Doublechindoge7's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[isprogstepevenpossible?]

Pretty damn dank for a first dubstep song, most fall pretty hard at the first hurdle of dubstep. This is pretty good, it's just a bit plain and has a little too much detune at times, still pretty sweet.

Squarion responds:

lol thanks

[Titan]

Straight away you establish the mood quite well, and I love that uplifter, it's structured and effective. I think it has a little too much release in the times it is re-used, It's nice, but the high frequencies get kinda annoying when sustained for so long. As well as that it almost starts to sound a little detuned as it fades out, not sure what causes this, but it is annoying...

Then the electric guitar comes in, awkward thing is I really don't like electric guitars, but I can't lower your score just because I don't like them. So it may be a little difficult to review this since the electric guitar is your lead... What I will count towards your score is I'd say it's a little harsh on the ears, turn down the distortion (if you're using it) a bit, or maybe just do some softening with a Parametric equaliser or something... I wouldn't mind it being harsh so much, if it wasn't for the fact that it's the lead instrument, if it's going to be played for so long you can't make it the lead...

Then for quite a bit we just get that electric guitar playing with some percussion for a bit too long to me, just a small problem. Then I noticed another problem, the percussion itself. The patterns aren't bad, but the sounds themselves are. Sorry if you didn't have access to any other percussion sounds, but I do have to make this a criticism. With a name like "Titan" I expect a pretty slow drum loop with a lotta momentum, which is what you did, good on you. Problem is that something that's supposed to be slow and powerful needs deep, hard hitting snares. Here we have light, high pitched snares that don't really leave much of an impact. Even just adding some reverb can make a world of difference, if done well.

The general mood's pretty good, the base sounds are slow, but the backing and additions are fast. This really nails the mood of something big and powerful, just like the title suggests, "Titan". Another nice detail is the base sounds are also lower, once again giving the mood of something big, but the additions are high-pitched adding a bit of a mythological feel to it.

I quite like 2:08 though, here the "momentum" of the track really shows, although there is less sound. Everything comes and goes suddenly, which usually would be a bad thing, but here it really puts an emphasis on the silence; which in turn, emphasises the "impact" when the volume returns in a fashion almost like call & response... I also noticed sometimes sounds were subtly "sidechained" back in, which really shows attention to detail in your volume management, and attention to detail is probably the most effective thing you can have over all other composers in music.

Finally, a little nitpick, the end is silent for too long before ending. Just a little problem, but silence in music is used as a prompt for the audience to take a moment to reflect on what they just heard, which is why people have it at the end of their songs. They keep it short though, so you don't get bored. It's not a massive problem, but it's kinda annoying when I'm listening to it on loop... =/

If this was more personal, for the electric guitar I'd dock half a star, but it isn't so I give it 75/100.

MysteriousPresence responds:

Your reviews are out of this world ! *_*
I honestly thought the guitar sounded great, but I didn't use distortion. But I did something with the EQ though, that's maybe what made it sound like that ! Thanks for pointing that out ! =3
Well in fact, I did the drums like this because I wanted to leave a complete silence after each snare ! So I couldn't put any reverb ! ^^
"I also noticed sometimes sounds were subtly "sidechained" back in, which really shows attention to detail in your volume management" : aww you noticed that... <3 You're talking about 0:55 and 2:37 aren't you ? I love those moments too ! X)
Yeah I actually don't like this ending, I think I should have stopped it brutally ! =3
Thank you kindly for the ultra-detailed review and for the great score ! <3

[Game Over]

Going into this I had a bad feeling, I don't know why, I just wasn't expecting much... By god I was wrong...

The drums hit hard, just about everything really has an impact, and it gives this track some real momentum! My first criticism is that it's a little too harsh on the ears at times, but that's really just a nitpick...

Then after the first segment, the mini-drop is pretty effective, but I have a few problems with it... I think there's a bit too much noise there, and as epic as all those powerful synths are, by combining them you've given yourself something tough to master and it sounds like everything's fighting for attention!

Then the drop, it's great! It sounds like Xtrullor's work, I love the chaotic sounds and all the variety! Still this drop is not without its flaws... I feel that it's a little too wet and a little too atonal, I do understand though that that's a tough balance, so It's not so bad. As well as that as cool as being chaotic is, it's not much use if it can't be understood; it's not incomprehendable, but it is a little annoyingly difficult to keep track of...

My last complaint: Sometimes the sidechaining is too strong and annoying
My last positive point: I love how you've used bitcrushing here!

Overall pretty solid.

punkerrr responds:

hey! thanks for the feedback! this track is 6 months old, i only just got around to upload it here haha, thanks for the feedback tho!

