johnfn's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Love letter]

You went overboard with the reverb but I don't even care.

[Sonar Eclipse]

This is actually amazing for your first month of writing music. The biggest problem currently is there is way too much reverb spread through the mix, making the whole song muddy. Turn down the reverb and you should be solid. Also I don't like the piano, go download PIano One (it's free!).

The chord progression is really solid and edgy/dancy and I really like how you automate the sustain on the chords to open it up and then close it, makes the song feel like it's constantly evolving. Really nice chip arps in places that add a lot too. Overall really amazing for your first month, keep at it dude!

[Delgith]

This is amazing. The composition is so so so great. For some reason I'm getting final fantasy vibes a little, it has that dark moody jrpg vibe a little.

The only reason I didn't give it a 10 is because the middle section with the arps felt a little mechanical and technical and jarred from the really emotional feel of the opening and final sections.

Again... amazing. More please.

KrrMaim responds:

I will give you more.

[Nostalgic Dreams]

Ahah "Nostalgia Dreams" is an amazing name for a song. (It's so good that I want to make a song called nostalgic dreams now.) This, however, sounds nothing like nostalgic dreams. It sounds like I'm awake and excited! :D

So lets get the good stuff out of the way so that I can complain more. I love complaining. The composition is pretty great overall. I like the overall melody and the final coda thing at the end is excellent in that we've been building towards it the whole time. It feels like a coherent and complete song, not just a string of different ideas (which I sorta said last time).

Honestly I only care about composition and melody and arrangement, so you're pretty much good. (You can think of the first 4 stars as for composition and the final one as for technical stuff, even though that's not true.) Still, there are a lot of technical problems with this song which detract from my enjoyment of the composition, so let's just go through the technical side and I'll point out some offenders.

Mixing: The beat sorta disappears towards the end. Cranking up the beat and making everything else a little quiet is probably the single biggest single thing you could do to improve this song.

Piano at 1:34: You should to vary the velocities on the notes. Right now it sounds like a robot is playing it, which is bad. Tweak the velocities to make it sound like a human is playing it. It sounds simple (and it is simple) but, if done right, it will add SO MUCH expressivity to the piano. I was amazed the first time I did it.

Trumpet sounds fake. I don't blame you. I never use trumpets because good trumpet soundfonts (that don't cost millions) are practically nonexistent.

Song sounds disjointed. This is a big one, so pay attention. Currently when people listen to this song they can't get into it, because it kinda jerks you around. This means you should work on your transitions. Consider the transition at 1:29. There's no indication that a transition is coming up at all, and then suddenly boom crash and a new instrument. This is really jarring. Put in a little drum fill before 1:29, or do some sort of lead in into the new section, and the transition will flow much better. Do this throughout the entire song and it will flow way better and be easier to get into the groove of. (If you want more on transitions, go talk to SkyeWintrest lolz.)

Too many instruments moving at the same time: Am I really about to tell someone they have too many melodies when I do even worse things in my own songs? Answer: yes. hahahah. Passages like 1:38 feel very 'unstable' (describing music is hard) because so many instruments are moving simultaneously. If you made the bass simpler I think the whole thing would 'stabilize'. Usually when I want many melodies going at the same time I follow some rules:

1. One focal point - It should be pretty obvious which melody you want your listener to follow, because it's the loudest. The rest should be quieter.
2. "weaving" - make one melody have gaps in it, and then bring in the other melody during those gaps. You don't have to do this, but it helps.
3. separation - Don't put two different simultaneous melodies too close to each other in frequency - they should never overlap. e.g. 1:33 in this song. Though there isn't a noticeable problem with overlap, they are still too close and it's a problem.
4. Panning. Use it. You could make some of your sections a lot more comprehensible by panning the instruments left/right. Definitely by the end it's practically impossible to tell what any individual instrument is saying because they're all overlapping. Panning can help.

So like I said... it's filled with technical problems, but the melodic and compositional side of things is strong. I think if you work at it for like 6 months or a year or something you could work through the technical problems and be writing REALLY good stuff. (I hope that's not, uh, discouraging or anything. Music takes work, but it's luckily a lot of fun too.)

(Composition -> This is prob why Steampianist likes you. Ordinary non-musicians can't really hear past mixing errors, so if they listen to a poorly mixed song they won't be able to understand it. But good musicians like steampianist can sorta hear the intent behind a song. You have good intent but bad mix. A lot of people have bad intent but good mix, but it's much easier to fix mixing than composition imo, so you're in a good position. ...I'm rambling a little bit here.)

Hope that helps!

LunacyEcho responds:

Holy crap. Dat review. Well, let's take it from the top!

