LunacyEcho's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dark Colors]

Why do all the loops you make loop perfectly? I don't get it. Seriously, the only way I can tell it loops is that the harpsichord gets louder. Nice work.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Well, you know my tricks by now :p If I follow the loop-rules I came up with, everything loops well with a little tweaking :)
I have no harpsichord in this loop though, so I'm pretty sure you're referring to the guitar I've added a few special things to XD

I really couldn't get the bells to work as well as I wanted them to :(
I also should've lowered the volume of the music box in the beginning, but oh well; it's not like I put much time into this :p

Thanks for your review!
Working on anything at the moment (I know that you too have a pretty full schedule) :3?

[Tropical Dream]

This sounds amazing. You did such a good job evoking a relaxing, tropical mood, with the Caribbean instruments and the calm melodies. Great work.

I think the intro sounded a bit fuzzy, though. The sounds of the waves seemed a bit low-quality, but really, that doesn't matter because the rest of the song sounds great.

Good luck in NGADM!

DuttonsaysHi responds:

Hey thanks! I see you managed to get into our group due to a drop-out, so good luck to you as well! I look forward to seeing what you come up with. :D

Yeah.. you may be right.. It's hard to tell since rushing water does sound kinda fuzzy, especially salt water. It's also layered with another recording for the seagulls but that one didn't have much background noise other than the seagulls, so I don't think that's it. Anyway, thanks for the review!

[Fanfareium]

Egads, and you blame me for not using high-quality brass sounds. :D

Melodically and structurally, it was great. Don't think there was anything more I could've asked for from a 'fanfareium', except maybe that you'd ditch the 'e' in the title. It feels so out of place, like the second 'e' in 'knowledgeable' or half the letters in 'cholmondeley'.

Nice sounding, and a passable sound effect. Hope you've having fun in the army!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

"and you blame me for not using high-quality brass sounds"

=> Touche.

(Then again, this was made long before you made your track, and I didn't use any DAW ;) ).

I didn't originally want to include the extra "e". The reason as to why I did so anyway, was that I had already decided upon the name, but noticed that there is a far better track with the same name: https://soundcloud.com/alberto-ranieri-manzalini/fanfarium

I know there can be several pieces that share the same name, but I wanted a small difference in the title :p

I'm definitely NOT having fun in the army :'3
I guess I'll live though...

Btw, there aren't that many arpeggios etc. in this piece (just saying) :D
Hope you're having fun too XD

[Kyeo]

I really enjoy the ambience of this track. It starts off calmly, but the addition of a beat and more synths doesn't retract from that feeling; it just heightens it.

I also love the main synth that comes in at around 1:40. It sounds very nice with the music and also does some amazingly sexy note orgies at around 1:59. Is that Fracture or have you just been over-progging lately?

And in comes the mandatory electric piano at 3:30. Here's a challenge: MAKE A SONG WITHOUT ELECTRIC PIANO IN IT AT ALL. :)

The song has some great sounds, melodies, and the mixing towards the outro is well done, but the percussion samples could be louder and could be more velocity-fied. Great work!

P.S. Why is this song called 'Kyeo'? It's an interesting name, but doesn't mean anything from what I can find.

adieuwinter responds:

Thanks for the comments.
I have certainly been taking the synths more seriously lately by adding more 16th (and 32nd and 64th) notes to their individual melodies. It'd be cool if I'd managed that with fracture, but I'm not that comfortable with the settings and such yet.

electric piano is a permanent requirement.
it's sexy.

as for the percussion, with more recent songs (this one's been completed for at least 2 weeks) I've attempted to add more strength to the bass drum by using various settings to give it more strength and subby-ness. I'll probably just copy paste tracks to resolve the volume issue, though.

The name of this song is inspired by a music zine (Punk rock stuff mainly) called Kyeo Speaks - which I had been reading at the time. It's pretty cool..

Thanks for the feedback!

