gregaaron89's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rig - Broken Glass]

O___o

Wow there are some really cool effects here... I like the pitch modulation. Could I possibly sample little bits and pieces of this? I would credit you. I think it would be great for glitch/idm

Rig responds:

Go for it, let me know when you have something!

[<MWA> Don't Forget [DEMO]]

chill

I like the mood here, it's well mixed with plenty of space to breathe. I really like the break at the end. I don't know how I feel about the bass though. The portamento/glide makes it really weird sometimes. It sounds great at the end of the measure, but when you have several notes clustered together it's really just causing problems and sounding sloppy. (like at :11-:13) What I recommend doing is duplicating the bass and for those shorter notes, transfer them to the second synth, and bring the portamento/glide time wayyyy down, or otherwise change the sound. Try to make it more dynamic. I guarantee that will help a lot. And I'm not really a huge fan of the overall sound of the bass either but I like more electro, saw basses anyway so just personal taste. But it works here and you're on the right track.

mjattie responds:

hey thanks for the tips, I'll certenly take a look closer look at it, today or tomorrow! On the other hand, if I reduse portamento and slide down a lot on that second synth you mention, it'll loose some of it's diry feeling, which I presonally like

Btw the saw bass you mention is actually a soft bass with fuzz distortion XD

thanks for the tips and 9/10 I appreciated.

Btw what software do you use? I use Reason 4.0

[[RM] - EnTranced Space WIP]

Dude...

I can hear the bass clipping... not good. Back off on the compression, the whole mix is really squashed sounding. You loose dynamics the punchiness of sounds that way, especially kicks and high hats. Don't try to make it this loud it just doesn't pay off. Professional songs get really loud from careful mastering and brickwall limiting, and it's not easy to get right.

Overall pretty generic sounding but it progresses nicely. And I hear the sour note people are talking about. It's because you go out of key and hit a minor chord. It happens at 1:00, just change that middle note in the 3 note arpeggio, move it up a half step and you'll be good.

Randomizor responds:

Thanks for the helpful review ;D

[~BH~ Crystalline Cloudsca]

Now that is a panflute

I like the atmosphere here, it's really airy. Nice piano arp. Only thing I don't like here is the 4 on the floor beat at this tempo. ARRHHGGGG it's like being stuck behind an old lady on the freeway. No offense. But 4 on the floor is a really driving beat, and has a lot of upbeat energy that really conflicts with the tempo and everything else in this song that's nice and peaceful. The stuttered kicks only intensify that. When you slow the tempo down, I personally think at a certain point it's better to use breakbeat (around 120 bpm or so), I think it makes it flow much better. (and I think it's just slow enough to possibly go double tempo with the percussion) But anyway great instrumentation and mixing here.

ErikMcClure responds:

Percussion has never been my forte :P The beat on this song was a bit tricky because I needed a powerful, catchy rhythm that still matched the solid flow of the song, and a breakbeat would have completely ruined it. The song isn't necessarily meant to be relaxing, per say, its supposed to be fairly active without going overboard. So while the 4 beat here isn't ideal, I wouldn't trade it in for a breakbeat because the song would lose its essence.

Thanks for the review :D

[House Menu Loop]

It's good

But it's missing some high end in my opinion. If you added some piano/electric piano to top it off that would be excellent. I think it needs more sustained/reverby sounds to balance out the harsh sidechain.

[Para - Smog Step Sanctuar]

I must have

listened to this 20 times already :) I saw it when you posted in the dubstep contest thread and I'm using it as inspiration (though mine sounds nothing like this) I was hoping you'd get best of the week, you definitely deserve it. It just flows perfectly, there isn't a second of this I don't love. I just wish it was longer.

[-:YRX:- DaughterOfJustice]

Cool

I like the mixture of genres here. The strings sound really thick. I really like how the amen comes in (with the dry faded in on the reverb?) Don't think I've heard that before, makes it seem like it's coming towards you through space (whoa) I think you could've sliced up and varied the amen quite a bit more though. The piano threw me off a bit though. Also I liked the bass but it only played for a very short part of the song and had kind of a random sounding pattern, I don't think you really needed it there, or you could've worked on the structure a little more to get it all to fit in better. Overall it works well and is very creative.

