sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Beauty in Chaos]

crispy mix! Is that your voice at 00:20?

larrynachos responds:

Nah. I wish I could sing or do any sort of vocals, but I can't. I can scarcely speak out loud lol. I'm glad you liked it!

[Tryhard]

I don't know much about trap, but this track kicks ass. Always nice to hear a new release of yours.

larrynachos responds:

Wow, thank you so much sfw! It's always nice to hear from you as well :) Glad to see you're still cranking out tunes in 2020

[Stay Focused]

oh man, love those crystal synth arpeggios around 00:10. I'd love to hear more development from 2:29-end. The ideas in that section slap pretty hard and I only wish it was longer. Well done.

Aaron-Long responds:

thanks a lot for the specific feedback, glad you enjoyed it!

[High Sky]

really enjoyable straight through. nicely done!

TRVSTA responds:

Thanks a lot!

[How you doin' tonight]

lovely lofi melancholy vibes. I wouldn't mind hearing an alternate take with vocals. Maybe include it as a bonus track or release it as a single?

SentryTurbo responds:

maybe one day

[Contigo a la Distancia]

really great playing and singing!
There's a lot of room reverberation in the recording. You can fix this in a number of ways.
If you have a closet big enough to fit your guitar in, you could try recording in there. This is surprisingly effective especially if you have a lot of clothes in there as they help absorb some of the reflective sound.
If the room is pretty small, you could try hanging some blankets up on the walls. There was awhile when I lived in a big basement room I hung rods going across the ceiling so I could clip blankets to them to partition off a little booth when I needed to do some recording.
Another fix might be to build a reflection filter. They sell these for an absurd amount, but essentially you put some sound absorbing material in a box, and set your microphone in there so it only records the sound in front of it and not the reflections from the ceiling/back wall/floor/etc. For the absorbing material, acoustic foam is great, a cut up egg crate mattress would work, or even some rags if you're really on a budget.
Anyway, fantastic work regardless. I think a little work on your recording technique would really help the listener focus on an otherwise flawless performance. Keep it up!

Ozcar responds:

Thanks for the advise. Hadn't sing for a while, so let's keep it for now like this. Thanks again ;)

[Sea of Love Tears 「恋水の海」]

Well written! This has a really cinematic feel to it, and it sits in a really delicate place between forlorn longing, love, mystery, and excitement.

The mix sounds pretty good. The viola (violin?) at 0:34 sounds a little synthetic, but for some reason it doesn't bother me much in the context of the genre. Adding a tiny bit of room reverb to this might help cover up some of the software feel of this, but in general the performance is good.
1:01 - the percussive hit on the 2 and 4 is a bit bright. I'd pull that back a touch. It's not overtly loud, but its just enough over what I'd expect for this genre that it pulls away a lot of attention after the 4 bar or so.
You've done a really good job of getting realistic performances out of your MIDI instruments which is incredibly hard. I feel like this took a ton of work.
I'd love to have heard some dubstep elements in this. As is, it sits very neatly as a genre piece. You've done everything you set out to do, and the piece evokes some strong imagery and colors in my head. That said, I really want to hear a unique twist on this. If you continue to work on this, I'd love to hear how you make it uniquely yours.

Tennon responds:

Thanks

[illbefine]

I love the jazz/pop feel of this. It's got a bit of quirk to give it personality to boot. Those vocal samples doubling the synth are really fun.
The super quiet intro is cool, but I think you could bump the gain on this just a touch. I like how it draws you in and I think the difference in volume between the intro and the rest of the track works, but the disparation between the two sections was just a little too much.
The sibilance and fricatives in your vocal performance are really hard to hear. I think the words in the vocal line would have more definition if you made those upper frequencies a bit brighter. A little compression on the vocals would also help keep things audible when you taper the ends of the words. I like that you didn't go for hyper compressed bubblegum pop vox, but in this case, a lot of the lines can be quite difficult to hear at all.

1:20 - I love this moment. I would consider adding a synth pad with a resonance/cutoff sweep to this section under those descending synth intervals (something like 0:34 in 'Lights' by Max Tundra or a more subdued/subtle version of the sweep you have going on at 3:04 in your track).

I like the brilliance of some of those crash cymbals, but I think they could be pulled back a bit so they don't stick out quite as much.

The descending piano line is awesome.

In general, I really dig this track. The style is a unique and memorable take on some pop tropes. You get extra points for imbuing personality. There are some mix issues that I think could be addressed (mostly in the vocals...I'd knock this up about half a point or more if they were more audible), but in general this was really enjoyable. This is one of the more original submissions this round. Cheers!

icantpronouncethis responds:

Thank you so much for the review. I did have many obstacles working with vocals due to it being the first attempt rally working on it. Compression has always been an issue in my music production. Maybe I should crank it up to a eleven than slowly drop it down to an acceptable level. One thing I learned for sure is to prepare before recording anything. Apparently high school choir class is not enough to get a good take.

