Tangerine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Maryland]

This song sounds nice. I like the explosion you had around 0:50. The harmony and the rhythm sound amazing but the only thing I have something about is the melody. It sounds very run on. Like my broken English and my run-on sentences. Would be really good if you cut the harmony into two sections and concluded it sooner to avoid it sounding repetitive. I know I may suffer from this sometimes too but I try my best to help it. What software do you use? I use Sibelius so I often leave it to a four bar melody then repeat with a few harmonic and melodic changes. I know it might be tricky for something like FL Studio (i'm not 100% sure on this. Don't quote me) not having a bar system like in notation. So I can sympathise with you on that level if your software doesn't use bars. Other than that, it sounds amazing and it makes me fear america! Keep it up!

50Steaks responds:

The melody sounds run-on if (and only if imo) you were expecting 4/4. The idea of this track was to be untraditional while also being nostalgic, and basically try something different. It worked. However this song in particular has been received far less well than I initially anticipated and I think it’s because of the awful mixing and bad choice of bass that doesn’t bring out that instrument enough. The result is a song people generally felt was mediocre despite it trying something new. Turns out however long you spend on a song isn’t proportional to the quality.

[Alabama]

The beginning was really suspenseful and intense. Good job on that. You really like making your compositions intense and ominous, don't you? If this were to be the theme song of Alabama, then i'd be scared to be on the same planet as it. Very well done on this! Keep it up!

50Steaks responds:

I absolutely like making intense and dark songs because that has been my strength I feel like. All of my most popular tracks have been in a similar vein and this one, while being a little quiet for my tastes, has good structuring imo and brings the atmosphere with the choir thing at the end.

[Grim]

Sounds good. If you kept a consistent level of sounds throughout then I could totally see this as a final distorted boss battle. Keep up the great work!

kadepow11 responds:

Thank you! I have a bit of trouble doing that sometimes. Sorry lol

[Funk loop]

A good tip with making groovy bass lines is to make it flow. One problem I see with your current bass line is that it starts with one note then suddenly on the offbeat it begins spamming notes. Then it pauses suddenly loses energy which becomes very offputting. Your main melody sounds great. The repeating bassline becomes slightly hypnotic and I think it would strengthen the song a lot if you were to change it more often or make it way more simple. With the bass, if you want to keep a funky bassline, rhythm is more important than a thousand notes. So that's just a small thing to keep in mind. Otherwise, this sound actually sounds pretty good. I like the melody at 00:23. If you incorporate what I've told you then you'll be on your way to making fantastic compositions.

Veenomn responds:

Thanks :)

[Ancient City Valialur]

Haha made me feel like I got transported a couple of thousand years ago in the shoes of my ancestors. Sounds amazing! You really hit the point with this. Did you use real voices or realistic synths for the vocals in the harmony? I find that in my music, the voices can't say actual words or grunts.

DanJohansen responds:

Thanks! I use real voices, but they are sampled into midi. there are a lot of crazy good voice VST's out there right now!

[Virginia]

I really like this song. This song definitely sounds much different from your other songs. Very nice and peaceful and I really like how you added the ambient swooshing sounds. You really went for an atmosphere for this one. The very thing that I fear is all of my songs sounding the same. I try really hard to make every song unique. You really went for a much easy-going vibe with this song which I like. The melody is very repetitive and boring (I know you stated it in the description) and I feel like if you spent a little more time on the melody then you would have been able to make this song hit harder than it already does. For future compositions, a good idea to think about is adding some arpeggios to compliment the melody. At the moment it's very chordy, (Which isn't a bad thing) but it seems to have very few layers to it. A very tricky thing to do is to add enough to where it sounds good but to leave out enough to where the melody is the main focus. I tend to struggle with this because I always become too ambitious with my compositions. Overall, this is a very nice piece and I'm glad to see you experimenting with other styles a bit.

50Steaks responds:

Couple things:
1. The “ambient swooshing sounds” you mentioned, that was supposed to be the wind on the mountain range Virginia is kind of known for.
2. I agree with the arpeggios thing, and maybe that would have made the song better, but I did purposefully keep it simple in an effort to retain the traditional vibe I was trying to go for. Otherwise you bet I would have drastically shifted the melody like I do in most of my other songs halfway through to introduce a new musical idea.
3. I’m glad you liked it, for a while I was worried that I under-did myself in musicality for the sake of the atmosphere which wasn’t the goal at all.

[Wooden Wall]

This is an amazing piece. A good idea to incorporate in your next composition is using larger varieties of melodic rhythm. The melody is amazing but it's really repetitive. maybe adding a mini trumpet doing its own thing to go along with the main brass entourage might sound great. A big thing that I see in this piece is lots of repeating. Perhaps the idea of a bridging phrase to make the song feel much more progressive and less repetitive feeling. You can see an example of this in my most recent song https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1030261. You can see that I begin off with the primary melody for just a little bit in the beginning then I switch to a brass bridge then I revert back to the pain melody to give the song a sense of conclusion and progression. I do admit, my composition isn't perfect but there are still things others can learn from it. Enough of tooting my own horn. Going back to your horns. A good transitioning phrase would to lower the volume of the horns and have a trumpet solo and it slowly ramps up in intensity then the main chorus comes and it really makes you feel nervous like there are a bunch of guards patrolling the area looking for you. Over all, you have a very good melody and a very nice snare drum pattern. Keep up the good work!

Gothorlagee responds:

Yeah, this was meant to be a very short one since nothing is usually happening around the wall. Its well guarded, but its just the same patrols day in and day out. I do have another "Wall" piece in the works that is a lot more involved and is based around a sneaky night time break in. Hopefully that would be something closer to what you described here.

[Nap of the Catgirls]

This song would have sounded so good with a light orchestra and a vibrato heavy cello and violin playing minums through each bar while the kalimba does its thing. Maybe even another kalimba to harmonise and add some rhythm. Also, the first half is dangerously similar to another piece I've heard. I'm thinking it sounds a lot like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v712NiVK5uY but there's one that has the same melody as your piece but I just can't find it. It half reminds me of a battle block theatre song. Maybe one in the lobby, I'm not sure. Even if it's intentional or not, there's a song out there that sounds incredibly similar to this. You're just lucky none of us knows the name of it.

Response: Hmm, I don't think it's those that I'm thinking of. That melody sounds really familiar. Like that one song with that weird frog riding on some robot thing running from robots (I know, very descriptive). I'm not sure. Some knowledgeable wizard of a person will appear from the dark and discover the song that I'm thinking of.

Nabella responds:

I just realized what it sounded like after looking at some of the recommended videos in your video link, lmao.

https://youtu.be/IkOK8tdEsFY

I swear I didn't intend this. While I was making it, I was trying to mimic all the music box songs I've heard from these YouTube channels.
https://youtube.com/c/R3MusicBoxEnglish
https://youtube.com/user/AirplaneFoods

I guess I subconsciously inserted a part of Toby Fox's 'His Theme' into this? Or maybe, because of the lack of instruments like you mentioned, the melody doesn't stand out very well from other music box songs?

Honestly, thanks for pointing this out. I don't think I would've noticed the similarities on my own.

(And yeah, I'll be sure to add some other instruments down the line.)

[-Orr- Kingdoms]

Oh, my word.. this is amazing. I absolutely love the atmosphere of this song. You really know how to work orchestral compositions. Amazing job.

DavidOrr responds:

HeyTangeroni, appreciate the kind words -- glad you enjoyed it!

[you are a liability]

I already know... no need to remind me.

TheChuckie responds:

rofl