sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The After Hours]

You've done it again! That dirty bass has this sort of quality that sounds like slowly ripping construction paper. I love it! What is your background? Your bass game is on point and your harmonic sensibilities suggest some serious jazz study. Your music makes me want to get a beer and nerd out with you. Let's not make this weird.

frootza responds:

I dig those metaphors man! I've been playing in different bands since I was in High School. I learned most of my "classical" theory during that time and I studied with one of the best guitarists in the world where I learned a great deal about jazz theory and technique (mind you, he never used sheet music as a lesson tool I learned that on my own!).

Lessons would include him dictating specific chords, like the split voicing of a B Minor 7 played as the third inversion. If I didn't have it within a second he would be very angry! So, it made me practice a lot haha. But he allowed me to graduate his school at a young age which was cool too.

Other than that it's been self study for the most part, which is the lifelong journey anyway. I want to try and get you some gigs in Jersey! PM me if you want to nerd out one day brotha!

[T-Logic - Architeuthis]

This is great! I got some serious Thriller vibes at ~1:00. Nice job separating the countermelodies. Everything sits with a lot of space in the mix. The ping ponging of the bass is a cool effect and totally works in this track. As a general rule of thumb, I typically try to keep bass and any meat and potatoes percussion panned dead center, but you make this work.

I kind of want to see an animated music video for this song featuring a giant squid destroying a city. Any New Ground animators up for the challenge?

Great work! 5 stars!

TaintedLogic responds:

Thanks so much, SleepFacingWest! :D This is a really positive review. I totally understand what you mean about keeping the "meat and potatoes" panned in the center, but I kind of broke the unwritten rules with this one (in multiple regards). Love your idea for the animated music video. Thanks again for the review! ^^

[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!