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216 Audio Reviews w/ Response

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pfew

Reeeeally having some trouble getting into this tbh, listened to it a LOT of times.

There's plenty of elements to lurv, the intro is georgeous with the cheeky percussion and bass, guitar (which however seems to be tuned a tad too low), harp and cello cooperation. Arrangement and mix are pretty much perfect.

Thing is that when Bob Marley enters, the whole tune to me seems to be postponing something that doesn't come, can't quite put the finger on it, maybe it's the drums that make it a little droney. Everything is still flawlessly and smoothly executed, but I crave for more dynamic progress, I guess.

Puzzler. :)
No biggie, as the fragile gay kids say. You just do that thing you do, I don't have to love every second of music you make to keep loving it as a whole.

snoballandthmonyshot responds:

yo the tang
no biggie? i think it is. i see what u mean about the dynamic progress, i'm gonna do a post-complete version, it definately displays a lack of imagination the way the second half develops.
nice 1
;ped

An army of orcs coming my way!

Probably best to reciprocate for your great reviews to this account eh?

I should come right out and tell you that I dislike this kind of music. I think this is a disagreement between the two of us on the term 'epic'.

Put very bluntly, I feel this is taking the easy way out. Reverb and heavy percussion almost instantly take care of the ominous feeling, throw in a bunch of strings playing long, sustaining notes for the contrast and there's the tension.

What I highly prefer is to have the epic elements - tension, progression, dynamics

I've been listening to a lot of solo piano music by Ravel lately and I can assure you: all these elements are found in the configuration of just notes. No matter how bombastical the arrangement, I feel that, stripped to the bare, the composition shouldn't have lost any of its impact. In the case of this piece, you would have to add a lot of extra notes to the score in order to retain its impact.

It's like when you watch a movie with a shit plot but great special effects. I always feel tricked into feeling what I felt watching it, and that annoys me - I know what they're doing, but I fall for it anyway.

That's because special effects are made possible by technology, which is a factor the artist (director) doesn't determine. They are tricks to instantly instill a sensation in the viewer, but by reflex, not by train of thought. They are a scientifically enhanced attack on the synapses. They aren't HUMAN.

The kid Donnie Darko, clumsily exploring the basics of physical love with his first girlfriend, HE's human. Him I identify with, him I feel for. He is a creation of a writer, a director and an actor, using their IMAGINATION (I wish I could bold it out, I hate how obnoxious caps look). This triggers me to on my turn use my imagination to identify with Donnie and start feeling what I would feel in his situation.

The reflex of a special effect disables that trigger. No use for imagination, because you already know what the outcome will be.

This is a crude analogy. Your music IS more than a bunch of special effects, but I just don't like the balance between them and your own imagination.

I am certainly not condemning your music. You are great at what you do and a lot of people, including yourself, like it, love it even. It doesn't make you any less artistical, you are obviously using your talent to achieve primarily what YOU want and not what you think other people want. So you can completely disregard everything I just said, and I won't lose any respect or sympathy for you. I am quite certain that while reading this, you seriously considered it and weighed it against your own views. I am here to give my opinion. If you'd like to talk more about it, I'd gladly engage in a PMing spree with you.

That all being said, good job. (hehe.)
I've had it on repeat the whole time it took writing up to here, and it's very constant, aforementioned ominous...ness... and tension are maintained throughout and never collapse.

I do think that you should have made the lead more stand out once the percussion got in full gear, it became hard to keep track of. Otherwise the mix is spot on for what you're going after, sharp hooks in the percussion and a very nicely dosed voice sample.

Good, full bass in the arrangement, but more treble might have pulled it towards stronger climaxes. It serves the purpose of menu music very well, creates an atmosphere instantly. Competes with the menu music of Baldur's Gate. :)

This is probably the longest review I've ever writtten, I don't know what the fuck got over me. I really hope you appreciate this for what it is - a largely illustrated opinion, a spark for a healthy debate possibly, in a light tone with no intention to be aggressive or belittling.

