Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Aberrant Snowflake]

Beautiful, emotional, melodies. As a huge sap I'll admit this honestly jerked a couple tears. Don't let that go to your head. I'm super easy to jerk these days. You have good hands. Uh, I mean for playing the piano. Your hands are good at playing piano.

Punnuendo intended.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Little known fact: This composition was actually partially inspired by "Watching Winter Waterfalls". After learning to play your riff, I realized I haven't made many compositions where there isn't as much of a direct melody, as a repeated pattern of notes with the right hand. Even rhythmically, you may notice the similarities!

I'm glad you enjoyed this :)
Also, I do indeed like my hands. They're very useful when it comes to playing nice melodies indeed ^ ^

[Atom (Demon-Wolf Remix)]

If there's one negative thing to point out about this it's that atomic bomb sample. I've had friends make fun of atomic bomb samples right before I showed them one of my own tracks with an atomic bomb sample. I think the criticism he was getting at back then was that the idea is super cliche at this point. I kid you not, I felt really dumb showing him my newest song right after he said that. I've always noted atomic samples after that day. You'll hear them in heavy metal, drum and bass, hard styles... fuck man I wouldn't be surprised if Madonna or Lady Gaga decided to be edgy with an atomic sample.

That's basically all I gotta say crit wise. The whole track is super slick. Loved those arp melodies. Maybe those synths were a tad grainy but who am I to judge? I'm a fucking failure. For totes serious, don't listen to me. I'm always wrong.

DEM0NW0LF responds:

That escalated quickly

[Spooked-Dubstep |Evilex 2016| Enjoy]

Hey there. Cool melodies and ideas. Would have liked this with less reverb. I try not to be too critical in reviews but right off the bat I feel like there's way too much delay and reverb that never goes away. I feel like those synths could have sounded so much crisper but those effects slur the envelope. Why so much delay Evilex?

EvilexMusic responds:

I wanted it to have a very wispy vibe and I see what you are saying, I am working on a VIP version at the time... I will have to keep this in mind :)

[Very Tired]

Oh my god. I love this. Good job jamz. Glad I came back around to poke through some more of your musics. This made me super happy. Will 2017 see some more IDM? Please??? I loved the neurotic drum programming.

jambrother2 responds:

I honestly don't know, I don't seem to have much choice on when I'm capable of making certain music. Sometimes it just pours out of me so naturally, but then I can go months/years without being able to. I'm really at the mercy of whatever it is that inspires me. I go through phases where I can only really make one type of music.
I released an IDM album on my bandcamp not too long ago though.
https://youstolemydomain.bandcamp.com/album/void
Thanks for your support Quarl :)

[Waterfalls]

[2-5-2017] I've been travelling this week so I didn't get to tune into this until now. Holy shit I love that metal climax! You did a really awesome job with this J Dizzle. Love hearing this. Thanks for tossing me the shout out! I'll probably be showing people this for years to come.

edit[1/19/20], this track is still killing me. Thank you JDawg <3

JDawg00100 responds:

Thanks I'm glad you enjoyed it! :D

[EnV - Osiris (WIP)]

"Hey everyone, I wrote a drum and bass at 165 BPM to annoy the shit out of you all!"

Track was almost rad, just do me a huge favor and bump the bpm up just a tad. Like... 175 at least. 183 bpm if you want to make Quarl happy. 200 bpm for lols. If you were to up the bpm casually you'd be sitting on top of a Slam era Pendulum track.

Drums: I'd layer in a bass drum with some mid range. More punch. That kick is all bass right now. Also maybe a thin layer on top of the snare to crisp it up a little? Not a clap but something in that general frequency range. I might cut the envelope for the hi hats a little so there's not so much white noise coming from them. Replace that white noise with a shaker rhythm but keep that hi-hat rhythm in there. Maybe replace that 8/8 hi hat rhythm with some 16th notes to help add tension. Those bongos towards the end are sick.

I don't want to make you second guess anything by writing all this about the drums but the rhythm section is missing some kind of tension and all of this plays into that. I remember talking to you a ways back about doing drum and bass. Figured you wouldn't mind this kind of feedback.

I'm really loving the melodic vibes. That high note at 1:00 had some stank to it. Stank isn't a bad thing in DNB. I've seen people pull of killer tracks that were 95% stank and like 5% actual music. I don't know how they pulled it off. Put some more stank in this.

