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.

[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.

[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! :)