siteml's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tracing Stars (Original Mix)]

Well, congratulations, at 1:20 I went "Jesus, that's immersive". 3 minutes in, I'm still loving it. Here's the kicker, though - I'm not a fan of most trance music due to the repetitive nature of it. You seem to introduce enough variety to stave off my cringe at repetitiveness - or rather, there's no excessive repetition I can detect (or have my tastes changed?). In fact, are you sure this is really trance? OK, kidding on that last one. But seriously, I usually can't listen through an entire trance piece because the repetitiveness gets to me, and here I am, listening to silence now cause the piece has finished. My only gripe would be what sounds like cello - it sounds somewhat unnatural at a few points, either because it comes from a MIDI soundbank or it's just a limit to what you had to work with. This is mostly why I went with 4.5 and not 5 stars. Mixing acoustic and electronic is tough to begin with, however, so again, hats off to you. Keep up the good work!

[Nii San (Brother)]

Very well done. It kind of reminds me of Avatar - The Last Airbender's soundtrack in both instrument choice and the atmosphere it induces. Pleasant to listen to, not overcrowded with instruments and has proper flow. I'm sure I could learn a thing a two from this :) Hats off.

[Adventure on a Horse 2]

Pardon my rant in advance. Each and every new melodic line/instrument that you introduce gets louder and louder and towards the end drowns out everything else (and does so unevenly). The reverb doesn't help, as it muddles things up - sometimes that's the desired effect and works well, but not here. The piece sounds fine until the second set of string and brass kick in - that's when it starts to muddle bad. I'd use the mixer a little more - try bringing levels of all the instruments down in there and notch off some of that reverb - it should help clear things up a little. I listened to the original piece to see if it suffers from the same: yes and no. It's got slightly excessive reverb, too, imho, but it works better because the instruments aren't drowning each other out nearly as much. Another way you can help clear it up is by simply reducing the number of instruments still playing in the background as you introduce new ones - then the new ones don't have to be as loud to get through. Don't be afraid of silence, by the way - you should have some silent or quiet moments in a piece to contrast the loud ones. And no worries, I've done the same mistakes before, and learned the hard way. Hope this helps :)

[Vacation - Mr. Puff]

I swear you have a way with the guitar, not bad on the piano, too :D The bass line is spot on as well - as well as the middle section of toned down marimba and piano, very well done overall.

[Poizone Symphony]

There's a nice feel to this, with a badass sort of atmosphere, but the chord progression keeps throwing me off, and that's distracting from what this could be. Also, at times it builds tension, but then it randomly releases it at unexpected times. Especially around 1:55. It almost goes into some sort of interlude, but then continues on as if nothing ever happened. If this had a proper flow, I would love to give it 5/5. As a tip, try to think about each element leading into the next, rather than sections secluded from each other. Up to about 0:40 this had my head bopping, then the percussion came in and I was wondering where it would go. The melody past that seems to keep on the anxiety that never seems to resolve. As I mentioned at 1:55 would have probably been the golden opportunity for a climax/resolution to follow up on later. On the whole, this is good, but leaves me oh so unsatisfied with where it goes, thus the 3/5