Raza's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lethalix - Soaring]

Intro instrument is amazing. Piano sounds a bit plucky. Oooh slides! I love slides they are often neglected. Your compression seems extremely strong on those drums, they way they force the rest of the track into complete silenece, is a bit over-much.

This isn't a push-pull type of trance song so there is no need to compress the beat that hard.

Really cool rock/mega-man feel. Some nice stuff here, I like your use of the slide, it creates some real swirling, Chrono Trigger feeling, video game nostalgia moments for me.

I feel for the length of the song you need to write one or two more riffs though. The main riff is over-used in the first two minutes or so, but still it's a nice track.

You could maybe cure it by having the mood change come quicker. At 2:30 you start picking up the beat and it sounds pretty good. The skrillex type beats around 2:50 sound a little out of place, but still okay.

The end is a bit abrupt.

Summary:

Overall nice track, I think the main riff is overused, but it's not a deal-breaker. Be nice to hear just one more in the song. The energy when the drums pick up is nice, remember that you did that part well, on your next project in the future, and if you do something really well ask yourself why it works. If something doesn't work, ask why not. Good stuff!

SmallTownRook responds:

Thank you so much for taking your time to review my track! this is the kind of review that i like to get :D

[forever]

Bangin' kick. I like the touch of verb on the very first synth, sounds like it might be default bit it's a really nice sound. I'm a trance fan. A progressive trance fan. So I might be biased in your track.

Fairly nice mixing, I feel it bleeds a tiny bit, like it could be tightened up a tiny tiny touch. But honestly, pretty good.

The composition and progression is nice, you don't miss any hits or transitions. I feel like part of what could be tighter is the shape of your synths and instruments, you could refine some of them, refine the volume envelopes to get really tight rythms, use some gates, use some note-length variety is what I'm saying here.

It adds that extra energy to a track.

But arrangementwise, you hit all the spots, you have a bridge, you have a progression, etc.

That up down pluck synth around 3:20 that goes on for a while is a bit stand out in the mix for being plain, since it's your main lead for quite a while I'd consider changing the instrument or dressing it up a bit. Even something as simple as a delay might rescue it from standing out as too plain to be a lead.

I like your lead up that happens after this, I can tell you really understand the arrangement of trance songs. The beat that follows the lead up is spot on around 4:45, it is definitely classic trance at that point.

So summary:

Anyways, overall good track very well arranged, that's your strongest point, the chord synth could be less bleeding, that one synth I pointed out as plain should be fixed, and maybe refine some of the shapes of your envelopes but honestly, very well done track in every respect.

[Your Essence]

Nice and unified sound in the first 20 secs. I feel this song is a bit wet, but better to be too wet than too dry.

On your main synth around the 40 sec mark, try to tighten up the composition it seems a bit meandering, make sure you're 'saying something'. You don't have to make it cliche, just make sure it's really saying something.

On the other hand it works later on in the song, when you switch the instrument. Maybe it's just that synth, that doesn't fit that melody. Once the melody switches back to that synth it once again sounds a bit off, like it doesn't fully fit.

You have to be really careful with 'wandering' melodies and make sure there is the right composition around them for them to work.

I like your classical-esque lead around 1:50, your work reminds me a bit of my friends Draconum, (aka Genettic)

Anyway, nice song, keep at it, and experiment with changing up instruments.

Demonic-Overmind responds:

haha, yeah! wandering melodies, huh... I'm trying to make a fully one mood non wandering melodies, which is my weak point. so, ultimately, I'm decent at mixing now, will focus more on instrumentation and melodies.

Thanks a lot for the review!

[Ishimoto]

Samples are a bit raw and I think pushing 0. Dial them back. A piece like this should be dynamic, with a fairly wide range between soft and quiet parts. The actual samples used sound high quality, and the composition is good, has lots of feeling, sounds like it could be quantum leap even, but you need to spend a lot more time setting up your mixing.

Wet some of those instruments so they sound like they are in a real hall, dial back the volume on most of them, work on the levels of instruments to get them exact.

Look at your DB meter and make sure nothing is pushing 0db, and don't be afraid to have the track be a little bit quiet, as classical sounding tracks often are, and it's always better to have your track a little bit too quiet than pushing 0 in the mix, because you can always turn up the master or add a touch of modest compression, but if you go over you'll get distortion.

NicholasCabraja responds:

I limited the FUCK out of this track. This isn't a classical track you hear on the radio. This is a hybrid/trailer type. Nothing is peaking dude not even the master. It's just the RMS value is between 10-8db. I'll be playing with the reverb in other tracks since it seems like they aren't wet enough. I'm using QL Spaces and they are all in a hall with different pre delays and mixing of wet and dry signals.

Thanks for the tips.