[Heightened Hope]

Great song!

My first thoughts upon hearing it are that I agree with TheDoor. It does have quite the abundance of quarter notes. Not saying that's a bad thing, but you know how I feel about repetition. :/

The chords were great as usual, but I'm issuing you a challenge now. When you start writing music again, I challenge you to write a song where the notes in every chord you play are heard at the same time, not one at a time like you always do them. :D

That little blurb at 2:00 sounded pretty dissonant. If you were to improve this song, you should probably see to something about that.

I love the ending so much. It creates suspense and does a great job of strongly concluding a light, airy peace, although I'm not entirely sure it reflects the title "Heightened Hope" very much. :P

Fun song, and looking forward to more!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

I definitely understand that too much repetition is boring, which is surely the case in this piece :D

Hahha, and you're DEFINITELY right in that I overuse arpeggios and/or the left hand thingy that plays chords by only using their tones one by one (whatever it's called when you roll across the piano with a hand) XD
I don't play every chord like this in a song, but with many, often far too many, I do :)
I have some songs where I don't really do this, and I could easily make more. One of them should be uploaded in a few weeks, so maybe I'll cheat in the challenge and use an old piece >:)

"2:00"

=> Yeah, that chord doesn't really fit the mood in the rest of the song. I don't really know why I put it there :p

I'm glad you like the ending! :)
I think the beginning and the ending of this piece are really the best parts. They are pretty good on their own too, but they also wrap the piece up together. They sound similar, but the notes that are played are actually different :3
And no... The title fits the rest of the song better, although I don't think it's that good a name at all.

Thanks for your review as well, especially as these are just random old pieces I'm uploading!

[Dreams of Darkness]

You sure that it isn't a five-star-er? Sounds like one to me!

It's another extremely well made composition, evoking all sorts of emotions and going through so many beautiful melodies.

I think the biggest improvement that could be made to this song, like with a few of your other songs, is editing the MIDI file so that the more powerful notes were made louder or played with more gusto.

Sorry I don't have time to write actual reviews, but like you, time is short for me these days. Have "fun" in the army and don't get yourself hurt!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

You think so? Thanks! :D
I figured that since the piece isn't properly quantized (or otherwise edited for that matter, which is a shame as the dynamics could be better) and the sounds are only that of my electronic piano, the Newgrounds community that is used to high quality sounds would rate this lower :p
Maybe I was wrong :3

This is a composition that I remember putting a lot of thought in, as it was intended to be a pretty important piece. I really like the theme of this one, as I rarely make this kind of music, believe it or not.

Don't worry about not having time to write an actual review; I can certainly understand that we don't all have as much free time as we would like to have... Hope you're having fun in America :D

[Argonauts]

It seems that a lot of the stuff you've been posting has been zero-bombed quite a lot. People are mean. :(

This is definitely a lot more than two-star material (which it was when I came along to review it). From the moment you begin listening to it, you can hear all sorts of trippy sound effects that really sell the 'ambient' thing.

When the drums come in at ~1 min, it gives the whole song a lot more flow, while still managing to keep the ambience. You get that for a while, and the next part that stood out to me was 2:23, when you get that quiet bit, the random "DUK" from some synthesizer, and the continuation of the song sans percussion. I'm not sure if you get the sound I'm trying to describe, but it just seems a little bit out of place. You use it a lot more from 2:47-3:26, and it fits in really well.

Past 3:26 is probably my favorite part of the song. It's the most soundscape part, and provides an excellent ending for the whole song (even if the electric piano does irk me a bit). It comes full circle by providing a really trippy ending.

It's very interesting to see how you managed to provide so much structure to an ambient song. Lots of ambient songs that I know of are just four minutes of pads and electric piano, but you managed to give this thing a body, which I like very much.

How exactly do you come up with the names for your songs? It seems like you RNG all the words in the dictionary and use those for your titles.

