LunacyEcho's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[GM,BW OST - 01 - Time Ray]

nice waveform

Miyolophone responds:

thanks i made it myself

[Candy Clouds [Future Bass]]

oooh this sounds very different than normal ectisity stuff, but i really love it and am glad you're branching out into cool new genres!! nice artwork too, great stuff all around :D hella vocal chops

EctiBot responds:

Glad you liked it! I've been working on expanding my skillset this year and exploring new genres, so I'm glad that shows 😀

[-Arcade Prix-]

tbh people compare your style to waterflame's a lot, but imo one thing that really makes you stick out is how much more variation and progression you have in your tracks, which makes them super fun to listen to. this is really good stuff (especially that nostalgic snes synth brassy sound at :45!!!); best of luck in the top 8!

Preds responds:

Thank you so much :) Glad I can slowly move away from being Waterflame v2 without changing my foundations! And yeah, one of the main points of this song was to bring nostalgia in some way :)

[Natural Phenomenon]

--NGUAC ‘20 Judge Review--

Gosh, there’s so much about this song to like, from the clean mixing to the wonderful soloing to what I can only assume is live instrument playing on multiple fronts. It’s impressive work, and shows a ton of musical skill on your part, and you totally nailed the vibe of a funky jam session with a bunch of mates improvising over a funky tune together!

Compositionally speaking, there’s so much going on in this song (mostly super smooth and funky solos). You had some great melodic lines (1:57 and 3:01 stood out to me in particular) and I really enjoyed your silence-into-double time transitions at 2:25 and 4:15. In my opinion, your raw musical skill is the best part of the track, and the subsection that I awarded the most points to in your breakdown. I won’t critique your soloing skill (not that there’s much to critique), but I will say the one thing that the song seemed to be most in want of was a catchy motif! A lot of funky jammy songs like this one will have a good root melody and use that as a basis for improvisation as well as structural development, but I couldn’t really identify anything performing that function in this song that didn’t seem more like a harmonic texture than an actual motif (like those noodly synth arps in the beginning and ending). There was that melody at 2:29 that came back at 4:18, but that felt like a borderline arp-esque texture given how uniform it was rhythmically and how little variation there was upon it in its different appearances. To grab those few extra composition points, I’d recommend working on a good motif and using that to develop your solos, which would create a richer musical experience than just basing it off of the chord progressions. That said, your skill is still very evident here, and nothing I’ve mentioned here detracted from the fact that it was a pleasant listen.

The production of the song was also rather well-done. I’m very impressed with how clean the drums are, as well as how clean the guitars and synths are—it sounds like you paid a lot of attention to making sure they all got their own distinct space in the mix. I did think you had some of the most interestingly-produced drums of your bracket, though, since it sounds to me like you either played the drums live or you have an incredibly intricate method for adjusting the note velocities on some pretty high-quality drum samples. In either case, while the drums occupy a good space in the mix, I’d recommend going into each drum track and tweaking the leveling/compression/limiting some more (which should be easy to do if they’re samples; if they’re recorded live, it sounds like you had a separate mic for each drum anyway so that shouldn’t be too hard either way). I found that there was often a bit too much variance in the volume and force behind the drum samples (particularly the kick), both comparing note-to-note and comparing across the whole song. In fact, toward the end, it sounded like even though the backing track was receding, the flat volume of the drums was rising, which was a bit of a weird sound. I know this sounds a bit nitpicky, but as a drummer myself, this stood out quite a bit to me, and hit me harder upon listening than other small production nitpicks I could make, like the fact that the bass is a bit hard to hear when not doubled with that clav-y sound or the clashing synths in the 2:51 section. All in all, though, your production was very clean, and I feel like a bit more work toward a more uniform master would rocket this up to the top.

In the end, though, I felt like the biggest area for improvement for this as a standalone NGUAC track was that while it had the spirit and the energy of an improvised jam session, it also had the looseness and lack of focus of one. Despite having a ton of different sections to the song, there was only one that repeated, making the overall point of the song a bit hard to follow and making the melodic content feel underdeveloped. There isn’t really any specific part of the song I could point to and say “change this to make it a perfect track”, but I feel like putting in a bit more thought from the get-go into how to make a cohesive structure would do wonders for a track like this. There’s no one specific way to do that, but as an example, if you were to adjust that 2:30 melody into a stronger motif, introduce it at the beginning of the song, and use your solos to build upon it, that could potentially be a way to adapt this song into a more coherent one.

