VociferousMusic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Mixtice - Adventure In 8 Pixels]

Oh I might use this whenever I try to tryhard in a game!
While I'm lately not so much into Dubstep, this one is dope!

PaPaRidiseGDL responds:

Thx Bro!❤👌

[Standing at the Mountain Peak]

Amazing!
I love these chords along the melody, it has something very emotional and dramatic to it, I'm always a fan of that.
I also enjoy your mix-up and the realistic sounds of the instruments. Such a shame the trip only lasted for 2 minutes. :)

Everratic responds:

Thank you for the nice review :)

[Sky Party]

Hello there. Excuse me that reacting to your PM took so long.

Let's start off with the positive things. The soundtrack itself seems to be mastered very well - Powerful but not overriding. The kick and snare are mixed well. Especially the snare uses to get mushed and repressed in such songs, which is not the case here. The snare sounds strong and powerful, which is good.
The breaks and transitions into the drop is well done and feels smooth to me.

Now about the criticism, which hopefully will help you for your future tracks:

A bit of variety is missing at the melody. You are using the same four chords over again, which makes it feel a bit insipid after time. Especially within the drop, there could be more variety. At 0:51 I would have gone for something else that freshes up everything. Be it changes on the melody, or the used notes for the dubs, like using more 8th, 12th or 16th notes.
The transition into the mid-part (1:16) is not optimal and is a bit too sudden and unexciting. It would have been nice to bring on the tom roll from 0:18 there as well. Same goes for the transition leading into the outro (2:46).

Another tip: Maybe try to use different kinds of steps within one soundtrack. Be it a change from half-time to full-time or from 4/4 to 4/4T. Believe me, it would make things way more interesting, especially for the second drop.

Giving the soundtrack a solid 4.2 score. :)

Spline-1337 responds:

Thank you!!!

[Sunset On The Hill]

Hey there. I'd like to give you a little feedback on that. :)

First off, I'm not sure if I can agree with you. Not sure if that would be something I'd listen to during a sunset. It definitely is too fast to give me that feeling. I even felt a little bit of dancing, haha. I'd say it's more related to a sunrise, in terms of "Good morning, what a wonderful day to do some actions!"
But in general it's a bit iffy. Some melodic parts are major and some are minor, which provides a bit a mood switch between dramatic and uplifting, which in general I find interesting!
But in general I'd relate it more to the sunrise. But that probably is based on different views.

The track is mixed and mastered well - although missing a little bit more of higher frequences. But otherwise there is nothing else to complain.

The short break at 2:07 was a good idea and calms it down a little bit. The transition into the continuation is nice. I especially like the outro of the song starting at 3:03. I think you have done very well there. Although the transition at 3:16 isn't optimal. I would have added a crash cymbal, or left out the drums until 3:19 when the tom plays.

The choice of sounds is nice and grants a harmonic mix, as well as switching between major and minor occasionally. I like the scale switch at 0:59.
Although I noticed something. At times the melody plays in major while the high pitched synth plays in minor at the same time (example 1:33). That honestly does not sound too pleasant to me, it bites the little bit. Something familiar is happening at 2:05. The notes don't really fit together. But at the same time, you did very well with the Xylophone playing the notes at 3:21. That would be a situation where this mixure of major and minor matches together.

Giving it 4.5 stars as I enjoyed it and the negative points are rather minor things. Good job! :)

Dag0 responds:

Thank you for your feedback, i appreciate it a lot. :)

About the name of the piece... yeah, i agree that it is, at some parts, it is more likely to be heard at a sunrise. But i chose that title because at some points, as you said, it sounds a little iffy, like if you were wondering what will happen the next day, and if it will be good things or bad things, what brings me to the other point.

As you could notice, the harmony of this piece tends to change from major to minor and viceversa, but that's not all of it. The first harmony that you hear after the intro is an ambiguous one, because the first chord (A major) should be a minor one. That's something i did on purpose to add to the iffy atmosphere you pointed out (and that's what i mean with don't knowing whether what is going to happen tomorrow is going to be good or bad, or in this case, major or minor lol).

Thanks again for your comment and good luck with the competition :)

[Charliux - Sirio ll]

Hey there. Just appeared in my box and I thought I would give you a feedback for one of your new tracks, which hopefully will help you further.

Mixing & Mastering

The track in general is mixed well. I do realizea little dullness at the end of the higher frequences, but I think that's because you did not upload the best quality here, which is fine.
But in overall it sounds clean and expressive.
There are two things I do notice though. While the clap is all fine in the predrop, the snare kind of gets lost in the drop. It lacks of strength. It either is too quiet or it gets mushed by the kick as it plays at the same time. A bit of a more powerful snare would be cool. After a while I noticed that also the hihats lost their presence during the drop. At first I thought they were just not there. They are barely noticable. A nice hihat or cymbal playing in between the kick and snare would have given it some more of flair.