Great work! Definitely unjustly zero-bombed. Keep going!

adieuwinter responds:

First off, thanks for the review!

As for the zero-bombs, I would guess it's a result of my track spamming (I posted around 5 altogether in just yesterday) - a mistake I will avoid repeating.

I remember the "DUK" quite well, and the first time it came in was most likely a mistake, as I often put sustain onto the individual synth / pad tracks. This leads to a range of random noises that irk me but which I restrain myself from removing, simply out of fear that it will remove the moments I am actually quite fond of.

I understand your irritation towards the electric piano, it's something I commonly overuse and the next time I write something like this (which won't take very long) I'll keep it in mind to add some effects for some variation in the VST's sound.

I would imagine that most ambient producers tend to spend less time on their melodies and chord progressions as opposed to simply mixing them into as many appreciable sounds as possible. I prefer to do the opposite; I generally start with a solid melody in my head (up to several, in truth), add synths and ambience around them, generally so that they harmonize nicely, and only later have them intersect. Admittedly, I still do quite a bit of copy-pasting...

The names for my songs come often when I look at my bookshelf or music library - I'm quite a thief in that aspect, but most of the time I will use the thesaurus to find a term that better fits the music.

Thanks again for the kind words!

[denial]

ENDING ENDING ENDING ENDING ENDING ENDING ENDING ENDING

gj though

johnfn responds:

I don't know what you guys are on about. It's a perfect fadeout ending with literally 0 errors. It was definitely never anything different.

EVER.

[Misguided Passion]

If your objective was to make something easy to play, you've probably failed. :D This sounds complicated, but shows off your piano talent extremely well. Great work! Is there sheet music for this anywhere? I really want to learn it.

It starts off like a typical classical song, but begins to sound a lot more interesting come 1:07. Once I heard that, the piece transformed from 'this is fun to listen to' to 'wow, I really want to learn how to play this!', probably because of the fun-sounding chromatic variations.

Then at 1:26, the double notes make it sound operatic. I think this part could've used more power behind the notes, but I'm not sure how much you can edit the velocity in your software. If you could, though, it would've sounded awesome to go ALL THE WAY!

Afterwards, we get a section with tons of grace notes. I think it was at that point that I realized that from listening to the song alone, it sounded more like it was written to be fun to play and not necessarily easy to play.

The way your left hand arpeggiates (is that a word?) downwards at 2:17 creates such an awesome effect, although I definitely wouldn't have minded a bit of panning to go along with it. And then at 2:42 we get to another part full of epic-sounding chords. I really think that, similarly to 1:26, you could've made the notes a lot more forceful.

The whole song was fun to listen to because it had tons of variation (save the ending, which felt a little bit drawn out). I don't really agree with your description, though: I couldn't really see quality coposition in this piece. It had beautiful composition, but it was definitely lacking in coposition.

It does sound a lot like your other songs, probably because of similar chord progressions in the more conventional-sounding parts of the song and the way you play your chords note-by-note quickly (I'm sure there's a proper term for this but it's slipped my mind for now). Also similarly to your other songs, it would sound great with orchestral backing. Someone should work on that.

Anyways, great track! I'll be listening to it for a while. If sheet music for it doesn't exist yet, is there any way you could make it happen? :D Good luck in the army!

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Hahha, thanks a (wait for it) MILLION for the review ;)

Shows off my piano talent? Well, I guess. I didn't cheat a lot, but I DID edit out some minor mistakes in the MIDI file ;)
Which is also what I sent to you, as I'm not that great at (or have the energy to) create sheets for this :p

Yeah, The different parts in this song are a bit random, but sometimes that's a good thing I think XD But that explains why it starts off so different than it becomes :p I think there was definitely some inspiration from Gustavo Santaolalla's Main Theme from "The Last of Us" here and there, especially at 1:07. I like to experiment with new things, and I rarely use that specific chord change (in this key, from E minor [with the perfect fifth in the melody] to C7 with the 7 in the melody). I really suck at explaining chords...

