Lich's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Qua Patet Orbis]

Get some really stand out Distorted Kick, Snare Hats and Crashes going with the rest of the track and this would be perfect to do some vocal work with!

AliceMako responds:

That can be arranged.

[Air]

Sounds pretty chill to me!

Really, the 'meat' of the track is purely 0:57 upto 1:50 and it does sounds pretty good. No complaints over your drum, snare or hat samples and the lead sounds simplistic but gets the job done (if not abit repetitively throughout the piece). Bass patch sounds quite nice aswell.

What I have immediately noticed and what sadly makes the track more annoying for me is that your Lead with the rest of the track seems abit out-of-sync at the beginning. Don't know if it's how high you have the attack set on the patch or if the pattern score is accidentally out-of-sync with the rest of the sequence but it doesn't sound right.

Only other gripe is how thin the track sounded between 0:00-0:57 and 1:50 onwards (at least in my own messed up opinion haha). I think it could potentially sound better if you boosted the decay and sustain upwards on some of your patches and widened them a tinsy bit more.

But yaaaaaa, the track does it's job and it sounds nice and bright in the process of it. YOu've made some pretty awesome stuff in the past so I'll subscribe to you and keep an eye out for your future releases!

Pandasticality responds:

im till learning as i go, thanks for the tips :) <3
- Pandasticality

[Last Cybernaut Standing]

We should totally collab sometime, I'm happy to lay down some Vocal-work for a track!

AliceMako responds:

I'd love that, your work is crazy good.

[Herald of the Insane]

This is a good track to eat my Pizza to.

I'm gonna give this track a rating of Pepperoni/10
Delicious.

DESHIEL responds:

OH GOD IT BURNS!!!!

[Mysterious Calm]

This may be the longest Experimental/Cinematic piece ever uploaded onto Newgrounds.

The whole piece seems very Adventure and/or RPG friendly. It seems to project a very mellow and individual feeling to it, the only-the-fly recording you did for it on the CLP-230 certainly works overall and I quite astonished by the quality of the audio considering this is unedited.

Please make more pieces like this!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

You think so? If this would've been a minute or so longer, the file size would've actually been too large to upload XD

This improvisation, along with a lot of my music is very inspired by all the Final Fantasy games (especially VII), so it's no wonder if it could fit an RPG :3
I really like the CLP-230 myself. It doesn't have many sounds, but the keys are great to play on, and the quality of the sounds is very nice. To my piano tracks, I tend to add reverb and some other stuff in Cubase, but I didn't feel like this needed any editing.

I will make more stuff like this in the future, I'm sure of it!

Thanks for the review and for all the kind words. All your stuff is quite amazing, btw!

[MJFarts EPIC electro track!!]

420/69, gr8 trak m8

midimachine responds:

solid review
m8/10

[4'Lich]

420/69, would drink and dance to this! Thank you :)

DESHIEL responds:

glad you like ;)

[Abyssal Depths]

Pretty much displaying a near-mastery of sound design using Sytrus. You are probably the only person I know who actually uses WaveShaper efficiently.

I do agree with Rahmemhotep below, this would be very fitting in either Earthbound or even Mother 3 but for some very strange reason it does remind me in it's atmosphere of the Cave before fighting The Pain in MGS3: Snake Eater.

Mastering-wise, it's spot on. Sounds beautiful coming through my ADAM A5X's and even on my cheapo headphones it sounds pretty damn decent aswell. Can't really fault it composition-wise although I do slightly question some of the notation which is introduced just after 0:54 in, it sounds inappropriately off-key compared to the rest of the elements going on but then it might be done like that on purpose?

Oh I do have something special cooking up, it's just now down to cutting it down to uploadable lengths (It's like 11mins long cut down), not killing my vocal-chords and getting some Dialogue sorted out by either myself or a special voice-actor ;)

JRob responds:

There's still quite a bit I need to learn with Sytrus, though. WaveShaper's an easy one, however I usually use it just for distortion - and even just a little bit of it can give any synth more "oomph," which is especially great for basses (there's one just for that purpose on the droning bass).

Sadly, I haven't played any Metal Gear Solid either :(

The only game I can think of that may have had some influence on the way I wrote this would be The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (it was something of an influence on my writing style when I first started writing music using computer software/DAW's - and when I first got FL Studio and pulled up Autogun, I really loved how some of the synths reminded me of some of the instruments in the game), but it's been years since I last played it, or even listened to any of the soundtrack.

About half of the layers I used in this song are detuned to some degree; I made the custom bell/chime synth at ~0:53 in Sytrus using frequency ratios of 3 on the first operator, 8 on the second, and 8.1 on the third, which is why it sounds off-key. There are quite a few dissonances in the song, all of which were intentional - I really love the use of dissonances at appropriate times as they can really make a song sound even more interesting and dynamic.

11 minutes? I remember the days when it was difficult to get 6 minute songs up on here without reducing the quality.

[In the Clouds]

What I am generally hearing from your track is more along the lines of a mash-up of two completly tracks from 1:37 (to 2:47) being the midpoint between the two completely. It makes the general direction of the track seem confusing in it's nature.

The mastering is generally decent, it could use a little bit more Stereo Widening along with the track in general using some 'brightening up' on the mix since alot of your Brass-like pads and general leads seem to be hiding behind the track itself.

Hope this review is ok, just kind of typed down what I could immediatly think of D:

ScottJacob responds:

I get where your coming from, its true that it does kind of sound like two-songs but i think they both work well with each other. The build up might be a little long but i enjoy how it comes together in the end. Thanks for the review i appreciate you taking the time to break it down, i like your mastering advise too, ill take it into consideration next time. :)