Rottenbeard's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[can´t you stop]

Great!

I love the 60s/70s vibe this has going for it. The recording quality also has a decidedly older somewhat saturated sound to it which is very suiting.

I really enjoyed this, good work!

[-BGZ- You Can Die]

All sorts of awesome.

This is like.. all sorts of awesome, crammed into a whole bunch of more awesome, and then rolled up into a delightful package of awesome.

Oh yeah, I went there.

[CKC - Inside of Me]

Love the melody, but..

The melody is great as is the backing, very progressive and atmospheric. Like others have said though, the slayer ruins it. A better VST or a real guitar would be a huge improvement.
The only other thing that stands out to me is that the entire song is clipping pretty badly, you need to tame your levels. Other than that I really enjoyed this songs beat, the hip-hop / synth rock fusion is really good!

Regards,
Daniel

CKC2009 responds:

ok kl, yh i cant play guitar anyways :P but il b sure to shoot slayer in the head and b done wiv it for good.

[Wo0rmy - Tomorrow is tha past]

Good rythm..

Nice melody, but you really need to ease off the side chained compression, the constant sharp pulsation of levels was making this good song otherwise difficult to listen to.

Regards,
Daniel

Wooormy responds:

i see ;D

thanks.

[Feeling a little blue]

Nice!

Great, grooving beat. Nice driving song :).

Turned into a full out song, with some nice quiet palm-mutey parts to break it up a bit and this would full out rock.

nunyabizness responds:

I'll work on that. Probably sound like zz top but ah well. He's my fave blues modern blues rock guitarist. Thanks for the feedback.

[This Is Your Song]

Good piece,

The actual song is very well done. Great mix and good flow. Like others have said though the vocals need improvement, theres two things I think you can do to help with this.

First off, you need to drop autotune or whatever tune correcting software you're using, because it really ruins the natural feel of your voice, i've never been a supporter of pitch correction VST's, ideally you should be able to sing without software assistance, if you can't then simply practice more until you can, because as it is right now, it just makes your voice sound fake (unless this was the intention, in which case disregard this criticism)

Now, aside from that, the other thing that will really benefit the vocals in terms of your mix is heavier compression on them. Vocals, especially in rock songs such as this, really seem to benefit well from fairly heavy compression in order to keep levels steady in my experience. Your vocal levels are all over the place right now which is why it's not sitting in the mix. Sure you sacrifice some dynamics but in the end it sounds better in my opinion.

Otherwise this is a great song and quite heartfelt. Keep it up :)

Regards,
Daniel

tootsie10 responds:

thank you your review is much appriciated!

Yes the autotune was intentional, i dont really like the software but i wanted that sound for this song

and i dont know about the compression but if thats what it takes to make my vocals to be on a steady volume then i will have to learn more about it!!!!

again thank you

[[JL] Lament of an Insomniac]

Nice!

One of your best pieces! Has a truly haunting melody to it. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would, glad I listened all the way through! The ending was a bit anti-climatic though, though I realize this wasn't really a progressive piece overall so this isn't really a complaint I guess, just my own preference in music style coming into play ;).

Keep it up!

Regards,
Daniel

JohnLeprechaun responds:

Thanks! I liked this one too. I'm glad you liked it, and I'm glad I made it haunting. The ending was worse before, I changed it the day I uploaded it. I'm terrible at endings. I'm great at intros, okay at middles, but endings are my weak point.

Thanks again. It means a lot coming from you.

[Shadow night (metal)]

I like it

This was great, has a real doom metal vibe to it, though it's a bit fast to be true doom. At any rate, it was really enjoyable and should be longer, much longer! :)

My only gripe is the drums, if I had to guess i'd say you're using addictive drums? At any rate, they are simply way too overcompressed, the cymbals especially. Pull back some of the compression on the high end.

Otherwise great work!

OPQC responds:

yeh, i know. this is a demo, if you didn't read the description. :D

the snare wasn't meant to be very compressed... but kk, i make it better.

[Ode to New Friends]

Good sound, but needs stereo!

I think part of the reason you're getting complaints on the strings is that this piece lacks any sort of stereo panning. You need to move some instruments around to make the piece fuller, either that or something got broke when you exported/uploaded this song and it's mono instead of stereo.

Aside from that, musically the piece was well done and well thought out and enjoyable. Only thing I didn't much care for were the ?cello? plucks around the 1:05 mark. But again.. with better stereo panning and some level adjustment they'd probably sound and fit just fine too.

Hope this review has been helpful :)

RyanWenke responds:

Thanks for the review! This was my first recorded piece since getting my software, so I am still learning all the tips and tricks. As I progress I will utilize all these tools :) Also, I think the problem with the strings is the lack of quality as well. This piece didn't use any VSTs, but just simple orchestral sounds from the keyboard itself. I have recently bought a VST for Orchestral sounds, so hopefully that improves the quality!