=> Nostalgic Dreams => Aha... yeah... it's not TECHNICALLY mine. Heh. Now I feel ashamed, sorta. http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=32208 <-It's from a game called Magic: The Gathering. Whoops. I think I gave "credit" in the audio file under the lyrics section, though. I named it as such because I was listening to it on a loop, trying to figure out a melody to add to it (which I'm not too good at). Anyways, I fell asleep and had this one dream that I hadn't had since early childhood. It reminded me of that card, so I knew I had my name. I get that it probably doesn't work for everyone, but I enjoy my little hidden details that not everyone gets.

=> Good stuff etc. => Thanks! I'm glad I improved under your standards as well as mine.

=> Mixing => Really? Most of the time, my drum beats are WAY too loud. This time, I used a slightly different approach to the drums and I get two comments chastising it. I'll take that under consideration.

=> Piano at 1:34 => Funnily, I did try and do a bit of velocity stuff, just not so much in sections such as that one. Next time I do something like this, I'm definitely going to thoroughly analyze the dynamics of piano music, since whatever I'm doing, it can easily be better. I see it too.

=> Trumpet => Okay, less trumpets. Noted.

=> Disjointed => Transitions are definitely something to work on. I never had very much formal training in music and all that (which is why I tend to make comments very un-terminologically (pretty sure that wasn't a word)), so I'm not that good at adjusting the various nuances of my pieces that would really make it work together. Most of my knowledge of good composition and good mixing comes from reading reviews such as this one, although almost never on my own work. Thanks again for that, by the way.

=> Melodies =>
• => Focal Point => The melody thing here was a bit experimental, seeing as I'm not that good at melodies anyways and I was trying something new. The focal point thing is what I normally do.
• => Weaving => I've never tried that before. Sounds like something fun to attempt in a future piece.
• => Separation => Interesting. I'm going to change something in the song I'm currently working on for this.
• => Panning => Well, you're the master. Panning is especially effective when I'm having a rough day and just need to lie down, close my eyes, listen to some music, and relax. Panning is not at all effective when I'm doing something else at the same time as listening to music, have one earphone and the other out, and miss half the song. Since I do the latter a bit more than the former, I don't do that much panning in my music. I guess it really fits the mood of the song. However, I'll definitely try and implement it in later music.

Do you really analyze your melodies and music this much while making it? I feel humbled by the process through which you make music.

=> So like you said... + Composition => Oh, that's not discouraging at all! I plan on making music for a lot longer than 6 months or a year. Thanks for the dash of hope. For some reason, whenever I begin to work on something, an authority figure always goes "You're doing one thing right and one thing wrong. However, it's lucky that the one thing you're doing wrong is a lot easier to correct that the one thing you're doing right." Is it just me, or does anyone else get that as well?

Thanks a ton for the ultracomment, johnfn! I really will take your words to heart and see if I can please you and everyone else a bit more with my next few pieces.

[The Door - How's It Goin'?]

I felt so bad that I made you review 3 tracks all at once that I had to write this thing out hahhaha. Here we go...

I think the beat is great. The instrumentation (percussion) sounds pretty legit! Also, don't you hate how sub-bass is practically inaudible except on decent headphones? Like, my dumb macbook can't even play any sub bass under like C4. Which is everything. LOL. (In fact, even on my good pair of headphones your sub-bass kinda disappears at points and reappears at others. This is why bass is hard. I'm not judging you based on that though...)

I have two main complaints. First, that brass vst thing. Sounds so fake. It's so fake that you might just want to flat out replace it with something obviously synthetic, maybe some sort of synth or something. If you want to pursue the brass route, you could try to find a brass VST of some sort that you could tweak the attack (how fast the note comes in) on. The main thing that makes it sound fake currently is that the attack on every note is the same.

Second though is the melodies that the brass instrument plays. Most of the time they just feel very random and they meander a lot without expressing too much, and I hear a good bit of dissonance as well, e.g.1:22. I think that you should work on this. One big suggestion: add more repetition. I know it sounds counter intuitive, but you have a lot of good little ideas scattered throughout the piece and by repeating one of them more (rather than just moving to another one) you could add a sense of meaning and coherence to the piece. :37-:44 for instance you could repeat a lot (I hear it once more later on currently). I dunno if you listen to hip hop a lot, but a lot of hip hop essentially takes a single sample and loop it through the entire piece.

I definitely didn't get into hip hop until I was at least a couple of years older than you, but if you want to get a head start, check out something like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWS6CITutY

First, notice that the backing is really as simple as I said, it's just a super simple drum beat, a bass groove, and (eventually) a super repetitive brass loop. It's really easy to overthink hip-hop I guess, but you really don't have to go overboard. Simple things can work really well.

