Rottenbeard's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[PrTr: 04 Drunken Pirates]

Nothing short of spectacular.

Like others stated, there doesn't appear to be any sort of solid melody through out, but that's fine, since it works for this particular piece. Interesting through out and incredibly hard hitting no doubt thanks to the impressive drumming.

The Hans Zimmer influence here is clearly obvious and, believe me, that's nothing but a huge compliment! What impresses me most perhaps is the sheer amount of stuff you've got going on at any given time in the mix. I'd be REALLY curious to see the project file for this particular piece, I bet the midi is a real mess ;).

This track kicked my ass all over the place, you've done an outstanding job.

Regards,
Daniel

EvilRaccoon responds:

The project file is a mess. lol Oh yeah. I do break it up though as much as possible, but even trying to keep things orderly with a crazy number of midi outs can be really hard to keep track of.

But thanks so much, a massive compliment and drive youve given me by saying my stuff resembles zimmers. I think people know by now he's my fav. ^_^

Thanks for your excellent review and score. I really appreciate it!

[The Prisoner (Acoustic Demo)]

Love the acoustic.

I love the guitar arpeggio piece here. What chords were you playing? I liked your experimentation with the radio frequency, you should consider maybe doing a slight radio to normal fade, see the song "telephone" by E.L.O to see what I mean, I think it'd be suiting. Your acoustic recording sounds great by the way.

You also have a great singing voice. There's a few points where it almost sounds like you're using auto tune but I can't be certain, at any rate it's no big deal. The vocal recording could use some improvement. I'm detecting what sounds like some slight distortion on the vocals, and it sounds like you might benefit greatly from a pop filter. The only other thing I might suggest is maybe some tighter compression on your vocals to even them out. I find heavy compression is usually necessary for almost every vocalist unless you're very good at gauging your voice and moving your head from the mic accordingly.

It's a great demo and the chord progression was really enjoyable as was your singing. Keep it up :)

Regards,
Daniel

WhiteFlame-XIII responds:

Thanks man! That means alot. It was capo 3, with Am, C, F, G for the verse, and Dm, G, C, Am, Dm, Em, Am for the chorus.

Unfortunately, my mic cost about 50 bucks a long time ago. It's really even mine. some cheap sony small diaphragm condenser. The little pops really annoy me too.

And no, I did not use autotune. Though it makes me feel good that you almost thought so!

thanks for the review!

[looking at you]

Nice!

Really enjoyable, has a real rockin vibe to it. I really liked the sound of the drums in particular. At first I didn't like them based on the original intro (the sound, reverb, etc sounded off). However, once the rest of the song kicked in, they seemed to fit the style perfectly. This song is definitely structured in a manner that would benefit from some nice harsh male vocals though.

It's like Oasis meets AC/DC meets ZZ top. Good stuff :).

daviddarky responds:

hahahaha thanks man

[BJ - Beautiful World]

Talk about going outside your usual genres..

This song is bad ass, man. I thought i'd give some of your stuff a listen to after all the talk about going outside your usual genres on my songs comments and i'm glad I did. I love this! Love the haunting but world / ethnic sort of sound this has going on. Love the slow plodding atmospheric beat and heavy verb use, just gives this entire piece a real dreamy, ethereal sound.

My only beef? It's short! Needs more length, much more :).

Keep this up!

Regards,
Daniel

GhostlyDoobies responds:

wow thanks Daniel for review!

i did not expect you to really like this song.

glad you clicked me and check it out!

:-)

[Blossom]

Love your choice in sounds.

Great stuff John! I really like your choice of synths in this. The lead or whatever it is that you have kick in at 1:04 sounds awesome. Love the crunchy tone of it. Catchy melody too. If you could just work in a heavier, more pumpy kick in there this would be rockin.

Only thing I didn't like was the high pitched lead near the end, also the way it ended. Actually really I guess just that whole end sequence in general seemed a bit out of place to me, but the rest was great :).

JohnLeprechaun responds:

Awesome, man. Thanks. Your feedback is always helpful. I had a totally re-done version of this song under development and suddenly the .flp disappeared, and FL Studio won't function properly. "The dog ate my homework," right? Sheesh.

[A few more weeks]

Not bad.. But could've been so much better.

I liked the direction you were going with this cover (which is also one of my favorite songs from a movie) but your mix in this piece has some serious balance issues that ruin what I think would otherwise have been a probably enjoyable track.

Most of the solo guitar work is too upfront and dry sounding and doesn't sound like it's in the same room / meshing with the other instruments, this was the big detractor for me. As the song progressed towards the finale it did improve though.
I won't take points off for noise because we can't all have amazing recording equipment and the music matters more than the quality of delivery (usually).

At any rate, you nailed the progressive nature and the dark atmosphere of this song very well. This isn't your best work but it's not bad by any means. Certainly not as bad as the fellow below me makes it out to be.

[Squirrel Land- High Ann]

Interesting!

I liked this, not sure why, but something appealed to me. The simple progression and simple, quiet use of instruments went together well. I liked the vocal delivery too.

Only problem is there's a lot of noise, I can hear your hard drive clicking in the background, lots of mic hiss, etc. Nonetheless, it has a calm, grooving sort of vibe that I dig. Good job : ).

Regards,
Daniel

[1834 - First]

Very nice!

I don't typically like piano solo songs as most people seem to fail to impart the emotion necessary to make solo pieces on the piano sound good (and hence, they end up boring). However, you seem to have nailed it in this. It's very calm, very smooth and very subtle song, with lots of dynamics in the playing, with the mood of the song evolving nicely from quiet and somber to almost happy sounding towards the end. I enjoyed this quite a bit, keep it up!

Regards,
Daniel

Pandaguru responds:

Thanks a lot for the review! Ill make sure to look at some of your works in the near future.

[Press Pause]

Excellent!

Very calm, very soothing, very relaxing. I enjoyed ths a lot, i'm a bit surprised at how much it's calmed my mood. There's always the right song for the right moment, eh?

The minimalistic elements all work together really well. The only thing i'm not too sure about is the female vocals, they almost seem to distract from the otherwise smooth atmopshere.

Aside from the minor quibble, this is well composed and very well mixed. Good job!

[NAPContest Submission]

Pretty good!

Good flow, good melody. Has a sort of haunting sound towards the end that I really liked.
The only thing really holding this piece back though is your samples, they're very synthy sounding. You would be well served in sourcing some better orchestral sounds. I highly suggest stuff by East West or Vienna, their orchestral libraries are phenomenal, though a bit expensive.

Anyways, great work, I enjoyed this!

Naroghin responds:

Thanks for the tip! Back when i first started I had bought Kontakt Gold for SIbelius 3. When I upgraded to Sibelius 5, I couldn't find or upgrade to the equivalent, so right now I'm stuck with a bunch of ok sounds that came with the Sibelius 5 upgrades. With them, though, are a large amount of awesome sounds that I can't seem to program into any of my scores. In the Kontakt window it shows they exist, but they are not available to be programmed through the mixing window. I'll contact technical support or whatever.

Thanks for the review.