FinnMK's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Time - Clabtrap 2013 Hype]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Yeah, the meta one! This was a fun one. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering and production: No massive weaknesses here, but bits and bobs and small things.
The main thing that jumped out at me is vocal quality. With a hip hop song, the vocals are so, so key. They carry the song, they're such a big part of everything. The vocals in Time were mixed fairly solidly, but the raw quality of them could have been higher. This is likely something to improve with your mic, your vocal preamp, and your recording setup. It would have been nice in Time if the vocals had a bit more bass and were a bit louder. Ultimately, you want to make them more full. This isn't to say that they weren't clear; I could hear every word clearly. But something to note. The little bits in the verses were the vocals were doubled for potency could have been panned further out. I could hear what you were trying to go for, but if you stack 3 vocal layers all within 10% pan of each other, it's not going to make much of a difference. Pan those doubled tracks out to 30% on either side or so and you'll really hear them.
There were some little bits of volume balance I think could have been improved. Just nitpicky stuff: a little bit more bass would have worked well; the flute synth in the verses was a bit too loud in the right ear; the hi-hats were a hair quiet; the female vocals in the chorus were a little too intrusive, being decently loud and panned completely to the right and left ear.
As I said, all this is little, nitpicky stuff so don't be too discouraged. Generally speaking the mix was decent, there are just little things to improve.

Composition: Basically a real solid hip hop song.
Let's talk about the main thing, melody. Good flow and good editing at the beginning and ends of lines. Nice meta content haha, the callout track to other competitors. I'm pretty forgiving on grammatical sense to get the rhyme and flow right, but there were a couple moments that seemed a little lazy to me (If you doubted me before, then you really reconsider this, for example).
I liked all the instruments used, but I could've gone for a little more instrumental variety between the chorus and the verse. Just a couple subtle touches, adding some things in and beefing it up or stripping it down would have made a big difference.

Overall, pretty solid. Looking forward to what you come up with for next round!

[The Damn Motherfucking One]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

I liked this one - definitely some good potential here. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering, and production: The main point where TDMO suffered in terms of production was that many of the instruments felt a bit obviously virtual. I can tell that I'm listening to a virtual piano playing a MIDI file, for example, as opposed to hearing someone perform the exact same piece on a piano. Of course, not everyone has a piano, but many of these instrument problems can be solved with very careful EQing, reverb, panning, and other mixing tracks. One in particular that might prove helpful for you is 1) plugging in a keyboard with MIDI capabilities and actually performing parts yourself, or 2) manually editing the velocity and timing of your instrument parts. When a pianist plays a piece, for example, they never do so with absolutely perfect timing or with absolutely the same amount of pressure on every note. The slightest touches of off-timing will help the realism, and so too will editing the velocity - part of what makes a great performance is the use of dynamics. So if you can't perform it yourself, you can still try and work in elements of performance that will make the music sound better.
I liked most of the effects you used on an individual basis (although some careful reverbing would have helped - remember, you want your mix to sound like every instrument is playing together in the same room), but I did question why you used some of the effects you did. It's always worth asking yourself, when adding a new instrument or effect into a piece, "does this make sense to have given the context of the rest of the track?" Some of the effects I felt you like thought sounded cool and threw them in without thinking about how they affect the rest of the piece. I'll talk more about this below in instrumentation.

Finally, I think the track could've stood to be a bit louder - good use of a maximizer and a limiter in the mastering phase would solve this.

Composition: Generally speaking, pretty good. No dramatically weak spots here. I really liked most of your chord choices.
One of my biggest nitpicky things for TDMO is instrumentation. There's a whole gaggle of instruments, from 80s synths to acoustic piano, to strings, to electric guitar, to modern synth effects. Many of these are instruments or sounds that would not normally play together, so when you're blending them you have to be sure that you're doing it for a good reason. You're at the point of musicality where you have the talent to work all these different things in, but...should you be? (enter Jeff Goldblum for Jurassic Park "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.")
What happens when you throw in all of these instrument types is that they break the cohesion and atmosphere of the piece. When I listened, I didn't get a sense of TDMO having everything together - it was more of a patched quilt made by 30 different stitchers. What would help here is deciding what the foundation of the track will be. Is it going to be more rock? (electric guitar and drums) Is it going to be more ballad-y? (piano) Is it going to be more synthy? In order to have the whole piece come together and work as a whole, you have to decide what you're going for, instead of just deciding along the way. Once you know your foundation, you can reasonably ask yourself when adding in new instruments "should I be adding this in? If I am, why? Does it work with the rest of the piece?" And when you do, you'll be able to have an answer.

