descara's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[L'amour est pour toujours]

Not really hearing the piano as 12! But it's a tad hard to determine against the synth. Lovely atmosphere anyway, and great pacing of said piano part.

The cello, however, feels rather meandering and mostly just drones on. I'd love for it to have some lines with more of a direction.

[Carpe Noctem]

Pretty nice overall! You use the tremolos to good effect, and the runs up and down in register are well executed. It's nice to hear someone using brass in lower dynamics.

These are the things I reflected about (more or less in some order of importance):

This is somewhat subjective, but I feel that for a large part of the track, you could use something that glues the orchestration together more. The staccatos, while they provide the drive and rhythmic motor, are pretty naked in themselves. In the first part up to the trombone solo, the highest tremolo covers this role nicely but during the solo, especially since the melody is somewhat jumpy, a bit of glue would be nice - some suggestions, if you want to vary the texture, could be high woodwinds (doubled with strings or not), low woodwinds (bass clarinet would be very discreet) or low brass (though this would be more likely to conflict with the solo role of the trombone). During the classical period, horns and/or bassoons often filled this role, as well as the higher woodwinds. Since you mentioned it in the description - I think you could definitely use the brass to fill things out more, if you want.

I'd watch out with the intervals in the low strings, intervals smaller than a fifth usually sound very muddled in the low registers. In the intro, the last interval (a fourth? bit hard to hear down there) between what I assume is vlc and cb sticks out rather sorely.

One rather boring critique is that the trombone sounds rather synthy when it has the solo - when the brass are combined later, it's easier to accept things as realistic-sounding as there's more stuff going on. It sounds like you did a decent job sequencing it, but it is so very naked in the solo that the patches weaknesses are very exposed - relating to the first point, adding some orchestral "glue" might help things! The trumpet also seems to be very high in register for how soft it sounds - trumpets in the highest register will usually be pretty loud, just one thing to consider when doing midi orchestration since it is after all a recreation of the real deal.

One critique about the composition that I have is that the ending felt rather unjustified - there's no build-up to speak of, nothing that intensifies, so the little trumpet explosion feels pretty silly and out-of-place.

I kinda wanted a stronger bass most of the time, and during the trombone solo, the trombone felt rather loud compared to the strings, but otherwise the mix sounded pretty good.

That's all I could think of right now!

InfiniteHarmonyMusic responds:

Hehehe. Thank you so much for your review! I'll definitely take these thoughts into consideration next time! And of course, I appreciate you taking some time out of your day to listen to this seriously.

[Explorations]

Nice, I really dig the chord progression. The drums, and later the lead, feels overly loud compared to the rest of the track though. A more drastic contrast somewhere in the track would've been nice as well!

TBM responds:

Thanks mate. I've fixed up the mixdown a bit, I added some faster modulation towards the end, and I may reupload a new bounce.

[Through the Woods II]

Love the chromatic descent! Also loops really, really well on a musical level.

When the rest of the strings enter, I'd have loved to seen more of them since it's a very welcome change of timbre.

Troisnyx responds:

Thank you :D

I will admit I wasn't particularly generous on the strings, but I didn't want to be too lavish with them either... :S I guess the sparseness shows.

[Deus Vult]

Sweet, I really dig the use of gliss effects early on. The drums do really get drowned out, though!

Also, the mix feels just a tad weak (I think it's a bit too bassy for it's own good, some multi-band compression might also help), and the ritardando really needs to be smoother (though it can be a pain in the ass depending on the DAW your working with).

bassfiddlejones responds:

It took us forever to get that ritard together, and had a few different options to go with, but ended up with this one. We wanted it to be drawn out just enough to make it uncomfortable. Can't speak much to the mix myself, but it was an enormous amount of tracks to combine. Thank you for the feedback!

[[Knox]Legacy]

Heh, best source of inspiration I've heard in a while!

Pretty sweet track, I really like the pizz. ostinato, the woodwinds give it a lovely atmosphere as well. I'd turn the pizz strings though, especially the double bass, it's kinda overpowering right now. Also, not sure how much you care about realism but the very brassy ("bursting") brass being considerably lower volume-wise than the pizz strings sounds rather odd and unnatural!

I dunno how far you've gotten with this track, but personally I felt it kinda begs to break out in an epic, more lyrical section (which may or may not break off from the ostinato - I'd at the very least change the instrumentation of it!).

Knoxius responds:

I totally forgot how bassy the double bass is. I only noticed it when I took a listen in my car; my headphones don't seem to really pick it up. Regardless, I haven't spent time mixing yet. Currently I'm working on stretching the track a bit... I feel it gets to the point far too quick.

Thanks for the review. I'll take your suggestions into consideration; I can already imagine a choir in the background!

[A Newgrounds Legacy]

Did not expect the synths but they were a really nice surprise! I also dig the prominent use of the cellos.

A few things I have to remark upon: The key changes, to me sound a bit unconvincing - very sudden key changes are certainly possible, but I think somewhat smoother voice leading (preferably with some contrary motion! really helps in these cases) would make them more musical.

I felt the track lost pace towards the end of the cello/synth section, after that it kept things going nicely.

One last thing - to get that really sweet heroic, fanfaric feel out of your brass parts, I'd look at your two-part writing somewhat (looking up horn fifths might be helpful!) and perhaps look at a couple of classical examples (i.e. "Alla Hornpipe" from Handel's water music") - for example at 2:00, highest notes of the horn/trumpet duet, the 4th between the parts stand out pretty badly.

Anyway great tune!

Bosa responds:

Lol. I'll be sure to keep all of these things in mind.

[Jazzy thing]

Sounds like bossa nova with a drum set. Dem circle progressions!

Nice work, would've like to see an expanded ending but 30 minutes is 30 minutes :)

BlazingDragon responds:

I did upload a new version that is fleshed out! You should check it out. ;)

Thank you!

[Southern Pastures]

This is really awesome! Loved the xylo+trp elements. The solo strings sound really convincing, what library are you using for them?

deadlyfishes responds:

Thanks descara!

Specific List:
Xylophone - EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus Percussion
Trumpet - EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus Brass/Sample Modeling: "The Trumpet"
Solo Strings - AudioBro LA Scoring Strings v2.0
Other Strings - EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus Strings, AudioBro LA Scoring Strings v2.0

Full list of instrument libraries used for this piece:
EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus
EWQL Stormdrum 2 Pro
EWQL Gypsy
8dio Epic Dhol Ensemble
8dio Epic Taikos
AudioBro LA Scoring Strings v2.0
Sample Modeling The Trumpet
Sample Modeling French Horn & Tuba

Here's a video of it playing in FL Studio 10:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6PxVGGZnPM

Here's a video of it playing in Sibelius (to see notation of the full score):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgJJR4IwgO4

Here's a PDF of the full score:
http://www.matthewpablo.com/wp-content/Files/Scores/Southern%20Pastures%20-%20Full%20Orchestral%20Score.pdf

Hope that helps!

[Falling Angels]

Very beautiful and atmospheric - for what it's worth I think going with strings was totally appropriate. Piano mind have lended it a somewhat more intimate feel, but strings give it another dimension.

It works pretty nicely despite the length, but starting out with choir and strings kind of sets an expectation that we're going to hear just that. This left me waiting for the choir to come in again, which was a bit frustrating!

Nice work nonetheless.

MichaelJ responds:

Thank you!
Hehe, I was going to add the choir again at about :45, and then I was going to do a little something with a horn - but I ran out of time for the contest. I'll probably edit it later!