p4c's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[{GBD} Shadow Of The Moon]

hummmm

ill jst type comments as they come to me.

it starts off a bit slow if you ask me. but the foreboding vibes of the song gets across, so its okay.

the sound effect that comes up in rapid succession at about :39 isnt very strong and gets annoying after a while. and the snare roll that introduces the beat is a pretty weak transition. the beat itself is too soft and shallow for me to really get into it.

you are, though, getting a really really disturbing atmosphere on, so great job!

the style change into breakbeats is welcome, but a smoother transtition would be nice.

i see what you're trying to do with teh chimes but i think you can do better if you jst let the chime play out a chord once or something and let the disturbing atmosphere do the talking instead of making them play over and over again in a chord pattern. that makes the harshness of the sound get annoying.

the different leads that come in afterwards just dont have any common key or anything so they seem random and thrown in... i think you can do better in makign this a coherent track.

finally, they often get too loud, alike at 3:30 or so. i liked that more as a background melodic element.

------

overall i thought this was very decent with the background and sound effects, but the song lacked direction and lasting appeal so it was tough for me to give it too high of a score. good job overall though!

[check out my latest. its only fair ;)]

DoobyTimePiece responds:

so i just reviewed your shit. cool beans and thanx for your feed back

[The Perfect Battle]

mehhhh

hmm. this was a good shot at interpreting the contest differently, but i wasnt all too enchanted by this for a few reasons. ill split up into sections:

GENERAL:

the pauses in between sections were too long, breaking the vibes of the piece into fragments too much. try to have smooth transitions between them and it would work better.

finally, in terms of production, all the instruments sounded pretty dry to me. try boosting higher frequencies to make them sound richer, and probably use a wider variety of instruments.

INTRO

this section had some odd chords going around. i mean, im not telling you to be trite or anything, but they kinda messed up the mood of it.

SECOND PART

this is by far the best section in my opinion. i think the percussion was very weak and could use work, but you got a very conflicted feeling there that i really liked. kinda videogamey [im thinking kingdom hearts haha]. good job overall, but maybe a more robust percussion line would work better than that 4x4 bass drum derivative you have going on now.

Third part is a pretty generic and predictable closing statement. ithink you can do better than this.

overall i thought this was okay but too fragmented for me to really get into it. good luck in the contest!

[check out my submission too. its only fair ;)]

Cleod-9 responds:

Thanks for the critique, I really appreciate it! (Sent you a review just now btw)

Anyway, it's no debate that everyone likes the second part the best. Though you aren't the first person to mention the percussion. I haven't written a piece with percussion in 3/4 time before so it was awkward enough for me deciding a beat, let alone make up a good drum kit. Still, I'm sure if I had more time I could find the perfect percussion to use.

Also I'm disappointed that you didn't like the 3rd part... :( Oh well, nothing I can do now. And I can see what you mean about the piece being "too fragmented" but I made it that way on purpose. Guess it didn't work for everyone.

Be sure to read my review if you haven't done so yet!

[[MC] My Last Step]

crispy!

i thought you composed this pretty well, kind of like those epic final fantasy videogame styles rather than a traditional classical piece. props! i also liked the introduction a lot, i didnt see that in a lot of other orchestral style entries.

compositionally speaking, two main problems in my opinion.

1) the chord progression was pretty predictable once you listen to the first few bars since it basically retains the same vibes throughout the entire song. also,

2) a lot of the instruments that you brought in basically take turns reiterating the theme, which is fine to a certain extent, but i dont think they all played together too much. like the strings and occasional woodwinds were pretty much almost the entire background throughout the entire song, and there was pretty much just one lead instrument at any point, so it lacked a compositional complexity i would have liked.

im more of a guy to talk production though, so here are my thoughts briefly. all your instruments were really rich sounding and bright, which is totally in line with the vibes of the song, so good job there.

some instruments seemed to peak a bit unpleasantly [:38, and 1:38 come to mind]. take them down a notch plz!

i wish you played around a bit to make the notes flow together more. theres that obvious synthetic pause between every note the lead violins play, which sometimes gets to me since it kinda kills the emotionality of how the strings are being played. try playing with slight pitch bending and modulating volume a bit, perhaps.

and i think you could have worked on the bass components of the song throughout a bit, since i kinda wanted to feel my ribs rumble with tearjerking pride, if you catch my drift haha. that never really came though. oh well.

so thats what i think. thanks for the fun song and ttyles.

