siteml's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[Lessie]

This is really nice, though I found the slow-attack effect on the guitar starting at about 1:15 in somewhat distracting/overbearing especially at times. Otherwise hats off, a great chilling out piece!

RaceTTar responds:

Thanks man. There goes my "remastering" lol! I think I fixed it now. Thanks again for the note :D

[Hero(WIP/Preview)]

This is pretty lush, though I wish there was more and it had some sort of continuation to the theme! Really good work otherwise, very solid!

[ManMade Catastrophe]

While the snares are something to learn from, as they are really nice, even the rhythmic setup, I really felt there ought to be some kind of chord or key change several times in the piece to keep the tension in some sort of progression. The low strings merely reach for something then go back down to the baseline of key/chord. You do try to do something at the end of the loop, but it's a bit late imho. For the most part it feels like the wheels are spinning but not getting anywhere :( I understand there has to be an element of tension, but you can do that while having a subtle chord progression going. Since otherwise in my mind you've nailed it, 4/5

MindlessVandalism responds:

THIS is the comment structure I was looking for!! I need people to tell me what I'm doing wrong, there's always some room to improve.
Thank you!

[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