Kwing's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Last Defense - Jessie Yun [NGUAC]]

"Took about 4-5 hours to create this track."

... WHAT?

This sounds outstanding. Good synergy between instruments, fast-paced, dramatic, and pretty much anything you could want from this type of song. Very minor nitpicks would be that the same core melody is used from start to finish, though the layering hides the repetition extremely well. Also, the high-pitched chirping sound (can be heard at 0:37 as well as throughout other parts of the song) is just incredibly bizarre and doesn't fit with the rest of the piece.

JessieYun responds:

Hello Kwing,
Thanks a lot for the constructive comment. I'll make sure to give more variations and better instrument choices in the future!

[The Endless Struggle (NGUAC 2018)]

I like what you're trying to do here, but somehow the impact doesn't seem to be getting across. The simple melody that the violin plays throughout most of the track is probably the biggest offender - some variation would have sounded nice, and also more short, stabby notes rather than the long, sustained ones you used would have given this piece more of a punch. The drums aren't bad, but for this really high energy moments (1:53, 3:00) you should have some deep, explosive drums that the listener will feel through their whole body. Beyond all of that, this is a good cinematic piece with a lot of energy, but the biggest drag for me was again having that one violin track carrying the same melody through the whole song.

FateModified responds:

Hi, thanks for the review! I just got the violin VST a couple weeks ago and so I'm still learning how to use it properly to get the best sound. I wasn't too sure myself about how the violin sounded in the first half of the song, but I kind of ran out of time to figure out how to make it better. I just knew I wanted violin in this piece. I'll get better with it in my future songs.

One of the last things I tried to do was to change the legato orchestral notes to short, stabby notes just as you said at certain places, but at that point my project was using way to much RAM and would not play properly and even crashed. So I gave up at that point and went with the last bounce I made from it. It's unfortunate, I'll have to manage my computer memory better when using Albion One and the Joshua Bell Violin VST's since they are memory hogs.

I spent quite a bit of time to get the drums sounding the way they did. My previous attempts were not cutting through the mix when the orchestra was at it's loudest. I also realized that they didn't have as big an impact at the points you mentioned, but again my computer would not cooperate with me at that point due to memory limitations I guess.

Know anyone who might want to buy me a new computer by any chance? Just kidding. I'm gonna have to save for a better one. My current mac is 8 years old, lol.

Thanks again for the review, and I'll definitely keep in mind what you mentioned for my future projects! :)

[A Summer's Dream]

The piano. Wow. Not sure there's much I can say about it that will do it justice so I'll just say the playing is outstanding. Though I'm almost positive I've heard the exact melody at 3:04 in some anime. Even if I haven't, it - along with some less serious offenders - is fairly generic in composition.

The singing is somewhat hit or miss. I like that you're not belting - you have a good mix of being soft and resonant, the harmonizations sound excellent, just the right amount of vibrato, but you sing a bit flat at times and hearing you draw in breath is distracting at certain points. There are also a couple points (not consistently) where I can hear some vocal tension that makes you sound a tiny bit strained.

I don't want to say much on lyrics - years of rapping have made me obsessively picky about rhyme schemes and complexity, and without having a firm grasp on what this song is really about I think it's fair for me to try and point you in one direction or another.

Taken as a whole, this is a really pretty piece. Nothing about it strikes me as really groundbreaking, but there's an emotional depth to it that's very alluring. A few quirks with the vocals broke my immersion once or twice but this was genuinely a great listen.

etherealwinds responds:

Thank you very much for your review! :) yeah the part at 3:04 isn't exactly a groundbreaking melody, but it fit the part nicely! It's probably in quite a few songs; not any that I can pick out off the top of my head though. I'm glad you liked the piano!

I do like to minimise the gain on the individual breaths by about -6db and often-times I'll remove the breaths completely from harmonies so that they don't clash with each other - I don't like to remove them completely though as the vocals would sound super unnatural. ^^

I'm happy you enjoyed it for the most part!

[Summer Night]

The first half of this works as an ambient piece. The second, not so much. I really like the slow building intro. The piano melody at 0:55 struck me as rather simplistic and boring, and I feel like a few alterations to the chords would have made the whole piece a lot better. The guitar outro was really nice, but with all other layers of the track fading away, it felt like a complete non-sequitur, especially since that instrument isn't heard until the last 1/4 of the song.

EdKempeper responds:

Hi !
Thank you very much for this very detailed review.
Yeah, there's a problem with the last part of the track. There's a lot of problems with this track.
I had some ideas, but with my "tools", it was hard to make them real...
I chose this song for the KO round because it was different from my other tracks. I'll try new things, new VST and new way of composing and mixing for the next ones.
Thanks again for your review.
Ed

[The Broodmother]

It sucks to be harsh here because I really like the composition, but the audio quality just isn't that great and it really brings the piece down. The lack of dynamics also make this piece sound somewhat stiff and get in the way of what should be a suspenseful or climactic piece. Adding a bit of reverb on the percussion (maybe using deeper sounding drums, too) and playing with the choir fading in would have made the buildup feel a lot more intense. With that out of the way, there's a lot you did RIGHT. Subtract my gripes with the mixing and mastering and this is a really exciting and engaging piece.

Cethic responds:

I'll be honest, I didn't give this version a proper mix or master because I had other things to attend to that were more important haha.

[Until Then]

This is interesting, for sure. It's hip hop, but you've got melodies that span the whole track and prevent this from being one big sound loop. In that sense, this really is a fusion of jazz and hip hop, rather than hip hop sampling jazz. The thing that annoyed me a bit and got redundant fast was the rhythm (or lack thereof) of the piano chords. It's clear you put the most forethought into the saxophone, to the detriment of the other instruments (this is fine for drums since it is hip hop, but really shows with the same few chords over and over.)

acxle responds:

thanks for the notice!

[Palace of Tales and Memories]

While the sound quality, synergy between instruments, relaxing tone, etc. is all on point, the actual composition here is very simplistic. There's a LOT of stepwise motion and not a whole lot of skips, making some parts of the song sound almost like glorified scales. That said, I really dig the switch to 3/4 at 2:17.

350teric responds:

Thank you for the thorough review. The song is evidently simple (I would say minimal) yes, but with some concrete points to it. Point one - the song is a ballad developing into an anthem, (dedicated to a concrete individual) it contains personal themes and qualities that requires simplicity. Point two - simple things have a certain strength and firmness, the song aims to be clean and effortless (I made it in a day). Finally, point three - there are some serious stylistic decorations in the lead guitar melody and the accompanying chords are not that simple if you listen carefully. (Loved your response) Thanks again! :)

[Sodium]

As others have said, the drops are really underwhelming. But with that aside, the rest of this sounds kind of nice. The different tracks work well together and I generally liked the transitions. Melodically there's stuff to build anticipation, but you should really be using different sounds (and sound levels) to match the phrasing with the proper intensity so we can really feel the impact.

Walpang responds:

Thanks for the tip!

[Random Trap Track]

I would switch the genre to hip hop for sure. This is a cool little piece. I like the chill tone a lot. I didn't like the drum samples very much, but aside from that this was a really fun listen. You said it's only 7 tracks but I feel like each one served its purpose quite well.

Andethy responds:

thanks :D glad you liked

[Perception]

There's a bit of variation here, but it seems kind of boring. The piano/violin is a neat combo but it becomes repetitive.

TheB34R responds:

Thanks for the feedback, I'll actually looking at remaking this track to be better