Otherwise, I liked most things. I think it would have been nice to have the melody tag off the piano at some point. Even when it was on the guitar, the piano was doubling it. So some variety would spice things up.

Overall, great potential. Go forth on your musical quest!

MysteriousPresence responds:

Wow thanks for the awesome feedback ! <3
I'm gonna use your precious advice for my last track ever ("Work, Buy, Consume, Die") ! The achievement of my masterpiece will be partly thanks to you ! =)

[Different]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Ah yes, the journey. Really enjoyed this one. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering and production: All excellent. Not many people earned at least 9/10 in every production category for me. What that means here is that there is nothing wrong with any of your production elements. Nothing sticks out in a bad way (except that the snare at 9:42 seemed a bit dry - a little more reverb would have helped); all the instruments are clear, effects are executed excellently, and mastering clearly enhances the piece.
The only way to go is up - I would've given higher scores if something here had really unexpectedly wowed me. A brilliant original effect here, the introduction of a completely beautiful instrument sound there, a magical moment thanks to mastering. It's hard for me to be specific here because, as I said before, there's nothing wrong with your production. But I hope that comes across - try and surprise me in the knockout round, push yourself to have those extra moments of pure mastery, and I could see you getting a perfect production score.

Composition: Very original, excellently executed. It's a testament to your sense of musicality that I was never disinterested the entire fourteen and a half minutes. Granted, I'm partial to epic journey pieces, but it's easy to get them wrong. My biggest nitpicky thing to mention would be regarding melodies. In all the spots you had melodies, they were well done - they fit the piece and enhanced it. What I would have liked to hear is more variety. Your core melody and progression are more or less the same throughout the piece, and that's a long time to listen to one melody. When you free yourself from the constraints of writing 3-minute songs, as you have, you have so much space and material to work with. It felt like a little bit of a missed opportunity here to not hear more melodies. One idea (and I'm just throwing it out here based on what I imagine when listening to Different) might be to have two distinct main melodies, introduced in different sections and fully fleshed out, then blended in a final sections where it's revealed one of them is a countermelody to the other. And together, they make beautiful harmonic music. Just an idea - obviously you're capable of coming up with melodies!

My other points off were in structure, progression, harmony, and texture. None of these things were done poorly, but they didn't completely wow me like your atmosphere, emotion, and originality did. In terms of structure and progression, there was never a section that took me by surprise, that changed the piece for the better, that took it in a new direction. Everything felt more or less the same, in a dynamic and instrumental sense, the whole way through. Again, since Different is so long, having that kind of variety tends to a big plus in my books. The key is to weave that difference in without sacrificing the atmosphere and vibe of what you've already achieved.

One thing to remember - while I hugely enjoy long journey pieces, not every judge will. Keep in mind that this is a contest, so having your music be more universally accessible, so to speak, might garner you some points with the other judges who would otherwise pass you over. Good luck in the Knockout Round!

[Shae's Nightmare]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Oh yeah, I really liked this one. Such a Moby vibe. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering, and production: Generally speaking, real solid all around. Good use of samples and effects (especially cutoff filter). If I had to nitpick it might be that the ride cymbal sticks out a bit as sounding fake...given that you have it panned right in the center focus as a main instrument, it's very much highlighted. It doesn't sound terrible, per se, and I don't think it would have sounded out of place were it in the background. But highlighted in the forefront, it sounded a bit fake to me. Maybe just a personal aesthetic.
I would say your mastering was a touch loud and the slightest touch overcompressed. This mix is sitting at an average of -11dB overall when the loudest top 40, volume warred mixes are typically at -12.
Otherwise not too much else to say! Good job here.

