SoulSecure's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Phasma]

Neat stuff man!

AlteredSignal responds:

Much obliged! To be honest, I wasn't expecting many positive thoughts on this, but I'm glad you liked it.

[Wait For Me]

This is good, but it just doesn't grab me that much, especially in the big sections. Personally I don't like overbearing compressed synth chords crushing everybody in their path that much. I think you did a good job of isolating the percussion from that carnage and you can pretty clearly hear the other instruments as well, it's just a personal preference thing. I'm very opinionated if you couldn't tell lol.

I'm gonna say it like this, the song is good, there's nothing inherently wrong with the mix or anything, I just personally think it's a boring song. Now it's not that it's ONLY boring, it is also serene and wonderful in the section starting at 01:55 and when you start coming in at 00:27 the instrument selection is phenominal, but then it crashes and burns for me with the chorus and I'm gonna say it again, THAT'S JUST ME. I enjoy listening from 01:55 onward cuz you have this great atmosphere and S P A C E thing going on with the pad work and the birds and I love me some birds man and when it goes into the chorus at 03:07 I find it much more palatable than the first chorus section. I think it may go without saying, but to go to that S P A C E after the carnage of the chorus' oppressive synth chords is like a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief.

Perhaps I could describe the movements like this: You get together with your friends and chat (beginning) then you decide you're going to play some HARDCORE FOOTBALL (first big section), then your buddy falls through a tall hedge after getting SLAMMED and you go through to get him only to discover a gorgeous courtyard with a fountain and birds bathing (down section after chorus) you then decide that maybe you should just play regular football instead of nailing each other over and over and you commence play (final big section).

Transitions in this song I feel are a strong point, good work on them. I can hear the experimentation going on with the sheer variety in this song, and you can literally see variety when you look at the NG waveform, but whether or not some of the non repeating elements would be considered progressive or whack may be up to the individual listener cuz I'm not sure what to make of certain things here.

I hope you found this in good humour as I am not trying to bash you or anything The more I listen to it though, the more I appreciate this song for what it is. Once again good work and GO FOR GOOOOOOOOOOLD!

Oh and before I go and hit 'submit', I just noticed your tag that says, "story." Do YOU have a particular story in mind for this piece? Would love to hear about it!... But maybe after the judgement so listeners can draw their own conclusions like I did :P

WolfgangMiakoda responds:

Hey man, far be it from me to turn down constructive criticism; if anything I really appreciate just how in depth you’ve gone. DnB still is very uncomfortable territory for me, especially the more energetic kind -I had actually meant for this track to be Liquid DnB, and I may change the first drop to fit that too in due time. This track was largely meant as practise, and experimentation with DnB, transitions, and some music theory.

I think that maybe some of the reasons it sounds so uninteresting to you lie with the compositional choices I made; this song doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of tension, its pretty upbeat and safe throughout. I mean, hell, the main chord progression in the choruses is a classic 4, 5, 1, nursery rhyme stuff. I mainly chose to go with this so I could experiment with a little trick known as the minor plagal cadence, which is when you take the major 4 chord (Fmaj in this case), follow it with the parallel minor chord (Fmin), and then follow that with the root chord (Cmaj). Because of the chromatic descent present in these chords, it’s a very satisfying resolution. Further i also wished to experiment with diminished chords, and how they can be used to modulate to different keys.
Another reason for the uninteresting composition may lie in the song structure, as it is pretty basic. Again, trying to play it safe here to really focus on the practise.

I think the main reason the second chorus fits better is simply because the transition into it is a lot more gradual and natural; the large synths don’t come out of nowhere. Speaking of, mixing those was a nightmare; I’m an orchestral and ambient boy, I’m not used to mixing lots of synths, lmao. But in that sense, it’s real nice to hear that the ambient sections sounded good; it would have been rather embarrassing had I failed on home turf.

I’m real glad that repeat listens have given you more of an appreciation for the song. It’s not my best work, I’ll admit, but I’m still rather proud of the result, simple as it may be. And yes, there is indeed a story behind it, though I’ll take your advice and leave that for after judgement day.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed review; I really do appreciate it!

[YPJ Technical Mecha]

Sweet.

EDIT: Yo wait you made this for the contest? Go for gold baby, but don't stop bein' you! This is a good example of that right here.

zybor responds:

:) Thank you for your kind words as always, SoulSecure.

