ChronoNomad's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dawnfrost]

Sounds good, man. The beats are super chill, nice and catchy. And that overwhelmingly deep bass that never really changed from one end of the song to the other...is gone! I know how hard it is to make solid bass riffs with unsatisfactory speakers, but it sounds like the earbuds got it done. Even headphones make gauging good bass a bit tricky since they tend to automatically boost the bass, so having a couple of sound outputs on-hand, like a good pair of headphones and solid speakers, is the best way to go.

I do think that the build and subsequent drop (or transition into the bass riffs, if you prefer) is rather underwhelming, but for a first attempt I think you're on the right track. The instrument that sounded off before sounds less so now without that deep bass to clash with, so bonus! Keep up the good work.

Hallow responds:

Haha, thanks. The earbuds helped quite a bit, but in the future I'll try listening to it with my boombox (which isn't that easy because it's not anywhere near my desk, but I'll make it work).
What could be improved with the build and drop (because drop is less wordy)? I'd love to be able to make a better one on my next work.
I'm glad that you feel that the high synth is less off - it was the last two notes of that sequence, right? I only started to notice it about two listens after you first pointed it out, so I for one find it sounds more off :P

[Forest of the Black Flame]

Oh my goodness, I just love this piece to black flaming death! It's been giving me chills on every listen, and I've already run through it about half a dozen times. Still a bit on the short side, but...so what? It just plain works.

I can totally hear Eternal Oath in this, but it also brings to mind a couple of great tracks from Chrono Cross, as well. Some really incredible use of Shevannai here, and the entire piece feels very appropriately dark and desolate, with just the right amount of fire and ash sprinkled in.

Neon-Bard responds:

Many thanks, Chrono! Yeah...it's a little short -- I apologize for the short tracks haha!

Eternal Oath is just so darn gloomy, and I really wanted to bring about a similar atmosphere with this piece. The artwork is phenomenal, so it really made creating the track an enjoyable experience. I haven't played Chrono Cross (gasp!), but I will have to check out the soundtrack.

Thanks for listening man! :)

[Riverside]

Argh! It's so short, but--man! It's just so good. Short or not, it's really great to see you submitting something. I love these nostalgic Crystal Chronicles feels. Well played, Neon-Bard...both metaphorically and literally. I feel a strange urge to pick up a Crystal Chalice and collect shimmering drops of Myrrh. Incidentally, my 2014 NGADM track Tir Na Nog was inspired a bit by FFCC.

I don't know why exactly, but nothing is looping properly for me here on Newgrounds anymore, including my own loops. Hoping that the issue is corrected soon, but until it is I can't really tell if the loop is seamless or not since everything skips at the end. I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that it's flawless. :D

Neon-Bard responds:

It is pretty short, huh? I have been so busy with school and contract stuff lately that I haven't really had time to just mess around -- I put aside time aside to have some fun, and this was the result.

Crystal Chronicles is one of my all-time favorites! I imagine that I'll listen to its music for the rest of my life. I remember your 'Tir Na Nog' track well, in fact, I'm surprised that I haven't added it to my favorites (done and done). The looping thing has been bothering me. I've tried just about everything...alas, nothing is working. It loops perfectly everywhere else. Odd!

Many thanks for listening! :)

[Dawnfrost WIP]

The beat is catchy, but the deep rumbling that carries on throughout the entire track is something that would have a lot more impact if it came in later or was simply used more sparingly. Even though there's only a minute's worth of music, it quickly becomes overwhelming. The listener at least needs a break from that sort of thing from time to time, and that would also serve to make it a more dramatic effect. Bringing it in and building it up slowly from the start could also work quite well.

The string-like instrument you bring in around he halfway point (00:34) doesn't really seem to fit the overall vibe to me, but the real problem is that some of the notes are out of tune and simply don't match what's going on in the background. Also, and it may just be that there's a particularly slow attack on each note, but whatever it is that's causing it, the timing sounds off.

Hallow responds:

Thanks for the great review!
I didn't notice any deep rumbling when I re-exported it at a higher bitrate - my original three attempts to export at 128kbps had some really noticeable error with the exporting where some deep sound was just randomly appearing, but this time I didn't hear anything (which might just be my speakers). I didn't add anything deep at all so far. Do you have any idea how to fix that? Also, is that the part which you were calling overwhelming, or were you referring to something else?
About the pad coming in halfway, now that you point that out, I do notice that some of the notes don't match the chords. I'll have to fix that. As to the attack, that was partially intentional - I wanted to give it that feel - but I can fix the timing by moving the notes forward a bit.
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Since NG doesn't allow for discussion threads within the reviews, it would help if you could PM me with any answers.

[Chuckles likes children]

Chuckles like children...how, exactly? Medium rare? In a stew pot? Something like that, I would suppose. This is such a creepily fun and energetic song, Azhthar! Those crazy squeaks are hilariously freakish, and your overall instrument choices and composition are simply fantastic.

