Kwing's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fore]

The main melody is good and catchy, though I think the level of repetition brought this down a bit (in some ways it sounds more like hip hop than dubstep.) Something like this could have benefited from theme and variation, but this is closer to theme and sound filters, with a few wub sounds and drops for the sake of the genre. Introducing a B section at 1:30 would have been a good start at keeping this fresh. There's a seed of a great song here, but most of what's built on that one melody is smoke and mirrors rather than substance.

[Sea of Love Tears 「恋水の海」]

I really love the soundscape. The piano and intro are very pretty, though the crescendo at 1:00 is somewhat dampened by the repetition and an overall lack of impact. My overall impression is consistent with you saying you wanted to mess around with it but ran out of time - 1:00 and 1:55 are the only high-energy parts of the song, and based on the structure it feels like the quiet bits are meant to bring these sections into focus, but the end result feels like a beautiful pedestal with a nothing burger on top of it, which is really a shame because I feel like some relatively minor changes could make this outstanding.

Tennon responds:

Yeah you are pretty right about the lack of time. It usually takes me at least another week after I finish a song to improve it to the maximum.

[Pretentious]

Some really nice grunge singing here. It's so common to have something wrong with either the voice or the mixing, but you pulled this off really nice and it makes this sound really polished. The instruments are a bit more modest - the guitar and bass don't really harmonize that well, which isn't to say they sound awkward, but rather they just aren't attention-grabbing or groovy. The solo at the end also struck me as quite boring.

I appreciate that the lyrics have a positive message, but they ultimately don't say anything that hasn't already been said many times.

dude2312 responds:

Kwing, thanks for reviewing my song. This was fast!

I appreciate both good and bad feedback. Once again, thanks ever so much!

[Sugar High]

Kind of interesting seeing this after a bunch of people went for the epic orchestral approach for the finals. The lightheartedness is effective.

The "uhn tiss" is slightly cliche but most everything else feels pretty fresh and original, and above all the music has direction and moves forward. The biggest thing harming this piece is that the synth doesn't service the upbeat mood as much as it could. Something a bit quieter (bells, xylophone) would have made for a more heartfelt piece, whereas the tone here seems caught between dance music and something more relaxing.

ColinMuir responds:

Thanks for the review, i see how you could want bells, personally, i do that a lot often though haha. :D

[Niko - Out Of Control]

I'm digging the melodies. Interestingly enough, the main melody sounds a bit jaunty, like it might have been in a pirate movie were it played on a different instrument. Generally speaking the sounds are nice and punchy, though sometimes the way you use the samples can become too repetitive (likewise, that main melody keeps going for nearly six minutes... really dude?) The whole song would probably feel more comfortable if it were shorter.

[Miston Music - Bombs All Over The Place]

The main drum beat that plays throughout the song is overpowering and seriously hampers everything else you're trying to do. The synth is doing some interesting stuff in the background, but it's really hard to hear when it's so toned down. Moreover, what can be heard doesn't seem to have any general direction in which it's progressing. You've got a loud, punchy beat but not much else.

Miston responds:

Thank you for your comment.

[Chain Reactions]

I remember judging you in the tryout round and the quality difference between that song (which wasn't bad) and this is just astounding. I'm really glad I have a big set of speakers and subwoofer to blast this on, because I think this would sound a lot weaker coming from any small sound system (I think this might have been the case with Likwify.)

Anywho, this sounds nuts. The percussion takes center stage, but the strings have such perfect discordant melodies, and the shifting time signatures really nail the sense of uneasiness right on the head. The quiet parts actually feel like they belong, but most importantly the suspense here is off the charts and this is really a rollercoaster ride from start to finish. The only flaw I can think of right now is that some of the melodies at the end sound a bit stiff. A bit of swing might have made them sound slightly more organic.

Outstanding job though.

[Freeing The Lunatic]

Whew, the reverb on those drums is raw as fuck. There's a ton of suspense here and I love it.

What I don't love is that the suspense just tapers off and fizzles. From a conceptual standpoint, the structure of this song makes absolutely zero sense to me. Just looking at the waveform is enough to make someone wonder "what the hell is this?" because you've basically heard the most intense part of the song by the time you've hit the 10 second mark!

