Hippokopter's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ananas [Riddim Dub/Brostep]]

B-ananas? That's my first thought. xD

Nice free Cymatics stuff too. xD

So just a couple of things. First of all, why the heck is it mastered to be lower than 0db? That's a bit odd to me. This kind of wobby stuff has to be LOUD!!! That's why stuff like VR's Shindeiru sounds so "in your face". In the mix, it won't sound that way, but that problem will be taken care of with massively ear destroying mastering. If you don't already know, mastering consists of compression, distortion, limiting, and just a bit of EQ. I can't explain how to actually master a track to be insanely loud, but I can tell you that there's a plugin that allows you to measure apparent loudness instead of electrical gain (and those are very different). It's the Youlean Loudness Meter, it's completely free and completely awesome for this stuff. Link: https://youlean.co/youlean-loudness-meter/

Don't be fooled, mastering isn't hard. It puts more pressure on the mix, really. Because of that, I'd say that your next course of action should be taking a closer look at mixing. I suppose for reference, here's my short-ish version:

Instrumentation:
A big part of mixing is actually instrumentation, i.e., making sure that each instrument has its own range of pitches to "live in", so to speak. The worse your instrumentation is, the harder it will be to mix the track.

Stereo Width:
Helpful if you have two instruments that can't be in a different octave, e.g., a piano and vocals. In that case, you could pan the right hand of the piano off to the right, and pan the left hand to the left. There's a bit of mixing still to be done just because the sounds still collide inside the listener's physical head and still mess with the clarity of the song, but you don't need to do quite as much.

EQ Pocketing:
Somewhat self-explanatory. The most immediate example of EQ pocketing is getting frequencies out of the way of a snare. EQ pocketing is the primary mixing technique.

Resonant frequencies:
This one is kind of an oddball in my experience. When you're searching for resonant frequencies, you don't want to just eliminate any frequency that you think is "too loud". The way I think of resonant frequencies is kind of like how filters have that dB/oct thingy going on. In the case of resonant frequencies though, it's easier to think of that slope as a kind of threshold. Here's my system: If any frequencies next to each other increase or decrease in volume faster than that slope, then take out the louder frequency/frequencies in that situation. I sincerely hope that makes some kind of sense, I'm not good at being clear, but that idea really helped me.

Sweetening FX:
Sweeteners are primarily used to either 1) fill out the mix, or 2) purposefully push something further back in the mix. This kind of leads into the idea of thinking of your mix like an actual room, where the dimensions are volume, up and down; panning, left and right; and "apparent-ness", back and forth. (I'll use semicolons whenever I fricken want, dangit!) Sweetening controls that third factor, "apparent-ness". Reverb, delay, etc. push things back, while compression, distortion, etc. bring things forward. Kinda neat.

Sorry about the miniature novel, but I really wanted you to feel equipped to mix a track. Then, mastering will REALLY seem like a piece of cake.

Lot7even responds:

Wowza!

Ok, first off: Yes, you are completely right, the mixing is simply terrible.
Funnily enough, "Ananas" means "Pineapple" in most languages.
As for the whole 0 DB thing, Okay. Honestly, If you look at songs by Virtual Riot, Deadmau5, Skrillex and all those dudes, you will see that the mix should almost ALWAYS be under 0 decibels. This is stressed in ALL genres. At our level, it matters less, but when you get better, this quietness is important because it gives you HEADROOM. Obviously, for this, it is about as compressed as a carbon allotrope. However, in good songs, having plenty of space above the waveform will allow you to mix much more easily because there isn't anything in the way One exception: all the drums in drops in EDM. That is the only thing I disagree with in the review. Thanks for it, by the way.

Now: Plugin recommendation of the day: If you don't have TDR Nova from Tokyo Dawn Records, get it. Its free and it is the best EQ I've ever seen. My 60-year-old recording teacher says the same thing, so trust him.

Lastly: Check the hangout. Its been forever.

[KChG - Phosphorescent]

Not a whole lot of songs impress me. This one did. Great job.

KChG responds:

Thank you

[Mm2x2-Trumpet time]

Well, there's some odd things going on.

First of all, the drums that you chose weren't that great. The kick and snare were lacking high end. You can use a multiband compressor for the kick and snare, but I'd recommend using custom settings for the kick and just an OTT for the snare and some high end EQ. There's some other junk that you can do, but that's the basics of un-crappifying drums in my experience.