I do hope I’ve justified my score here to you, since it was so different from Everratic’s, and I understand that not everybody shares this opinion! My pop-flavored sensibilities might be shining through here, and admittedly, all judges have their biases. You are certainly a talented composer and producer, and I’m sorry that the stars aligned just out of favor for you—you were certainly very close, and I have no doubt that you would’ve written a song for finals that would’ve been just at home among the others. It’s a real shame, but it was a very competitive All-Stars bracket this year. All I can say for now is that I hope you keep writing music and that we can have the privilege to see you in next year’s NGUAC!

Composition - 26/30
Production - 24/30
Structure - 6/10
GSM - 24/30
Overall - 80/100, normalized to 8.0/10 (M=8.0)

ChrisisD responds:

First of all, thanks for your lengthy response and review, I really appreciate it! In response I can say that it was indeed sort of a jamsession rather than actually fully producing this song. I've only had the one weekend to make it, which turned out to be nearly all of Sunday. And as for a main motif, yeah it lacks one!
Yeah, all the points you make are very valid. I didn't spend much time mastering and as for the (live) drums, I only noticed they were getting louder towards the end when you pointed it out.
And as you said, I listened to most other admissions are so utterly different than my music. Started to wonder if I'd have to develop my Dubstep skills anytime soon 😅. But you more than justified your score. Thanks again. And who knows, maybe next year.

[Overworld Song]

--NGUAC ‘20 Judge Review--

Sorry this review took so long! So, the thing that strikes me most about this song is how well I can project an image onto it in my head. You’ve done a great job at distilling a lot of the best qualities from video game songs and injecting them in here; I can practically see a protagonist setting off on a journey through some looming adventure world, and that’s a really tough skill to learn, so kudos to you on that. But let’s get into the more nitty-gritty aspects of your track.

Compositionally, you’ve got some beautiful melodies in this song. I think the most key aspect of what makes them good is how well they fit the vibe of the piece (the sound design helps a lot with this), like that Undertale-esque bell melody at 0:25 or the piano at 1:04. I recall giving you a decently high composition score, and I think that the best way to bump it up even higher would be to have more melodic and harmonic development throughout the song. acxle already mentioned this in his review, but your chord progressions were on the simple side, especially the IV-I vamp that made up the majority of the track. Songs in this ambient-ish video game-y genre usually have some good harmonic variation (often upon a strong motif, which this track also lacked, although that’s not always a bad thing). Even something as simple as a key change towards the end would do wonders for that kind of thing, since it doesn’t look like you’re intending for this song to be a loop anyway. That said, you’ve definitely got some great compositional chops, based on what’s already in this song. Don’t be afraid to flex them a little more and take some risks!

In terms of production, I enjoyed a lot of the sound design in the piece—particularly the slightly detuned piano and that strong kick. You had a pretty full mix as well, and kudos to you on doing that with those lo-fi drum samples (I loved the filters on those samples during transitions like 0:24 and 0:50). I did think that that arp was taking up a lot of space in the low mids, almost to the point where it was overlapping with the bassline a little bit, but a bit of EQing should get that fixed up. The chordal synth that comes in at 1:36 and stays for the rest of the song also clashes quite a bit with the arps; I’d recommend tweaking the sound design a bit to give them both some more space (this was the biggest production issue for me, since it thickened the mix to the point where it felt weighted down in the mids). I’ll actually disagree with steampianist here and say that I would’ve preferred a bit more high end on the hi-hats, but that’s a super minor thing. On the whole, I thought your production was pretty solid—there were just a few things here and there that could’ve shot it up to the next level.

In the end, I felt like the biggest issue with the track was the general lack of variety, which is sort of a structural thing but also sort of an intangible, tough-to-define quality that can be hard to fix. Besides the intro and outro, much of the song maintains roughly the same texture (aside from a small break in the middle), and there’s basically no relief in the song from the low mid space taken up by the arms. That, combined with the lack of harmonic variety (your second chord progression, while different from the IV-I, nevertheless maintains a similar harmonic function and sounds rather interchangeable with the IV-I) makes it so that the song as a whole gets, for lack of a better word, a bit boring after a while. You have these super engaging melodies and a great sense of production—don’t be afraid to make things more interesting!

