Animith's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[SN | Beautiful Arrhythmia | SN]

Review Request Club

Really nice, calm start. Even when the fast-paced drum comes in, it's quiet and glitchy enough to still maintain that really quiet atmosphere, which is really nicely done. I think by the 1:00 mark the glitches and drums are perhaps going a little too insane...not for the beats, but for drowning out the piano and pads out a little too much.

The beats themselves, despite being incredibly fast, are really nicely done and you completely avoid the machine-gun trap that people tend to get into with this speed of drums. I think it's obvious you put a lot of time and effort into the drums, and it really shows in all the right places; really great to see a drum beat this fast and this complex still work this well, and somehow not manage to make the piece sound heavy or aggressive.

Ach, ye should have just sung it the octave higher xD Singing live always always always beats pitch shifting/autotune, and the pitch shift here serves to make the vocals just sound more artificial than they should...it's when you have to disclaim that you didn't autotune that you KNOW you should have sung it live :P It was a nice idea, though I think the transition into it was maybe too abrupt...like, even if you'd just left the pads in underneath the voice it probably would have sounded better.

Really well crafted piece. Insane drum work, nice glitches...definitely wouldn't mind seeing more of this kind of thing from you.

-Review Request Club

SessileNomad responds:

lol its all i make anymore these days, expect more xD

[It's a Fuckin Loop!?]

Review Request Club

Loops perfectly, which is awesome. I think it's the kind of thing that would work for a relatively short sequence, because after the 4th or 5th loop I did feel like I had to stop it for the repetitiveness, but for a short sequence, such as a little part of a flash or part of a menu screen, this would be really effective.

You could certainly develop this into a full song, or even a slightly longer loop so it can be used for a longer time. I think one problem with this is that through the 22 seconds there's not much variation of the main tune, so it's repeating itself within the loop, giving it less of a shelf life before it gets highly repetitive. I think if you're going to make this longer, you need a few more synths or variation just to give it that extra dimension. But for a loop, this works fine; nicely done.

-Review Request Club

Dj-GST responds:

Yeah, I'll work on some variation and make it longer.

thanks for the review :)

[[SxHx] Prfkt.Tempo]

Review Request Club

The drum sound threw me a little at the start...something about it just sounded a little odd, but maybe that's just because I don't normally listen to techno xD.
It kind of sounds like there's a sort of bass playing at the same time to give it a vaguely melodic feel...I don't really know, but whatever it is really kept catching my attention throughout and started feeling repetitive pretty quickly. But again, maybe that's just because this isn't my genre.

The voice is nicely introduced, I like the echo in and the stereo bouncing you have at around 0:18ish, really caught my attention for all the right reasons. I think that maybe it could have done with a more melodic feel to it, or maybe have changed to another set of lyrics halfway through just to keep it varied.
The main melody is anthemic, and you have these little automations every now and then which are pretty cool. However, by the second minute I do think it needs something else to stop it feeling repetitive, and in general I thought it was sort of lacking a really defined bass part, though maybe that was the idea. I could see this being the kind of thing played in clubs, though. Hazarding a guess at what 'jumpstyle' is, this is the kind of thing people could easily jump/dance to, which is definitely a good selling point. I'd say your weakest part was probably the end, because it seems a little sparse relative to what went before it. All in all though, pretty nice work.

-Review Request Club

[<MWA> Erroneous Glitch]

Review Request Club

How you made glitches sound ambient is a little beyond me, but it is pretty damn awesome that you accomplished it. You set up a really nice pace by the first minute, and so while the pads are still technically playing the same thing, it doesn't feel repetitive, and while it is quite fast-paced, it still feels laid back.

A lot of the time, we have to say things like "You need to add more instruments or variety to this, because the main instruments sound repetitive otherwise"...and you do that perfectly. In the first minute you've got the drums and the other sounds, when the main melody comes in the second and third minute you've got all these different sounds coming in to support it, never mind all the little glitches and automations...it's a relatively simple melody and chord, and you create something really epic with it.

All the sounds are really nicely crafted/chosen...I think the one that comes in high at 2:58ish is perhaps a little too piercing for something so high up, but that's probably just me. And the ending with the piano/strings is really nicely done, and even the occasional glitch you throw in works really well.

Very nicely crafted piece, top-notch. First 10 I've given in audio for a while.

-Review Request Club

mjattie responds:

:) thanks a lot. It's nice to get good feedback on something I've been working for some time on.

[New Qualification V2.0]

Review Request Club

Might sound a bit like a broken record now, but I have to agree with Haggard and Steph with the idea that this lacks depth. Especially in the first 30 seconds or so where it's just the voice and the drum kit, it felt definitely like you'd forgotten to put another instrument in; even if it was just a single sustained bass note, it would have given a lot more depth than both the relatively inharmonic sounds you had going.