On the subject of drums, this song is lacking in hats... there's a bunch of good free ones out there from Cymatics, Antidote Audio, and from the Kozmoz 3k Follower Drum Pack on youtube. They all have great, all-purpose hats. (If you stumble upon Ghosthack, their dubstep stuff isn't good. I'd go to them for foleys, though.) Anyways, I'm pointing out hats specifically because if you had hats in here, this would sound much less empty. If they sound odd at first, just know that they'll work great when you have everything else in place.

Moving on - the buildups weren't very attention-grabbing, and the drops weren't very attention-keeping. This will get better overtime, but you need to know that it's a problem. If you keep making songs, it'll eventually fix itself (and you'll begin to make music that you actually start liking). The only helpful things that I can tell you are that you always make the drop first, and then you always change the buildup if you don't like it for some reason.

Actually, about making the drop first - always do that to start off a song. Usually I just make the first drop first, and then duplicate it and make modifications for the second drop. I suppose you could also make multiple drops with similar styles, and then call the most energetic drop the final drop and then choose the first drop(s) however you want. (I worded it like that because you might want to try making a 3 drop song sometime.)

Finally - the trumpet lead. It has its place, but that place is not the spotlight of a song, unless it's a meme song, I suppose. But in a more official song, choose your lead more wisely. And if you really can't think of anything, just use a supersaw. It's such a common sound that nobody will raise an eyebrow.

So yeah. Some problems, but don't be discouraged.

mm2x2 responds:

Thanks for you advice xD I really appreciate it

[Voices in my head]

The free cymatics samples.... lol. The kick you used is one of those odd lasery sounding ones... those ones kinda suck. They work for "older" dubstep, but not the modern ridiculousness. Plus, the bass tone hangs around for way too long. But hey, good job for experimenting with an odd kick.

The only other problem is that some of the noises in the drops don't sound very, uh... sonically developed. They lack the necessary grime that's needed in order to glue together a dubstep drop. What I suggest you do is you get a really good synth if you don't already have one, preferably Serum just because of how limitless it is. Then, grab a preset pack for the synth you choose. (It doesn't need to be a paid-for preset pack, but good free presets are hard to come by.) Then, analyze what's going on in each preset - completely deconstruct it except for the oscillators, then gradually add the effects back in. Identify the effects that change the sound the most, then change that effect's parameters and see what it does. After enough experimentation and experience, take a shot at making your own sounds again with new knowledge of how things work. If it sounds like crap, deconstruct it like you did with the other presets, but try to find out what's making it sound awful. Then, do what you can to revive the sound. It's pretty easy, and you end up with something unique. Then, you can save that preset and chuck it into your songs!

Sound design isn't a piece of cake, but it can be done! Then, once you get that skill, you'll have to work on mixing.... oof. Good luck.

charliux210123 responds:

thanks, I hope to improve on that, i use cymatic presets because they seemed very old and classic and that is the kind of dubstep that I try to do, I hope to receive more advice.

[Niko - Shattered]

It's decent, but some parts feel empty, especially transitions. You just need some perc loops or something, just to keep attention.

Then there's the noises in the drops. They're okay, but they're not very full sounding. My suggestion if you have an empty-ish drop like that is that you start layering like crazy. It creates really alien textures and it's super awesome. Of course, you need a bunch of wob samples to do that, so either make a bunch or buy a pack. If you want to buy a pack, you might want to check out Antidote Audio's Ultimate Dubstep Basses. 7 bucks for hundreds of super useful samples, can't get a better deal. Not sponsored. :p

But yeah, there's some problems that need fixing. Just keep plugging away at it and they'll get fixed sooner or later.

Nikolopoblete responds:

Yes, there's clearly a problem with the emptiness in the track, which I tried to fix just by adding effects and compressing more everything. It seems like it didn't really worked. However, I never thought about layering basses before, I might actually try that in future stuff :O

Thanks for the feedback :D

[Drifting Through the Cosmos]

It sounds lavender town-y to me. It sets an interesting mood for a dubstep song.

Uh-oh. I took a look at your page just to see how many songs you've uploaded, and you've uploaded quite a few. But here's the catch - I think that in spite of the number of songs you've uploaded, which is a lot, you're not learning very much each time you make a song. I mean, you've only uploaded 2 since the beginning of 2018, this being one of those 2 uploads. To me, if you're not uploading as fast as possible, then you're not improving as fast as possible. If you're not making a song sometime close to when you're done with the last, then you're not giving yourself the opportunity to really learn from your past failures, and that results in less improvement. If you're aiming to get good at making music, then you need to make songs much more frequently and much more quickly. I upload songs somewhat weekly, and I've catapulted in terms of how well I can make this type of stuff, simply because I've learned from my (many, many, many) failures. I found out about that philosophy of producing through a website called EDMProd, and I'm not the only one who favors that philosophy.