On the whole, I enjoyed your song quite a bit. My commiserations for being sooo close to making it through to the final round, but I can tell you’ve got a lot more music in you and I’m excited for the work you’ll put out in the future if you keep up this level of skill. Hope to see you in future NGUACs!

Composition - 26/30
Production - 25/30
Structure - 7/10
GSM - 23/30
Overall - 81/100, normalized to 7.4/10

BeeFef responds:

Thank you for the long and detailed review! First of all, the thing you said about how well you're able to picture a scene corresponding to the song in your head — maybe it's partly because I tend to get little videos playing in my head for things anyway, but that kind of thing has been something that I feel like I could pull off at least pretty well for quite a while if not longer. I remember there was this thing my father would do with me back in the day where he would tell me to play what a certain scene or scenario "sounded like" on the piano, and I would improvise that and he'd often be impressed. So maybe it's something that comes more naturally to me.

Some other things I wanted to point out:

The sound that you hear at 1:04 that you were talking about isn't a piano. It's actually the FL Studio Plucked! plugin with an instance of Pitcher (FL autotune plugin) on it. I wrestled a bit with the mixing and stuff with that track/channel, mainly because the plugin is nightmarishly varied and random when it comes to the sounds it makes when I have it at just one setting the whole time and I didn't want to export it into audio multiple times and then splice those together (I did that with the whole track instead).

I actually didn't use any drum samples. The kick came straight from a plugin called KickWOrK and the snare came from a custom thing I made from scratch in Sytrus, which is another plugin in FL if you didn't already know. I think even the high hats came straight out of a plugin.

The whole lack of variety/not enough content thing seems to be a recurring theme, here. Not knowing what to add to a song after a certain point is one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to composition. I feel like I got at least a little better with that with my KO round submission, but yeah. And also, what does GSM stand for?

Speaking of the KO round, I don't think I was actually *that* close. I got a 7.58 or so overall, which put me in the middle of the AAJs in terms of the scores for the submissions for that round, and still a decent distance away from making it into the final round (I would have needed more than a score of 8.33). I hope I can get some feedback from those judges to see where I went wrong with that song.

I'll probably be back for more NGUACs. Thanks again for the review!

[Breath]

--NGUAC ‘20 Judge Review--

Sorry this review took so long! So, aside from the fact that the “lyrics” for this song really made me laugh, I think the thing I enjoyed most about this track was just how relaxing and meditative it was. It was definitely a great reprieve from a lot of the high-intensity EDM tracks out there in the field, and even though you mentioned that this was an experimental song, I think you really nailed a particular vibe, which can be very hard to do!

You definitely have some good compositional skill, which showed at many points throughout the track. The intro buildup works well, and once the drums hit, you establish the main motif of the song pretty quickly (and it definitely is a catchy one!) In fact, on the whole, the composition is rather solid, but there was one thing that caught me really off-guard. In places like 0:39 (and many others throughout the song), the rising chords bring with them the same melodic line, transposed to fit the new chord instead of adapting a melody in the original key for the new chords. This makes it sound like you’re constantly modulating the track, instead of just going through chord changes. Key modulation can be a powerful tool, but too much of it can make the listener feel like they’re constantly resetting their tonal baseline, leading to a bit of a tiring listen. I don’t feel like the chords themselves are bad—one thing you could do to fix this issue is to try rewriting the melody so that it develops more in its original key instead of just repeating itself while constantly transposing. Speaking of development, I did think that the melody itself was lacking in development (in that it stayed the same throughout the song and didn’t really take the listener anywhere?), but that might be more of a structural issue, which I’ll touch on later in the reivew.

To address your production, you had some interesting choices throughout the song! You had an interesting groove with that hi-hat getting gradually louder and quieter, and it sounds like you had a good grasp on which sounds to include in the track to make sure the full frequency spectrum was covered without overcrowding anything in particular. To improve, I would suggest being more picky about which samples you use! The percussion samples you used throughout the track were pretty muted—to the point where the kick was often masked by the other instruments and the snare was noticeably missing a lot of its high end. I understand that the genre constraint of lo-fi music is that the drums aren’t always super crisply-mixed, but when contrasting those sounds to the distinct hi-hat (which is actually a pretty decent sample), it creates a bit of a mismatch that makes the song somewhat confusing. I also like that you kept the inhale/exhale sample going throughout the song, but sadly, it’s not a particularly high-quality sample, nor did I find it pleasant to listen to; it almost made me more anxious to hear the filtered sound of someone constantly breathing near me. It was a cool idea in concept, but in execution, I’d suggest either finding a less invasive sample or including it only in crucial parts of the song. There were some other nitpicks I could make about the production (such as the too-shrill high synth at 1:30 or the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much panning here), but that mention of crucial parts of the song is a pretty good transition into my thoughts on your structure! Which are...

