Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[AIM - The Mountain]

Hello SirQuebi, thanks for reaching out for a review. Congratulations on your third place by the way. Truth be told, I didn't have you as high up on my list as the other judges. There were a few cinematic and orchestral tracks submitted to the contest that I felt did a much better job at stoking my excitement. JordanKyser's "A Dreadful Space Journey" comes to mind. I had placed Seprix and Lucid Shadow Dreamers tracks higher on my list as well. At that point I might have told myself "the orchestral tracks are covered, time to vote on some underdogs." In a competition like this, standing out is important. For myself, there were a lot of tracks that sounded like this but did a better job with things like dynamics, mix, and pacing.

Your track stood out for certain, it 100% qualified to do justice to the art it was paired with. The wind samples gave this a very cold feeling. The instruments fit the mood and setting well. Those strings gave this an Eastern vibe. If I were to nit pick the instruments at all I'd start with the percussion. You could have brought the bass drums forward a bit to add some depth to the mix. If you could automate the levels on the bass drums so that they hit harder then dissipate faster, they'd have punched a little more. An EQ could have let you add emphasis to that bass, a compressor would have let you bring those tones forward a little without overpowering the mix, and some side chaining would have allowed you to drop the levels of the string instruments slightly on every bass drum hit. EDM jargon, sorry :C

The percussion problem is illustrated in how static the note velocities are. Orchestral percussionists have one note they can make. They can very things up dramatically with crescendo or decrescendo. I'd have gone more over the top with those values to create some very dynamic percussion. Some cymbal swells might have helped add tones to the mix as well.

The rhythms are all great. I'm not picking on you for your rhythm, just the tonality and dynamics. Electronic artists tend to max out tonal diversity using only a handful of instruments and a ton of EQing. Perhaps larger crescendoing would have helped this stand out for me. It's the mix down and dynamics that I think I'm paying the most critical attention to.

Oh hi, a cymbal at 2:56. I've listened to this track like 20 times now and I only just noticed that poor percussionist with her hammer over there doing nothing the entire time. I assume she could have also been playing something else but she really wanted to hit that cymbal more. It had a tonal quality missing from the majority of the track.

Your melodic choices are great. You write good melodies SQ.

My love, write MORE about your work. Especially in a contest like this, allow yourself to gush. You wrote three sentences. While I don't assume you already wrote a song before the contest and found a work of art to juxtapose it with, the more you say about what you put into the track the more of an influence you can have on the judges and their opinion. It can feel diheartening when it feels like no one is listening. Sometimes I write one emo sentence and upload my work, then I cry myself to sleep. Don't be like me. Show your passion for what you do. We artists have so much passion but we can't allow our work to speak for itself. Your competing with others who feel the same way you do. Stand out a little bit more by describing all the instrument choices, the pace of the track, the time you spent doing something. If you were particularly proud of something, let us know about it. Sometimes I'll say something along the lines of "I'm really proud of my ride cymbal rhythms in this," and the judges will be like "yes, that was the only thing I liked about your song also." Gush my love. Gush about your work because it is special...

Holy shit I'm late for work. This is why I don't automatically write reviews for everyone. I spent an hour here. If I didn't say it yet, I LOVED your work. It did stand out but it stood out in a competition full of artists that also stood out. Judging this competition was hard. I wish I had placed you a little higher up my list... (14th, sue me)... but I'm glad the other judges felt that you deserved the recognition here. The judging process can be so painful. Congratulations SQ... I'm late for work Sir, okay? Bye <3

EDIT: Now that I'm at work and safely off the highway I wanted to go back and edit a couple of sentences. Also to clarify, though you were placed 14th on my list, that was a hard decision to make. These comps aren't going to make anyone famous or get us paid. They are for fun and self improvement. I hope I didn't hurt your feelings SQ. I hope to see some more awesome work from you in the future :)

Quebi responds:

Thank you for your review. I'll definitely make it a point to write more about the pieces that I upload. Secondly, I do really need to focus on my percussion. It is a point that is consistently brought to my attention. Hearing your input helps direct me towards improving my percussion in the future.

[AIM - sursum=corda.EXFLOW_cls.PANDAEMONIUM::STORMFALL/.]

This was one of my favorite AIM tracks to judge. Doing some vocal work of my own these last five years has taught me to respect artists that use their voices as instruments. In many ways a vocalist is trapped in their own tones but the more you sing the more you expand your range and technique. You can accomplish so much with just your voice if you follow that creative vein. I'm also aware that you are an avid percussionist, you really put your soul into your work dearest.