There's something else wrong with taking too long to make a song. The relationship between time spent on any given song and song quality is inverse after a certain amount of time, oddly enough, and that time comes sooner than you may realize. You'll know it when it happens. That time, when the relationship inverts, is the time when you upload the song. That's the time when you're done, whether you feel like it or not. You set things down, export to audio, and hope for the best. (It's what I do.) I heard of someone who has what he likes to call the 20-hour guillotine, where at the 20 hour mark, whatever he's doing, he just immediately stops and is completely done. (20 hours of working on the song, that is.) Stop, drop, and upload. I don't know if you want to adopt that rule. Or maybe, you could set up a checklist. It's not my thing, but it's definitely an idea.

All of that is 110% geared towards improvement. It's the one thing that if you keep it constant, you'll improve basically forever - in theory. The theory is no use if it's not put into action. :)

MusicHeroTeam responds:

Thank you! Great advice!

[The Rage To Feeling So Close]

So a few things, I think, made this song somewhat grating to listen to. I know that sounds really harsh, but I mean that in the nicest way.

First of all, the same noise plays over and over and over and over. That's the primary reason for my somewhat low rating, really, because the monotony really tarnishes the overall feel of the song. It's not a bad noise, and not a bad melody, but no noise and no melody should play for sooooooooooooo long. I think you understand.

A smaller thing that I think contributed to the monotony was that the kick was kind of odd. It's more prominent at the end when the drums are more solo, but I think that the bass of the kick hangs around way too long for this harder kind of music. I don't know if you're using the free Cymatics kicks or not, but if you are, don't. The bass tones of those kicks last for too long. They're good for modifying, though, and I suggest you mess around with them to make them sound better (using pretty much any effect that doesn't mellow out a sound). In the meantime, you might have better luck just using the Kozmoz 3k follower drum sample pack, and using the kicks from that pack. It's totally free, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcQHLJmHZQ&t=11s

I see that you put some "hard work" into this song, but you've got to realize that if you're not working smarter, then hard work means nothing. Even worse, if your idea of "hard work" is working on a song for months, then that will make you want to quit music production altogether, because if each song is going to take 3 months to make, what real reason do you have for putting yourself through that? The simple answer - make songs in 3 days instead of 3 months. It'll turn out way better than you'd think, and you'll improve astronomically faster. Sounds a little crazy, but I think that only crazy people get crazy good. :)

So good luck in the future. And really quickly, I don't know if it counts as self-promo, but if you check my main news page, I have some really awesome links posted. (They don't link to any website that I've had a hand in making, other than my sample pack on Google Drive. :p) I highly suggest you check them out. The things other than my sample pack, I mean. xD

SKEVAX5 responds:

Thanks for your opinion

[Unravel]

Amazing use of music theory, first of all. It sounds to me like you're a music theorist who stumbled upon dubstep (like me... :P). I won't bother trying to explain how to make a more "coherent" dubstep drop, only because that's a question that you will find the answer to overtime.

However, there are some mixing issues here. First of all, the snare at 00:41. It sounds like it's being muffled by everything else, and then it's all going through some disortion on the master. Dubstep snares, I swear, they are the most annoying thing to mix. What I usually do is use a plugin called Clipmax to clip the snare and just make it sharper. It helps it cut through other elements. That's not enough though, so what I also do is I route everything that isn't a drum into a single return track, find what frequency the snare is at (the frequency that the snare "rests on" after the initial attack), and then I just remove that frequency from everything else by making an EQ cut on the return track. But typically, that's still not enough. So, I also sidechain everything else by the snare (sidechain EQ specifically, using a lowpass set to taste). Then, as long as you have an actually not-trashy snare, things should sound decent.

If that's just a bunch of audio jargon nonsense to you, sorry. I couldn't find any good explanatory videos. I know they're out there, but I couldn't find them. :/

ItsAlmagestFR responds:

No-No, i like your reviews, thanks for that, appreciate it dude. yes, we both do think that this collab is quite weaker than "zombies" since we forced ourself to get out of the box but we both quite exhausted and getting on the dead-end at that time, especially on the first drop since we forced ourself to do this song for 3 days only after creating Zombies (Which is peaked last time) and we already exhausted because we need to record the drums for Zombies (I think we did not sleep for 72 hours at that time). but yeah, i like your review! Thanks a lot!

[Push the Big Red Button [BroStep]]

Lol, with Cymatics I usually just get their demo packs. I can't stand their manipulative business model.

