Dutonic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[3manon - Voyage (Full EP)]

I love the thought you put into the purpose and narrative of your songs. It's always a good feeling to feel like you're composing with a purpose. You do a great job at it. I could definitely see your story in my mind while I listened.

Your orchestral VST is a little on the weaker side, but that's totally fine. My main criticism of your EP is in the mix, theres too much low-mid (80-200Hz). And your music loses a subtle clarity due to the mud. Just managing your EQ a bit better would improve this. Chapter 5 has a lot of mixing issues, the sounds are just not coming together nicely. It sounds like you may be just turning up your drums instead of side chaining them as well.

Keep working at it and you'll go places. Good luck in your studies!

[Ruby - Gold]

Honestly, while the variety of instrumentation was nice, you just play the same 4 chords on loop for the entire song without even changing the melody. And its a boring melody at that. You're just spamming the root note of the chord. Granted there are some moments where you slightly change it up, but even then, it still feels exactly the same as everything else.

In summary, the production quality was great, but the arrangement itself was obnoxiously basic. I would place this in the same category as Darude - Sandstorm. If that's what you were going for, you definitely succeeded. Perhaps my review is unfairly biased by my distaste for repetition to this degree.

PokeMusicRuby70 responds:

I understand where you're coming from. The problem with me is that it's so hard for me to make songs without making them too repetitive, and I can't think of any way to differentiate the chord progressions. Thank you for the feedback though, and I'm gonna release my next song in a little bit so hopefully it's better than this one in your opinion. But yeah, I'm sorry if my stuff is too basic. It's just so dang hard coming up with new ideas for songs. :|

[Lordant - A Star Like Me]

I'm not a fan of the delay on the flute in the intro. It just sounds kind of squeaky. Personally, I don't like seeing extended lengths of background ambience in music either (I also think the ambience could benefit from being farther back in the mix).

Overall, a well made song as usual. These are just some minor tweaks I'd make.

Lordant responds:

Thanks a lot!
I'm not sure what to do with delay, I kinda like that squeaky feedback. I will try to make it more subtle or create a delay mix automation, I think it may help a bit. As for ambience, again, its length is fine for my taste, but I agree with your point about the mix.

[Lordant - Rain Elegy]

I think a very light and subtle orchestral pad would add a lot to the first few bars. Imo, just filling in the rest of the frequency spectrum at like -20dB with respect to the melody would be an improvement for sure.

Giga nit-pick I know.

[Lordant - Allegro Fratturato]

I love the xylophones/marimbas

[Calm Breathing]

I love the song description lol

[Train to Nowhere (Version 2)]

Wow what a dynamic arrangement. I get the sense you’ve spent some time with classical music. Honestly really nice score.

There were definitely some really sudden volume spikes that didn’t need to be so jarring, I’d definitely bring those down.

[Wrath]

0:58 holy shit

Dude you nailed the objective you set out to do with this song. The sound design and production is just really really good. I never felt bored the entire way through. So much variety

[VOID]

Imo I feel like there’s too much reverb in the mix and especially in the midrange it’s muddying the sound a bit.