FinnMK's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Khalden's Theme - Invincible Hero]

* This is an official NGUAC 2017 review *

Overall, this is a fun piece of music. High energy, interesting blend of instruments, generally a good time for all involved! On to specifics...

Mixing, Mastering, and Production: There are no huge weaknesses or holes in your production, but there are some small things that add up. For the most part, everything is very clean, especially the guitar. There are some volume discrepancies however, mostly in the drums. Everything about the drums could be louder. I should really be feeling the meat and bass of the kick, the crisp punch of the snare, the scintillating splashes of the cymbals. But they're all buried in the background, only barely peeking through when other instruments aren't playing at the same time.
Another note about the drums is that they're fairly obviously virtual. The hi-hats and the snare especially feel a bit fake. The way to get around it (if you don't have an actual kit to record) is careful mixing. You can make virtual drums sound really great if you know what you're doing. How to get that specific sound is a long one to write in this review, but check online about mixing for drums and most importantly, practice!

Generally speaking all the individual instruments are balanced well and sound pretty good. The guitar gets buried semi-frequently and never really 'pops' out, though. In your mix they occupy a fairly limited Hz range, which makes it hard to hear them at times - except when they're ripping mad solos, of course.

You used reverb pretty effectively; most instruments blend well together because of it. I have no big comments about your creative mixing, other than that I was never really surprised; it didn't go above and beyond. Most of your reverbing and panning served a decent purpose, and then did no more - which is not a bad thing, but it didn't make the track ascend to excellence.

Composition: Like your production, there are no real weak points here. Khalden's Theme is particularly original in its instrumentation - good use of unique and not-heard-every-day instruments. They all blend together very well.
As a whole, the piece is somewhat straining on the ears. It's only at the intro and at 1:42 where the listener gets a break from the pounding drums and guitar. As a result, it's not something you want to play on loop...your ears get tired!
Your use of melody is pretty solid - the melodies are memorable and interspersed. They just seem a little disjointed in the context of the song...when they're played they don't flow completely smoothly. I found them a little jerky, in a rhythmic sense.

As a whole, I don't have that many tips about the composition. It was decent in most manners, it just didn't really 'wow' me. Still, I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for the Knockout Round!

Cheers,
Finn M-K

[Super Slushi]

* This is an official NGUAC 2017 review *

Overall I definitely enjoyed this one. It's so whimsical! But let me go more in depth...

Mixing, Mastering, and Production: Super clean mix. I didn't feel like there was mud anywhere and for the most part things were balanced well. But a clean mix is only part of the equation. There some volume balances I wasn't a fan of. The first drop at :27 is pretty shocking - a significant volume increase and sudden instruments panned far to the right and left. This is not inherently BAD - but the problem is it's unfairly unexpected. When you're writing a song, you know when the drop is going to be. You know exactly how it's going to play out. But the listener, especially on that first listen, doesn't. During the introduction of the Super Slushi I adjusted my volume to be able to hear everything comfortably. When the drop hit I had to pause and readjust my volume; while it was a comfortable volume to listen to the intro to, it was too loud for the drop.
The reason this is 'unfair' is because when I'm setting my volume the only context I have is the introductory section; I can't possibly know when the drop will be and how loud it is. Because the intro and the drop have such a significant volume and panning difference, there's no way I can be listening at a volume that's perfect to appreciate the drop, at least until I've listened to the drop once. But if I have to pause the song and readjust the volume at a moment that's so crucial and built up to (the drop), then it really takes me out of the song emotionally.
A way to solve this is to volume match those first two sections a bit better. Once you've done a drop, once you've hit a loud section of your song, then AFTER that you could very reasonably drop things down to a very low volume, build up and drop again. At that point, my ears and brain are prepared for the loudness.
Other than that I felt like the drop sections could have use some more bass in the bass instrument itself. The sub-bass frequencies were actually fine, but the rest of it was sort of lackluster. So pump up that 125-300Hz region a bit on your bass instrument and really get that satisfying meaty bass sound!

In terms of creative mixing, things were generally good. Good use of reverb, delay, fades and panning. The main reason I didn't give you a higher score on this part was because none of your effects really went above and beyond. They were all successful, but never very unexpected or super original.

Mastering was solid, no real tips there. I think I should've actually given you a bit of a higher score!