So what's the solution? Take that calm bit at 0:43 - 1:24 and slap it on the front of your song, push that beginning part back, tie it with a transition, and if you want to get fancy, make a big climactic ending.

This has a lot of potential. Shame it doesn't sound finished.

Baumarius responds:

I agree that it may have been rushed a bit, and I will try to rework this so it has a better structure before releasing it with the album. Thanks for the review!

[So Lit]

Between the autotune, trap snares, and topics (drugs, alcohol, sex, partying) it's really hard to see anything here other than a forgettable flavor of the week. To be candid, there are plenty of performers (I hesitate to use the word artist here) that achieve great levels of success using this style, and if I can applaud you for anything it's the precision and fidelity with which you emulate this style. However, other judges have specifically discouraged trying to score submissions based on some guess about how other listeners receive it, so I'm sticking to my guns and giving this the score I think it deserves (then again, maybe someone will claim bias and this review will bite me in the ass, who knows? Either way someone is going to call me a bad judge.)

Anyway, I should probably get into the specifics of what this song is missing. Dissecting this lyrically is the easiest, so I'll start with that. The hook (die/high/by right now) could be considered catchy but is simple and ultimately says too little to bear repeating. Bottle in my hand/I ain't got no plans/sick of clocking in/ass up in that fast(?) is another pretty good example of crippling simplicity. In this case you're really rhyming one syllable words, plus hand/in is a pretty generous slant rhyme. Ditto for time/young/fun. Beyond the rhymes themselves, the lack of wordplay and metaphor also make this track pretty forgettable. I could keep going but I think it would be excessive at this point.

So what about flow and delivery? Well, you're on beat and on key (not that you would be flat or sharp when using autotune...) so the overall result sounds clean, but your delivery doesn't really accentuate what you're saying. Perhaps this is by design, since you don't have any standout "oh shit" lines to draw attention to in the first place. The only possible use I can see for using this style is if you want people to let the music wash over them as background noise without listening consciously, which unfortunately I can't do since I'm being asked to judge this critically.

Last is the beat. Again, the production is clean. In particular, the synth is really tasteful, though the synth and percussion make it pretty simple and minimalistic. This isn't bad on its own, but like all hip hop it really puts pressure on the rapping.

So to summarize, the instrumental here is quite nice (provided you like the samples that were used) and the vocals sound clean. In short, it sounds like this song achieved what it was meant to be. The fatal flaw being that you could (and should) have aimed a lot higher.

Kurtiskong responds:

This is obviously a biased review but hey we all have music taste and this one is obviously not yours. If you listen to any current day rap music this is basically in that realm heavily. Also simplicity is key to make it anywhere since most of the rap “fans” are pretty brainless and don’t care for meaningful rap anymore, that style came and went in the early 2010s. Also if you listened to all 3 of our submissions in order you must have missed the true meaning of each song being the attempt, rise, and possibly winning aspect of each individualy in that order. Which means everything used in the songs were metaphors for how it feels to move through the ranking of a contest. But thank you for the review, I appreciate criticism.

[illbefine]

Tough break, R&B is one of those genres that's actively difficult for me to listen to.

Where to start? The instrumental really isn't doing it for me. The sounds feel canned and don't resonate at all. I'm pretty sure this is part of the R&B aesthetic so I guess I can't go in on you too hard for that. But overall the different layers just feel kind of uninspired. At best you could call them relaxing, but the timbre is a little too bright and cheery for that.

Vocals just sound weird to me, partly because I just don't listen to this kind of music and partly because I've never heard it come from a white dude. It's not bad, and the effects you mixed it with do make it blend with the instrumental, but it's not a groundbreaking performance. Nothing lyrically profound seems to be going on either, but I do like the internal rhymes on the first line (eyes closed/tight so/light won't.) It's a shame you use so many simple and slant rhymes for the rest of the song because you set the bar pretty high there.

icantpronouncethis responds:

Thank you for the critiques. This was my first-attempt to work with "normal" vocals and I had a pretty difficult time with it. I just gotta learn from my mistakes, and also practice more. Maybe if I had a clearer vision of where I was taking this piece might have helped me a bit more. Your comment on lyrics got me thinking about how I should be arranging them. I only focused on end rhyming, didn't even think about the internal rhymes. For sure that would've been fun area to venture.