Buoy's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[The Essence of Time V2]

oh neat, some orchestral ish stuff. Um, yeah the first version of this was better I think. This doesn't sound like it has LESS reverb at all. And you have a bunch of terrible piano melodies, and you're also going off key occasionally here. The mix could be cleaned up so much by just laying off the damn reverb a bit. The percussion towards the end is kinda cool!
And hey, a ritardando. Trademark Step feature. Neat.

Step responds:

Really, a ritardando is one of my trademarks? That's pretty cool, hehe.

Yeah right now I can't be arsed to decide whether this one or the other version's better. At the time I thought this one beat the other one by a mile. But yes I did abuse reverb back then, just like anyone would after recently finding out what a mixer actually does... right? :(

[D'n'B Thing]

The first 10 seconds were kinda enjoyable, the track had a bit of a groove with the regular beating kick drum. But the horribly reverbed kick and frantic drumming kinda messes everything up after that. And the main synth is bright and horrible. And the bassline is off key, you're not consistently in either a major or a minor key.

Step responds:

Yeeaaah this one's horrible. I made another full DnB thing with Decibel once (http://goo.gl/LyfHF if you're curious)... after that I never touched DnB again :3.

I'm fairly sure I'd find DnB even harder than jazz if I had to try it now.

[The Essence of Time]

Time to pick it up where I left off.

Okay I don't have your other songs that clear in mind but this seems like it's actually pretty musically sensible? Granted a lot of the piano stuff is goofy and shit but the strings are okay and the drums occasionally make sense too, and the mixing is kinda okay! So you seem to be making a bit of progress here. It still gets repetitive and boring after like half a minute though.

Step responds:

OMG you're still reviewing these. That's awesome, thanks so much. It's actually really interesting to know what you think about these old things believe it or not.

Haha yeah I remember being pretty darn proud of this. It is super boring though! Although I think this was like one of my first songs that actually had a sensible melody.

[Istishhad]

This submission is really fun, and has one of the strongest and coolest themes. The hippity hoppity drums and percussion fit the otherwise ethnic and organic instrumentation pretty well, and the programming of them is quite interesting, but it does sound somewhat goofy. The mixing is pretty good and consistent throughout and everything sounds relatively clear, but it's not glorious and impressive either.

This song has a bit of the same problem as your last one - you have this absolutely gorgeous string-oriented part that starts at 2:28 (I'm expect more of that good stuff from you so I'm favoriting you btw), but nowhere in the first two minutes do you even hint towards it! If it wasn't my job to listen to it thoroughly and give detailed feedback, I probably wouldn't have bothered listening as long as it took to get to that part. Also just because I'm curious, what are you using for strings?

After that part things get pretty boring. I've already hear the ethnic+hip hop mix, and it's the same thing now, just more sparse. There's not a lot more to talk about in this track after the initial novelty has worn off.

8.7/10

[-SuperWing Heroes-]

Triplet rhythms, cute and playful orchestral instruments, an almost polka-like bassline and oddly amazing little sound effects that fill out the track. Yep, this track smells like Waterflame from miles and miles away! I love it!

The main parts do their job well by being upbeat and danceable. The bombastic string arrangement and the cutesy piano in the second half make me smile every time. The change of intensity (but not pace) at 1:28 was wonderful, and the aforementioned oddly amazing percussion gives it a really neat kinda christmassy vibe. The chiptune elements towards the end were great, I wouldn't mind hearing a bit more of that.

The mix is wonderful here. Absolutely every element of the track is clear as day and shines through the mix like the sun. Despite the drums being pretty snappy and the instrumentation being bright and poppy, I can keep it at a relatively high volume without getting bothered by it at all. So yeah great production!

There is really only one drawback with the track that I can point out, naturally it's the repetitive and somewhat bland structure. More than half of the time of this track is spent repeating the main theme, and there's nothing really surprising happening composition-wise. Also the ending is lame as shit, plain and simple, just like in the tune your competitor made.

8.7/10