Age/Gender: 28, Male
Location: Memphis, Murder Capital
Job: Prophet of Hate
HATE. Because 2,000 years of "For God so loved the world" doesn't trump 1.2 million years of "survival of the fittest."
Newgrounds Stats
Whistle Status: Normal
Exp. Points: 1,104 / 1,110
Exp. Rank #: 32,761
Voting Pow.: 5.27 votes
BBS Posts: 17,088 (5.14 per day)
Flash Reviews: 33
Music Reviews: 99
Trophies: 0
Stickers: 0
All Audio Reviews
99 Reviews | 30 w/ Responses
I'm focusing on your right hand. I notice you've got your double kicks down, fucking awesome, but I notice a serious lack of stuff like latin and african style claves and straight up gear changes. You're doing things on the kicks you should be doing with your hands, which isn't quite meshing with the guitars.
Again, heavy reliance on effects on everything, not to say you're not tonally correct, just that when you're using a clean tone on the guitars, you can't just pound in with the double kicks like you do on the hard songs. There's lots of places where you're shuffling the kicks where you should be shuffling your pinger or your ride cymbal.
my first thought when hearing the guitars is "separated teradiddle (21221211) with slow dynamic cymbal build" but instead you're all trying to hardcore this one out. Also, the sampled "clap snap rap" effect completely throws me off.
You keep doing corps style snare in places where an airy big cymbal holding pattern should be.
Again, great song, very clear and all that, but there's more to music that sound clarity. In the opener, you go for highhat when ride would match the reverb on the guitar more.
I know I sound like I'm nitpicking, but what good is a review without constructive criticism?
Basically, in short, you need to work on your strike form on your right hand. That's why your kicks are so much faster than your hands; I have a feeling if I watched you play your arms are doing all the work instead of your fingers.
Author's Response:
Thanks man.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
I mean, this is really good... but can you do this live? With the effects and all?
It's very good, but.... everything sounds TOO crisp, like you either used triggers or electric drums.
For instance, I don't hear any dynamics in your strikes. Every strike is the exact same volume and timber as the last.
I mean, yeah, if you just want to make good music to submit to NG, fucking kudos, it's a good song... but playing shows? how will you make that happen?
Author's Response:
Synthesizers.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
I love it how you included all the little fuckups to make every sound honest... nice.
Author's Response:
the fuckup-sounds ARE honest. hey btw buddy, did you turn into a zombie yet? :O
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
"A little too soft on the ears...."
Don't get me wrong, very good song, but you don't seem to be ...pushing... things hard enough. The core is VERY strong, but I get the feeling some really kind of out there ...
AHA!!! I FIGURED IT OUT!!!
ok, there's this bridge, between speed and white noise... take any rhythm, play it fast enough, and you get staticy sounding white noise, right? Well tonaly, you're using PLENTY of white noise, but you AREN'T bridging that gap, so in my head, there's this empty space... like things are too soft. BUT IT'S THE UBER FAST QUICK LICK RIFFS I'M MISSING!
Like, the point of slow beats is to have more space for flashy quick ornamentation, right? Having a really warm, tube-tone is supposed to soften up all the dynamic of crazy ass break core snare shit.
I mean, VERY good, but I noticed this....
Author's Response:
Hm... Trying to figure out what this means...
Oh, ok, I see. So you want more harmonic tones in the break? Cool, I can do!
Thanks for the review! :)
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
And there weren't a whole lot of good breakdowns, either. I mean, it's cool you can transpose, and the finger roll technique you're using is nice, but all it takes is a little rhythmic variation to make this song have a lot more grasp to it. Then again, that probably only makes so much sense to me because I'm a drummer as opposed to a guitar player.
Author's Response:
Yeah, You're right about the making sense to Drummers, I'm completely Retarded When it comes to Rhythm, Time Signatures and Shit.
I have no Idea what you're talking about :P
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
It just doesn't sound like you're operating all the full spectrum of the EQ. Since I know this is punkomatic, I know where most of the drums and guitar riffs are from, which kind of sucks. I'm hoping there's at least a real guitar in that mix somewhere; that would be awesome.
I assume you recorded the punkomatic playing in the background through a second mic again?
