TaintedLogic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Nothing But Sand & Water]

I love the mellow mood at the beginning with the arpeggios. Beautiful instrumentation and melodies. It's majestic and serene, and has a well-built atmosphere to it. One complaint I may throw out there is that it had little rhythmic variation (especially in the lead instrument) and melodic development. I'll also say that I thought it was a little bit...safe. You could've heightened the emotion a lot more here and really gone for some sweeping roller-coaster-ride sort of phrases. Instead, this piece is a little passive and I'm almost tempted to call it background music. Overall, though, it's coherent enough while still possessing enough structural variety to keep me engaged. You definitely captured the deserted island theme well. This is solid work in general, and I thought the decelerando at the end was fitting. You seemed to go for a very flowy style of progression here, so I admire the conclusiveness it had by the end. Keep up the good work, Mattashi! ;)

Mattashi responds:

Thank you TaintedLogic :) I should have spend some more time on this but I've been busy with work lately and really wanted to enter this contest so I composed something on my day off.
Thanks for the feedback!

[Africa (Singalong)]

I love the organic vibe this has, and the percussion arpeggios at :22 (and a lot of other places) add a lot to the piece. The vocals were very well done - I've tried (and failed) to record vocals well, and I can say that the balance and blend is great. I love the jump in energy between the verses and chorus. I love the solos that start at 2:57, and obviously the percussion is awesome throughout. Step, the mixing is top-notch (I wouldn't expect anything less from you), and MetalRenard did an awesome job with the mastering as well. If I had to complain about something, it would be that the ending felt a little bit lazy to me. I understand that it's supposed to have a continuous, flowy sing-along feel (which it most certainly does), but I strongly prefer the conclusions of tracks like this to be...well...more conclusive! Overall, I love it, of course. The mood, atmosphere, and transitions are all solid, etc. Keep up the great work, all of you guys! ;D

Ceevro responds:

Actually, the mix just previous to the final mastering was not faded-out, but ended with a single hit. Stylistic choices have to be made, and while I loved the last hit, others preferred the fade-out. If you go to the thread, you can hear the original ending on the last WIP, and decide for yourself.

[Veil of Dreams]

Ooo...I love the mood. This has a strange sort of energy to it, apprehension even. All of a sudden at :39, I picture someone lifting up the last branch at the end of a narrow, windy forest path and the sun hits her, a view of mountains beyond like an enlightenment, a revelation. I admire the progression! I will say that I thought the transition at 1:31 was a little sudden, but the phrasing and articulation in this piece is beautiful overall. The church bells were also a nice touch at the end. Your samples are amazing! Which plug-ins/VSTs do you use? It sounds like main menu music more for a PBS movie than a videogame (and that's a good thing!). Haha, keep up the great work, Samulis. ;D

samulis responds:

Thanks for the review, man! That little turn at :39 is my favorite part, it gets me every time I listen. :D

The samples used are actually all of my own creation. Believe it or not, the samples used here were no different from the ones in the contest I just ran, there are just quite a few more than 25 in use, haha. I'm thrilled you think they are amazing, it was a massive amount of work to make all these samples and the resulting plugins. Hopefully I will be able to share them with you and everyone else soon. :)

[~{ Chrome Killer }~]

I like the gritty synths, although sometimes it was hard to distinguish the bass's notes, as it got pretty muddy down there. I liked the angry mood and hard-hitting drums. I think you needed a smoother transition into :34, but the melodies at :34 were pretty cool. It's a well-structured yet very fast-paced piece. It loops pretty well. I think the drama and mood of the piece would've been enhanced had you made the bass and effects towards the beginning (which seem to persist throughout much of the piece) sound a bit cleaner and more distinct. Overall, though, I like it. Keep at it, Larrynachos! ;)

larrynachos responds:

Yup, I agree with all your points. Thanks!

[There's No Coffee in Hell]

Ooo...this one is really soothing and flowy. Sounds like it's from a montage in an old movie of a boy and his dog. You captured the innocence, the lazy summer days, and the feeling of comfort and companionship. I've always admired your ability to craft moods like this, SleepFacingWest. This is seriously good content! It's well-structured, relaxing, harmonizing, and cleanly mastered. Newgrounds needs more music like this! Keep up the great work, man. ;)

sleepFacingWest responds:

Thanks! (and thank you for your suggestion on the other track. I think I know what's happening)

[Spy Theme Excerpt 01]

Wow, I just love these short, jazzy tunes! The drama at the beginning was good, but I was a bit confused by the pacing shortly after. This is going to be nit-picky. I thought you were going for a classic Forte-piano and then rapid crescendo during the first 5 seconds, but the crescendo never really came. This made the transition into the sneaky-sounding piano at :06 fall flat IMO. The first chord sort of brings this energy into the piece that is quickly reset and made more mellow. I just thought it threw the listener off a bit to have a dramatic intro perhaps predicting a fast-paced piece, while the rest of the piece progressed rather slowly. That said, the part at :06 and beyond is moody, charming, full-textured, smooth-flowing, and generally has all of the ideal compositional values I look for in a piece. I admire your sense of rhythm and harmony. It's a very catchy track. You should go for a full-length track sometime where you can really space out your ideas. :06 to 1:28 would make a great intro for a 5-6 minute track. I know that this piece already feels relatively conclusive as it is (I see you used the classic tonic octave-jump), but more development and structuring is necessary for this to be a truly complete piece IMO. Like I said, though, this review is extremely nit-picky. Your compositional skills are already rather good, and the mix seemed pretty tight as well. Keep at it, man! ;D

sleepFacingWest responds:

Good ears! I actually WANTED to do that sforzando into crescendo, but I couldn't make it go. This was the first piece I had written with this software and I was learning how some of the articulations worked. Despite pushing various envelopes around, I couldn't get them to swell without reattacking with a new sample. I could have crossfaded between samples, but I didn't have the processing power to run that much at the time. Now I would probably double up a lot of the horns with samples from a symphonic set to fatten them anyway, so I could use proper crescendos from another library and then balance the two in post production.

