Tangerine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Ghost World]

Nice

DaSomeoneBruh responds:

thanks :Δ

[Goddess Revival]

This is lovely Dan! The name fits so well

DanJohansen responds:

Glad you enjoyed it good sir!

[West Virginia]

Hey, 50Steaks! Good to know you're still alive, haha. You can take as much time as you need on your songs, you don't owe us anything. Like as I say with video games, rather take longer to produce a masterpiece than to rush it and make something mediocre.

Anyway, after listening to this song, I really like it. It's short and sweet, and I really like what you did with the intentional dissonance. You played around with the feelings of hopefulness and eeriness really well and I think the blend of the two really worked together in making an interesting and unique piece.

With your more recent songs, you've started branching out with new ideas and tones which I think is really nice. You're experimenting with feelings and I think it adds a lot of personality to your music.

I can definitely tell that you spend a lot more time working on a good melody. It works in unison (mostly) with the melody and it really drives the eerie theme with all of its diminished-sounding chords. Also, I feel like this is your best melody so far. It's super catchy and fun to listen to.

Anyway, to wrap things up. I really like this song. I can tell you put a lot of effort and thought into it and it really shows. It's a short but certainly sweet piece. Also, never feel like you need to rush to get your songs done. As I said, it's better to take longer and make a masterpiece than to rush it and make something mediocre :)

50Steaks responds:

Hahaha you think this is dissonant? Try listening to the original lmao.

Well yeah of course the worst thing I could do is rush through these final few songs and leave myself and everyone else hanging. I don’t think this is a masterpiece by any means, either version, but I do like the melody. Thing is, by the time I was finishing the new version, I’ve heard this melody so much that I may have gotten sick of it, hence why it’s not very present in most of this version. The old version, yes, it’s very dominant, but this new one, I decided to make a third melody that would just take over in the second drop (or first drop idk). Also at 3 minutes long it isn’t really THAT short, it’s just the intro that makes it seem shorter.

I feel like this song fixes every issue I had with the original Virginia. It has WAY more harmony and progression, has a better melody that isn’t as repetitive, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. I’m glad you liked it too, and if I can ever figure out how, I will make the title just West Virginia to be less confusing.

[GizzyKittyMusic - Feeling Good]

Hey, this is nice. Glad to see you're practising, haha. I've barely started on mine c:

The synth you're using sounds a pretty synthwavey, I'm not too familiar with the genre since this month I'm going to go for Eurobeat instead of synthwave.

The song is pretty good but it gets repetitive. I would recommend an A,B,A,C,A structure to practice better harmonic variation. It's what I used and it's a pretty good structure. Also, this seems to be a one-chord-wonder style of song. It's alright but you have to be very careful not to make it repetitive. I would recommend switching sections after 16 or so bars.

I can see you're putting an honest effort into learning the genre. Just keep listening to other synthwave songs and see what you like in some and see if there's a way you can incorporate it into your own song without stealing any melodies or motifs.

GizzyKitty responds:

Thanks for the advice! It is always appreciated!

[Atlantis [NGADM Round 1]]

Sounds great. Best of luck in the competition!

Benji-G responds:

Thank you!

[Overlord of Chaos Pt.III: Final Form]

I know I'm late, but this is awesome. Great job Dan!

DanJohansen responds:

Glad ya dig it man! :D

[wow]

This is really well put together. You're well on your way to becoming a fantastic orchestral composer. There is just one thing I need to point out. Orchestral musician to another, invest into a better string SoundFont. It'll save you when it comes to orchestral music since it's the foundation of it. At the moment the strings sound super artificial and almost like a solo strings instrument. But yeah, invest into better strings. Trust me it'll save ya.

ilablitz responds:

Thanks, I'll definitely get a better soundfont now after listening to this piece after not hearing it for 4-5 weeks I hear the artificiality in the strings. Thanks for your feedback!

[LokiTheCat - Dreaming of a Better Future]

This is such a cute little piece! The melody is very sweet and very catchy. It's very calm and relaxing (perfect for this month's MTAC if you wanted to join. First thing you see on my page. Would love to feature you on the showcase!). Anyway, shameless advertisement over!

There is just one thing about the song which stops it from getting anything higher than a 4-star. Something which I think really damages this piece. The mixing is this is very raw and I don't think there is any. The sound is constantly peaking which is making the crackling noise. This is even worse with the music box kalimba thing. At the end of the piece, I feel like adding more strings along with the violin would have really helped it. The violin you're using is typically not meant for solos alone. It's meant to be used as part of an orchestra. When I hear it play alone over a piano sounds wrong. You certainly wrote it for a solo violin. There are soundfonts which have good solo violins like SGM.

