Hippokopter's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Dragonfly]

Pretty nice! I like the pace of the song. There are a couple of odd things though. Good thing they're relatively easy to fix. :p

First of all, there's one note in the melody that doesn't fit with the chords... it's in the final "section" of the melody. I think it's because you're using Eb natural minor, but there's one note that comes from Eb harmonic minor. The thing is though, that final section is a repeat of the second to last section, so it seems like it should work just fine. Well...

Different chords require different sets of notes sometimes. If you're just sticking with only the chords that any single scale gives you, then you don't need to switch scales in your melody. But if the chords do go outside of a given scale, then the melody needs to as well.

In this case, what's happening is that the first iteration of that repeated part in the melody is being played over a V chord, which is a borrowed chord from harmonic minor. The first time around, you do change chord scales to harmonic minor, but then you stay there when the chord switches back to I, and THAT's my humble hypothesis as to why that single note doesn't work quite so well... :p

Who knew there was so much to say about one note...

Anyways, the other problem I had noticed was a mix related one. I honestly don't know how much work you put into the mix because I don't have well trained ears for that particular task, but just in case you put a ton of effort into it, I'll be nice. :p

In dubstep, the kick and snare are huge driving forces for keeping the song going. I don't know if you know about SeamlessR, but he says that your drums in your premaster should be WAY too loud, specifically because they get beaten down pretty hard in the master. SeamlessR says that the drums should be at least 4x as loud as anything else, but that ends up sounding a bit too overpowering to my humble ears. :p

All I'm saying is that the kick and snare need to be louder in the premaster. By how much is a matter of taste.

Other than all that, I like the general feel and progression of the song.

Pretty cool. :D

AeronMusic responds:

Every melody and chord I create is done by ear. And if it sounds good to me, I will use it.
I don't know much about music theory and that is why that particular note may sound off. I do get what you mean but you know much more than I do about music theory, as I can read. Anyway, thanks for pointing that out. This does help me when it comes to scales.

And now about the mix and the drums in the mix.
I spend a lot of time on mixing everything together. In my opinion, the drums are quite loud for this track. I don't like everything what SeamlessR creates. Especially his drums. I think it is just meh... and that is a matter of opinion. Though, his basswork is very well!

Thank you for this great feedback! I don't usually get this anymore these days.

[Leave out (Dubstep)]

I really want to collab, but I have Ableton and you have the DAW which shall remain unspoken. xD

Anyways, just two nitpicky things. The chords in the drops aren't aggressive enough, they don't cut through the basses enough to be easily noticeable. Usually it's best to just make the chords some kind of OTT'ed supersaw (but don't highpass it). Second, the basses in the drop don't sound quite right, but that's so hard to nail that it's hardly worth mentioning. You just kind of get better at it as you go.

Pretty awesome.

[Silver Ray]

You can almost feel the stampede of creators that are coming here to get the ID of this song.

Also, it seems like just presenting Silver Ray would be enough, rather than "representing" it. xD

canonblade responds:

sure, my bad ! Thanks

[Is this even dubstep?]

Yes. Yes it is. xD

So the only thing here that I think is missing is more aggressive mastering. There are four basic parts to mastering - compression, EQ, distortion, and limiting (but not necessarily in that order, although that's not a bad starting point).

Compression - Just to catch peaks. I recommend TDR Kotelnikov ( https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-kotelnikov/ ). Shouldn't compress much more than 2 dB.

Sometimes, a vintage/coloring compressor is thrown onto the mastering chain somewhere, but it's not necessary.

EQ - There are three kinds, to me anyways - frequency adjustment, removing resonances, and coloring. Be sure to take out the stereo bass using mid/side EQ. Coloring EQ isn't necessary, but it can, well, add color. If you think some frequency is resonant, see if it continues to resonate for a prolonged time, and if it does, duck it. The order probably matters for some strange reason, but probably not enough to impact things seriously.

Distortion - A form of compression, but when the signal gets past a certain point, it distorts rather than compressing. The drive knob smashes the signal into the distortion. Go as far as you can without things getting icky. Try different distortion curves.

Limiting - Keeps things in check. Limiter shouldn't compress the signal more than 6 dB. A nice little free limiter is LoudMax ( https://loudmax.blogspot.com/ ).

