Hippokopter's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Eternal]

sounds perfect 👌

[L4xLewi5 & EMKM999-Tidal VIP]

Dude this is SOOOO SICK! How the crap did you ever get the kick/808 to sound like that!?

That aside, I do have a problem with the mastering. I don’t know if you’re intentionally coming down on the dynamic range side of the loudness war, but typically, this sort of stuff isn’t supposed to have quite so much dynamic range, lol. If you’ve already tried researching mastering, then I’d suggest getting a book about mastering. I have a book that I think is called “The Mastering Engineer’s Handbook” by Bobby Owsinski, I think…? I’m probably wrong about the poor guy’s name, lol. Most of the book is somewhat irrelevant to bedroom producing honestly, but it does give really good explanations for how to think about mastering, how to construct good mastering chains, and tangentially, codecs. Tl;dr, don’t use 192kbps mp3s and you should be good. XD

Jokes aside, this track really is super awesome. Hope you’re planning to keep going in 2020!

[Vortonox - Gravity]

Happy new year! I agree with Uxvellda about the mixing, which is its own can of worms, but I'd add that there's also some... inconsistencies.

As an example, listen to 00:13-25. The synths you’re using are very clearly in a triplet pattern, but the drums aren’t. If you listen to the hats, you can hear them going “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &” as opposed to the triplet pattern, “1-&-a 2-&-a 3-&-a 4-&-a”… something like that, anyway. XD

Another example would be at the end of the first buildup, at 00:46-49. The snare is clearly building into a non-triplet pattern, which is fine, but it clashes pretty hard with the triplet synth.

At other times, the harmony clashes more than the rhythm, such as 01:16-29. The vocal loop uses two notes, the root note (also called “do,” “the 1,” or just “the root”), and the flat 2nd. On its own, the vocal loop likely has a cool sort of sound, because alternating between those notes just sounds cool like that. But when used in a song, you have to be conscious of that flat 2nd, because it can clash really hard with a non-flat 2nd (not to mention the root note itself, since it’s only a half step away from that).

If you don’t know exactly what I’m talking about with this music theory stuff, then I strongly suggest looking up some free youtube tutorials. You don’t need to be a master of music theory, but you do need to have some basic knowledge of scales, chords, etc. You needn’t learn anything more complicated than basic chord progressions and cadences (and if you don’t know what those are, don’t worry too much about them).

Anyways, that’s about all I got, as if it’s not a novel, haha.

-Hippokopter

Vortonox responds:

Thx for feedback

[Abstrack - Regular Lament]

Really great sound design imho, but there are some problems.

~~~

First and foremost, I’d say that instrumentation is a problem, and from the admittedly cursory amount of your previous songs I’ve heard, instrumentation seems to have been a consistent problem. Personally, this is how I think of instrumentation:

At minimum, one low element, one mid element, and one high element; at maximum, (roughly) one element per octave. Kick, snare, and other such primary rhythmic elements are always exempt.

...except by now, you ought to know that rules are made to be broken, haha. This rule tends to be broken in buildups, where a lack of bass could be used as a tool to give the song a bit more tension (though this rule is broken only when tasteful, of course). This rule could also be broken in intros and outros, to more gracefully enter and exit the listener’s awareness, I guess.

In all of this, you should focus on the fundamental pitch of any instrument when determining what range category it falls into. What I mean is, for example, if you have a piano part, you should use the fundamental pitches of the notes to determine whether you should count it as a low mid part or a high mid part (maybe both!). An example of a good time to break this rule would be if there happens to be a vocal part that you want to really “pop.” In that case, you can count it as both a mid AND a high element, to better account for higher harmonics, sibilance (S’s, T’s, etc.), and breath that you may want to highlight.

Just keep it tasteful, lol.

~~~

Secondly - yes I know this is an absolute novel - mixing. Different people will say different things about the overall goal of mixing, but as a producer, I think the most workable/tangible goal of mixing is to make each element’s presence match its importance. Yes, those are ambiguous, and yes, that will often require interpretation, but hey, that’s what’ll make your music unique, right? Here are some examples of these concepts:

Things that affect presence:
-Volume
-Reverb
-Delay
-Compression
-Distortion

Things that are typically important:
-Kick
-Snare
-Lead
-Vox (vocals)

