ian-booms's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[KyiyoForest]

Cool idea here, but I think you can take it a lot further! To create musical interest you need contrast, an easy way for you to add more musical interest to this piece is by playing around with instrumentation. Maybe the piece can start the way it does, but as it goes on more instruments could be introduced. Anything to add more variety will help you to hold your listeners attention.

[届かない (todokanai)]

Very pretty track! Love the dynamic arc that it takes, it adds a lot of interest. I had a different interpretation but I definitely can hear how each section corresponds to the intended interpretation.

[longing (or, wedding song to a broken soul)]

Great work!!

[Forgotten Journey]

Fun listen! There is indeed a lot going on here! Sometimes in the percussion when there are many hits in a row it sounds really robotic (such as at 1:10), you might want to try giving each hit a different velocity to make it feel a little more human.

Keep up the great work!

Mabelma responds:

Thank you tons for your feedback. I’ve seen some people do that but never tried it myself, will definitely give it a try 🙏

[Transforming Landscape]

Great work! I love the shift to a more dissonant feel at 0:53, it provided some really interesting contrast to the first section and really made me feel like I had just stepped into a new world!

[Machine's Breath - Outer Planes]

Great work rob! Would love to hear some additional modulation on that bass sound to help it keep evolving over time. Really fell in love with the cool alien sound effect sounds! And that cool arp sorta thing that comes in at 2:30, that sounds fantastic!

wobwobrob responds:

Cheers geezer!

[Northpeaks' Shadow (Newgrounds VGM Challenge)]

Composition sounds like a spy theme but the instrumentation feels like something that might be in a Zelda game, really interesting combination, I love when someone takes a trope like this and spins it in a fresh new way!

WakerLink responds:

glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the comment

[Plasmic Bloodflow]

Cool listen, my only criticism is it sounds a little too intense for a hangar theme, in my opinion it would fit a lot better for a racing theme or some other higher energy setting.

Great work!

[Further Suns Inc. [VGM]]

Really cool track, love the cool usage of bit crush such as at 0:55, gave me some Disasterpeace vibes!

Liked the sound design too! I am pretty new to synthesis but here are a couple things a like to do to add a little more variation to my pad sounds! I love adding some random modulation to help every note sound a little bit different from each other, especially adding "NoteOn Rand" modulation to the panning and attack settings (I'm not familiar with Vital, but it seems to be a pretty robust synth so I imagine it has a similar function) that way every note in a chord will be a little different from each other, adding a little more organic of a feel to the pad. (I would love to hear any synthesis tips and tricks you've picked up too!)

Overall, very satisfying ambient listen, great work!

Chepaki responds:

Thx a lot for your feedback!

As someone else already pointed out: yeah I'm still not very good with panning and rarely push/modulate a pan knob too far, and now that you mention it I notice I have the same problem with randomness in general... Always trying to add just a little and then undoing it almost immediately haha

I don't think I can give good synthesis tips, but here's one thing I've seen someone else do that I ended up doing multiple times: https://youtu.be/7qQX6YGBQEA?t=793
Basically cutting more of the high-end when playing higher notes, I feel like it works very well with harsh sounding waveforms like square/saw, and I'm pretty sure it can be done on most synths by linking the note value (inverted) to the filter's cutoff

[Twilight Jungle]

I'm getting a strong DKC vibe from this track, love it!

I love your use of nature / ambient sounds as a backdrop for your track!

Personally, the auto panning affect really drew attention to itself, I like to reserve that sort of affect for background elements because otherwise it tends to feel really distracting, that's just my personal taste though.

Secondly, it sounded a little weird for there to be a huge nature scene happening in the background but the drums and other elements seemed to have little to no reverb on them, made it feel like the sounds were happening in different spaces and it broke my immersion a little bit.

Overall, really cool vibe to your track, keep up the great work!