Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Trilogy II]

lol, your blog is pushing a track from 2016. Feels like yesterday, doesn't it? Perfect mix down. Gratuitous guitar solos. Sexy metal drums. Funny story, when I mix DNB, double peddle rhythms take up too much of the mix so I can't 32nd note a bass drum as well as you metal people do. 2:34 kicked in just as I was typing that and for a half second my brain wanted to caps lock. DOUBLE PEDDLE RHYTHM KILLING ME.

JDawg00100 responds:

Oh man I haven't listened to this one in forever! I miss doing these Trilogy songs. They are always my favorite to write, creativity overload. There's so many solos in the beginning haha. I'm surprised there is because I am definitely not a lead player lmao. I feel ya about the double bass, it can get a little crazy. I actually never use a snare and a bass drum hit at the same time when it's that fast.

But yeah I really like these Trilogy songs. My favorite is definitely Trilogy IV

[wtf2020]

Compared to Affliction, this song has a much better mix. All that nit picking on your other track goes out the window here. I have a personal problem with keeping up my quality from track to track. Sometimes I listen to something from one year ago that doesn't hold a candle up to my work from four prior. I'm guessing the tones missing in Affliction might have been a result of the stress from NGADM? I stopped competing many years back because I always felt that the pressure to try and be the best was useless. I'd put out work I wasn't proud of to just meet a deadline. Maybe I'm projecting my own insecurities onto Affliction?

This track is so dope. Killing it JD.

JDawg00100 responds:

And yeah i'm not gonna lie Affliction was a nightmare to finish for me. I started with the intro riff and for the next few days I just couldn't go anywhere with it. It's one of those riffs that you write it and maybe a month later you come back and make a song. So I just forced it and barely got done writing it before deadline I think. This song I let my ears rest a bit and started mixing later, which I don't really do enough.

Thanks for the review :)

[Affliction]

lol, I think every metal composer has started a track on that grainy filtered guitar at some point or another. Was listening to a chimp spanner track the other day like "yep. I've heard this filter before." It's always filthy though.

I'm wondering if this track could have used a little more bass compression to being those low tones forward. The guitar work is phenomenal which is why I'm noticing that lack of bass. It also helps that I'm wearing some expensive headphones :/

I wish I could get the same level of variety from my melodies and rhythms. I feel like most the time I just copy and past until I call it a day. Seriously great stuff JD. I love it when a track feels like it tells a story. This composition goes places <3

EDIT: I noticed that guitar at the intro was all the way to the left. I couldn't ignore it after that. I'm noticing a splash cymbal is hard panned too. I spend a lot of time panning but I usually don't pan something 100%. It creates an empty feeling because tones become unbalanced. It creates a lot of extra space in the mix but in a genre where your guitars are each creating unique tones, maybe go softer with that panning to help balance?

I don't know why I'm nit picking all this. Maybe those NGADM reviews below put me in this vibe. Let's just blame them. Your work is great as always :p

JDawg00100 responds:

Yeah for some reason I decided on keeping the bass low in the mix. It might have just been the way I recorded the guitars. I used IR responses instead of what I usually do. I haven't tried to go back to the way I recorded this song ever since, it's so much trouble and latency. I always try to record my guitars as tight as possible

As for panning I always pan hard left and right for the rhythm guitar, maybe have a fortifier rhythm in the middle (which I didn't in this song because I was essentially using two different tones for each panned guitar). That leaves me a lot of room for lead guitar, or my favorite harmony guitars. As for the drums I really don't mess with the panning of my vst. I'm so bad with mixing drums, I've barely got the parallel compression down

This NGADM I didn't really care an awful lot. Got pretty far by the skin of my teeth too. I've had some awful years, I stopped joining them after a few really bad years. So much so that the songs I made for those specific years I just really hate, I need to go back and listen to them after so long. But really I just wanted to join it to force myself to get back into making music, so that definitely did that for me.

Thanks for the review :)

[Brainzap]

Super tight brain dance kb. Fresh sounds, perfect mix. Wouldn't expect any less from you champ. That break down had me jazzing.

<3 <3

Kingbastard responds:

Thank you, Quarl. Much appreciated.

[The Pianist]

Short, to the point, clean. I think those drums could have used some tambs or rides to brighten up the track a little but otherwise the song really grooves. Why the fade out though? You could have looped the track a bit and given us something a little more substantial to listen to. I'm of the opinion that most drum and bass track can get everything across at a little over/under 3 minutes. Two minutes just felt awkward because it feels like your pulling out just as the song was getting to it's climax.

