sleepFacingWest's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[slight disconnection (ALBUM VERSION)]

nice work! It's like some sort of distant dreamy vhs memory. I recall driving through Cali in a vintage convertible even though I've never done that.

The major 7th you go to in the bass on the I chord (the 2nd chord in the intro-type progression) feels *really* dissonant to me. I like the melody you have in the bass part, but I'd consider popping that up an octave or two and then using the actual bass to hold down either roots or at least more stable chord tones.

Love literally everything else. This is great!

realityreimagined responds:

yea i agree lol, tysm :))))

[Heaven Energy]

Dang, that's a wide mix! It's got a really heavy spread, but when summed to mono there aren't any phasing issues which can be an issue with mixes this wide. I wish I had your production-fu. Any tricks you feel like sharing?

Dieswyx responds:

Just try to make it sound good, there's not a real trick in there. You will gain the knowledge through the years or something, idk. I just put myself into an automatic mode 😌

[A Bright Morning]

Nice orchestration! The colors changed often enough to keep things fresh and the glockenspiel was used really tastefully to punctuate moments. I really got the sense of experiencing a bright fresh morning as the world slowly wakes up.

The only critique I'd have is that the melody can kind of feel a little meandering. If you wanted, I think you could get away with establishing a dominant melodic motif and then find ways to let that evolve over the piece. There were enough similar things happening that the piece felt like a cohesive whole, but nothing that stood out as a very obvious theme. Then again, its entirely possible that keeping things loose and ever-evolving is the point that I've completely missed.

Either way, great work!

Irish-Soul responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I’ll be sure to keep it in mind when I write music in the future :)

[song of the vulture]

This is a lovely lilting tune that hints at a lot of different contexts. It feels nostalgic, a little melancholy, perhaps heroic(?), and a little creepy. I could also see it working in very specific romantic contexts between erudite lovers. The harmonic movement is also quite nice. Complex enough to keep things interesting, but never feels like it's working too hard.
Is there a chorus effect on the voice or is that 100% from the multiple takes?

Great work as always!

Troisnyx responds:

Thank you so much! <3

The voice was from the multiple takes (five in total), and two instances of reverb at small percentages -- one on the mixer track for the vocals, and one on a send track.

[Rain World -full-]

Do you work with James and Lydia?

Midnights-Ocean responds:

I do not currently but I would be interested to do so if they were ever interested. : )

[TL - Sonata for the Calm and Bright]

really great composition! It's incredible hearing how versatile you are. I love that you get access to a new piano and you're like "screw it, might as well knock out a Sonata XD

As always, all the following is personal opinion. You always leave very good detailed critiques which I find helpful so I want to return the favor.
It feels a little tight metrically and the attacks are a little robotic. It's always hard to say for sure, but it sounds a bit like it may have been moused in as opposed to playing it live with a keyboard. If you are able to play it in live (or at least one hand and maybe trade off) and turn off quantization it will help make this ebb and flow a bit better. The velocities could use some more variation and the tempo could push and pull a bit more to emphasize phrasing. Some of the shortest attacks in the left hand feel too abrupt and could be lengthened a bit (at least in my opinion).
I love what you're doing with the general shape of the piece and the treatment of the source material! Your ability to stretch what is otherwise a common melody is really impressive. Melodically I felt that all of your decisions unfolded very naturally and imbued a sense of your own personality while never losing sight of the origin. That's not easy to do!
Some of the movement in the left hand sounds a bit funky to my ears. It's entirely possible that's what you're going for, but the solo piano playing in this style sets my ears up to expect classic counterpoint so my head goes to a very specific theoretical space. In that world, I'd expect to hear stronger chord tones on the down beats in the bass, clearly outlined cadences at the ends of phrases, and no direct or parallel 5ths/4ths/octaves. This almost fits that paradigm but also breaks enough expectations that it can feel like something is left unsaid (like the shave and a haircut rhythm, but without the final 2 knocks). If I were approaching this piece, I'd consider leaning more heavily in one direction or the other. If you're working with a predetermined harmonic framework, I think the vertical harmonies could be more clearly outlined (especially in the bass, but also in how the strong/weak notes play out in the treble voice) and some of the tonic > pre-dominant > dominant relationships between the horizontal harmonies could be more clearly defined so it feels less meandering. If this is meant to be freer (like two independent melodies woven together irrespective of overarching harmonic structure) it might help to break a little more from baroque "isms" just so it doesn't set up the expectation of adherence to classic counterpoint.
An often-overlooked thing that you do really well here (and something I wish I was able to do better) is that you are able to traverse the range of the piano with incredible deftness. It's done so naturally that I didn't pick out on the first listen. I only realized how much distance you traveled when going back and skipping between sections to hear the compositional relationships between parts. Skipping to the chimey upper register of the piano to break some of the tension when things get dense in the middle and lower register is just brilliant and I'm totally going to steal that!