Unfortunately, I felt that the weakest aspect of the song was its structure. It began well, with the first minute featuring a lot of good musical development, but then it just… kept repeating itself without developing much. Again, I understand you’re working in a genre with rather repetitive conventions, but my biggest issue with the lack of development is the lack of textural variety, so that listening to such a long song gives the listener an almost trancelike experience instead of an actively engaged one. I also thought that the drumless bit at the end also went on for too long, since it sounds to me like it’s acting as a cooldown section after the long main section of the song, and doesn’t have enough complexity to warrant being as drawn-out as it is. Luckily, structure is the easiest of these things to fix! All you have to do is do what you did in the first minute throughout the whole song—if there’s an aspect of the song that’s stayed the same for too long, change it up! The more you experiment with adding or taking away different sections in a song, the more of a deep understanding of how structure works you can get, and it’s a fun learning process too.

In the end, I enjoyed listening to your track, but there are a number of areas of improvement here, and sadly, the competition in your bracket was very fierce. Still, it was refreshing to hear your take on a genre that isn’t too well-represented on Newgrounds, and I hope you keep working on music because I can tell that you have a great sense of style. Good luck on future productions, and thanks for taking part!

Composition - 23/30
Production - 19/30
Structure - 6/10
GSM - 22/30
Overall - 70/100, normalized to 5.7/10

Force64 responds:

Thanks bro, your comment makes me happy :P

[Onikuma]

0/10 no klargflarbenmelody until 1 minute in

[Wonder Beats]

--NGUAC '20 Judge Review--

This is definitely a pretty decent EDM song! You’ve got a great sense of how to keep a listener interested throughout a song, and there are a ton of awesome details and ideas scattered throughout a well-transitioned piece that make it an entertaining listen.

Compositionally speaking, I do like the main melody you’ve got going through the entire piece. It was definitely a good idea on your part to feature it on multiple instruments to establish it as a main motif. It’s also certainly very catchy, since it’s so heavily based on the chords and a standard rhythm—but perhaps this is what also makes it feel like it sometimes overstays its welcome. Because it’s such a systematic melody, its effect on the overall piece becomes very predictable throughout the song, leading it to become slightly boring at times. This is especially because, aside from some good transitional sections, there’s very little rhythmic or melodic change and virtually no harmonic change for the whole track. You do have that middle section where you play a new melody for a moment, but it’s still set to the same chords, and when the same melody is playing for the rest of the song, it starts to get a bit tedious. Luckily, it’s pretty easy to fix this! One way could be to have different melodies/chords in different sections (e.g. having a progression for buildups, one for the breakdown, etc) or even to change up that main melody more often throughout the song (perhaps by changing the underlying chords or overall contour of the melody). That said, it IS a good melody! You just want to make sure that the listener doesn’t get too tired of it to appreciate it.

In terms of production, the whole track seems to be mastered pretty consistently (albeit a little quiet for Newgrounds), but really, it’s the mixing and sound design I’d recommend taking a closer look at—specifically, the relationship between the volumes of the different sections. Imo, the most crucial thing to get right for songs like this is not just the drop, but the impact created by the drop. Right now, in parts like 0:56 and 2:23, the drops are fine on their own, but since the buildups leading up to them end with solo synth lines that are at about the same volume as the drops themselves, the impact is lessened and the drops become weaker as a result. In an energetic song like this one, the drop is what the listener is really waiting for, and you’ll want to make them as effective as possible. Besides that, there are a few other, smaller production nitpicks throughout the song—for example, the crash at 0:28 is too loud, the pad needs more of its low end EQ’ed out, and that synth line is kinda shrill when it plays on its own. Still, if you’re planning on doing something similar to this for the next round, I would say that the biggest thing to pay attention to would be the power of impact! Don’t underestimate the amount of control you can have over a listener’s attention.

