thecoreman's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Generity2010]

Nice!

I can see what you tried to do there, but... Meh... Stuff like the trasition to piano at 1:35 was really awkward and it didn't fit at all, and the piano sound itself wasn't that good, too gritty, sharp and reverb-less - FL can do much better.

I have to say, at about 3:00 the whole thing got pretty boring on my ears - you should have tried to change up the chord progression. I mean, like the piano part should have been in the Aeolian 6th, Phrygian 3rd or even in the Locrian 7th if you're willing to venture those "shady" modes. It would have given - to me, at least - something intersting to listen to besides the sounds.

The sound itself was great (besides the piano sound), the effects were well used. Should have done some EQing on the precussion, but that's just me being prefectionist as usual :P

Overall, it's a nice track, mostly sound-wise, kind of lacking on the compositional side. If you ever Redo this, I'd recommend starting it exactly the same, changing the piano part, adding a "solo" thing after that and only then return to the main theme. Then it would deserve a round 10.

tewcool responds:

Thanks! This was really helpful, I appreciate the input.

[Unexpected]

Dude, this is awesome!

I really dig this! The only thing that bothered me were the drums at 2:05, they don't sound good and they don't fit too much... I'd go for a more open, "ambient" groove, lots of Ride, Crash and Bass drum, perhaps Half-Time, and EQ them to be on the much bass-ish side of the track.

Besides that, the track was really good, and I really like it. Great job!

MaelouX responds:

Thank you for the advice! I'll try to do something but I confess that the percussion is really not my thing...

[Yesterday's Answers]

2nd place! Runner-up!

Hey mate, thanks for participating, you won 2nd place! Hope to see you make plenty more music and I hope to see you around the forums!

ItsTheAshtray responds:

Hey! Thanks for the review man. It was really a great idea for a contest and I'm glad you started it.

[-( bumpressure )-]

You won! 1st place!

Congrats on winning the 24 hours challenge mate! Hope to see you 'round the forums!

Tykwa responds:

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

[Funky Ass Metal]

Awesome!

This is pure awesome. A face-melting track. Great funky phat riff, awesome leads, guitars were very well co-ordinated, drums were sufficient for the track, panning helped the 'dual' feeling, structured enormously well.

Great job! Keep 'em coming!

[Happier Days {[Preview]}]

Nice, happy

but the effect which started at the begin has some bugs... An overall nice theme with simple chord progressions. The best thing about this submission is the use of the instruments. Could have used a B part, bridge, stuff like that - aka variations.

[Jailbait Sally]

Meh.

The general idea was great, but the materializing itself wasn't good. You said "PS - Not to be taken as a serious blues.", so I'm giving a fair score according to that, I guess.

Some pointers (If you want to get serious, that is) -
- Get better ways to record yourself. There are tons of USB mics which sound great and are really cheap.
- Record each instrument individually. You know, that's how the pros do it.
- Rehearse a bit before recording, unless you're looking for an imrpov track.

ripoffhitman responds:

Well I appreciate your critisizm, thank you, heres my rebuttle.

We recorded ourselves with a $100 dollar mic and direct recording, which is the best way to record unless you have a studio system, which we don't.

There was only vocals and guitar, so we choose to do both together because classic blues always has both being recorded simultamiously. Then again, it's not meant to be taken seriosly.

It was meant to be an improv track, and we made that obvious, cause you can even hear Miles say "solo". Improvised music pulls people in more, because you don't know what happens next, because even the person recording didn't.

Thank you so much for a review, I love reviews, if you could do the same for any of my other submissions that'd be great, and I might be adding some new stuff soon as well.

[Next to Nothing - Blue Lights]

Very very good!

Nice work! It was flowing, good, kind of "Insomnium-ish", if you know what I mean. The good things were all the time - there was nothing "bad", you made great usage of the chord progression and the instruments all the time. The accordion at the end was really great, I liked it :)

Now for points of improvement -
However, the singer was off by a few cents all the time, most people won't notice such a thing but it really bothered me, and you just did it too long. I have nothing against long songs ("Echoes" by Pink Floyd is one of my favorite songs, and it's about 20 minutes long) but it was getting really monotonic at some point, I just stopped listening... For example, the guitar solo was good, but nothing special - we heard these licks and riffs before. Get out of scale, think outside the box.

Also, the song had practically the same energy all the time, because the drums were really just there as a metronome, not an instrument. You can use them much better.

Hope to hear more of you!

Arnaki responds:

Hey, thanks a lot for the constructive criticism, we don't get that often :) Sorry for taking so long to answer but we kinda neglected the whole band thing a bit in the past months due to university, work etc.

The backing vocals are definitely a bit off, but that's because they're all falsetto and the singer (me :P) isn't what you'd call an expert, heh. I'm taking lessons though and they've helped enormously. I can't hear the main vocals being off, but you probably have a more trained ear. Our guitarist also told me to ask you what you would have played as an "outside the box" solo over this pop-like harmony (it's just major and minor chors, no 7th or 9th chords etc), just as an example. As far as the drums are concerned, I think you noticed that it's a drum machine as we couldn't record drums due to certain circumstances. We don't like it either, but it's the best we could do.

Thanks again for taking the time to listen and write your review!

[[LY] 24H comp. entry]

Reviewed'. Pretty awesome

Great intro, love that sound. I like to call this song "Spooky-Yummies". Sound was really great, I esspecialy liked that didgeridoo sound you put twice in the middle, it really fit the atmosphere and it was a great addition. It was fast and groovy, and I liked listening to it. Sudden ending was win-ish. HOWEVER (bad cop mode on), if someone asked me what this song was about in 5 minutes, I wouldn't remember a thing. Yeah, it was cool and groovy and all, but it lacked stuff that turn it into a song.

Hope to see you in the next challenge!

[That is Fair (24h challenge)]

1st place! You won!

Everything great. Made me think of "Drunken Masters", and Russia. very energetic, very transforming, very trancy-fancy, and also a bit classical. Everything balanced each other out great, and it sounded great. it felt a little weaker after 2:30, like you were kind of giving up. And the different fadeouts at the end were weird, and not good weird.

Tis' be the perfect trance for me. Awesome, awesome, and awesome. Hope to see you in the next project, as well!

Yust responds:

It felt a little weaker after 2:30 => this was voluntary, to make a variation on the 2nd drop where you hear my distorted synth instead of violin.
Thanks anyway for the 1st place!
Nice contest :D