JohnnyFrizz's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fredgy - Eurodancer {Remix}]

Good!

But still needs plenty of work, you wont get anywhere which half-made songs man, if you're gonna make a remix of a song you gotta try to make it even better than the original, otherwise there is no reason for remixing it (that's just my way of thinking though).

Now, Im gonna try to help you as much as I can with this review and you can either apply it to this song or to your future creations:

First of all, congratulations on getting the melody and chord progression right, Im not a big fan of this song, but I have listened to it enough to tell you got it right, btw the lil piano riffs you added were pretty nice!

Now, I heard plenty of clipping on your song, starting with the piano. You should always be careful when using piano on your songs, my advise is, route it into a channel on your mixer, Idk if which sequencer you are using, but for example if you use FL Studio I would advise you to put a Soft Clipper on the piano channel and if the piano still goes on top of the 0db meter lower its volume a little bit. If you are using Cubase or Reason or any other DAW try putting a compressor on the channel and set the Ratio knob on 100.1 that will prevent it from getting above the 0db mark ( ;

I love the filter work at 00:26 good job! I also like your bass its pretty original but it seems to conflict with the kick and makes it sound weak, I would suggest you to either side-chain it or EQ it better cause it just eats all the lower frequencies.

The song still seems pretty raw, it definitely needs a lot of EQ work without mentioning mastering, another advice, try putting a Limiter on your master channel, that will prevent the song from clipping and it will sound better mastered ( ;

The structure of the song itself isn't that original either, its pretty much the same as the original, I would suggest to change it a bit and make it LONGER for goodness sake!! Its just to short! I mean did you seriously worked 3 weeks on this? Heh, I don't believe you P;

Keep working, the more tracks you produce, the more you will learn about production and the more effort you put into your tunes, the better they will sound.

Johnny~

Fredgy responds:

awesome thanks! :p
i'll try to work everything out what you said ^^
yes i did work 3 weeks on it, but not whole days / week x)
i started 3 weeks ago with it, and then i worked on it slowly :p
like 2 hours a day or something and sometimes i skipped a day because i wasn't home or something :p
i think i used to work on it for something around 23 hours, but i changed many times things, i did things also i never did before what took much time because they were new and so on ^^

thanks for review! ;-D

[Gauntlet - Medley]

Sweet song man!

I can´t believe I never listened to this one till now, its freaking brilliant!

Lovely tune, mixing and mastering could be improve but since it appears that you recorded this live Im not gonna affect your score ( ;

Going to my personal favorites.

Keep rocking bro!

Johnny~

Stage3-1 responds:

Thanks. Mixing and mastering was tough.. It was all recorded live in my basement, so I did the best I could. I did all the mixing myself, sent the tracks away and paid to have them mastered. I'm satisfied with how it turned out, but I'm hoping to get even better results for the next CD. Thanks for the review.

[Kazmo - Far Side of the Moon]

Brilliant!

Boy! This would have been perfect for me if it was a bit longer!!! The song pretty much ends at 4:50, its too short for an original trance song!

But anyway, leaving that behind, I thought it was just brilliant, it kinda reminded me of Above & Beyond's style, have you listened to their tracks? If you havent you really should!

Technically speaking this song was a win, but musically speaking I feel it lacks on some areas, the melody of the song seems pretty basic to me, perhaps a more complex arpeggio line beneath the piano would help fill up the song and make it sound more harmonious.

Overall I felt this track was a win, just try to make it longer, oh and btw I loved your build up! Very good use of filters there!

Keep it up! Would you mind checking (and perhaps reviewing) my latests tracks? That'd be awesome!

Johnny~

Kazmo responds:

I don't know about the length, not all trance songs have to be 8 minutes long. This was as long as I felt it should be.

Arpeggios are overused in my opinion. It seems like the answer to everything is an arpeggio these days, and I try to avoid them. Instead I have an irregular sorta-arp in the background.

I'll check out your stuff when I have the timez :3

Thanks for the review!

[Techtronica (NAP)]

Very interesting!

I like to see you are trying (or at least tried) electronic genres. Since the day you arrived to newgrounds, I have enjoyed your orchestral/cinematic pieces, but this time you are offering us something fresh and different from your conventional stuff.

I love to see what happens when classical oriented artists try electronic music and this is a very interesting result. I must admit that, although your lack of resources, you managed to create something pretty good and unique, one of the elements I totally love from this song is your use of hats and shakers, it feels like if they were flying all around you haha, but perhaps that because of my surround sound system lol!

Haha one of the things I really like about classical musicians doing EM is that they write the piece as if they were writing a movement for an orchestra, there's pretty much no repetitiveness (or at least a very little repetition) on the song and that definitely helps a lot, since the listener never gets bored, and that's exactly what you've accomplished with me.

Im between an 9 and a 10 for this piece...its a pretty hard decision, but since you were limited on resources I will infer you are capable of doing it a lot much better =)

Perfect 10!

Good job Nathan!

Johnny~

[Through the White]

Orchestral ambience, great fusion sound!

First of all lemme say that your mixing needs a bit of work, but leaving that behind....I think your song is brilliantly composed!

The whole instrumentation was stunning, I like the way you mixed orchestral sounds with synthetic sounds, it brings this composition into a whole new level!