I didn't take the time to read that essay you wrote about the track but I already knew that you put a serious passion into your compositions. You don't typically do something unintentionally which is a huge boon in a contest like this. It helps for a judge if you gush about your work and describe how it relates to everything. In fits of depression, sometimes I only write one sentence about a song and throw it up knowing no one will listen to it. This contest is not the place for a brief intro. In a contest like this, intention is everything. The judges have no way of telling if an artist just pulled a track out of their ass and picked a random work of art to display with it, or if they genunienly loved a work of art and tried to compose something original to it. The more information they can give about their work and why it relates to the art the more they help themselves here. You ummm... you wrote too much. I really hope someone read all of that information but again, it didn't hurt you at all. LET THE WORDS FLOW, ART IS FEELINGS, YES!! FEEL THE MUSIC <3 <3 <3

Let's talk about Chromatic Storm by Wuggynaut and why this track did glorious justice to that illustration. The drawing itself has an other worldly vibe. The choices of color were phenomenally potent. Is a world ending, or a new world being created? WHO KNOWS! Those colors were wonderfully represented in your arps. Something about those scales gave the song an etheral color to itself. There was a Final Fantasy X vibe I got from that, specifically Besaid village. Soft, pretty arps. I also loved the way you incorporated a second language into the track because it helped create a tone and a setting. It took me somewhere entirely unfamiliar. Language can create so many new emotions. Smartly done Tron.

The only thing I didn't entirely enjoy was the high pitched alien voices. Creating a quartet can be hard if you don't have a low register though. I use a loop station to create four tone melodies. I'm lucky I have a range that includes a baritone and can top with a falsetto, not everyone has range. It might have been worth trying to reach out to find a guy to hit a low register for that one part. Good luck finding men that will sing for you though, especially with language barriers. 4:30 had a lower tone I really liked... after going back I realized it might have been in that earlier part too...

BRING IT FORWARD. People love husky voices and that low pitch voice would have beefed that section up more than the high pitch voice. Bass is super important to a mix. People tend not to realize how many tones they can fit around a dominate bass line but the bass can really fill up a space and not take up too much priority in a mix.

I remember telling you once to lower the reverb on your voice so we can hear your sass vocals. This time around the reverb was perfect. Hell yeah.

Choice samples, thunder and rain. Was that a wet synth at the beginning? I always loved making water droplets with my synths. I think you get a slightly better tone with a sine wave synth. Use a quick chromatic octave jumping pitch bend, a short AF envelope, and some reverb for the perfect water droplets. Just saying, a good synth water droplet is something that can be perfected :)

If it was just a sample, boo.

Congratulations with your win Tron, all the judges placed you highly. You deserve this win. Keep doing things we love :D

Troisnyx responds:

Gosh, thanks for the thorough review and commentary! 💖

To answer some things you mentioned or asked—

1) I'm glad you heard the passion in the drums; it's been quite the vulnerability to me. Thank you.

2) When you get chance, simply for background purposes (and possibly future doujin related story purposes), please do read the essay — gosh, I can't believe I'm calling it such. There's so much in it that I would love to explain that might not just give context to this song, but also to a lot of Cosmocrystal related stuff.

3) I love the OST to Final Fantasy X. It's one of the first I've heard in detail. Perhaps the world / synth combination does bring FFX to mind, though it's certainly not what I had on the brain. 😅 The closest, in my mind, that this'd resemble, is that song that plays when you escape Macalania Temple and when you explore the first regions inside Sin.

4) I admit to the higher pitched throaty voices being less refined than they ought to be. That, I think, is down to poor breath control, something I feel I need work with. Those basses, I'm surprised I even reached them — I briefly reach G#2 in the lower parts of the choruses, "O let the rain etc." and that's my lowest note yet. I can't sustain it, I am ordinarily a mezzo soprano. Still, I'd be happy to train it more.

5) Water droplets in the beginning were a wet synth (specifically, the Droplets patch in Sytrus, so it is modifiable). I'll give your tips a spin though, for outside of vocals and instrument playing, I've never designed sounds before. I'd love to give it a shot!

