Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tainted Airwaves]

I sent you a message saying that Tainted Airwaves was the coolest thing I've heard so far this year. I maintain that opinion today, this song had so many awesome elements. The vocals were creatively affected and utilized, the drums had some sick fidelity and texture.

I'd check all your fidelity units though, there are one or two spots where the tones get a little too powerful (1:00 being a perfect example). I don't like to rely on a limiter but I always do. I soft clip leads and basses to avoid overpowering the mix. I might even be guilty of putting a limiter on the master out I'M SUCH A BRICK SLUT, WHAT EVEN IS 0 DB??? OLOLOLOLOLOL.

The above limiting trick might also help your four-to-the-floor section sound a little cleaner. That part in particular could use some limiting/more side-chaining but I smiled wide when it played because it was a really creative decision, which I respect immensely. If you love a genre or sound enough to randomly put it in the middle of a song... big balls. Juicy balls, massive... how do you even sit down?

larrynachos responds:

Thank you so much Quarl, I really appreciate that! It's a bit messy but I feel like I'm one step closer to making the kind of music I want to make.

I made the switch from limiting to soft clipping a year or two ago, but with this track I was having a lot of trouble balancing the mix. Lowering the volume to reasonable levels like -3/-6 completely deflated the sound, losing all of it's gusto. I had more elements sidechained but I kept turning them off because I couldn't get them to sound right. Cutting out frequencies for elements was constantly backfiring as well, so I decided to just embrace the jank. I do agree that some moments in the track suffer because of it though x.x The drums in the hardstyle section get a bit crunchy because I have like 3 kicks layered but I also had them all routed to a single mixer track cause I'm an actual psychopath.

The chiptune midsection is one of my favorite bits, but 3:23 is what I'm all about <3 I wonder if it would have been better with a wider bass, maybe a reese. I wish I allowed myself to tweak and change my songs after release, but for some reason once I've published a song it feels like that waveform is set in stone, and if I make any changes it never really hits the same in my brain.

Thanks so much for listening! I'm really glad you liked it!

[Thunder Strike]

So I wrote up a massive review detailing mix and fidelity techniques only for it to get lost/deleted when my tablet's cookies were refreshed for leaving the pop up review momentarily. LET'S TRY AGAIN, LIFE IS ALL ABOUT MISTAKES, WOOOOOOO D':

Great sound for only three hours work. Loved the cinematic vibe. That aux snare rhythm was tight, so was the hi-hat work. I felt like that trap snare was a little weak, it has good presence but you can fatten up that tone by layering another snare on top of it. I'd start by looking at a crisp 909 snare. Layering takes practice but it's such a potent force, all my tracks have 3-4 snares working together to make new snare tones. I like to merge each individual snare signal into one so that I can then send the merged signal into fidelity units to polish them all at the same time. I use Reason's Redrum, so before the merging the snares I have a little control in the drum machine over each individual sample's pitch, tone, and envelope. The "real" layering happens in the MIDI so if I want to I can use each snare sample simultaneously or individually for different parts of the song, combining them all only during the hook, drop, or chorus. Say in the intro if I need a weaker sound I can just use one or two snare layers. You can also do the same for kick drums and other instruments, layering is a powerful tool. I like to layer pianos behind synth patches sometimes...

The snare you're using might also sound alright with a little reverb on it. I like to use automation lanes to sparingly introduce reverb from time to time so it doesn't muddy up the mix unnecessarily or get too repetitive but your mix here is probably simple enough that you could get away with some constant snare reverb like some kind of 1980's pop act. Artist's choice, snares can ultimately sound however you want them to :p

Taking a second from fidelity technique just to say how much I loved those horns and strings. Orchestral elements in this track are tight. That guitar patch towards the end wasn't terrible but it's the instrument I think is the most out of place. Does your DAW have a choir? I'd try replacing that guitar patch with a breathy choir, transpose the melody over and maybe simplify it a little bit?

For such great orchestration I'm wondering where the orchestral drums are? Song is called thunder strike and you don't have a single drum swell or timpani? TIME TO GO BACK TO MUSIC SCHOOL TRASH-just kidding don't do that, music school is expensive. Instead, see if your DAW has some nice orch drums. Hook them up to a compressor/EQ, let them become the thunder. A lot of people over look how much atmosphere aux drums can create but something as simple as chimes or a vibraslap can go a long way. I love a good güiro, woodblocks are nice, or orchestral cymbals...

