Wow, I actually like this composition a lot. Those instruments are terrible, though. One pro tip is to vary the loudness of the piano notes. Right now it sounds like they're all being hit at maximum loudness.
I actually like the melodies and stuff in this one more than normal. The chord progression is really good. Also the rhythm is really unexpected in a good way in the first half.
Elevator music for spies.
=> instruments =>
Well what do you expect at this point :D
=> loudness of piano notes =>
Context time! A while ago, a friend and I were joking around about writing a musical for our Psychology class in order to surprise our teacher. We came up with some lyrics for a song and I whipped this thing together in an hour. So the piano is actually a placeholder for vocals! And that's why I didn't do any velocity adjustment like I normally do.
=> melodies and stuff =>
Awesome! So do I. Shame I ruined it with this dumb thing though :P
=> elevator music for spies =>
Ooooh that's a really cool perspective! I can totally hear it now.
+0.5 for the skype call troll. I was in fact on skype for the first time on months and YOU TOTALLY GOT ME.
Anyway, this song is gonna be YYUUGE, just you all wait.
DUMPING LAB!
(I have no clue what Trump is actually saying in this song.)
Heh, I'm glad that it worked. But spoiler alert next time; now people will see D:
Yeah, this song will be HUUUUGE for sure :D
It's fine that you don't hear it; he's actually saying "disgusting", and then "dumping ground", which is already a part that exists here on Newgrounds :)
I just made this silly thing in about an hour. Thanks for checking by!
This is cool. I'm not sure it works so well as a standalone piece because it rushes through so many themes so quickly! Also is it just me or is it missing some bass? Anyway, the main melody is pretty cool and it was kinda cool to see a number of different takes on it. It was an interesting idea to keep the strings even in the final section. Keeps the song more coherent? I dunno.
Hey man!
You said cool three times in this review. I guess that means my song is TRIPLE COOL.
You're right about how it rushes through everything. I was kinda met with a dilemma when I saw this animation for the first time. It's a 1:30-long animation to depict all those different eras of humanity. I could've either gone for a more coherent score which doesn't reflect the eras as accurately, or sacrifice some of that coherency to morph the song in accordance with the era. I ended up choosing the second option which, I think, works out quite well for the animation, but as you said it definitely sounds kinda like it has ADD when heard as a standalone song.
Agh damn you're so right about that bass. It hadn't occurred to me until now.
Thanks a lot for reviewing!
A+++++ Best use of x in song title ever would read again
...
But...
...
F------ WORST INSTRUMENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I shall forever remember the day I nearly got johnfn to swear
The mixing is a little weird and the drums should chillax a little but you did chiptune!!!!!!!!!!
I get what you mean about the drums; I'm not sure I understand what the mixing issues are -- please, can you PM me about this?
The funny thing is that the drums (in their chiptune form) are probably going to be conserved for the live-recorded version that should come in a few months from now... *blush*
COOL BASS GROOVE YO
Out of all my tracks, this is the one you choose to randomly review? Well, thanks for checking my stuff out once in a while :p
I still owe you like 2 reviews and a loooong review response, so I've got nothing to complain about.
Was relistening to your NGADM track and remembering how creative it was, and I decided to check to see if you had any new stuff, and you did! You have a bit to come in terms of mixing, but this stuff is great. I love how varied it is - your music does a great job of keeping me guessing where it's going next. The jam towards the end is lovely - exactly the kind of thing I secretly hope every song would do, honestly. Keep it up :>
=== This is an NGADM Round 4 Review ===
I was really, really taken aback when I first heard this track. But not for the obvious reasons.
Not because of the banjo! I was actually kind of anticipating a SoundChris-esque switchup at some point in your NGADM career when I first started listening to your tracks. They were incredibly varied to begin with, so I had a feeling you guys could do something a little different.
The reason I was so taken aback is because I don’t think I’ve ever heard a musician improve on so many fronts simultaneously. Your previous pieces were these long, sprawling, fairly unstructured, not-quite-sure-where-the-focus-is, slightly cheesy orchestral rock tracks. Now suddenly you pull out an insanely tightly structured, highly focused, darn-near-perfectly-mixed, super catchy track. This kind of improvement I typically see over the course of years rather than 2 weeks.
