Zafrece's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Horizon]

Very nice sir, keep up the good work. I need more songs on my ipod lol.

Geoplex responds:

Thanks :P

[Battle Network Fight!]

Whoah ho ho! Hello there epic old school style music, i havn't seen you on ng in a while. I'm glad i found you again, you were missed. I loved this piece off the bat, I sat there listening to this and let it loop literally like 13 times. This is a great piece and really captures the feel of the epicness of the megaman series. I can't tell if this was an original piece or a remix of several songs. It all sounds so familiar, yet it doesn't at the same time. I loved the chord progressions. The drums were great and fit right into the style. Slapping this sucker on my faves m8 great piece. I'm a sucker for this style game music.

One of the few things i can say is that the whole thing is a little muddy, but that could just be those older sounds being used. I know allot of times if you are using some of the game library sounds (i know some people do rather than making the sounds), they can tend to lack a bit of crispness.

One thing about the acid bass,(personal opinion) when used in the mid ranges like you did around 50 i find it to kinda of suck all the attention from everything else.

The ending didn't loop all that well back into the start, what allot of loopers tend to do with their music is make circle progressions. That basicly eliminates any notice that the song is looping. Also the ending climax was too different from the start up of the song to loop and transition with out noticing. It's too much of a difference in things going on from 1;23 back into 000.

Other than very small things this piece really took me in. Like i said before i'm a huge sucker for this style of music so needless to say i loved the song.

You should ask people on the forums to scout you, im pretty sure sonic did. But it seems he and i aren't enough to approve you alone.

5/5

StaticBlu responds:

Thanks for the review. I did the sounds from scratch so I guess I need to keep a better ear on them. The looping was tricky to figure out. It probably would have been better to let everything die down first with the same cord progression then connect it so the large mass of sounds just don't cut off like that.

SonicJ did say that he would scout me on the condition that I make another Jet Set like piece because he loved the one I made before so much so gonna start figuring that out.

Really appreciate the feedback for this. It will help me to look for better sound quality in my work!

[I Don't Want Love At All]

.........Why... does this have no rating or reviews....( catches breath)

Ok, for once i really have nothing to say but amazing piece of work. The song was amazing, the sound was professional and clean. The singing was perfect tone and pitch.

This is one of the better pop songs i've heard on ng. I have no idea why you have no one following you, or how this amazing piece of work slipped under the radar for so long. But some times random crimes happen , and i think this is one.

5/5 amazing work.

jakeghost responds:

Thanks again for the nice words Zafrece!!! I am super glad you liked it so much :D Catch you round!

[SaveOurKingdom (Remaster)]

I'm hearing allot of chan peaking and general conflicts of chans. It sounds like you had several of your sounds in the same channel, I keep hearing other sounds drop out as others come( volume). I find myself saying this allot but make sure everything is in separate channels and all the useless harmonics are cut off. Param eq or any other spectro form of eq your channels.
The mix is great up until the first time the lead introduces itself, then that lead dominates the entire song. Leads should never be louder than the rest of the song, make sure they are under the kick in db levels. The vocals were not my thing, but just taste at this point.

Lich responds:

I kinda screwed this track over when I first made it, it's a shame as I kind of liked it at the time.
I assure you, everything is mixed through separate channels.

Nevermind. Thank you anyway for taking the time to listen to it. I assure you that I have several tracks in the making which are much... much better quality :)

[O Canada (Trance Remix)]

Every sound is in the same channel from what i can hear, try separating them into a different channel, and assign them to a separate mixer track as well. This will stop allot of the sounds fighting for control over the same chan. If you hear a sound all the sudden get way softer than you intended it when another one is starting to play, this very well may be the answer. You can hear what im talking about in the first 10 seconds.

Try Using any type of param EQ and clean up allot of these sounds. They are all sounding on the muddy side. The kick was way too low,i say this allot, but the kick should be around -6 or -8 db pre master. The kick should also be the loudest part of the mix, followed by the bass as a close second. The bass wasn't really following the lead key changes all too well, that's a simple fix however. Nexus is a powerful tool when used right, i would suggest looking up some tutorials over how it works.

+ 12 db = 400% volume increase.
+ 6db = 200%
+ 1 dB = around 10%
0 dB - No change.
- 6 dB = 50% volume decrease (half the original level).
- 12 dB = 75% volume decrease (to 25% of the original level). ( image line db guide)

Hope that helps in some way

Zafrece

ToxInjection responds:

Thanks for the review! :D

They actually aren't in the same channels, but I think I may have virtually kept them at the same volumes anyway. I didn't do too good a job of mixing them, but I'm getting better! I'll definitely keep this info in mind if I end up delving into trance again (which I most likely will.)

[cokerun]

I'm not the best at reviewing d&b seeing as i dont listen to it often and this is a little out of my comfort zone. However i will try to do my best for you.

