Kwing's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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

[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.

[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.

[To The Clouds]

The wind instruments sound amazing here (especially at 1:02) and I'm really digging the trills. Vocals also sound great - together they produce a really tribal sound. If there's any critique I can make here it's that it sounds like the song is building up to something big, whether it's louder or faster or both. This isn't bad in and of itself, except that the listener never really gets that payoff (and I was REALLY looking forward for the drums to kick in the door, guns blazing and start pounding away.)

Overall outstanding piece, but doesn't really resolve.

etherealwinds responds:

Hey Kwing, thanks for the review!
Now that I've not been listening to the track non-stop while working on the track all last evening, I'd be inclined to agree with you. This obviously isn't a pure orchestral track, but it's the most I've worked with orchestral elements before and having an awareness of exactly how far I should push the climax for it to give you that really satisfying feeling is a skill I shall be actively practising. I was always a bit afraid of the intricacies of orchestral composition but I think it's something I could definitely try my hand at.

Thank you for the solid advice! I'll definitely be going back to this track and building on it even further (if my poor laptop will allow me to open the FL studio project anymore!) :D

[Emotion Creator]

Metal is my thing but synth isn't. Hopefully those biases cancel out and I'll give a good vote.

First off all, the fake 7/8 riff (count 7 then count 9) does a phenomenal job of building tension. I'm sure you just wrote it as 4/4, but it's pulled off very convincingly to great a galloping feel, while the "real" 4/4 signature keeps things feeling nice and smooth. Guitar solo is also a big plus.

The main negative? Repetition. You seem to know which melody is the most compelling because you reuse it an awful lot. Which is nice and dandy, except that it does too much work in carrying the piece. Some of your other sections just aren't that interesting, but continually going back to the same few measures prevents the song from really progressing.

MisledSatellite responds:

Thank you for the review)

[Forever Jazz]

This is MIDI music???

There is some seriously incredible composition going on here. So many musicians on this site neglect the instruments you're working with, but you really went above and beyond to include complex solos and have your different instruments synergize really, REALLY well. The drums at 0:56 - 1:17 are INSANE.

As far as criticism, I think you've hit a ceiling with respect to how far MIDI music can take you. The quality isn't bad, but for the level at which you're composing it's a pretty clear straggler. I also noticed some jazz cliches or weird transitions at 0:35, 2:00, and 2:35. Very minor gripes.

AzulJazz responds:

thank you so much friend!!

[Dragon Slayer]

Interesting listen. I like the mood, but some of the compositional elements make the tone feel somewhat inconsistent (is this supposed to be in major or minor key??) What I noticed a lot were a lot of weird and unpredictable twists in the melodies, which is great, but would feel more at home if there were some more predictable variants and the riffs you currently have were your B sections instead. What you have now seems like it's a confused half-breed of power metal and progressive, which isn't bad except that some (not all) parts feel a little awkward and your transitions aren't great. The quiet chugging sections also feel kind of pointless - I don't feel like they're really building to the more energetic parts.

Hope this isn't too critical of a review - I actually really liked this piece (2:55 - 3:38 sounded more like a jam session than a song but holy shit it sounds amazing.) There's just a couple hiccups here and there standing in the way of this being outstanding.

350teric responds:

The compositional approach is instinctual rather than reasonable. Therefore at some points it follows some rules and in other it does not. The rules in composition are made subjectively by the author. So, I hope this gives an answers to the mentioned unjustified discrepancies - "hiccups" with the conventional approach. Thank you for the review! :)