Reviews for Nightscape (WIP3)

[p4c]

definately an interesting one.

[sorry for typoes. i ate doritos and now im typing with my index fingers lol.] liquid funk is tight lol. heres what i think:

the beat, while defianately cool, feels a little incoherent in my opinion, and i think it could be improved if you put stresses on the dominant beats with the hats, the bass drum, rides, and maybe the snares [but maybe not]. i mean, it is jazzy, so it makes sense too.

i thinkthe pad coming in at :52 is definately a keeper, and the sax is good when it comes in, with the reverb a nice touch. good job with that. i do think the bassline is good at teh start, but i thi8nk a more active touch would feel better, instead of it just alternating between two notes. either that, or some heavy distortion/modulation in there, since it seems really really stale when its going for such a long time.

like i said, the sax was good when it came in, but when we get to its solo section, it seemed a bit stale too--it sounded pretty bland tbh, even though the samples were very nice, and i think it could be improved it if you let it stray out of notes quantized to powers of 2 [32nd, 16th, 8th, whole notes, etc], and let it leak into triplets and other offbeat patterns [fits in with the challenge!! sort of], and lower, longer, distorted [natural-sounding, i dont know how to describe it. just listen to the crazy craziness sax players make in real life] notes at times so its more just like... a really soulful guy. --it seemed like the sax always wandered pretty fast and stayed really high and at a point just became unconvincing.

also try to lead into the next notes by bending pitch or having some softer, realy short notes before longer, louder ones--don't just go straight to the notes. flow into them.

sfx and mixing thruout were excellent, keep em coming.

like karco said, it seemed very repetitive. i understand that long repetitive songs are common in glitch, dnb, idm, etc, but they always have slight variations to think about in the percussion and the sonic qualities of the instruments, which people dont usually notice, but this song didnt really seem like it had those qualities to be honest. i would play with effects chains, modulation, etc throughout just to keep the listener interested.

idk if you're not done or something, but the end is realyl abrupt. just telling you :)

alright, thats what i got. hope i helped :) [i might have forgotten some stuff. i went away from keyboard for a few hrs and jst got back.]

btw, i still want a review for my track :D

[SymbolCymbal]

WOW

WOW
sewriously, love the mixed time signatures for the drums ..very experimental of you.
KUDOS
Track sounds very ambitous and prolly took forever to make.
also love the sax you puit in there even though i think it could have b een EQ'd into the song a lil better.
this definitely falls into acid jazz.
would have loved to here some organ with this one.

Now onto the drumwork

Positively loved it... great rythms and cutoffs. not too crazy but just insane enough to make it looney smooth...
the pads in the backround really round this out perfectly

5'd 9'd
downloaded and goin in the ipod
Congrats,,, few make it to my ipod

[Karco]

Here you go? :P

For starters, note that my comments might not make sense because I hardly ever review this sort of track. :P

I'm personally finding it very difficult to keep up with the different time signatures... especially in the intro, when there's nothing easier to follow (for example, the pad).

Your saxophone (right?) makes really good harmony with your pad (really good composition there by the way) and sub at times, and other times it sounds boring - for me, mostly when the pad isn't there to back it up.

Your pad is great, nice feel to it, and your progression is very good. I'd have liked to hear you develop it a bit more, maybe have a few more chords or a second progression? Two chords just isn't enough for a six-minute track in my opinion.

It also feels very repetitive - it's mostly drums and sub, with the pad on and off. The only real diversity in there is with the saxophone and the drums, but since it's six minutes long, almost all of it sounds the same to me.

Voice clip at 3:43 kinda breaks the nice atmosphere for me, I don't think that was necessary. :(

Since you only have two synths and one instrument in this track, I'd have liked to hear a fourth or fifth sound in there changing things up some. There was that bass sound playing eighths around 5:25? But it didn't help much.

Normally I would say I don't get the ending, you seem to have ended mid-measure. But since you say it's a WIP, I guess that's your excuse. :P

I think that's about all I've got to say, not bad. :) Let me know when you post the finished version.

[cullum14]

not bad...

not bad at all. I've never heard dnb and jazz before but it kinda works so there you go! Sorry for this review being late, I've just come back from holiday. Also, if its a little short and crappy its because I'm not used to this genre of music.
Ok, so its a very interesting track, the saxophone actually works surprisingly well. Although you might want to think about changing the melody a little. I also like the dnb beat. But the song is a little long for my short attention span and you might want to think about having more chords than 2. Also you could work on an intro and outro.

[Suspended-3rd-Chord]

,,,#

lol, I read the kind review you left KaiserSzandor. Try to give some advice in addition to bashing/flaunting your superior knowledge to the average newgrounder that you take everyone as. Maybe then you would actually EARN your high horse that your prize yourself riding on so often, for now you're still just an elitiist, pedantic, condescending fuck ;)

as for the track itself, very damn interesting. Some awesome ideas in here- jazz and DnB has got to be one of the most unique blend of styles IMO.

Really like the drum beat going on, still has a DnB drum beat feel while adding the odd time signature complexity, while not feeling too awkward. Like what you did with the ride-crash cymbal throughout, how the rhythm is similar to the ghost notes you would hear in an amen break, and how those hi hat/snare sounding hybrid thingies rhythm were sequenced, not being just boring straight eights. some of the buildup sounds were pretty intresting to hear as well.

Chord Progression rocks, really enjoyed the synth texture you placed on. Nice ambient feel. The filter fade in was really sweet too.

The slowed down beat and stronger pads was real nice in the end.

Suggestions:

-Your hi hats sound like a choppy snare sample, wtf?

-The thing that definetly sounds like a snare- sounds a bit weak, maybe layer it with a snare with a good decay and add a minor amount of reverb

-Oh goodness, I didn't like the saxaphone one bit. Both the melody (personal taste? or my I haven't aquired these advanced tastes yet) and the overall sound. I thought the small, lengthy pitch bends (natural element of the soundfont) that used seldomly were overly long, making the melopdy feel real awkward in the background. I know or think of jazz resolves around a lot of dissonance, but given the calm, smooth atmosphere (of the two chords that your presented first) I would like if you toned down the dissonance a bit. Way too many clangers in here for my personal taste (the latter half wasnt too bad). The note at 5:09ish killed it for me, as the previous notes sounded like you were going to roll into smooth, and then broke it. As for the sound, I just hate the timbres of alto saxophones. some of the high register notes were on the verge of ear piercing. Maybe it would be an interesting contrast to include some tenor saxaphone, after all it is a 7+ minute song.

-Work some ambience throughout the piece in a subtle manner, just some random sound FX and small intricate snippets that may help with the repetion and make the general progression more interesting

-Not a big deal since its DnB, but maybe work a distinguishable melodic theme somewhere during the section with the pads, as this mostly sounds like you were jamming in an improv session and just looped a few spliced breakbeat patterns throughout and two chords for the drop section.

-speaking of which- the bassline. I dont care, but since you pride yourself on avoiding simplicity, maybe spice up your bassline more both in a rhytmic and melodic sense, considering it was the same two sustained notes throughout.

Good song and sorry for being late to review, but here's my two cents. Definetly some awesome ideas and very easy to roll with. Though your knowledge is probably far superior than mine, and probably most everyone here.