Composition: Great atmosphere, very hypnotic. Good use of thin and thick texture areas. There were a couple areas I docked points for; one of them was melody. Though this is a hypnotic, in-the-moment piece, I still felt like there could have been a bit more melodic variation. Maybe a soft piano dropping some high notes or something.

I don't really have too much else to say on the track itself. It's a solid idea executed well. In terms of what you might plan for next round though...
The reason I didn't give more points is mostly because this is not a track that screams 'look at me!'. In the context of me listening to music regularly, I really enjoy this track. In the context of me judging a competition, I want more from it. It doesn't showcase the boundaries of your skills well enough. You're directly competing with music that IS screaming 'look at me!', so when you have a piece like this that is subtle and just waits its turn, you might get swept under the rug. I'm not necessarily saying you should abandon your style, but I am saying that this competition is a showcase opportunity, so make sure your biggest and best is front and center, not your most subdued. I hope that comes across right.

Looking forward to what you come up with next!

[Lovely Kitten - Moment Of Decision]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Mixing, mastering and production: The main drawback here was that the instruments were not convincingly real - and in a piece that has sparse instrumentation like this, that is really, REALLY, crucial.
It's hard for me to get into the piece emotionally if I can tell at every second that I'm listening to a basic virtual piano playing a MIDI file. This can be solved in a couple ways, the firstmost being to actually have the music performed by a pianist. Even if it's a pianist playing a digital piano which creates a MIDI file, it will sound so much more real and true than having a bunch of dots and clicks build a track. A pianist will not have absolutely perfect timing, they will not be quantized to a click track, they will not have the exact same velocity for every note, and that's what it makes it so real. If you don't have a pianist around who can perform the parts, another solution is to manually edit those aspects so they sound real. Don't quantize every note; don't make every note play at 100 velocity. Have some dynamics, have some rubato, try and keep the feeling in it!
Even if you get a more expensive piano vst, you'll run into the same 'definitely-not-a-real-piano' problem if you still make everything so robotic.
The last tip here is to make sure to play around with EQ and reverb - that will certainly help the sound.

Same goes for the strings, to a lesser degree. Some of the strings were fairly obviously virtual. EQ and reverb are your friends here - try and make your mix sound like every instrument is playing in the same room. The piano and the strings were noticeably different in their sound, and that's not ideal.

Composition: Fairly solid all around! Good pacing at the start and generally speaking throughout the whole piece. Your progression was good as well; the strings coming in more and more over the course of the piece worked.
In terms of harmony, texture & originality, I docked a few points because it feels to me like what you're striving to achieve with Moment of Decision has been done before. There are, in existence, about a million piano and string ballads. Regardless of how well it's done, there's not going to be anything that can really surprise the listener.
Your melodies and countermelodies are good for the most part; 1:39 is particularly nice. But here again I wasn't particularly pleasantly surprised by anything. Your melodies work well, but they're par for the course in the context of a piano & strings ballad. I didn't feel like i had heard anything I hadn't heard before in other pieces.

Overall, don't be discouraged! You have a lot of potential and I'm eager to see you realize it. Good luck!

[Threat]

Hola! You asked for some feedback on melodic elements.

First, the good: I think your choice of instrumentation for your melodies was spot on. The doom-y piano and the hard synth works well and keeps the atmosphere all there.

Now, to improve: The piano sounds a bit obviously virtual. I think you mixed it decently well but here are two ways to improve the sound: 1) Actually perform or have someone perform those piano parts on MIDI. Or, if not that, work the velocity of the notes so that not every note is being hit with the exact same intensity. Since real pianists don't play like that, if you have a piano part that has perfect velocity, it'll always sound a bit fake. 2) Get a better piano vst (and still do step 1!). This is easier said than done, but if you're looking to upgrade I highly recommend VI Labs True Keys.
In terms of the synth melody, it's not bad. It just didn't strike me in any particular way. It's very good at adding to the atmosphere, but it didn't strike me as catchy or memorable. My other issue with it was that once had begun, it maintained basically at the same level for the rest of the track. You pump it up the octave at 1:32 but it's still essentially the same thing. So a little more variety in the melody would have been nice.