I really love how you mixed it up at the end with something completely different, it really spices up the Halloween vibe. Interestingly enough, while I know that this is an homage to the great Chuckles by thespazicat, it also feels like it would be incredibly appropriate set against some of the infamous Joker's shenanigans. He's got that whole lunatic clown thing down pat, so I can't help it when my mind wanders in that direction. Throw in a few psychotic bursts of laughter and--voila! So much clowning around...

Suffice to say, I love it. This is an awesome Halloween-themed track and I think it has an excellent chance at taking one of the prized top spots in this year's Halloween Spooktacular. Good luck!

Azhthar responds:

Rare to medium rare actually ;) Thanks a lot for such a positive feedback. I thought about recording some psychotic laughters. Acutually I wanted to make a completely dark and evolving intro finish it with a squeak followed by a laughter and then start the real track but I always do these intros and I chose to make it different this time putting the music more into the focus... So the laughters were thrown out :) It would be awesome to score some silly fight of the Joker´s shenanigans in the old trashy Batman series but I guess this time is over. Sigh...
Good luck to you, too! Your track was really awesome, too! Ahhhh... I love musicboxes :) Simply the best instrument out there. I whish somebody could invent a real midi driven musicbox where you can make thousands of tracks for one musicbox. I think I would go to write a whole concert/symphony or opera for this musicbox. Not that I´m able to do this but I would start to learn this just for this instrument...

[Tℎ𝑒 T𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑏𝑙𝑒 H𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟]

Hey, this is a pretty nice chiptune, spyderbrd! I'd say that, overall, you still have more work to do to create a smooth mix; but the only way to get better is to make tracks, so you're on the right track.

It only seems moderately Halloween-y to me much of the time, but some of your instrument choices really fit the vibe, like the lead that comes in at 3:05. Those are some of the most creepily appropriate progressions in the entire piece as far as I'm concerned, so well done!

One other thing of note is the ending, which has an increasing amount of hiss for some reason. I don't know if that was intended or merely an anomaly, but it just doesn't sound good. The ending is also rather sudden, not to mention incredibly simplistic, but hey--endings are hard.

spyderbrd responds:

Thanks for the review! edit augut 2016: Went over this track recently and noticed that hiss you were mentioning. Apparently when i reformatted to .mp3 or .wav it caused a clipping issue in audio bandwidth. Sorry for not uploading better quality. Still was fun and lengthy to create... not even including the early version that was never released, that i built upon to make this. I thought it was great but i now know that after a year, only 600 people have heard this song. and that saddens me.

[Threnody for Innocence]

I have been wanting to leave you a review for this ever since you submitted it! Sorry that it's taken so long, but here I am now, so--let's do this thing! :D

First of all, it's long. But you know what? For a composition that is very nearly nine minutes long, it seems like almost half that, and I shall tell you why. Quite simply, it is because you are a superlative pianist. The powerful emotions that you pull from those little black and white keys are stirring. I feel as though my very heart is rising and falling along with the melodies, my soul made to float and fly one moment, to drown in sadness the next, and on and on it goes. The tempo and key changes are superb, and you've created such lovely cascading arpeggios and chords, a mix of harmony and dissonance that transports me completely within the music.

And now we come to the part that I have struggled with, mostly because I cannot stand to be even remotely negative when a piece moves me in such a way. In fact, I am sure you know what's coming, and I would rather not touch on it at all if I could. *sigh* But with as gorgeous as your piano playing is throughout the entire piece, the other strings simply don't do the composition justice. The overall quality comes across as almost being MIDI-like, which is kind of ironic after covering your track from the second NGDIC! :3

Anyway, while the strings don't always sound bad per se, they rarely sound what I would consider good. The higher notes are especially telling, while the lower range actually sounds fairly decent. I do think that a bit more attention on the mixing on the string section could have helped; maybe making the notes a bit more sustained with fuller reverb, but the sample quality just isn't there. Man, I thought you had some sweet symphony strings at your disposal, but maybe I'm thinking of dem0 now...I know he has a pretty jealousy-inducing tool set.

Okay, so ultimately this one was hard for me to gauge what I should do, ratings-wise. The piano is, once again, chock full of unparalleled awesomeness! The other strings are, well...less so. But despite its shortcomings, I still can't see my way clear to giving this anything lower than 9/10. And it's all because of how you yank on my heartstrings as you tickle those ivories.

Amazing job for a song of such length, as well. I purposefully stay away from doing things that are too much longer than five or six minutes simply because I figure that a lot of casual listeners would probably be like, "NOPE! Ain't nobody got time fo' dat," and bounce before even giving it a chance. I just hope that many more people give your Threnody of Innocence a chance. It is well worth those precious, non-refundable minutes of time in my humble opinion. Well done.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Whew, no worries about the "late" review :p
This response is already more late than it should be as well XD

"For a composition that is very nearly nine minutes long, it seems like almost half that..."