For two contests, but I don't expect to make it in NGUAC because their judges are not fan of stuff like this, every year I failed in NGUAC and NGADM because I do stuff I love instead of conforming to contest. And I totally agree when @Quarl when she said she entered contests not to improve herself. Same story for me, I do it just for exposure and fun. Hardly won anything for past years beside Robot Day and Madness Day.

Thank you once again :) Have a great week and take care.

[Adaptation]

Gotta say, I was disappointed when listening to the opening that it didn't go into the intro riff of Crawling by Linkin Park lol. Augh! 2:52 just hit me real time and I love it. Not much to say since this is a really great sounding wall of sound that has dynamics to keep it from getting boring.

Great job. Love the... well it's not exactly a normal snare is it? But yeah the 'snare' lines are really awesome.

zybor responds:

Thank you for your review, SoulSecure! :) Have a great week and happy 4th of July.

[AIM - Ice Mouth]

I'm jamming this on my phonular phone, so Lord willing I'll listen to this on my PC at a later time to more properly review.

As it stands right now it sounds pretty fantastic. It is what it is, a nice icey piece that would fit in well with a Donkey Kong Country level. Love it!

Edit: Listened to on headphones. I don't hear anything wrong, still a sweet song that goes nicely with the picture.

CaptainBoomcake responds:

thats a good description for it, I see it! Thanks, I love making icy sounds so I am glad the obsession shows!

[Ordinary]

It is not free VSTs that I'm impressed with and it's not a factor in my score (not saying that's not cool and all, but I think you get it). I turned this track on and was grabbed immediately by the unusual melody presented which betrayed the title of 'Ordinary'. I was pleasantly surprised by this song and the quality is top notch cinematic music in my opinion.

I like the feeling this gives the picture, like it's about to be a huge adventure and the picture is just the first moments of it as the song starts to take you further from the hole in the ice into the rest of the story. Really reminds me of MGS.

Fantastic work! Love your take on sea exploration, so exciting!

zybor responds:

Thank you for your awesome review! :O

Yah I wanted a fancy title but couldn't think of any so Ordinary was chosen. Also, it fits the idea of free tools that seem so ordinary and often get overlooked by musicians, who undermined their real potential. The goal of this project and other used free instruments is to prove that tools don't define a composer. Like my late grandma used to say, "To an artist everything is a pen, but if you had no skill for it even the best pen would be useless."

Thank you again for the review! :) Take care!

[AIM 2020 - O'Malley]

This is right up my alley. I love to listen to 90s/00s style electronic lounge and this captures that feel I like very well.

I love how crisp the drums are compared to everything else, super swank.

I agree with Yoshiii343 down there about your bass. I think it'd be a good idea to add another layer over the bass. Like, add another synth that plays the same lines as the bass generically, but not the transitional phrasings and put some lfo modulation on the synth and blend it in with you bass. Nothing too hard, but something smooth to fit the feel of the track. It would give the bass more movement (as said in Yoshiii343s review) without making it too busy, because you aren't changing your bass line. I would bring it in around 3:06 personally.

Otherwise, I would just like a little moar bass volume personally. Bah, I'll just crank it on my stereo!

I was not a fan of the piece of art when I first saw it, but your track man. Listening to the music and viewing the piece gives it so much more depth than I realized was there at first. Of course the added depth of music period, but I'm noticing things I hadn't before and was forced to think of how the art inspired the music.

Anyway, great job!

WolfgangMiakoda responds:

When I get back to working on the piece, I'll definitely take this into account. Drum & Bass is still largely new territory for me, as is Jazz, so this was a rather challenging, albeit really fun project to work on.

As for the artwork, I kinda felt the same at first glance. It didn't really strike me much, and had it not been for a completely random flash of inspiration on behalf o the cat, I might have looked elsewhere for my inspiration. :3

[The View From Here]

Sounds like somebody took some inspiration from Midgar up in here with your Final Fantasy sounding lines. Even if this was accidental, it definitely works considering the art. While I'm on how parts of this remind me of game OSTs, of course with art and a sound like this it reminds me of Phantasy Star Online.

I like your very lyrical synth lead start, it grabs the attention. I love bendy, slidey synth lead lines!

