Hippokopter's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[MINECRAFT]

Roses are red and watered with rain...

Why was I built to feel nothing but pain.

...xD

Pharinfarin responds:

Exactly how I feel

[50]

Hey, that's my idea! xD

This song is pretty interesting. There's that big obvious motif of the four descending notes that happens so often that you know what I'm talking about. The only problem is that it happens so often that you know what I'm talking about! xD

I don't know what kind of music theory stuff you know, but if you know about motifs, try to remember all the crazy things you can do with motifs the next time you make a melody. Invert it, chop it up, reverse it, add notes, make a completely new motif, or any of the innumerable combinations thereof.

Also, don't forget to mess with the rhythm. If all the notes are the same length, it can sound kinda robotic.

I say all of that because you had a really interesting motif happening, but it just stayed static, and I think that maybe adding some more melodic interest might have helped.

Nevertheless, I'd say that 50 songs is a HECK of an accomplishment. xD

NixcoreMusic responds:

Yes, i know what you're talking about xD
Sometimes i get lazy with melodies or i make melodies that are similar to other songs from famous artists.
But anyway, thanks for the advice :)

[Complextro/Dubstep Drop]

soundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgoodsoundsgood

[Magic World]

Sounds pretty nice. I like the mastering, it's not super aggressive, but it's aggressive enough. I really like the melody, too. The drops and the mixing probably need a bit of work, I'd say the drops more so than the mixing. But other than that, I liked it.

[[Dubstep] Saert - Scarab]

I gotta say, this is beyond strange. It's very creative, but it's just so strange. xD

First, I complement you on your mastering. It sounds really nice... in the drops. At other points in time, like at 00:25 and 01:53, it just feels like it should be a bit more laid back, but it's not. However, that's much more an issue of level-setting than mastering, and if your mastering chain could handle that, you're pretty good. :D

That being said, you should still keep a bit of dynamic range in your song, just so that the really loud parts sound really loud in relation to other parts of the song.

Second thing - your sub is really strange. I don't know if you're actually using a square wave for your sub, or if you're using an ultra-distorted sine, but either way, a sub shouldn't have THAT many harmonics. For the most part, subs and 808s are just for people with good listening gear, so don't worry too much if you test your song and find out that people on phones or laptop speakers won't be able to hear it.

If you really think about it, has any well-known dubstep producer ever distorted their sub that much? No, because it doesn't matter that much. You might want to find a song that you really like the sub of, and then try to remake it.

Third thing - the leads in your drops are pretty odd. They almost make it feel like the song changed keys or something.

That's the other thing about subs, too - they help the listener keep track of the key. They can't be too distorted, because then they sound too much like a square wave, and that low down, square waves don't sound like they're on any particular note.

Anyways, most of the leads you used kind of oscillated between two notes a major third apart. That's creative, that's strange, and that's not tonal. Maybe in a slightly different context those would sound better, but in this song, the way you had them playing, they sounded a bit odd.

Again, this was really creative and strange. That, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing, but you have to make sure that it's still something that sounds... competitively good, I guess you could say.

Nice job. Don't lose your creativity. :D

[Paper Skies - Celestial (Sharks Remix)]

Stunning. Nothing more needs to be said.

[Simplicity]

This is pretty creative, and I think it paid off pretty well! Just a couple of things to say, though.

First of all, don't be too terribly simple. You don't want things to start sounding empty. A good rule of thumb that I've been using recently is that you should try to have something happening in all three general ranges - low, mid, and high. One instrument can cover multiple ranges, like a dubstep bass or that distorted screech lead that's so common that I don't need to explain much more. :P It also feels good if there's some background-y fx on different stuff like reverb and delay, but don't overdo it.

If you're going to break those rules, and you should, just make it clear that those rules are being broken, and make sure that they're being broken at appropriate times, like a bridge or a transition or something, e.g., remove all instruments but a possibly highpassed piano, and then go into a drop or something.