When I listen to most good music on Newgrounds, there’s usually one or two points that I can point to and say “THIS. This is the highlight of your track. Do more of that.” An obvious example would be the solo in midimachine’s first round track, or the point around 3 minutes in “Adagio” by JacobCadmus where the melody comes in. For this song, there is no such point. THE ENTIRE SONG IS THE HIGHLIGHT. The verse is the highlight. The chanting B section is the highlight. And OF COURSE the final uptempo section is the highlight. When I was talking about being taken aback up above, this struck me more than anything else.
Your previous songs had many many sections sections, and a few of them stood out. This is a stage that a lot of musicians go through, where they have tons of ideas but they can’t really sift between the good and the mediocre. The difference in terms of arrangement from your old songs to this song, which is arranged SO tightly that there’s no downtime at all, is just nuts.
I almost want to call shenanigans. This is preternatural improvement.
I mean, it’s just so satisfying to hear you repeat the first two sections because, not only are they really good, but by repeating them you make the song really coherent. It makes it sound like an actual Song (TM) with Cohesive Ideas rather than a Cool Idea Display which I felt like your previous two tracks came close to being.
I don’t know if you guys have heard of Wake Up by Arcade Fire, but in a lot of ways (except genre, lol) this song reminds me of that song. Both songs do the ABABC structure, where A is singing, B is chanting, and C is AN AWESOME SPEEDUP SECTION THAT MAKES THE SONG WAY BETTER.
Your switchup into the uptempo section is so good. It seems like after all my complaints about transitions in the past, you’ve removed all but a single transition now, and made that one super awesome. Like I already touched upon, it’s all about quality over quantity, and quality here is insanely high.
A quick word about the mixing. I think it’s perfect. Despite the complaints that other people have given you in the past, I think that your tracks have always been mixed very well. I mean, sure, in previous songs you make mistakes where certain elements are not loud enough etc, but that’s missing the forest for the trees. Your songs have always been full and easy to listen to, which is a very rare skill. (Honestly, I’d love to read a writeup of how you guys approach the mixdown/mastering process.)
Honestly, if the mix in this song has any issues at all, they are above my pay grade. It’s really pleasantly full, but it is not fatiguing in the slightest to listen to. I would not be able to distinguish this from a professionally mixed track, which is essentially the highest compliment I can give.
The only thing I really thought of as a suggestion for this track was that you could switch up the chord progression on the chant section. When I first heard it I was slightly disappointed that it was the same progression, because switching up progressions is a nice way to add a little more interest to a song, and also because you hit Em for 3 straight bars and that’s not quite as interesting when you are just chanting out the chords. In my mind’s ear I heard something like Em->G->A->Em, maybe paired with something like C->D->Em (which could also foreshadow the final section, hehe).
But that’s not really why I docked .25 points from your overall score. It would be ludicrous for me to expect you to be able to read my mind when writing a song, haha. I just score songs based on how much I like them, and then I do my best in reviews to help you understand why I enjoy or don’t enjoy songs. In your song, the only thing that really consciously nagged at me was the similar progressions in the 2 sections, so I figured that might have something to do with my overall appreciation of the song. (Which was insanely high, mind you!)
This is a fairly short review because I normally spend a lot of time in my reviews griping about stuff, but there really isn’t all that much to gripe about for this song. It's that good.
I’d go as far as to say that this is my second favorite NGADM song, ever. Can’t wait for your final track! No pressure. :-)
9.75/10
Johnfn, thanks again for the massssivee review! Sometimes I wonder if you and Step are competing to see who can write the most in a review, haha. I'm really glad you enjoyed it (though I disagree about orchestral-rock being cheesy. IT'S AWESOME). Knowing we were up against the monster that is SoundChris, we knew we had to pull out something totally different and amazing to beat him (therefore banjo). We certainly removed many transitions in this piece, it's far more cohesive, which is what you guys wanted! If this is your 2nd favorite NGADM song, I'm curious to see which is the first!
=== This is an NGADM Round 3 Review ===
I find it funny that everyone is all like, "bruh, you made such a big improvement over your last track!" "THIS IS AMAZING! HOW DID YOU GET SO MUCH BETTER?!?" Just between you and me, I always knew you were this good. I mean, I had to ding you a little for uploading a WIP last time, but in my mind if that WIP was stretched out to full length, it would have done just as good as this song.
Which isn't to say that you *haven't* been improving, since you definitely have, just not to a degree everyone else is saying. They're saying you went from good to great. I'm saying you went from great to slightly greater. ;-)
I honestly think that your biggest path to getting better has almost nothing to do with music and everything to do with sitting down and committing to busting out full tracks. To actually make a track with climaxes, breakdowns, you know, the stuff that keeps music varied past the first minute.
