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Review Request Club

Nice powerful beat to start with, which is always good. The bassline could be a lot bassier than it is; right now it's kind of hitting the mid frequencies more than anything. And the cut-out of the kick beat at 0:45 really felt awkward; you lost that gravity and were just left with this mid-frequency synth and light drums in the background, which felt a lot less cohesive than it did when it was weighed down by that really heavy beat.

The change at 1:29 in instrumentation was good, but the fact that the melody stayed unchanged was quite noticeable. If you're not going to change the melody, you definitely need to add more elements or automations in just to try and keep the track sounding fresh; nothing feels more repetitive than a repeated lead line, that's for sure. Another quick-easy-fix would be to change the melody up. You do this at 2:45, and it works well; if you'd incorporated that in at 1:29, I think this song would drag a lot less.

Generally, you've got a lot of good elements here, it's just a case of tying them in together a little better. Mix up the sections a little more, bring out the bass...if nothing else, bring back the heavy beat from the start at some point, because that was a definite highlight of the track. Melodies are hard to do, but you've already got two here, so its just a case of incorporating them both more evenly into the song.

-Review Request Club

Review Request Club

I got to about 30 seconds in and then had to pause. I...really don't get what you've done here at all. It sort of sounds like you made the remix, then added in a few random distortion effects and emulators for fun, and then accidentally exported it like that. Everything seems out and distorted, and there's no real cohesion save for the fact that everything seems like it's several feet underwater.

There's...some good ideas here? The voice starts to sound quite ethereal and you've got a good drum in there...god knows you've got a good coverage of the mid-lo frequencies...but the sound of it completely wrecks this, it just doesn't make sense at all. This definitely needs a second look just to work out why everything sounds so distorted and why both frequencies you're using are so occupied by all this stuff. That and the lack of ending is quite odd.

It's alright, there's some good ideas in here, but as a remix it really doesn't work, to be quite frank.

-Review Request Club

DXsamurai responds:

thanks for the review but damnit i already got a review from the Review Request Club.
stop already. I get it damn distortion. ok

Review Request Club

Definitely from the start sounds like you wrote this for someone to sing/rap on top of. Simply because the mixing's pretty light and everything is generally in the sort of background. That being said though, you've got some nice instruments in this; good sounding synths, a pretty ace drum beat (Though I also think the cymbals were perhaps a little overdone). One thing I think this is probably lacking is a nice bass line. Like, a really bassy one, because you've got a bass here, but it's still pretty middle-ish in frequency, so you've pretty much got the mid-hi frequencies covered, but the bass lacking a little bit, save for the kick drum that comes in. That being said, the bass does get more prominent later on in the song, so perhaps it's just the start that needs a second look.

There's a nice bit of variety to this, which is good...I think some sections were a touch too long, but that would be remedied if you had someone with lyrics on top of it. Generally though, you've got a nice sounding track, here. I think while it is a standalone you could remix it so that the lead synth feels more like a lead instrument, until the time when you actually do get a vocalist to come in and take that main-interest role. You could probably go on the NG forums and try to find someone to do the vocals for you, there's a fair few singers/rappers on NG, that's for sure. In general, it's a pretty decent track. Nicely done.

-Review Request Club

SymbolCymbal responds:

LOL yeah the bass i used is actually a monosynth just played on a ow octave so it doesn't really get that bassy sound that it needs. When i revamp this for thew lyrics coming soon from newgrounds own mc BIGRED aka Tintonger. I did put some actual bass later in the song im glad you picked up on that. it took me a bit to mix that. Unfortunately i have to do most of my mixing with crappy speakers and or earbuds.

Tintonger had sent me some lyrics for the beginning of the song and just from hearing his other stuff i think this song is going to be a really awesome and creative one.

Im glad you like the variety whenever i am composing i never want it to get boring. if you check out some of my first submissions like dreamwalker or HIT ME organ donor you can see that i do alot of rhapsody type composing. Im really glad you liked this one. i spent alot of time on the train to work composing this a 1/2 hour at a time on my laptop using earbuds.

When i get the recorded lyrics from tintonger im going to remaster and revamp a few things so thank you for the constructive criticism, i will definitely take it into consideration while remastering this.
The completed song will be sold on a newgrounds charity album for either haiti or some other charity we come to an agreement to in the audio forums

Again thanks for the sweet review

Review Request Club

Nice introduction. The slight filter-changes on the piano worked to make the first seconds not sound repetitive, though I think another synth could have possibly come in before 0:28 just to support the piano a little more.

When everything else comes in, you've got a nice mix going; the drum's there, but not cutting through anything, and there's a nice warmth of texture which works very well. At 0:58 when the pads cuts out I'm in two minds because the piano's not all that supported for about ten seconds, but then everything comes back at 1:10ish and it sounds pretty solid again.