Hope this helps!

SentryTurbo responds:

Alright, thanks

[Magenta Caverns]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Overall, a fun time and cool atmosphere. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering and production: My main issues with the production are tied to the fact that nearly every instrument sound very obviously virtual, sounds very obviously like a preset. When I'm listening to everything, I want to be getting into the music but it instead feels like a showcase for a vst. This is not necessarily tied to the quality of the vst (although purchasing more high end vsts would certainly help), it's an issue of mixing. The solution here is carefully EQing, reverbing, panning, and volume balancing every instrument. At the end of the day you want the instruments to sound like they're yours - not a preset. Presets are great for inspiration, but they tend to stick out if you leave them in a final mix.
Some of the reverbing and delay works well here! But for me it was hard to get over the 'storefront window' feel of the instruments.

Composition: Decently solid all around, no huge weaknesses here. I'm just going to go through with a bunch of little tips.
Everything had a really fun bounce - thanks to the rhythm section of bass and drums for that one. Great use of toms to help achieve that.
The ending felt a little sudden and not particularly well thought out. You said that you originally wrote it as a loop. I can't speak for the other judges, but I think you could've left it as a loop! If that's what the track was built for, then it would probably sound better that way. You nailed the video game loop feel, so I say embrace it.
I think a little more variety in the structure and feel would have been nice. It would be tricky to balance it with the feeling of a loop, but if pulled off it would really enhanced the track.
Your melodies here fit the style and the piece well, and you kept the melodic instruments varied. Good use of the bass to make countermelodies. Actually, listening to this again now, I probably could've given you a bit of a higher melody score :p
The instrumentation, while varied, was almost...too outlandish. Your instrumentation sort of tried to reach for the stars, I feel like. Marimba, bass guitar, synth leads, strings - it's a mix of instruments that would never normally play together in real life. It was hard for me to place what the feel of the song should be. It's worth asking yourself, before you pick an instrument to add, "why am I adding this particular instrument? How does it fit with the rest of the group?" I had the feeling of you picking a bunch of instruments that sounded good individually, without necessarily considering how they work together as a group. As a group, I felt like it was a bit disjointed, like if I grabbed 10 random musicians and stuck them in a room together. If you're going to go more natural, like with bass guitar and a drum kit, then go for it. If you're going to go synthy, with a virtual kit, organ and synth leads, then go for it. But it felt like you were in a weird in-between place where I couldn't emotionally commit, if that makes sense.

Fun ideas though! Keep it up and keep having fun.

ToxicGeek responds:

(My bad for taking my time for responding it)

Mixing: Yeah I know like nothing important into mastering. Tho I'll try to gain some experience in the future. Also, I don't see myself purchasing myself more VSTs with real money, that would be much for my wallet.

Composition: Glad you like the melodies!
The instrument choice is varied on purpose because of the game's aesthetic. It's in a Sci-Fi setting and there's a lot of diversity in it and each planet has its unique vibe. Sure I could change some instruments to make the whole tune more coherent but no biggie.
And yes next time, It'll be a loop upload if it was intended.

Thanks for the review!

[Waves of Color]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Ah yes, the 7/4 one. On to specifics...

Mixing, mastering and production: There are no huge weaknesses here, so you're on the right path! Just some little things that add up. If I had to give an overall comment, it would be that I can hear all the ideas you're trying to achieve with the production side of things and for the most part you do achieve them. The little details of execution can be tightened up and made better, though.
One of the things that hopped out for me was that a great number of the instruments you used sound pretty obviously virtual/and/or like built-in presets that come with the vsts. Obviously if you have budget constraints for vsts this is a tough one to solve, but a solution is 1) use the presets for inspiration, not as a final product, and 2) carefully EQ, pan, volume adjust, and reverb all your instruments so that they work together as a unit. There's a difference between having a bunch of instruments playing at the same time and having a bunch of instruments playing together. Ideally, you want your mix to sound like all your instruments are indeed YOUR instruments, and not someone else's. This can be achieved with the use of the things above: EQ, panning, volume balancing, and reverb. There are a billion effects you can add on, but if you don't have your core ones in there doing their job, the mix will always sound fake if you use virtual instruments.
Mastering also helps the cohesion of the whole piece with tools like multiband compressors, more EQing, maximizers and limiters. It's certainly worth playing around with those and making sure everything plays together nicely. I would like to mention that your end mix did was clean, had some nice punch and decent volume balancing, but there's always room to improve.

