Knuckstrike's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Final Fatasy 7 Overture]

This is my first time reviewing like this. I hope the review will turn out okay.

INTRO
The start is really good. The ladders work well with this piece, and the calmness you start with works well as an intro. It gets a bit boring after a while though. To an unexperienced listener like me it sounds as if the part from 0:00-0:48 is almost the same ladder all the time. If you could start with putting that extra instrument at 0:49 in at half of the current intro (0:24) It wouldn't sound as repetive.

GENERAL SOUND
You can easily count the amount of FF games I've played on one hand, so I'm not familiar with the kind of music. I've never heard this song before either, so I had to search for the original.
I like how you made the music sound a bit fuller. The extra instrument you put in from the start fits just perfect with the whole song.
Because you made it sound full from the start and didn't put that many instruments in later the surprise of orchestral instruments wasn't as much as in the original. It didn't make it worse than the original though. Just softer. I think it would me more suitable as background music now than it did before.

ENDING
A compliment here on how good it loops. The original didn't loop as well as this. It's not too different from the rest of the song, so not much to say about this.

OTHER REMARKS/OVERALL
Even though it lacks the climax of the original, I really enjoyed listening to this piece. The only thing you may need to watch out for is that parts don't drag too long, or it will get boring. You did a great job though. It's not easy to make a special song out of an intro.

Review request club

Rinibra responds:

Thank you so much!

[How to be a Monster]

It doesn't sound like something serious, especially now I've read the author comments. However, you want a real review so here is one.

I'm not starting off negative. It's your first audio submission, so it's nice that you want to sumbit something. It's also good to hear that the younger ones are interested in Newgrounds as well. :)
It was short, but 470kb is still pretty small for audio. Good job on that.

I'll have to point out the obvious though: your cousin is barely hearable. If you can tell him to talk clearer and a bit further away from the microphone it would sound less horrible to the ears.
Maybe you could post the "lyrics" in the author comments so we know what he's saying.
It wasn't completely unhearable though. I managed to hear everything after listening to it a few times.

For next time, it would also be better if there was a bit more time spent on the story. It didn't really have an end. But what bothered me most was the "and then, and then". I guess you can't help that with a story written by someone so young, but it does take away from the quality.

Review request club

JimmyTheCaterpillar responds:

Lol. Thanks Knuckstrike.

[City Vibes]

I like the creepy feeling it gives at the start. Because of that there was a large difference between the intro of the song and the rest. Not a bad thing though.
After about halfway down the song it became a bit too flat and more of the same, so I didn't like that part as much.

After listening to it a few times, I finally noticed why this song was called city vibes. Nice use of the sound effects. :)

Everything sounded well, there was a nice build-up, and the sound effects thrown in keep the song entertaining, so this song definitely deserves a four. Either make it a bit shorter, or indeed make it more powerful.

Review request club.

Hikari responds:

I love you

[Not Enough {Dj-Abbic}]

The starting beat is fine. Just a beat is a pretty nice way to start. What I do have, all the way until 0:53, that I did get a bit bored with the basic beat that almost stands on its own. If you cut half of this, I don't think it would take away anything from the great quality of this song.

When the real melody came in it immediately starts to sound better. It doesn't sound very clear, but the electric and a bit distorted sound it has sounds nice with the rest of the instruments. Again it continues a bit long, but because this has a bit more to it it doesn't sound as irritating as the starting beat for 50 seconds.

I like the slower parts. I normally have that with a continuous loud beat I turn my volume down, but I don't have that with this song. The calmness of some parts cause that. It's also a climax for the somewhat louder parts. Good job on this.

One of the climaxes builds towards 2:45, definitely the real house part of this song. I feel like that's the core part of the song, and it's really good. The variation of instruments makes it exiting, almost like the beat is faster there. And that's something I like in a song. The title doesn't say anything about this part :).

The ending is very creative. At first I thought it would just be the music playing softer and softer, but that isn't the case at all. Awesome work on that. It is something I haven't heard in a song before.

The only flaw about this whole song is that a lot of the parts go on too long. The whole part from 4:15 to 6:37 is basically the same, but with an instrument left out every thirty seconds.

It's a really good song overall though. It almost deserves a perfect score.

Review request club

DjAbbic responds:

I understand what you mean by the intro/outro being very long. I made it that way because I followed the standard club layout (long intro and outro for easy DJ mixing), but now I see that 4:15 to 6:37 is just a tad too much :P. I might change it but then again, I might not.

Thanks a lot for the constructive review! I really appreciate it.

[Lux Cannon]

A good variation of sounds.

The piano you start off with sounds nice. But really from the point when the beat comes in it really starts to sound like a complete song. The melody at that point is great. You should let that sound a bit throughout the entire song.

A dark part followed next. The original melody/sound was hearable there, and the instruments you use sound well. It was a bit monotone though, some sounds here and there in that part would give it some extra power.

And then there was the real dubstep. It's always good to try ad experiment a bit, but this part differed a bit too much from the rest of the song. That was because of two points:
- It was much louder than the rest.
- The original melody was hardly distinguishable.
I didn't notice any mistakes, and the sounds you used were ones I hadn't heard before. So that doesn't make it a bad part. It does make it a part which you can improve.

The end was pretty nice. To let the original melody come back sounded good. I hoped for more of an ending though. Now it's basically the same as the intro, but then with a fade out.

Still, as a whole it's a good song, with enough variation to keep me interested.

Review request club