Raza's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[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.