Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[House V1b3S - Audition 2020]

Dank atmosphere and pads. Definitely has it's own funk. Has a bit of that house sound but is far enough removed that I can only agree, putting this under "dance" was a good move. I just looked up tutorials to see if Live 10 can sidechain. This track might groove a little harder if those bass kicks were side chaining some of those pads. Heck, I'd even include the snare signal into the sidechain. It costs nothing to play with it :D

CaptainBoomcake responds:

yeah there's sidechaining in live10 with the basic compressor, but the reason I didn't was because I didn't want it to be tooo punchy just so it could be relaxing at the same time as dancy if you get me, a lot of my other work has heavy sidechaining, I might side chain my pads to create more space when I do the vocal edit though :) watch this space, and thanks for the review appreciate it! Because the bass throb is definitely all encompassing and needs to be dealt with on my other edit!

[Rumble]

Tasty melodies and change ups. Really sexy elements love. Mix sounded pretty mono and flat but that's my only complaint. All those great elements would have sounded more crisp if they all had their own place in the field. Just have to get brave, play with panning, and trust your ears a little.

It's a well accepted rule of thumb to put your bass tones, bass drums, and snares towards the center field. You can play with everything else. I like to split my lead synths into two signals, route the two signals into a mixer, than pan the two channels hard to the left and right. I'll send hi-hats, tambs, bells, rides, and crash cymbals off to the sides where ever they sound best.

Panning creates the illusion that sounds are louder than they really are so you can pan something, then turn the level down on it to give room for other instruments! Go nuts Valent, would love to hear these dank melodies and elements in a crisper field :D

UmValent responds:

Somehow this slipped under my radar, but thank you so much for the review, Quarl!
I'll keep on working on stereo balancing and mixing in general.
:)

[XTC]

Damn, this has some solid demolition room vibes. Lifted podcast used to post tunes like this and I've missed the dark step vibes. Out of sheer curiosity, who are you listening to these days Demonicity? What inspires this sound? I need some new DNB artists.

Clean reese basses, clean drums, creative samples, tight synths. Great stuff :D

EDIT: yo, I was so sad when noisia announced they're disbanding.

Demonicity responds:

thanks!
i listen to various neurofunk and techstep artists and my biggest inspirations on DNB are mostly NOISIA, Prolix, Phace, Malux, Black Sun Empire and Aeph.
Also the mindset of organic expression to sound gives me kicks.
Not forgetting raves tho.

[The Fall that Broke Me]

A beauteous romantic hand slammer. I'm certain people will be making babies to this.

It's good to hear a new LSD track. I haven't noticed you in my feed in a little while and I was starting to wonder if adult life had you cucked. In all seriousness though you really do compose such lovely solo piano work. Never give up the dream :)

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

That'd be quite the peculiar baby-making experience!

That said, I'm glad you like the piece! I have indeed not been uploading much as of late. I was in the risk zone for adult life-cucking, but thankfully I clawed my way out. I shall do my best not to give up on the dream, and I hope you do the say! Thanks for the nice words :D

[submerged]

I never played FF X2. I gave into all the negative reviews despite loving the first one so much.

Great ambiance by the way. Those wet synths were a nice element. The piano was heartful. The vox pad was good low key structural glue.

I almost didn't even catch that delicate loop. I just happened to scroll up right after it did. Great work Troisnyx :D

Troisnyx responds:

I did play it; I am not too much of a fan of the ATB and the JRPG character tropes, but I love the costumes, the changes in scenery, landscape and events going on, and especially the soundtrack. It is now my second favourite FF soundtrack of all time right now, second only to FFXV.

So glad you enjoyed this so much <33333 The feeling of healing was what I hoped to impart from this.

[World Jazz Collective - Balkano]

This jam melted my face <3

sorohanro responds:

Thanks :)
We recorded 3 tunes, hopefully will have time to mix them and post them soon. Want the stem to make a remix?

[Safe to Say]

Newgrounds has been getting some really fierce future style artists lately. You kids are super impressive with these progressive up beat sounds. I'd have liked to hear that drum kit side chained to the front, the aux sounds get a little convoluted. The drum kit would help clean it all up. It's a minor nit pick, drum and bass nerds like the track to revolve around the drum kit so we get antsy when a drum kit doesn't punch to the front :p

DoctorNoSense responds:

Thanks for your feedback <3 I definetly write that down ^^

[QShunt - Purple Skies]

Lol, this has that old newgrounds dnb vibe you'd get here all the time but crisper. We used to get a lot of melodic genre bending DNB. I suppose we still do, I just immediately thought of Rawrthaas when I heard this. I think I was craving some ghost snare rhythms, some tambs, a fierce ride cymbal, and maybe a crisp saw tooth synth with some high portamento and long release but you can't always get what you want. Track bangs without my needy ass griping.

Those vox towards the end were a sexy touch. The piano through out the track activated my love organs. Nice full pad with equally full chords. That snare roll at 3:11 had a sexy experimental glitch vibe <3

Bonus points, TotalHarmonicControl is a really cool name :)

Qshunt responds:

Thanks for the kind words!

[AIM 2020 - O'Malley]

Nice swing 4/4 rhythms and the melodies grooved. Sounds were well mixed and compressed to impress. I can see some people griping over the power in that snare drum but hey... it's drum and bass. The kit is half the point. I realized years ago listening to Noisia and Evol Intent that a good drum kit can fill all of the space in the mix on it's own.

My only direction is that there might have been some more variety in the aux percussion. Some tamb triplets, a couple of splash cymbals, a vibraslap, maybe an orchestral bass drum swell. If this wasn't AIM I'd recommend some vocal samples of Bernard Shaw or Morgan Freeman saying something inspirational but hey, samples skirt the line of acceptability in comps.

Good luck Wolfie, I really love this sound <3

RosesWolf responds:

You're the first person on this site to call me by my nickname (Wolfy) since I joined this site, lol!

But that's all very valid feedback, and I'll definitely look into some vocal samples, that's a really neat idea! I'll definitely look into further auxiliary percussion.

I haven't seen anyone really complaining about the snare myself, and I think it's a relatively light snare for something like DnB, but that may just be my inexperience talking.

Thanks so much for the review, and I'm really glad you liked it!

P.S. Not sure if this counts, but all the high hats throughout the piece were played in 12th notes, so a sped up triplets :3