I like the riff you had going at 0:41 or so, it definitely felt dark and ominous, and gave a lot more of a creepy feeling to the voice...but by 2:29 it definitely feels repetitive, and needs something else just to give it that variety. I get that adding too much depth would kind of take away from the creepy/sparse feeling, but I think in an effort not to cross that line you started writing four miles to the right of it, and ended up with something that was perhaps too sparse. Just adding in another sound would have helped the main one sound less repetitive, without sacrificing the feel you were going for, here.

The drums in general were really cool, but (there is a but), there's points at which I think you overdid drum hits at 1:35, 1:49, 2:23...and maybe some other places, but I didn't catch the times of them. It's a very cutting sound, and so when you use it 6 times or so in a row it slices through any other sound that's there at the time and can get quite distracting.

For a first try and something new, this is definitely headed in the right direction, it just needs a few tweaks here and there to definitely get you on the right path for this sort of thing. Really nice work for a first try, though.

-Review Request Club

[[AL] Pretending]

Review Request Club

...Yeah, I would have never guessed you played this live. Over-quantising something you played live is always a pretty good way of making it sound that way...I think that unless you really have played it THAT out of time, that you shouldn't quantise live things any more than is needed, because having everything dead-straight on time is a good way to make it sound synthesized. Perhaps more than that is the fact that every note is being played at what seems to be the exact same dynamic, so I'd say that either you need to work on your dynamics a lot more and/or if you're using an electric keyboard, see if it is touch-sensitive as far as how loud it will play the notes, or fiddle with the dynamics of it in reason to give it a more natural sound.

I thought the cymbal at the start (or whatever it was?) with the piano was a little weird, just because generally you don't start songs with a cymbal crash? xD
I liked the drum beat that came in after, though. It was present, but didn't overpower the piano and had some really nice glitchy sounds to it. I was about to say it was lacking a bass but then realised it was my speakers sucking, so now with headphones in I can say I really like the bass/again, present, but not overpowering. And at 1:30ish or so, you also had some quieter piano(?) sounds in the back which were really nice.
I think it's the entrance of the string/wind sounds at 1:40ish where you lost me on the hip-hop idea. But then again, I'm a total noob when it comes to what hiphop is in general, never mind olskool hiphop, so maybe this is what it does sound like xD As a piece in general though, I did like it. Despite the slightly-manufactured sound of the piano, you did have a lot of feeling there and I think this really matched the title of your song. Keep it up.

-Review Request Club

ChampionAnwar responds:

Ever since I found out about quantize, I've pretty much never looked back. I've always quantized stuff perfectly, a lot of the time it just doesn't sound "in time" enough, even though I know it is. Oh and yes, dynamics is something I haven't used in ages, I just get the line tool and make everything the same nowadays, I'll have to go back to actually keeping the velocity at it's original amount, it does make better sound now that I think about it :D! Thanks man!

Regarding dynamics on certain parts, that's something I'm gonna get on right away (first on mah list) hehe. I may just play it again and leave the dynamics and it seems to have just made it sound too processed.

Oh and I'm not really into HipHop music much, so I don't have that much of a clue either, I just asked one of my friends and he was like that's hiphop and I was like cool xP. I'm glad you liked my orchestral section! :D

Thanks for the awesome review maaaaaaan! :D :D

[[dB] Isolation]

Review Request Club

I didn't mind the melody being the same throughout. Through my /severely/ limited knowledge of this kind of genre, I've heard songs which generally have the same melody throughout. To use perhaps the only example I know by name, Sandstorm, by Darude? Used pretty much the exact same 4-bar melody throughout the entire 4-minutes version of that track...but it's what happens to it, and what's behind and around it that makes it not cross the line from memorable into repetitive. While I get they're not exactly the same genre (or they could be, I have no idea), I think this is what this track is lacking' the variation needed to make this melody stick it out for three minutes without sounding repetitive.

I didn't even mind the melody just playing itself out until we got to about the 1:08 mark, where I started feeling like something else needed to be done, like another melody, or just another more prominent countermelody being added in...piano is an incredibly versatile instrument, you can make it seem varied simply by shifting it up an octave, or even reversing the sounds, or giving the melody to another track. Or perhaps the most effective; cut it out completely for portions of the track. Because it gives you a greater opportunity to build BACK into the main theme, not just over it. The bass/drum line you have going from about 1:35ish had me thinking for its entire time that with a bit of work it would have made a kickass buildup. Cause you had no piano, you just had the drum and bass all on their own, and so the entire track is toned down a little. So while you did use it to just slowly wind the track down, I think it could have easily been used to wind it all the way back up again into some big kind of final climax, which is what I was almost expecting. Even if you didn't do any of that, just having a few more synths supporting the piano here and there would help you a lot; it gives the listener something else to focus on if they find the piano too repetitive.

