EctiBot's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Single Awareness Special]

The beat is cool and stuff and the mixing is pretty good. The one problem I do have though is that the song appears pretty boring without any dynamics or anything at all. If you listen to famous hip hop songs now a days, the artist always add in that one interesting part that everyone remembers it by whether it be a part where they sing some of the lines instead of rapping, parts where they change the pitch the voice or something like that. This is important especially in rap tracks, because fundamentally they are pretty samey. To make the track interesting you need to add some parts that the track can be remembered by.

Other than that I think it was pretty good. The length was a bit lacking, but it worked. As I said earlier, the mixing is good and the beat is pretty original actually.. great work :).

ADR3-N responds:

Thanks, your critiques are specific without being too nitpicky. Appreciate it!

[High In The Starlit Tree]

if I just copy paste the review below me, that's pretty much all I want to say about this. The ambient feel of this track completely takes over my ears early on in the song and takes me to a different worlds. Its really rare that someone on newgrounds are able to put together so many different instruments without it sounding too messy and random. I've tried to mix electronic sounds with accoustic ones like you do in this track, but I've never been able to do it this well. You are really good at knowing when certain instruments should come in. This is a talent all great composers have, and you are certainly one of them

This track might be my favourite of all the tracks this round. Great work :D. Keep it up :)
- Ectisity

[Erratic Movement]

Interesting track this as the two others already have mentioned, the title fits perfectly.
Really like the meldoies in this. They are really light hearted and makes me wants to dance in a strange way. I wish the kick would have been a little more intense and powerful. Maybe even add a little sidechaining effect to the claver whenever the kick hits to really give the track that dance feel.
You could also add a little snare work here and there in the song to vary up the beat percussion a bit. The main claver lead could use a bit of a boost in the higher frequencies to really make it stand out as well.

Overall a pretty good track. Really enjoyed listening to it, and I believe that with a bit of work it could be amazing :).
- Ectisity

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Psyhhoaparaat responds:

Late response on my half, but thanks!
I haven't really looked up how to use beats properly, but I guess it's high time I do :P

[Forest of Azarah]

Well made track this. Really like the melody and the synths.
One thing that I really dislike though is the snare. It's terrible. I don't know if that's the basic Fl studio snare as I haven't used it for ages, but it sounds really poor. Try to get your hands on some better percussion samples. The beat is what makes a track, and without proper samples a track can't reach its full potential.

As for the structure, I did enjoy it and I thought it sounded nice, but there is something missing. As I assume that you were going for a 8bit video game music feel, you lack an arpeggio in the background, just to make the track sound fuller. I would probably have used a triangle or sine wave and added a continuous arpeggio playing a little bit lower than the main lead.

Also, this track lacks dynamics. As Biggyzoom said, there really is no part of the song that gets me excited or anything. There are no buildups, and no drops at all. Try to spilt your tracks into different parts, and make sure that you have some sort of transition between each part. The quality of these transitions can make or break a track, so it's very important that you spend time to perfect them.

Overall a decent track, but I feel like you can do better. Keep it up :).
- Ectisity

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xxUltimaWeapon responds:

Thanks for the thought out review. I finally got my hands on a non-demo version of FL Studio and will be more apt to spending time working on these tracks more. Your input really helps me improve, so thanks again!

[Kwing vs Sky]

Buuuuurned. Sry Sky, you got completely wrecked XD.
Didn't think there were any rappers this good on newgrounds. Loved how you used snowgoons beat for this :D.
Amazing work, can't wait to see more from you guyz :).
-Ectisity

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[Tiger]

Ummm...................
What in the friggin world! What you made the last time I reviewed one of your tracks was good, but this...... 3.41 minutes of pure genius.
The buildups, the synths, the structure, the mixing. It's all really really well done.
One thing I'll say though, is that I feel like the effects were too loud compared to the leadsytnhs. The mixing is very well done, but the general volume of the leadsynths are too low so they don't really shine that well through the mix. If you just turn them a tiny tad up, it would be perfect.

Overall an amazing and creative track. You have really taken huge steps since the first time I reviewed one of your tracks, and I just love seeing a musician grow like this :). Of all the requests made to the RRC this round, this is the first that I'll have to give a full score to.
Great work, keep it up! You're headed for greatness if you continue like this :D!
- Ectisity

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Felocai responds:

Thanks man, thats really nice to read :3

[Nebulae]

This is a hard one actually.
In a way, I think it's poorly made. In another I love it and think it is genius.
The sound design is rather uncreative and full untouched presets that I've heard thousands times .
I would advice you to do as Sequenced said and try to learn a bit more about sound design. I'm in the process of learning it myself actually. There's a lot of great books and youtube tutorials about it that I would really recommend you to watch if you want to make that sound that defines your music.

