sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pulse Sketch 1]

Great! I'm a sucker for minimalism. There were some nice unexpected twists in here as well. I gave it 5 stars because I think it works well as a composition, but I could have personally used a little more variation in the loops themselves so you wouldn't have to rely so much on completely changing the loops for each section. Reich's textures are constantly undulating due to audible processes and after awhile your ear becomes highly sensitive to the slightest shift in texture (which is happening all over the place). I really liked way the duple vs triple feels interlocked in different ways. I think by adding or subtracting a note to either of those loops and/or changing a melody note here or there could work out well, and you could get more hypnotic mileage out of your already sonically rich material.

The mix was perfect. I have no feedback there.

All in all, enjoyable! I look forward to your next release.

gruber99 responds:

Hey thanks!

Yes, adding or subtracting a note here and there would definitely help the monotony a bit. I was determined to keep the note-for-note vibe haha. Do you know Phrygian Gates by John Adams? One of my favourite pieces of all time, and inspired this piece quite a bit I think.

[Shadow Play]

Nice work! That bass is super dirty!

frootza responds:

Thank you brother! I'm definitely proud of the bass grooves in this song! Just doubling it with a live bass and rough square shape sound for this effect. Sometimes it goes off with some counterpoint between the bass and the square but I've been having fun writing for this style lately. Appreciate the review dude!

[Veil of Dreams]

I added you to my favorites. I'm super impressed with your incredibly clean and expressive instruments and compositional ability. If you don't mind me asking, what is your background? The samples are so clean and perfect, either you have access to some super legit studio space, or you have some really great DIY tips to share with the community!

Well done! 5/5

samulis responds:

Haha, actually the space these were recorded in was quite bad! A drywalled classroom (luckily with high ceilings). My "secret", I guess, is a stereo pair of Rode NT1-A's. I'd put them on anything imagineable. I don't understand how damn good they sound, but they do! Now Rode has an even better version of the NT1 (it's jet black too), that I really want to get at some point.

It's actually very very basic recording stuff... just a spaced stereo pair of NT1-A's, like 2-4 feet apart from each other, high up pointed down towards the sound source, then a close mic.

The secret sauce is, of course, good convolution reverb. I swear 90% of how people perceive sample libraries is the reverb used in the demos. Convolution reverb well used is the difference between realism and flatness. A little white noise/hall noise stuck in there is no bad thing either.

My background is exactly what you hear... game music. Although I've dabbled in everything from 3D design to tutorial writing, game design, and more.

If you're around in a few months, I plan on releasing all of these instruments soon. :)

[Stormy Evening]

This is great! really nice harmonic motion. The atmosphere you work with is perfect. The composition seems to really ebb and flow with the field recording. The mix seems a little distant to my ears. Was that a puposeful choice? I can see it working with that wistful feeling, but I would think about some light compression and maybe eq the highs up a bit? That's SUPER nitpicky though. You really did a perfect job with this one.

Also, if those are your own samples, good job! SUPER clean recording and they didn't sound robotic. I'm incredibly impressed.

samulis responds:

Hey dude! Thanks for the review.

Just me puttering around C minor with some divisi stuff. Always fun. Yeah, I did intend to make it a bit distant sounding, to fit the more ambient sound. I didn't do much mixing to it at all, haha, aside from the field recordings.

[~{ Chrome Killer }~]

Damn, dude! Crazy good mix!

larrynachos responds:

Coming from you, that means a lot! Thanks :)

[T-Logic - Heuristic]

I thought compositionally this was nice. There's enough variation to keep it interesting. The pacing is perfect. There was never a moment I thought something got too repetitive or boring, and the end is like a triumphant manic dream attack. Well done!

I'm curious - what prompted the decision to do everything with the high pass filter? During the first phrase I thought you were creating tension and would let it open up, during the second phrase I thought you were super brave and going for the gusto, but after that I was a little disappointed. I found it a little challenging to continue listening to be honest. The snare drum is a bit fatiguing as it's always just hammering away at the ears at the same limited frequency range everything else occupies.

