FUNKbrs's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Neo Classical Caprice No. 24]

I could wish for more nuance in the drums....

The instrumentation was clearly masterful, but the drums lacked dynamic and had too blank of a grind. You could have made things more complex with the ride without giving up that good double bass massage sound.

Syncopation is your friend, and not just in the slow parts. You can syncopate extremely quickly in a pattern so fast it can be used as a piece of a straight pattern. It's easier to understand how a line of melody fits into a chord, but rhthyms kick ass that way.

Blah, I'm preachy.

Yngwie Malmsteen all the way.

masheenH3ad responds:

That's Cool! I have No problem with your observations. As a matter of fact, I will take them into my considerations. Thanks! I learned a lot in your review.

[HungHimselfWithAGuitarString]

Shame.... SHAME I SAY!!!

Ok, so you're not a great guitarist, whatever, BUT WHERE'S THE BADASS BASS TRACK?

You, sir, have betrayed the ENTIRE RHYTHM SECTION.

From this day forward, may your name be recorded in the annals of the lazy, who, NOT ONLY failed to apply awesome to his native instrument in the recording, ALSO failed to do so for a fellow BROTHER in the rhythm section.

Guitar's not bad. A little blankly "Blackety black"

Not horrible... but it could do with a little more range in the variation instead of just repeated patterns.

SymbolCymbal responds:

LOL best review yet.. yeah i def boned on this one.. i think this one sucks so bad im not even gonna go back and fix it

[Tagumpay! (Victory!)]

Not enough drums.

It wasn't bad, but the mix was way off. WAAAAY too much guitar, not enough bass and drums going on.

The guitars are good, but a little pretentious. I know this sounds weird, but you need more silence in the recording. The whole song was one slow solid chunk of notes, and there wasn't anything fast to balance it.

There was no real rhythm guitar going on, just two leads, and it makes it a little overwrought. It would probably work better at twice that speed, but that slow.... argh.

masheenH3ad responds:

Thank you for your keen observation. I will take it into my consideration. ;)

[Everything here]

New wave, soft and fuzzy.

This is the kind of music the people in the 80's hoped like hell we'd be making now.

Very warm, very tube, came on a little slow and never really just hooked me, but it got cool and stayed an even cool, and that's not easy.

I feel you could have a pronounced low end bass line, though. It's like you just cheated the bass by using fat tubes and reverbs to fill in the low end.

johnfn responds:

You're right, I did totally cheat on bass (I didn't even think of that). I am usually pretty lazy with bass, I'll work on that next time. Thanks for the review.

[Simpsons acapella Stalagmite]

Great use of voice.

The vocals had a lot of flavor; they weren't just notes.

Lots of depth, lots of well though out layers.

Definitely kicked ass and sounded thoroughly professional.

Stalagmite responds:

well i say! proffesional just like your well written review!!!
its truly uplifting to see your interest in this song! ^ ^ thanks so much for the compliments and the fantastic vote! *hugs* thanks alot buddy, thank you!

[B.O.B - Furry Farm]

I knew you preferred it gay...

I love it how you included all the little fuckups to make every sound honest... nice.

Rucklo responds:

the fuckup-sounds ARE honest. hey btw buddy, did you turn into a zombie yet? :O

[Nav - Space Sequence (Remix)]

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....

Nav responds:

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! :)

[Kiddi's Medley]

Slightly repetitive....

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.

Kiddmeizter responds:

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

[Rising Death]

A little empty on the EQ

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?

RatherRandomReality responds:

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.

[Khuskan - Not Enough]

Nice use of texture

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.

Khuskan responds:

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.