I must admit I didnt quite enjoyed the frasered drums you used, I think the fraser is a very delicate effect, its quite hard to get under control since it makes your drum loop's volume very unstable and hard to mix. In my opinion, fraser should never be used on percussion, but I do like the originalitty it gives to the track.

I think this is probably one of the most innovative songs Ive heard on the portal.

Nice work buddy!

Keep at it.

Hails...

Johnny~

beachbum1001 responds:

Your review totally made my night dude. I'm glad to hear that you liked it as well as your constructive criticism, this song isn't fully finished, I'll but uploading the last edited version fairly soon. I can see what you mean by the frasered drums. I have been thinking about the same thing including the overall drum loop.. I plan on making a changing drumloop instead of the same continuous loop for the entire song. I think that might be my single biggest mistake with making music. But yeah, anyways, thanks for the review. You really got me thinking. I'll be checking out your stuff when I get the time.

[[A]Take A Minute]

Very nice!

Wow! A very nice and professional sounding loop, I cant believe it doesnt have a single review!!!

C'MON PPL START REVIEWING THE GOOD STUFF!!!!!

I enjoyed a lot the way you combined the calm lounge/ambient elements with the exciting drum loops and hits, though I must admit the snare hit was a tad too loud for the mix, it simply overpowers the whole song, I see what you're trying to do here but I would recomend you to turn that snare volume a couple bars down cause its really loud for the mix.

Always remember, never let anysound go on top of the 0 mark on your mixer, if you can manage to make every sound audible staying under the 0 mark, then your song is perfectly mixed and ready for mastering where you will be able to push up the volume of your song again.

Keep it up my friend, you got the spark!

Johnny~

Mid-Night responds:

Thanks for the review!

[Awake - Suspended in a Cloud]

Hello again Awake!

I see you are trying Ambient this time around, what a coinsidence lol!

I must say Im in love with this piece, you really catched that nice calm flying on clouds feeling, everythings flows perfectly, the guitar was a great addition to the song I loved it, and the piano that comes after the hit at 00:55 is sweeeet!

I must admit the breakbeat part was a lil bit off the point in this song, but I still enjoyed it and that wasnt the reason I gave you a 9, the reason was the length!!! Its killing the whole thing for me, come on!!! You must extend this song, it sounds unfinished and its just to short to chill out to it.

I think you should definitely take advantage of the the breaks you added and extend that part a couple bars more instead of cutting it off that quickly.

Well you know what to do, GET CREATIVE! And dont be lazy to finish it, I know its tough, I have experieced it myself, but you're not getting anywhere with a half/finished song.

I see a lot of potencial in this track, keep it up and good luck!

Johnny~

Rawrthaas responds:

Thanks.. more inspiration to finish things :)

[Awake - Eternity]

HARD TRANCE! One of my favs fo shure!!! :D

I simple love this genre, is really fun to listen to songs like this ones in a while to get out of the progressive/anthem trance style most of us are used too.

I like the way you used the vocals for the first part of the song, it gives it a lot of power and epicness, though I must admit I was expecting something A LOT more powerful coming after the 00:15-00:31 break. That thin lil high saw just doesn't do it for me, I really felt a lot of emptiness on that bit, I think its because of the lack of mid frequencies , I think you could compensate that by either adding a pad (sidechained or gated if you prefer) or by pushing the mid frequencies of that super saw arp you added.

I really enjoyed the breaks part, though as my good friend below said, that high pitched pluck sound really hurts, so I would recommend you to lower the high freqs on that one, just a tiny bit, that will do just fine ; )

I was hoping to see some kind of change for the second chorus right after the breakbeats but you just repeated everything again, I was hoping that perhaps you could add a new and more powerful synth to play a different melody there, obviously on a lower octave to compensate the lack of mid freqs.

For the end you simply repeated the melody on the breaks and faded it away, so, there was really no merit for it...

But not everything is bad lol!

I like the way you mixed (mastered?) your song the kick gives it A WHOLE BUNCH of energy and the percussion overall was very well executed! I think those breaks are some of the most original Ive ever heard and the toms transition was simply delicious! :)

I believe this would be a great song for an action video game or movie, it simply has a lot of energy but the tiny flaws such as the high pitched plucks and the thin lil saw bring the whole feeling down...

Please dont take this review score as an 8, but as an 18! lol Thats because on the noobies scale I would definitely give you a 10 but since I see that you're not a noobie Im giving you an 8 on the profecional scale ;)

So you got the 10 of the noobs scale plus the 8 on the pros scale! WOOT! ;D

Good job my friend! Keep the sick ass beats coming!

Johnny-

Rawrthaas responds:

Thank ya sir, appreciate it! :)

being considered on a professional level is purty nice :D

[Reasoner- 2,327 Miles]

Brilliant!

Hey Reasoner!

Its been a while since I reviewed one of you tracks haha!

Aaactually this isnt a review but...oh well, Im just gonna say I love this piece! I must say you have some skills at piano and a great ability of simply being able to sit down on the piano and make magic, I like doing that myself sometimes when inspiration comes, but I hardly can achieve something like this so spontaneously lol...

Ahh this is just perfect for an afternoon as you said lol very relaxing and calming.

Keep up the good work my brother!

If you have some time I would like to know what you think of my latest track submitted to newgrounds "The Time is Now".

Hails...