If finding a balance between two elements is an issue you can try to separate them in a multitude of ways. Sometimes using a stereo expander to open up the sound a bit can help it occupy more room in the mix. Things can sound a little warbly if you do this by itself, so I usually send the main sound to a bus with the expander on it, then mix both the bus and the original track lower so the volume is the same, but the sound fills the stereo space out a bit more. If you do this with more than one sound, set the stereo field differently so you separate where the sound swims.

You can also try parting the frequential curtains so to speak. This is when being able to see your mix on a spectrogram is really useful. If two sounds are relatively constant, limit the sound of one of them to a concentrated area in the spectrum, then duck those same frequencies in the other sound. Alone they don't sound right, but together they should blend well and will fill each other complimentarily.

For percussion, you might want to try using sidechain compression to auto duck the synth. Make it so the synth will dip in volume subtly when the snare triggers. That way the snare can still have the prominence you want, but you can keep the volume levels lower and more balanced.

Was the high pass an attempt to do something new, or did you have a specific scenario in your head? Creative decisions are creative decisions, but this one was so unique I figured there must be some sort of story to go along with it. Overall, well done musically. The mix confuses me a bit, but I might just not "get it" yet.

TaintedLogic responds:

Wow! This is an extremely detailed and helpful review, man! Thank you so much! ;D I appreciate your compliments about the composition. For the mixing, I was mainly relying on the advice of one of my long-time friends on this site, Johnfn, but I acknowledge that I took his advice way too far. :) I'm incredibly grateful for the advice you gave me in the last 4 paragraphs. I'm always trying to improve my mixing. I have to ask, though: you mention terms like "stereo expander" and "bus" that I'm not familiar with. Are these plug-ins that are available for FL Studio? Do I have to purchase them? Are basic versions of them already included in the mixer settings? I would check right now, but I'm afraid I'm on vacation this week and so I don't have access to FL Studio. Thank you very much again for your advice, though. You're getting a couple of healthily-sized reviews when I get home this weekend. ^_^

[Adrift]

Really nice use of simple wave forms! I love the way you make them breathe. You control the stacking of overtones really well. This is the sort of thing you listen to with headphones and let it massage the inside of your brain. I could have used a little more detail in the background. There's a lot going on up front with harmonies and melodies blending together like chalk being smudged, but with this sort of ambient stuff I feel like microscopic textural work in the background helps give the track more dimension. A mentor once mentioned that a drone is never just a drone. On a macro scale it may move slowly or even be stagnant, but on a microscopic level it's always moving, undulating, and creating a sense of motion. I don't have any specific suggestions as there are many ways to approach this, but I've always found it helpful to keep in mind when I work on ambient tracks. That said, it really does feel like coming home. You've managed to tell a story with this one excerpt, and I look forward to hearing the rest of the album!

[Cantus Fletus]

This is great! You control the pacing incredibly well! The blend of sounds is unexpected, but it works.

I'd consider messing around with the vocals a bit. They sound a little synthetic (especially in the faster sections). This is mostly due to the way that the sample fades in and out; you can hear individual attacks and releases of notes. I'd consider adding a little reverb to the vocals to mask this effect a bit. It should smooth out the gaps between individual notes as well as give the end of notes a more natural sounding taper. There are limits to this effect, though. Obviously if you crank the reverb too much, it'll make it sound like the choir is in a cement room a mile away. You can also try nudging some of the notes to start a bit earlier. This way you don't hear the end of one note, then the beginning of another, but they'll sort of crossfade and blend together a bit more. If you're able to do this with your particular sample set, you can also try lengthening the release time of your sample. Not all instruments give you access to the ADSR, but it's something I'd look for. I mess with this an awful lot in my own tracks. The slow attack on slow sections sounds great, but sometimes you really need notes to pop, so I'll automate the attack time to be quicker for those sections (or duplicate the track with different settings and chop the sequence between the two...it depends mostly on how big the project already is). Lastly, think about adjusting the velocities of each note in the vocal line. There are some notes that pop out a little unnaturally. Shaping the contour of a line is, to me, one of the most difficult things to do. You do a really good job of this already, but there are a few notes that still pop out oddly to my ears.

