Noisysundae's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[National Coming Out Day 2020]

If only Y was a tone...

TheBetterAudioPortal responds:

at least we have A and F and G

[{0.eb} (chill remix)]

Boosting the kick and the bass for the choruses is very weird for me. I prefer the overall leveling in the softer parts (around 1 minute mark to be exact). Excluding that, the mix is solid. The composition is good enough to do its job. Doesn't really grow on me tbh, but Ambient stuff isn't about catchy melodies, most of the time.

Since my points are rather subjective, I'm not gonna take any score away.

NoStereo responds:

Thanks for listening! To be honest I'm not sure if it even belongs in ambient, NG just doesn't have the right category I think ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Thanks for your opinion on the bass, I'll keep that in mind next time and see if I can strike a better balance there.

[Reflections (chillstep)]

Feels a bit empty even on the ambient part. Adding a pad will definitely help. And I think this can use a more complex drum beat, partly to fill the mix, and still be Chillstep, like you did usually with DnB stuff. I have no other complaints.

Dang, the R4R thread is way too cold.

5TanLey responds:

yup I could add something more, thanks for the tips :)

[[Future Drum and Bass] Delete - GoldHeartSenpai]

Saw this thing from the front page, congrats!

From what I hear through my skimming on all of your tracks (This track here is the latest by the time I wrote this review.), I can say it has better mastering than your other tracks. We got the right amount of compression here. It doesn't feel too overcompressed (for a victim of the loudness war, at least). The track is very well mixed overall. Only two nitpicks from me (and that means it might be just me) is the lead saw is a bit too loud on treble, and perhaps bring the drums and that square arp in the background a little more to the front, I think. The key shift on the second half was a cheap, yet brilliant choice (it worked, really) since I can feel that it will be very repetitive otherwise.

I'm not following you yet. But rest assured, I'm gonna listen to your future tracks, and I'll follow you if you can make me click that favorite button again. For now, well done, and definitely, keep it up. ;)

Febbs responds:

Thank you! I will continue to Improve, and thanks for the Helpful Review!

[Safehouse]

There was 'Orbital Decay', and now this?

Darker DnBs (no matter the genres) are my favorite. I wish the portal had more stuff like this. My only complaint is I think the drums could have some more patterns, despite the fact that this is not breakcore. Anyway, the wobbles from neurobass are enough at this point.

Who needs dubstep when you have many good ol' dirty genres already. Personally, this kind of music makes me feel a lot more badass when playing a video game. And I definitely agree with PolarTrance here, can I have it? :O

DEM0NW0LF responds:

Trust me, it only gets darker. Thank you for reviewing.

[Journey]

Hmmm...I agree that it's repetitive. It might be because of not having enough melodies put into it combined with its length. Variety of sounds and compositions is a key to making a slower piece. One of my ways to keep music from being too repetitive (especially when I run out of ideas lol) is randomly changing some notes within arpeggios. I can't explain it clearly by text, but it's something like this. Not a spam, though, I assure you.

https://instaud.io/private/3e5e6aee880f85cd2d297598cc14d6e645ff770d

You can reuse what you did with the decay of the sine synth in the beginning too. Other than that, try adding more instruments. In this case, adding a pad could do the work. About the mastering, I'll pass because I'm listening through a pair of cheap in-ears right now. (Have monitor headphones but my place is too hot even in the morning. :S) Anyway, I feel like the kick can be louder. And I think you've used side chaining on the beckground synth in 1:37, right? It's actually not a problem, but if you want more presence of the kick without interfering others', compression only in the lows to lower-mids might do. ;)

If anything is wrong in this review. Just correct it. I know I'm not perfect. :P
Keep making more, mate. Practice makes perfect!

PixelEaterMusic responds:

Thanks for the review! I actually wanted the kick to be less present in this song, and when I used the compression it sounded interesting so I kept it. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to hear your thoughts on the mixing too, whenever you get the chance, I (mostly) know what I'm doing with sound design and music theory, but I just recently heard about mixing and I gave it a shot, if you could tell me some weak points or strong points in my mix I would be ecstatic!

[One night away]

So much better than what I've reviewed last time if you remember me. :)

I might be biased because I love the intro and the part at 2:45 a lot. XD
Before going into others. Let me explain why I love it.
• Good use of velocity of each notes. It really makes the piece more dynamic. Keep this in mind every single time you do something with piano!
• The instruments are not too loud and suit the atmosphere very well.
• I love it!
• etc.