It's got a lot of potential, but I think you liked that melody a little too much and it got a bit overused and overexposed. There is such a deal as too much of a good thing; tone it down a little, maybe take it out totally for a few bars...give your listeners something more to anticipate.

-Review Request Club

Decibel responds:

Amazing Review, I appreciate the honesty and I thank you.
This ideas inspired me, i'll get 2 work on it as soon as possible!

>Deejay<

[I have a potion]

8-bit...on acid.

Pretty much the long and short of this. Like, the kind of thing I'd be expecting to hear in a Mario game where he got splatted by a hammer and had to walk around in a daze, and the walls start swirling or something equally trippy. it's very interesting, and when you review as much audio as we tend to...interesting is always somewhat refreshing.

The first two seconds or so caught me off-guard because there wasn't the discernible beat there and it did kind of feel like a few random chords strung together. But by about 0:03 you started establishing the feel of the beat and the track started gaining a little more structure. A bit of an unorthodox beat, but a cohesive one nonetheless.

The voice could have done with being a little clearer, or just a little louder relative to the lead synths. Because if you hadn't typed out the lyrics in the comments, I would have had close to no idea what was being said. I think you messed with it a little too much and made it a little too ambient and in-the-background so the more buzzing nature of the synths just cut through it completely. But apart from that, I have no complaints about your choice of sounds; they're all pretty easy on the ears to listen to and they all compliment eachother pretty nicely. I heard some pad sounds here and there, kinda wished there was a little more of it, but then again the silences between the kind of semi-lurching lead synth did add to the feel a whole lot.

This is really nicely done. Unorthodox, which is -while not speaking for everyone- definitely the kind of submissions I really don't mind reviewing at all. If no-one was unique then no-one would be interesting, so it's nice to see this kinda steps out from the usual 8-bit. Keep it up, as always.

-Review Request Club

Calamaistr responds:

awesomes. and yea ill someday make the voice clearer.

Hmm, i dont know about being onorthodox but i guess my style isnt very generic.
There are more people who make non-generic music on ng :)

Thanks for finding this worthy of a 8.

Greets -Cal :)

[CLUBeRz (WIP)]

Review Request Club

I think it maybe starts off a little too strong, though that could have been my fault for having the volume up pretty high xD.
I like the initial beat; you've got a nice set of synths there which at first, seem to work well together, but once you get into the main beat you see that this track could use some mastering; all the synths are kinda piled on top of one another, so the lead synth begins to drown out everything else, even the lighter parts of the drum track. I think this could use a remix or some mastering to it, just to try and separate the streams out a little more so they can all be heard in the way they're meant to.

And while the synths work with eachother, I'm not entire sure they work for this genre; like some other people in the RRC said, its the kind of sound you'd expect more in an 8-bit rather than a House track. The drums could have also maybe done with having more of a prominent role, because they were shelved in the background maybe a little too much.

In all, it's got a pretty solid set of ideas, it just needs a little reshuffling so we can get to hear them all better :P But do keep it up, cause this has promise, and mixing aside all the sounds...sound good! What more do you want? :P

-Review Request Club

[antiexasperation]

Review Request Club

The start reminds me of the music that was on the game "Insurgo". Maybe just because they're both played on electric guitar, but they both kind of have the same feel...like it's just someone jamming whose made a nice melody to play and felt like recording it. It's nice and lighthearted, and puts you in a good mood for the rest of the song. When the rhythm kicks in a little more, it's kind of even more of the same; feels like you happened to hit record during a righteous jam session and this is a part of what you were playing.

I think for criticisms...the palm muting was a little off, it felt a bit crackly under the amp, and probably could have been a little cleaner/more muted...and the tone in general could have been a little cleaner. I'd be interested to hear the "better version" of the song just to see if this is claned up or not, but here it's a little distracting from the melodies...but at the same time, does give it something of an authentic feel.

There's definite potential here; could use a little improving and maybe the addition of a drum or bassist just to add another dimension...but I kinda like it as it is. It's nice and unassumingly earthy, and I love the track for it. Nicely done.

-Review Request Club

axlisbak responds:

thanks for taking the time out to listen and review, regarding the clean tone, the crappy mp3 player recorder does it no justice compared to the human ear, and the better version is pretty much the exact same as this but way too distorted and has an electric solo layered onto the end, id upload it but its not worth it. thanks again