sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[submerged]

I love the super short decay synths on this. It's really effective creating the sense of water falling!

[TL - Welch's Joint]

Cool tune! Really nice hook and you develop the motifs well. I know this jazz stuff takes FOR-EV-ER to produce, so well done! That melody is really evocative. It has elements of heroism, but it also feels a bit cheeky at times, and definitely kind of sneaky. Something dramatic is happening, but it's not overly dark.
I'll try to give some critiques half as good as the ones you usually leave. Most of the things I can suggest relate to large ensemble jazz orchestration.
When the bass line is prewritten like it is in the head, I'd double the rhythm in the bass drum. Jazz drum charts don't typically have a lot telling them specifically what to do, but they will give the drummer stylistic indications and a road map of what else is going on in the chart. The bass line would either be written for them or a good drummer would pick up on that pretty quickly and and punctuate the bass line to help give it more oomph.
At 00:20, I'd think about having the ride cymbal keep time. There's a lot going on rhythmically in this section and it can feel a little stagnant without something driving it forward. If you want it to remain laid back, maybe just hammer the 2 + 4 down on with the pedal on the high hat. This will give the piece some fenceposts to wrap around. I'd also accent some of the staccato chordal hits in the horns with a smack on the snare drum (or crash cymbal if it's more of an arrival point).
At sections like 00:40 where the clarinet has a moment and then the horn counterpoint comes in, I'd consider letting the bass simply walk through the changes (mostly on quarter notes with a few syncopations here and there). There's a lot of really cool stuff happening rhythmically in the other sections and the piece will groove harder with something holding down time.
In general, whenever the entire ensemble is playing syncopated rhythms, it creates a ton of tension. This is super effective, but when you want to let off a little of that steam, I'd simplify the rhythms in at least on section so the other more complex stuff has something to bounce off of. You can accomplish this pretty easily by simplifying the rhythm section quite a bit. You could get away with having the bass walk through changes on quarter notes and have the drums keep time playing a swing feel on the ride and stomping 2 + 4 on the high hat with occasional accents in the bass drum, snare, and cymbals. It'll help the piece push forward, and really highlight the lovely rhythms you have going on in the horns. Otherwise, it sort of gets lost in the shuffle.
The mix feels a bit lacking in the highs. The drums sound like they're using brushes for most of this piece, but typically you'd expect to hear more stick work with full big band since the drums would need to cut through the dense horns. There are exceptions to this rule, but most examples I can think of with brushes in large ensembles are in sections where the horns are laying down pads or are otherwise playing very sparsely.
The Horns could use a little sparkle. As a general rule, I almost always add a little saturation or a touch of overdrive distortion to brass instruments. I feel like most libraries benefit from reinforcing the upper partials of the frequency spectrum.
The individual notes in the horns also feel a bit stagnant. One of the biggest pains about producing jazz stuff is that every note needs to be shaped. Even when horns are holding long tones, it's very difficult to make them play on/off. The note has trajectory and the volume swells over the course of a phrase. Playing with that aspect a bit more on a horn by horn basis (or at least section by section) will really help with the realism.
It's always nice to hear real jazz on NG. I know how much work this takes, and applaud your dedication to seeing something this difficult through to the end. Always good hearing another release of yours! Keep it up!

TaintedLogic responds:

Wow! Thanks so much for all the detailed feedback, SFW. This has got to be the most thorough review I've gotten in years. As someone who wasn't formally trained as a jazz musician, I really appreciate the orchestration/sound design tips. The doubling of the bass with the kick drum is especially interesting - I'll be sure to try it next time.

You're right about the mix being a little bottom-heavy. I agree that the articulations and entrances/note changes could sound more authentic, too. I'll spend some more time on both of those things in the future. Thanks again, though! I always highly value your comments, but even more so for a piece like this. Cheers! ^_^

[bottled raccoon]

I had no idea you made music! Sounds awesome

aap responds:

Thanks! I like doing music whenever I can find the time. I got myself a bunch of analog synths and I really love the sounds these things make!

[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 ;)

[Fore]

The balance in this is pretty good. Nothing sticks out like a sore thumb, and I can hear the parts as individuals as well as a whole. It's a little compression-happy, but that feels appropriate for the genre.

The melodies are good, but the piece feels a little loopy to me. The riser at 2:16 is the first time I can hear you pushing the notes around (via pitch bend), but the rest of the track, while works formally, is a little repetitive. I had a teacher who used to browbeat us (students) for writing (acoustic music) directly into Finale because she said she could hear the copy and paste. She believed that even if you were repeating a section verbatim, by doing it with pen and paper it forced you to have an intimacy with the notes and you really had to consider if rote repetition was the right choice. I think a lot of times it's easy to be caught in the same trap with electronic music. We make loops, we copy and paste them, we layer loops in different ways, and then we end it. I am 100% guilty of doing this myself. The challenge with this sort of stuff is to find ways to keep things interesting. Dance music often lends itself to repetition, but the devil is in the details. I'd try to find ways to keep phrases fresh when they come back again, or if they are repeated exactly, make sure they pay off somehow.

That said, the sound design sounds pretty good, and I don't really have any critiques on the mix.
Cheers!