johnfn's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[=(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 :)

[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 :-)

[8 Bit Flavour]

Good God, that melody.

This whole song is built off that one melody. And wow, what a melody.

When I first started listening, I felt that it was kinda weak, but I kept listening, and it kept on growing on me. Until somewhere in the 3rd or 4th listen I realized that this is really amazing stuff. It kinda just snuck up on me.

The piano outro is probably unnecessary. It's okay though.

[Belldom]

Very cool melody.

This song oozes originality. Really good stuff.

[A Simple Dream]

Nice and chill.

That synth around 1:10 (and continued through the rest of the track seems a little off tempo to me.

Other than that, this is a nice chill piece. It doesn't do much, and it doesn't intend to. Good work.

[Hydroxygen]

Some thoughts

Even early on, I can tell that you really cared about making this song right.

The chord progression is a good one, but maybe switching it up every now and then would be good.

Around 2:30 the beat comes in with the pads and gated stuff and it really makes my ears confused (it keeps pulsing). That seems to be typical of technoey ravey music though, so maybe it's what you were going for, I dunno. I wont dock you.

It's really a shame that stuff like this gets nuked by 0 voters.

The lead is a great instrument, but maybe you should have worked on that melody a little more. I felt like it could have been more interesting. That was what was holding me back from really enjoying this song, I think. Maybe a build up would have been a good idea - it's kind of hard to keep a techno song interesting without changing something, be it dynamics, chord progression, etc.

My strategy (I'm not any sort of authority, though, my songs all suck) is that whenever I get a new idea I'll try to integrate it, even if it messes with my whole song structure. It kind of plays to my ADD tendencies ;)

Voted 5.

Heitoki responds:

I agree about the melody, it sounds empty. I was planning on releasing a version 2 for this song, including a piano interlude, with some background tie-in melodies.

I like the progression the way it is, but the dynamics was indeed faulty, and admittedly monotonous.

lol, i also like you, like to mess with songs "on the fly". Thats how i got the idea for the super saw, as well as the tec'ish square, which was inspired by Sonic and Knuckles boss battles.

I will work harder for dynamics though.

Ty for your input ^_^ !