Spadezer's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Lordant - a little creature among distant worlds]

I get the sense that the song had a long couple of buildups, which makes me feel disappointed that it basically ends at 2:11. I was feeling pretty invested in what you were leading up to. The balance is great and the mix is clean, although I'm not sure about the high hats. The choice of instrumentation is light and sweet, the choir especially fits in beautifully, although I'm not sure if I agree with your synth choice in 0:45 only because it seems so different from the rest of the song that you have. It may have worked out better if there was a big section that called back to it or referenced that section in a big way. Maybe you ran out of time or either bit off more than you could chew. Aside from that, it sound beautiful. It has nice transitions and has a playful and ethereal feel.

Nice little piece. The title fits it pretty well. Not much to say but good work :)

Lordant responds:

Thanks for feedback :3

I personally love doing long buildups, and there was a climax in the mockup, but I didn't have enough time and passion to finish it, so I changed the structure a bit (well, I need to stop doing my works at the last day before the deadline). As for the synth, I personally quite like it, although it is a little out of the arrangement. Maybe I will change it, if I do a revamp of this piece.

[Zenology (NGADM - Round 2)]

That very initial intro has a nice hook, and sets the tone for the song pretty well. The hype sections feel loud and overly compressed. You can especially tell like with the piano, it's compressed enough that the hammer strikes (at 0:53) themselves are quite noticeable. The mix is just tiring. While it is loud, it's not unbalanced, which makes me think it's more of a lapse in mastering instead of mixing/eq. I don't have too much else to say on that. It's adequate, but it would be nicer to have more headroom before maxing out the mix. I understand that you have a lot of sounds going on at the same time so I do appreciate what it took to be as clean as it is.

Compositionally, it feels super hype and frantic, but at the same time it doesn't feel varied. I do like that it has retro EDM feels, like OG Newgrounds with ParagonX9. Originally I felt like the sections don't feel varied on my first listen though, however as I have listened through it a couple of times I appreciate what you did to separate the sections. What I did notice is that while they are compositionally different, they have the same feel of energy. Most of the song feels a lot like "I'm sonic! I gotta go fast!" Some of that might come down to how you've done the mastering, and some of that could be that the melody doesn't slow down at all either. Stylistically, it definitely doesn't help that you have a high BPM for this style of music even though I'm not against it. However I do like the sliding driving bass in the last section and it really adds a good element. The outro feels like it just ends which I feel like is kind of a let down. I really liked the 1:14 section with the acid synths, and you did a good job of making a big open space in 1:58. It's similar to how I've done song progressions in the past since I tend to like making similarly big spaces.

Generally speaking, I feel tired after listening to the song lol. But it's a fun ride, so I'd say it's a good work :)

[Overclocked Chip [NGADM + NGUAC 2024]]

Yo that intro is dope. Super good hook. It really had me jiving and ready for whatever you came in with the drop. I wasn't quite sure about the drop at first, but as it continued on, I think it's a solid complextro feel. I'm definitely impressed with those that can pull of this style similar to MDK since I don't think my writing process would help me emulate this well at all. I do want to nitpick the drop though, and the issue I had repeated itself at the start of the second drop too at 2:56. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think my issue is both that it feels a little dry, and it's also missing some connecting background white noise of some sort. I wish I could find the video again of a producer who was breaking down their design process, but a trick I've done is to add crowd noise in the background. It's not very loud so it's more felt than heard, but it really can make a section feel connected and energetic without adding more sounds to the mix. It's a pretty neat trick that's hard for people to notice too ;)

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the mixing. It's so nice to hear loud music that's not crowded, and I was even starting to get afraid that I was just turning into a broken record repeating "compressor abuse" in this contest. I think you also manage to make it sound full and big while also using a minimal amount of sounds, so I might actually be taking notes on what you did here for myself. However, and I hinted at this earlier, I think you managed to accomplish this at the sacrifice of having the synths feel a little dry. Some of this I would attribute to sound design choice. Kinda taking a guess here, but your bass synths have a sense of mostly being made of saws and squares without any poly voices or dimensional expansions (assuming your using serum). Best example is 2:15. Again, I appreciate what you've done because it makes the mix super clean, and I personally appreciate clean mix more than pretty sound design. But it feels like it needs a few sprays of water mixed in lol.

