Buoy's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The 10½ Heroes -Remix 2-]

These synths are actually kinda cool. Neat rhythms too! The drums are starting to get out of control and ruin all your songs at this point. A decent synth bassline is a welcome addition to your music. I don't know if this is intentional but you tend to use a pentatonic scale a lot, which gives a lot of your music a stereotypical chinese kinda vibe.

Step responds:

Yeah, I had no idea they were pentatonic scales. I just thought they sounded cool and at the time I just went with whatever I thought sounded cool. That's still what I do though haha. Some things never change.

[Mass Illusion]

Ooh, kinda going for an EDM beat are we? Well, until you screw it up completely after like 30 seconds haha. A lot of the melody is off-key here. But you're doing some kinda cool things like the 32nd note runs and pitched snares.

Pan flutes really are not a good instrument in dance music.

Step responds:

I had a pretty good approach to this track before. Some of the composition isn't too bad, but everything is dissonant and messed up that it really didn't reach its full potential. I'm actually STILL pretty proud of the re-introduction of one of the motifs of the track at 1:07 though, with the pan flute fading and whatnot. I seriously want to make a transition like that again in the future.

[Distant Oblivion Loop]

This melody is pretty good actually. But yeah. 8 seconds, made in twenty minutes. I'd have a hard time breaking the character limit on this one.

Step responds:

I wish I made a whole song out of this. I actually made a MIDI of this melody with all the counter-melodies and whatnot but Echo never added instruments to it, despite it having one of the best melodies I made at the time.

One time I should find a 10-second loop on Newgrounds and break the character limit on that. Just to prove that I can break the character limit on anything :3.

Thanks for commenting.

[Tarantella in D Minor -Re]

Not that much of a remix is it, you just played the song, haha. This one has a lot more, er, musical sense, in it than the previous songs, but of course that's on account of you not making it. The synth sound in the latter half is terrible :) But at least there's delay on it! I'm looking forward to the moment you discover that reverb exists too..

Step responds:

Haha. Like I said in the author's comments, this is one of the first tracks that I enjoyed which is classical. Now classical/orchestral is probably my favourite genre. Back then I couldn't properly appreciate classical composition and thought it was just random notes put together. I was such an idiot :(.

Thanks for leaving a review!

[The Barren Battlefield]

Most enjoyable submission yet, just because there's not that much in it that can ruin it. Piano is getting somewhat better, but it's still kinda awful of course. A bit lacking in content too. And man that flute reminds me of recorder lessons in 4th grade.

Step responds:

Yeah I wanted to try making a sad piano song. Turned out more boring than sad, but hey at least it's a change of pace :P. That flute is actually just a wav sample. Literally, someone made a flute library which had a wav sample of every note and it was openable with a particular sampler in FL, and I had no idea how to use it. I thought I could just grab one of the wav samples and make melodies with that, hence why it sounds terrible. If I used it properly it would have sounded pretty decent.

Thanks for the review!

[Mortal Kombat Theme ~Remi]

This right here is like the epitome of bad and overrated video game remixes on NG, haha. How is it even possible for so many people to like it and give it top marks? People are weird :P
The sytrus synths are a bit of an improvement since the last few songs, even if it sounds really stereotypically fruity loopy.

Step responds:

Dude I have no idea how people are giving me all these high scores. I was absolutely overjoyed when I was getting 10/10's and favourites at the time though. This was my first ever track that hit it off slightly in terms of popularity since the rest got minimal reviews.

Thanks for the feedback!

[The 10½ Heroes ~Remixed~]

Lol, what a guitar solo. Almost sounds a bit like Victor Wooten's style. You have mostly the same instrumentation, not much to comment on there. You still tend to treat drums as an instrument with the same priority as other instruments instead of using it as the rhythmic groundwork throughout - hence the long percussionless parts. Cool ending! A dreamy piano chord and a fading arpeggio... seems like a bit of development.

Step responds:

Oh god the guitar solo. And the ending. I was so proud of those haha.

Echo did all the drums at the time, and most of the time they were treated the same way the melodic instruments were treated, which was bad. I think that by Life Goes On I start actually treating the drums as a proper rhythmic component.

Thanks!

[-Distant Seas Remix-]

Most pleasant song yet, sounds a lot better without the synthy Slayer guitar. As usual, some melodies sound surprisingly good and coherent, while others sound like more or less random experimentation. Drums still need work. I could say the same things I've been saying over and over now about every song but I don't want to repeat myself too much. You probably have a sense of what I think of these things by now.

Step responds:

Yeah, this actually has a decent atmosphere that fits the melody. But yeah, the bad instruments/drums still ruin the whole thing. My MIDI stuff ends pretty soon though!

Thanks for reviewing.

[-Distant Seas-]

Maybe in the world's worst NES game, this could be a sea theme. hahaha. I see you have yet to discover the world of reverb at this point. There's a good melody hidden in there somewhere, but you kinda ruin it with the variations of it :P

Step responds:

True, true!

Don't worry, I'll discover reverb eventually :P. Also I can't believe I thought FL Slayer sounded GOOD at the time...

Thank you for the review!

[Distant Seas Loop]

I mentioned in the review of your first song that it was a lot better than most of the stuff audio mods have to skim through in a day.

Well this isn't.

Step responds:

You said it bro :^).