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tweerock

69 Audio Reviews

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Becoming quite a producer there, eh? I wish I could be as active as you :). Just posted my first song in a few months, I think it was :o.

Anyway, good song all in all. I would say that it's very well mixed in general, though I think the vocal sample is out of place (very weak, for one - not a fault of the sample, but of mixing) and some of the instruments are underwhelming. There are parts where I feel the expression is a bit thin.

It's a little bit repetitive, which is okay, but for a song around this length, it should be far more varied. The rhythm is very straight, and there aren't many risks taken in the harmony, making it more interesting or dissonant - which is something you could look into.

I still gave it a high mark, however, for the effort in mixing and the feel/atmosphere of the piece. I feel the piece is very well joined together, like you achieved exactly what it was you were going for.

I'm looking forward to this ep and anything coming up from you in the future :). I'm releasing an ep myself, trying out this thing you people are doing :P.

Very, very nice stuff. Maybe you went a bit overboard with filters, but I really like that main synth riff. Drums are a little plain, but this song sounds great overall. Short, but this is a good length for a song - building up, releasing.

Been a while since I've been on NG at all :p, but nice to see you're still active.

Technosaur responds:

>still active
>takes me a month to reply to this

SSERFMSIOEUCVM. Thanks for the feedback, man. Really appreciate it. :D

I love the chipsounds in this, they sound awesome. However, the song overall is a bit repetitive. I'm not saying it's bad that you're using those classic four chords, but I noticed it really well in this piece as it repeated itself throughout. I also felt the song didn't offer much variation, and it felt a bit stretched out.

Other than that, top song, great production value. :)

MashedByMachines responds:

Okay, ill remember that for my coming songs :) Thanks!

Hello again

I love it when people do "well known" songs I've never heard of in an arrangement or remix. I get a total unbiased opinion for myself and get to know the feel when probably what the people who love the song feel when they hear it again. Like the Ocarina of Time music a year or so back.

Melodically, this song works very well, though all on the same scale. It's that kind of ballad sound. Though I'm all for "(pointless) variety and thousands of shifts in an dissapointingly short song", like in every one of my songs, I think this works quite nicely here. Rhythmically, the song is uninteresting, in it's waltz time ballad style, but no matter, it works the way it is.

It's phrased progressively, and though the same melodies appear again and again, it tells the story of the song well. The layering works even with three or four simple instruments (piano, string pad and some awesome sounding reeded instrument I can't make out), though I can't help but feel using a string pad was cutting corners a little...

Dynamics are a wonderful thing, and often neglected by the writers I review. That, and the lack of panning, are my complaints about the mixing.

All in all, a satisfying track with some great elements, and some mediocre ones too. Good work, it's been a while since I've checked out any of your stuff!

Shanath responds:

I really appreciate the time you took to write this lengthy review. I always seem to forget about panning and don't seem to mix songs that well. Lol. Even though this is my latest track I don't think it's the best one I've uploaded at all in the past few weeks. Still I think I caught a little of that emotion the original had, even if only decently.

You should check out some of my other latest stuff if you ever have the chance, maybe they'll sound a bit better. xD

Thanks for the review.

My previous critique

It's awesome to took most of my advice to heed. You've certainly improved, but let's see what you've done here in full.

The melody line is good as always, still a bit simple (which isn't a bad thing, don't get me wrong, it really works with the piece), and the rhythm works well, though it is repeated a tad throughout the whole piece. That break in the octave at 1 minute something caught me off guard, and I quite liked it, but it was the only part of the song that went that high, and the rest of the song is the same more or less in this sense.

Your phrasing is interesting. The entire song is divided into audible ideas (Idea 1 - Start of the song, Idea 2 - 19 seconds, Idea 2b - 23 seconds, Idea 2c - 31 seconds, Idea 3 (bridge) - 36 seconds and so forth), so the important part was to find a way to bridge them together. Idea 1 into idea 2 worked nicely, though when it went into idea 2b, it felt a bit abrupt. Into idea 2c, it was completely unexpected, in an interesting way, but I feel it completely changed the mood of the song briefly. The rest of the song works well, phrasing wise.

Instrumentalisation (I'm pretty sure that isn't a word and Instrumentation is the word I'm looking for, but I don't care :) ) is pretty obvious, seeing the only instrument is a classical acoustic guitar (though it is very hard to hear the difference between one and a steel string). I can't tell you how much better this would've sounded with some shifting dynamics on a real guitar (I play guitar also). I won't take off "marks" for that, but I'm just saying. I guess I can't say much about layering or mixing either, but they're mediocre, here on the track.

