Tangerine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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.

[Feel Free [Big Room]]

Very nice benji!

Benji-G responds:

Thank you!

[Nebraska]

Wow, I can't believe I missed this one. I really need to not follow so many people, haha.

For your intro, it's effective but I feel like it's a little long and from a listener's standpoint it could drive people away. Especially with the short attention span of people nowadays. I don't really know how to say it, it's good for setting an atmosphere for someone who is committed to listening to the whole thing; however, if the viewer didn't care to read or see the song through, they may get bored from the long intro and leave. The intro is as long as the duration of some of my older songs. I guess it's just a situation where you have to sacrifice one of the other. 01:47 is a really nice cinematic transition.

There's not much I can say about this song because it is very small (despite it being larger than a majority of my songs). You use the intro, A, B, and outro format which is why it felt so small. I get the feeling that you spent less time and effort on this one when contrasted with some of your other works. When you remove your nearly 2-minute intro then it leaves you with under half the song actually being the main segments. I may be bashing the intro quite a bit here, but that's because I'm trying to look at this from the point of view of a normal person. Someone who will click off the instant their attention is gone.

Your outro, however, is amazing. The way you made the song go suddenly quiet works perfectly with the story of the song. I could absolutely picture the water rushing in whilst you're stuck under a heavy vehicle. The music really made me picture the point of view of the victims of a tragedy I wasn't even aware of. The outro definitely conveys the message of life suddenly being taken away as water floods your lungs.

The overall thought of the song. I like it. Despite the majority of this review being mostly negative, it's a really neat piece of work. The reason for the majority of my review being negative is that I don't want to sound like a broken record saying the same things over and over. The reason why I highlight the negatives is because you're constantly improving and with improvement comes new problems as your standards are raised. Also, I am very sick right now so it might also be because of my grumpiness. Keep up the good work!

50Steaks responds:

I’m going to be frank: the entire song is literally filler for the outro. The outro is why I made the song, the rest just builds up to it. Slowly trickling in more instruments, having a climax, and then ending on that note. This was a filler song in all, one that I could just throw out as a sort of apology for not uploading in a month. However I don’t think I put less effort necessarily into this, just less time. Equal magnitude of effort, but less of it in total thanks to reduced time.

I initially had the intro shorter. I compare this debacle with Oregon, where I shortened it in that one and extended it in this one. It’s all about atmosphere but I don’t think I pulled it off here as well as I could have. And you’re right; my standards for myself always increase, but I’m beginning to fear that my skill has stagnated after this song. I have already started a new one; I’m trying to make it my next best song by redoing things over and over in different ways so it’ll be a while until it’s done. However it is the summer now, so I should have more time to make songs now.

Enough rambling, thanks for reviewing and at least partially liking this song.

[Time to Slam Dunk]

Hey, I saw your name in the frontpaged section and thought to myself "I remember seeing that name somewhere". I'm sorry but I can't remember where I remembered you from if my life was on the line. This is awesome though. Keep up the good work and also congratulations on getting frontpaged!

edit: I remembered where I knew you from. I joined your discord server a while ago.

supermelon-creations responds:

Thx and, yeah, I also send you a message asking how you got your music on spotify, thoughs till today I dont have music on spotify :P