So I kinda see what you were going for here. You have some low, square-y sounds happening, and that lends itself to a very dark sound. The problem is that you use that sound too much. In moderation, that kind of odd stuff works out really well for a lot of wobby kinds of music, but if you overdo it, and that's relatively easy to do, it makes the song sound odd.

Another quick thing - the sidechaining. It's really massive, it doesn't really need to be that way. I see that you use FL and I use Ableton (why have you fallen to the dark side? xD), but I know that Ableton's Compressor can Sidechain EQ so that the other instruments are only sidechained by the high clicky part at the beginning of the kick. Here's a better explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH7F_GBEfeY&t=268s

I have no idea if this can be done in FL, but I'd assume so.

Finally - the speed of the wobs. Usually, I find that the deeper the wob, the slower it should go. So with these low squarey things, you can't make a spastic rhythm because it just doesn't work that way... unless you can make it work, and if you can, by all means, do that. I'm just saying that it usually doesn't happen that way. To balance things out, you typically need something that's a bit higher in frequency so that you can make that thing be a bit more spastic - whether that's a lead or a super distorted bass with a bazillion harmonics. That's where sound design comes really handy. :)

I suppose there's one more thing - the buildup didn't quite "match up" with the drop. My suspicion is that you fell prey to the curse that is having to do things "start to finish." In this wobby stuff, DO THE DROP FIRST. You would think that'd be kinda odd, but it actually gives you the centerpiece for the entire track. Looking at it that way, it'd be kinda dumb to make all the other parts of the track first, even and especially what exactly the buildup should build up to.

SeamlessR workflow video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gHKCIxYraE

I hope all of that helps. :)

Lot7even responds:

Wow, thanks! Incidentally, I just downloaded a dynamic compressor, so now I am all set. Oh, and the cymatics demo packs are what this is.

In my new song, I'm working on harmonic basses. Gahd, I need serum.

[Nirimi - Aloof]

It sounds decent, but I do have a few things to say.

So first of all, if you don't already know, the gain of a signal is the amount of current running through something, right? BUT, there's another way to measure loudness that more accurately represents how loud we perceive something to be: RMS. I don't know what DAW you use, but I know that in Ableton, the little mixer volume/gain thingy shows gain and RMS at the same time. (There's some free VSTs I've heard of that show perceived loudness, noteably "Youlean". I don't think it's in RMS, but it's similar enough.) That's super useful, too, especially for drops and stuff, because that's how people are competing in the loudness wars - by manipulating that RMS value directly. So for the future bass chords, you can try to put them into some kind of submix, and then compress and EQ them to get that RMS value sky high, or at least as high as it'll go. :)

Speaking of those future bass chords, there's a mixing technique that can help with big fat chords like that - modeling the gains of each of the layers after pink noise. If you don't already know, if you import a sample of pink noise, you can use that to set the levels of all of your tracks when you begin mixing. I use that technique, but I usually don't do that to the entire track, just big chords. Anyways, you can have a sample of pink noise playing with the chords, and then, you can set the levels of each of the layers of the chords so that you can just hear them over the pink noise (I find it's more helpful to think of it like turning the level up until the pink noise starts ducking out of the way). Sometimes, that can turn "chordstacks" into "CHORDSTAAAAACKS!!!!!!!1!!111!!". (This guy explains it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EerIGRBoIzw)

Finally, this whole track has just a bit of that... I don't want to be too insulting, but "inexperienced" feeling? Don't take that the wrong way, please... but it just seems like you need to spend more time streamlining your process of making music. But hey, here's the great thing: you don't need to worry too much about directly making your melodies and drops better. At least, not much. Overtime, if you streamline your process of making music, it will obviously become easier, and you'll be able to make music faster. That means that you'll get exponentially more practice making entire songs - melodies, drops, chord progressions, you get the idea. BUT, that also means that you will have more opportunities for failure in each of those areas. But don't worry! Each of those failures will help you to NOT do whatever that stupid thing was when you try to make another song! I mean, I've forgotten to MIX an entire song, but that means that now, I'm acutely aware of how far along I am in mixing something, and I will NOT upload a track before I mix it. (If you have any interest in hearing what song I'm talking about, it's literally called "Awful": https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/789501)

Remember, the definition of an expert is someone who has failed in every single way possible.

So yeah. Not perfect, but don't beat yourself up too much. :)

-Hippokopter

RobinvanDommelen responds:

I get where you're coming from, you see, I haven't even been making music for a year at this point. And the DAW I'm using isn't as complex or advanced as say, Ableton. I've been meaning to get around Ableton but for now that's just too much to fit in my scheduele. So, of course, I will definitely use all your advice, but for the 9 months since I've started this project has had me proud too.

Thanks for your feedback :D