Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[You're so Cute]

Oof, loved this. Loved everything about it, pro take. Hella nice leads, the super saw pad playing the chord progressions was surprisingly strong and shared it's space with the lead elements creatively. The arrangement is full, good use of your stereo field, but it's not crowded at all. Everything has purpose. The groove is very real, surprising syncopation from everything "melodic" but the track still keeps that obvious 4/4 EDM pulse. Samples are all energetic, I think I've found a new favorite song. Great stuff Softable :)

softable responds:

OMG you are so kind...... really you made my day. Thank you so much!!!

[The Rains Have Ceased, And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To S]

I love uselessly long song titles. I still don't know the full title, even tried viewing it from your profile page. Still cuts off the full title. Priceless, don't change it. I like to include long song titles in the author's comments when this kind of thing happens but it always feels like a small defeat.

Love this Indy rock sound, hope to get something nice like this one day. Percussionist, my fiance just got a guitar and bass for the studio. Gotta train him to love stuff like this so we can jam as a team. This has that Explosions In The Sky waltz crescendo structure going on. Loved these climaxes. These guitar licks are so piff. Amazing music Bulrog!

popolamusic responds:

The full title is "The Rains Have Ceased And We Have Been Graced With Another Beautiful Day. But You Are Not Here To See It." Empire Empire song titles are usually very long video game quotes so I wanted to keep the theme going. And big Explosions in the Sky fan, so thank you!

[Domestic [2022 Mix]]

This has a subtle down tempo "Mouse On The Keys" vibe. If you're not familiar with them I'd recommend starting with their 2009 album An Anxious Object, some of your chord progressions feel like they came straight from that album. Worth a listen :)

I love the drums you've programmed by the way. Very sensitive snare programming. I really love how "live" the kit sounds. Great drum samples, well mixed. I got no complaints on the overall fidelity, this is a great mix down, perfect. I'd have sooner labeled this track under Jazz, Indy, or Blues than Synthwave but I honestly get a little miffed looking at the small selection of genres we got. We got chipstep but no shoegaze? What if someone wants to upload some do-wop and all they got is "other- miscellaneous" to pick from? I SAY WE RIOT IN THE STREETS, MY RESOLVE IS TRUE. I only have one pitch fork though, sorry. You'll need to sharpen your own pitch forks :0

Intro and outro was as pro as everything in between. I like it when artists respect the coda as much as the introduction. I'd have let that final tone fade out another two or five seconds, I could hear that steep automation volume drop SHAME ON YOU KETYRI /s

I have to admit that these melodies sounded very familiar, I wonder if I downloaded the original version? Couldn't find it anywhere but these melodies are incredibly romantic. A small part of me got mad that I couldn't find the original version because I swear this sounds so familiar. You owe it to yourself to listen to some mouse on the keys, I kept switching over to them while listening to this because I could have sworn I heard similar chord progressions and melodies in there but I'm pulling out my hair because it's the only band I'm aware of that even sounds remotely like this. I'm thinking I must have downloaded the original? Don't torture me like this, what happened to the original track? DID YOU CHANGE THE NAME? DELETED IT? HELP ME KETYRI WHAT'S GOING ON? WHY DO I FEEL LIKE I'VE HEARD THIS SONG BEFORE? Do I have to scour my favorites page by page while ctrl F'ing Ketyri just to scratch my itch? What happened to the first upload?

As soon as I know why this sounds familiar I can sleep peacefully. Assuage my paranoia. Help me sleep, Ketyri. Link me to the original so I can sleep at night Ketyri. I'm honestly not making an accusation, I might have listened to the original 500 times on a mixed cd. Chords might be popular with the kind of stuff I listen to. You need to do me a favor and listen to Mouse On The Keys Ketyri. Do it Ketyri. Go do it now D:

edit: I just listened to this on some new studio monitors and noticed those pads. If I recognized familiar chord progressions, I definitely didn't recognize that glassy pad. Those pads were very nice, drool :0-

junipersona responds:

just add me on discord at ket#3232 and all of your music dreams will come true. And yeah this was a drastic reshaping of an older track, also called Domestic. I took it down today, you probably heard it, The bass was a lot less subtle, the drums hurt the ears and were too upfront, the piano samples were lazily done, the mix overall was worse and I emphasized the pads less.

[Peace]

This music is wonderful. We're watching the news in Colorado. I respect your outward display of optimism for peace. Here's hoping for the best in a totally unprovoked war. Uncontroversial opinion right now: fuck Putin. I'm so sorry for you.

Thank you for sharing this, the instruments are very gentle and soothing. It's actually so moving I started crying but then that crash cymbal at 00:41 made me smile and laugh. Broke the spell a little. I associate cymbals to fall on certain beats, I play the drums. It's probably a bias. I'd have sooner expected a soft cymbal swell or some kettle drums, but I like getting taken by surprise. The best word I can call that crash is "distracting" but I think that the act of smiling and laughing still means I enjoyed myself. Thank you.

edit, damn I wasn't finished. Since I dissed that crash a little, I will say that I very deeply enjoyed that brief toy piano/drum kit jam. The whole track is so lovely.

Couplex responds:

Thanks for the nice words. The whole essence of this composition is divided into 2 parts, the first piano (slowly sad, and bells - fast and fun)

[Different Story]

Clean, smooth, relaxing. You got such nice style Casper. One of these days I'll have to download some lofi tone generators and make some white noise. I love how the distortion caused from playing a record has become an entire genre despite that being literally the worst aspect of vinyl records. What was once an annoyance from over-playing your favorite records is now a romantic fizzle that belongs to hip hop at large.