While the initial piano riff is cool, having it play through for 2 minutes is overdoing it a little bit; changing the octaves or the instruments (As you do nearish 2:00) would help make the opening half of the track feel less static. And even then, 2:00-2:50 and onwards is just a repetition of the theme that's alreayd been, so I think definitely you could have used a second theme taking over the main one at points just to break it up a little more.

One definite thing to improve would be that, I think. You use the same chords, same melody and the same beat throughout, so by the 5th minute it feels incredibly repetitive. Break it up with different sections, different melodies or harmonies...you do well in changing the instrumentation a few times, but playing that melody straight through the whole thing runs that massive risk of it sounding like the same thing over and over. Especially as you sacrificed the bitrate quality to get it on NG, I'd say you could shorten this song quite significantly, thus having a higher quality track on here, and managing to keep it catchy, and not draggy, which is never a bad thing. This has definite potential though, so keep it up.

-Review Request Club

Dj-GST responds:

Thanks man.

I'll work on the repetitiveness when I make another track.

I don't really wanna shorten it, if someone wants a high quality version, they can just PM me (as comments say).

Review Request Club

Nice introduction; you've got a pretty nice beat set up by the drums, and you've covered all the main frequencies by about the 5th second, which is always cool to see. We like balance in a song.

For an improvised line, the lead synth is pretty cool; there's a lot of different melodies in there and even some really cool dissonances as well, in parts. The automations also work really well to keep the track feeling varied; variation is definitely one of those things you need in a song like this, because the backing accompaniment doesn't change, so the lead has to do something pretty spectacular to hold the attention, which it essentially does.

In terms of improvement, you could maybe think about having breaks in the background beat to go into slower sections with just the synth, or just changing up the beat a little. And maybe even add a vocalist in, even? It's the kind of song that could support something like that, definitely.

While the improv was cool, I think five and a half minutes of the same beat was a touch on the long side, but not so much so that it got boring. So nice work, overall, it definitely got pretty trippy in places. Keep it up.

-Review Request Club

MixyRecords responds:

Thanks, i appreciate your critique. Very in depth analysis. I agree with you about mixing up the background beat; it is something I should have make the track better.

Review Request Club

Nice work with the different harmonies at the beginning; the melody stayed fluid, and the song kept sounding interesting as you kept moving it to slightly different places in pretty smooth ways, so nice work there.

I'm in two minds about the second instrument (Can't tell what it is, so I'll say it's a synth), because I think you'd not have been much worse off without it, just keeping it as a piano track on its own, because as it is it doesn't add a great deal to the piano, and in some cases is something of a distraction.

At 1:58ish when everything else comes in, the instrumentation makes a little more sense, though some of the harmonies seem off in places...I think with piano instrumentation sometimes, less is more, because you still want that to be the main focus for a lot of reasons, and it kind of feels messier when you try and add a whole lot more instruments into the mix.

In general, this is a pretty awesome tune, there's nice chord changes in it...in general, I'm in two minds about the instrumentation, but it's a good track nonetheless. And either way, I'm sure your mother was very touched that you wrote it.

-Review Request Club

Calamaistr responds:

Yea the piano piece is one thing, as i made it playing it on an actual piano, when i wanted to reproduce it in FL i just wanted to add whatever i came up with in the zone of it all, i was just thinking of my mother and the melodies made itself (the secondary melodies)

I really like having multiple melodies play throughout eachother, dont know what to say more.. hmm

Well ofcourse thanks for your review like the others i thanked, hope youll keep reviewing my work as i like your personal input here and there. :)

Review Request Club

Yay, indie song! We like indie songs!

Again, you've got a really catchy song here. The guitar's got some nice chords to it, I also started hearing parts of a sort of acoustic-guitar melody in places, which was nice. you did a solid job of miking this in general, although as has been said, you probably could have done with a little more bass in places (Although that's not much of an issue, given the upbeatness of the song)

I notice this time you've got the piano behind the guitar, as well as the lead guitar which comes in, which both work really well and compliment the voice really well. The voice again, really unique and a great strong point for the song. The way there's harmonies recorded in the voice as well also shows a great improvement from last time...the production value in this is just really spot on on so many things, which is pretty damn cool.

Having just got to 1:35, the way you use clapping instead of the the more conventional percussion works really well; it's a point where drums would've probably been to heavy, and so it's a great alternative which works really well, and again just adds to the reasons this is the kinda song you have to smile whilst listening to.

In general...I don't really have anything to say to fault this. You've got good guitar work, nice choice of the different instruments, good voice...and a nice individual song, which there are by far not enough of on NG. So keep it up, for sure, cause you've definitely got a talent here.