But don't let all that get you down. The song is amazing! Mixing typically does come with experience but I think the peaking is something you should take a look at. Other than the mixing, I really liked the song. The melody is sweet and the harmony does the job.

GizzyKitty responds:

I use an app called BandLab (I forgot to add that to the description) to make music because it's free so I really only have access to the sounds they give you when it comes to using instruments I don't know how to play. I'm not really sure how to fix it because of my limitations (I will try adding more strings and I'll see if another one of their sounds works better) but I will keep the blending issue in mind in the future and I thank you for your advice. I'm fairly new to making music and I've never been formally taught what to do so any advice is appreciated.

In regards to MTAC, I don't know if I want to enter any sort of competition yet as I'm not super confident in myself and I just do this for fun. If I were to enter, would I just be able to polish this song and submit that as my entry?

[Groovin']

I could only dream of making something as groovy as this

Saturn95 responds:

the groove is eternal my friend lol

[Montana]

Hey, sorry for taking so long to comment on this. I saw it ages ago but I wanted to wait until I got good sleep and it never came until now.

I think you nailed the length and feel of the intro. In the past, I've mentioned how your intros may be a little long and the same effect could have been made with it being shorter. You kept it short and sweet with this one which I think suites the song a lot.

As for the rest of the song, I think it's a good work of art. I can tell you worked hard on the melody because it is very catchy. The melody definitely not the reason why this isn't 5 stars.

The harmony I feel is lacking textual variety. When I am at 00:59 I can skip to 01:49 and not be able to tell a super huge difference. It's just slightly more involved than 00:59. Personally, in music, I find having each section have its own special thing to it helps keep the viewer's attention and helps with the replayability. There are parts in the song in which I believe you did this really well (01:09). This section has to be my favourite part because it's very unique and it has a nice contrast. The harmony feels more than open chords with very quiet arpeggios. This section specifically feels like it's telling more of a story than all the rest of the sections combined. 01:20 just adds a nice touch onto it as well.

Overall, I do think this is a really good piece. There are sections in it where I can feel your compositional mastery start to shine and other sections where I think more harmonic variety would have been nice.

Do I think this is your best piece so far? No, but that's only because you're an amazing composer who has made phenomenal works in the past. It's going to be difficult for you to surpass yourself but there is still room to improve and I believe you can do it. You've come so far in your composing and I am very excited to see what you produce next. Take care 50Steaks and keep on improving!

50Steaks responds:

I’m a bit surprised you had nothing to say about the key change, especially since if I’m not wrong, it’s the first time I have done that on this account. At 1:19, the overarching goal was to create a melody that could serve as a bridge for both the key change and the second drop. As you can imagine, this is what I was talking about when I said that I had to keep redoing the song over and over to get it right. Not to mention I had to upload this in a completely roundabout way that took forever, meaning that what would have been finishing touches was sort of neglected. Originally, the harmony was actually more complex (you could hear the instrument at 1:09 in the first drop much more clearly) but I changed it because I didn’t want to have too many instruments doing arpeggios at once for fear of it sounding messy. What I probably could have done is bake an actual harmony into the instrument playing the chords, sort of like how I did with Nevada in the second drop. I personally think that the key change tells the best story, which was the point of the key change.

So anyways, the “big thing” about this track to me is what I did with the lead instrument, making it the harmony in the second drop. Unfortunately the percussion did take a hit here which is probably why you think it was repetitive. Maybe I relied too much on the melody again, like in Virginia (although here the melody is actually good).

I think I’m gonna have to rethink a lot of things going into my next song. Probably the reason this one didn’t get frontpaged is because of an issue you neglected to mention: the mixing. I mean just look at the waveform; why does it only cover half the space it could? Again that’s an issue with the exporting, but I think I could have done way better with the choice of lead instrument anyway. To be honest I’ve been finding it difficult to improve on my previous song (although with this one, I definitely did). Maybe I just need to try a new genre again.

So while this might not be my best song, in my opinion, it is my best melody. That’s really what this song is, then, just wasted potential on a decent melody. I definitely will be doing the video game thing again though at some point.

Anyway, thanks for the compliments, I’ll try my best to genuinely surpass Nevada like I’ve always wanted to.
Edit: to those who read this, I don’t believe it’s wasted potential anymore now that it’s updated.