Deemo-R's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Splash Damage]

Holy shit the tones are crazy, it's all Archetype Rabea? Awesome jam!

Burn7 responds:

Hell yeah! All the synth and guitar stuff comes from the plug in, it's CRAZY dynamic and has insane variety. It's quickly becoming my favorite guitar toy.

Thanks for checking it out! :D

[Hookington & God's Warrior - The Great Adventure]

Phenomenal sound! The back half is absolutely killer in design, great production all around. Two thumbs up for this!

Hookington responds:

aw thank you so much!!

[T0g3ther!]

Wow, it's been a looooong time since the last upload. This track rocks! I'm not personally a huge fan of the consistent electric tom sounds, but the mix sounds great all around. It's definitely a bit of a throwback for me, used to love listening to chiptune rock several years ago. Not sure what's up with the half-minute of silence at the end, but it's a top-shelf tune in my opinion. Awesome stuff!

Biggyzoom responds:

Many thanks. I'm glad you like it. :)

[Practise February 24 23]

Always cool to see someone getting into writing music! :)

Without specifically knowing what your musical tastes are, I'll just give my own very subjective view on what you've made so far. I'll try to use the piece in the description as a point of reference as well. This is gonna be long, so think of it as like a "mega-review" of the last 3 pieces together.

I think so far you have a good sense of arranging elements together in generally tasteful and fun ways - the combination of voices mostly blends in the way you're describing. It's a cute texture with a bunch of short, plucky sounds. However, it doesn't sound like it really coalesces into a bigger idea, so it just wanders a bit until it stops. There are a lot of individual musical aspects that can be causing this, but I'll break it up so it's not one huge, unreadable paragraph.

Meter: The meter (4/4's, 3/4's, 6/8's, etc. of the world) of this track doesn't sound like it stays consistent, and I'm not sure if that was intentional (the Feb 18th sounds like it's 4/4). Atsui Iro keeps a pretty stable 4/4 feel through the entire track; it does play with your perception by shifting the background elements a bit, but the melodic content generally sticks to the same spots in the meter, which keeps it from feeling too lost. Without a mindfulness for where you're creating emphasis, your meter and the feel of the piece can completely unravel. There's no real "anchor" here rhythmically. You're not REQUIRED to stay true to this, but it helps when starting out, because it's easy to accidentally dip too hard into the out-of-the-box stuff without realizing it.

Accompaniment: Just wanted to touch on this before mentioning the melody. Some of your other practice pieces have a more clear accompanying pattern, but this one is harder to identify what is foreground and what is background. I think partially this is due to the way most instruments are imitating the melody, but it may also be an issue of range. Giving vertical space for the melody (like what you can see on the piano roll) helps prevent it from being overshadowed by other voices, as well as making it the most clear element of the music (You can immediately tell with Atsui Iro that the piano is playing high above the general noise). As for creating good accompaniments, not all pieces need one - but it's helpful to consider the group as "supporting members" of the music. They can build the harmony, the rhythm, groove, what have you. Manipulating this is a lot of what arranging is about.

Melody: I'm not sure I can identify a true melodic idea in this track, but I'd say the xylophone is the "leader", in a sense. Its tone stands out the most from the group, and it has some space in time between its own statements. Still, there's not really a satisfying shape to the melody - it moves a bit like a zigzag between distant notes until it lands somewhere that isn't really related to anything (this is an issue of harmony, too). There's not a consistent rhythmic figure to it, and since everything moves at about the same pace, I can't tell where it's starting or stopping. Writing a good melody is never easy, unfortunately, but if you listen to Atsui Iro (which has more of a "just vibes" approach), you can hear a few things that may help: the shape, the rhythm, and the repetition.

Repetition: This is one of the key ingredients to memorability - if that is the goal - in music. It's a pretty common trap early on to write straight down the page with new brushstrokes, but you'll find it much easier to write if you generate a strong core idea that you can build from. If you listen to the first piano line in Atsui Iro, that is the initial idea - it has a shape you can visualize, a specific rhythm, and a "character" to the sound. When you hear it play again, that same idea is played with just the slightest twist to it; one note is changed. The last one, specifically - it arrives somewhere new (20 seconds into the video). Then it repeats the first idea again, before finishing that phrase with the same slight change a second time. This is a pretty blatant example - you don't always find such straightforward repetition in everything - but it helps illustrate how useful it can be to repeat your ideas (even if only parts of them, like the rhythm or the general shape).

