Buoy's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Mio/Homura]

You improved the sound quality by a lot in this, the vocals sound mostly acceptable mix is relatively balanced. The Instruments sound much fuller than in your previous songs. The sine wave synth adds a lot to the intro. The water sfx is good, but really overpowering when it's present. So I enjoyed the first minute or so, but things seemed to start falling apart after 2 minutes. Going acapella for a few moments gives it a nice rock-opera-ish feel, but that's greatly diminished by the vocals being off tune and distorted at that very critical moment. The second half gets old and tiring very quickly, due to a combination of lack of variation and the piercing, muddy and top-heavy mix.

7.0/10

[-Clutterfunk-]

Clutter indeed. Genre hybrids are nice but I found this to be veering a bit much on the side of chaos and incoherence. The structure is a linear progression through different ideas and never revisits any of them in a meaningful way, and while that makes for a fun trip, it also makes for a weaker and less memorable piece. Combined with the occasional almost comedy-like sound effects, it's difficult to take the song seriously. Also despite the variation, the half-a-bar drum beat does not seem to change even once through the song, it seems like you just forgot about it or something. That closed hat in the left ear gets fantastically annoying and distracting after less than half a minute. Otherwise a good song with a ton of nice ideas.

The mix is fine. Everything comes through nicely.

8.0/10

[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. :)

[Fly me to Blue]

Nice with a more straightforward jazz fusion piece after the more technically oriented prog showcases from the first 3 rounds. This strikes me as more well-rounded and structured than your earlier songs which I'm sure is what you were going for after review upon review criticizing scatterbrainedness and disjointedness and all that. I personally didn't mind all that too much, and I'm also a bit more skeptical of the change in style - I find this to be a decidedly less varied and novel piece, and got a bit tired around the 5:03 mark after hearing the central melody for the umpteenth time. There is also less variation in intensity when it comes to instrumentation and production. The solos and instrumental parts were not as exciting and meaningful. But note that all of the above is me comparing this song to your first few, which I was relatively ecstatic about. It's a fantastic piece on its own terms.

The instrumental side of things is wonderful as usual, the drums in particular have a glassy transparent quality that I love. Nothing negative to point out there.

9.0/10

[C.Ph.E.Bach - Fantasia]

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

sorohanro responds:

Thanks :)

[Primordial Sludge]

For the most part, I found this to be a phenomenally boring piece of music. The synths and drum samples are cheesy, the melodies are almost nonsensical - they establish no atmosphere and convey no emotions - and the mix is muddy. Some redeeming qualities are that the percussion that rises in pitch at 1:27 is pretty neat, and the filtered chords in the middle of the song weren't THAT bad. Apart from that though, this sounds pretty abysmal.

[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

[War]

This is lovely. I adore the acoustic guitar. Please keep submitting your works here.

[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!