TaintedLogic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Stand Still (Original)]

I love the soft piano at the beginning. It sounds very humanized too. The cello is beautiful too. The vocals fit the mood of the song perfectly. You guys have a great sense of harmony and progression. Well-structured, smooth-flowing, spacious and atmospheric, you two have clearly displayed your excellent melodic inclinations here. While it is very dynamic in nature, there is enough repetition to keep the listener grounded. The lyrics are also quite poetic here. If I had to complain about one thing, it would be the ending. It seemed to be winding down, but it then faded out the rest of the way, depriving this piece of a proper sense of conclusion IMO. The piece is mastered very loudly and I can hear all of the instruments clearly. However, it’s my impression that the piano is in danger of peaking at some points, so I’d suggest equalizing out some of the treble tones. This is a very small detail, however. Overall, this is simply fantastic work. I’m very excited about what else we’re going to see from you two for the rest of the competition. Good luck! ;D

9.5/10

Jabicho responds:

Hi TL! :D
man thanks so much for all the compliments, it means a lot to us, i'm sure peachy will be really happy to read your review too :D
Oh yes! i totally understand about the ending, I think it maybe felt like 2 endings XD, and maybe using just one of them would've make it better :)
Thanks for the treble notes info! I think I feel like i'm learning a lot about mixing since i never checked tutorials or anything, so your help means a lot to help us grow in that area :D

[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.

[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

[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

[Storyboard - Frequency (AT Remix)]

Having the vocals in there as an intro wasn’t a bad idea, but I think you could’ve done a lot more to connect them more smoothly to the instrumental section that followed. A general rule of thumb is that you should always carry over one or two instruments to the next section during additive transitions. I liked the melodies at :07, although the chord progression was cliche. Then, you repeat that melody almost continuously until around the 2-minute mark with little added variety, which was a bit of a structural oddity. And that part at 1:57 sounds a little out-of-place, probably at least partly because it’s hard to make out the tonic because of that sweep you threw in there. The downbeats during that breakdown section also indicate a completely different progression as during the refrains, which makes the transition back into 2:52 pretty rough as well. I appreciated the variations on the melody you there, but then you launch into this uncharacteristically dissonant sections which also threw me off as a listener. There are two clashing moods here - the upbeat progression of the chords and bass and the newly creepy, atonal melody. Dissonance can be effective in music, but with the preceding ¾ of the piece being so cheerful and no structural changes warning me of this impending dissonance, I’m left confused as a listener. And then the bouncy, high-pitched synths you added at 3:19 were annoying, loud, and harsh-sounding. I also have no clue where the part at 3:48 came from. I don’t recall hearing any strings earlier in the piece, and generally it’s not a good idea to introduce new instruments to your piece during the last 30 seconds. Never mind the fact that 3:48 sounds like you copied and pasted it from a completely different track. Overall, this track has very little coherence, which is strange because the first 2 minutes or so actually lacked variety IMO. You mention in the description that you “never ran out of ideas,” but I think one of the main problems here is that you tried to work with too many ideas at once and the piece lost its sense of direction. You want to ground your listener in a familiar structure before creating any sweeping variations. In my view, you have not done that here. However, I have few complaints with the mixing and mastering and you did a good job of keeping the texture full throughout. Most of my complaints have to do with the structure and transitions, so I think that is what you should focus on, my friend. Good luck, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to PM me. Keep at it, EnNinja! ;)

6.5/10

EnNinja responds:

That took a while to read, but I pretty much agree with you on everything though I have to correct you on one thing. String is not only heard in the end of the song but also before the second drop along with the piano.
Thanks for the amazing review :)

[Good Mood Injection]

I liked the upbeat mood and frantic synth patterns. The kick sample wasn’t my favorite, though, and you had it play a short succession of rolls in a very unconventional way for the first minute or so. The piece also throws you into the middle of the action without much introductory content. I enjoyed the melodies at around :40. You have a lot of different structural elements to this piece during the middle, yet some of them are loosely connected to one another (1:43 and the part immediately before it, for example). There also isn’t a section when you dial back the energy and offer much in the way of structural contrast. This piece is lacking a sense of emotional ebb and flow that’s often necessary for development and progression. You also didn’t vary the melodies much later in the piece, thereby missing more opportunities to give this piece an overarching sense of direction and finality. The ending is a bit lazy and cuts off suddenly. With some dynamic considerations, you may have been able to turn this into a decent loop. I thought the mix was pretty clear and the frequencies here are well-balanced. Perhaps you could’ve used some more panning or compression to maximize this clarity. My main complaints mostly involve the structure and progression of the piece. I think you need to do more with phrasing and variety here, especially later in the piece when you fail to develop the progression in a climactic way that’s also different than earlier. Otherwise, solid work. Keep at it, Eatmeatleet! ;)

7.5/10

eatmeatleet responds:

Thanks for full review, it's nice to get some 1's especially for harmony and stuff. I know progression is not the most original but it's a nice track ;)