Author's Response:
Well, let's just start from here - I am extremely ignorant when it comes to playing music. I used to play drums but I sucked. So this was made only in punk-o-matic and nothing else, I think I achieved a good effect in general. It doesn't sound like punk but more like heavy metal and it's different than 95% of the tracks I've heard created in punk-o-matic, which all sound similar.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
The rain effect could have used a little more dynamic modulation, instead of just being a constant drone. When I first heard it, I thought you were using a bad cable or something. Then I realized you probably used some sort of composition program, and that it was intentional. The thunder piece then made that obvious. Real rain comes in sheets, it doesn't fall steady. Yeah, I'm being a nitpicking fag. Sue me.
Also, you spent too much time in the melody, and not nearly enough in your bass register. Bass notes aren't just there to reinforce the in-line melody, the should preferrably be doing their own piece of polyphony. Dixie-land jazz is good stuff, and I think it would fatten up your compositions if you were to study it a bit.
All in all, nice solid video game music
Author's Response:
Your comment about the rain is pretty strange, as it is an effect sampled from a real rain. Same goes for the thunder strike sound.
Also, you're not the first one to say i don't spend enough time on bass. Yet, i tried to make it a bit more present for this one, and i think it is already too much.
But anyways, thanks for the review and advices !
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
I love how you used touches of compression and subtle eq'd reverb decay on the drum samples. The vinylizer you ran on the samples also helped knock off a lot of that "OMFG PROGRAMMED" sound the various fruity loops faggots seem to have.
The track still sounds extremely keyboard driven to me, however, and the vocals sound a little over wrought (yeah, I fucking said it. OVERWROUGHT. The american idol style is NOT to be emulated; it's to be ridiculed) For example, I couldn't hear the supposed "guitar track" in the mix, either because I'm deaf, OR because the guitar sounded EXACTLY like a key board, which I consider a bad thing.
This is still a fucking excellent track though, no doubt. And that's coming from a guy who is definitely not a fan of the whole "soulful ballad" concept.
Author's Response:
Well that's awesome, because I didn't use FL, giving me an excuse not to make it sound like FL, and this is an awesome review in that it gives me a bit more time to explain the track, style, etc for the sake of people who have likely never heard this sort of music before - i.e. anyone outside the UK.
The track was written for a big college project, in which we had to closely emulate any style we wish. We got free choice over what style we could do, however, we get more points depending on how close to the style your track is when completed.
The style you're hearing here is called Trip-Hop. It's a sort of ambient acid jazz originating from south-west England, around the Bristol area, and started off with key bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead in the early 90s. It was extremely keyboard and loop driven and almost all have a breathy female vocalist.
I'm not one for using loops, so apart from the very subtle guitar which I recorded and looped myself (you can hear it most after the end of the first chorus, about four bars into the middle 8), everything here is sequenced, but written in a way that adds the essence of what sampled music is. Everything flawlessly loops, there isn't much variation in any of the individual loops and the grungalizer (which you sort of correctly recognized as a vinylizer, though I've never heard it called that before) was used to not only cover up loop imperfections but to add another little bit of depth.
I didn't have as much time to work with my Vocalist as I would have liked, but when compared to Massive Attack and Portisheads tracks, the vocals seem more or less spot on to me.
Oh and trust me, that isn't a touch of compression, the whole track is compressed to the drums - another trip-hop sound, but it creates such a subtle boost that it's perfectly enjoyable :D
Thanks for the review.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
But a little muzaky. Really good lullabye type stuff for falling asleep too. Really nice use of chords and stereo effects.
It felt really 1960 early psychedelia pre LSD.
Author's Response:
Hehe... thanks.
Muzak usually doesn't have any dynamic change, though, but I see where you're coming from.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
You used some really nice rhythms in your melodies, but the chord changes always waited for the measure break. It gave it a bit of a monotonous feeling to it. It's not enough for the individual notes ot have a beat to them; the chord changes have to dance within the track as well to get that "all encompassing" vibe that makes for impressive techno.
Author's Response:
That is by far the most intellegent advice ive recieved since I joined NG. Thanx for the advice and the good vote.
- Rate this review:
- Helpful!
- Useless.
- Flag as abusive.