Cymatics has a mastering guide if you want to know more. ( https://academy.fm/mastering-blueprint/ ) You can circumvent the email thing by using 10 minute mail ( https://www.10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html?dswid=4592 ).

Nice though.

SpeTheof responds:

Thanks mate! This is so helpful!

[The Garden of Eden]

I wouldn't be so sure that Eden is mythical, lool.

Lots of dynamic range, it sounds heavily inspired by Xtrullor. I like it a lot! My only criticism is that the dubstep wobs feel a bit out of place in this kind of a song. Usually, I find that can be fixed by just messing with the buildup, because the buildup not only builds up energy, but connects the rest of the song to the drop.

Other than that, everything is spot on, and the mastering in the drop is loud as crap. Good job. :p

PS, uh...... 130 HOURS!?

*jaw falls on floor*

Songs shouldn't take that ridiculously long! If you do that, then it'll make you procrastinate because you won't want to go through an ordeal that lasts nearly 5 and a half days total! There's a system I've heard of called the 20-hour guillotine, where after 20 hours of working on a track, you drop everything, call it good, and upload it to wherever. I usually work pretty quick myself, so it's not a problem for me, but if it's a problem for you, you might want to adopt that practice, supplemented by maybe a song finishing checklist like this: https://www.edmprod.com/free-resource-song-finishing-checklist/

But still, really awesome! Keep it up!

Tennon responds:

Wow really detailed review! The reason why this song took me this long is that I encountered a shitload of problems while making this song. My obsessive-compulsive attitude also forces me to listen to this song over and over again to fix every single flaw. Lastly, you will not believe how I mastered this song. There are parts where I had to increase every note individually to make them the loudest possible while still making sure that they don’t sound distorted. For the build-up though, I agree that I had to polish it a bit. Yeah I truely suck at build-ups...

Anyways thanks!

Ps: I changed the description of the garden. Now it says that the garden is legendary. Also, not only the drop is loud, but everything is loud lol.

[(Dubstep) Twenty Four]

You have an idea list? That's pretty schmancy. I've always wanted to do something like that, but the ideas I usually come up with are musical and can't be written down very well...

So there are two main criticisms I have.

Firstly, this is pretty empty. There's the drums, and a wob, and maybe some FX. Half of the time, there aren't hihats. This issue, emptiness, isn't too hard to fix. Just keep in mind that at any given portion of the song, there needs to be a low element, a mid element, and a high element, not counting the drums. The only time that this shouldn't be the case is if there's a musical reason to deliberately not fill out the frequency spectrum. (The beginning of Virtual Riot's "We're not Alone" comes to mind.)

So, if you're ever struggling to make something or some section sound full, just stop for a second and remember that. It really, really helps.

Second criticism: structure. I understand that you make chill music, and I admittedly don't know enough about that, but be advised that dubstep is quite a bit more structured than what chill music may allow for. (Again, I don't really know, but maybe.) In a dubstep song, it's best to make sure that there's some indication of where the listener is "going," even if that's just a sweep up to some section. Dubstep shouldn't have that feeling of just "floating around."

So that's about it. Just keep working at it and you'll get it.

[The Warden - Ragga Bass]

It's a bit crackly overall, but the main idea is pretty cool, actually. I think you know why it's 4 stars as opposed to 5, so I'll leave it at that. Btw, where did you get those reggae vocals?

RoseTheVixen responds:

got them from up my bum

[I am First (Dubstep)]

Holy Cymaitcs.

I mean, it's not bad, but it just doesn't feel that original with all of this Cymatics stuff.

I have a bunch of Cymatics stuff too, though, probably not as much as you. Mostly FX from their FX toolkit sale, and a Serum 7 packs for 7 bucks deal, but also Terror Drums. The thing is though, I try to keep it original. I don't like it when more than half of the "spotlight" elements throughout a drop aren't made by me, just 'cause then they don't feel that original. A Cymatics bass here and there is pretty good, and I think actually kind of fun, but not spamming them.

All of that is excluding drums, because I'm noob when it comes to making those. I would make my own if I could, but I've tried and I'm astonishingly bad at it. Maybe sometime in the future. :p

All I'm saying is that maybe you could try to dissect some of those (pretty awesome) Cymatics presets, and make your own stuff with them.