I think the sub bass could be pushed a little harder. I find a good distortion unit often does more to push tones than just using the fidelity tools, especially if it includes a lot of options and features (Reason's Scream distortion unit is my baby). Granted, if I'm slapping a distortion unit onto my bass I'm also using an EQ and a compressor to avoid clipping or tone issues. The compressor also give you the ability to control the bass patches' levels with a sidechain signal (watch a sidechain tutorial if you haven't, it's really easy when you get the hang of it.) Sidechaining just let's you control an instruments levels with another instrument's signal, the most common use applying the kick drum to momentarily duck the sub bass from the mix to get cleaner drum sounds. Sidechaining has other uses and applications but the most common use is for cleaner drums.

Impressive work from a three hour binge and I hope this review doesn't bother you at all. I want my music peers to sound as good as possible and that sometimes requires a little misunderstanding. I hope to see you around more TrashDragon, peace love unity respect <3

TrashDragon89 responds:

Thank you so much for the review! I am very new to music production so your advice is very helpful.

For the snare layering, I will definitely keep that in mind for my next track. I tried to layer some on this track, but couldn't find one that sounded right.

As for the electric guitar, I also agree it's out of place. It's just from a free pack on FLEX and was a last-minute addition. I might remake this song and take it in a different direction, and use some orchestral drums like you were talking about.

I also haven't even bothered to get in to sidechaining or better mixing yet, but will definitely look into it soon!

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this! I will definitely use it for my future projects :D

[🜋Solopsist]

Inventive engineering and ideas, loved the creativity. A little experimental for hip hop but it's not like we have an explosive range of genres to choose from on Newgrounds. I mean, having a trip-hop option would be nice. If this was a little more up tempo/breakbeat I'd say toss this into dnb. This has the same glitchy tone and energy as stuff like Aphex Twin's "Window Licker" or Squarepusher's "Dark Steering." Love what you're brewing up Wilieu!

Wilieu responds:

fucking love dark steering

[Kanban]

I really wanted this job. Can you do me a favor and check my resume again? I might have given you the modified work application that includes my criminal priors, my bad. Also, if I'm not getting the job I really want that dime bag I stapled to the resume back. That was supposed to be a bribe.

CaperCube responds:

It's nothing personal, I've got 114 other applicants to get through today and frankly, I didn't even look at your resume.
Listen, you seem like a good kid, so I'm gonna give you a head start to call an Uber before I get security to throw you out.

[Not Yet Awake]

Beautifully peaceful. Snug fit for a jrpg, I can imagine this in almost any game where the protagonist carries a sword larger than a sword is supposed to be. I could also hear it in any story driven piece of media. Love it Soro <3

sorohanro responds:

Now that I think of it, it sort of have that "sword larger than a sword is supposed to be" vibe.
Thanks for the review.

[Delighted Chatter]

Gold, absolute gold. Arps are lovely, sparse piano notes haunting, reverb and record pops sensual. Drums have a creative bop to them, great fidelity! Short track but short kings are kings too <3

Casper responds:

Thanks, quarl. This was a wip I had laying around not gonna lie, did that strat for like half of jamuary. Unfortunately I failed the challenge, fortunately i sleep a lot better now

[AnarchyJam]

Sounds like a really healthy shot at a genre you're not necessarily into and it's honestly better than some of the stuff I hear from people pursuing the genre passionately. Getting a perfect dnb mix down is hard, I've been at it for so long but I still have trouble with the genre. I actually get mad when I hear someone else's perfect nuero mix, it just shouldn't happen >:c

You're doing the Jamuary rush so I know you put what time you could into this but I'd love to hear you come back later to polish. Intro was noticeably bare-bones, you didn't waste anytime getting to the beat. Since the drums are the most important aspect of a DNB mix I'll point out a few things I noticed. I'd have panned the drum highs more. Not sure if you layer your kicks and snares at all or if you just use one sample each but fans of bass genres love hearing crisp unique sounds from the drums and more layers will help with that. Takes practice making your own drums but I usually use at least three snare samples together to make the main snare sound. From there you can pitch bend the samples, play with levels, route them into fidelity units, and send them back to the mix as one homogenous sound. I merge all my snare signals into one before sending them to the fidelity units. I hear a lot of producers now a days pitching up their snare drums. You used an old school snare sound but literally pitch it all the way up and you got that nu school tone all the kids like doing drugs to.

I get pretty weird with my synth modulations so this next section is opinion but I'd have loved to hear that reesy lead get pitch bent to higher highs every so often. It's a powerful lead but it could be a bit crisper occasionally, I often find using a good distortion unit to be more helpful than fidelity tools. I think the lead also has too much envelope release. I only automate the release up when I want to muddy up the mix or transition the song around. Usually my leads have absolutely no reverb, delay, or envelope release because they take up so much space. If I want a momentary burst of these things I can automate them in every so often, like adding a pinch of salt to a recipe.

