LuckyDee's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Therapeudic Nightcap]

Nice work Tom, and a great casting on the bartender too <3

Tommytomtom619 responds:

Thanks Lucky! I've been wanting to collab with Eltrain for a long while now.

[lost winter]

So I promised you an official NGADM judge review and by gods will I stick to my promise - but having read through the reviews below, you're not going appreciate what I have to say. So I'll run with this:

I can't deny your track is very well made. I could go into technical details on this, but everything's already been said and it appears my skills in this respect mark me as the last person in this merry band to say something sensible about this.

But with all the feedback you're getting, all you do is complain and deny whatever criticism is thrown your way. You're basically bringing a knife to a gunfight to then start telling the judges they're doing it wrong and the competition is flawed. The music you choose to make is great for the dance floor, but in just about any competition you're doing yourself an enormous disservice by submitting something long and monotonous (compared to 99% of the other submissions). That's not the competition's fault.

Congratulations on your place in the finals - which you have definitely earned. A little self-reflection would suit you.

Sequenced responds:

I'm making music I enjoy doing, sorry.

[The Beast]

Hey the acting on this is pretty damn solid! Work those production skills a little - the overall volume of the track is very low, creating a number of other challenges - and you'll be making amazing stuff.

ImDennisMenace responds:

Noted my man, thank you for the feedback! Genuinely appreciate it! I think I still have the project file saved so I can actually fix it this time.

[Grant and LuckyDee's Spooktacular Adventure!]

Gorgeous work \m/ \m/
Thanks for having me on board!

TeffyD responds:

No problem, thank you for your wonderful voice acting!

[Inquisition - ADM'22 Round 3]

Official NGADM review:

These are the sounds that accompany the opening credits, or better yet, a preparing-for-battle montage of a fantasy themed movie. They speak of action, of movement, of dogged perseverance in the face of adversity. The tide will be turned as the tribes are uniting, their hesitant leader flitting from one unit to the next to monitor their progress, unexpectedly building their trust and boosting their morale in the process. Peter Jackson eat your heart out.

Simply put: this piece is amazing. You write about the mix being lacking and the chaos in the composition with the four different themes, but neither are obvious enough to draw attention to themselves. Well, that's not entirely true: the changing time signature does register, and even though I couldn't figure it out off the cuff (it's 7am, forgive me), it still feels natural enough not to detract from the vibe of the piece nor hamper its momentum. Also, despite there not being a lot of repetition in the piece, the sections form a coherent whole with a natural flow and a solid overarching theme.

The choice of orchestration works really well; the brass adds a sense of urgency to the anxious mood set in the strings, the simple rhythm section allowing for them to perform cartwheels and flourishes in the background as the tension rises. The dynamics also work really well, giving it that roller coaster ride feel necessary to really build suspense. The only criticism I can come up with is that by contrast the final four bars feel forced and empty - I get why you would move into this section, but for a climax it feels incongruously sober and to the point compared to the rest of the piece - I envision the entire string section cascading in on itself, if not outright smacking each other around the ears with their instruments. Mental note: if you are playing the violin, best not to mess with the bass player at this point.

Anyhow, the end result is simply put very, very good. As might be obvious by now, it really sparks the imagination - for me at least - which I think is one of the best qualities any song can have regardless of genre, composition or production values. Keep up the good work!

Santi-Montali responds:

'Mental note: if you are playing the violin, best not to mess with the bass player at this point.' Well violin section has more players so I think overall you might end up winning that fight lol. Thank you so much for listening and reviewing! :)

[A Untouched Place]

Nice work man, the melody and the texture work really well together. And good to see you're still alive and kicking.

squidwardtesticles responds:

Thanks Dee. I mentioned it to starr and a few others, but I've been going through the process to become an EMT. So I haven't been active on the server because I'm busy.

[Year]

Official ADM Review:
Much like Quarl recently did to me, I'll start out by thanking you for writing down the purpose of this piece. Reminding me of old Laurent Garnier tracks, I can totally dig how this would be a great note to end a night of partying on; it has the right vibe both in terms of melodies as well as rhythms. Close your eyes and you can almost feel the crowd moving around you, tired, sweaty and probably off their gourds on E. Especially he final section, with the beat dropping away is a real nice come-down, seeing everyone home safe.

In terms of production and sound design, it's pretty damn spot on. The selected samples work really well together in terms of texture and everything has a clear place in the mix - from a technical viewpoint, you clearly know what you're doing. I could dance to this, even though I'm not a particular fan of the genre (or haven't been anymore, for a couple of decades).

On the other hand there's the composition, which I can look at in two ways: there's music made for listening to, and there's music made for experiencing. By your own admission, this track falls in the latter category, being composed for a very specific purpose. But for this purpose, I think it falls short. You can't come down from a night of partying and dancing in just under 8 minutes - you'd get hurt. For the intended purpose, I'd expect the track to be much longer, the build up (much like Garnier's stuff) much more subtle, the rhythmless section stretched seemingly endlessly, with the instruments meandering about and gradually dissolving into something equally pleasurable and incomprehensible. OK, that last bit may be personal preference, but immersion is key here, and in that respect time = money.

