Hikari's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Not Over Yet]

Alright, lets press play and see what happens.

Starting off with a nice filters piano and a sweep, nice and relaxing. I especially love how the sweep is on a pumping sidechain. I'm not sure if I'm a fan of the buzz lead, sounds like nexus to me, but then again It could just be that generic. I'm not saying that generic is bad or anything, it does have its purpose but I digress. When the kick drops in it feels like it doesn't have a lot of body in the mix, try compressing it if you haven't already. I'm not sure how you set up your signal path in your mixer but I would say try sidechaining more. Another thing you could do is try cutting 500htz on your kick and adding a bit of distortion. So I'm about a minute in and honestly I'm a bit sad because there was no real build up. You just dropped what seems to be the main melody. Well see I suppose. OH, before I forget try using your snare as a light sidechian source to get it to cut through the mix. The sliding lead is neat although a variation would have been nice. Around a minute forty the song is quite muddy, I think this is due to too much going on at once in the song in the same frequency range. Oh when that rough lead drops in I love it, so much attitude. I've been noticing volume fluctuation through out the track. This could be due to heavy compression on the master buss. Three minutes in and I'm kind of getting bored, all of these sounds are quite flat. You should add more effects and percussion. The outro comes a bit late. I think that the song could have been shorter, especially with the lack of variation in the melodies. Finally as the song concludes you fade the piano back in, nice touch.

Hmm..

If your not doing this already I would suggest slapping a hp filter on everything that isnt your kick or your bass around 120htz to leave room for the sub. I would also adjust the levels of your drums in the mix. You know what actually, I figured out what was bugging me. Try using more hihat sounds then just the 909 open. This would make your track a lot more interesting. Also try adding more drum sounds because just a kick, 909 hihat, and snare just doesn't work these days. Especially now that we have access to tuns of free sounds all over the internet. Next time, try to build more suspense in your track before you drop your main melody so that it hits harder. I would say at least a 16 bar 'intro' then the snare role, then boom drop the lead and the bass.

Don't get me wrong, I say this all with love.

{Review Request Club}

Dylnmatrix responds:

Thanks for the detailed and very helpful review. I may not understand some of the stuff you're talking about, but I'm going to figure it all out...eventually.

Yeah, the main lead is a preset from Nexus. It's going to be quite a while until I figure out how to properly make my own leads and synths.

As for the percussion...this is pretty much all I got ^^;;. Sure I've got the other samples that come with FL, but...I just don't feel them as much. And I don't want to slice and mix up the loops FL gives you, just because of me being paranoid about copyright. Even with the free sounds available over the internet. I'll see what I can do though!

It's a shame you got bored throughout the track. But hey, not everyone's going to enjoy my music like I want them to. I see what you mean on there not being much melodic variation. I did try to vary it with the 7 melodies, 2 of them being a lot simpler than the rest. And 7 minutes is a long length for a track, even for me.

And thanks for the tip about dropping the main melody.

Thanks again for this huge and oh so very helpful review. I am definitely taking this to heart.

[-[PK]- Phono Band ~]

Ok, so I'm going to review this as I hear it.

I like the atmosphere... ok so I'm at 20 seconds in and that pluck seems too loud especially when compared to the next placment of it. Around 30 seconds in the progression seems to be a bit dissonant. ok so I just hit 1:00 neet break down but the songs kind of lacking an energy and movement I would love. Ok I'm at 2:00 and you just dropped the arp, you have me in suspended space, where are you going to take me? 2:30 I love this but you should have had like a noise sweep or a snare role to really bring the suspense, that way the impact of the next part would have been much greater. The lead around 3:15 seems really stale, maybe a chorus and some more reverb would help. Actually this whole song feels rather dry. I think you need to do some eq tweaks because sounds tend to clash. Are you removing the frequencies you don't need on everything? That last hit would have been real fresh with some panning and more reverb. All in all I give it a 8/10. Keep up the great work.

[[Jay T] - Poundcake!]

Your drums are not cutting through the track like I would like, try some subtle sidechaining using your snare and kick and maybe bringing down the lead bass.

[Chilled 1]

This and the endless handbag.. the sound of negrounds..

[Earthbound-PK on a Pink Cloud]

Very interesting. I like that drone at the intro. It almost stood the test of time.

[Deep Space]

I love the sound design here. How did you make that pad?

[Ghetto Graveyard]

its a shame this doesnt loop right..

[Muddle.]

you submitid this in the past

[Super Slumber Party]

Needs more cowbell.