The good thing is that's exactly what you did here and you nailed it!
I am actually constantly a little worried about scoring your piece. I might have mentioned this elsewhere, but your type of music is really really similar to the style of music that I enjoy. This kind of thing makes me worried that I might be scoring your track too high, but then maybe that worry is making me overcompensate and score too low??? In either case, I have to commend you on all the awesome work you put out here, since it's right down my friggin alley and I LOVE IT.
Your melody work is awesome in a way that I personally really enjoy. It's got a slight bit of groove to it, a little bit of repetition, and a lot of small catchy riffs. So good.
Your attention to detail is great. You've got a ton of really unique sounds. I mean, right at the start of the track, there's this weird high pitched vocal noise. What the heck even is that? I have no idea how that could fit in a song, but I dunno, somehow you make it work. MAGIC.
The concept of using what sounds like a soda can popping open as a sound effect cracks me up. It fits so well!
I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my last review, but a good deal of my score is an educated guess at how good of a musician you are (rather than just how good the song is). I mean, this is a deathmatch, and I want to pick the best musician (who can continue to write great songs) rather than a one trick pony, ya know?
Good musicians have a bunch of characteristics that average musicians don't have. One of the most important ones is that they know exactly which aspects of their songs work and which aren't, and they're sure to showcase the best stuff right up front, and get rid of all the crap that isn't working. This is why your music poses a bit of a conundrum to me. It always seems to me when I'm listening to your music that the parts that you highlight are highlighted completely by accident, rather than with the intentionality that a good musician would have. And yet you consistently "accidentally" highlight the best parts of your track, so it can't be an accident, can it? Or are you just the most lucky musician in the world?
I mean, listen to the melodic solos going on at :30 onwards to :48. These solos are awesome. I love them. (I think it might have something to do with how you solo in a really similar style to me. I'mnotbiased), and there's pretty much nothing else with a lot of interest going on in the song, so they just naturally receive focus. So it seems like you highlighted them intentionally, right? ...But I'm actually not so sure. I mean, you doused them really heavily in reverb, as if you wanted to hide them. And you didn't actually make the lead instrument loud enough to unambiguously take center stage, so the first time I listened to the track I didn't even realize that they should be the focal instrument.
It's this kind of ambiguity in your tracks that really nags at me. If you think it's good, put it front and center! And if you don't, just get rid of it. (But don't, since I think it's good.)
Another thing I really dig is the little 4 note riff at :35-36, :47-48 and other places. It's alright by itself, but the repetition adds a lot. You have such a talent for coming up with these tiny simple riffs that add a whole bunch of character to the piece - this was something I appreciated in your previous track as well. You kind of bury it back a little in the mix, which makes me, again, really wish that you highlighted it more! You have good ideas, don't hide them! :)
Moving on though. I was really pleased that you did a song with a more interesting arrangement than your last track. Particularly, I love the breakdown at 1:12. Alright, the fact that you clearly just pitched a single syllable up and down for all your notes rather than choosing multiple different syllables to pitch takes away a little from the professional quality, but I don't really even care all that much. I just love this sort of pitch bent quality in vocals. The pitching strikes the balance between real and artificial in a really nice way.
On the other hand, I feel like the climax-esque section that comes after that breakdown stays a little too high energy for a little too long. It doesn't really vary it up at all, and aside from a few simple synth arps, there's nothing all too fascinating going on here. This is actually probably the biggest issue I had with the track - a strong lack of variation in the 2nd half. I feel like the song does not really go anywhere after the 2:30 mark. I mean, just imagine how much more compelling that section would have been with a synth solo similar to the idea you had around :30 coming in after a couple of bars of climax.
(And now, listening to the song for the umpteenth time in a row, I come to find that you do in fact have a solo buried in that second half! I'm leaving the above here anyways, because I think that for the solo to be really effective, it'd need to have more of a focus on it from the rest of the mix.)
All in all, great song. Keep at it!
Score: 8.50
=== This is an NGADM Round 3 Review ===
Okay, NOW we're talking.
This piece is INCREDIBLE! I'm not quite sure how you did it in 2 days. In fact, I'm not sure how you did it at *all*. I was somewhat intimidated about writing a review for it because I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do other than write THIS SONG IS MY JAM over and over again, at least 500 times, with a couple of table flipping emoji in there for good measure. But maybe I could at least dissect why it's my jam a little bit?