[Tracks for Unfinished Games #1 - Rainforest]

I've worked on a game that never saw the light of day for I think, at the very least, half a year, before. XD It sucks.

Anyways, always a fan of Native Instruments. Nice sounds, and samples, I like your reverb, whatever it happens to be, everything sounds good on the sample side.

Sparse composition but not without structure or purpose, creates a mood, has atmosphere and I could see this working in the background of a game for sure. Would add a lot of mood. I see dark green and grey, maybe some rain.

I like your little piano riffs around the 1:50 mark.

Very nice ambient piece. I feel your choice of 'pipe organ' sample could have been a little fatter? I don't know, it's not really a criticism though because the one you did choose also works. And also I'm not listening on the best speakers right now, so I don't hear the bottom end as well.

At the 2:55 mark you have a very dry square synth, that's the only instrument that sticks out as not belonging, it's used right to the end of the song. You might want to touch it with verb or replace the instrument, so that it blends in with everything else and sounds like it belongs.

Overall last impression? Good song for what it was intended, an ambient background piece for a game, really nice atmosphere, and I enjoyed it.

ABitApe responds:

Thanks for the great review! Honestly, I can see you put effort into it! And oh! Did you make music for the game? And if so, did you release any of the songs even though the game never got released? Would be great to hear.

Yeah, that reverb is nice! It's the RC48 from Native instruments with the "Atmo sphere" preset. It's one of the large presets.. I use it a bit too often haha!

I do agree on you on the pipe-organ. Atleast now when I finished the song for standard-release instead of for the game. So point taken! And yeah.. the fact that I need more bottom in my tracks is a regular critique I get, been mixing in headphones so it's hard getting it right! But I've ordered monitors now.

Oooh! Didn't even notice the square sticking out before.. More verb would probably help yeah.. Need to work on my mixing skills!

And great to hear you liked it ^^ Really enjoyed your critique mate!

[DJVI - Sound Ward (REMIX)]

Song could use some tighter compression and it feels a bit dry/raw in places, usually a small touch of reverb is used to make everything sound 'real' or unified, except on a very few instruments, but if you make an instrument dry try to make sure it's a deliberate choice. I'm guilty of this one too.

As for compression, dance tracks like this need to be a little bit less dynamic, get that nice push-pull that's going on in the composition to really shine with a bit of compression. Give it punch.

Now mixing aside, composition seems solid, and I was really getting into it near the end, started to feel the dance in my bones. XD It ended a bit suddenly, I would like to hear the main loop added on to and have the song extended bit a minute or so. If you're stuck for an ending to a dance track it's always a good idea to wind it down.

In other words, start stripping away instruments until you're left with a main beat. The reason why people do this, to the best of my knowledge, is so that your track can be easily beatmatched and mixed into the next song on a DJ's list. They need that extra couple of bars to crossfade into a new song.

Anyhoo! Good job, keep it up!

[Searching Through Memories]

HIgh quality samples! This track is distoring so it means you're probably pushing 0db. Turn on a spectrometer and find out which frequencies are pushing and dial them back.

When you mix and master an orchestral piece you generally mix it lower volume because they tend to have a more dynamic volume range. If you want to achieve a boost you could use some light compression, but don't mix your channels over 0db. Sometimes you can get away with 1 or 2 over, but listen for that distortion.

As for the track itself, some nice feels in the strings, I like the peaceful atmosphere like you said you were going for.

Some nice dynamic harmonies. Generally good writing, I'm not sure if it could be tightened up a tiny bit or not so that's a fairly good sign that your composing is good. Just remix it and fix the levels, get rid of that distortion.

Really pay attention to the volume levels of your instruments, and don't be afraid of having the track a little lower or quieter than most tracks you hear on here. Go to youtube and listen to some classical music.

So a breakdown of your stars: - 1 Star for the mixing, and minus 1/2 a star because I can't tell if you need to make the composition a little bit better, due to the mixing making it hard for me to figure out. So this could very well be a 4.5 or 5 star after the mixing is fixed.

Again, nice track!

LawnReality responds:

Thank you for the input! I'll be sure to take try and fix it when I get a chance.

[Astrals-13]

Ure Good

I really like your style. I love subtlies and I also love the feeling of your melodies and how you present them. You could use some practice on clarity sometimes, perhaps to much going on at once, but I like it the way it is personally. Makes you listen a few times over to really hear everything. You would be a great loop writer (you should get that shit pressed unto vinyl! ^_^) I request the full song. [e-mail]

[Spectrasong]

Loved it~

Had an intresting if not original feel. Love the use of the reverb to create some fitting soundscapes in the background, the samples all went well with each other, however you tweaked them was great, there are a lot of sublties, which I really really like. Makes replayability. Very diverse. Has some emotion. Good Stuff. I look forward to hearing more music from you.