-Review Request Club

Review Request Club

Like the introduction, the amount of filters you put on that piano meant that even for a 4-second music loop, after 30 seconds it still didn't feel repetitive, which is quite a feat in itself. The reverb off it also gave a nice sense of magical atmosphere, which was a good touch. The entrance of the bass and drums is also really nice and subtle, so you have that tiny thickening of texture without wrecking the pretty ambient mood you've set up. So much so that even when the drum beat starts coming into its own, you've still got quite a relaxing vibe going on throughout. It's pretty impressive how you keep the same melody throughout and yet don't really make it sound repetitive. I think as a point of improvement, despite it not sounding repetitive, you could think about maybe moving onto another melody, simply so you don't have to continue to use filters and automations on the main tune just to keep it varied. A second melody would probably be a much easier path.

That being said, this was a nice upbeat 100 second listen. Pretty simple, but not repetitive for it. Has a good atmosphere, the entrances of the instruments work well...in all, was a pretty cool listen. Keep it up.

-Review Request Club

aliaspharow responds:

Thanks allot for the review

Review Request Club

As you were so nice to outline the sections, I'll review each section as it comes.

0:01 - 0:38 Intro (to set the mood)

The parts either side of 0:24 seem unrelated to eachother. To the point where I'd say you could've started the track at 0:24 and been no worse off. What you had at the beginning was nice and added some ambience to it, but it just didn't really fit with what came after the pause, to be frank. But what did come after it lead into the next section nicely.

0:39 - 1:20 Main theme

Very nice beginning; quite down-toed, but you still get this very subtle sense of build. The use of the more static-y synth playing by the guitar was nicely done, though I think the guitar itself could have been a little sharper, just to bring it out of the texture more, because as it is there's quite a fuzzy nature to this section given the static and the distortion.

1:21 - 2:03 Melody comes in, full instrumentation of theme

Like the new lead synth, there's a nice sound to it and the melody it's playing is simple, but strong. The drum beat is also nicely done, has some interesting sounds in it as well which is always nice to hear. The section in general is perhaps missing a really bassy synth (Or just bassier drums?) to give it more of a frequency range.

2:04 - 2:45 repeat of theme

By this point I was expecting something to come in as an addition, just to keep the variety up a little more. And here especially I start noticing the muddiness of the guitar again because it feels like it's being turned up or the melody's being turned down more. This section could have used an extra synth just as a point of difference from this one and the last, to justify the repetition. Even a nice harmony line below the melody synth would've probably done it.

2:46 - 2:55 Short break

Definitely could have done more with this break, it felt kind of half-hearted, like you just needed anything to break up the second repetition of the theme and the third. Nothing much happens in it, and so it feels somewhat superfluous.

2:56 - 3:38 repeat of theme

Same as before; needs something to change it up a little more; this is the third time of hearing what seems like the exact same thing, and that's not really all that necessary. You could have taken 1-2 repetitions out and probably been not much worse off

3:39 - 3:43 Short break

This length of break works for the little that goes on in it; the shortness of it means that there's no real need to cram it full of things, so the break works better here.

3:44 - 5:07 A little 8-bit(ish) sonata

This section was nice...but felt unnecessary when it came to the track, like you'd thought of it, realised it used the same kind of chord progressions, and stuck it in the middle of the track because you needed it to move somewhere else. I commend you for moving out of the main theme, but here I think it's a step too far and it loses the cohesion.

5:08 - 5:15 Intro teaser

Felt a little random; the transitions in and out of this little section were quite awkward, though I sort of see where you were coming from. And I'm running out of characters, so I'll be more summarisey now.

To be frank, I skipped through the final sections as I saw it was the 4th and 5th repeats of the main theme. I think definitely, _definitely_ this could do with fewer repetitions, because it makes the song drag to no end. A song this length needs a way to justify itself, especially as you had to lower the bitrate so much to fit it in. You could have easily stopped at 3:44, and had the 8 bit section be a new track, and then you wouldn't have had to worry about bitrate or repetitiveness that much. There's a lot of good ideas in here, but I think in a more condensed version those ideas would have been a lot more powerful, instead of the slight over-use they have here. You had a cool main theme, the ideas were there...just don't repeat it 5 times next time and all will be weii. And I'm out of characters, so I'll just say keep it up.

-Review Request Club

Cornilious responds:

Yes, repeats and variation. Will fix later.

I don't know about the 8-bitish section. I like it and a lot of other people like it too. But hey, to each his own.

Thanks for the thorough review!

Review Request Club

I get the idea that you just kept writing until its done, but at least for NG you have to take the size limit into account; it's better to have two higher-quality tracks that were meant to be one than to have one lower-quality track for the sake of keeping everything together, sometimes. That being said, onto the track:

The opening synth was interesting, had quite an unconventional melody to it, but I think it wasn't supported enough by other synths; it needed a bass line or a warm pad behind it just so it wasn't playing by "itself" for the first 40 seconds with just the drum underneath. The drums as well...didn't really work in my mind, it felt like they lacked a sharpness or any kind of attack to them, so it was just some form of wishy-washy percussion in the background, instead of the kind of backing you'd expect in a DnB song.

