TaintedLogic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rupert]

The intro isn’t bad, but the chord progression here is cliche. The glitchy content at :08 was a good idea, but you could’ve mixed it in a lot better, with cleaner, more dynamic white noise and fewer harsh frequencies in that mid-range bass. Also, you seem to be lacking smooth transitions at several points in this piece, such as :09, :26, :34, and others. I liked the more melodic content that started creeping in by around :30, but :52 is another clear sign that this piece has major mixing and mastering flaws. I can barely make out the arpeggios between :52 and 1:00. I also think you should’ve done a lot more with the drums in this piece. Maybe adding some drum fills and crashes would help smooth over some of those transitions, too. There are just so many moments in this piece in which you vary the texture but fail to prime the listener as to your doing so. I wasn’t a huge fan of your kick sample. It sounded a little too aggressive and sub-bassy for a piece like this. Otherwise, the instrumentation was not satisfactory. Your synths have this annoying fixed vibrato (i.e., 2:17) that just screams “stock sample” to me. You could’ve done a lot more to modulate those synths to not be as harsh-sounding or in-your-face, as this is fundamentally a cheerful song. I also would’ve added some more reverb, as the sound quality overall was pretty dry. You tried to bring this piece full-circle at 3:07, which is another good idea, but you still need to connect it to the preceding section more. The piece also had a constant energy to it, which I generally discourage. It’s usually more structurally effective to channel the emotions and interest of the listener by creating dynamic contrast and an ebb and flow of energy. I’d suggest inserting some sort of breakdown or re-intro section to accomplish this. The fade-out ending also came across as a bit lazy. I just realized that this is a really negative review, though, so let me give you some positives: I enjoyed the melodic progression and texture. You also have a good sense of harmony. Still, I think you need to clean up the mastering, transitions, and sound design before this piece maximizes its potential. Keep at it, man! ;)

5/10

Genclops responds:

Appreciate the criticism, it is refreshing! Thanks for the listen

[Black Sackbat]

To be honest, I’m not sure you took this piece completely seriously. I enjoyed the sense of climax at the very beginning, but most of this piece is just a simple beat, bass bomb, and vocal sample that plays every 4th bar. There’s no strong melodic content (I’m not counting the vocals at the beginning as “strong”), and in general it’s just simply not a structurally complete piece. When many of the parameters on my rubric are irrelevant, you know the piece is dangerously flawed. For example, I didn’t notice any mixing or mastering errors, but I’d imagine you didn’t have to do very much mixing or mastering in order to pull this off. Also, there’s clearly no sense of melodic development, structural variety, etc. because there is very little structure or progression at all in this piece. I’m sorry, man, but I don’t believe that content like this has a place in my competition and, to be completely honest, the whole thing seemed vaguely reminiscent of some sort of inside joke, as implied by the author’s comments and title. This is especially disappointing because I can see that you have serious and complete songs on your page, too. Good luck with your future tracks, man. I’ll PM you again next year. ;)

2.5/10

freezwalm responds:

10 points to Gryffindor, check my new song 'Mind Full Of Secrets' if you wanna hear what I'm capable of

[FD - The World You See]

I love the ominous, apprehensive mood at the beginning. Perhaps it’s a little slow to develop, but you establish the atmosphere extremely well here. The stop-start transition at :54 threw me off a bit. It seemed like it was this subtle, melodramatic build, but then the section after it is very reserved and mellow, with nothing to release the tension of the build-up (crash, pads, etc.). That said, you launch into this beautiful cinematic section that tugs at my emotions. The quality of your samples is quite impressively high, and the vocal section at 1:26 was quite the emotional height. You transitioned well into the breakdown section, leaving yourself plenty of room for contrast and climax once again. However, I wish you had made an attempt to develop the themes you presented during the first chorus (1:26) further. Otherwise, the piece lacks a sense of overarching development and finality, and the end result of the emotional input is a rather unconventional bell-curve. Perhaps these structural details are extremely picky, though, and I’ll admit I have very specific preferences in that area. The mixing and mastering are fantastic. I simply couldn’t find any flaws. As I’ve touched upon before, the instrumentation and atmosphere are fantastic, and you also did a great job with the texture, dynamic contrast, and the like. Overall great work! I simply would’ve loved to see you flesh out the choral part over multiple refrains next time because I’m the biggest structural fuss in Newgrounds history! :D Keep at it, man. ;)

9.5/10

ForgottenDawn responds:

Hey, thanks for the long and detailed review :)
Well, in my defense this track is part of a soundtrack I scored for a video game, specifically an epilogue theme. Since it was supposed to blend three different scenes from the same narrative, I had to fit that vision accordingly. Long story short, it wasn't envisioned as a standalone piece but rather a part of the greater picture. Anyways, glad you enjoyed it. I'll see you in the knock-out round. ;)