I'd briefly heard from Jessie how highly you all placed me, and I was honestly surprised. Thanks so much once again.
Was granme ra chs hymmnos sos omnis yora! 💖

[Psychic]

Super original and unique! Cute samples, good breaks :)

KawaiSprite responds:

thank u mucho

[DV - Compression Calamity]

Gave this a quick listen at work on my phone. Glad I put off the full listen till I got home. Great stuff :)

When it comes to that "bricked" spectrogram there's good bricks and bad bricks. The sub bass seems to fill out those monochrome graphs so it's hard to tell visually what the fork is going on. Once you start sidechaining your sub bass out of the way it's like "lol, I have textures again."

la-yinn responds:

Don't tell anybody, but it's been over half a decade since I've sidechained anything so I've actually forgotten how to do it...

I should probably get on that, now that I think about it lmao. But I bought / rented Serum through Splice yesterday evening and now I'm literally hooked to music production again. Don't understand the synth at all yet, but my god.. Such powwa. Seriously, I replaced my weed addiction with a production addiction and I'm loving every second of it. Who knows, give it a year or so and I might start to produce some legit quality shit. Like I tossed my dreams into a trashcan years ago cause it wasn't working out and now those dreams are back and they're like all buff and shit and they wanna kick my ass in that dark alley over there.. ~ _~

[d1]

I just mentioned side chaining in my review on "test." This track is dope and almost perfect. It would really shine if you used the kick and snare drums to side chain the bass and pads out of the way. EDM genres revolve around the drums. If you can make the mix revolve around your drums, you'll note a huge groove improvement. Right now, your basses are over powering a little :)

I'd also layer another kick drum on top of the other to give it some flesh. It's so phat, give it a complimentary mid kick or a shorter envelope? Up the pitch on that hi hat, IMO.

Really this is sick jass. I feel like I focus so hard on mix quality but my own melodies and rhythms are uninspired. You're writing some dope beats and some killer melodies. Killer.

Jassummisko responds:

Hi again!
Not gonna lie, my mixing in general is pretty shit so I really appreciate any comments you give.
Having the mix revolve around the drums sounds like a great mixing philosophy to go by.
Thanks for the feedback!

[test]

:D

Drum and bass can be a hard genre to mix for. It's a damn good kit but it's missing a few tones. Layer some more? The sub sonic bass frequencies are drowning the drums a little. I'm not sure how hard you're sidechaining that bass but I'd max it so that the kit pops through the bass. Then I'd probably add some distortion on that low/mid frequency synth you have and try to EQ some more tones out of it. It's a mad low energy bass but even low energy bass lines can shine and punch.

Forget everything I just said and look up "Diplodocus" by Noisia. Try and make this track sound like that track. Note how everything in that track pops. It's all about those finer frequencies my love, sick test <3

Edit: layer more and compress everything, then lower all the channels, control z a bunch of times, twist a bunch of knobs, then compress that, then layer a few more times, then compress it again. Was this helpful?

Jassummisko responds:

Hi Quarl!
I fucking love Diplodocus. Easily one of my top 10 Drum n Bass tracks of all time.
I'll look back into it and see what I can do. Thanks for the feedback!

[DV - Unreal]

I just gave your 2013 tunes a listen. Someone clearly figured out how to compress and mix in those six years. This is some damn clean dnb. Really glitchy styles. This is like if Tipper and Spor had a baby but Squarepusher was the real father and Spor doesn't know so don't tell him, shhhhhh.

la-yinn responds:

Hands down the biggest compliment I've ever gotten. My ego is blushing, damnit! Thanks a bunch. :-)

[MM7 : The Sabotage (Quarl's Pipebomb Mix)]

Cool industrial vibes. Crunchy mix. I loved how dark that intro was. I kept reading "followers" as "flowers." Kind of awkward mistake to make but can I please pretend Mother Machine has a flower garden?

Anchorwind responds:

Hmm... I'll try to weave that in somehow. Stay tuned.

[MM7 : Her Initiation Ceremony]

Damn, this has some really old school jungle vibes. Around the Late 90's/turn of the millennium the DNB scene started seeing some really grimy almost industrial breaks from the Moving Shadow label. Moved up to 170-180 BPM this would fit right into a Timecode mix.

Aside from that, I just wanted to say that I'm loving the spook vibe from this. Cool vocal samples, good break beats, classy synths. Cool track you have here. Stay cool Anchor :)

[Tokyo Machine - SPOOKY (FractureClutter remake)]

Damn, great quality out of this. Loved those melodies and instruments. Boss double time change up towards the two minute mark <3 <3