Everratic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Macrocosm [NGUAC Final Submission]]

Besides a few blatant mixing errors, I think this is a beautiful, well-executed track that evokes a lot of emotion. In the future, you might want to avoid saying that your submission was rushed or is incomplete; it caused me go in with low expectations, but fortunately, it's good enough that I disregarded this comment by the end :)

[Lost and Alone]

This was very relaxing! I could listen to this on loop for hours while doing work.

[From the Dust You Whisper]

I didn't notice the length until johnfn pointed it out. That makes the song even more impressive xD

Phonometrologist responds:

Was it intentional? I cannot say that I do not disagree.

[Some Birds Are Not Meant To Be Caged]

This is amazing :O

zybor responds:

Thank you for stopping by, and thanks for your review! :)

[Melodic Convergence]

This is phenomenal in so many ways. I think the best feature of the song is its liveliness. You managed to keep me enthralled by your work for over 7 minutes, and I was actually sad when it ended.

I don't have any significant criticism. I actually like that there doesn't seem to be a unifying theme or melody, and there is even some messiness (or lack of focus) in individual sections; I think this feature contributes to the liveliness of the track that I adore so much. With that said, I think it might be slightly too messy at times - there were a few elements that I thought failed to add value, and they barely fit in the mix. I didn't really mind it though, and I think most listeners won't even notice.

I give this a 10/10.

VociferousMusic responds:

Thanks for the neat words, I'm glad you liked it!
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by messiness in terms of lack of focus. But since you are referring to the liveliness, I might assume that you meant that some instruments played a bit off-beat sometimes. That definitely has been done on intention to make it sound more real and organic. In the busier sections I reduced that to a minimum though.

I think I get what you mean by the last point. I must admit I do own VSTs that are worse on quality than others, which caused a slighty noticable difference between them in the mix. But I'm more than glad I actually had access to so many instruments at the end. At some point I prefered to have a certain instrument in instead of renouncing it. I felt like some instruments are really important to be added, to grant the certain flair to the piece. I'm glad you still enjoyed it that way and that gives me the feeling that I made the right decision about that. :)

[Arrival of Hope]

This is beautiful! :D The melody is so uplifting. The buildups and release of tension felt too textbooky for my taste, but it was still done effectively.

AceMantra responds:

Hey, thanks! I'll see what I can do about making future compositions feel less "textbooky" :P

[Don't Mean a Thing]

I never laughed so hard from listening to a song before! I don't think I'll ever forget this one. I love the cute xylophone countermelody, and the banjo comment is gold. I'm pretty sure this is my favorite entry from the ones I heard so far.

LunacyEcho responds:

Oh man, that's high praise! Thanks for listening and glad you liked the bit about the banjo haha

[endK - Resonance]

I'm amazed that on your first attempt, you made a song outside of your comfort zone that's this good! And you managed to avoid a generic sound as well.

You became really good at making your percussion and melodies work well together; I remember I used to comment on that a lot. It now seems like an area of strength for you.

This might be typical for the genre, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm not a fan of the use of what seems sort of like white noise. I find it a little distracting, which is unfortunate because there's so much ear candy in the song. I also think that the song is ever-so-slightly over-compressed, and it creates an effect that sounds like all the elements are glued together into one wall of sound; perhaps you wanted that, but I can tell you put a lot of effort into making the leads sound highly expressive, and I think the leads would shine more if they were a little more detached. I hope that makes sense :P

Still, this is a great track, especially considering the genre change.

Like Chrono, I also love the key change.

endKmusic responds:

Yeah, everything you ever said I took in consideration, and I'm glad you did.

About compression -
I wanted to glue it and make it slightly less dynamic.
There are four different parts of the song I wanted all the major ones to have the consistent energy since they were a little bit different in terms of dynamics.
Sound of leads may be better without it, I agree, but it was not so much of a sacrifice, since I wasn't going that harsh on compression. I GUESS.
Next time I'll double check for sure.

Thanks for the review, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Always love hearing from you! :)

[under the stars tonight]

I love the nostalgic vibe you established. At times the song is quite emotional. There’s a lot of ear candy and always something interesting going on despite being a bit repetitive. Speaking of repetition, I understand your situation, but I’m not sure why you decided to make it 5 minutes in that case. I think this could easily be condensed to four minutes and sound much more impressive that way. I’m not fond of the juxtaposition of totally different reverbs; although it’s not always bad, in this dreamy song, I wanted the song to sort of take off from the ground at times, which I believe would be apt considering the theme, but the difference in reverb between different elements kept the song grounded. I found the very ending to be a bit boring. You’re a fantastic pianist and I think you could do something a little more interesting while returning to the root chord. This song has a lot of emotional appeal and I greatly enjoyed it despite my criticism. I’m glad you returned!

johnfn responds:

Actually the repetitive middle section is my favorite part! :> Also you didn't like my iv->I ending idea? >:( thanks for the review tho glad you (mostly) liked it!

[RPG Boss Battle]

The distortion on the bass that comes in at :49 is distracting. It makes sense to have that effect, but I guess I think it’s too extreme as is. Otherwise I think this is a perfect video game track.

McGorilla42 responds:

Thanks for the comment! Maybe that distortion is a bit extreme and interfering with the upper mids - I can easily tone it down a little. Thanks for pointing it out! :)