Composition: Very original piece, masterful use of vocal samples. I felt the drop sections were a little thin. If there had just been...more in those sections I would have loved them. The melody I enjoyed a lot, but I felt like it was overused - it made Super Slushi a bit of a monothematic piece. I would've liked to hear some variety in the melody, especially in the verses. That melody works great in the drop sections, but then to hear it again in-between the drops isn't very refreshing.
The structure was good, no real problems there, but it also wasn't anything special. Quiet intro, drop, build, drop, quiet ending. I've heard it on a million different dubstep songs before. I did enjoy your double-paced rhythm section at 1:49; that definitely added some nice, unexpected variety.

Overall, a decently constructed song, I just would've liked some more variety in the melody and structure.

Looking forward to hearing what you come up with for the Knockout Round!

Cheers,
Finn M-K

GobSmacked responds:

Ay first of all thanks for the review! Uhm yeah I shouldve "prepared" the listener for the first drop a tad more for sure. And yeah the main theme and melody got repetative very quickly imma try to mix in more variety and also make them drops *T H I C C E R*. ;3!!!

[His Last Departure]

* This is an official NGUAC 2017 review *

Generally speaking, good stuff! I liked it.

Mixing, Mastering, & Production: There was nothing dramatically off here, but there were some volume issues. The flute is pretty overpowering, and the percussion has some inconsistencies between the instruments. The timpani is much louder than the snare or kick, for example. Having that volume consistency across the track would help to unify everything. The piano had a beautiful sound.
The tambourine and the toms stuck out to me because they were obviously virtual. This is as opposed to where you had virtual instruments playing, but they were reverbed and EQ'd to fit in well with the atmosphere of the piece. When the tambourine or toms played, all I heard was "Oh, there's a virtual tambourine/tom playing', not 'ah, a nice addition to the piece'.

Having the ambient sound added a lot to the atmosphere of the piece and it was leveled and mixed very well. Generally speaking things were reverbed nicely. The mastering was decent as well - things got clearer and crisped up. I felt like the mastering suffered in the bass - earlier in the piece it's too quiet and later in the piece it's too intrusive (the timpani especially). I had a couple surprises from the mastering in the terms of volume - one was at 0:31 where the acoustic guitar and drums kick in. To me it was too loud of an entrance, not by virtue of performance but simply of volume. The piano probably could have been a little louder to accommodate where the piece was going, which was to a louder place later on.

All in all, decent production. There are no serious flaws here, and practice will make perfect!

Composition: To me this was a track that aimed not for the stars, but for something more modest, and it achieved that goal with mostly success. The harmonies and texture are good, and I was drawn into the piece as a whole. Where it lost points for me was in structure, progression, and originality.
They're all sort of tied together. For the chords, there's nothing wrong with a 4-chord song; some of the greatest works in history have been 4 chord. However, when you take away a creative element from a piece (in this case, having only 4 chords) you have to compensate with other aspects of musicality to keep things interesting. If my interest isn't being constantly piqued by new chords and harmonies, the next places my brain will hop to to try and enjoy the piece are structure and melody. For His Last Departure, you start with a solid, basic, melody. And then that melody repeats. And then it repeats. And then it repeats.
You do have some variations of it in different instruments, but for the most part it's just those same 4 chords with that same melody in that same tempo for three and a half minutes. I kept hoping for more, for variety, but the chords, melody, and structure were all fairly static.

In terms of instrumentation, I liked all the instruments individually, but after a couple listens and a look through your instrument list, I had to ask myself "Why is Blue using these specific instruments?" This set of instruments include a great many that would never normally play with each other. A bansuri and a timpani, a piano and a sub bass - these are strange blends. I'm all for originality in choice of instruments, and sometimes strange mixes result in amazing music, but for His Last Departure I felt like it was more a case of you picking a bunch of different instruments based on how good they individually sound without a lot of regard for how they work together as a group. It resulted in a sort of dissociation when I listened to His Last Departure; I kept being surprised with a brand new instrument and kept having to work to try and get back in the atmosphere of the song.

Ultimately, not a bad piece! You have a lot of potential. I would say you have the talent to be more daring - try weird new things, try new time signatures, try to push yourself. I think you'll be surprised (in a good way!) at the result.

Cheers,
Finn M-K

[At Peace]

Really great stuff. It's almost film meets game soundtrack type-music. That base piano riff with the guitar is one of those progressions you can just listen to endlessly. Nicely done!

[The Power To End Us All]

Man, I don't really consider myself a metal guy, but I can just hear the great musicianship here. Glad I'm not in the same category as you for the NGUAC! Keep up the good tunes.

[Olive Juice]

Awesome producing! Really nicely mixed and very easy to listen to.

Cheers,
Finn