a lesson when we show up to the next fight with muscles coming out of our muscles >:C

Yoshiii343 responds:

hey quarl, thanks for the review!

>"you're not in high school anymore"

true. i guess the music i make is just my way of grieving the care-free teenage life i never had or wished i had. but you know...could've, would've should've...

>"Your mixing skills have plateaued for a long time"

mixing has become such an afterthought for me that im legitimately considering outsourcing it.
coupled with the fact that i've stretched the free drum library the best i can just exacerbates the problem

the whole sudden section change is simply because i like to surprise my listeners >:)

i jest. i can't make that guitar feedback sound consistently enough, and even then, it feels really cliche to me unless if it's a part of a riff

/shrug

now im just making excuses
again, thanks for taking the time to write this. it means a lot.

[AIM - An enemy that is slightly more than dangerous]

DumbOctopus, An enemy that is slightly more than dangerous
Composition/Structure:9 Production:6 Emotion/Atmosphere:10 Art Relevance:2

You did good by picking a piece of pixel art that benefits your chiptune style. I kind of take small issue with the source of inspiration being just a bunch of concept pixel drawings for bosses when there are so many pixel works to choose from that would have better conveyed your music. This is relatively perfect MegaMan music from the NES days. I'd fully expect to hear it in a side-scrolling game from that era but to really drive home my issues with the relevance you should have considered including different sections for all the different bosses included in that image. If you had just gone with some regular old Megaman fan art, it would have better served the relevance by being more specific. The song feels like it would only suit one or two enemies from the source drawing. It's a great little jam but am I going to battle each enemy in that image with the same music? Is it static music for a boss rush, one after the other?

One thing I always say when I judge this contest: use the artist's description space to really drive home how the art inspired you. Doing so can really remove a judge's ability to claim that a song is uninspired. One lone sentence feels incredibly uninspired and dishonest, how did this art move you? Your music in particular isn't speaking for itself, though that's definitely the end goal. You only get a 2 there because I'm in a bind wondering if you made this song and then just picked a random pixel image from the art portal to try and wedge your way into the comp. After listening to some of your other tunes, it's all chiptune. I'm not convinced that you were at all inspired by the source material as opposed to just picking a random pixel thing to match a general vibe. Feel free to say otherwise, correct me.

Given the genre, another judge might be a little more forgiving of that mix down but I'm not going to be. It's a relatively small sound for contemporary gear in 2024. The original Gameboy had four sound channels: two square waves with adjustable duty, a programmable wave table, and a noise generator. I could imagine your sound coming from the tiny GameBoy factory diaphragms but my Sennheisers are THIRSTY for contemporary mix techniques, which you have no excuse of avoiding if your using modern equipment with good fidelity tools. Chiptune can be so much more than this. You can still make chiptune appear high fidelity with the right amplification, compressors in the right spots, or louder drums. This track would have sounded great in 1990 on my Gameboy but you're totally allowed to use all your contemporary tools to your advantage in 2024.

It looks like you have something over-limiting the sound on the master out forcing you to unnecessarily lose range from the available sound spectrum. Could just be the program if you're using an online service? Going by the old tech it actually sounds true to the time period. The visual artist used a method called famicube, which I looked up and it's a general list of rules to follow to make art in the style of certain game systems. If you did something similar, mentioning it in the artist's description could only have helped you. I don't even know what program you're using and as an old regular on Newgrounds, I like knowing what my peers are using. You have a space when you upload music to include your software and gear, you can make a template so it only takes a second of your time. I would have loved to know more about your ideas and what kind of technology is driving it, regardless of whether it's a DAW or a free online browser tool. Everyone has their tools and techniques...

The music itself is good and I'd like you to continue doing your thing which is why I'm handing out a 10 for Emotion/Atmosphere and a 9 for Composition/Structure (song could have been a little longer, 3 minutes for a contest track is i.m.o. bare minimum, hence I stole one point there). There's just a lot to have to consider for this competition and I'm not totally impressed with the presentation or convinced by the "inspiration." Do what you will with this information and keep making the music you love. My feedback may seem totally useless to you but I'd love to hear you try and expand your music language past chiptune to better inform a larger body of work that includes various genres, styles, and techniques. I'll post this review later but on 5/1/24 I wished you luck with the other judges and may you have wonderful days! Peace and love DumbOctopus <3

DumbOctopus responds:

Thanks for the review and pointing out some mistakes. I must admit: I should've explained how exactly this track is inspired by the art.
The only thing I totally disagree with is comparison to Mega Man. With all respect, this track sounds barely like Mega Man music for several reasons, and wouldn't fit at all in a Mega Man game.
Thanks again, even though I didn't win, I was happy to participate in this contest :D

[Night chaser]

Loved those breaks. Pads working the background like crashing waves coming and going, drums doing all the juggling. Short but beautiful ❤️

[Tunnel Vison]

Perf.

SchattenDnB responds:

Thank you so much for listening!

[Qshunt - Comfortably Numb (Vocal Mix)]

Super clean, loved that kit. Aggressive but chill, fun breaks, cool vocals, sick instruments, relaxing melodies. Pro :3

Qshunt responds:

Thanks Quarl!

[Black Sheep]

Lol, always loved the Brie Larson version. Cool remix :3