You might hate me for saying this but if you stripped out the brass entirely I might have given this a 7 or 8. Sometimes simple is better!

P.S. "it's basically me creepily whispering into the mic about how water diffuses into and out of the kidney"

LOLOL this sounds like the best thing ever. Step aside Kanye :D

TaintedLogic responds:

Thanks so much for the detailed review, which probably at least matches the reviews I made on your tracks in combined length! ;) Thanks for you advice about playing with the attack. I've been trying to get more authentic samples, but I don't have a lot of time or money to invest in that. I knew someone would comment about the lack of coherence. I wanted to mimic the experimental nature of some jazz music, but I'll try to add more repetition in the future. Believe me: hip-hop is probably my least favorite genre of music, although there are some songs I like in every genre. I think I often try to make my tracks too complicated and varied. I'll think about that more in the future. I don't hate you for craving simplicity, btw, and nobody was MAKING me review your tracks - I WANTED to! :D Thanks again, though, Johnfn! ;)

P.S. "Step aside Kanye." ~Yeah, a lot of my classmates made jokes like that too. XD

[-Velocity Wings-]

Fantastic amounts of energy, and overall excellent work. I have some small nitpicks though, like I think that that one melody at :57 is great and you could have probably used it as a main motif by repeating it throughout the song. You keep making modifications to it (the second time you play it, it's different than the first time), which I don't like so much, I think it would be better if you just kept it the same - that would make it stronger.

The guitar solo at 1:30 is lovely but mixed too quietly imo, I could barely even heard it until someone pointed it out!

Arrangement is great and you mix it up with some orchestral elements towards the second half. Honestly though I think that it's perhaps a bit overlong. You could either cut it down, reintroduce that one motif (:57), or switch up the bassline a little.

Hope that helps! Great song.

[CLAB - Eye-Cue vs Teqneek]

Both of you did excellent, making the vote hard. Eye-Cue has a better voice and had some excellent lines, like "thumping you with your bible verse", "immortal teqneek" and the def leppard thing which was already mentioned. Speaking of, I really liked the godzilla/mozzarella rhyme.

But honestly the content of Teq's verses is much better. I was getting tired of all of Eye-Cue's gay lines, which felt really played out, and I really enjoyed Teq calling him out on that. Teq's lines felt more directed and relevant. The high point was definitely Teq calling out "epitome" and later "louisville," which was hilarious.

Vote: Teqneek.

Teqneek responds:

Yo lol when I heard those 2 mispronunciations I knew he just dug his own grave.

[Dark Reflections]

Oh wow this song was driving me absolutely nuts because I couldn't figure out where I recognized that initial riff from. I almost assumed I was just going crazy when I found it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkKsID6Rp6o (Skip to 1:03)

Cryptomnesia is a really annoying thing to happens to you. But I think this piece is interesting because it interprets the initial theme in a different way, it's almost like an adaption of the song above.

The funny thing is that the idea at 2:35 sounds really familiar too. I think it's probably just that build up to the suspended resolution thing that seems a little familiar. It might sound like I'm complaining but honestly I don't think I'll ever get tired of the resolution of suspended chords :D I actually hear it a few more times towards the end, but it's executed best at 2:35 imo because it has that really lovely lead in that starts like 10s earlier.

This is another excellent improvisation. I come up with a lot of interesting ideas when sleep deprived, but nothing as coherent as this. The chords are really interesting and dark.

Though I'm not as imaginative as TheDoor6, I get a strong sense of loss from this piece, mostly from the main motif that kicks off the piece. There's also this black and white feel to this piece, like it would fit really well in one of those old silent films.

Overall, excellent piece. I'm stuck between 8 and 9.

P.S. Your improvisational stuff is actually really inspirational and I've started incorporating some of your ideas and styles in my own improv. I still have a long way to go though haha.

BlazingDragon responds:

The riff is pretty similar to the song you posted. I might have subconsciously borrowed it from there since I love the Chrono Cross soundtrack, but it is also a fairly common pattern. The chord progressions in that piece and my own are quite different though!

I have to admit that I love those suspension/resolutions as well, even if they are a bit cliche. :p I've done a lot of work emulating other composers and am still finding my own musical voice, so it does not surprise me that much of this sounds similar. Especially since it is improv and I'm falling back on things I've heard my whole life. But that's some of the fun; taking ideas from many people and mixing them together in a way that is uniquely my own! :)

Thanks so much for another thoughtful review John. I really love listening to your stuff and am envious of your skills with electronic music. Great stuff you've got!