Things that are typically not so important:
-Arps
-Chords
-Chants
-Risers/sweeps

Importance is more subjective than presence. Importance wholly depends on what YOU want the song to be, whereas presence is simply the technical nuts-and-bolts of getting the mix to reflect your view of each element’s importance.

~~~

That’s all I got. Hopefully this helps some!

-Hippokopter

Abstrack responds:

Hmm! You are right about the "instrumentation problem". I never really though of the high+mid+low|octave rule you're talking about. I let instruments sometimes collide because of that. And yet, when you think about it, it's so much obvious.

I had heard of the concept of "mixing" before, but it was so much abstract... I'll concede it's still not extremely concrete. But now, because of your explanation, I can happily apply it to more than just the volume of instruments (*sigh* I was really dumb 3 minutes ago).

I wonder where you learned those concepts. They seem so much important (they must be "present" lol), and yet I never really heard any explanation about them.

Holy cow, thanks for your time spent writing this. That's going to be helpful as ****. People like you deserve free quadruple-chocolate cookies.

[Zippy]

Neato.

Very old-riddim style, I like it. This is only 4.5 because the mix is pretty wonky – kick in particular is too quiet, and the basses are a bit too loud. Otherwise, sick.

Lot7even responds:

ah, gotcha. thanks!

[The Pump King]

Scouted!

TWEL responds:

Much appreciated! <3

[Rager - Tetra (Dubstep)]

Pretty nice! I do have two complaints though...

1 - The first drop sounds somewhat similar to the verses. Not huge, but just sounds strange building up into something that sounds like what the listener has already heard.

2 - The second drop gets sort of adventurous with the sound design - which it should! But, it just doesn't seem to fit the style... not for me, at least. This is where that "if it sounds good, it is good" rule comes in. If you disagree with me about this point, you're right!

Aside from that, you emulated PBN and Teminite well. Nice work.

[Venomite - Spaced Out]

I really like 1:28-1:53! Nice job!

[[DeathStep] 死]

Hrm... Sorry, but I feel like this needs some work.

First, I'll say this - a lot of what I'm hearing go wrong in this song is stuff that will be cleaned up with dubstep experience. (I specify dubstep because you seem like you have quite a few non-dubstep songs under your belt already, but dubstep is a very different animal than most other genres.)

That means that a lot of this stuff isn't an immediate fix, unfortunately. Some stuff is just like that, and learning to be patient and work hard at the same time is a very important part of becoming a master.

Anyways - First off, I don't know how you went about making this song, but for dubstep, it's best to make the drop first, and then work on the rest of the song. The drop is the part that takes the most effort, so you probably should work on that first, right? But it's still a challenge to just dive headlong into making the drop, I get it. So then, you need to figure out a way to approach making the drop that best fits you. I find that what works best for me is to first think of a dubstep bassline (something like the Cymatics dubstep loops from their dubstep beginner sample pack), and then work out something similar in my DAW (which is Ableton 10, because it's better, nanny nanny na). The key is to get the basses to have a great tone and have decent stereo presence, so they sound nice and in-your-face. Then, once I've got a bassline down, I can put some drums to it. I have a good sample pack for this, namely Terror Drums by Cymatics. I'd suggest investing a bit into the best dubstep drum pack you can find, unless you already have. (I like Cymatics hats, they're very characterful.) Once I've got my wubs and my drums laid out, I can add background stuff, like arps, chants, background noise, risers and sweeps, etc.

After the drop is done, I find myself basically mixing it right after. It's not too hard to mix the drop, really. The biggest issue for mixing is the balance, making sure stuff sounds loud or soft enough. The only time further processing is necessary is when a fader feels "unstable." If the fader feels like it's fine sometimes but not other times, you need a compressor. If the fader never feels fine, like some frequencies always stick out or aren't prominent enough, then an EQ is in order. Usually further processing isn't necessary when I'm just mixing the drop.

Then, there's the stuff around the drops. There's no real rules, except to put some good effort into making it sound musical. Otherwise, as SeamlessR puts it, you'll just make "impressive tech demos."

So there. Also, congrats on being frontpaged!

FuzionTech responds:

First of all, I use fl studio demo. So I am limited by the rules, but sometimes I could find alternatives (even though It takes time) and use those alternatives to fill out some parts which needs more editing.
Second, I am somewhat inexperienced with dubstep. I usually do house music.

Third, I just use The stock plugin
Edit: I changed the music

[Alex Jones [Dubstep]]

UHHHHHHH THE SWEARING XD

I mean... er... the sound design is cool! But all the swearing... xD

I don't think you meant for me to hear this tho, lol

Venomite responds:

XD