And, hey... is there any reason that Nexus would be more useful than Serum? I've always felt that Serum is rather astronomically better than anything else, but what situations would be better with Nexus rather than Serum? (I'm not as interested in Sylenth. If I want a low-latency subtractive synth, I figure that there are heaps of free ones, and if there's some advanced functionality that Sylenth has, Serum should work fine instead. :p)

N-Guerra responds:

hello I understand you perfectly,
Actually, this library of sounds was a gift from (Cymatic)
I have my own sound banks,

I just wanted to show OR present this wonderful library of (Cymatic) I think I forgot to mention it

I'm sorry if I express myself or write badly. I am not very familiar with the English language. When I use the Google translator, I hope you understand me. Greetings.

[-V- Effervescence]

Have you ever tried using something other than the init wave for chords? xD

I like the reverse FX, especially the reversed glass shattering that's in the drops somewhere.

The drops sound kind of empty to me, but other than that it's pretty ccool. xD

I like putting stupid crap in tags too, lool.

Lot7even responds:

Oof Late response xD

I never use the init wave. I always add voices lol
OH, and the glass shatter was a thingy in the VR sample pack. I dragged it in as a joke for my brother but it worked xD

[FC - Doomsday Protocol]

I see in the description that you're just getting back into production, so I really don't want to discourage you. The thing is... there are some problems. I'm not saying that you're bad, it just looks like you're new and there's some stuff that you ought to know.

So first and foremost, the level setting. The drops are crazy loud, but most other things are rather quiet, so the drops aren't awesomely loud, they're jarringly loud. Just bring up the volume of the other elements I'd say, or maybe more aggressive mastering compression.

Loudness is an odd thing... you may have seen things floating around about RMS or dBTP measurements. To straighten that out, RMS is a rough estimate of how loud something will sound to human ears. dBTP, or true peak decibels, is a measurement of how much amplitude the wave will have when converted from digital to analog (via speakers or headphones). dBTP matters because a signal can be at 0dB in your DAW, but have any kind of dBTP, anywhere from -2 dBTP to 4 dBTP. That's how the pros make their tracks so loud, by using distortion, compression, dynamic EQ, etc. to get that dBTP value for their track as loud as possible while still maintaining the original vision of the song.

All of this is going to put pressure on your mix, so your mix should be somewhat adequately prepared as well, otherwise, well... you can't polish a turd. The good news is that mixing isn't that bad in dubstep. The biggest thing is making the kick and snare punch you in the face, using things like sidechaining and a bit of EQ. However, if you're using vocals, it's good to know what to do with that too. Usually, vocals have a bit of reverb, nothing more than half a second usually. Sometimes a bit of delay, but don't overdo it. Then, some OTT is always nice. Bring down the upward and downward compression knobs to taste. Then, add a mini master of some kind. If you're using FL, just a maximus ought to be okay. Finally, and rather importantly, make sure that nothing is taking up the same frequencies as the vocal, frequencies of both the fundamental and the S's.

Don't stress about it too much. Good mixes will come with time. And if it's not perfect, just call the imperfections "grime" and let it be that way. (It's what I do, anyways. :p)

Okay, second - style. So I see that you were inspired by Evilwave, but I'm reminded more of old Skrillex, other than the orchestral stuff, and that might actually help a bit. At 00:27, to me it sounds just kind of awkward. But, Scary Monsters has similar drums but isn't so boring, for lack of a better word. I think that's because between the drums, there's more to focus on in Scary Monsters. In fact, at 01:53, there's more interest between the drums, and it doesn't sound that bad.

It's those little stylistic things that matter when setting the tone of a song, you have to make sure that they're good, otherwise it just doesn't sound good.

All of these problems will work themselves out overtime. The problem is, it takes something like 50 dubstep songs to really get the hang of it, so.... get cracking I guess. xD

FractureClutter responds:

It's really nothing wrong with this review. Criticism helps us to move on and become better and I highly appreciate any reviews. Sorry for late reply(
I still have some problems with understanding of how to make right mixing and mastering, so this probably is reason of most of my problems. Yes, drop is too loud. About the vocals. I thought that it's already ok and then forgot about it.
Sorry for so little reply, but I understood most of the things you said. Practice is key and I'll try to become better at producing. Nobody can do really good music at first. And thanks again for pointing on my problems.