[Fuego96 - Temple Street {DJKU Cover}]

This looks promising... This is very unique and interesting, yet sadly a bit too repetitive for my tastes. Repetitiveness is fine in music when there's a climax or drop of some sort, or if there's a lot of variation, but otherwise; unless it's for a soundtrack, it tends to be just boring.

The synth at the beginning is a very simple, generic techno synth, but it seems to be quite well made. I like how you played around with the cutoff and resonance, but I think you should be more careful with how you use them. There are some very jarring, atonal high frequencies especially at the beginning, I know this is a side-effect; not intentional, but you can easily fix it! To fix it all you have to do is reduce the volume on the higher frequencies of that synth, I don't know what DAW you use (Digital Audio Workstation or to put it simply, what you use to make music) but with mine; Fruity Loops Studio, All you have to do is open maximus or the parametric EQ and turn down the high frequency volume. (Sorry if you didn't know that, I don't yet know how experienced you are, I'll assume you did though because for most people that's one of the first things they learn in terms of mastering)

Anyway, then those weird tropical sounding plucks come in. I've heard 'em before, but I don't know how they work. They sound like a combination of a normal square pluck and a megadrive-like bass pluck, it's a nice, atmospheric, but hard hitting sound and I'd like it if you could tell me how you did it! It sounds kinda like it may have been done with unison phase retriggering, but it doesn't have that weird space-like buzz afterwards like most synths with unison phase retriggering do... The flute-like synths with the high AR (Attack and Release) aren't particularly interesting, but they do a good job at creating the atmosphere.

Now my favourite part! 0:43. that part has a nice atmosphere with unique sounds and unique interesting tempos and gates in the sound, the detuned square synth sounds quite well made, while simple. It sounds like you might have actually bitcrushed it to make it sound distorted and a bit more authentic, which if you did, nice touch! Some might find it unpleasantly atonal, and I wouldn't blame them, however I feel it's surprisingly well made!

Here's where we get to the second main problem with this, the percussion... It's dull and simple. The percussion is what brings the energy, rhythm and movement to a track, but this is a simple beat with weak snares and barely audible kicks. One thing to note about drums is if they're weak, they need to have an interesting rhythm, or if they have a basic rhythm they must be hard-hitting and powerful! Of course no rule in music is always true, but it's true more often than not. I genuinely didn't even hear the kicks until the part at 0:43 the 6th time it looped, (I'm listening to this on loop while writing this) If they're too quiet to be heard you need to either make them louder, boost the low frequencies to give it more of a "presence", or get rid of them. (Sorry again if these were the only drums you had access to, again, I don't know what you use...)

Then the rest of the song is basically repeating the same loops with a little variation in the cutoff and resonance and different combinations of loops. Here's another rule that's helped me with this problem: listen to the part that will be repeated on loop until it gets annoying or boring to you and try to use it no more than half the time it took to get boring for you. If you don't wanna use that then also repeating something similar more than 3 times depending on the complexity is usually a bad thing.

Anyway, this is 4-star standard as far as I'm concerned, I just took it down half a star for the repetitiveness. You must remember that your listeners are likely to hear it more than once, so repetitiveness must be used wisely. I wouldn't usually take half a star off for repetitiveness, but this is only 2 minutes long; so while what's there's good, it shows you really could've done more than what is here. Anyway, got my eye on you now, you look like you wanna get scouted so you can get your music on GD just like I did; and it looks like you might be good enough to deserve it... ;)

DJKU responds:

Do you wanna know the weird thing? This was made in FLS: Mobile :p

[VHS intro]

Dramatic and atmospheric, nice bassline, could do with some more variation. One sound I did like in particular was the bitcrushed "yaiy" kinda sound, I've heard it before, but here it seems especially loose, interesting and clean...

AliceMako responds:

It could but then it wouldn't be background music for an intro/intermission anymore i think :3

And funny you should mention, i've had this downsampler for years like it was one of the first couple of things i got after scoring a better "go to" compressor and limiter for my mastering chain and incidentally the first time in years i've used it modulated this blatantly.

Like normally speaking i'll just leave it passive on something set to very subtle in order to warm a sound up a bit or make it less obviously digital sounding etc.

[8-bit Battle/Boss theme (Slightly modernized)]

Just when I thought I was getting good at making 8-Bit music... =/ Well anyway, this pretty much serves its purpose for a soundtrack perfectly... A little too slow of a beginning, but it got its atmosphere down. A problem I see a lot with 8-bit music is that people don't often make their drops hard-hitting with powerful chords and snares, I think this is why Sky Summit is my best 8-bit themed song yet (In the opinion of me and my friends) They often fit the mood and sound nice, but don't really feel all too epic. Here I was expecting the same since it was slow, but got the mood down great, which most people who make that mistake do; but then the heavenly battle theme came blasting out powerfully and I was sold! You've done by having high release times and loud volume with the leading instrument while the background instruments sporadically try to fill the gaps!