Structure and Phrasing

Nice overall structure. A good intro leading into the predrop smoothly. The break also is done very well - increasing action. There is just a little thing missing during the bar leading to the drop (1:10-1:11; 2:34-2:35). Maybe a vocal or the baseline already preparing and gaining volume. It sounds a bit empty.
I do like the switch to the full-time step after the drop, it gives it more variation.
The transition into the outro isn't as smooth as the transition into the drop. I think the single kick is a bit overkill. I would have either removed it or replaced it by a low sub.
It's a bit of shame that you repeated the same break. An alternative one for the second half would have been nice.

Melody and Instrumentation

The chosen percussion and sounds are good and I really like your choice of the dubstep bass sounds. They were quite cool to listen to!
I think another instrument/sound would be nice to add at the second half of the predrop - maybe a high pitched synth/lead that plays faster notes.

Sound design

I really like the endings every 4 bars within the drop. They are creatively done and different ideas have been played out. I like the EQ-play within the track, it definitely adds spice to it. The FX sounds are well chosen quite as well.

Please don't get irritated by the negative points I mentioned. These are relatively small things. I just thought I would tell you these as we all gain experience and skill by receiving (good) critism. :P

Giving the whole piece 4.5 stars since as I said, these are really small things I enjoyed listening to it quite much nonetheless. :)

[in tRoUbLe]

Hey there! Within this I'd like to give you general feedback to your song and take the occasion to answer you to your comment on my soundtrack.
I have chosen this piece to give feedback to since that's a genre I enjoy listening to very much!

First off, this definitely also falls under the 'swing' genre. It has many characteristics of it and I personally would even say this is more familiar with swing than jazz.
What I enjoyed is your creativity for the chosen melody and chords. Your choice of instruments is excellent as well. They fit very well and I also like the Xylophone, which gives the piece something playful to it.
I personally would have chosen another tempo. Music of that kind usually works with a BPM range of 110 to 130. Your soundtrack is a little bit too hectic and in my opinion the general expression would have been even better, if the BPM were slower.

Now about your comment. Please don't feel like you have no talent at all. Because that's definitely not the case! You are in age of 15 and what you did was comparing apples to pears. Without knowing for how long you've been into composing, I already know that I have way more experience than you. Everyone starts off small and the time will do it's job if you keep practising, believe me! And to be straight up honest, I believe that your stuff does sound way better than what I did in age of 15. So just keep it up and improve! :)

Dag0 responds:

Thank you so much for your comment, i really appreciate it when someone reviews my songs like that. About the genre... to be honest i thought of swing as well, but since i couldn't find it on the list, i had to choose jazz because it was the other one that this song reminded me of lol.

I've been making music since the age of 14, a year and a half ago, and I have always liked the type of music that you did. I hope that some day i will be able to do those kind of things as well, you are now my inspiration, thanksxd.

[Fire Gold - Ember]

Gotta push the score a bit! I have no idea why this got such a low rating. What I noticed is that your song was very well mixed and mastered. And a big praise on how clean the sound is! You did a good job in playing around with the EQ.
Now about the one negative point, which made me take away a half of a star, is that your choice of dubstep sounds wasn't too great. They do sound a bit too oldschool. You should switch to better ones about that. It's just an assumption that this might be the reason other people gave a bad score. But in my opinion they seem to ignore the other good things about this piece.

[Close to Her]

Awesome work! I'm neither one of those who would say that this kind of music is outdated. It sounds classical to me, which never will lose its presence. If you enjoy to compose such music, then you should go on with it. There are tons of movies I could think of your soundtrack could fit in, not even medieval held. But you did quite well in underscoring a medieval love scenario and it gave me the right feeling for it!
The melody and chosen chords are exquisite!

Bosa responds:

Thank you very much! Yeah, this was really just a minor side chain piece I cam up with, just because I've been wanting to write something like it for a while now. I will be creating some epic pieces as soon as the NGADM begins, and hopefully I will get some TV placements with those as well, trust me I have been storing ideas in my mind for months and I can't wait to put them all on the instrument floor.

Music is always subjective, and mainly depends on how somebody is feeling while they listen to it. If somebody has gone through something in their life recently, then sometimes an emotional piece is just what they want to hear and it is often approved of despite the genre. But the people I was talking about are the closed minded ones who refuse to listen to this golden genre of music. You and I may create classical or film pieces to our hearts content, but I think there will always be many out there who will always think this music is unfashionable and will not appreciate the beauty behind the notes.

[444]

Fantastic! This piece is simple held, but fullfils its job to the listener! I would appreciate it if the composer did come up with what they thought about when they did this. But let me tell you what I felt during the listen.
The rhythm of the piano reminds me on the infinity, something going on forever. It gives me the feeling of my actions being slow, which reminds me on the space and it's physics. I imagined I was an astronaut outside of the base/station, having a clear view into the infinity of the universe, while I feel like even how much I try to move, I barely go forward.

So yeah basically, I can see this being part of a space movie, or even a documentation about it. :)

ChrisisD responds:

Thank you! As for what I thought when I was making this... I’m not going to tell. For the simple reason that music speaks for itself. IMO it doesn’t need a description. You are a perfect example of it, even though I didn’t say anything you got a whole picture of it by yourself. And that for me is the most important thing when I write something. So thank you for filling in what you thought when you heard this!

[Tune Machine - Excavation]

Noted this in the NGUAC tryouts and I did enjoy listening to this piece quite much!