SkelaNG's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Catch me rolling]

Stolen, this is Miqu's mashup of Pac's Catch Me Rollin' and a beat by Allrounda Productions.

FnPig responds:

You know what else Is gunna be a mash up? When I MASH your mom UP in her face with diz nuts boy.

[BurgeraX: Target Locked [Drumstep]]

You've got a long way to go where mixing and sound design are concerned. Maybe try starting from specific packs of presets and learn what waveforms and methods create what kinds of sounds. Research music theory, it'll help, especially with dubstep/drumstep and bass oriented genres. You need focus and impact. Keep going man.

EruptionMusic responds:

ok note taken. Thanks for the advice ill look int that

[Tantabus]

Had a wonderful time Mastering this, as always good work, Musical suggestions: Your choir-using work is excellent, but if you could maybe work on making it more of a frontpiece, possibly make it more varied, more lifelike pitch-wise, it'd be that much more impressive. Latin phrases have a lot of possibility because chopping and cut/slide editing can maintain grammatical correctness while playing on the sample for originality. I'd love to see more brass solo stuff like the ending as well, possibly go faster with the horns, something rushing and exciting. You've got the cinematic epic down, spread out.

[Ian Kayell - Konnection (The Bond) (Original Mix)]

Keep that percussion where it's at mate, I see too often people over time overcompressing and overgaining their percussion until they end up with a mess just as bad as Monstercat or Spinninrecords. The bassline is beautiful, it's not overpowering and it's not too far back, and you can still focus on all the wonderful soundscape work around it. The only thing I'd suggest as far as future projects is play around with structure a bit more, you have the kind of style that could easily go 7-10 minutes without seeming repetitive. Good job, keep on!

D-Chain responds:

Thanks Skela!
I will try my best to put all the goodies you mentioned into the next project of trancyness.
As far as I know, most people dont really know how to keep their percussion tight and loose while still maintaining the perfect mixing.
I shall now try ending the nonesense im speaking of because I have more things to do.
See you later.

[Boss battle]

Excellent, exciting and it stays interesting. The only thing I'd say is maybe use a different instrument for that lower bassline of yours, something that holds up the rest of the track in a stronger way, but that's personal preference. Good work, keep at it.

ILG924 responds:

I'd have to play around with the bass a little more, that was probably the instrument that I spent the least amount of time on. I think I know what you mean, the lower notes lack a little bit of power. Since this is kind of mimicking an old SNES/PS1 sound, that's to be expected with the VST I was using.
I do agree though, I'll see if I can mix a cooler sounding bass into my next song. I also need to practice writing some more interesting basslines, so a clean sounding bass can only help
Thanks for the review!

[Aurore]

The "finger snap" percussion around 1:30 kinda kills the vibe for me(even thought it feels fine at 3:10 or so, I don't know why), I think you need to work in some more complicated, softer percussion, and maybe sink the vocals into the atmosphere a bit more, keep the space defined as what you had it in the beginning but still develop it, if you know what I mean?
Either way, I'll be watching you for more, keep doing what you do, good luck.

adieuwinter responds:

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see what I can do.

[Domyeah - Burning Red Giant]

Whatusernamedood had some good points, but I think it's a good thing to remember bass doesn't need to be a constant presence in even a DnB song, Drum and Bass can be heavy and sub-focused(leans towards drumstep or trap) or drum focused with balanced out bass(typical DnB, vocal DnB, breakcore) Or Even -very- light on bass focusing on atmosphere(Liquid DnB, some vocal DnB, leaning into IDM). Yeh you are quite light on bass to the point you are missing something, but if you took whatever shit EQ job you did on the piano and fixed it, you'd have a very full track. I believe what Whatusername is referring to when he mentions the phase going down is "phase cancellation" which can cause your signal to reduce in gain against your will because of two opposing phase directions colliding(basically), a Compressor could fix with or you could fiddle with your settings to avoid that particular offset.

The intro is painfully generic, especially when you come in 50 seconds later with a pretty okay pickup, after you've abandoned the pop chord structure for a more bass-music oriented one.

My suggestions, Research Mixing, A lot of people have some pretty good tutorials on youtube and even around here, it'll give you a HUGE edge. Research more into writing melodies and leads, it'll give you the freedom to keep your macrostructures(song parts) going for longer and groove building to greater heights. Stop overusing that lowpass shit, it makes your music sound lower quality when you're dipping out every 32 bars, one build? fine, A second build or breakdown? fine. 3+ times a song is pushing it.

You're doing good, keep it up.

[Ordinary]

If you used reverb more spatially instead of effect-oriented, and balanced the soundscape, this song would be absolutely brilliant, not to mention how Godlike it'd sound if you made the Percussion more varied and colorful and spent some extra effort mixing.

[B7 - Doom Tribute WiP]

The thing I was thinking most listening to this was "this could use some better mixing" and when I noticed that you said you used LandR, I know why. It might be a cheap alternative to hiring a mix engineer or a time alternative mixing on your own, but you're getting what you pay for, and in some cases especially with the free version, it might sound even worse than if you just took a blind stab at mixing it yourself. In any case, performance wise, it's incredible.

Burn7 responds:

You know, you're 100% right about LandR. I DEFINITELY used it as a quick fix for mixing because normally mixing something takes me about 8-10 hours on a 3 to 5 minute song. And since this has a few different dynamic ranges I wanted to see how LandR would handle it. I was pleasantly surprised with what it gave me, even though it is definitely muddled in some ranges. So thank you deeply for your 2 cents, they are definitely counted and add to my overall "things to consider" fund.

When I have the final version completely recorded and I don't have to worry about structuring things anymore then I will spend a good amount of time personally mixing and mastering this track. I actually wasn't going to do a full mix, just minor tweaks and let LandR do the rest. But since you brought attention to it and since it has actually been bubbling on my mind for a little while I can now say that's definitely the plan for the endgame.

This all being said, thank you kindly for your time and review. And I'm glad you liked the song!

Thanks a lot!

[Pop Song]

That was actually quite clever, and funny as well, I laughed my ass off at around the minute mark. Props.

AytonHunter responds:

Haha thanks friend! I don't really make a lot of music but I wanted to see how easy it was to make some pop!