I loved hearing this, got off to it even... but I'm not sure I want to spend all night writing up a crit. You should be proud of this track. It's always awesome to hear people branch out trying new things. I wasn't kidding when I said this sounds better than some of the neuro I hear from the upcoming and aspiring dnb people. Do another one <3

Arponax responds:

Dayum thanks for the feedback, ill see, i would like to get back to more tracks i made this month so maybe ill add this one too.

[Let the Wind Free the Leaves]

I love the sound. Those guitar melodies are lovely! Aux drums all sound like they have their own little panning settings and homes in the stereo field. I'd love to hear this with some rock & roll drums but I'm a drummer. I will always bias for harder drum sounds D:

Now for the tough part, you got a lot of work to do with fidelity tools. You need to play with some compressors, equalizers, and filters to get some pro mix quality! There's a lot of space you're not using in the mix, a maximizer can help you cut off sounds before they clip out, peak, and start causing distortion or muddiness.

Regardless of the genre you write, a compressor can help you boost stuff and should also give you a sidechain input to send drum signals to if you want to move things like bass momentarily out of the way. Sidechaining is just using the levels of one signal to control or mitigate levels on something else momentarily. Most people use kick drum or snare signals to control bass and pad levels. It's really noticeable in dance genres but it's a technique every producer can make use of regardless of their preferred genre. Pro technique and super easy to execute once you watch a tutorial :)

A compressor and a maximizer working in tandem can help you find a larger sound but the EQ can do all sorts of silly things too. You can boost and cut the best or worst tones from an instrument. You can also use automation lanes to get really weird modulations out of your EQ, I've been using an EQ with quick modulations on my snare drums to get really weird tones out of them :D

I don't see that you tagged any live instruments. Impressive if it's all digital, this sounds just like a really fluid live jam session, down to the not so good mix down that always comes with cheap one mic recording set ups. Something in particular that reminds me of the live recording is that constant white noise tone going on. I'm sure it's the cymbals making the noises but it kind of sounds like the wires on a snare drum resonating because of the guitar amps. Around 1:02 it's really obvious. I'd EQ the fuck out of that sound, maybe even tap a filter onto the instrument to aggressively make it disappear :p

Not sure I want to spend all day on this crit but I saw "feedback and critique appreciated" and figured I'd just go hard into the fidelity talk. At a certain age everyone needs to get the fidelity talk, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. We all fiddle or flirt with our fidelity tools at some point or another. I remember my first fidelity tool, high school prom. Garage Band broke my heart but it was the start of a long and happy relationship with sound production that I still enjoy decades later. Wear protection.

PixxlMan responds:

Thanks for your critique! Glad to finally get the 'fidelity talk' haha.
It's really cool to hear that you thought it sounded like it was played live, that was kinda my goal, I felt like a bit of an imposter making jazz fusion purely digitally lol.
You're right about the cymbals making that white noise, should have tamed that!
Thanks for all the tips and suggestions!

[Curse of The Wicca]

High energy drum and bass, sick breaks. There are certain things I could nit-pick but it's the rough edges that make dnb such a cool genre. This is making me want to throw down some breaks, I've been having creative issues with the dnb genre as of late but it all starts with a killer drum kit. Your kit is killing it PandaPanda :3

PandaThePanda responds:

Wowow! Thank you so mush! Yess there are a lot of problems or thing that I would probably do a bit different now. I remember being really happy with how it sounded so I got on a high after I finished the song and couldn't wait to release it so because of that I was a bit to fast with quality control hehe :p

[Daru925 - Who drank my coffee?!!]

Wonderfully epic Daru. Powerful percussion, high quality horns, massive strings. Only problem I had was the song length but there was so much variety that I didn't really care. This song went places. That section at 1:56 contained so much frothing rage. This track isn't a boss fight so much as a boss victory. I started writing up some weird scenario where your enemy is trapped under a burning pillar in a dojo while you monologue about a master plan but the action sequence @ 1:56 changed my vision up. Maybe the hero got out from under the burning pillar for one last hopeless sword bout. He totally loses though. This is season finale music and I'm gonna have to tune in next season to find out what happened to all the characters you didn't kill. The hero you're torturing is gonna be so bad ass in season 2. We might have to start out season 2 without the hero only to reveal half way through that the building collapsed under the stress of fire and the hero was swept up in a river, found by a small tribe of forest sprites, and nursed back to health? Or maybe you just decapitated him and his younger siblings are taking up the sword to avenge him? I don't know but this music deserves to kill every hero that fights against it :3

Daru925 responds:

Nice, i'm glad that the music evoked you all this. Very interesting. I like it.
I wanted the final chords to sound like victory, but then merge into uncertainity.
You know, for the sequel when evil returns^^