Erso's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Xtrullor - Arcana]

You said you want to make something fully orchestral. But sound effects at the ending make me think twice about it.
Despite the fact the song is written in 156 BPM, it still feels really slow. But I don't think that is a flaw. The overall epic mood makes the slow tempo sound even better.

Otherwise than that, I didn't really find any problems. To be honest, this is one of my favorite tracks made by you yet. Keep up the good work.

[Spewing Cyber Chunks]

The bass seems to start earlier than another 4 measures.
At the 01:10, weird dissonances start appearing.
And it's very repetitive, that's why it might be extremely boring to listen to once you had listened to this for a minute already. There is no harmonical changes, and differences between each parts are veeery hardly notable. The ending is just 16 measures of the same thing.
And yeah, no form. A song that keeps repeating the same thing with some other patterns layered onto it. It isn't divided by more epic parts and calmer parts. But maybe I misunderstand something in this genre?

Sound effects sound pretty good with each other, that's what makes the song sound pretty decent overall. But still, more work needs to be done.

YHTFLKC responds:

Pretty much everything in this one is intentional this time. I personally like the glitchy weird stuff, but I really have no idea what I'm doing so maybe it doesn't sound as on point as I thought it did. Thanks for the feedback though. It is what it is, lol. Maybe I should have categorized it as videogame music..? I don't really think much about what genre any of my stuff fits into

[ChromatiC]

I can still see the overall repetition despite different sound effects used each time. And there is no specific form. It's just a dubstep song with different patterns layered onto each other with no rest parts, it isn't divided like it should be.

Everything else seems decent to me.

[Phorhead & Zoeghs - Tyler's Waffles]

Some flaws:

02:31 - 02:33 - wtf? These sound effects are really annoying to listen to. They are like knocking your head.
Also, in the beginning, saw pads in the middle frequencies don't sound that good and relaxing.
The track really sounds slow despite being 165 BPM until the drop ot 02:40.

Overall review:

Melody - it's dubstep, there isn't much of a melody but it shouldn't be. Although the high frequences pads follow the harmony, that's a plus.

Form - nothing wrong.

Harmony - it's okay, but really repetitive. Try to add some new harmonical someone around the middle of the track.

Sound effects - to me, they are well executed. I don't honestly know about voice effects, should I say they are a bit out of the overall rhythm or not because voice effects are voice effects and I never used them.

Rhythm - nice rhythm for dubstep, delayed notes only represent how they are aiming to each other.

So yeah. The track was decent. But I leave it 4 stars.

Zoeghs responds:

Thx for the review! I will try to work on these things.

[Lucid]

This mixing is still better than mine ;) In part from 01:00 the first bass should be probably F, not C. When C is in the lowest bass of the tonic, it makes it sound unsteady.

Overall the song is good and I found no flaws with the form, mixing, melody or harmony.

Wait a second, why does this ending sound like there's more but isn't uploaded? :Thinking:

Nicki1202 responds:

Hey, thanks for you review! The ending got cut off by some weird bug, but I updated it now.

[Hyperspace Travel]

The ending was kinda weird but fun 8)

Also, you have improved like a loooot more. This track is a huge step up from the previous one I listened. Keep it up.

One little thing, I just learned I don't need to use the standard clap/hat soundbanks, better look for more suitable ones in the browser in the left menu of the program (Open the Packs folder - find a soundbank you like - click right button - click 'Open in new channel'). You can test out the soundbanks by just clicking on them in the left menu.

BreadKing responds:

Thanks for the review. From your last review, I tried to improve my style, and I took account of the many things you said in general. Overall, besides the ending, I think my track turned out good! Thank you for helping me get better, my style will probably be like this in a way now. :)

[[Chillstep] Adrift]

That's exactly what I need.

[Letters of an Empath]

Yeah, in my opinion it's kind of a bit more dissonances here than it should be (it would be more calming if it didn't have so much of them). I don't actually feel the overall form, it's a bit messy, the rhythm is changing too constantly.

It would be tough to say it's a little boring because well it's just three instruments and they sound as good as it's possible. But it's just five minutes of them.

