Hippokopter's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Owl City - Lucid Dream (CR33P3R Remix)]

So there are a couple of important things here that are a bit off kilter. It looks like you haven't posted too many songs here, so don't take what I say as, "You're so bad." Take it as, "It looks like you're new, here's some stuff to know."

Okay, so first up is that the drops aren't very full. Usually, a heavy and thick drop consists of a bunch of things - kick, snare, hats, cymbals, rides sometimes, toms sometimes, fat basses, fat sub, but then also there's risers, impacts, sidechords, arps, chants, and plain noise of some sort, maybe a crowd sample or just white or pink noise. Sometimes, there's even a very soft sustained high note that's drenched in reverb (which appears in many of Teminite's songs, as an example). I don't even use everything there because it's a bit too much, but usually I put in chants, sidechords, and risers and crap to keep things from sounding too empty. But, in EVERY drop, it's near essental to have hihats. If you make a hihat pattern, don't worry if they sound bad on their own, they'll sound fine with everything else, just don't forget the hihats. (Crow, if you know about him, says that he was wondering why his drops sounded so empty, and then he just added hats and POOF, full drops.)

All of that is to say that there's no reason drops should sound empty.

Secondly, there's some mixing issues. The vocal chops sound good on their own, but they need to mesh better with the lead vocals. To do that, you can push the vocal chops back in the mix by adding some delay and maybe some reverb. I'd personally go for ping pong delay to add a bit of interest and width, but whatever works. As for the lead vocals, it seemed like they were being covered up by other elements, I could only understand it sometimes. I'm not quite skilled enough to know exactly what the problem is just by listening to it, but maybe try just compressing it a bit more, and bringing up the level up 1 or 2 dB.

Also a mixing thing - the kick and snare. Philosophically, what needs to happen is for the kick and snare to be center stage, but ONLY when they're happening. This is why we sidechain rather than just EQing, because mixing for the kick and snare has to be time-based. That being said, the snare is a notoriously annoying element in the mix because it's hard to get it to really pop out, so some rules are typically bent for the snare. The snare usually has its own sidechain thing going, not much but some, but then also, the frequencies of where the fundamental of the snare hits is cut out of everything else. (If you understand mid/side EQing, you can just EQ the mid frequencies out of the way of the snare. That preserves a bit more stuff.) If that doesn't work, you can be a bit adventurous and clip the snare with some plugin like Clipmax ( http://www.vst4free.com/free_vst.php?plugin=Clipmax_&id=2212 ), which is my personal favorite. Adding harmonics makes it punch through other stuff better. And if all of that doesn't pump some life into the snare, just use a different snare. It sucks to have to re-do everything, but it really helps and it sounds awesome.

And finally, the verses are a bit lengthy. If you want it to stay that long, you could add some variation with some of the background elements, maybe filter the kick and snare, bring the chords up an octave in some sections, idk.

A lot of this stuff doesn't improve overnight, you have to actually implement stuff into songwriting for it to help. So my best advice to you is that your improvement will come with the time you spend making songs. The more time you spend making songs, the more improvement. If you make a lot of songs, you will improve like you've never improved before, never being who you want to be, but getting satisfactorily close.

And again, this isn't an, "Eww, this is so gross." In fact, I think that the drops are pretty sick, you put the right wobs in the right places as far as I'm concerned. It's just that there is a road ahead of you, and I wanted to light the way a bit.

You're doing a lot right. Keep it up.

[R3V - Resemblance]

This sounds really refined and professional! My only slight criticism is that the mastering isn't as aggressive as it usually should be for genres this intense. If you don't already know, although I suspect you might, the goal with mastering is to squeeze out as much headroom as possible without things getting too distorted, and in the process, maximize what's called the "true peak" of a song. When digital information is converted into analog sound via speakers or headphones, sometimes, though the electrical gain of a signal is at 0dB, it will end up outputting a sound louder than 0db, for... reasons. The loudest analog sound in the entire song is the true peak, because it's the peak of what will truly come out of the speakers or headphones.

Mastering for harder genres is all about getting that true peak as sky high as possible, which usually doesn't go below 1dBTP (1 true peak decibel) in the drops. A nice free program to monitor true peak is the YouLean Loudness Meter. It has a bunch of cool stuff and it's totally worth downloading.

A couple of important notes:

Some platforms will clip a signal if it goes above -1dBTP, noteably YouTube, so if you're mastering for YT, just make sure that your song is -1dBTP at most. (I haven't found any free 64-bit true peak limiters, but there is one 32-bit true peak limiter whose name eludes me.)

Also, when there's some kind of monitor on the true peak, the monitor is only predicting what the true peak will be when the signal is converted from the digital world to the analog world. As a result, different VSTs will predict sliiiightly differently, but they'll generally all be within something like half a tenth of a dBTP. (For instance, Fabfilter's Pro-L is 0.02 dBTP more lenient than YouLean. None of it matters, but the programs will sure try to convince you that it does, lol.)

Anyways, that's it. Pretty awesome song otherwise!

By the way, NG is showing that you've only posted 9 songs here, but this sounds like you've made more than just 9 songs. How many songs have you made?

R3VMusic responds:

Wow, thanks a lot dude! I actually didn't know that different sites(i.e. YouTube) can make your stuff clip when other sites don't. And I agree that the master might not have been as loud/aggressive as it could have been. I was just running into problems whenever I tried to get the master louder, stuff would sound muddy and messy. Honestly if I had put together a cleaner mix it probably would have been easier, so I'll keep that in mind going forward. I'm pretty novice when it comes to mastering, so your tips/feedback here is super appreciated!