=> Thanks a huge deal, Chrono! That's something I really appreciate hearing. I feel that that is how I feel when a track really manages to swallow me up for a while, and really let me live it its world. I think that the dynamics you get from real piano playing do indeed help a lot when listening to longer compositions. At this point, I am a pretty good pianist, but I have so long to go still that it's quite insane XD
I'm really glad you managed to live into the piece, as that is part of what the intention is.

We tried to do a little bit of everything for this composition, including a lot of progression, key changes, and indeed arpeggios, dissonance and harmony, among many other things. But mostly, we wanted it to include the real emotions we were feeling.

Oh yes, no worries. This ended up becoming a really hurried production. I don't have particularly good strings, especially not solo ones. EWQLSO Silver does have some okay strings, but the solo violas/violins/cellos aren't really that many nor great, and this piece definitely was intended for solo intruments, as most parts are rather melodic (there is a String Ensamble at one point though). The intention was all along to use dem0lecule's samples. But this track took a while to compose, and alas, we were both gone for the weekend, as dem0 was asked on a sudden camping trip, and I had other plans. He also first thought the deadline was on Monday, and didn't arrive home before late Sunday himself XD

I definitely get that it takes a lot away from the piece, as it has that very same effect on me. The piano is not great either. It's okay, and possibly the best free piano vst out there, but we could've gotten a much better sound out of that as well :)

Another fact was that I too came back pretty late on Sunday (earlier than dem0), so I had time to fix up the most important parts of the tracks, like a few more note edits, velocity levels and balancing. But I had no time to adjust the attacks of the strings either, which really doesn't leave much of a great sound :p
As for the mixing itself, I think it's okay, but I am far from being really good at it.

So no worries about hard feelings or anything, 9/10 is still an insanely high score :D
I hope the judges won't be afraid to say what they really think either when their time to review arrives, as I'm personally very content with Cadmus and Chris moving on to the next round :p

I love how ever since Phyrnna mentioned "ivories" in a review, and I accidentally read it "ovaries" on the first look, I can't see that word anymore without remembering my misreading. Leaves a really weird feel in my thoughts now. Tickle those... XD

I tend to just do whatever length suits me, be it 16 seconds or 1 hour (both, I have done), but I am aware that the avarage attention span isn't very long. But I'm glad to hear that the lenght didn't take too much away from the track. I think it's partly helped by that the structure is divided up into 7 natural sections, that all have their own unique identifiers and progressions.

Man, it's still such a shame that dem0's strings had to be abandoned -at least for now- for this. We should definitely do our best to produce a better more awesome version.

Thank you so much for such a long and passionate review, ChronoNomad!

[NGDIC 2 - Mayhem Trance]

Hey, Gragon73! Nice to have some fresh blood here on the Audio side of Newgrounds. This is a pretty solid adaptation from Noisysundae's MIDI track and I like what you've added. The bass could actually sound much worse, and I think you've done a good job here.

To be honest, this might just be the coolest way for someone to get into music production. It's how Samulis got his start right here on Newgrounds once upon a time, in fact. Now I really want to hear what you can make on your own! But hey, don't let that make you feel pressured or anything. Good things come to those who wait. :)

Hallow responds:

Yeah, the "I know the basses don't sound that good" was before I messed with the oscillator waveforms a bit (pretty sure they were all saws) and it really sounded terrible x.x
(To be honest, I really want to hear what I can make on my own as well, lol.)

[Mistral (Piano)]

Hey, lordedri! This is a very nice piano composition you've got here, and anyone who knows anything about me at all knows that I positively adore the piano. That also means that I'm sort a harsh critic when it comes to said instrument. :3

Such an intense tempo and you manage keep it going throughout the entire length of the piece! That is quite impressive, though if I'm being entirely honest I think having a more subdued, slowed down section would have helped to break up the monotony and give the song more depth. A few more key changes could have also worked wonders, but what you already have is great. With that said, I still really like what you've done here. You make excellent use of dynamics from one end to the other, which becomes all the more important when working with a single instrument. Fantastic job!

Love what you do, so I hope you'll keep right on doing it for a long time to come! :D

Adjeye responds:

I totally get what you mean, you should know I adore the piano as well :D, most of my used electronic melodies I've first played on the piano.

Changing keys is something I slightly experimented with in this composition, but its clearly not enough (around 1:30 I switch from G#minor to major) but its something I'm not too experienced with.

Thank you for your constructive feedback, it helps me a lot! It really does!

[No Hope in the Horizon]

Yes, this is indeed quite brief, but...what of it? It is an absolutely beautiful Classical piano piece! You are speaking directly to my soul with these strains. From the softness at the beginning to the building tension toward the end, I can feel the ebb and tide of emotion that has gone into this piece. Well done.