As for the good stuff, the mixing is great actually. the sounds work really well togetherr and fill each other out. The structuring of the track is very creative, and I never felt bored while listening to it. I do think it needs some variation in melody thouh. While you did a grat job with the structure, that only compensates the fact that the melody is samey. Also, did you put a phaser or something on the kick? I love that effect where the kick changes volume and it's intensity. It's close to genius for this track.

Overall a good track, but there are some small things you can fix on to make full use of its real potential.

- Ectisity
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Drewpy responds:

Honestly, this review is one of the most helpful and substantial that I've ever received, and I appreciate it a bunch! I will start to try to learn sound design now, and I'm sure that'll take a while to get down, but definitely worth it in the long run!!! And actually, fun fact, I used 2 completely different kick sounds. I was a little worried about how that would work out, and I'm stoked that you enjoyed it! I'm experimenting with repetition and structuring a lot right now, and I have yet to refine my taste in style with melodies. I'm going to try to add more variation and make my tracks more dynamic in the future. Again, thanks so much for this review, this actually helps me out a lot!!

[Bosque]

Very nice guitar work this. A lot of creativity put behind it. You were able to do a lot fit a fairy simple melody and chord progression, and I appreciate that. I do feel like this track could have been more though if you had used more samplers. There's a lot of different overlaying melodies you could have added to some parts of the track to make it more full and exciting. I would have loved a bass part as well, but as a bassist myself I guess that's only my preference. I don't know if you only had 4 samplers available, or if you purposely limited yourself to 4 samplers, but I believe you can take your music to greater heights if you sit down and try to see the full potential of a melody and chord progression. Without vocals, tracks like these are solely driven by the excitement of the composition, so you need to add that extra little that makes up for the vocals.

Overall a great track though, and I really enjoyed listening to it. I felt like it could be better, but it's a good start. Can't wait to see what you make in the future :).
- Ectisity

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xdsebaxd responds:

I really aprecciate the extend feedback. It was very helpfull. I try better for the next time.

Thanks!

[Electron Storm WIP]

Interesting piece this. Since youve made such a nice list of what you want to know, I'll just go through it one by one.

First of all, I think the sample that stood the most out for me was around 0:42 where there are people screaming. Really helps add to the mood of the song.

Second, the progression that starts around 1:10 was a bit too repetetive for my liking, you do really well to try to mix it up by adding melodies and changing the octaves here and there, but the most important thing to make a section in a song like this not sound too samey, is to switch up the drums. You had the same drumline for a very long time, and that makes me care less about what you do with the melodies and concentrate more on the drums. Try changing the drums up here and there. I'll leave it up to you what to do, but the drumbeat is something that really needs to be well thought through in a song like this.

Third, I don't really haveany problem with the volume of the samples, though I do think that the voice could be put down a couple of decibles. One thing I think you should do though is to eq the voice a bit, and cut out a couple of the bad frequencies. The mic you use is decent, but it stil generates bad frequencies that needs to be removed. These frequencies are generally the very highest and the very lowest parts, but there might be some frequencies in the middle that needs to be cut.
Eq'ing of synths and vocals are important, and I would advice you too use at least a couple of hours learning how to eq vocals.

Fourth, the overall composition does NOT make sense actually, but I don't mean that in a bad. It's the same way I look at some types of dubstep. It doesn't make sense, but I kinda like it because it makes no sense. I wouldn't think too much about making music that makes sense, but rather make music that YOU enjoy.

The intro is interesting, but I do miss osme percussion and sound effects to build the suspense. Think it would really good if you could find a sample of those drums they use in those classical music bands and use it to make a cool, improvised drum roll :). As for the ending, it was pretty stale. What comes after 2:10 is not really enjoyable to listen to because you pulled out the chords too early. I would have left the chords in until the end, and then done 4 or 8 bars without them, and then a crash or a downlifter at the end. Only how I do it though.

Fifth, your use of filters is pretty interesting, though try not making your filter automations "constant". By that I mean that don't make the cutoff increase with the same amount throughout the automation, but add a curve on it so that the cutoff increases slowly at the beginning and quickly at the end. This makes your automation sound much cooler, and it really helps with the dynamics of the track,

Sixth, My keywords to you are eq'ing, scales and drum variation. The reason why I mention scales is because I feel like you could have experimented much more with this song if you play around with the notes in the scale you are using. A quick youtube search will usually give you a much better idea of how to do this than me explaining it, but you could always send me a pm if there is anything you wonder about.

Overall an interesting track with good ideas, but can be done better.

-Ecticity
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[Pixel Reindeers]

Interesting track Spit. You have some really good ideas for melodies in this. It's a bit messy at times, but that kinda adds to it's charm. The eq has become better since your last track I reviewed, but I still think that the kick and snare conflicts with the synth. The synths them selves conflict with eachother as well at times. Try listening to the different parts in your song one at the time and mute everything except the kick. Then you gradually unmute channels one at a time. This way you can more easily hear which synth is causing eq problems and which channel is making your mix messy. It's been a great tool for me.

Overall a very interesting song with good ideas.

-Ecticity
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