YouriX responds:

Hey thanks! Yes i love doing that reverb fade trick! Is pretty easy to do! Also thanks for the tips and advices. I'll try to be varied the drums more in my future works since i dont like updating to much on my old songs. And also i think i'll stop using the dnb bass unless i really have to. Also thanks for the comment and i will take up your advice!

[Os Vs Mjattie -of Softest Rain]

What a rush!

I haven't felt a rush like that from anything on Newgrounds in a long time. Simply beautiful. It starts off very nicely with the rain and the piano. The piano melody sounds a bit aimless at first but it falls together. At 1:12 it started to remind me a bit of some of Reasoner's stuff. I totally did not expect the beat to come in at 1:20. That gave me chills, great piano work! I'm not really sure if I like the synth that comes in at 1:54 It sounds good when it's buried under the beat though, maybe it's just the distortion that's bothering me, it doesn't really fit with everything else. Overall I love the harmony and mood here, and the instrumentation. I think you could've brought out those strings a bit more though and maybe added more layers of them. The rain is a wonderful touch. The feeling this gave me I've been trying really hard to create with my own music, but this surpasses anything I've made. I'm inspired :)

ObsidianSnow responds:

Awesome, thanks a lot. Easily one of the most useful and thought-out reviews I've ever gotten. I can't really say anything more about it, except...

Thanks for the (awesome) review, Greg Aaron!

[Your Eyes - F-777]

Nice

Nice to hear something slightly different from you. I think this would fall under the trance category, not dance. I think the biggest problem here is lack of direction. There's no doubt about it, you're really good at fills, changing stuff up every 16 bars or so and keeping the energy high. But that's the problem. This track is over 4 minutes long and there's not much break in the energy, it does get kind of repetitive. At 3:41 a really nice bassy supersaw comes in, which is kind of strange at that time not only because it's so late in the song but also it changes how the overall mix sounds, it sounds more open there with more low end, I really like it. I think you boost your highs too much overall and compress pretty hard which kind of hurts your mixes. It usually works pretty good for what you're going for though but I think you should try to lay off a little and put some more dynamics in. I'm being kind of hard on you but I think it's advice you can use. Overall it sounded pretty good :)

[-[ Wings ]-]

Sped up progressive house

That's what the bass and the groove sound like to me. I downloaded it and changed the bpm to 128 to see what it sounded like, and I really like it. I love the high hat groove you have going on here, it's so house but at a much faster tempo. It sounds especially sexy at 1:25 (which is of course at a different time if it's slowed down) Don't get me wrong here, what you have here sounds really cool and I really like it, and it sounds great at this tempo. In fact I don't think it would work as well overall at a slower speed. All I'm saying is PLEASE MAKE HOUSE that sounds similar to this but slower, I think you'd be good at it :) And do try slowing it down to see what it sounds like, listening to your song at different tempos can give you a better perspective of it.

In general about the song I agree with what mrmilkcarton said, can't really add to that. Except I'll say maybe high pass your bass a little bit and Put a more subby sine under it to make it thicker. This song's crazy and all over the place, which makes it really exciting and unique. Keep it up.

FlamingFirebolt responds:

It actually sounds really good at 128 BPM. ( I'm suprised ).
I tend to avoid low bpm for some reasons like details. When a song is slowed down theres alot more to pay attention too and slow bpm songs tend to sound really long and boring. If you slow down it must be slightly pitched doesn't it? If you want i can export a 128bpm version of it :).

Well i'm up to anything, but House is high on the list at the moment. Still is weird that i was aiming at trance for first. And i agree, MrMilkCarton was so damn spot on nobody can point out something else. Geuss that's a good thing.

The subby sine sounds like something xkore would say. And he did multiple times so i wonder if you got the idea from him :P. Nevertheless he probably didn't invent it either.

-firebolt-