JBeat2k9 responds:

Holy crap dude thank you so, so much!

I just went to check out your channel, and if anybody else here loves 8-bit, SERIOUSLY loyally retro sounding music, get your ass over there immediately!

Sky summit is awesome, but I LOVE the second battle theme for Card Battles of Carded Cardiness. Please keep up the awesome work, an d don't worry about not being trained in music theory! I'm self taught, too, and trust me, if I can bloody do it, so can you!

Thanks for the 4.5/5! :D

[Bells party]

This sounds real nice, Nice flow to it, nice percussion. Amazing atmosphere at the beginning and during the drop to distinguish it from the breaks. I only have 3 problems with this...

1. Sometimes the notes sound a bit... Off. It mostly works well, but sometimes the notes just don't sound right... Not a big issue.

2. There's a little too much detune on the bell, it's not jarring, but it's uncomfortable. Just a small thing again

3. This doesn't sound finished, don't get me wrong, what's there is great. Problem is, there just simply isn't a whole lot going on. There's only 3 tracks playing if I'm hearing right, although that doesn't mean it's bad, it does make it feel... Lacking...

Anyway, good luck with your FLS.

IyuriI responds:

Ok :D thanks)

[Summer Day]

I'll keep this brief, here my thoughts are more or less the same as with blue skies, but there's a couple other things that drag it down a star...

1. The beginning does not fit the mood of the rest of the song, it isn't a bad start, it just doesn't sound much like a song called "Summer Day"

2. A little too much of this song is uplifters, (by uplifters I mean transitional devices, stuff that's supposed to build up to a drop) they don't sound bad, but they're not supposed to take up much of a song and about half of this song has uplifters! Again, just like the volume jumping problem from Blue Skies, it's not jarring; but it's noticeable. It won't ruin the song, but it does distract me from it. I understand this is quite a short piece and I imagine that's the problem, so I would recommend in future to either cut down on the uplifters, or lengthen the piece to spread them out.

3. The drop, I'm sorry, but this is where everything just fell apart! Luckily it's short, but everything that is added to the mix at the drop ruins it... You seem to be pretty harsh on yourself with the detune, all of your songs except your second one are pretty good at balancing it and even your second one wasn't so bad, but here... It's fine until the drop, but then it just sounds like a mess of frequencies! It's not all too unpleasant, but it does take the flow and excitement out of the song, and disappoints after all the buildup.

That third reason's the real kicker, I would've still given this 4 or maybe 4.5 stars if the drop was fine, but it knocked you down to 3.5. I know I said I'd be quick, but when I start on one of my tangents, nothing can stop me...

Score: 73/100

P.S. 30-40 MINUTES!? That's believable, but still pretty damn fast for such nice sounding synths!

Tomodachi999 responds:

Thanks soo much for the feedback!

[Blue Skies]

Jesus, how do you keep doing this? You've only made 3 songs and all of them are better than my what? 50 or something... It's just unbelievable how quickly you've sprung up... As for the music itself, for once I didn't have high expectations coming in! After hearing what you could do my expectations were pretty high, but then I see you've departed from dubstep and see the title is Blue Skies. Dance is usually a pretty predictable generic genre if you ask me, and the title didn't really grab me, so I was afraid this would be boring and generic... BY GOD WAS I WRONG! Despite departing from dubstep it still has an imprint on your music, you seem to have stayed true to the heavy detune and distortion of it, which makes this unique and interesting. It's just simply smooth, with a nice atmosphere and nice synths. There are only 2 problems here...
1. Sometimes the music moves too suddenly, it flows, but sometimes from quiet solos it jumps straight to harsh, loud synths. Not jarring, but noticeable.
2. It is overall unique, but it feels like it could've been a little more, maybe a little longer? As close as this is to 5 stars, while pretty much flawless, it just doesn't sound like 5 star material...

I'd still say your first was your best, but this is your 2nd best in my eyes.

Tomodachi999 responds:

Ayy

[-TD- This Money (Dubstep 2016)]

This is real good, got some real atmospheric synths going on here. I like it, but I have 1 complaint. I feel like this song would sound better if it was compressed, pacing wise, not mastering wise. I feel like if more had happened, albeit in a shorter time this would've been a more exciting track. What's there is good though, and especially that weird "ayaiyai" flanged (I think) wobble at 1:52, though that did sound a bit out of place.

Also, I think you're already scouted! XD

Triented responds:

I AM SO GLAD SOMEONE FELL FOR DAT XD

I rly appreciate your review. I don't get that many!