And thank you! I REALLY appreciate nit-picky. Your commentary is absolutely spot on. I was focused more on learning the new library while writing this one, so I slacked a bit compositionally. Originally I had intended to write a very driving manic jazz track, but I realized that A) the software I had gotten is actually quite hard to work with and everything sounds like crappy general midi from the 90's without a TON of edits, and B) My jazz arranging chops were rusty as I hadn't used them in years and just remembering how to idiomatically harmonize melodies in 5 parts was a bit of a struggle. In short, I bailed on the idea to do an "action jazz track" because it got difficult. That said, I'm definitely more prepared to do this sort of thing now and think that perhaps it's time to revisit it!

[Get Fabulous]

I love the cute and mellow vibe this has. The instruments all work so well together, and the progression and sound design make this piece quite charming. I love the melodies around 1:00. I thought the drums were a bit too quiet, though. I know this was made for a videogame, but it kind of bothers me that the ending isn't either a) conclusive or b) good for looping. That said, you established the mood and atmosphere in this piece extremely well and I compliment you on your high-quality samples. Keep up the good work!

sleepFacingWest responds:

Thanks for the great feedback! This gives me a lot think about. I agree with a lot of it. Here's some of what I was thinking to give these choices some context:

The quiet drums were partially a mix choice based on the style from the 1960's. Amping up bass and percussion is something that people started doing a lot more starting with Disco and moving forward to Hip Hop and other synth based production. That said, I could probably pull the reverb down a bit in the congas and maybe compress them a bit more to make them pop. I'll play with it.

The Major 7th chord ending was made to lead back to the beginning of the track again. It was supposed to be good for looping, but I admittedly may have missed the mark on this one. Here's a sample of the track looped out once so you can hear what it should sound like.

http://www.bryanteoh.com/get_fabulous_looped.mp3

That said, I was also hoping it would stand alone as an ending by itself. This version of a jazz standard has a similar sort of thing at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqRhR1c6Wo

Please hit me with suggestions, though. A lot of commentary I've gotten here criticize the abrupt endings. They're supposed to be short and sweet and loopable (each track is distributed on my blog with split intro and loop files so you can just loop the loopable bit as long as necessary for the game/video/whatever), but it's come up enough that I feel like I may be doing it wrong. OR maybe I should post tracks already looped out so it's obvious how they work? Donno.

[Hyperresonance (WIP)]

Ah, classic DM-style, I see. ;) I like that heavy bass you have in there, and the synths that start to take over around :30 are catchy and engaging, although you might've needed to build some more harmony around them, especially since they stayed rather up-front in the mix for well over a minute before the bass came back in at 1:27. I do like the melodies and the synths, but I think you've used some of those instruments before. Also, the phrase sort of suddenly ends at around 2:35 - I think you need a crash in there or something to smooth it out a bit. The heavy piano chords at the end were cool, though. Overall, nice work! I'm looking forward to the final product. I like how one of the tags is "non-ep-related." :D

Dylnmatrix responds:

Yes, classic me style. I needed to write something in my comfort zone after finishing Blood Moon, as that was a doozy to finish.

Fun fact about the bass: it's completely made by me! No presets, just two Sytruses, one acting as a passive sub, the other being a saw wave tweaked to my liking, then a whole bunch of distortion and effects in Patcher. It's pretty awesome if I do say so myself.

I'm actually currently in the process of trying to write a good harmony that doesn't sound terrible, so no worries there.

Also, the non-ep related tag may now be void as this track may or may not be a bonus on the EP. I dunno, and even if I did, I wouldn't say ;)

[Europa]

Okay, I love the mood at the beginning and the pizzicato-esque synths at :15. I loved the synths at :42. What really kept me engaged with this piece, though, was the atmosphere. You used just the right amount of reverb to somehow make it sound energetic and chill at the same time. I love that! I think the mixing is also rather good. It is a little repetitive by the end - I didn't think it needed to be almost 5 minutes long - but it still keeps me engaged until the end. :) I thought the ending was a bit lazily done, though - fade-out endings generally lack creativity in my experience. Other than that, though, this is a really solid piece. Keep up the good work, man! ;D

ErikMcClure responds:

The mixing was done by a friend because I'm garbage at it :'D

[The Toys' Forest LOOP]

It's okay. I already AM mad. :D I like the mood and theme of this piece. It's very dark and pensive in a way. Definitely fits the "Toys Forest" title well. It also makes a pretty good loop. I think you should expand this, man. This could function pretty well as the intro to a longer piece (although you might have to cut it down to 30 seconds or so first). Yeah, I love the atmosphere here. Keep at it, man. ;)

Syzion responds:

I'm planning on making this a 3 to 4 minute composition.
I suppose I could make another version as a complete, looped edition.
Thank you for your review.
Congratulations on reaching over 1000 reviews, by the way!