conorstrejcek's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Carnival Dance]

You have some really nice ideas here!

A couple things to improve:
1. I think you could have chosen a less over-used chord progression for this piece. If not, then maybe vary the progression a bit sometimes, it will add a lot more interest to the piece.

2. You need a strong melody over your ensemble. Right now you have a lot of nice orchestrated chords throughout all of the instruments, but to have a memorable piece you need to have more melodic content. This comes in a bit around 1:20 with your violin solo, but you should have more of that throughout.

Overall though, really nice sounds you have going!

- Conor S.

Emid responds:

Thank you very much. Really helpful points but I wanted a basic chord progression throughout the song, and you can see I am trying not to be repetitive with variations in it. Thanks again for your input.

[Carbide Iterations]

Really nice chord progression you have going there. I like the sound of the drums as well. The only reason I didn't give you a higher score was because I felt like you could have transferred the melody into more synths than the one you seemed to use throughout most of the song. Also you could let up a tiny bit on the reverb/delay, but overall really nice!

- Conor S.

OcularNebula responds:

thanks for the review!

I've actually considered the things you mentioned as I was writing the song, but it seems the extent to which I implemented these considerations was not significant enough. The main arp melody does indeed get layered with another synth as the song progresses, but the change is gradual and the supplementary synth is rather quiet.

Same goes for the reverb/delay, I've decreased those incrementally as I was writing the song, but only by very slight amouts, I'm afraid.

It is unlikely that I will re-edit this particular piece, but I will certainly try to find ways to implement your critique in future projects!

[- Seems Simple Enough]

Love the sounds

What do you use to make your 8-bit music?

I'm loving this.

Or4nges responds:

Haha thanks! I tried to be sort of minimalist in this song. The only things I used were 3xOsc, Magical 8-bit Plugin, some bitcrushers, and the usual EQ's and soft clippers where needed.

[Water & Switchblades]

Nice.

You said you'd like some feed back. Well, I think if you want even more variety you should try using different velocities for your hi hat hits, or using more than one sample for them. Also, I would center the snare more in the mix, it seems to be off to the right - either that, you have two snare samples, or you are making the reverb of the snare come out on the right side. Either way I think it should be more centered.

Your use of different effects and sounds are really nice to listen to. You create a really nice atmosphere.

Also, what were you using for your vocal samples? They were really nice.

xxxZigZagxxx responds:

Thanks for the feedback :) That's a good point about varying the velocities of the hi-hats, I must try that :P Also, I can't remember ever using more than one sample for hi-hat, except for closed/open perhaps. So that's a nice suggestion.

I was using an interesting snare sample that went from left to right somehow. I think that perhaps I should center it more. But only a little bit, because maybe that snare adds to the spaced-out feeling of the song.

Thanks about the complement of the atmosphere. I'm really working on layering at the moment, to bring out the individual quality of my songs. To try to create a sort of ambient atmosphere with a cool beat.

Also my vocal sample was pulled from freesound.org, as were a lot of the sounds I meshed together to make this song. I just like layering sounds :P

Benny a.k.a "Silly Boy"

[Lost Pictures]

Makes me feel something

You really made me feel something with this. Have you tried writing with anything outside of the piano? I feel like this could be even more powerful with good orchestration. Well, either way, this is a great piece right here.

NordicHazard responds:

i tried yeah, cello's staccato but the sound wasn't clean as only piano so i decided to let it this way. Will try again when i figure out how i can get it better. Thanks!