I wasn't sure about wether I should use the double notes or make them singular, for this specific reason. I had a difficulty with getting more power out of that part, as there's a limit to how powerful something can be with most electronic pianos... I really would've wanted to play this one on a real grand piano :D
If I vould've added more velocity with the software, there would be a lot of clipping, which is not okay... I could've brought the entire song volume down and focused more on that part, forcing the listener to heighten the volume, I guess :/

What can I say? I like to play with grace notes every now and then XD
At this point I had definitely began to focus more on making the piece fun to play, through some improvisation and remembering, which indeed did NOT make this song easier to play :D...

Lol, are you asking me? I'm not a native speaker :p If it's not a word, it should be ;)
I usually use this bassline/whatever in much more dramatic places (I love the effect from it), but I could fit it here. ARRRGGGHHHHH you're totally right!
I'm thinking I should've separated the right and left hand in the MIDI file, and re-record them separately :/ That way, panning the left hand would be the easiest thing in the world!
Myabe someday I will become smart, and quit being lazy :)

You're right about 2:42 too :p

But... But... I like the ending D:
It ties so well to the beginning o.O
:(

I like variation, mostly. It's good to have a balance between repetitive and varying. Even if I use the same melody several times, I often play it in a new key, and sometimes with different chords and baselines too :p
This piece though, varies quite a lot (even if 1:26 for instance has the same idea as in the beginning of the song [after the intro], and 2:42 uses the same chords but a different melody and such).

I didn't understand your joke at all until I noticed my typo XD Now I'll have to leave it there in order for the joke to work! Thanks hahha :D

I don't fully agree with your next comment, but mostly. I agree that this sounds a lot like some of my other stuff, but I don't think it has much to do with the chords progressions :)
I use a lot of different chords (as well as progressions) in every piece, so I'm convinced that it's my style of playing and using the chords/melodies that makes this similar, as you also mentioned XD
That note by note playing probably has a name, which seems to have slipped my mind too :)
Yeah, I tend to overuse it... A LOT :'D
I did use some other things too though! Like... Like... at 1:25 for example, and especially at 1:40!
And then I go back to the thingy... It's easy okay D:

I'd love to master the orchestral genre some day when I have the time and motivation (aka. lack of laziness).

Once again, thank you for your long, extensive and helpful review! No sheets, but the MIDI can actually be turned into sheet music by some programs ;)
Yay... The army... I can't wait...

:')

[can't move past]

It's very relaxing. Not very triphop, but very ambient and ethereal.

Sometimes, I wish I could just listen to music without seeing the title or the picture associated with it, because they always give me ideas on how to listen to the music that might detract from the overall experience. For example, for this song, I can't help but hear the phrase "can't move past" whenever the piano plays that three-note melody. :) Probably wasn't intentional, but I just can't un-hear it now. :D

WHY DID YOU FADE OUT? Especially when it was becoming more progressive, too! If you were to revisit any song you've made in 2014 so far, I'd probably hope you did this one, because you can just hear so much potential in the ending. I'll admit that I'm not that big of a fan of the ambient genre (I prefer more fast-paced stuff myself), but combined with your style, the music is pretty sweet. Keep going with it!

If you're trying to experiment with stuff, try making something like a song that would fit in an action soundtrack. I can't really wrap my mind around how someone with your style would pull that off, so if you did, I'm guessing it would be a very interesting experience. :P

Good work!

johnfn responds:

> triphop

idk, the chord progression really feels like something out of Portishead's book, for some reason. All of those minors.

> the picture associated with it

Me too! Maybe I should start titling my tracks untitled or something...

> fade out

lol yeah this is kind of my "i dunno what else to do now" ending hehe. I need to work on this...

An action soundtrack? Hm kinda like that song Step just did? Hmm, intriguing. I kinda did something like that, but that was ages ago. Definitely interesting to think about...

Thanks for the review.