[To The Clouds]

Super moody and cinematic.
The bass has a super slow release. I'm not sure if this is the synth/sample or if it's an effect, but it works in some places better than others. When the bass moves faster (such as the rising section in 2:22), the decay fights the onset of the new note and causes a moment of dissonance between the notes creating a bit of muddiness.

In general I could use some more layers of some upper percussive layers. You have good driving motifs in the lower and mid layers, but picking out a few places to bring in some textural layers of clacks, shakers, tiki tikis, could really help accentuate some of the sections and create more dramatic shifts when you pull them out. For example, if you added some subtle layers starting at 0:30 (and suddenly shift to a different layer at 0:47) it would make the muted synth/harp section at 1:02 REALLY stand out.

The same goes for 1:41. You could build layers of activity leading up to this, and then if they suddenly dropped out for those drones/flute to take over, it would feel gosh darn epic. it's a great way to subconsciously build tension.

2:57 - after the cymbal cresecendo, I'd consider adding a bass drone an octave below the current bass in a sine wave or something to really help that section pay off. Right now the crescendo leads into something, but the texture remains largely the same as it was leading up to that point. You could go all Disney Magical Moment with it too and layer in some super subtle tinkling of a mark tree, though it's up to you if you wanted to go that route or not.

All in all, it's really great. I think you accomplished what you set out to do. The midi instruments didn't stand out, and you did a good job of balancing it with live recordings. Well done!

FYI, I'd look into the possibility of using Vienna Ensemble Pro to help offload some of the duties of your workstation if you're having trouble keeping up with running all the virtual instruments. Not everyone loves the extra layer of tech it adds, but I've found it indispensable when it comes to large ensemble work.

etherealwinds responds:

Okay okay, I finally got some time on my laptop to respond to reviews again.
Hey SFW! There is some really good advice here. I really appreciate you adding specific pointers for me to try out! I'll try them all out and see what fits and what doesn't :)

Thanks for the library recommendation also! I'll look into it.
One of my motivations to join the competition this year was actually the pleasure I got from listening to your music last year. I was real impressed.

[Pretentious]

Great vocal delivery! The tone of your voice is totally appropriate for the genre and the lyrics are fitting. A minor thing regarding text setting - putting the emphasis on 'is' in 'this IS fareWELL' in the chorus is a little awkward. Typically you'd try to write the melody so more important words get the stronger beat. Instead of starting that line on the pickup so 'is' starts on the downbeat, I'd try doing 'THIS is FARE-WELL". It's the difference between <and ONE two-THREE> and <ONE and TWO-THREE>. It's not a deal breaker and there are examples all over rock of awkward lyrical placement (Green Day's use of the world 'mel-O-dra-MA-tic' in Basket Case instead of how you'd actually say it 'MEL-o-dra-MA-tic' has always bothered me in particular).

The guitar needs to be WAY more beefy in the mix. It's pretty subdued right now. I can sort of hear what you're going for, but it lacks the punch I'd expect in this sort of alterna-rock track. I'd try rolling the bass off of the rhythm guitars a bit and let the bass guitar take care of that. Maybe double track the rhythm guitar and hard pan them left and right. Also, adding a SUPER short reverb to the guitars will help beef them up in the mix. If you tracked the guitars using dynamic mics, maybe try a stereo pair of small diaphram condensors?

The track looks pretty heavily compressed, but you have tons of headroom across the board. Was the limiter set a bit to high? I don't think you necessarily need to normalize it to get that brick wall, but because you have so much headroom, you probably could have squashed the track less and let some peaks pop through the texture. This may have helped with

3:45 - The guitar palm mutes/bass/bass drum are fighting each other pretty hard here. Try to notch out places for each of the instruments in the mix. They don't all need to occupy, say, 150hz. Really only one instrument is needed there at a time, the rest will fill in the illusion that they also live there.

All in all, really nice writing. The song is fun, energetic, and has that 'Foo Fighters' aesthetic you were going for. I'd book up on some mixing tutorials to get your ideas to really sparkle.

dude2312 responds:

Hi, sleepFacingWest.

Great critique, I must say. I'd say it's a matter of perspective in regards to the placement of the accent (I happen to like it Green Day quite a lot and it is not awkward for me). As of right now, I am taking tutorials on mixing as this is my 4th attempt at recording. Before that, I had never recorded anything in my life!

So, I thank you for your review, I think it gives me a lot to work on and more importantly, I appreciate you dropping by to listen to my song!