The change of melody at 0:40 and how it developed further at 1:00 was nicely done, but the lead synth wasn't quite loud enough; it needed that extra volume to bring it out more in the texture. That and I keep hearing these incidental synths which are again, too quiet to really be heard completely. I think in general a second look at the mixing wouldn't go amiss.

The section at 1:40 was a nice change because you started getting more depth with some pad-like synths, but again I think the levels were a little low, and by 2:10 you almost completely lose me because everything changes into this kind of whole jumble of different things, and into what sounds like something entirely new by 2:30. To the point where I'd say you could have split it at 2:10-2:30 and make two songs.

The new section is quite frantic, but it works for it, because you've got a depth with some bassier synths and the drum beat is a little more conventional...if very fast. There seems to be an odd silence at 3:22 and 3:42, for about a second? Might just've been the computer slowing down, but it seemed quite awkward. I think I'd agree with the previous reviews and say you need a slower section in this just to even out the drums and keep the pace a little less crazy; 8 minutes of fast pace, especially 8 minutes of fast percussion, can get quite tiresome.

And at 4:45 again it seems to go into an entirely new song again for at least 50 seconds before reverting back to the previous section...ish. I think if you'd said "I put three tracks together to see if they'd work", I wouldn't have called you a liar.

The section at 5:20-6:40 seemed quite lost in itself...like there wasn't as much choerency as there could have been between everything. In a sense I think the drums could have done with being less frantic then, because the synths themselves are quite laid back and creepy, so it would have worked well as a slower section. The ending minutes seem quite drawn out in themselves, I think you could have halved the ending and not down yourself much detriment.

Annnd i'm running out of characters. So...in general, I think you could split this song up into smaller chunks. That'd let you increase the bitrate, and maybe polish off each section a little more. You've got a LOT of variety in this, to the point where I think there's too much; there needs to be something that links everything together in some way, and it seems like in parts it moves onto completely different areas. There's some good ideas, I think they just need to be condensed into a smaller timeframe so you have a chance to pick out the best ones and make a really solid, shorter track. You've got some nice elements of frantic and creepy, so just find a way to bring them together in a shorter time and you're fine. Sorry for the ramblesome review.

-Review Request Club

shizeet responds:

Thanks for the comprehensive review. Again, I didn't write this specifically for NG, as mentioned in my description, else I'd probably would've kept the length lower. Also, the quality of the track really isn't so much degraded by the lower bitrate (most of the samples weren't very high quality to begin with) as much as it is by mixing, which I didn't spend a lot of time on.

The opening melody was more of a bassline/chorus riff rather than a full theme, though the instrument was kind of lacking in bass. Agree with the drums though, didn't really spend enough time processing/mixing them to pierce through enough the often thick mix.

The next part the melody really wasn't played on a "lead" synth (that instrument ended up being used as more as a pad throughout), but due to the somewhat limited instrument availability, I felt that it could work there as a contrast since it was a relatively less busy section.

2:10 was meant as a climax/breakdown of sorts, not sure why you didn't get that. The section right after is actually just a quick redux of the 1:40 section but with different instrumentation. Actually, there really isn't a lot of completely new sections throughout, mostly just older ones reimagined. I'll post a full section breakdown at the end of this response.

Drums might be too fast here, but I wouldn't count the parts before and after as fast paced - felt it was of a more moderate pace to me :/. Those silences were intentional, but weren't executed very well. Think I needed to leave some stuff still playing for it to sound more convincing.

4:45 was certainly the part that truly be could called a "new song", since I did recycle the ideas from another piece I started on but abandoned. I did make this part somewhat more busy on purpose since there really wasn't much melody to digest most of the time. Probably could've made it work well with better mixing though.

The ending, though, I actually felt had it more or less spot on. It was really meant as a huge release of sorts since this section has been building up and down for the last 4 or so minutes - making it too short wouldn't serve it justice in my opinion.

But anyways, thanks again for the review. I didn't feel it ramblesome at all and it really did help me better understand your perception of the piece section by section - and also gives me a lot more to respond to ;).

Structure (roughly):

A - B - A - C - Transition/Climax - C' - C'' - A' - (A' + B) - D - D - B' - D - B'' - D - B''' (with modified melody from C") - D - B'''' - D - End
*B', B'', and B'''' sections use a modified version of the A section bassline/motif

Not much to say...I like writing music, hoping to improve a lot on that front. I like reviewing things, as I'm far too opinionated not to. I'm amazingly awkward as a person. But all in all, I mean well. (:

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