Sawdust's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Field Afrikaans]

Pretty cash.

I love the whole vibe of it. I love the percussions and the interplay of it with the bass. Class stuff, man.

[The Guilty]

Clean vocals ruin it

I dislike heavier kinds of metal, but in some occasions, but when the song is REALLY good, and when it all works to create a sonic representation of anger or something, that's when I can enjoy the song. Sadly, this song does not capture that.
Don't take this review personally, though.

First, I hate the mixing. I produce a lot of music, but I'm still a novice at mixing myself, but even I know that with the right mixing, you can greatly improve a song. I dislike the mixing on this because the guitar really shits all over everything, you could've put a compressor on it and lowered the bass a bit to bring the bass guitar, drums and vocals out.

However, I don't like the music either. The strings alone would've made a much better piece in my opinion, it could pass off as an ambient piece, that's how bad I find this song to be. The riff is probably the only effective thing you've recorded for this song, not counting the rhythm section since it's impossible to fuck those up. Your guitar work on this song was good, except for the solo, that shit was fucking awful. No offense, but I don't know what you were trying to do with the solo, the strings gave me the impression that you were trying to create an epic atmosphere, but the solo sounded extremely amateurish and made the song worse. Sorry. Try something on the pentatonic next time, or even do some tapping for all I care. The growling vocals are alright, but once you go clean the song gets destroyed, you come off as one of those nerds that are the reason why very few people respect metal and why it is not mainstream. No offense.

As for the lyrics, they're so cliched I'm not going to start. It's not a story, it's not quote worthy, and it doesn't add to the song at all. The voice acting was probably the best part of the song simply because the guy sounded like Solid Snake, and Solid Snake performing at a concert would be awesome. Shame though you didn't mix that properly, I kind of made out some clipping towards the end.

All in all, a mediocre song that could only be improved by replacing everything, thus making an entirely new song in the process. Sorry.

Pure-Metal-UTA responds:

Harsh but great
I like the composition of it myself, but i felt the mixing was off and the solo was improvised which didn't help.
I agree completely that the clean vocals suck, that's something I'm working on to improve. And I like the lyrics.
Thanks for the review.

[one take]

Cool

Reminds me of Futureheads. Good stuff.

[Dimoria - Little Wing]

Holy shit

Dude I love your tone. Can't quite put it, is that chorus or a flange? Also I love the bass, and shit, the drum rolls and fills are awesome. And the solo, you did it right, no, you did it SPOT ON. I like how you gave it a modern disto sound but not change it up too much and throw in sweep picking and shit like how Vai covered it XD. Great work, man.

[Spacewalk (FL Core)]

Massive!

I'm the type of guy who like, only uses presets and basic FL vsts and such, which I think contributes to a overly simplistic sound, but then you come along and make this HUGE track piled with walls of pads and synths. I really like what you did here, especially with the reverb, that basically made everything sound bigger than possible.

Amazing song! It would've been better though if you just sliced a packaged drumloop and made that the drumkit here :P

Step responds:

Hehe, thanks man! I'm pretty surprised it turned out like this, I thought with FL sounds I'd have to be limited to making some cheesy generic trance, although I suppose FL Keys served me well (to some extent xD) in this song ^^. I'm not that good when it comes to reverb but I'm glad you like it :P.

Yeah, the drums xP. I layered every kick in FL Studio and still got a kick which sounds like crap. Oh well, maybe I should have done that, but it's too late now, the competition's deadline passed 4 days ago. On the 22nd I'll get the results :).

Thanks for the great review!

[War Lament]

A bit weak

Now, for starters, I love the soundscape you painted here, like very moody, atmospheric, warm and lonely. The lament isn't as perfectly expressed as I'd like it to be, but it conveys the concept of one fair enough. The looming strings on the lower end attempting to substitute a bass instrument, the flutes on the higher end carrying the song and creating a melody screaming out a message of sadness and loneliness, coupled by what is apparently a choir, which further permeates the lamentation in this song. Great instruments used as is and the mixing done was great.

However, the song does have its faults. One of them being how it felt a bit "hollow". For starters, I didn't hear a good kick or a definitive bassline. You probably did that intentionally and my earplugs are probably not picking up the full force of the bass you had, but still, I didn't get a lot of bass. Plus this song was so hollow, you had perfect room for another melody, and if it were a bass melody, this song would have been so much better. Flute playing the role of being lost and lamentation, while the bass echoes happiness in the lower register, something like that.