Also where's the cover art? It's not placed in the description (at the time of this writing)

NatahDN responds:

the cover art is the thumbnail of the song ( I'll probably start posting the art in the description lol)

also tysm for this great feedback :3

[Event Horizon]

NGADM 2024 audition review per request

This song does have a fun style of high energy that I'm on board with, but there were a few issues that stood out to me that I think could have used some improvement. Firstly is that the instruments and synths you use come across as feeling cheap, and I think most of that is to do with that they feel dry. There isn't much processing, so the instruments don't feel like they're working in the same atmosphere, especially the synths that you start out with in the intro. I also recognize those Sytrus presets at 1:28 (that I've shamelessly used in my old songs like 10 years ago), and I can tell that you didn't touch those effects
outside of those initial presets. I think Sytrus is a fine and dandy synth to use, but a lot of their presets have too much reverb and delay IMO. Another issue for me was your synths and sound choices, which for me falls into the instrumentation category. The fast moving synth you have going crazy at 0:50 isn't up for the task that you're trying to put it through. You've got one that's trying to slide between notes in a legato fashion that really needs to have a more defined start and end. Otherwise, which you have in this example, the notes sound undefined in a similar fashion that a drunk slurs their speech. I also think that the kick you're using doesn't really work for this song either. For the type of style you're using, although the second one you're using in the 1:54 section works better. You'd want a kick that has a more defined initial hit (or transient) that can cut through the mix, especially when you're working in more high energy songs. My advice, look for sample packs that give you some good quality percussion sounds. Cymatics has packs of stuff that you can download for free that I'd highly recommend getting as a good start. Otherwise, if you're willing to give out some money, a service like Splice is good because you can get access to a lot of stuff with a simple search, and it really doesn't cost that much to use. And if you don't want to use it, you can pause your service pretty easily.

As for your writing, it is a fun piece and has some eurodance vibes that reminds me of watching Initial D. As Everratic mentioned below, the song doesn't feel like it connects with itself too well. You've got a lot of fun ideas, but the trick to making good music is trying to either tell a story through music or by exploring ideas in as many different ways as you can. This I've drawn inspiration from this rather old video that I'd recommend taking a listen to https://youtu.be/r9LCwI5iErE. Not much for me to say outside of that.

My biggest advice for you though is to listen to other music and study those songs. Find good music that you like and listen to how it works. Try to get an idea of what it is about that music that you like and what makes it sound good. How is that artist using the instruments they have in connection to the rest of the music. How are they using effects. How are they structuring their song. Look up youtube videos. I'm still constantly watching tutorials because maybe there's some tricks or extra knowledge I can pick up. Always be learning. Or if you find an artist that you like has a video going into how they made a song, that can be a great opportunity to see what they're doing and pick up some more tricks along the way. Rob Scallon is pretty sweet, and is very entertaining. If you haven't checked out any of Andrew Huang's tutorials, I'd highly recommend giving those a watch. Lots of good knowledge there. Especially with his 4 producers 1 sample series.

You do have good potential. There's a lot of fun ideas in this song. With some refinement, I think you could get to making pretty good music.

-edit- that video I linked wasn't the video I was looking for. Still a good listen, but this one is much closer to what I was thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5SkqX8vo2s

[Chirped]

I really like the harmonies that you got going on. Really funky rhythms happening too. Unfortunately I'm not well versed in jazz like this so some of what I say may be out of ignorance. It's obvious through this song that you have a mastery over harmonies and chord structure beyond what I could easily replicate, and it's to the point that some of the melodies feel like wrong notes, base feeling almost disjointed, and the song almost feels like it doesn't know what key it's in. However, taking into account the title of the song and how you've utilized the square/sine synth you use, I can see how this song could emulate the style or sounds of birds. Hopefully that statement isn't too on the nose because I don't think it was that readily apparent.