The progressions are great and I like it. However, I think the sound design doesn't go with the mood. That synth doesn't work well when it takes the lead. You can keep that synth in the background like in my favorite parts and let the piano takes all the front. And more importantly, don't push all the velocities to the max. You may raise the volume a bit (as I don't find the piano after the chorus relaxing as it should be), but since the velocity is not equal volume, don't push it to 100%. Doing this is even worse when combined with heavy use of reverb effects.

I'm not an expert on this, but the melodies could have some more works, too. For example, the arpeggio on the piano can be used in the chorus instead of straight chord hits, or used 'em both!

The best choice to go on this piece will be liquid DnB imo because of its BPM. Ambient is usually very slow or doesn't contain any percussion at all. So, rule No.1 of DnB, make the drums stand out, but not in-your-face. Instruments in this piece obstruct them and make them too soft, especially in lower mids to bass. give the volume on those to your drums. Not the hihats, though.

That's all of it. I might be missing something, but this was all I can think of and write. If there's anything wrong with this review, correct it as you like. I know I'm not good at criticizing things, but don't judge my grammer plz. :P

BlastBeats responds:

Luckiest R4R review ever! And yes I remember you too!

The part you liked the most, is the part I started this project off with! Hence it's the part I listened to the most, and tweaked the most. I'm really glad you liked that.

Your ears are good. My velocities were 100%. Like... how did you hear that? It's a good point. I'll take it into account (because I can't live without my piano). I made that supersaw lead to get force some call and response in this one. I don't really know what to do with it. It reminded me of the Lost Cosmonaut series, where I made the majority of my music for. Biased by nostalgia? I dunno...

An arp in the chorus. That seems like an awesome idea. I have some time before the deadline of the NGAUC. If I get it working, why not? I'm learning music theory, so I intend to improve my melodies too.

Good point, I shall change the genre name. Last time I made DnB, my drums were too loud, so I didn't want to do that this time. Now they're too soft. Mixing is tedious!

There is nothing wrong with this review at all! I cannot but appreciate it. It's in-depth and very helpful. Thanks a ton! And I will judge your grammar: No errors detected

[Revolution]

Dude, were you pumping up your bass 'n' kick over the zero? You let the compressor did too much work. Listen to around 3:50 to see what I mean. Most of the time, lowering everything else and gaining them later is great.

The loudness between the louder and the quieter parts is too different that I have no idea which way I should turn my knob. (I listen to music at a quieter level than most people) Perhaps it's because of the first thing I've mentioned. The ride cymbal like in 1:36 is way too loud. This might be the reverb causing this problem.

Lastly, overusing of resonance, especially when you use the filter on the master channel. Use it only a bit unless you're going to do that with other effects on top of it.

Was going to give this 2.5 but +0.5 because the melodies themselves have a potential to be decent. When you're better at mastering, consider making a remade version of this. Need much much more impact on the climax, from what I imagine. Keep at it. Practice makes perfect.

LaserVision responds:

The mastering is certainly the hardest part in music composing. This was also made in GB for iOS and its much more limited than FL Ive discovered. I will for sure take your tips into consideration in the future. I do also have plans to remake this in the future, Im currently learning FL.

Greatly appreciate the detailed review!

[Learn To Fly]

Major problem is your kick! It's too much and it makes the limiter mute anything else to make room for it. If you were making this on a bassy headphones, I recommend comparing to other EDM songs you like to check if you're doing it right until your ears are precise enough to do the mastering by your own. For example, in 0:50, the guitar sounds weird because some notes there are obscured by your op'd kicks. Just decrease its pre-gain alone make the whole piece better, trust me.

Other things are the drum pattern sounds too repetitive, either adding some SFXs, additional drums or decorating the pattern with lower velocity notes. I don't know much about composition so I'll pass.

littlelamp100 responds:

thank you for the review. i actually turned the limiter off, but i manually used volume envelopes to make the kick stand out... i probably shouldn't have. :p i'm new to fl studio, so i know pretty much nothing about mastering.

also yeah the drums are pretty repetitive; one of the reasons this is so short is that i was sorta running out of inspiration. sorry you didn't really like it, but thanks for the feedback :)

[Floydian]

Some parts on the lead synth are a bit off, like around 1:00 and 5:00. The latter is more noticeable since it was played with drums. I think the biggest problem is about recording/mastering. Too much reverb on drums too, especially the toms. If you've used some sort of stereo separator, you've overdone it. Anyway, I like the use of noise, reverse effects in this piece.

Astrolope responds:

Thanks for the review!
I don't know what you mean by the synth being "off", you mean in terms of the rhythm? I kinda wanted the melody to have a feeling of looseness to it, if that makes sense :)
And actually there is no reverb on the drums, it just sounds that way because I only had 1 microphone at the time unfortunately, so I wasn't really able to get a dry punchy sound (unless i were to multi-track the whole kit, of course.)