I be digging yous.

MaestroRage responds:

A very long and detailed review for sure, please don't think I take any of this in offense, truth be told as mentioned I have weighed your words carefully and there is truth in them. I would love to express some ideas and thoughts on pm, expect a few soon ;).

I thought the most over what you said concerning Special effects in the tunes. I've always tried to keep effects to a minimum, but when I think on it, it seems EVERY song will have at least one. The revaluation, if you will, proved to be quite disturbing.

I am not going to write any more in this review box, and am going to start writing you a PM now. Well said WinTang, I hope to walk away from our debates with some more knowledge for my arsenal.

Thank you for the review.

loverly

Glad to see you back mate.
Can see how my ditty inspired you but you took it to a whole other level here. I think the mix is spot on, including the click track and (seemingly) artificial static.
Trademark pitters stuff all around, adorable, beautiful. Yes, you still got it. Have a jolly 5 :)

pitbulljones responds:

awww nice one mate, i honestly can't thank you enough for inspiring me, it's been ages since i made anything. i doubt i'll be ever bangin em out at alarmin rates now, possibly one a month i dunno, whenever the inspiration takes hold.

nope not artificial static, thats a shit guitar recording that, gives it warmth tho so kinda like it.

thanks again mate

sorcer?

This started out fun, you build toward a nice atmosphere. Your beats are good, not very original per se but still some interesting choices like the double time towards the end.

Melodically the track is rather weak though. The piano really comes out of thin air and sounds very tacky, the synth accompanying it is too out of tune and the whole thing repeats itself too much without variation.

Mixing and production can be improved on, but I'd focus on adding more direction to the harmonical aspect of your music. When you are going to use the same figure over and over, try to at least invent some slightly different endings to alternate between.

Keep experimenting!
4/5

1zin1 responds:

although i somewhat agree with you, i disagree with the un original beats seeing how there mine, and have obviously not heard them anywhere else.
And the piano is from the song sorcer
( "sorcer" don't know what it is? lok it up)
and was trying to break the song with the begging of the song.
it's all mix a mix of riffs i made, thats the song, and i wouldn't change it a bit.
but thatnks for the review, when i remix this song, i'll keep your statments in mind.

Oi friend

Always good fun to swing by your page and see what you're experimenting on. This site needs more artists that focus more on expanding than receiving downloads.

I had problems with this though, main thing is that it gets on my nerves :) I'm trying to put my finger on it while listening to it, so bear with me.

A word that comes to mind is 'mushy'. The whole thing is basically submerged in pads - of course you have a name to live up to - and they seem heavily reverbed, too. I'm afraid it drowns out a lot of dynamic nuances. Couple of times I went "Hey! I think I just missed something cool!", there's glitches and weird synths and a really cool beat, but they don't seem to stand out as much as they usually do in your music. On the whole, it lacks a direction and soon I feel the whole pad-thing is beginning to sound gratuitous and even bordering on corny New Age (which is something I highly suspect you weren't going for).

Listened through the thing a couple of times now, there's definitely some good ideas in there. It just doesn't really feel organic, too randomly thrown together, and relying too much on heavy sustain.

I really admire your productivity though, by the way. You pump out full-length songs at a frightful rate and I may not always like them, but they are always at least decent and show a lot of effort.

A 5/5 for that effort, and encouragement to dig deeper into this stuff, and a request to pardon the possibly harsh tone of the review. Maybe this was just not written for me :)

dj-padman1 responds:

Very valid points. I agree.

I was going for a frantic feel with the percussion so it did get overloaded. The pads as well? aww man, I should be getting those right!
I had the same feel listening back to it. I'll try and get the next one sounding a bit 'leaner'.

Well, input is always welcome, and yours carries the weight of a skilled practitioner of the art, so I thank you! ;)

Whee

A hint of Bartok's math-music logic :)

This wins mainly because it's so transparent, even when it gets "warped up" one can still follow the individual parts.