A lot of the panning and reverb I did like! You kept things fresh throughout the whole piece.

Composition: There's a lot to like about Waves of Color. I love the 7/4 time signature, both for the ideals in attempting and the talent to pull it off seamlessly. For our western-music-theory ears, odd time signatures often sound...odd! But you made 7/4 sound natural, so kudos. The points you lost on originality were pretty much only due to instrumentation, for reasons mentioned above in the production section.
For everything else (structure, progression, melodies, harmony, texture, atmosphere, emotion), there are no real PROBLEMS here, it's just that I was never really that drawn in or wowed by anything. Everything was good without being great.
In terms of structure, you certainly had some progression and no failure to have several interesting different sections - you cram a lot of section into a 4-minute piece! My main drawback here was that at some point, more sections is not what you need, especially if they're all pretty much using the same melody to carry them. Granted, it's hard to compose a melody that will work well in 7/4. But by about halfway through, I was ready to hear a different melody. This wears on the structure and progression too, because no matter how many new sections you have, I'm not going to be interested in hearing them if they have the same melody overtop of them. Granted again, your melody is not the exact same the entire time. But the few melodies you use are very similar to the point where it's hard to distinguish them from each other.

Overall, good stuff with lots of potential!

Spadezer responds:

Ah, thank you. Much appreciated.

Yeah, effects and mastering. Obviously, there's a good amount of effort going into balancing. I'll admit some of the adjustments with reverb, delay, sounddesign are slightly neglected while focusing on the composition of the themes.
Mastering..... something I have knowledge on but admit I don't do much with it. Not sure if because I don't comprehend their abilities of the tools well or what. But this confirms that I've been needing to improve here.

Actually that applies to a lot of what I was thinking for the rest of the subjects. Confirms what I think may have been going on, and I may not have been thinking about it enough to admit/address the issues. Thanks for the feedback.

[AIM - Rothgar]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Oh man, this one. Really great talent, really not-so-great production. Into the details...

Mixing, mastering and production: This was the real weak point. Now, it wasn't THAT weak - I could hear all the parts clearly and I was able to get into the emotional space of the piece. But at the end of the day it's just a bedroom recording, and you're competing with people who have studio-level production quality.
For acoustic guitar, getting a great recording setup is a bit of of an investment, but certainly it's the next production step I hear for you. I would get (if you don't already have) a decent condenser mic (and a little interface to give it phantom power) as well as a Shure SM57. Point the condenser where the neck meets the body of the guitar, and have the SM57 a bit away from the body of the guitar, pointing at the soundbox hole. Once there you can play with levels and distances - putting your condenser closer to the strings will pick up great plucking, while having it away will pick up chords and louder guitar much better.
I would also recommend recording to a click track if you're not already. There were a couple slight timing problems.

From a post-recording standpoint, definitely play around with reverb and panning; try to add to the character of the guitar without stripping the real, raw, live sound you have.

Mastering shouldn't be too difficult from there if you're sticking with just acoustic guitar, but it's still a crucial step. Simply having a multiband compressor, an EQ, and a maximizer + limiter on the premaster will do a world of good.

Composition: Beautiful, atmospheric. I really, truly enjoyed it. Now, to nitpick!
Your main melody is great, and is a beautiful moment when you play that EM and F#M chord in the A section. Solid solo in the middle of the piece. I definitely liked the idea of the harmonics, but they weren't quite executed perfectly - a couple minor performance errors took me out of the moment. After the solo is finished and you go back to the A section, the melody gets a bit drowned out a bit by your background layer - I think were it blended well, it would work fairly well however.

