TaintedLogic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[Corriamo]

Haha, I like the cool riser you have at the beginning there. Interesting mood towards the beginning. The riser made it seem kind of dark, and then there's this explosion of happiness at :50. It does get a bit repetitive after a while, though. The structuring and transitions weren't bad. It has this sort of chill vibe about it, and you know how to progress a piece along pretty well. My main complaint, however, is the ending. I know it was intended to loop, but the sound cuts off about 2 seconds before it loops. I don't know what program you use to make your music, but if it's FL Studio (the one I use), I would highly suggest pressing "wrap remainder" when you export it to ensure that it loops properly. Otherwise, pretty solid piece man. ;)

Mekkatech responds:

Glad you like it. I'll remember to click wrap remainder from now on Thanks :)

[Auto-Tuned Guitar Out the Wazoo]

Came for the title, stayed for the really interesting mood you got going on here. I really like the atmosphere of this piece and the experimental sound. I'm tempted to call it breakbeat, but it's not really electronic. It's a really creative idea with the various samples and stuff, but I think for it to work you need to work on your mastering a bit. For example, you had some sort of squeaky FX thing going on in the background for the first 2/3 of the piece or so. That's fine, but I think you should Equalize it more so it doesn't sound as harsh. Same thing with the vocals towards the end. They sounded rather jarring, and some proper mixing could fix that. Also, the ending wasn't that conclusive. I have to say, though, the reason why I've made 1,000+ reviews is because I love listening to unique and creative content, which is one thing that Newgrounds still has a lot of IMO. This IS creative and unique content. IF you fix the mixing and the structure a bit, you've definitely earned yourself a fave and download here, my friend. Keep up the good work. ;)

phosphorusprocedure responds:

Thanks, man. The problem's probably how the guitar/vocals get recorded. I don't have a pre-amp currently, so my way of "pre-amping" the signal so I can hear it is compressing it really hard and turning the volume way up. Probably not the best set up for mixing, but I'm still messing around with the best way of recording stuff.

The ending was so someone could come along and sample me humming if they felt they could make a beat out of it. I also love when people drop out the instruments and let me sample isolated elements, makes my life easier sometimes.

Thanks for the very thoughtful review, and everything else, really appreciate it!

[Sneak Attack]

Ooo...I love the drama at the beginning. Interesting mood you got there at :03. I wasn't a big fan of the bizarre, distorted snare sample, but otherwise those chill vibes, strings, and groovy guitar complimented each other well. It would make for an interesting addition to the scene of a movie or something. Although it is very short, I think it needed more progression throughout the piece. There was little discernible structure, and I think it needs more variety in order to be a complete track IMO. That said, I think it would function great as a full-length track. I just think it needs some more climaxes and transitions. Anyway, keep up the good work, man! ;)

sleepFacingWest responds:

Thanks for the review! Typically I try to make short score music pretty underwhelming. It needs to set the mood, but not get in the way of dialogue and sound design that will be happening over the top of it. I was really afraid that if I added too much variation to this it would become annoyingly noticeable when the track came back around again. In your opinion, is this actually a non-issue? I might be limiting myself for very silly reasons!