There's a reason people mention hating fade outs. It's not always a bad thing but for such a short track it sounded really premature :)

Edit: If this is going to be the only track you upload this year do us a solid and give us another minute in heaven <3

[Nintendo Switch Type Beat]

It's times like this I wish I still rocked Nintendo. This track is dope. Dandy kick triplets. Happy glitchy square lead. I see that ambient end is no longer just an experiment but a feature. Relaxing.

Seriously Protaganacho, this track is so cute and perfect <3

Edit: thanks for the video too. Seeing other people make music feels enriching. I usually just open my DAW and cry for a few minutes before opening Steam.

larrynachos responds:

It's really difficult to get the ball rolling on some tracks. If I don't get something nice sounding in the first half hour, I usually just quit. Luckily, the switch samples were plenty of inspiration!

Thank you for the review Quarl! I should have extended the actual beat part instead of immediately succumbing to making an ambient section and calling it a day, but I started getting self conscious about being on stream so I just wrapped it up lol (even though apparently the stream cut off before I finished the song loool).

Thanks again :)

[X3LL3N - Higher (FuzeNG RMX)]

Really warm vibes from this. Sassy happy melodies yo. I spent a few minutes nit picking the drum kit. Something felt off. At first that bass drum was too weak but when it goes to DNB it just pushed everything out of the way. Sidechain like "hi, I'm sidechaing." Do you layer your kick samples at all or is it just one phat sample? Maybe a second kick with more emphasis on mids/highs would make Quarl happy. Same with the snare actually. I know all you kids are into a ton of bass on your snares these days. It's cool, I get it. Punk rock dude. But give us older tone deaf people something to bite onto. I need some more mid/high from a snare because I listened to loud music when I was growing up. Feels.

Dynamics! It took me a few listens to realize those piano notes sound really static. Maybe give some life to that robo-piano with velocity changes. Emulating the velocity of a live piano drives me crazy. I don't know how to record dynamics proper in reason from my digital piano so I have to fiddle with numbers after the fact. IT SUCKS, kill me. I get lazy and automate the levels instead. It's not the same but I pretend it is.

Loved those snaps in the beginning. You're production style is tight. Clean. Pure. Keep doing you Fuzion <3

FuzionTech responds:

I used different kicks when making this. no I didnt stack them. I just placed them in an order. intro has that soft-like kick, the main has a hard hitting kick. and I forgot to post process the piano. my bad. and thank you for the comment

[Mirage]

Damn, this takes me back to my young days here on newgrounds. Fox Steven used to have a sound like this when he first started posting as StanSB. That wobbly synth melody, a two step drum pattern, and some pretty melodies. It's a classic sound. What program are you using to make your sounds in Kite? Let mew know if you'd like any feedback, I love giving people something to think about :D

ElderlyKite responds:

Thank you so much for commenting my song. I am using FL Studio. I am always open for feedback so I'll appreciate if you'll give me any!

[Moog 3]

Solid track! Super creative vibes I'm getting from this. Loved all the rhythmic flourishes and bass tricks. I can only nitpick the mix down. Things sound a little over compressed. I need some more dynamics :)

Bass overpowers but it's not so much the sub bass as just... everything. You got bass coming out of your bass. I also feel like I hear that low end heavy snare a lot from other producers. I'm getting a little fatigued from hearing that bassy snare. It might just be the pitch? I used to love hearing the bass snare, dunno what happened. I guess I'm just old and need higher freq noises to compensate for my hearing loss :C

After listening to this loop a few times I think I'm not hearing enough panning. Rig once taught me that panning creates the illusion that sounds are louder than they really are so the more you can pan things the more you can turn them down and create room in your mix. I can hear some panning going on with those hi hats but I feel like those aux instruments, pads, and sound effects could use more pan in a direction. Bass to the center, everything mid/high can get it's own place. Pay attention to which channel on your mixer is doing more work and pan an instrument or two to the opposite channel for that section of the song.

I like to send my lead synth through a splitter so I can dedicate it to two channels on my mixer, then I split it into opposite directions to make room for sub in the middle. My lead is usually a lot of mid/high.

Not sure if any of that made sense but I leave you with this: keep following your dreams! Believe in yourself! Stay in school! Don't do drugs.

dedsh4d responds:

Thanks for the response and the criticism! I don't typically think of panning in my mix (and I don't know why), but now that you point it out -- I do agree. I see myself missing the entire feature of panning within production fairly frequently on anything other than percussion. I'll definitely take your response into consideration and practice! Greatly appreciated!