Finally, for structure, I actually thought your song had some pretty great transitions (aside from the aforementioned production thing)! 1:10, 2:07, and 2:35 were some favorites of mine. You also had a number of well-arranged, distinct sections, which is a good thing (although, as mentioned above, some different melodies would be appreciated). I only have a few small nitpicks for structure, such as that 0:42 took me aback at first since it seemed to be a climactic buildup into another buildup instead of a big new section, and the return to EDM drums at 1:38 was too soon given that we’d just entered the more organic-sounding breakdown. On the whole, a well-structured song!

All in all, your grasp of structure shows that you’ve got a great sense of the big picture, and the small details in the song (pitchbent transitions, automated noise sweeps, etc) show that you pay attention to the little things, too. All you need is some more experience fine-tuning things like leveling and melodic variation, and I’m sure you’ll improve in no time. Best of luck, and I’m looking forward to seeing what you put out for the Knockout Round!

Composition - 22/30
Production - 20/30
Structure - 8/10
GSM - 23/30
Overall - 73/100, adjusted to 6.2/10

[really shouldn't rush]

--NGUAC ‘20 Judge Review--

So, my biggest takeaway from this song is that you’ve definitely got some awesome melodic chops! I’m a huge fan of chiptuney solos, and that’s basically what this entire song is, which definitely put a smile on my face.

Compositionally, I really enjoyed most of the melodic lines, as well as how they ramped up in intensity and harmonic depth as the song went on. Some highlights of the song imo were 1:00, the transition into 1:22, and 1:55. I do wish there had been a strong hook or melodic motif to tie the song together, because right now it feels like one huge solo, but given the structure of the song, that’s not a big enough issue to detract from the enjoyment of it for me. One thing I’d suggest watching out for would be that, in parts like 2:02, the synth line and piano line are kinda competing with each other for the spotlight, and it’s hard to focus on which one I’d rather listen to! One potential way to deal with this would be to add gaps in the melodic lines for each instrument and having the flowery bits for each instrument play during the negative space of the other, effectively weaving a single, cohesive melodic line across the two (or more, potentially!) sounds. As an example, johnfn does a pretty good job of this in the back half of his song ‘wide world’ (https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/553933), although you’ll have to excuse his abysmal drums. And, speaking of drums…

I thought your production wasn’t too bad, but by far the biggest issue for me was the volume of the kit! The best way to support a groovy, funky song like this is to get a funky groove going on the drums, and you definitely had that! But as more and more different sounds came in, the volume of the drums didn’t adjust with it, so that by the end, it was tough to hear those cool fills you had (1:20, 1:45) or the transition to the more energetic drum beat at 1:47. I thought that the relative volume of the drums around 0:19 (when it was just bass+pad+drums) was at a decent level; if it’d be possible to tweak the track so that the drums stayed at that relative level to the rest of the track the whole time, it would make the groove much stronger—and there’s a lot of ways you could do this, like dynamically automating the relative volume of the different tracks throughout the song. Other small production nitpicks include that the main synth volume is a little loud and the reverb on the piano at the end makes it sound a bit too airy and unrealistic, but on the whole, the most pressing production issue (and, luckily, the most easily improvable thing) is the drums. Gotta get that funky groove!!

A quick note on structure! It’s not for everyone, but I’m personally a fan of the “song that just ramps up in intensity over time” structure, and I think this song pulled it off pretty well—you really did a good job selling that gradual buildup across all of the different instruments. I mentioned this earlier, but I would appreciate a motif tying the different sections together. I also thought that the ending was slightly inconclusive and might be in want of a more substantial denouement; having a motif could help here, since, for example, having a quick, subtler restatement of a motif after a big climax like the one you have could help end a track like this very effectively. That’s not the only way to end a song, of course, but in the end, I did feel like the song petered out a bit too quickly, giving the impression that perhaps you ran out of time when writing the song (a theory supported by the title too)!

I know I nitpicked this track a lot, but I really did enjoy it, and I’m very much looking forward to what you’ll be putting out for the Knockout Round. Good luck!

Composition - 27/30
Production - 22/30
Structure - 8/10
GSM - 27/30
Overall - 84/100, adjusted to 7.8/10