My only real issue with the song is the mix is so dark. Like it needs some EQing to brighten the the whole thing, I'm not sure if you just need to put an exciter on this or what, but that's my opinion. I may listen to this on my Fishers to see if it's just my headphones for some reason, I'll update you on that. In any case, the darkness I thought might be a stylistic choice due to the association of synthwave with nostalgia these days.

I also am not a fan of how the song is compressed, but this is a stylistic thing so I'm not going to knock you for that lol.

Something that struck me as missing was hard panned pads. I don't think they are necessary though.

Cool song, goes well with the art.

Update: listened on the hi-fi, still sounds dark and compressed, but if that's what your going for it's not an issue :P

ChronoNomad responds:

Granted, I do love me some Final Fantasy, but in this case any similarity is purely coincidental. Or, at the very least, a random act of subconscious. Granted, it's those kinds of things that seem to spill out unbidden when inspiration strikes. All that aside, I've never actually played Phantasy Star Online, so I don't really have a reference point for that one.

Ooh, I quite like that you referred to that synth lead as being lyrical! I've always been a fan of grace notes and slides, so I incorporate them into my own music pretty often.

Hmm, I personally find that there's a pretty nice contrast in the mix between the background instruments and harmonies, and the generally brighter main melodies. Of course, if you're talking about the overtones of the music in general, there's a certain level of dystopian ambience that I feel is inherent in a location such as this. Kind of like the atmosphere in Blade Runner, there is always darkness lurking just beyond the light. Similarly, though it is ironically quite bright in DaRR1o's imagery due to all the artificial light, you can see by his tags that it is actually night. My hope was to conjure up this imagery within the music, as well.

Thank you for such an in-depth review, SoulSecure! Your time and effort are very much appreciated, and it's reassuring to hear that the art and music go well together.

[Can't Be Swayed (Ft. Pink Nois)]

I think the vocals are too aggressive for the instrumental during the rapped parts, they should be spoken more softly IMO. I would also double the vocals for the verses, but that's more of a personal preference and I don't think that would be necessary. The vocals I think should also be mixed more quietly since at this point you're probably just keeping these recordings (AKA they are too loud).

This song is pretty much a smooth jazz song with quick, palm muted guitars. Reminds me a little bit of some Dave Brubek mixed with the Spyro OST (Stewart Copeland) except without pianos. I get that you have a busy guitar riff going throughout the song, but it needs some improv or a solo to break it up and make it more interesting. Like, right after the first chorus you could put a busy solo there and after the end of the song you could easily jam a trumpet solo or keyboard solo while dropping most instruments except the palm muted guitar and light drums with a bass line that riffs off what the soloist plays. Man, after that you could finish on a big chorus or a drop out chorus. Like I feel the song has more potential.

As it is the whole song is a bit of a plateau. Yes, I hear your swells, but they are mixed/played in a way that the volume of the song isn't much affected, this is another reason to mix your vox quieter. It needs to be more dynamic.

I enjoy the sound you got here and your drum mix is really good with that hard hitting snare ( reminds me of this one song from the Trigun OST) Nothing sounds like it's badly EQed and I get the work you put into it. Keep it up.

(listened on headphones and some old 2003 emachine pc speakers)

TeraVex responds:

Wow what a great review! I greatly appreciate your feedback! I can tell you gave the tune a good listen! As for the mix, I slightly fixed that issue in the mastering phase as the master was realllly loud which I fixed while mastering for release with the album. The vocals are still a bit prominent there, but I think the overall loudness issue was alleviated. Believe it or not, this track was going to have a horn section but I couldn't get them recorded due to the sudden change in scheduling due to everything closing. I'll always think of it when I play this tune!

[Carbon]

Love the riff and the instruments used, it's just way too repetitive. It needs more variations and maybe some vox w/distortion on them or some toasting vox. I like it as a concept. I'm sorry I can't currently give mix feedback as I'm not listening through headphones right now.

But seriously, when everything came in at 00:35 I was like, "Aw yeahhh," but then it just basically repeated over and over. Like, I get that you had a few drum pattern changes and took instruments in and out, but it needs more overall variations.

AlteredSignal responds:

I felt like I'd ruin the piece and make it incoherent if I added more stuff, but can't disagree on the fact that it's repetitive. This happens when you want to keep it simple, but don't want to force odd variations here and there, my bad. For a vocal track's instrumental though, I think it'd pass.