I like how the left-hand seems borrowed from bebop, and to the extent of that it might be interesting to give it a triplet-based swing feel, just a thought.
And maybe a bit more of the retriggering on the melody that you used at the very beginning?

I've always been a sucker for reverse stuff, you used it very delicately too, especially in the way it blends with the (I assume it's a) cello.

Very original, very exciting, very cool! 5/5

LJCoffee responds:

Thank you WinTang!

I wasn't really sure where this was going while I was working on it - I have a non-warped version - but it felt a little too repetitive and it had such a low density that it just felt a little too flimsy ya know? Then I was thinking that perhaps this would make a nice intro to something much more typically eloctronic - but again, unless the final had a running time of about 10 minutes or more then this would be a little too long for an intro and to be honest I was much too lazy to really flesh out something that long.

I took the shortcut of manually "randomizing" the velocity data to try to make it sound a little less perfect in an attempt to get a more human feel - I was afraid that almost I over did it though. Maybe I did :D

Either way, it was fun to work on and I'm always glad to get comments from the regulars!

Thanks again!

Nice one

Wonderful guitar tone! Effectively simple lick too. When the piano and strings came in, I was worried you'd be going all Robert Miles on me, but the sine lead made me remember which artist I was listening to. On re-listen, the cowbell

A good hint at profound lyrics, I think I was able to make out about 60% of them. Misleading title, m i rite?

The whole rhythm section is a bit dry - probably on purpose, contrast and everything :), but I'd say it's clashing a bit TOO much. The kick is eaten by the bass somewhat, and the snare sounds quite bland. I do very much appreciate the funk element, however.

The whole thing has an understated quality to it, sort of like what Air sometimes succeeds in. Modest, honest, sympathy-generating.

So to sum up, mol-dur effect in vocoder = instant win.

Khuskan responds:

The last word in the lyrics is 'again', but I wanted to use them more as an instrument, less as a poem.

As for the rhythm, I guess they're just a personal preference of mine. The bass is a little overpowering but I'm prepared to blame that on the less-than-cd quality I had to encode it to to fit it on newgrounds.

Yeah, that snare pissed me off to a point I just found something that was good enough and left it, but I'm getting more and more eager to get my tracks finished ;-)

Fun :)

Got nice and meh bits in this, as an experiment I'd say it's delivered at least 20 interesting breaks and glitches.

To have them work as such they should be handled a little bit more carefully though :)

The way I see it, with breaks and mainly glitches, the listener has to be able to keep feeling the rhythm and beat at all times, though sometimes just barely.
So if you're going to make a big chain of glitch, cut it at the right place to re-acknowledge the beat, or have a hi-hat or something keep up the beat during the glitching.

Enjoyed it!

Distortzion responds:

Yes, maybe, really maybe I'm going to add synths an stuff but for now...

Hmm

This sounds a bit too linear to assume you played it yourself... I can't really rate this because if you just assigned a piano vst to a MIDI, I think it's crap, but if it's an arrangement you made yourself, or I'm a moron and you did play it, or even both, you may consider this 10'd and 5'd.

Distortzion responds:

Too be honest, yes I used a midi but I had to improve so om it.

And what did you mean with "linear"?

Planetary.

Whoooo

Thankfully, you realized that the chaos of all the arpeggios is quite heavy on the ears, so you gave us a few kinda relieving parts as well, hehe.

I think it's very nice, I can't really tell in how much you actually aimed for bitonality but it has some Stravinsky elements! :P

I imagine this has been pretty hard to mix and as such I think some of the levels are not really in line but I can't be bothered to come up with names to describe all the different synths, so you'll have to figure out which ones I mean yourself. :)

Here's a 5.
(now stop fucking bugging me)
(<3)

Distortzion responds:

Planetary lol

Thnx for the rev.

There are two kinds of people: those who finish a sentence properly.

Age 40, Male

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