Things i would change- One thing i noticed was that the lead theme was almost over powering the entire song. It was louder than all the drums and pads you had put together. A general rule of thumb is to keep the kick at -8 or -6 fb pre master, and have everything else fall under it for volume. The lead was a bit repetitive, and i felt it needed to change/drop off or at least shift priorities in the song some point in it. The drums were a great line, however it also needed a little shift in my opinion. I'm not sure if this is the full song or a small piece of a larger work yet to come, but i feel as is it needs to be extended. It needs some shifts in the pace, a song just cant keep building and building with a tempo that high. At some point it needs a fall off or down period.

Things i liked- I loved the ambiance of that pad that was underlined in the song. It was rather hard to pick out in some segments, but the subtle ambiance and shift in keys it added was great.
I really liked the hits you had coming in around 50, they added power to the song. The sounds were over all very crisp, you did a good job of mastering.

Not bad over all with a few minor things aside.

Keep up the work m8

Zafrece

rrool responds:

great critique. i will have that in mind, thanks.

[The cracked spiral]

I have to agree with the comment below on some grounds. The song did seem rather "monotone", However i will shed a little more light onto the subject. The lead of a song sets the feeling and the pace of the entire song. It also grabs the most attention to your ear, not to mention saw/ distorted guitars tend to be harsh on the ears along with higher pitches. Often times if you want to avoid a uniform feeling in a song, certain hertz ranges need to fall off, and attention to others needs to be brought in. Like if you were listening to nothing but a drum kick with a bass line for a while, you would eventually want to hear some higher notes and have that bass die down or stop for a bit. Trance is a perfect example of this. Trance is rather harsh with the mass amounts of saw waves and phased pads, and that arp driving bass line. This usually gets old pretty quickly if nothing changes. So most trance songs have a down break where the leads fall off and the bass takes a break and give rise to the lesser used hertz of the song and change the wave forms to a more mellow tone for a bit. It gives those hertz a chance to shine and let your ears get used to the lack of those sounds. Then BAM, come back in with added parts for the "after the gap return" to shock your ears back into their places. This is of course doesn't directly translate into metal mind you, but the same idea applies. If you listen to sonata artica for example, they are a great example of what i'm saying.

Over all i still loved the song, i would hate you to read this and think other wise.

Love and trance mate

Zafrece

[Tone - Forza Silenzio]

--First impressions / suggestions- --It was very misleading towards the start of the song. It was very empty and i wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. The use of some ambient pads goes a long way, if nothing else a small amount of white noise filter can help make it feel like those gaps are less apparent. I mostly hear just a bass, drums and a lead. (personal preference warning) I personally would have liked to hear at least some chords in the song if nothing else but to help aid in giving it more of a full sound. About 1 min i would recommend getting edirol orchestral for strings, its decent and has some ok sounding strings.( i couldn't tell if those were strings or the synth you made/ preset used wasn't fitting.) If you ever have some money to blow and want realistic sounding strings look into holly wood strings, by quantum leap east west.

Things i liked- That tune is insanely catchy.
-Good use of side chaining, it really helped the kick stand out
-Amazing white noise flares, with a very cool decay effect on them.
-The song is nice and crisp very nice job on eqing and mixing.
-The trance drive bass was epic, i'm a huge fan of that style bass. It was almost verging on Psytrance and goa trance( which is freaking sweet).
- Nice sub bass drop at the end.

Pretty good man, i was bobbing my head through most of it. Since

No problem on the scouting btw, if you are coming on to ng with this kind of stuff off the bat, you really deserve to be part of the portal. There are allot of people out there that i often wonder how/why they even submit things if they don't ever get any better or try to. As long as you keep trying to improve people will help you along the way.

Love and trance

Zafrece

[Neoryu]

The song seems a bit delay/verb heavy with the leads at times. They are seemingly falling into the back of the song around 40 when the harmony in thirds comes in. But allot of anything at this point boils down to preference. There really isnt anything to say about this song other than i enjoyed it and the composition was great. I loved the rhythm segment from 11 on, reminded me of old school bulb. 21-25 shadow of the colossus after you kill a boss =p. Like i said before, it's finally good to see some one who can actually play guitar on ng, they are few and far apart.

Keep up the amazing work, and best of luck to all your endeavours in the future sir.

Zafrece

[Transformation]

I'm surprised to see fpc in here as a list of things used, i find it hard and bothersome to eq or add specific effects to the separate drum sounds in fpc. Like the comments below i tend to avoid it completely So major props to you for pulling this off. Did you use any external vsts for this piece?

Troisnyx responds:

Only Soundgoodizer in small amounts, for volume boosts. Otherwise, all I had were --

1) Sampler
2) Fruity Soundfont Player
3) Slayer
4) FPC
5) Autogun
6) Fruity Parametric EQ 2
7) Fruity Reeverb 2
8) Fruity Delay
9) Fruity Fast Dist (for all guitar sections)
10) Maximus in small amounts (then again, that was available with FL 10 by default)

That's the setup. (I basically can't afford anything else at the moment, and I'm trying to keep my FL running speed to a bearable level at this moment.) Glad you liked it!