Dutonic's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[I Have Only the Insects to Keep Me Company]

The dissonance in the intro turned me off at first but this one grew on me as I kept listening. This is a weeeeeird song, but it's really well done.

["Trancefusion Dreams" :3]

*Motivates very hard*

G2961 responds:

hahahaha. yes. bad google translator

[Water Level]

For the purposes of a video game soundtrack: the intro is phenomenal. In my opinion, the DnB just really doesn't work for what the song is aiming to do. Now I'm sure there do exist games that this could work well enough with - but the list is short. I also think the "heys" SEVERELY detract from video game OST vibe.

This said, the production and mix are well done. This is not a poorly produced song by any means. But you've classified it as a for a video game soundtrack, so I'll critique it like one.

[Candrin's Theme - The Vagrant]

If this was a gym leader theme from an official pokemon game, this would have like 1M views on youtube

[Common Area]

You don't need to "like" a song to appreciate that it's good. Also... are those wizard101 commons theme quotes??? My dude. I love you.

[Far Away]

Hey! I'm an orchestral composer and video game soundtrack designer. Wanted to leave some thoughts. I'm not sure how to rate this song as its intended purpose is lost on me. From what I can gather in your description this is just an "idk whats going on but I'm having fun" piece. It makes me feel like you were just discovering what sounds cool as you went along (the composer equivalent of "discovery writing). I often compose this way as well, but utilizing this method generally means you need to have a rough idea of what the track is going to be ahead of time. Even a framework as simple as "action packed", "emotionally evocative", "background ambient", or "symphonic movement" can be a total game changer for how we think about the song as we're writing it and ultimately shape the end result into a cohesive musical experience. Which I think this song lacks.

I rescind this feedback if this is meant to score to picture. That would change things since the purpose of the track is to enhance the sometimes very dynamic scene/mood changes and not to be a standalone musical experience.

By the way. These samples are super clean. Very high quality. The mix is great. You definitely know what you're doing as a composer.

sorohanro responds:

Thanks for the review, very detailed and insightful.
Sometimes I go with a framework, but there are times when my inspiration decides to go a very different way, and next day I look back at what I've done and I'm like "??? how??? why??? when???".

There is a list of samples and instruments used in one of my responses.
I also discovered a new effect (it was with discount), which is not a reverb, but one of it's presets works great as a send reverb for orchestra. (Finisher FLUXX by ujam, on "Man Cave" preset).

I feared that Kontakt default orchestral instruments won't blend with EWQL or Sunset Strings, but that plugin did a great job.