Spectacular work as always! I know you're super busy, but if this is what you can do with brand new samples and 12-15 hours of work between school projects, I can only imagine what is coming in the future. I can't wait!

TaintedLogic responds:

Wow, thanks so much for such a detailed review, SFW! You're absolutely right that I moused this in. I really should challenge myself to use a keyboard sometime, so thanks for calling me out on that. I agree that a lot of the volume and tempo automations are too subtle to stand out, and I regret not doing more with the note length and articulation.

I think it's funny that you keep mentioning the "left hand" and whatnot, because I didn't really think about that while I was composing it. In all honesty, you'd probably need at least 2 people to actually play this. I agree that the vertical voicing is a bit strange at times. Originally, I wrote it all in the same track, and I only pulled apart the different voices later when I was trying to humanize the piano. I definitely took a lot of liberties with the counterpoint and played with the expectations of the listener to some extent. Admittedly, all of the key changes in the last minute or so were inspired by the first movement of Beethoven's Waldstein, although he pulls off the modulations much smoother, of course. Your point about "leaning more heavily in one direction" is well-taken.

I'm also not sure I originally intended to base the entire piece off of "Silent Night." It simply seemed right to weave the melody in there once I started writing the waltzy section.

But I'm really glad you like how I've used the full frequency range of the piano. It was a way of creating variety amidst the somewhat repetitive thematic content and melodic contours. I've been criticized in the past for having a lack of variety in my contrapuntal pieces.

Again, thanks so much for the review, SFW! It's safe to say that this review made my day. :')

[Trois interprets HisoutaP's "Rudy's Theme" from True Aspirations]

Gorgeous as always. I love the “raw” approach. It really feels like you seized a moment.

Troisnyx responds:

Thank you. 🙏🏽 I needed to hear that, I think. Capturing a moment's worth of emotions in a piece of music is akin to the kind of stuff on grew up with, and it's heartening to bear that I'm on that path.

[test upload/new mic]

You have plenty of headroom on your recording, so I wouldn't add any compression on the recording phase unless you're REALLY familiar with how compression works. Artistic color choices aside, you'd only really need to do that if there were extreme volume issues (like you were working on a script that required some yelling or screaming) so you don't accidentally clip and ruin a take. Other than that, it will give you (or the mixing engineer) far more flexibility if you leave the compression for post-processing.

If the audio is being sent to a mixing engineer, you should be good to go. If you are uploading things yourself, you'll probably want to "normalize" your audio. This will take the loudest part and set that at the maximum volume before it clips. That way, your audio will make use of all the headroom you've got (all the vertical space in the waveform). If you are sending it to a mixing engineer, don't normalize. They'll typically appreciate being able to take care of that themselves.

The recording sounds pretty good! You could probably get a little closer to the mic so it picks up less of the room, and then crank your gain down accordingly to keep the levels from clipping. The gain is set a little high right now which makes the mic a bit more sensitive allowing it to pick up sounds that are bouncing off the walls or ceiling. One of the benefits of using a preamp/audio interface like this is you have more control over the signal as opposed to a mic with built in pre and converter. Get a little closer and turn the gain down to compensate and it should help remarkably with the ambient sound (although it's honestly not terrible). If it remains a problem, you could buy (or pretty easily build) a reflection filter. I could step you through a few options if you want. Audacity is fine for recording audio. The app that you use generally won't make a huge difference when it comes to recording. There are slight differences in workflow when editing, but even then, they all basically do the same things.

It seems like you're recording in stereo which is why it's only coming out of the left channel. At the top of audacity there should be a dropdown between the input menu (icon of a mic) and an output menu (icon of a speaker). If that middle dropdown says 2 (Stereo) Recording or something like that, you'll want to change it to Mono.

Feel free to DM if you have any questions or want to chat about it further.

DrSevenSeizeMD responds:

Thank you so much! I was worried that I had the gain too low. I fiddled with the gain forever and was never sure if I had it right, so I decided to just ask yall!
Ok, so lower gain, closer to the mic!
Thank you so much! I'll also switch it to mono!
I'll harrass you if I have anymore problems! I appreciate it!

[fireo dominus]

that choir sounds amazing! Is that a virtual instrument or did you sample actual singing?

father-p responds:

two VSTs, layered. and both are free! it's the SAM orchestra and Labs Choir from spitfire. Both are good on their own but the free version of sam has a very limited range, and Labs sounds pretty boxy on its own. but if you layer them and pan them separately a bit it sounds great!

[TL - Credo]

sounds great as always! Love the sacred music vibes early on before the dominant 7th.
I like how loose you're able to make this feel despite being created in box.
You might want to consider some parallel compression in the drums to help give them a bit more presence and punch, but that would be overly nit picky.
Best of luck with the internship. Is it music-based?

TaintedLogic responds:

Thanks so much for the review, SFW! I appreciate your critique of the drums. I've been trying to get better at mixing drums in Logic for a while now, and admittedly I'm not quite there yet.

And no, the internship isn't music-based. I'm studying to be an urban planner, actually. Cheers!