Rottenbeard's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Adarga (Shield)]

Good guitar work.

I liked this, the guitar work was great (very steven wilson sounding). Unfortunately the whole song is rather repetitive, namely because of the same drum loop being repeated, but also because the song has no real evolution, it's just the same backing riff for the entire song with little variation with the exception of the breakdown at the 3:30 mark.

A little more melody and progression would've given this song much longer legs to stand on over the long term.

At anyrate, you did good musically, and the guitar work was stellar, I just can't help but hear all the potential this song had, it's a shame you didn't push it that little bit further.

8/10 and 4/5 from me!

Cheers,
Daniel

masheenH3ad responds:

Thanks for your wonderful review. I learned a lot. Rest assured, I will take it all into my consideration. My pursuit to unleash my musical language has no end, I treasure all the ideas and insights of all of my listeners. Once again Thank you very much!

[Clo - Sonofkirk]

Excellent!

Love it! Nice progression, interesting choice of chords and a smooth solo section. And as always, the drumming is stellar.

The whole thing has a bit of an opeth vibe that i'm really digging.

Cheers!
Daniel

Sonofkirk responds:

Thanks man, this song has a big sentimental value to me, it's really my favourite. I'm glad you liked it! And yeah, Opeth is definitely a source of inspiration to me :). Thanks for the review man <3

[AudeSecret Project]

Nice!

Good production value, lots of nice layering and the overall mix was well done. The music reminded me quite a bit of some of dimmu borgirs more recent stuff, especially with the layered strings and intense use of double kick. The guitar playing was excellent, and the harmonized parts flowed well.

My biggest gripe with this song is that the drumming overall seemed a bit too over the top, especially with the double kicking. I realize that this is pretty common with this style of music so it's more a style preference than anything, but i'd have preferred something that sounded more like it was played by a real human and less like programmed drums.

Anyways, overall I liked this, 4 out of 5 and 9 out of 10 from me. Keep it up! :)

mr-vincent responds:

hahaha thanks, but I can't play drum... I'm only playing guitars, and I do my best to make my drums sounds like a real one, but you know... It's hard :p

If you like it because it reminded you Dimmu Borgir, listen to these one:

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/liste n/347654 (Sorrow Of Life)
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/liste n/346821 (Lights Of Darkness)

[Symphony Of The Demon - S]

Bloody awesome..

Delightfully evil sounding, incredibly full and fantastic guitar work. This tune seriously rocks.

There is two issues that bug me though. First is that your kick drum is barely audible due to the fullness and bass heavy nature of this tune. This can be a hard problem to fix, believe me I know, so i'm not knocking you for it, just stating that it's a bit of a detractor from the song overall. The drum programming otherwise was brilliant.

My other issue is that your hard limiting is resulting in some audible clipping distortion which is a bit unpleasant, and particularly noticeable on tom fills and the double kicking at the end. Again, this isn't necessarily a detractor since it's in keeping with the genre if i'm being honest, and many commercially produced records are MUCH worse (hi, Metallica!), but it's a slippery slope, trying to wrangle loudness against clipping. Hard limiting is one of the best and one of the worst things to happen to the digital music age! Personally, i'd like to see it used a whole lot less..

Anyways, overall this piece was fantastically awesome, and aside from those two issues I raised, I loved this, keep this shit coming man!

Cheers,
Daniel

Sonofkirk responds:

Thank you so much! That's the kind of review I love to read. I always get into trouble when it comes to mixing and mastering tracks because I use crappy computer monitors which are naturally full of bass. To my ears it sound very bassy and I can hear the bassdrum but to other ears it sounds different...

About the clipping thing, you are right and lol at Metallica! This is incredible that such a great band fucks up an album this way... And I actually didn't use hard limiting, I think it's because I suck at mixing :p

Anyways thank you so much, that kind of review make me want to record new stuff! THANKS!

[MD2010 - War Theme]

Excellent song, but the mastering..

Musically I thought this was great, the piece flowed nicely and had a good epic feel to it helped by the heavy guitar, the fact I personally love orchestral rock hybrids doesn't hurt either ;)! The guitar chords sounded pretty good for a VST though the short solo piece didn't sound as convincing.

My only major gripe with this however is that you are crushing your audio with whatever limiter you're using. To much of the audio is being clipped off and it ruins a lot of the pieces dynamics, especially noticeable on the bass drum and cymbals. Ease up on the hard limiting and you'll have a winner on your hands!

Cheers,
Daniel

Step responds:

Thanks for the review!

"Musically I thought this was great, the piece flowed nicely and had a good epic feel to it helped by the heavy guitar, the fact I personally love orchestral rock hybrids doesn't hurt either ;)! The guitar chords sounded pretty good for a VST though the short solo piece didn't sound as convincing."

Yeah that was from Hypersonic 2, which is more aimed at synths, so sorry about that :P. Although yeah, I like orchestral/rock a lot too.

"My only major gripe with this however is that you are crushing your audio with whatever limiter you're using. To much of the audio is being clipped off and it ruins a lot of the pieces dynamics, especially noticeable on the bass drum and cymbals. Ease up on the hard limiting and you'll have a winner on your hands!"

Yeah you're exactly right. I'll definitely fix that when I get the chance.

Thanks for the great review!

[Gangsta's Paradise (Acapella)]

Epic.

Oh man I loved this,

Creative and hilarious spin on this song, keep up this kind of stuff man!

FolegAlmighty responds:

Thanks man. I had to get in touch with my inner hood.

[Pull Through (demo)]

Nice!

Nicely played, good singing and the lyrics flowed well.

Just curious but are you recording to tape? I notice an unusually high amount of noise, even for a cheap mic, so I was thinking maybe it was tape noise.

Anyways, the quality of the recording is not the point since the actual instrument and your voice sounded good despite the background noise, and the song was nice and heartfelt, which is what matters!

Cheers,
Daniel

toastedavalanche responds:

I wish I was recording to tape, but unfortunately not. It's just a really bad microphone,. I had to turn it up loud to get the levels right! There's a new microphone on the way though, so quality should improve considerably. Cheers for the comment dude.

[Rock n Roll Queen ( vocal )]

Nice!

This is good! Nice catchy tune, your singing is mostly very well done. Your choice in snare is a bit questionable (heavy ring for this type of song, but it's a style choice..)

For the vocals, the quality of the recording is quite good though i'm hearing some background noise (fans, maybe?). My only suggestion for your vocals is that they're currently TOO dry.
I know that dry vocals is all the rage these days, but in your case the sheer dryness seems to be sucking air away from the vocal performance. Most modern dry vocal recordings do indeed have some reverb applied, but it's applied very very lightly with a bit of a pre-delay. In a mix the reverb is not perceptible, but adds some much needed air around the vocals.

This only applies for the vocal solo's. The harmony parts during the chorus sounded fine to me.

Anyways, 4/5 8/10. Keep more stuff like this coming! NG needs more stuff like this :).

CyprusX responds:

Thanks for the review . For the vocals I did the best I could think to avoid recording too much of the environment , but yeah , no soundproof room , And the fact that I used a 15 $ karaoke mic did not help either . I like my snares nice and heavy , even though I overdid it with this one : P.

Once again thanks for the helpful review.

[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!