Dragonov7733's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[When Eat Donut (Remaster)]

Sounds pretty great! I think you achieved just the right amount of reverb in this one. In addition, you made a very compelling melody with some nicely selected chords to back them up.

There are only a few issues that I find in this piece, and they have to do with the clarinet at the end. The resonance of the instrument just feels a little bit off; it just sounds too squeaky to me. Perhaps you could use some eq work or a change in instrument to have it blend better with the darker overtones of your piano/strings. It would also help to have a small indication of a new verse coming into that part (ex: riser), to make the progression feel more natural.

Edit: I see that you have updated the piece. It's much better now.

RealBlargMaster responds:

Oh hey I updated it

Edit 2: Thanks

[Virtue]

I find the melody you have in particular to be quite good for the majority of the song. It gives me a sense of wonder and reconciliation.
Listening to this song makes me imagine that I'm in the credits of an rpg, having slain the final boss and having justice prevail.
It's pretty entertaining to say the least.

BUT there are a considerable amount of issues to this song that, if fixed, would make it strong:
- The final note at the end of the song fails to give me a sense of completion. You made your final note one step above the base note of your key. The note directly above your base commonly gives a feeling of tension, with an anticipated release. There was no release, and to me that was unsatisfying.

- From 0:00 to 0:24 I couldn't really track the direction you were going with the chord progression there. Though I do appreciate the boldness of some chords being cacophonic to instantiate conflict.

The drums in the mix lack the oomph I'm looking for, they seem a bit distant from the song for most of the time.
Some solutions...
- Consider using compression on your kick and snare to reduce the dynamic range of their sounds, and boost the volume. Doing this gives your kick and snare presence throughout the entire hit, instead of just trailing off immediately after the initial attack.

- Sidechaining could help your mix considerably. If you don't know what sidechaining is (not assuming this it's just to help if you don't), its the process of routing your instrument/s (usually drums) to the sounds of the mix, and then having the instrument/s cancel out some frequencies when they play. This gives your instrument/s an opportunity to "cut" through the mix properly.

- I HIGHLY RECOMMEND USING TDR NOVA FOR THIS AND NOT FRUITY LIMITER OR SOMETHING. TDR Nova (free by the way) has a system that allows you to specifically target which frequencies to cancel out in the mix upon input, and this is necessary. Sidechaining via Fruity Limiter or other tools are often suboptimal because they reduce the entire volume of the mix instead of certain frequencies. Therefore you "cancel" out things to make room instead of removing only what you need.

Some frequencies in your basses need to be boosted, mostly in the low-mid range. I just want to feel the presence of them more so I can really feel the drive of the baseline complimenting the tune.

This song has great potential, it just needs to be delivered through some hard work and grit.

RealBlargMaster responds:

I really thank you for this INCREDIBLY in-depth review and I'll address each part of this review in order.

- It's supposed to loop but I forgot to cut the ending instead of leaving the remainder.

- The progression was very heavily inspired by DM Dokuro and Hopes and Dreams, since I'd been working on Toby's music a lot recently and I wanted to try their kind of chords. This was never meant to be a completely complete song, as none of mine are fully complete. I have the trial version so I can only work on them for around 4 hours at a time before I get too tired, since I can't save them.

- I used simply FPC drums for the drums which is pretty stupid. I don't do that anymore, though, I use real samples now. Writing original drumlines are hard and I really don't want to use loops to challenge myself.

- Yes, I know what sidechaining is, I've only tried using it once, though and I couldn't figure it out to be completely honest, I'm still a beginner with most of FL Studio.

- I will check that out (And probably download it, for I'll need all the help I can get.

[NEStalgia]

Interesting piece you have here, I'd definitely say that this gives me NES vibes.

I really like what the drop that you did at 2:08, with the synth going up and down in the mix to put you in a sort of trance with a rumbling bass trudging forward with each hit -I find it sort of enthralling to say the least-.

I have only a few complaints:
- The certain parts of the mix get a little repetitive, notably the off-beat hits since there is no instance where you take a break from it (other than the start/end).
- Some of the higher frequencies feel a little too harsh, I would suggest removing the grittiness of it to make the song more pleasant to listen to.

Overall its a nice song with a decent mix, especially when considering the context of this being experimental music.

Force64 responds:

Thanks man, i was trying to make new thing with old stuff, I'm learning still, so your comment is clever to me, I will try to improve those complaints that you give me, thanks again :D

[Alexantoro49-Windy Swingy]

Welp, I can't help but rip apart this song with this review, because there is so much wrong with it.
(Sorry if I hurt your feelings but I'm just trying to help in this review,)

Honestly not sure if this is a joke song or a valid attempt at creating music. : /
We'll go over the positives first anyway.

Positives:

The best thing I can give to you for this track is that it has decent chord progression and has many well placed melodies and bass-lines in certain places. A lot of them add a pretty decent atmosphere to what you did here.

I like the vocal chopping you did around 2:09 - 3:00 but the little "awoo" you put there really disrupts the mix in a unsatisfying way, and the "ois" that are there are too loud to fit properly within the little drop you have here.

The sub that you use in the sound is implemented pretty nicely, and sometimes it gives certain parts of the song some depth.

Negatives:

I might as well address the elephants in the room here.
The mixing you have done here is really, really poor.
When you assembled all of the instruments together to your piece its like you forgot that too high volume in the master channel results in a really ugly form of distortion.
(Be sure to manage the level of your master and the instruments in order to have a pleasant, clearer sound)

The worst example is within 4:05, its so distorted and the frequencies are so poorly balanced that all I can hear is a ugly mashup of noise near the lower end.

Your vocal samples that you provided with your voice severely need some sort of autotune/modification to not sound horribly awkward with what you have. They almost ruin what you have at the beginning of the sound, which has some decent progression on its own.

Your transition into 4:02 to 4:05 is extremely awkward and the riser you put there is way too quick to compensate. You transition from a cheerful game-ish themed area to a really, REALLY ODD part. It doesn't blend at all with what is going on before it and overall is made much less appealing to the ears with the vocal additions.

You have a pretty poor use of reverb throughout many portions of the song, at times it makes the song have less of an atmosphere due to layers of it stacking up too quickly, causing everything in it to sound muddy. Remember that the point of reverb is to add depth to your instruments, making some seem farther away than others. Here you add it to almost everything and add too much.

Theres very little separation between the instruments, as in all your instruments seem to play with lower frequencies which kinda hurts the sub-bass you are using as well.

I have moderate suspicions that you used a variety of presets from certain generators, but thats for another review, as there's much more wrong here than just that.

D73.

Force64 responds:

Well, I'm responsing this too late :p

Always there are problems with me if you ask about sound mix, it's my biggest weakness...
And this review doesn't hurt me, but this help me so much for to try to improve more.

Anyways, thanks for your review :3