[Air Conditioning (WIP2)]

okey doke

this is pretty good, i can definately chill to this. well mixed and a well done soundscape.

some things id do is 1) when the hats start doubling up and swingin at about :20 vary the volume of the hats to stress the beat

2) the open hat sample could be incorporated in better than an offbeat stab.

3) pads in the back are a little too soft. keep them soft; but raise volume a bit and maybe eq highs a bit up to make it brighter.

keep rockin.

[Krupinkin - Glamour Bitch]

nice!

the vocalist is really awesome. props to nikolay!

i liked the relatively minimalistic feel of the whole song. i think you could have ramped up in intensity a lot more though--example, transition at :52 - try distorting the lead synth more and maybe using some noise to build it up; and also try distorting the voice too. electro is fun with all that kind of tweaking ;)

but this is still pretty sweet as is. nice job!

[Words from the heart]

nice!

compositionwise this is really really good. i loved the resolving dissonances and repeated notes in chordal sequences throughout. that was really well used.

just the slurring and stuff seems kind of strange. every measure everything just pauses since ur letting off the slurs but its too pronounced and too often. also, dynamics can use some work. i know this is programmed, don't play repeated phrases exactly the same--try varying the strength of ur notes there; and everything can really use exaggerated dynamics--it just feels flat the entire time.

thematically, its pretty repetitive--which is fine; i think that a nice touch would be to let off on the bass notes more often, transpose stuff higher and maybe make the arrangement more intricate since you free up both hands to work on the melodic treble.

i dont have time for more constructive crit for now... maybe ill talk later. but nice job! [if u can review back... its only fair ;)]

Nekoprism responds:

Thx a lot for the comments... I understand everything you mentioned...
Just so you know it's not programmed... it's a live performance.

And yes my left hand is lazy... but I'm getting better at it... =)

I always wanted to make a orchestrated version of that one, but too many other ideas to work on.

I'll be checking your stuff.
Neko

[98 Hot Air Balloons]

damnnn!

hehe, ive been listening to ur stuff lately. production is mint! you pay a lot of attention to the details, and even though the themes are largely repetitive, it carries those subtleties that make deadmau5's stuff surreal. kinda makes me feel like writing up some more music again... :)

[Party in Pallet Town]

ehhhhh

this was an okay reproduction of what the pallet town theme was, but after that, all you really did was throw on a breakbeat on top--i think that even if it is meant to jst be a loop to work on, you could have at least played around with teh melody and the breakbeat to see how you could make them interact--its basically jst 2 loops on top of each other without any attention to how they complement each other. whatever, ill take a look at ur other stuff haah

scoutzero responds:

Yeah, this was just something I messed around with. :D

[Step Aside]

hehe ill tell u what

yeah, it isnt house music, probably one of those progressive offshoots of breakbeat stuff or something. but theres no category for that here... iwonder why?

anyway, the song. ithink each section was pretty well made, but it wandered around too much--it just keeps changing into different forms all the time, way too quickly for me to really feel it in any thematic way. but the production of it all was very nice and in some ways quite minimalistic. nice job on that :)

so yeah, overall it was pretty well made but didnt really keep me interested for a totally long time for that compositional reason. whatevsss! keep rockin.

vai90 responds:

Well, I have a thing with trying to make a song interesting by combining patterns to make it more lively and jumpy rather than to repeat a certain line for a while but I can definitely understand you felt that I kinda overdid it here.

I have a few tracks that are a little more "solid" or you know...slower, relaxed I guess.
It would be awesome if you could check out a few more tracks. =3

So....yeah, thx for the critique, I will take this into cosideration for my future songs again.

[Cell Phase]

very nice!

somewhere in the depth of the glitchy sfx was a wandering melody and a kind of abstract rhythm.... this was very immersive. as a loop, this is tight--though if it were a bit longer, maybe some lower frequencies and serenity before teh chaos would be nice? hehe i think spreading out the atmosphere to the full spectrum would make it more immersive for the kind of cellular, amoeba lost in a huge sea of predators-feel. nevertheless great job! this was in interesting one.

vai90 responds:

Wow, that was the best formulated review I've read this week and I got an amazing amount of reviews lately (for which I am very grateful by the way)!

Thank you!