Lich's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dual Uzi]

Sounds fine for a day of work.
Dat FL Slayer

DESHIEL responds:

*puts on glasses* YEAH... *squeezes*

[In Your Time, Always]

Had a listen through around three times with a combo of Studio Monitoring Speakers, Small Hifi Speakers and consumer headphones for different listening perspectives.

I genuinely like the synth-work you have designed and used in the track. The quirky leads and the chilled out pad/back synth which aids the track at the beginning of your bars sounds pretty retro, the kind of sounds one would hear coming from a Minimoog, a Jupiter or a CS-80. Just the right amount really, no more or no little, it's a nice balance overall as a chillout piece.

Your drum samples used within the track work fine to aid moving the track along and establishing a beat. Mixing-wise, you should experiment with making it around 1-2db louder as I found it abit more difficult to distinguish on the consumer headphones and the Small Hifi speakers (while popping just fine through my ADAM's).

The vocals have a characteristic edge which sound different from the usual clean vocal work that I've heard from other musicians composing similar-styled pieces in the past. By all means it's not super perfect but it just works so well overall for this piece. it goes so well with the retro-esq sounding synth work and the added glitching in select parts works nicely. Throughout careful listening, I'm still trying to figure out towards the chorus if the vocals are double tracked or if you've added pitch-shifting/chorus to it? I'll figure it out hopefully upon one or two more listen through's :P

The overall mix you shouldn't worry about too much, it's pretty decent overall for the chillout theme you are going for. If you could comfortably extend your lower end frequencies out so it sounds more present but rolling smoothly then that would be a plus. Maybe abit of extra 'colour' on the high end lightly with a Tube Exciter plugin could yield a slightly nicer result depending upon experimentation. Consider giving it a shot, I'm 50% certain it will sound slightly better haha.

Yeahhhhhhhhh, overall it's a pretty good chillout piece, I'm most impressed with the Synth work and anything I could really recommend to you I've already mentioned above. 4.6/5 ^_^

SoulSecure responds:

Most of the time my synths are just tweaked presets, 3xOsc or samples/soundfonts that are so filtered/washed out/effected that you can't tell what it used to be. I'm actually not that into synth work, which, coupled with my background, probably explains why I tend to stick to sounds that remind me of the 90s and 80s.

I have to rerecord at least one vocal part of this song and possibly another due to being off key. When I started doing this kind of music I found out that my horrible mic actually picks up my vocal signature better when I sing softly (used to screaming into it and whatnot, hah), so I was actually sort of forced into this vocal style.

DURING the chorus I have two of me singing, but the verses right before and right after the first chorus have a flanger on them.

I did not know what exciters were until I read this review. Could be rather useful.

Thank you for the review!

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I agree on the drums. They're pretty quiet samples and they're turned all the way up. Gotta edit them or something.

[Pollyanna [Recorder Cover]]

Duuuuuuuuuuuuude, a Mother song cover, Yes please I say!

It's been quite awhile since I've heard Pollyanna in it's Mother 1, 2 and 3 variants and from what I remember of the notation and sound of the original piece, you've pretty much hit it all spot on for the Mother 1 version. I could totally say it's better than the original but Mother 1's was done on a dated console sound chip over 20 years ago so that's abit different ^_^

The sound of the recorder as well is pretty damn good. Did you add anything over the recordings at all like some subtle reverb or is it all natural?

Favorited as well, anything Mother must be favorited! Excellent job, I will be keeping a close eye out for your future recordings!

NyxTheShield responds:

Reeverb only, it also has some octave lowered recorders because it would sound too empty with their natural tone (it has 1 natural recorder at the center, another natural with double tracking at the sides, an octave lowered at the sides too, and the entire track without the center one lowered 2 and 3 octaves in the background to fill the low frequencies)

I am glad you liked it ^-^

[Gad]

Listened to it nice and loudly on my ADAM A5X's and it sounds pretty damn glorious.