Also, I've made a total of 14 songs. A couple are private because they were some of my first, and as to be expected, they were terrible. I started producing in December of 2016, although I've been playing piano since I was a toddler. I suppose I just grew in skill very quickly since my beginning a year and a half ago, haha.

Again, thanks for the support and feedback man! :)

[Virtual Riot - Show Up (Novacore Remix)]

It's definitely mixed very well, except that it sounds rather stereo for a trap beat like this... idk if it's just me, though.

On to the serious stuff.

I'm not rating this at 4.5 stars like I usually would ONLY because these lyrics swear and talk about drugs. Make fun of me or whatever, but the fact is that this sophisticated potty-talk isn't associated with good things, and much more associated with bad things, and for solid reason. Swearing and talk of drugs are the marks of someone who isn't very disciplined when it comes to self control, which I hope we can agree is awful at best and catastrophic at worst. That is NOT to say that you, Novacore, are at fault, but what I am saying is that you not only listened to this garbage, but you put it into one of your creative works despite the fact that it is just not good any way you slice it.

Please Novacore, don't become one of the mindless people only capable of making music only if it relates to sex and/or drugs. It's a classic trap that's nabbed at the very least thousands, and I don't want it to get you.

But in the end, do I really think that giving you 0 stars will totally make you do a 180? No, of course not, that's silly. Of course you'll scoff and scroll away. But I want to let you know to the best of my ability that you're going into a dangerous place that has much too large of a chance to get you into ridiculous amounts of life-destroying trouble.

Make fun of me, do whatever, but there's no good reason to tell me I'm wrong.

12/23/19 EDIT:
To the people who don’t like my comment, there is nothing remotely harsh about it! Just the opposite – I am condemning harsh things: sex, drugs, and frivolous talk thereof. There is no reason to dislike anything that I said above! If you think that careless discussion of sex and drugs is all fine, then all I can say is that, with kindness, you need to change. My words are not the problem.

To Novacore, thanks for the encouraging reply (if you’ll ever see this).

Ipsiom responds:

I just made this cuz Disciple put up the acapella and I am a Virus Syndicate fan so I figured I'd try an Eptic style thing. By no means does this mean I'm taking my music in this direction, quite the opposite actually. I just make stuff like this when I'm bored and what not, same thing came from the We Are Number One Remix

[SquaereCat - Sun Goes Down]

R E V E R B F I L T E R

Not that that's a bad thing, I guess, lol. I've never found quite so much use for the reverb filter when it comes to making crazy basses, but this song makes me think I need to mess around with it some more...

All I have to say is that the second half of the song is a near copy of the first part. For bass music, that's not such a great thing. Bass music folks want more variation than people like country fans or some other less musically tasteful group... :p

Jokes aside, even though a lot of people will say "Oh, it's fine to just copy the first half and make it the second half," that's just not the case with bass music.

Really savage song, though! Sounds awesome.

[Sakura]

This is awesome! I LOVE when the kick clips in the drop like that, especially when there's a powerful sub. The picardy third fade out ending was pretty original, lol.

The only real criticism I have is that the melody just plays in a loop, and it's just a supersaw. Don't get me wrong, supersaws are the most useful tool in edm, but sometimes, it might be cooler to switch to a more original sounding lead (in the drop or intro, or something). As for the melody just repeating, you could make a different melody for the buildup.

All I have to say past that is that you chose one of the worst keys for the sub - C. Low C is too low most of the time, and high C is almost always too high. That being said, the sub here just follows the chords, so it's not a super duper big problem like it could be, but it still sounds good to have that nice sub resolve the chords in its proper range. Next time, try to avoid the keys of C, C#, D, Bb, and B, because they're all bad sub keys. (I've found that D and C# work okay in some circumstances, but for the most part, it won't sound super amazing with other stuff.)

So yeah. Nice song!

Sylux03 responds:

YEY! Thank you for the good thoughts. ^_^ I'll keep that in mind.

[Trickshot - Stress Free]

This ain't bad. The kinds of (minor) improvements that I think are needed are stylistic, and I don't think I can give good advice about that. All I can say is that whatever problems you have, they will work themselves out overtime, if you make enough songs.

I hope you do well in the contest! :p

TrickshotMusic responds:

Ok thanks man :) if you could tell me the problems it would help me resolve them faster lol. but thanks for your review

- Trickshot

[Strength]

This is pretty good! The white noise fx and cymbals are really piercing though, you might want to tone them down some. There's a good amount of bass though, and that's always nice.

Okay, so a quick note about mixing. It seems like you wanted it so that each and every element shined. That sounds good in theory, but in practice... it doesn't make for a good sound. The trick is realizing that the listener's focus can only be on one thing at a time, so only one thing at a time really needs to shine. I say that because in the drops, it seems like you have a lot of background elements that are covering over the other main elements, and also because of the before mentioned cymbals. Instead, try to push things backward and pull things forward in the mix by using reverbs, delays, choruses, flangers, phasers, etc. to push things back, and distortion, compression, limiting, multiband/OTT, etc. to bring things forward. (Idk if you have access to fx like that in GarageBand. I use Ableton, and I've never used GarageBand, so I don't really know. If it accepts VSTs, there are a bazillion vsts out there that work well for mixing.)

Pretty good overall.

[Kcilceht]

You know, I'm not exactly sure what I expected. I saw that the title was "the click" when read backwards, but I didn't expect this.

It's certainly entertaining, and definitely... original... uh...

I'm a little baffled why this you called this dubstep tbh lol.

Definitely has your signature on it.

Thycket responds:

yeah, i didn't know what other genre to put it under lol

thanks for the review fam