Changes of c-moll with gis-moll are executed pretty well, except H more sounding like C in cis-moll in the viola part (I'm talking about the bit at 03:55).

But these are all some small things about it. Overall the soundtrack really sounds like it was done at a pretty high level. Keep up the good work.

Deemo-R responds:

Some of the rhythmic stuff comes from the conductor's interpretation, but yeah, there's a lot of change in activity happening here. Even though form isn't quite the focus of the piece here, it would be a lie to say that the resulting compositional structure is entirely intentional. I'm very much to form what the DCEU is to cinematic universes: earnest, trying to find success based on the models of others, but often missing the point and creating something with a lot of strong elements placed in all the wrong spots. It's probably one of my weakest aspects as a student writer, so I'm not too surprised to hear that criticism. The dissonance is - for the most part - an aspect of the piece. What you notice in the viola is coming from the fact that it was having a difficult time staying in tune in the environment where we were located. Unfortunately it's a bit pitchy, but the general lines are still intact. One of my most likely faults in this piece was not using more dissonance, so that it could become as common a part of the experience as the consonance. I get where you're coming from on this. I also understand that feeling of being tired of the sound by the end of the piece - I've heard quite a bit of music that can feel that way. It's usually a personal thing, but I always appreciate knowing where people stand on it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to critique, it's very helpful! :)

[Sacrifice]

00:31 - 00:33 - doesn't fit the overall rhythm so much.
00:34 - 00:58 - quarts don't form a melody together. It doesn't sound awful due to quiet second voice, but it would be better if there would be something else than just ripping off the melody 3.5 tones lower.

The only criticism I can outspeak here. Everything else is perfect for me.

[Technology - Corrupted]

First minute is just boredom. One thing repeating over and over again isn't that good. But what comes next is just awesome. It's enough harmonic, has good mixed sound effects, nothing wrong with the rhythm. I can't judge the melody part because it's a drop. But the drop itself really gets repetitive. From 02:30, the intermedia or what, has not that quality soundbank.

Second drop doesn't rip off the first drop, that's a plus. Aaand also I would say it needs more bass, because there is a bit of too many high notes.
At the ending of the second drop rhythm and melody are starting to convert into a mess together.

04:38 and later — sounds a bit painful with this 8-bit loud soundpack.

Doublechindoge7 responds:

Huh... This is a really strange review... Well thanks! I just say this is strange because you seem to be pretty good at spotting mistakes, but some you point out I don't understand...

You said the "first minute " is "One thing repeating over and over again". Now I do agree in hindsight that the intro is a little dull, but because you specified "minute" and the song drops 1 minute in (and you're consistent with times in your review), and the intro is far more detailed than that. There's the main synth which fades in on the 1st 8 bars, the arp and drums that fade in on the 2nd set of 8, the bass that comes in at the 3rd, and the glitch effect and kick uplifter at the 4th. I don't know if this comes off as nitpicky, or if you were just using hyperbole, but it sounded like you were being serious...

Then you mentioned the drop is repetitive. When I first read that I was preparing to prove you wrong, but looking back I see exactly what you mean. Y'see, every time I repeat part of a drop I change the modulation of my synths, so they're the same sounds with different "movements" to put it in simple terms. This is usually enough, but here when I looked back, while I could notice the differences clearly I realised that I only noticed them because I already knew they were there. The changes are more subtle than I thought, and so they don't really pop out to anyone who doesn't already know they're there. So I'd say that's a pretty good point...

Then there's the main bit that confused me: "From 2:30, the intermedia or what, has not that quality soundback". What? What do you mean? What's a Soundback?

Then you say the second drop has too many high notes, but that confuses me... The notes of the second drop are the same except for the added bits with the Megadrive soundfont (The "8-bit" sound), and even that has another bass using a different sound from the soundfont under it. Also I'm not sure what you mean by "Melody and rhythm are starting to convert into a mess together".

Finally 4:38. It sounds fine to me, but you're probably right. High frequencies don't bother me much, and I don't pick up on when they might be annoying to some people very easily...

Please PM me a reply =)