If you look at it from the other perspective, there's not much to see. This clearly wasn't written as listening music, as for that purpose it's way too long and uneventful. Had you not added your description, I would have listened to it as such, and your score would probably have reflected this for the worse. As it is, I'll stick with your explanation and tell you you have a storyboard for the track you intended to create, with a lot of merits, but not finished as is. And going for something on an epic scale like that to finish within two weeks, yeah that's steep - which makes it a risky move to submit a track like this for a competition.

You're absolutely on to something here, no denying, and I hope you manage to crank up the epic to 11 on tracks like this. Good luck on the competition!

Sequenced responds:

I'm glad you are able to appreciate it for what its purpose it. I've had some feedback from other DJs and the 3-4 minutes is enough, I had it drag out more while writing this but it just felt TOO dragged out. So how do you balance that?

The reason I'm submitting tracks likes these to NG is because of the international success they've been getting. So, is NG ready for something a little bit different?

Perhaps, I may make a rendition of my own for 10-11 minutes just in case for back up if I start touring. but when I listen to this, I think the length is JUST right. We will see :)

[Garance's Theme]

Official ADM Review:
I scrolled over X3LL3N's review when I was listening to this for the first time. I didn't read it, but one word caught my eye: storytelling. And as much I want to do my own take on this, he kinda hits the nail right on the head there. The four sections each carry a clear emotion, following each other up in intuitively logical ways and painting a picture of Garance's life - looking at her picture again while writing this it is only now that I realize that's actually a stray hair coming down her forehead and not a Peanuts style nose, but that's neither here nor there.

There's little I can comment on the sound design. The choice of instruments is phenomenal and you know very well how to make them sound like an orchestra rather than a bunch of individual musicians. For a moment I feared this might not be the case, as - to me - the only thing that really stands out is the piano, introducing the arrival of the second section with its two bars of descending notes. It stands out from the rest of the instruments in how unnatural it sounds, which I think in part stems from the absolute lack of sustain (it somehow sounds too 'dead' to be mistaken for a real piano). But save for those two bars, whatever's left of the piano disappears into the ensemble and it turns out my worries were unfounded.

Likewise, there's little I can suggest on composition either. The different chord progressions between the sections work really well to carry the melody and keep things interesting without feeling forced, with the exception of the modulation going into the fourth section - it doesn't entirely come out of nowhere, but the lead-in and ensuing progression somehow don't entirely add up. I'm not knowledgeable enough of music theory to point out why this is the case, so purely going by my gut here. Another minor thing is the melody vs chords in the 2nd an fourth sections. In the 7th and 8th bars of the second section, the melody goes F#-G-A-C# over Em, so ending on a dissonant C# from the E major scale. While there's nothing inherently wrong with that dissonance, looking at it from a storytelling perspective it doesn't work for Garance, who might have found more joy if the chord progression starting that section were D-D-Em-A instead of D-D-Em-Em. (Hope I'm making sense here, it's hard to convey these things if you think you know what you're talking about, but not really how to actually say it D: )

But this is nitpicking, and that's all I can do here. You've done a great job, doing the young lady more than justice with an ode as beautiful as this. Good luck!

Everratic responds:

Thanks for the long and detailed review!

The piano is the one instrument in the entire mix that was recorded dry, whereas the other instruments were recorded stereo in a hall, so that's why it stands out to me. I do have "wet" pianos, but this particular piano had the right timbre for the song so I used it anyway. I do agree that it gets better when the mix is more full.

I agree that the modulation is not very smooth and seamless. This was intentional but it could have been executed better. Maybe it would sound nicer if performed by a real orchestra.

I don't think all dissonance is necessarily "dissonant". Dissonance can sound beautiful or charming in some contexts. I think that's the case here, for my ears at least.

[A New Beginning]

You never cease to amaze <3

VoicesByCorey responds:

Thank you my dude <3

[Real ass dude Voice Demo (Platinum)]

Hey man, despite your setup looking sensible, there's way too little high end in the audio, making it sound dull and muffled. What kind of mic are you using? What processing did you apply? And what's that condom made of?

Aalasteir responds:

Thank you for your message.

I've listened to so many terrible podcasts and bad YouTube videos, to the point where I thought that it was supposed to sound like that. This conversation has been sponsored by Evil megacorporation Incorporated.

The mic. First-generation Focusrite bundle:

https://www.amazon.com/Focusrite-Scarlett-GENERATION-Interface-Recording/dp/B00Q4FF5FK

Form shield. I couldn't find the exact model:

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-Microphone-Isolation-Reflection-Sound-absorbing/dp/B0B3RH7JQH/ref=sr_1_22?crid=3R1TXA461SIS3&keywords=foam+shield+mic&qid=1658730220&sprefix=Form+shield+m%2Caps%2C186&sr=8-22

Cannot remember the exact processing, I've made a lot of vocal chains.

I should have put a reference track in my DAW for optimal mixing practice.
--

This is the new one.

https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1139263