Quarl's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Shiver]

lol, nuero is a hard genre to pull off. You did a really good job but might I suggest not relying on that deep skrillex snare everyone defaults to and instead looking for something a little grimier? You could always keep the original snare as a background layer and just raise that thin snare layer you already have a little more? That bass kick might have benefitted from slightly longer release? I'm nit picking, mix is always hard as fuck with nuero but this is pretty damn tight. That reese was nice and dirty :')

Reminded me of the old API & Paragon days. This was actually way cleaner than one of those old nuero tracks. I just went back on Paragon to listen to Airbass and Chaoz Devotion... holy shit has dnb changed since back then. This track puts those sleepy legends to shame. Good job Rav :D :D

Ravitex responds:

Oh wow, didn't expect to get a long review/comment/thing today. Thanks for the feedback! I admit tho, the snare kinda sucked here. The reason why I keep my kicks short tho is because they really mess with my sidechain. I do have some ideas on how to improve that in the future. Anyway just wait a few more days, there's another neuro track coming, just alot better, with more fitting drums.

[Jim's Theme - Piano]

Stop writing goodly. Soon it's going to look weird when half of my favorite tracks are by you and I'll have to be honest with myself about whether or not I'm stalking you :\

Half star minus because I feel like you could be composing arrangements with additional instruments just as fucking dope as this. You have so much talent as a piano composer. Why not ask someone like Mihai Sorohan if he'd be interested in doing some additional instrumentation for something like this? Why not ask him if he'd perform for this piece in particular? You can tell him I suggested it. He's very nice and at the very least would be too busy to say yes but I'd be willing to bet he'd still be down to try. I have a lot of respect for him :)

Don't let my suggestions slow you down at all. Being in a comfortable creative mode where the music just flows is something I envy. Just keep pumping out stuff and you'll be dead before you know it because life is really short but at the very least you'll have made a ton of radical stuff :'0

Sorry this review got spooky right there at the end.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Haha, I actually recorded this more than a month ago, so my pace isn't that fast. I intend to compose something new real soon though! Thanks a ton for the compliments ;)

I actually have a few collaborations brewing right now, but they're on slow-cooking mode :'D
Most of them won't use many real instruments, but some of them will include song! A few of them are covers, and a couple are originals. It'll still take a while to get them anywhere ready for uploading, I think :p
As for a collab where I play the piano, and someone else actually plays another instrument for the track, I think that's something I have yet to do (IRL band playing and such obv doesn't count, as I've done that a lot)! It's a cool suggestion. That said, I think I'm ready to leave this song be, and move to newer projects for now :)

I do know of sorohanro! I haven't personally exchanged too many words with him, but if I end up making a similarly themed piece in the future, I might steal your idea and contact him! :D

I still need to cover "WWW" for you. I find myself playing that riff a few times a week xD
If I end up making an actual piano cover, is that something I could upload to youtube/NG?

I can see where you're coming from with that philosophy, heh. I have a blog where I occasionally write some interesting thoughts as well, so I don't find it to be that creepy ;)

Thanks!

[Get Into It]

This was some super clean liquid dnb. Drums sounded a little crunchy, maybe strap a filter or EQ on them and lightly shave off some of those higher frequencies a little? IMO.

Melodies and arps were beautiful. Reese synth was nice. A little too conservative for a nuero reese but perfect for liquid. Those female vox were a great touch too. Reminded me of Ben Sage's old dnb tunes. Check out this track by Ben Sage & Subsonic and tell me you don't like this :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARzboHt1Gwo

MavMusic responds:

Thanks for the tips! I do agree that the drums sounded a little too loud and crunchy, which is my fault. and i listened to the track and it sounds great. It could help me with a new song idea but i wont copy off of it xD Anyways, thanks for the tips and feedback, I appreciate it.

[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

[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