While the strings themselves sound pretty simplistic and don't seem to offer too much other than an underlay for the rest of the composition, the Evolving crystalline-like pads which kick in half way through counter-balance it perfectly. The drip-like hits which repeat monotonously throughout the track are just the right volume and sound, neither being overbearing or underwhelming.

The Mixing for it is pretty much spot on. What reverb plates are you using for this? IT just sounds so smooth! The bass rolls really well and there's just enough crisp high end present in the crystalline pads to make it sound awesome. Saying that I have noticed several small segments of the track where the bass-y string beneath can get overbearing at select parts when it's the only thing present.

I really don't have too many extra gripes with it. Maybe if you do a second revision you could always consider adding an additional subtle texture underneath the track to detail it some more?

But yaaaaaaaaaa, excellent job all around!

Chemiqals responds:

Thank you for this awesome review! I actually used Fruity Reeverb 2 for all the reverb here. Though, I did mix the reverb a lot differently than I normally do. I tried to give the strings a really subtle and muted sound. I upped the sub bass on the main strings to give it that deep tone. Then on the crystaline pads I cut out the low end completely and added a really extreme reverb in comparison. The extra strings that come in at the end were probably the toughest part to mix. I ended up giving them some really strange reverb where the dry levels came down a lot. But I upped the volume of the instrument itself. I really wanted them to sit in the background perfectly, haha.

Thanks again for the awesome feedback!

[Halls of The Fallen]

Dat X50 Guitar Tone. Tasty!

I couldn't really find any fault with the guitar side whatsoever. You play it excellently and when it overlaps with the arp-like spacey riffs it sounds even more damn impressive.

My super-big nibbling gripe about the track is TMF drum kit. Half of it has vanished to the void behind your mix. The snare is barely audible, your kicks are almost all mid/high banded and there's barely any bass coming off of them and there seems to be a disturbing lack of drum noise in the center stereo image, like it sounds like it's just been pushed to the sides to make your juicy guitar work more audible in a hurry. Would this due to compressing everything over the master channel or compressing the drum channels individually? (or something else entirely?)

But ya, don't take it too harshly, I am aware that you made this to showcase your guitar work ^_^

LunyAlex responds:

Thanks for the review, man!

You make a very good point. I'm fairly horrid at mixing percussion of any kind. I need to work on that bigtime. I think the biggest reason why it sounds lacking in body (and spread out to the sides instead of dominating the center) is because I used some Ozone Stereo Imaging on the Master channel and that was ... probably not the best idea ever. Haha.
It's high time I hit Youtube for some knowledge on drum mixing.

Glad you enjoyed the guitars (which were indeed my main focus)!

Thanks again!

[Walking in the Air Improv]

I've been listening to this piece a couple of times over while I was sorting out some stuff for work tomorrow, it's such a nice composition to listen to in the background. It doesn't really matter if any imperfections come in note-wise as with the tone of the song it actually seems to enhance it even more!

The Piano tone is really nice and the Reverb usage is perfect for the composition as well. Just out of curiosity what room/hall plate are you using for your Reverb? It really does go so well with the song.

Favorite'd, 5/5, will listen again (several times!)

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

I think that piano improvisations in general are quite fitting as background music, as lng as they are not too overtaking :)
I've actually grown to like imperfections myself as well. The only thing that actually bothers me in this improv is the brain fart between 2:07 and 2:08 :p

The reverb in this track is something I'm definitely happy with, along with the EQ:ing. This is an old recording, but I mixed it quickly yesterday before uploading it, and I think it went well.
I'm using one of the piano sounds from my Yamaha Clavinova (CLP - 230) electronic piano (recorded with audacity). The reverb itself is a lazy kind that has worked well for me whenever I want something to sound a bit out of this world... Maybe not far away, but... Dreamish?
If I remember correctly, I actually combined three different halls/rooms, instead of just choosing one and editing it. I think I combined an "Arena", "Cathedral" and "Church" setting in Cubase's RoomWorks Reverb VST.
I don't know if that tells you anything really...
Basically, it's a shit ton of pre-delay and reverb time.