Well done with the track! If you ever buy a mic and mixer, shoot me a PM, I'd love to listen to more of your stuff in the future.

Title is important after all

This very short song, in its early stages, seems to have an good hold on where it wants to go but could do with better execution.

Melodically, this song is fairly simple, but I actually think that works quite well with what you've done totally so far. Nothing wrong with the rhythm either, it isn't so simple that it's robotic, but actually has some push to it (until it reached the bridge, where it grinded nearly to a stop like it was approaching a speed bump).

The mixing is mediocre, and the steel stringed guitar sounds very artificial. You have to be careful with that, especially when repeating notes after another. I think it's weird that after playing one note on one string, it rings even after the same note on the same string is plucked again.

Musical ideas are expressed, and executed simply, though the bridge destroyed a lot of what the song had going for it

The song is so short, yet you repeat an idea twice, with some arbitrary sounding "bridge" plopped there in the middle. It doesn't transition at all, and the movements are non-existent in between the two ideas. It doesn't help explain the idea either, which is not doing anything good for the song.

This brings me to the problem of layering: there's not a lot of it. You have some random percussive bass instrument that is too unclear and muddy to listen to with another instrument and a solo guitar which doesn't bring enough depth to the sound.

If you want the song to be really simplistic bring the bass volume down and make it very clear to listen to, so you could hear the two instruments by themselves if you tried to. Otherwise, it needs more layering and more instruments, and building complexity.

My last issue was that most of the song stays in the same octave (which was bold, but didn't work), and there wasn't any dynamic shift.

I know you mentioned how "rough or incomplete" this is, but a little review couldn't hurt anyone.

PS: The title is silly and should be changed to something more creative.

IAmYossarian responds:

It's actually a solo guitar, but I have no recording tools. As a result of this, I have to generate my music through an artificial channel (I use GP6). I haven't actually mixed the song yet (I literally wrote it in like an hour then submitted it), so I'll lower the bass when I do. When I finish the song, I'll try to change positions so it's not all in open position/first seven frets. I'm still trying to figure out how to properly transition from the intro/chorus (that's what I'm planning, at least) into a slower section without it being so abrupt. However, I don't think a rallentando (gradual slowing of tempo) would fit very well. I may add another intermediate bridge section to try to improve the song's flow. Finally, I'm admittedly really bad at naming songs (if you look at my other songs, none of them are named well), but I'll do my best to think of something which is less cliche. Thanks for submitting a such helpful critique!

Not bad

This is definitely an improvement. The ball is rolling in the right way, I don't think I need to say much here. Good work!

Okay track

You need to use a limiter (LMMS has a nice built in one called Fast Lookahead Limiter) for the crackling/scratching. Put it in the problem instrument's FX chain, and that should solve individual instruments. Put in the the master channel if you want to limit the whole piece.

For the "many instruments playing at the same time" thing, know about dynamic balance. Know which sounds should go above the others, and automate them. For example, in symphonic classical pieces, a when a crescendo happens, the bass gets louder, but the high, melodic lines quieten a little to be supported by the bass, and so this feels like it really is getting awesome. Another thing is, start off the song pretty quiet so you can build crescendos afterwards. It's just what I think, it might not work for you.

The song is okay, but slightly uninspired. A little (or a lot :p) wet reverb would've filled the ears and made this sound awesome, but by itself, it's just not bad. Rhythm is cool with the crash fills, but repetitive. Not much to say, but I do like some of your other stuff better.

And for the audience thing, I dunno. You've kept me here for a bit helping you out (hey, no inconvenience on my side, and I'm helping somebody out), but others? It takes a while to be known anywhere on the internet, but since NG doesn't show names next to songs, there's no guarantee anyone will want to exclusively listen to your music. The trick is patience, and self improvement.

Cheers!

ElementalNova responds:

By "uninspired", do you mean "repetetive"? I couldn't think of anywhere else to go with this, so I just repeated the same theme. Also, I just realized that this was my earlier version. I had changed the cymbals (making the brush as loud as the crash and making it less repetitive), but the changes are so unimportant that I'm leaving this one up. Thanks for the advice, though. I'll check out those effects.

Impossicool

I don't see why you shouldn't keep going with this. This is pretty cool, my friend! I mean, the mixing is a tad off, there's not a lot of variation (shifts etc), but the sound is nice. Good work!

Lashmush responds:

The mixing is not good because I accidentally the disco. :c

Wow

You really took my advice to hand! Keep going, it's getting more and more awesome as you go!

I write music for video games. I also write video games. I am also "Fyaopo" for those who want to know.

Thomas Wang @tweerock

Age 27, Male

Paul Rocker

Australia

Joined on 10/2/10

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