Taking in the whole song, it doesn't feel like it drives to any particular point for me. It does have a sense of flow and movement, but it's hard for me to give a solid definition of what sections are which outside of are there more or less instruments lol. But, the vibe is great. It's carefree and light, and I'm a sucker for the smooth jazz / coffee house style. Stuff like the Rhodes and the simple lead synth that accompanies the piano fits perfectly. I do get a sense that the sound samples of the synths you've used are a little basic, particularly in the piano, and the super dry cowbell lol, which removes it from feeling like a live recording. I don't mind it though because there's a really good display of humanization going on, and the "cheap" sounds give it some character in this example, but they do contrast the quality of the percussion. There's only a couple spots were the snare sounds a little off, like at 2:01 with the repeated 16th note crescendo, which makes me more impressed with how varied and authentic the snare sounds as a whole.

A couple notes on the mastering and mixing. The balance is really good, so that's not an issue. A non-issue for me is that you have some room left in the master volume (which would simply make it more consistent with other songs on NG). In general the instruments tend to feel a little dry (except the Rhodes). For me personally, I think the bass could have benefited from having a little more of a defined attack. Just something with a few more harmonics at the start of the note to help define its presence better.

All in all, a very well made song. Really the only issues I could have with this song would be in respect to my possible misunderstandings of what's going on in terms of composition and flow and some minor production stylistic choices. Solid effort. It took me a few times to study what was going on, but it was a good ride.

[~Time~]

Initial thoughts, I like the vocals. Some of the composition feels kinda plain though. Especially for a trance song, it would really benefit from more automation and flow. There's a lot of reverb which makes the mix feel messy. Some automation and ebbs and flow would make it feel less repetitive before the break. Fade out?! Tsk tsk. For shame.

Some main takeaways, the writing suffers from feeling repetitive. There's definitely a repeated two measure tune that you've got going through most of the song, but it would have benefited from some development and change ups. Maybe changing the rhythm more, flipping it backwards, or just simply playing around with it to make it more interesting during the song. Or even having counter melodies that work along with it to make it feel more special. I also want to repeat the idea of using automation. It's got a nice poppy, bouncy, happy early 2000's dance sound, and I would agree that trance is close for this style. Especially if you're making something that's close to trance, automate anything you can think of lol. Automating filters does a really good job of making things flow well without even needing to change up much stuff. Changing up the waveforms of individual synths adds a lot of flavor and spice to a sound too that you can automate. At the minimum, automating some gains/or volumes would help bring elements in or out smoothly.

Another thing is that some stuff and sounds feel like they're really dry while other things are marinating in reverb. I think the stuff you have in the background has too much reverb, like the piano and the plucky synth thing (probably the bells you mentioned). Contrastingly, the lead synth that you have repeating the melody the vocals use could benefit from having *a little* reverb to help it sound like it's in a big room, but you only want to use a little because it does need to sound close since it's your main lead.

Looking at the other judges' comments, I agree with their take on the bass and controlling your high frequencies, so I don't need to say much more about that. I do like your style, but it could benefit from refinement. This has some good Eiffel 65 Blue vibes and eurodance feel that I would personally be down for in the right context.

Some song recommendations I would give for you to study, take a listen to Let Me Go by Denis Kenzo or, my personal favorite, Oceanlab Satellite from Above and Beyond (the original Oceanlab one works too). But I'd recommend paying attention to how the bring sounds and gently transition, and also pay attention to how they're using their voices / melodies. Now these are full blown trance songs so they're focus is more about the groove compared to something like I'm Blue (da ba dee da ba dai), but it should still give a picture or idea on how once could focus on the flow of a song.

[Urge 2 Dance (Around U Mix)]

interesting.

[Illusion]

I seriously dig this. There's a lot of solid work that went into this, but especially for a psytrance song it's a bit too dry. The bass sounds really good, albeit a little tiring on the ears, but it really could do with some filter and slight reverb automation. It also feels a little too shallow too, so it probably could do with some beefing up in the low frequency area, and the higher frequencies of the base could be more stereo to help it feel wider. There was a lot of details in the background that really added some nice atmosphere to the mix, and I was soaking it up since this really grooves well. It's a solid piece that grooves well, but feels a little stagnant.

burningmagma responds:

Thanks, I'll make my next song more full. :)

[duck_honk]

QUACK

Fwiller responds:

true!

[Why Do They Build The Walls Like That?]

What I need is some good rock/metal in the NGADM, and I think I got it

Mischa-head responds:

Thank you! More coming soon :D