The main riff is just awesome. Probably one of the best NGADM riffs I've ever heard. To be clear, I'm talking about the thing at :24 here (and again with modifications at 2:03). The thing that really surprised me is that the first and second time I listened to this song I just heard :24-:33, immediately recognized it was awesome, and figured the rest of the riff after :33 couldn't possibly live up to it and kind of tuned it out (I also think to some degree that the user is not primed to listen too closely to any riff after the first four bars). Turns out, the second half of the melody is just as good as the first half, just jazzier. I think figuring this out was the point at which I started flipping tables.
The fact that your main riff is so awesome really took me aback, honestly. From your first and second tracks I had you pegged as a guy who could (maybe) write a good solo, but generally wrote half-decent, moderately catchy, but generally repetitive riffs. This riff is from another planet compared to your other stuff. I don't know what you did to make that possible, but you should keep doing it.
I could talk a little about all the other stuff I like about this track. The mix is really well done - those pads are just enormous. I love almost the entire transition back into the main section at 1:19, with a slight exception. I like the random airhorn sample you snuck into this song (I'm not gonna say where it is so that everyone else can search for it). The addition of the slap bass to the Midimachine Sound (TM) is almost like cheating, because everyone knows that slap bass immediately makes everything better. (It's kind of like soundgoodizer, or a kazoo.)
But I feel like ranting and raving for extended periods of time about that stuff would kind of be missing the forest for the trees, since EVERYONE KNOWS that the melody is 90%+ of the appeal of this track.
But maybe you're wondering why I didn't give this an even *higher* score than the score I already gave, considering how I praised the song so much? Dang, you're greedy. Ah, nah, that's a reasonable request.
I do have a minor nit-pick, which I just have to gripe about, since... well, you know. I have to. The execution of the transition from 1:19 back into the main section is ever so slightly off. Up until about 1:40 its just an AWESOME transition. The little melody going on top of the percussion craziness is just perfect. Then suddenly at 1:40 to 1:42 you drop the ball - there's a bit too long of a gap and all the awesome buildup energy fades away. This really bugs me because it's just a minor but damaging flaw to what was otherwise a near perfectly executed buildup. Like, I WANT to enjoy the buildup more, but I can't! I say this is a minor nit-pick, but really, I wonder how much better this song would have been with a properly executed build back into that final section. It could have made a big difference, since the build back to the final section is usually the peak of a song.
Alright, so that's my minor complaint. My next suggestion is a lot more important, imo.
The thing about your track is that I *wanted* to loop it like 100 times. It's insanely catchy, so why would I not want to listen to it 100 times in a row? But after the second time listening to it I realized that I was insanely fatigued because the song is so insanely loud. I had to go put on some Elliot Smith to recover. But I still wanted to try again later! I still *liked* your song - it's just that I *couldn't* listen to it multiple times. In fact, it's not even just a problem of multiple listens - I'm not sure if you put it through serious compression or what but this song is so loud that it's actually tiring to listen to, even once.
Outrageous loudness is a bit of a double-edged sword. It generally improves the first listening experience, because everyone likes loud music (proved by science!) - but it degrades the listening experience after the first listen because the song gets fatiguing.
But, here's the thing: your song is so good that you don't need to go to the lengths of extreme loudness in order to compensate for something. The melodies and builds are awesome and they will continue to be awesome even if you make the song's mix a little less aggressive. If you were just to tone down the loudness a bit, you'd get a song which rewarded multiple listens rather than punished people who try to listen many times, and that is the ultimate goal here.
Just to be clear, when I say "loudness" I don't exactly mean volume loudness (because then I could just turn down my volume and it'd be fine!) - it's more like a combination of mix aggressiveness, drum loudness, compression, and a bunch of other factors that combine to give listener fatigue.
Anyway, this was the track of the round for me. Given how outrageously high your average was already, I can only imagine that with the loudness issue fixed, you'd score higher than 10. Awesome work.
Score: 9.25
i always forget to respond to PMs. its not because i hate you, just because i forgot!!!
Male
MD
Joined on 8/16/03
Meltzer 
Trumplings 
March of Progress OST 
Une Nouvelle Chance 
Jumbo Jungle 
Deja de Hablar 
The Prodigal 
BVYS N GVRLZ 