I hope I don't sound like a total twat. I think the piece is really well written and it works as is. These are just ideas to take or leave. Thank you for sharing this!

Shurrikane responds:

That's a big review! Thanks for this one!

I barely play around with the control lf ADSR - I should consider using it more often and "smooth" the notes. Thanks for the feedback, I was always struggling with the choir! This will certainly help a lot!

Have a nice day!

[[NIM] Chaoz Fantasy ORCHESTRAL REMIX]

This is a really nice version. I can hear a story you're telling with the progression which is, I feel, always important no matter what type of music you're making. You have good sensibilities when it comes to orchestration (how to layer instruments). You had mentioned having trouble getting things to blend and fill space on the review you did for me. Here are some suggestions - I apologize in advance for all the huffing and puffing I'm about to do, but these are a few things I've learned along the way that I've found helpful.

There are a few things you can try to make this "pop" more. The instruments in general are a little flat. No matter if it's a percussionist, brass, woodwind, or string player, instrumentalists will never play a note with a flat even tone or, what's more, play a sequence of them that are precisely the same. Even if it was humanly possible, a good instrumentalist will try to shape a line to help mold phrases and highlight nuance of the music. In digital production you sort of have to fake this. If you have a keyboard, go back over some of these lines and try to add some swells to each of the instruments using the mod wheel. Different instruments react to different CC values, but typically you'll see either CC1 (modwheel) or CC11(expression) control variance in the timbre and/or volume of the instrument. If the instruments don't react to this, CC7(volume) is a way to brute force this, but it might sound a little unnatural. If you can't use an actual wheel or slider, you can mouse these events into the automation. A lot of times I'll rough in the shape of the line with a hardware controller, then go back and refine or sometimes completely change something with the mouse.

You could also try tossing some of the instruments into a room. Experiment with impulse reverb. You can push instruments forward or backwards in the virtual space by subtly mixing the wet/dry of each instrumental section. You can also adjust for samples to make them sound better. For example, in a full orchestra, the string section is HUGE so the sound of pizzicato strings is going to come from a bigger area than the french horns which are a little more localized in comparison. You can use the reverb to help diffuse the sound a bit.

I'd suggest taking a few bars of something that was played by real instruments and transcribing those parts into your DAW using virtual instruments. Then go back and forth between your mix and the recording and try to get your instruments to sound as close to the recording as you can. It will never sound exactly the same but you'll learn a lot of tricks to make your software sound more human. You'll also start keying in on really detail oriented production techniques. As an added bonus, it'll be like a crash course in orchestration. Seriously, I've studied a ton of music theory and composition, but I've learned more practical tricks for effective arrangement by pulling scores apart by ear and trying to recreate some of my favorite parts.

Phew! I hope some of this helps. It really does sound great! You have incredible instincts, and I really like hearing the direction you took this piece. It's already in a ridiculously awesome place. Trying out a few of these ideas might help with future projects - or maybe not! I just suggest things I'd want to hear if I was working on a similar project, but in the end you decide what to take and what to discard.

larrynachos responds:

Oh my god dude, thank you so much for this review! This is probably the most thorough one I've ever received! I will certainly take your advice, and I'll keep practicing until I get it right :D Thanks again!

[The First Movement]

Really cool development you have going on here! The initial melody is epic yet stately. I love the minute variations. I don't know that you need to come up with a completely new melody per se. Something melodic should happen at 2:26. It would be super cool if you could come up with a countermelody to the main theme...something that would play off the rhythms and intertwine with the notes harmonically. Present this new melody without the first theme over the horn stabs and rhythmic part, then when the key change happens later, bring the original melody back and play them both at the same time. It'll wrap everything up in a nice and tidy package, and then the new melodic material won't seem so random. Leave the completely new theme for the second movement ;)
I like the story this piece tells. Did you have a specific scene in your head when you wrote it?

xchurch173 responds:

Awesome thank you!! And I'm glad you liked it, I've been fiddling with this one for a long time. And I usually just start writing with a small scene or emotion in mind, and then I sort of build the rest of the scene with the music. I let it build itself and just see where I take it.