My only other note is in regards to the rest of the elements of the composition as a whole - structure, texture, atmosphere, etc. The reason you didn't get perfect scores in these other sections is not for any deficiency, but that I wasn't wowed by the other elements too much. There are some great moments, but to get that perfect 10 I need to be enthralled and wowed the whole time. Rest easy though! I didn't give anyone super close to a perfect composition score. But I just thought I'd clarify.

I'm certainly looking forward to what you come up with. If you can improve your recording, mixing, and mastering then you'll certainly be a top contender. That's a lot to say for just one guy with an acoustic guitar. It's a testament to your talent!

Ceevro responds:

Thank you for that. I think that the mic I have is decent (certainly better than what I started with...which was the built-in mic in my laptop), and where my recordings are really lacking is actually in the acoustic space itself. There's a moment which you probably caught where my chair squeaked loudly. There's a high hiss from my computer fan. There's the gaddamn neighbor with the stupid-ass Harley he simply MUST rev for an hour every day. I can mitigate a lot of that on the cheap by setting up a recording wall before I record, but I simply don't have the space to leave it up, and so it adds an hour on to every recording session.

On the mixing/mastering side: I've been taking some online courses in mixing/mastering. I'll have to be careful in the future with what I've learned, because most of what I've learned is that I tend to overdo FX that I find really cool. ESPECIALLY reverb. I just love the sound of loud reverb, and it seems like most people...don't. Most of what I could do to make things better would be to get a cleaner recording in the first place.

And performance: This was really, really hard to play. Yes, there were some errors in timing, and I deliberately let them be. I recorded for several hours, discarding every single part of the song at one point or another and eventually settled on the version you see here. I could have time-stretched or quantized a point or two, but it just sounded too mechanical to me. Better, I felt anyways, that you hate me for what I am, than love me for what I am not.

Thank you so much for the review! I will continue to improve!

[Ling Kano's Fighting Show S3]

* This is an official 2017 NGUAC review *

Overall, really catchy and fun. On to specifics...

Mixing, Mastering, and Production: Generally speaking the whole mix was pretty nice, just a few things I'll nitpick.
The bass guitar is a little muddy - it would sound much cleaner if the mid-low frequencies were downplayed a bit. There's a careful balance to be woven there, as those are some crucial frequencies for bass. But as it stands the bass guitar sticks out of the mix a little too much, and not necessarily in a positive way. You can get that same focus on the bass guitar and have it stick out of the mix (as it's doing some cool stuff I wouldn't want to not hear) by upping its higher frequencies a bit. You could listen to some modern hard rock for inspiration here...I think Nickelback's latest stuff has some really solid mixes, especially when they showcase the bass guitar.
Some of the drums are pretty obviously virtual...the hi-hats and tambourine could be a touch crisper and reverbed a bit better to fit in with the rest of the mix. I could've also enjoyed hearing some more volume in the snare.

Pretty much every 'auxiliary' instrument sounds really great. All the little effects and touches here and there work very well. My right ear has a little bit of fatigue, however- there's a lot of stuff panned to the right side throughout the song. Main guitar melody, tambourine, strings, etc. What really seals the ear fatigue is the bass guitar which sounds out more to the right ear than the left. Having those constant mid-low frequencies on the right ear gets pretty draining.

The mastering is pretty solid; most instruments are clear and come together well. There are no big volume problems (just a little drum stuff as mentioned above).

Composition: Really great melodies, really solid harmony and texture. Everything sounds full and complete at the big parts, and quiet but still clearly there in the quiet parts. The blend of instruments is also great; they're unique and work together well.
There was nothing WRONG, per se, with how the piece is structured, it just didn't wow me in any way. The structure serves its purpose but I was never caught pleasantly off-guard by it.
My only other points in composition came from what I heard as missed potential in some of the chordal stuff. In the main sections with the guitar melody going with the bass counter-melody you mostly went between two chords, but I so clearly felt in my heart the progression wanting to move more. It may be a personal style choice, so I didn't mark much off for it, but maybe something to keep in mind. At 2:20 when we have some chord switches it was a really great moment - made more so by the bold strings coming in!

All in all, a fun and unique track. Super looking forward to hearing what you come up with in the KO round!