Buoy's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[In Remembrance]

This is a wonderful and well rounded piece, but it required quite a bit of effort from me before I could really 'get' it. I have to be in a certain mood to really get immersed in this and not have it feel like a bland orchestral backdrop. And even then, it gets somewhat boring after 4 minutes or so, since each part evokes a different nuance of mostly the same mood. It was also less harmonically interesting than, say, Children's overture (though 1:46 through 1:51 was nice), and the instrumentation felt a lot blander than in Alpine. Despite your description, I did not find the dissonance to be anything out of the ordinary.

Mixing-wise - some of the notes from the strings and the cymbals were unpleasant and piercing, and the mix in general is quite top-heavy.

8.5/10

BlazingDragon responds:

Thank you for the helpful review. I'll make mixing more of a priority in pieces to come. :)

[C.Ph.E.Bach - Fantasia]

Well that was short. Sounds good though, for what it's worth.

sorohanro responds:

Thanks :)

[Road Blues]

I love the quirkiness of this. New fav artist. FINISH THE DAMN THING

Jiimaan responds:

I will, I swear!

If only for that dithyrambic review!

Thanks!

jiimaan

[The Hidden Tribe]

You apparently managed to get into the 3/4 feel a lot faster an easier than I did at first, I remember struggling with that for months. Until I listened to 3/4 songs lol. Melodies are okay, the chords are a bit wack and dissonant though. I like the rising velocity of the drums, it's cool to see techniques like that popping up one by one

Step responds:

Oh man I totally rushed this one. I hate the chords in this. They're horrible haha. That drone just gets so annoying. And the drums are repetitive.

You really think I got the feel down right first time? Well, I had played lots of melodies on the piano in 3/4 before I made this so maybe that's why!

[Out of Options]

Oh hey you're using some new sounds and the melodies aren't bad at all. They're a bit simple and banal at times but i kinda get where you're going, especially with the woody whatever instrument, it doesn't sound all that much like a xylophone. Pretty tight drums, nice. They're still too soaked in reverb though. The song doesn't start to drag on until like 1:40 so that's good. And the strings are kinda nice.

so hey! cool.

This isn't hip hop, what are you talking about.

Step responds:

Of course this isn't hip-hop. I was an idiot back then :3.

Some of the melodies aren't too bad, I agree. Others are just repeated too much and sound amateur. But at this point I am getting somewhere.

Strings are from a string soundfont whose name has escaped me. Yeah they're not so bad!

[Musical Evolution]

Cool, that's an interesting theme for a song. Nice to see you're getting out of your previous comfort zone and trying a bunch of new things.

DnB: it's okay, nothing much DnB about it though.
Dance: terrible. Fix the fucking synth. Piano melody was kinda neat.
Classical: yeah, not that great. You seem to be better at the electronic stuff than at classical at this point in time, odd.
Windows: hahahaha fuck you
Medieval: Cool, the melody was a bit neat. Flute is okay actually.

I know it's inevitable with the theme you chose for this song, but it's pretty scatterbrained and disconnected and pretty impossible to enjoy in full. No recurring elements across the different parts.

Also this is half a year on and off? Well, it's practice I guess ;P

Step responds:

"Cool, that's an interesting theme for a song. Nice to see you're getting out of your previous comfort zone and trying a bunch of new things."

I used to love doing that and still do!

"DnB: it's okay, nothing much DnB about it though.

Yeah I thought "how to make a drum and bass song...", and then the idea occured to me that I should just add drums and a bass. I was an idiot :3.

"Dance: terrible. Fix the fucking synth. Piano melody was kinda neat. "

Ugh yes, awful synth. I do like the piano melody here too though.

"Classical: yeah, not that great. You seem to be better at the electronic stuff than at classical at this point in time, odd. "

Without East/West my orchestral songs were horrible. When East/West came along it was a massive improvement!

"Windows: hahahaha fuck you"

LOL.

"Medieval: Cool, the melody was a bit neat. Flute is okay actually."

I STILL like the melody at 3:49. I want to remix it sometime... it's totally different from the melodies I usually do. It's got a very solid structure and it's super catchy. I quite like it. I think this medieval part is the only audio of mine pre-2010 I can bear listening to.

[Speeding Through Infinity]

Whoo! This is a pretty big improvement from anything you had written before. Hey wait a minute...
*goes to check if this was submitted before or after Chaoz Fantasy by ParagonX9*
Yup. You ripped him off good with that intro.

Okay back to the track, yeah you're using some nice filtered sounds and subtle background pads and well rounded drums and all that. Your production values really went up a few notches. There's almost no trace of your earlier shittier endeavors, well except the terrible piano and occasional horribly reverby kick drum.

The composition is better too, you have neat transitions.

Woohoo!!! Getting through your songs is getting fun and easy.

Step responds:

Oh 7/10, that's higher than I expected!

But yeah I was unimaginably proud of this one. It was my first ever Trance song and I loved its atmosphere. This song has a pretty spacey atmosphere to it that I think I'll probably have trouble replicating today. Bad production and stuff though.

Yeah and everyone says I ripped Chaoz Fantasy. But I'm totally OK with that because Chaoz Fantasy has a godly melody.

Also shoosh I like the piano melody in this track :(.

Thanks for reviewing!

[Corneria (Remix)]

I haven't heard the original and I'm not gonna bother because your 3 year old song isn't worth it ;) But the harmonized synth sounds kinda off, like you added a major chord to every note but didn't care to check if it sounded good. Production isn't unpleasant at all. Also the song is boooooring. Nothing that stands out from the busload of tracks on NG that sound like it.

Step responds:

I was so proud of my transitions in this one. I thought the "you think that was cool?" transition was super clever of me :3.

Looking back this does suck but the production did improve a little. Everything's clear and the compression issues aren't nearly as obvious.

[Not a Care in the World (]

Same things as in your last review except this track is a lot more pleasant since it's slower and less intense. Though that also makes it more boring. And wow it's loud as hell too.
Your tunes seem to be getting more sensible at this point. Routine techniques and a better sense of songwriting seems to be sinking in. That's good!

Step responds:

Haha this is so slow... but yeah my melodies start making a bit more sense here. But ugh I still can't believe how slow my improvement was from 2008 - 2009 :(.

Loud as hell is thanks to that limiter. I rememember that limiter always making lead synths drown out all my other background synths, so my solution to that was to turn the background synths UP. I used to turn volume knobs up to crazy amounts. I bet if I took the limiter off this, the song would explode.

[Power of the Piano]

Wow, that's kinda... good, compared to the previous songs. The piano is super shitty and quantized but you have some of those typical "Newgrounds trance" piano melodies and stuff and the production is kinda punchy. The mix is pretty muddy and crushed. The 1:14 thing sounded pretty cool for a few seconds. Cool phased drums. Terrible bassline after that. Cool piano run at the end there. Weird ending.
Huh.

Step responds:

Muddy and crushed - yeah. At this time I had no idea what a limiter does and the default template that came with FL automatically throws a limiter in the master channel, so without knowing it, it was crushing all my mixes until 2010 when Blackhole12 informed me what that limiter was actually doing, which led to me removing it.

Yeah ending is weird :3. This has quite a lot of energy; I was actually really proud of this at the time. Now it pains me to listen to it but hey, like I said, before 2010 my songs all sucked haha.