Rottenbeard's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.