Sorry I don't follow rap/hip hop, are there contemporary acts that are really dipping into the lofi sound? Honestly, if I called myself a rapper in this day and age yet never touched a lofi track I'd probably hate myself D:

Casper responds:

Thanks for the review:)
I've noticed that in the hip hop industry even lofi beats lean more towards trap. I know cymatics have this problem with some of their drumkits, the snares sound like low-ish quality trap snares which doesn't make them lo-fi (i have about ~50 gigs of drumkit so I'd know lmao). Even the sad guitars I hear in a lot of tracks can be made into regular trap beats if you take away the detune and the various fx, without having that big of an impact to the overall song in my opinion. I remember in 2015 when ChilledCow (now the infamous LofiGirl YT channel/music label) started making the 24/7 livestreams and heavily popularized the genre. Nowdays It's hard to distinguish between what it was supposed to be and what it is now since It's so oversatured and a mix of other genres that now include vinyl crackle and tape saturation and labeling it as "lofi". It's something I struggle with since I do want to have my own style of it but can't help but feel that there's no use in even trying when the competition is 500 times bigger. Whenever I scroll through artist's news or on hip hop subreddits it's discouraging seeing all the new albums and new releases while my interpretation of this genre is in no way unique and sometimes I wonder if what i do is too effortless and too simple. Lol, kinda deviated from the topic there. I guess rappers hop on lofi beats because that's what the cool kids listen to these days and it's really easy to make in most cases, with free plugins being very high quality.

[Sailing Okeanos]

Gorgeous orchestrations, strings hella dank, perc nice and full. Electric guitar? Damn. I will be totally frank with you, the synth was the weakest thing but please forgive me for nit-picking that? I'm a little dubstep, you're a little baroque. We have our differences but I still love and respect you. This is such an amazingly strong piece. I could never get orchestral sounds and harmonies to work together this cleanly <3

That high buzzing arpeggio might have been too much stimulus? In your shoes I might have patched something much deeper, just a general tone. A bright synth like this might have decent bass textures you can bring forward with a distortion unit, an EQ, and a filter. With automation lanes on the filter's Freq & Res knobs, a very simple low tone saw synth can do so much more.

I'm so flipping biased. I guess another way of putting it would be that you can program a synth to sound like anything. An arpeggio like this sounds like an arp, I KNOW YOU, YOU WOULD NEVER BLEMISH YOUR HANDS BY PROGRAMMING AN ARP but it's totally ok if you do because those arp machines create classic retro video game sounds and other neat tones that are valuable. I'm so saturated on EDM at this point, a simple saw just doesn't blow me away.

The only reason I say all of this is because your one of my favorite composers here, and hearing some juicy synth work in your music would literally kill me. I would die. I would die six times.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Wow, thanks you for leaving such a long review!

I totally agree. It's a bit of an old song, and I didn't spend enough time making it. The later half of the song is most certainly more lazy than the intro, and it's also simple, yet the mixing isn't very good. It does have the right energy more or less, but there's just such a lack of finish on the details.

I hope you're doing well :)
I'm looking forward to when I have the time to make some new stuff for NG, or upload pieces from some of the projects I've worked on :D

I have a few other oldies to put up first though ;)

[In2 U]

Damn clean beatbox recording, sample or home made? Mixing that with the pop vibes are really inspired. Super clean, love this <3

BurningSexuality responds:

Sample, and thanks yo. Glad you like it.

[Jamuary 2nd 2022 - "Eden"]

Sounds are hella fresh, love hearing birds in music. There is a fun music conversation that revolves around how birds of different regions may have influenced tonality in human music and vice versa. Regardless of it's origins I love hearing birds make their way into music.

I'm glad I stopped in on this page to really listen to the full six minutes. I actually let it loop for a while. Love the perc, bass is nice and lush, pads are well done, chords inspired. Honestly, this track has a lot of love on it. As someone that builds stupid big drum kits, I love hearing people take a more gentle avenue. Always loved smashing my drum kits, it took me so long to learn how to drum with sensitivity. I got a lot of respect for percussion that vibes as well as this.

Just when I'm about to compliment something another wonderful element get's added to the funk. This is really inspired, I love it Vodou <3

TheVodouQueen responds:

Tysm!!! Glad you really enjoyed it! :3 ♡

[Jamuary 2022 (Day29) - What Comes Next]

LOL, brass instruments have such specific ranges. I was surprised by Spazkid at the Newgrounds office when he pulled out a trombone and was like "I can play six notes."That might be an exaggeration off my poor memory, I'm doing some reading right now on trombone and realizing experienced players have a greater range. I really wish I stuck with the sax in Grade school, it's one of my favorite instruments to hear played virtuously.

There's been some great music this month but I gotta hand it to you metalblinga, this track is so relaxing that this song jumps to the front of my list really quickly. It's just a chill bop. Personally, I like to get a drum loop going first, then will jam on top of it, then shave recordings down into separate parts. This definitely sounds like a track that was composed on top of a really good loop in a similar fashion. Killing it with that sax <3

metalblinga responds:

Thanks Quarl, I appreciate it! <3
Saxophone Is my favorite instrument to listen to, it's so soothing :)

[Alienlike (Ronatapes1)]

OUCH THIS IS SO GOOD. ABSOLUTE GRIME. I LOVE THESE MACHINES, CAN I CUDDLE THESE SYNTHS?

CryNN responds:

bwahahahahha