Thanks a lot for listening to my stuff and for reviewing it! You've posted a lot of cool stuff yourself recently. It's a shame I've been to busy to keep up with everything lately -_-
Now I'm back though, and should have a lot of time for such things :3

[Joyflight]

Just had a listen through this several times and I'll share my thoughts

First of all, from a composition side, it's fine really. It's not overly repetitive as you thought of it as and the length of it is pretty acceptable aswell. That's a pretty good main lead from 00:50 onwards, it works pretty damn well with everything else going on!

Next, the actual sounds and patches you are using. The Transition FX you are using I recognize straight away (I use the same booms, fades and splashes haha). You may want to stretch some of them out and maybe do some pitch adjustment to them so it sounds more unique and fuller. Secondly I am struggling to hear the Kick you are using properly on both my ADAM A5X's and through a variety of cheap and pricier headphones. It may be worth compressing it abit more and then raising the volume on the Kick so it sounds more 'forward and present' in the track.

The 3x4 Tremolo Guitar tone you are using seems to clip itself after each note and has no release on them. You may want to increase the release of the notes via your plugin or if that's not possible, some short-size diffused reverb should solve the problem and make it sound much better.

Bonus points for your pad work though, it's atmospherically impressive to hear!

Onto the mastering, apart from the kick as mentioned above it's generally ok. Bass response is smooth and not overbearing. Not much high-end hiss coming out of the track apart from the hats you are using (I'd say just to be safe next time I'd cut off all frequencies above 17,000hz when dealing with hats, crashes or china).

That's all I can really offer to say at the moment, I would be interested as to how you will progress from this stage. I'll definitely be lurking in the background, listening out to any of your future releases you upload to Newgrounds. I've scouted you aswell to help speed the process through to proper ratings and presence on here!

Hope you found what I've mentioned helpful!

Mor1 responds:

Just had to read through that several times, it was so beautiful ^^

I know the problem with kick, but i didn't know how to properly fix it. I'm still pretty new to mastering stuff. And i'll find a fix for the guitar.

I'll definitely keep all those tips in mind! And thank you very much for scouting me!

[a Fine day for revenge]

Dat thumping kick
Dat fitting rhythm

DESHIEL responds:

Dat review

[no entry without goggles]

That's lucky I have googles then

AliceMako responds:

An actual dresscode sign said that, i didn't come up with it myself.

[Qwaint - Freckles]

You'll have to bear with me on this one, I'm predominately an Electro-Industrial Musician (sometimes a Metalhead on the side aswell) used to heavy stompage and Distorted screaming vocals haha. I'm not used to listening to Hip Hop :C

I must say, even after a few plays through the track it always sound very entrancing, the steel string-like instrumentation melds in with the bass so well that it gives off this kind of downtempo and daresay relaxing atmosphere which I really like. With the femenine vocal-samples popping in at intervals, it aids it very well.

It sounds like a pretty olden-styled track (or however it is tagged as), the simplistic drum kit which drives the song along with the more tape/saturated-like mastering style seeming fairly evident (and pretty nice).

If there is anything I could really say I don't like about this piece, it's the clicking which goes on and on throughout the track. It seems inordinately loud compared to everything else which is going on to the point where it's annoying. i think it needs to be turned down by a few -DB maybe?

Overall, apart from the clicking I do actually enjoy this track, it's a pretty chilled-out piece and the atmosphere which it gives off impresses me. HOpefully what I have mentioned above makes sense, I'm not used to listening or reviewing this kind of music style!

KleptoidKat responds:

Hey man, thanks so much for your observations!

Believe it or not, its actually a male voice pitched up a bit. Every sound you hear in this track has an origin (or sample) you wouldnt even think about. Basically what im trying to say is, I flipped the shit out of this. Lol. When you said simplistic drum kit that almost shook my heart haha. I put a lot of work into those snares to make it sound unlike any other snare.

As for the "clicking" sound, that is supposed to be the hi hat. After all this track derives from a beat tape meant to be used by rappers. If vocals were layered over this beat, the clicks wouldnt be as showy as the nude beat.

- Qwaint