Anywho, good song, you got the concept done nicely and the melodies and harmony was superb, just a bit weak, mundane and generally didn't traverse the soundscape you had set out to make well enough. Could've used more dynamics, if you ask me. And you are, how hilarious :P

I like it.

4/5 8/10

-Sawdust RRC

popraz responds:

Thank you ! Very helpful, since I intend on revisiting some of these ideas, so I needed all the feedback I could get. Again, thank you, I really appreciate it.

[Etude #5 - Moonlight]

Perfect!

Wow, what a great tune this is. From the melody to the performance to the recording and mixing and all those other details, this is quite the piece. Images of castles and all that Oblivion type imagery go well with this song, in fact this could probably do a really good job of serving as background music for a fantasy-type RPG.

As mentioned, the performance is great. I love clean and well sounded the playing is, how there wasn't any of that string buzz crap going on and how it generally worked the whole time. Like how the bass notes never interfered with the main melody and were played in perfect time and sync, I loved that.

And I also love how it didn't sound too muddy or sharp and how there was ambience present in the overall song, and how the sounds you make when you slide down the neck got in there. Makes a great feel overall.

Anyway, t'was a good song, 5/5 10/10

-Sawdust RRC

Darkmaster603 responds:

Thank you! I'm glad you liked my song! One thing I like to keep in mind with my pieces is that the classical guitar can do things other instruments cant, such as sliding. I also saw a castle, but I thought it was just me. Now that three people see one I don't feel so weird lol.

The original title was something along the lines of "Moonlite Castle", but I changed it to "Moonlight".

Thanks for the review and kind words, I appreciate it!

[Clear (Rezurrected Mix)]

Bass was kinda bad

I liked the song, to be fair. Was a good dance song, percs worked well with the synths and stuff, was automated smartly, which I like. But it did get a tad bit repetitive, but that's probably because of the lack of say, a prevalent bass instrument than would sit more prominently in the mix. I can sort of make out something resembling bass, but it sits too low in the mix and is practically unhearable. I'd advise you retweak the song and have the bass be more prominent. Other than that it was a good song, and is perfect club material. Well done and all, that was really nice.

-Sawdust RRC

ReziUze responds:

Thanks you very much for the review! I will take this into consideration and next time add in more bass!

[Too Awesome For Your Phone!]

Good as a ringtone

38

It gets the job done as a ringtone properly enough, I love how it loops really great, how varied and rich in sounds and effects this is, I also love the tone you got out of your guitar, though I think some fuzz on top of the distortion would sound cool. I also loved the switch to acoustic guitar at around 0:38 where you also got some melody laid down, great part. It'd sound cooler probably with some pinch harmonics.

One gripe I have with this though is the apparent lack of bass. Sure, you EQd your guitar to have a lot of bass, but in the process you made it a painful process to attempt to find a slither of bass guitar in the jungle of distortion, I'd assume there was no bass, but if there was I'd advise you mix it differenlty next time so that bass is still pretty hearable and stuffs.

Good song.

Sawdust RRC

SantaBro responds:

Yes I agree about 38.

I have a bass in it, but when I do riff-based songs like these I usually just play that riff on the bass to give make it heavier. Here I also had to remove a lot of bass to make it suitable as a ringtone. So it will be hard to pick out the bass in it.

Thanks for the review!

[Kina Grannis-Valentine (Cover)]

Ambient, kinda lounge-y

I really like this piece you have here, the piano playing was topnotch and if I'm hearing correctly, very aptly backed by soft pads. I just love how the tone of the piano is, not too percussive, not too soft, which gives room for other sounds and harmonies to be made.

One gripe I have with the song though, as evidenced by the 8/10, was how muddy sounding the song got at times, probably because of a combination of the pad and how it tended to stay in one register. Now, I can't fault you for the composition aspect of the song, but you, as a player, could've probably improvised a bit more? Like maybe get more notes in higher octaves, generally transpose it up or something, so it'd sound less muddy. I dunno.

-Sawdust RRC

Jabicho responds:

Thanks so much for the review! yeah, I'll keep improving the improvisation part, giving more room to lower and higher notes. Thanks again!