Phrases: Gonna be a bit broad here, but... A phrase is like a sentence in music, and sections are like paragraphs. I think your pieces so far don't really have the sense of a "complete thought" until the track ends, which is one of the things that makes it hard to grasp. It's a bit long to be a single phrase, but the voices keep this one line going for the whole piece, between the pauses of the "melody", but there aren't any smaller pauses or conclusions to the ideas between the beginning and end, so it reads like one big run-on sentence - just like this one. Without getting too deep into the weeds, it helps to divide a full section up into smaller, mini portions that have a bit of a "comma" or "period" feeling between them.

Expanding further: I actually think you should go for a longer piece if you feel comfortable trying, because the idea of creating new sections adds a whole new wrinkle to the experience: How do you make a change that works while keeping the music going? Where does the momentum carry you? Changes between a section tend to be on a bigger scale than anywhere else, so it can help get the feel for how you can use the same ensemble in multiple ways to frame an idea. That may make it easier in turn to put the same ideas to work on a smaller scale, inside each section.

Harmony: I glossed over this, but I don't hear any sort of "progression" in terms of harmony in this piece (the one from Feb 2nd sort of does). There are a few changes that stick out - like 00:12 - but it doesn't seem to go anywhere on purpose, if that makes sense? I know I've already gone way overboard (sorry!) on dropping every tiny thing I can think of, so I'll just try to keep it relatively light. The harmony can be the result of anything from a bass line against the melody, to a full stack of notes from the whole group. It gives context to the whole piece, so it's worth trying to see how you can change things by changing the chords from moment to moment. Harmony has its own rhythm, too! When the harmony changes, that usually comes across as a point of emphasis (like mentioned earlier in "Meter"), so it's worth taking a second to see if you like how quickly or how slowly the chords change. Any further on that topic and I think it'll get too heady - I have trouble describing it in a digestible way because it's not my strong suit.

Hope that wasn't too agonizing to read through! Again, nothing here but subjective observations from my perspective. You're doing a great job, and hopefully it's an enjoyable journey! It's great to see you experimenting with music while keeping up with your art too! :D

P.S.: Your piece reminded me just a smidge of "Jules Arrives" from The Last Clockwinder. I think maybe you'd like that OST if you haven't heard it already! It has a very "vibey" feeling to it if that's your thing.

Sony-Shock responds:

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! That was a lot and I liked reading all of it!!! Some are things I've had in mind, others are things that will really help me have told directly. I know the basics of theory, but identifying it is hard with lack of experience~!

I've written this comment 3 or 4 times but I kept accidentally ESC-ing out of it and I got mad TvT (I use the escape key to close my emoji window).

Thank you very much, I bet that took a while to write~ I think I'm going to try looking for exercises and ideas to work with on longer songs and see if I can focus and how that can help!

[X]

Having recently gone through bereavement, I can say this definitely stirs those emotions. Sorry for your grief - it is beautiful how you're able to express it in your writing.

[Bitter Root, Sweet Leaf (Day 3)]

Really well-realized arrangement for just a day! Glad to see you taking part in the Jamuary challenge since you're one of my favorite artists to shadow-surf whenever I want to catch up on new NG music :D
I think some of the sections become slightly blurred by the dynamic balance, but the idea is communicated very well. Love the harmonic choices here, it has a charming character to it!

SilverPoyozo responds:

Whoa, thank you very much =D
I usually go a bit overboard on the string voice movements, it can end up a little fuzzy, but that aside I'm happy with how it turned out.

[Wandering Beast - Clocksmith Exorcist]

Really like the guitar work on this, sick stuff (forgot to mention spooky too)!

[Let's Meet Up! (Orange County)]

Your melodies are hella good tho

[The Alchemist's Manor (Day)]

Lovely harmonies and orchestration! If the string samples had a quicker attack I think it would sound a bit more crisp from about 0:15 - 0:30, but the writing is phenomenal and it would sound great in a live group. It reminds me a lot of Kondoh, Morishita, et al. from their Fire Emblem work! :)

[Apart]

Nah, I like poppy stuff though, haha! Better to get out of your own head sometimes, but being self-critical is good for keeping your standards on an upward trend. I think Bitbeak got some of the only things that make it feel same-y throughout, but for my thoughts some small production/arrangement things could easily mitigate that criticism. I love how light the whole vibe is; the little sizzle of the ride cymbal on the drums feels good when the chorus hits. I do think maybe the bottom end could be filled out a bit more on the chorus to make it feel like more of a payoff - like some sort of stronger bass element that grounds it all a bit. I know there's already a bass guitar, but it and the kick drum feel very reserved during the chorus. But maybe that's not quite the right vibe for the tune, so I dunno - just a brainstorm! :)

Very tight playing, and you've got a great voice!

floorboardofficial responds:

Yes, I definitely agree some greater dynamism in the production would help loads. Thanks for the feed back though! Much appreciated!