Free2Play's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[-+[Scarborough Fair]+-]

Curse you amazing artists that I bump into whilst trying to help some noobs learn a thing or two! This is fantastic! your voice is beautiful! I am envious of your talent!

Keep making music though, its stellar.

LadyArsenic responds:

Aww thank you! :'> I'm so glad you were able to enjoy it this much! I will continue to do my best, as it is what I live for.
Thanks again! <3

[StarDrive]

I'm glad you put that part of this was based on Luigi's Ballad cause I noticed immediately lol.

But you picked like the coolest guys to base your music on they rock lol. I actually sing that part all the time.

If I were to make a complaint though, it'd be that even though the mixing is good, it feels a little bass heavy. There's not enough highs either. With more highs and a bit less bass it'd sound less cloudy and more UMPHY.

Keep making music dude!

Geoplex responds:

Thanks man! I did focus harder on the bass here, and I limited myself on the highs because I've found a lot of my previous works have been quite.. piercing. Especially Solar Rain, if you know that one.

[Initia]

Okay so I don't fully want to give this a 5, and truly I wanted to rate it a 4, but this song works well enough in your writing that I like it.

But dude your mixing is bad. To really hit top notch you've gotta fix the overly loud mixing. I think your songs may sound way better just from turning down everything A LOT.

While you get a cool ambient sound from the pad strings, the lead violin sounds like garbage. It's too loud and mixed really high to where its almost painful.

The piano is also not very convicing to me, it needs more reverb or something to make the fakeness of the samples less prevalent.

I gave this song a 5/4 soley because I like your writing, it's very good. I enjoy the chords and melodies very much.

But the mixing is really bad, very very bad. If you don't get that fixed it could really overshadow how good your writing is like it almost did here.

You should check out my friend who is also on bandcamp named Taylor Mefford. If you search him and listen to his album "An Experiment with an Air Pump", you can listen to a really well mixed classical album composed entirely of free instruments from the internet.

Keep making music dude!

Norzman5 responds:

I'll try to see what I can do about the mixing. Sometimes it's hard because I don't know what it's going to sound like on other people's speakers since not everyone has the same setup as me so I'm still trying to figure out how to get it right. I can turn down the violin easily so I'll probably change that.

Thank you for you input though, I really appreciated it.

Update: I tried tweaking it a bit and have uploaded a new version

[Musical Theater]

Dangit dude, even more stuff I can't say too much about besides compliments.

I really like your use of the lfoish bass. You also always have lots of little things going on, I think that is what stops your music from sounding too stale or boring. You fill the soundscape in a nice way.

I think I could say the beaty break that comes in right at the beginning and repeats a few times later could have more umph. The melodic parts are really good, but the first part sounds like its trying to set a powerful heavy tone before going into the melodic part. It's like something out of Skullgirls in my head.

Keep making music dude!

jawalker213 responds:

Thank u very much for your input and ideas, Inferno, I definitely agree with the break idea.. that's a great area to work on in the future! Looking forward to ur next track!

[Mobying]

This is pretty sweet dude! I really like how you used very simple synths with some effects to make a nice relaxing soundscape.

Usually I rag on the slower pace of some ambient songs, but you made the slower progression work in this case. It's like the pace and the slow changes are interesting enough to keep you listening. You add little things here and there to, like I noticed a few interesting note changes from like :45-1:15 and stuff.

The synth panned right would do some more improvised stuff which really helps it feel not stale.

If I were to make a complaint there's like 2 things. One is that the center synth that plays what I think is the melody is sort of overtaken by the two left and right synths. It would help you get that "sing-along" feeling, where you know part of the song just from one listen and you can expect it while the song progresses. It's an anchor you can know.

The 2nd is that there's something going on really deep in the basses, maybe I just noticed with my headphones, but I thought someone was knocking at my door when the song really got going. Is there like a deep sub sound down there? It's not really a kick because it doesn't match it. Maybe someone is knocking at my door?

Lol, thanks a lot for shouting me out, I'm honored. I'm glad you like my advice, admittedly though I'm not that skilled. I lack a lot of control. What really can help is going to the review for review thread and getting reviews there. Lots of them are much more detailed than random passerbys.

Thanks, please keep making music dude!

jawalker213 responds:

ok, the improvised stuff idea is excellent and I think more stuff could include improvised lines.. so much of things are loops that it's a change worth risking! This track wasn't really mixed that well, but the key things you pointed out are exactly the reason I like to post unfinished stuff, it gives me an idea of where to focus the mixing. For this track I got: improve panning to put one synth in the "limelight", focus on cleaner sub frequencies. Great advice, thanks a lot!

[3. In A Tired Heap]

Stellar voice acting!

It's very hard to pull off drama like this, and the fx touches were really nice.

The poem was pretty sweet too!

I hope someone else reviews this track who knows a bit more about voice acting and poems lol. But I'll go ahead and scout you at least.

entertheegg responds:

Yeah, she did a really good job! Thanks for the review and scout

[Children of Saturn]

Sweet dude! I really like your use of different synths to capture the atmosphere. That's one thing I'm not particularly good at.

If I were to make any compliant it'd be that the 2nd half is not varied enough for it to really wow you by the end. It's a bit recycled by that point. Other than that I love it!

JoshuaHughes responds:

Thanks for the review! These are really helping me get a lot better a lot faster. Gotcha on the 2nd half. I'll make a mental note of it.

[Only The Beginning (Extended)]

Saw you on the forums and was like "I guess I'll check out his stuff" lol

Man you're way better than me, there's not much that I can say. You're stuff if very creative and breaks the mold a little bit without being super alienating.

I like all of it. Very cool stuff.

Stuff that makes me jealous lol.

Back-From-Purgatory responds:

Thanks, glad you like it.

[Dance of the Groovy Dragon]

Dang dude you're like the 5th song today that's actually pretty good that i've reviewed lol.

Nice use of the cloud pad wav by the way lol.

The only thing I can say is that maybe you should've changed up the chord progression or instrumentation more at the 3rd minute. Also changing the beat to halftime at some point may have helped spice it up.

I guess I would've liked to hear it build up to a bit more full chorus somewhere. With a few more instruments, or another synth taking the melody. You know more stuff.

Keep making music dude!

VideoGameManiac responds:

Thank you for the kind review!
Im actually not a fan of "adding more" since I like to keep my tracks as simple as possible but theres always room for improvement of course and I appreciate your ideas! :D

[Refresh your Taste]

If you just condensed this song to like 3 minutes, did that synth solo in the 5th minute in like the 3rd and then ended it, I would've loved it. I probably would've given it a 5 lol.

This is better than your other stuff, but I'm still not a fan of how you just had it get louder and louder and more distored for like 5 minutes after the beginning and didn't change anything at all lol. Come on man just one chord change, ONE would make me love it lol.

Maybe its just your style, but I don't have any friends who would like this kind of dark distorted techno in this way.

But keep making music dude! This is an improvement to me!

SlaughterClub responds:

thanks for review i.. would of made it a bit shorter.... if it was it was made with software but the tune was play & recorded live ...so it is easy to lose track of time & yeah this is a bit louder then my other stuff i had the compressor turned up all the way .. its not meant to be a master piece just a fun track for all the family ;;-)))