[Opus V: Observer]

I like the mood and instruments. I think the mixing needs some cleaning up. There’s a bit of distortion in here, and it’s possibly because the instruments were not equalized carefully enough. There are times when some of the melodic lines are hard to make out, such as at 1:27 - 1:30 and 2:20 - 2:25. The piece has a sense of constant continuity whereas you should’ve stripped away some of the harmony significantly in order to create more structural contrast. This moment finally comes at 3:08, but you could’ve done a lot more to maximize the emotional polarization of the piece. Also, 3:40 is a completely different piece, and I think you know that too. If you were trying to form a mash-up here, you needed to connect the parts before and after 3:40 much more cleanly. There were also other transitions, even within the 6 littler songs that make up this grossly long track, that needed smoothing over, such as 4:21. As a judge, I’m expected to treat your content as one concrete, complete, and coherent whole, but this is not a coherent and succinct piece at all. It’s hard for me to get a sense of melodic development or cohesiveness within the 6 individual pieces themselves. You need to focus on fleshing out individual ideas more instead of conglomerating all of your little ideas for riffs in one place. You seem to have made very little effort at connecting the various movements of this piece. 10:53 comes to mind. If you don’t plan on making two or more sections of music into one cohesive whole, those sections do not belong on the same track. I also suggest you try watching and following YouTube tutorials for “equalization” in whatever Digital Audio Workstation (FL Studio, Garageband, Logic, Reason, etc.) you use. Also, the part at 15:17 isn’t even in the same genre as the content before it, despite being the most enjoyable part of the track IMO. You did a nice job of creating a full texture throughout, though, and your melodies are generally solid. I also thought the piece was pretty catchy, too, although there wasn’t really any one section that was particularly memorable in this 18-minute morass. Above all, you’re just force-feeding the listener too much content at once here. You need to slow down and focus more on the details of this piece - a sense of build and flow, coherence, mastering, etc. - before you go for a 18-minute-long epic narrative song. Because if you don’t tie the piece together as you progress, it falls apart underneath you, and that’s what happened here. Without the author’s comments, I would’ve been able to garner almost no overarching sense of structure from listening to your piece, and that’s a dire problem. I seriously hope you understand why I’m giving your piece such a low score because you’ve clearly put a lot of effort into it, and if you don’t understand please don’t hesitate to PM me. Keep working at it, man. You have the melodies and atmosphere down. Now, please work on the structure, mixing, and coherence...a lot. Best of luck. ;)

4.5/10

flaminglog responds:

This was made in famitracker and would play on a modified famicom.

There IS no mixing in famitracker apart from instrument volume. This was an extremely well-loved piece in the chipmusic community. Judging traditional chipmusic by modern electronic music standards is complete nonsense, honestly, but thank you for listening to my track.

Your contest, clearly, is not a place for chipmusic such as this.

[Cosmic Giggle]

I like the beat, although you could’ve used more reverb on the drums and maybe some more careful Equalizing on the treble end to bring out those hats a bit more. I appreciate how unique and funky this piece is. You’ve created a really quirky mood here that, again, you could’ve capitalized on with some more reverb. Unfortunately, this isn’t a structurally complete piece, and it loops just as it seems to be coming to the peak of a climax. You have little melodic content here (besides the repetitive ghost-y background synths), and very little in the way of structure. The piece is basically one long build-up, which is too bad because if you had fleshed this out more it could’ve been a very enjoyable and creative piece. For what it is, I like it a lot. It could be good for some background game music, but as a stand-alone piece it loses points for lacking complete progression and variety. Still, nice job with the mood, instruments, and sense of originality. Keep at it, man! ;)

7/10

[Injection (Melbourne)]

I like the ominous synths and sense of build it has after around :30. The progression is slow during the beginning, but you do a good job of creating space for contrast and climax. The melodies at 1:32 were seriously underwhelming, though, and showed little progression from the earlier synth patterns. You also dragged this section out for way too long. By 2:32, this piece was badly in need of some structural relief, yet you never had a proper breakdown or bridge in there. In fact, you failed to offer melodic development, dynamic contrast, or the other opportunities a second chorus would’ve provided. You failed to maximize the drama here by creating a sense of progression across multiple emotional heights. I don’t hear any flaws with the mixing or mastering, but you could’ve done a lot more with this piece compositionally. Until you maximize this track’s potential and take more risks, it doesn’t stand out as particularly unique or interesting. Sorry. You dragged out the intro and outro a lot, losing sight of the sections of the piece that the listener is more likely to remember (chorus, melodic bridge, etc.). Keep this in mind next time, and you’ll have a very strong track, my friend. Keep at it, EuphoriaSound! ;)

6.5/10

EuphoriaSound responds:

I didn't spend several hours on this time.
I barely finish any tracks anymore and the inspiration is fully gone.