My second and final point has to do with music theory. It'd be easiest for me to explain this as though you know a bit of theory, so that's what I'll do. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then there's plenty of youtube videos about this stuff. :P

So the chord progression you have happening here is an odd 8-bar loop: Gm; Cm; FM; Gm; Gm; Cm; Cm, Dm; Gm. I used semicolons to differentiate which chords are being played in the same bar, each semicolon is a new bar.

This progression has some problems. There are two instances where the chord repeats, and when that happens, it has this odd... "forced" sound to it.

The other thing about this song is that it's in swing, and that kind of makes me think that the chords should be a bit more exotic and jazzy.

Here's my suggestion for a new chord progression: Gm7, D#Madd6, FMadd11, A#madd9, D#M7, Cmadd9, AMb7, DMb7.

Hope you know some theory! xD

But anyways, I just wanted to be helpful with that. Sorry if that was confusing!

Other than all that, it's a nice song! I like it a lot.

SpeTheof responds:

Hey thanks so much, about the chords, when a melody comes into my head, I have to follow it as it is, else my whole inspiration would be ruined. So i guess i followed what my mind told me to, even if that doesn't feel or sound right in some people's heads, but why should I follow some generic basics about chords and not make the song however I want :D

[Venomite - Powers]

(:P)

[Menu]

My first thought was, "wow, this took 6 hours?" but then I noticed the decimal point. xD

BlockGhost responds:

At least you look at the description haha

[[Dubstep] The Unknown]

Ok, so a couple of things here.

It sounds like you did your own bass sound design. I don't mean that in a critical or insulting way, I think it's good to make your own stuff. My philosophy with that has always been that the centerpiece noises will always be my own, but some of the off-to-the-side noises can be Cymatics' or Antidote Audio's or something. (Hooray apostrophes. xD)

Second, don't be afraid to distort stuff. Distortion is your friend, don't be shy with it. Especially, ESPECIALLY on the kick and snare. If you hear Cymatics drums and stuff, those drums are made to respond reeeaaaaly well to distortion, and not a small amount of distortion. What I do is I have the kick and snare in their own submix (Ableton calls them groups, idk what FL calls them), and then I use a Cymatics effect rack thingy (again, specific to Ableton) to distort the drums and it sounds AWESOME... so do something like that. :P

If you make your own drums, I suppose you could try testing them out by seeing how much distortion they can handle until totally sounding like garbage. If you're gonna do that, test that out with other peoples' drums, too, just so you have something to go for. Like, if Cymatics drums can take, I dunno, 6 dB of distortion drive, see if you can get drums your own drums to do that too. (...assuming your drums are normalized to 0 dB. No cheating by just quieting down your drums or anything. xD)

Second and final thing: mastering. It sounds weird and hard, but trust me, it's not bad. It takes a little bit of getting used to, but it really isn't bad or hard at all. I go for a signal chain sorta like this:

EQ - removing stereo bass below ~120hz using mid/side (M/S) mode
Compressor - catching peaks, never compresses more than 2 dB (check out TDR Kotelnikov: https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-kotelnikov/ )
Clean-up EQ - Cleans up general problem areas in the spectrum. (check out TDR Nova: https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-nova/ )
Distortion - any kind of distortion you want. I get nice results with multiband distortion.
Limiting - never limits more than 6 dB. (check out LoudMax: https://loudmax.blogspot.com/ )
Metering crap - I like Voxengo SPAN ( https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/ ) and Youlean Loudness Meter ( https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/ ).

None of that is set in stone. If you want to make a change to it, then A/B it. If you want to put some random compressor on the master, make sure that the master is as loud with the compressor as without the compressor, and then see whether or not it improves the master. You could do that with a compressor, a transient processor, a limiter, anything really. Just make sure that it's not useless and it's not bad. :P

Well, that's my comments on this thing. Nice work.