johnfn's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Industrial Nightmare Demo]

Very nice. The pads from :30-1:00 (and again at 1:15) were my favorite part. The beat is fantastic - it's so strong. I don't know what else to ask of you... except maybe a melody heheheh.

anthonyragus responds:

Thanks! Yeah there will definitely be more variety and melody in the full song.

[Darkish]

Dark*ish*? More like dark*est* :p

This is really cool. I'm not sure why you tossed it under misc, it sounds very industrial. I was hoping the string would drop like 6 down and hit a low note, it would make this song pure evil. But yeah this is very cool.

DESHIEL responds:

If you want to hear that string drop you'd have to teach me how to do it xD

[Loop of voice]

This is so cool. Dude you have to develop this idea more. I love it. The drums are disturbingly organic. But everything else is great.

VladNS responds:

thanks. I will think about it

[Takamina]

Beautiful!

That chord change that we close out on sounds a lot like Chrono Trigger, if you ever played. It's sweet.

I dunno exactly what else to say since Classical isn't really my strong suit. I feel like some of your melodies are stronger than others. The opening is really nice and the final 10-20 second phrase we close out on is pretty too. Maybe you should cut out the middle?

KrrMaim responds:

I don't know much about classical either. I just make music stuff then I am told to put it in a genre.

I'm out of town right now but when I get home i'll expand on this idea. Maybe i'll completely change the mood :] it will be fun to do.

[=(Search For Happiness)=]

Seeing this song and songs like this with scores in the 2-3 range flat out depresses me. Seriously? This is 2.74 star material right here? Honestly who thought that? Did they even listen to the whole thing? Was it just 0 bombed? Does Tom Fulp still not care at all about the audio portal (even though if you look at the numbers it's going to overtake the flash portal in raw submission count in a year or two max)?

Sigh. We all know that NG is a terrible place to get decent remarks on audio. I'm hardly saying anything new here. So let's just talk about the song.

It kind of blows my mind that you say you were lazy on this one. Lazy on a 7 minute song, seriously? Personally, if I go longer than 2 minutes on a song I am PUSHING MY ABILITIES TO THE LIMIT. What do you DO for 7 minutes? How do you not hate it by the end? And yeah I'm really impressed by this. It manages to be varied and interesting throughout it's length. SHEER MAGIC.

But the thing about this song. The real important thing. The lead melody needs work. The one the whole song is structured around. Someone had to tell you. It's good right now. It's halfway to a good lead but it's not quite there. It's not quite catchy enough, not quite interesting or unique enough. It has to have MORE somehow. I dunno how. I'm more of a noob at this stuff than you are.

So my suggestion would be to gut this song and put a better melody in. Everything else is great - the production, the mixing. So that's it really.

ArcaneSoul responds:

rlly? I kind of like the melody :3

The lead though i can agree needs TONS of work. I was trying to experiment with different leads though since i use the same ones too much.

[Run Around]

This is really cool. Great loop for a menu. The only thing I'd ask for is a little more melodic interest from the synths that start at :23. I think a more mysterious feeling chord progression would really fit in here well. Other than that, very cool. Nice work.

[Hellbound]

This is really cool. I can't think of any specific criticisms. If pressed, I might ask you to diversify your melody some, but I'd feel bad while doing so (the song is only 0:27, I mean come on).

There are a lot of really nice details to your sound here, like that weird high pitched scrape I hear every now and then. Great drum work. Good stuff.

I would really love to hear this expanded into a song.

BTW - saw this song in the audio advertisements page. If you could send some criticism my way on my latest piece, that would be awesome :)

[Superheroes (Bugg Remix)]

Hey, this is pretty cool. You did a really nice job with mastering, balancing etc and the song overall sounds very nice.

I have to admit that I don't often listen to remixes, so you can take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt :) I felt like you let the sample from the song drive most of the remix. That's fine to a point but I'd really like to see you add some more to the sample somehow, be it a new melody or something like that. I heard some cool synths pop in, and I would have really liked to hear them develop some more before rejoining back to the song.

BTW - found you on the audio advertisements page. if you could give me some feedback on my latest, that would be great :)

[More fun fer nikko]

Bah, it's way better with the ambient echo stuff :) 9/10 for the other version, 7/10 for this one. This song actually didn't make any melodic sense at first, but when I listened to the other one it clicked together.

One thing to think about: there's no bass! I generally think it's really important to have something driving - or at least filling - that lower end of the song (even though i understand that you're trying for something icey here).

Cool stuff though! The melody is quite interesting (great interplay between the instruments), which is rare for electronic music ;-)

KrrMaim responds:

~wink

[That One Hour]

Hey, this is pretty sweet music.

Okay, some suggestions.

The main instrument up until 1:15 or so sounds great, but it doesn't carry the melody that great. It's pretty echoey and makes it hard for me to pick out exactly what's going on.

I think you should work on the the melody from 1:30 to 2:00 or so - mainly the melody. I think you're trying to go for something dancey, which is fine, but you need a little more variation/strength on the melody line. Right now it's like the melody is hiding behind the chords from the other instrument. Bring it out!

Minor nit: That reverse crash sound you're using is repeated enough to be expected. I'd suggest you to switch it up.

This song takes until about 1:30 or so to really start being great. I bet you could truncate that introduction time without losing too much.

Anyway, nice song. Bring out that melody line and it'd be great. Keep it up!

BTW - saw you on the audio advertisements forum post. If you could review one of my two recent pieces, that would be great :-)