It's not like it used to be :p

[Reactionary]

I like the nature sounds and atmosphere. The intro was a little drawn-out, but I’m enjoying the sense of climax and instrumentation. I like the cute pizzicatos and upbeat string melodies at 1:23 and how that contrasts with the heavy breaks at 1:38. The drop was full of variety and emotion, and I love how you brought on some structural contrast at 2:38. You might have overdone the reverb at 3:15, though, and the strings get a little lost amidst the overpowering melodies at 3:23, although this probably warrants an easy volume level adjustment. Still, you’ve blended some very organic sounds with electronica very well here. I would’ve liked to see you change the drop a bit more the second time around, just to add a sense of development to the piece, but you already have a lot of variety within the drop itself. I thought you also could’ve done more to have the energy wane a bit before the big release at 5:02. Also, this piece is long enough that you could stand to vary the main string riff (:53 and other places) more. Overall, though, this is solid work. It’s smooth-flowing, well-mastered, energetic, catchy, and well-scored. Nice work! ;D

9/10

[Heroin]

I liked the mood here and a lot of the samples. I enjoyed the panning and percussion. However, I think you needed more mobile content than the vacillation between two relatively simple chords and arpeggios that categorized much of this piece. Perhaps the only strong melodic content is at 2:16. I think you should’ve introduced that theme earlier and then developed it more later on for maximum climactic effect. You also overused that vocal sample a bit. The balance is pretty good, but I think the pads get very distorted at :34 (and other places) when the bass comes in. Looks like you have some filtering and compression to do, my friend, especially on the lower frequencies here. As for the structure, you have sections that are more mellow than others, but the texture is also almost constantly full, whether from reverb or otherwise. I would suggest stripping away the beat and chords at one point and seeing if you can insert a proper breakdown where you truly minimize the energy, just to give this piece the emotional contrast it deserves. After all, heroin can cause depressive depths after its initial manic phase, I believe. This is a smooth-flowing and catchy piece. Touch-up the melodic development, mastering and structure and this would be a very solid piece. Keep at it, EtK. ;)

7.25/10

etK responds:

Thanks for the review, truly it helps.
Yeah I just came up with these two basic chords that I really am not the first to use, that's because of this simplicity that the song is really short for a drum n'bass piece, I didn't want it to feel too "heavy" and boring. Now I agree with you : I think honestly that I should have adapted this melody to something like a drumstep piece, or at least something where I could come up with a contrast, instead of a classic DnB structure with a minimalistic melody. However for the mastering, I think it's one of the best I've ever made, I really think that all of the samples are almost perfectly balanced.
In the end I may make another version of it, maybe drumstep. Now just a question : Who are you exactly? Like, do you have a review channel or something? ^^ I'm interested. You seem like the kind of person it's great talking about music with. I have a review channel myself, on YT.
Again, thanks for the review man.

[At The Forefront]

I love the emotion at the beginning. I’m not sure I was a huge fan of the strings’ suddenly being cut off during the intro. Perhaps it adds a bit of drama, but it also disrupts the flow a bit IMO. The chord progression is also a bit cliche, at least for the first 45 seconds or so. I’m impressed with your ability to mix in that bass bomb at :41, though, and I appreciated your panning work during the transition at :58. All of the instruments blend really well here. I’m enjoying the combination of organic and electronic elements. The dark mood is engrossing, and you did a great job of creating some structural contrast at 1:39. You maximized the emotion with those strings, which is excellent, and then I’m exceedingly enthralled by the conglomeration of dreamy and foreboding moods. Perhaps the transition at 2:49 was a bit rushed, but the purpose of re-energizing the piece was fulfilled. If I had to point out any mixing or mastering flaw in the entire piece, it might be that the frantic string melodies at 3:35 get buried by the powerful ambient guitar melodies. I also thought that the bass drum and snare could’ve been brought more up-front, especially during the sections with more textural depth. Regardless, the section at 3:35 definitely has the strongest melodies of the entire piece, which, its being the final climax and emotional height of the piece, is fitting. I love how you brought the piece full-circle with the bit at 4:33, and decided to further gnaw away at my emotions for another minute after the last grand refrain. You took a lot of risks in this piece, and I think they all paid off. While not perfect, this piece is riveting and unique. Very few competitors have garnered full points for structural variety and flow from me. Your knack for structural ebb and flow will be your gambit in future rounds (and I assure you: there will be future rounds). Keep up the great work, Enzer0. ;D

9.75/10

Enzer0 responds:

Thank you for such an in depth review TaintedLogic. I too feel it was a little rough around the edges and am hoping to impress you guys with what I've got coming up! Thanks for taking the time to break everything down and I hope you enjoy my future entries! :D

On a side note, it's good that Peter Satera eventually declined in Judging the event as I am his brother. :D