Nimble's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pareidolic War]

That piano riff starting at 1:17 nearly brought me to tears, all of those modulations gives the rest of the song a much more aged vibe; as if this war has been going on forever. This is definitely something I appreciately vastly, and the rest of the piece feeds off that mood set at the beginning. The laidback sense of despair around 3:45 definitely makes this song; a small climax for an ever continuing struggle. Good job and good luck man :)

Phonometrologist responds:

That piano riff right there is a short chord progression that was inspired by Bach. The key thing about those three chords is in the descending bass line for the minor One chord to get to the major Sixth. In between is a minor fifth in the first inversion so the bass line is D>C>B. The only problem is that Bach goes over brilliant stuff too fast so I attempted to savor it a bit in this piece. So my mentality in that piano section was a bit more traditional so as to get an "aged vibe." I appreciate you interpreting the piece as well since that is where the art comes in. This war has been going on forever as it goes beyond just our own flesh and blood.

[Path to the Eilan Tree]

...Wait, I wasn't following you before?

You have such control over your harmonies I'm amazed. the amount of openness and neutrality that this song gives off is accompanied by a really nice feeling of progression and adventure. I particularly admire how after all these open and odd out phrases you're able to end on as simple of a resolution; I was expecting something interesting to happen, and the fact that it was sweet and to the point was a pleasant surprise. my goodness man, this is great. Good job and good luck :)

SilverPoyozo responds:

Thank you very much, I appreciate it. It was a real struggle to finish though, until I realized that 'simple' was the way to roll with it. Good luck to you too!

[Tree of Life]

Man, I love both of your voices. I also like the composition elements within all the auxillaries, only amplifying the melodic lines in a good way. I've said this so much so far this year, but this is wonderful work. Good job ethereal, and good luck! :)

etherealwinds responds:

Thank you sir Nimble, Nimblest of the Nimbles. Good luck to you too and I'm glad you liked my piece!

[The Trombone Blues]

Oh gods, this sounds like something straight out of one of Sidney Bichet's 1930 Albums, full of improvised jumble and whatnot. Especially love that (pseudo?)-half cadence at the end with the kazoo.
There are a couple of latency issues with your trombone playing and the track, but it's barely noticeable, just nit-picking. Now it's time to study moar jazz sam!

samulis responds:

Bleh. Get out. :P

Actually the latency stuff was kinda my fault. The piano part starts right off and I couldn't quite get enough time to prep for the flutter-tongue gliss of evilness so I had to bump everything over and record the trombone track with a lead-in. it probably didn't line up fully. Plus it was 2 AM.

I'm surprised no one has gone crazy about how it ends on the IV chord. :D

[Wave]

Damn it, just when i'm finishing up my rendition of it to post on NG, I see this. It sounds lovely, even though the claves could be a little softer, and there's a bit of white noise. other wise, this sounds pretty nice. good job bro.

steampianist responds:

Go and post yours i want to hear your rendition of this classic :D

ah yes the white noise was coming from the guitar track cos the guitarists used a computer mic (surprisingly clear though) so i was only able to reduce a little white noise otherwise it'll be flangy

oh and thanks for listening

[Follow that car!]

I love how we both ended up writing in 5(3+2) at some point in our songs :P

The composition is great, even though it's a bit anti-climatic. it creates this aggressive, down and dirty mood that doesn't get out of my head easily. it's awesome. The production is also very good, with a few minor issues(the bari sax gets hidden in the first phrase) all in all, this piece is very worthy of a win. Hope to see you next year on the field, I'll be rooting for ya from the stands in the meantime :)

acmeDyne responds:

Frankly, I'm amazed I'm still in it. I really expected you to win. I haven't even thought about what to do for the next round. Thanks for the kind words and encouragement!

[Necrostatic - Zombie Jam]

you have the right idea about what a dubstep song should sound like compared to what you hear, so that's a big plus. however, there are a couple things i want to address;

The music stayed at a near constant volume. This is probably the biggest problem since ALL types of music have their highs and their lows, their softs and their louds. A lot of (arguably mainstream) dubstep starts out very soft, with a piano sample or something of that nature, and continually grows larger and larger until the drop- here it wasn't the case. it was a consistent volume the entire time and stayed that way, even towards the end. dynamic volume is critical in keeping an audience interested in your music.

There was variation- enough of it to keep me listening, so you did well on that part. what i didn't feel though, was the filling out of a track. you know how some music sounds like there's only like 3 people playing and there's really a million different things going on at once and vice versa, where a jazz combo of just Piano Drums and Bass can easily make a track sound like it's alive- this track was more on the side of the former rather than the latter. I would say that by using more, different synths with the ones you use and just having a kind of background sound (whether it be chords or what have you) will fill up the track more and not make the vocal samples sound like their talking- it'll make it sound like an actual sample.

I hope this feedback helps, even if just a little :)

Necrostatic responds:

Thank you for your review.