Good luck Envy. Hope life is treating you well :)

Envy responds:

Awesome advice! I'm not great at DnB so thanks for helping me out. TBH this started out as a 130bpm house track so it's tough to speed it up any more without losing my mind haha considering what I'm used to the melody sounding like. That also explains the kick. It was a big booming kick I was using for the house version I just shortened, hence why it's so bassy - I'll have to fix that. I definitely plan to add some more stank as well.

I actually purchased a "silk road" drum VST for most of the percs and I've been loving it so far. It was only like $20 too. Totally worth it.

Thanks for the in depth review! Hope all is well with you!

[Ambient Improv]

A good synth doesn't need a song to support it. You can just sit on a keyboard pressing one note over and over again without feeling dirty if you just like the tone. That said, the Roland looks like fun. I had to force myself to say that because I know it's a good synth. But for some Reason, years of looking at propellerhead synth stacks has this "I don't see anything special" side effect. Like calm down Quarl. It's a Roland, it's not like you know how to make a better analog bitch. Concede defeat.

Mem bank, arps, LFOs, effect knobs, sequencer... but I can't tell, is that a mod wheel or pitch shift? I would need at least four mod wheels and twenty pad controllers to justify making a purchase. I think I have to take a point off the score because I'm basically reviewing your synth and I found one little nuance to be upset about. Otherwise I'd have given you a 5/5.

Mich responds:

Hah. To be perfectly frank, the JP-8000 isn't a super amazing synth. For one thing, it's not even analog, it's "virtual analog" which is a fancy term to say "we made a digital synth with an interface to make it seem like an analog like you know and love". I've drooled over this one for years because of its trance legacy though, so when the right ebay deal + budget showed up I had to go for it. It's still pretty versatile, but it's not analog. I got my hands on a Korg Trinity for free, and while it's also a digital synth, it doesn't try to pretend to be analog; it's in all respects more powerful than the JP-8K, it's just a tad less straightforward to use (menu-diving, 90s touch screen, etc).

Anyway, I don't think Roland is particularly an innovator in the synth world at this point.

Waddayknow I ended up rambling about synths as well. Thanks for the review and such. <3

[I Couldn't Do Anything Quietly]

Such a cool piece. It's really easy to drone out to this. I just checked your page, noticed you've uploaded a lot of music to newgrounds. I've never seen your name before. I know this is going to sound super weird but I looked at your posting history. Not a lot going on there which might have led to my ignorance of you. NG users can be very communal when the proper rituals are followed. I also noticed this:

Response to: What you want to contribute to NG
Posted October 24th, 2013 in General
i make mediocre music

First of all, no you don't. Your music kicks ass. You didn't know what you were talking about in 2013. Being an artist is hard. It can feel like no one is listening sometimes but don't worry. I'm here now. This track reminds me of the music played while growing up. Jam sessions with old friends and family. This song is a reminder to me that so much music is just waiting to be heard. YOU ARE NOT MEDIOCRE, every artist blames themselves when people don't notice their hard work. Just keep doing it. I'm noticing you right now. This is me noticing you. I love your music.

jambrother2 responds:

This is incredibly kind, thank you so much.

[Sidereal [Oliver Vocaloid]]

I've never heard of vocaloid, looks like it was built primarily for Cubase. I guess I don't get to play with it :(

I loved the melodies and arrangement! The sound quality was pretty good too. I feel like that hard snare would have fit better in a dubstep track. Tone and texture might benefit from an extra snare. Maybe if there was a crispy clap or thin 909 layered on top of that first snare and leveled with it to fit? Dunno, just my own opinion.

Keep doing your thing Corroid! Love it.

Corroid responds:

Thank you for the review, I will follow your advice ;)

[You're Sweet, You're Cruel]

Synth wave. I had to look up the genre. I'm not super familiar but this sounds faithful so far as I can tell. I feel like music has gone full circle and the 80s is in again. I don't necessarily mind, the music sounds great!

backwardecho responds:

Thanks lady!^^ Yeah.. this was one of those where I wasn't precisely sure where to toss it, given the genre options offered here, but synthwave seemed close enough. Well, this song is decade old, but I totally agree that 80's sound has been making a comeback, which I don't mind either as a lot of electronic artists I like came from that era. =)