About the constant volume: I made it that way, because of fearing overcompression or clipping. I heard several new artists, which just slammed vsts all over the place causing great volume distortion, where I´ve seen people on the other hand sidechaining so much that they overcompressed their Vst´s, resulting in an unwanted change of volume. It was just safer for me to do it that way. But I will keep an eye out for that and try to lessen the volume of buildups and boost the volume, when going into the mainpart.

Dubstep: I choose that genre, because it mostly describes the way it sounds. Newgrounds lacks a secondary genre, or a tertiary genre. It was a little bit out of the genre as it was supposed to give it more my touch and to not stay stringent to the dubstep genre.

VST´s: I will try to add more VST´s to it. It is just difficult to come across good ones. Most of them are just muddy and I don´t like it. But I have access to a few good VST´s, so I will try to add them.

Background sound: I always wanted to do that. But whenever I tried to do that, it sounded out of place. Maybe you can get me some input on that one.

Drums & Bass: There should be more of them and more variation to that. I simply didn´t notice it, because of the many synths going on. I will try to lessen the VST side a little and put more drums into it + variation.

Vocal: Yeah that was from a text to speech program. I wanted to try, whether it works or not. I thought it was OK on some parts, but maybe I have overused it a little. If you mean the part, where someone talks over a period of time, then I have to say that it was meant to be so. A singing voice wasn´t needed there. That would have destroyed the rhytm of the song and the beat. Singing was not an option. This part was meant to be like this :).

Next track: The next track is in the works. There are real vocals and they fit quiet nicely in that mix. I will try to use your feedback on my next song.

Thanks a lot for the review!

[Observation Deck Battle]

Sorry if i'm being a bit too harsh here, but i'm going to address a couple things;

While you may think a track can work as a long, chill piece, your music won't be the only thing on someone's iDevice, nor will you be the only artist they listen to. either add more content in your song(in the form of different chords, key changes, different sections, what have you) or cut down the length. simple enough.

Change is a good thing, even in music. I heard a couple small changes in chords, but that's about it. the same glitchy pattern, the same rhythm throughout. add some variation, go full glitch and mess stuff up in the process, at least in doing so you would've taken a couple steps outside your comfort zone.

since this is a battle theme, it'd be characteristically correct to have the drums at the beginning, and to have some high-level action-y stuff going on. now, the definition of style and being in style changes from person to person, but battles themes are typically HYPE HYPE HYPE SO MUCH HYPE- didn't really feel it the HYPE from this track. maybe make it a little faster.

The drums are WAY TOO COMPRESSED. at the very least lower their level in the mix.

Use more than one instrument, or at least change the main synth. instrument variation is change, and like I said earlier, change is a really good thing. if you don't have much to begin with- look all over the internet, there is plenty of good, free stuff to use.

I hope this helps. :)

FortressLord responds:

Thanks. I read carefully through it all, and I agree with most of it, but there is a few instruments and the drums actually have a compression effect purposefully added for a digital feel, although I agree this would not normally work.
I will on future tracks take your advice though, and half score shows I'm at least on the right track.

[-La Pura Vida-Salsa NGADM]

This song sounds more like Latin Jazz than Salsa, but you had the right ideas flowing around. As IYD said, a lot of the feel that comes from Salsa is the percussion, which was there, but it wasn't very influential through the course of the piece. The composition and instrumentation is very solid, with exception of the trumpets doing falls and hits every 2 seconds, it makes this less enjoyable. you don't have to remove these at all, it might just be that they're loud in the mix. It was a good listen other than the reasons listed. I apologize if i'm being a bit harsh here, I'm hispanic myself and am only trying to help.

SoundChris responds:

Thanks a lot for leaving your thoughts here! You are right that i didnt have followed all of the forms which are typical for salsa - in some cases i have broken the rules by intent, in other cases because of my lack of knowledge about that style of music. Maybe you can call it "latin influenced jazz" :D If you say the trombones are a little bit to loud - thats possible. I actually dont know how the piece really sounds: According to my headphones the track has been well balanced, on my mac on quicktime it was also ok. But when i tried to play the track on my windows computer and the hifi-device the brass seemed to be much to low.

For the near future i think i have enough from salsa, but someday i think i will try another one and then i also will try to bring the percussion in front, maybe add some singing and will work on the brass sound as well.

You dont have to apologize my friend - your review is really appreciated - always glad to learn more about music so i can improve my skills :D So thanks man!

All the Best,

Chris

[Dreamyard]

I really like this piece compositionally and the instrumentation just compliments it the whole time. i get the whole vibe of good dreams and nightmares from specific parts of this song, and the only gripe I have is towards 3:10 that section is a bit too long, but it still sounds good. a lot of the song is driven by chordal harmonies and stuff in common, which is a very nice touch. can't wait to see what happens in this match-up!

Kor-Rune responds:

Thanks! Less metal, noted and appreciated! I'm usually not the headbanging type

Glad you liked it!