Mataro's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[(NUB)TiedTheRoomTogether]

Oh god. Oh god. TOO DISTORTED!

But cool, nonetheless. It sounds like it needs a ton of EQing. I can't tell whether it's distorted on purpose, or what, but it sounds like just bad equalizing.

Drums were brilliant. Absolutely awesome. Piano was great as well. Sounds like the Love Philter, and it works great here. I haven't got much to say, because there isn't much to hear. Great job. But the distortion kills it for me.

Keep it up, and keep going. I figured I'd stop by because I saw your complaint about not getting enough listens, and I know just how you feel. I'll make sure to stop by every so often, so good luck!

4/5, distortion stops it from being a full 5. 7/10. Rock on :D

nubbinownz responds:

hehe guess it's not for everyone ;) the semi distorted sound you're hearing is a 3 % tape filter applied to the drums, intended to make the drums sound low quality and scratchy .. :(

[Mad World - Rock]

Holy hell in a can.

Abso-freakin-lutely awesome.

I'll tell you right here, 5/5. This is plain wicked. Commercial stuff here. A tad cluttered, but it sounds great. Vocals sound a little off at times.. But they sound awesome for the most part. If that's you singing, awesome job! I'm really curious what you used for everything.. What filters did you use on the vocals? (If any? o.O)

What's that guitar? Sounds too damn synced to be real.. Is it? And those strings are brilliant. The drums are perfect though. Been looking for that sounds for a long time.. Damn. Awesome job here. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this.

I refuse to lower myself to download spamming, but I will promise you that I'll come back and slap some fives on this for the next week or so ;D

You deserve it. This rocks. In the best way. Keep it up, and rawk on! >:D

Sasha-Tarquin responds:

thankyou very much for your review, i'm really glad you liked it. In response to your questions.

it is me singing thankyou for your support,

the guitars are real, it's me playing through a line6 pod xt,

with regards to the drums i've bin looking for this sound too and onli jus got it, if your curious look up parallel compression :o)

really appreciate your support thanks again.

[C:\Program Files\Breathe.exe]

Wtf is this?

I'll tell you what it is. It's brilliant. Percs were great. Synths had an amazing oldschool feel. Bass was somewhat plain, but it go the job done. Drums were.. Well, I've heard better, but this is pretty good. 4x4 kick, but it's not like I really criticize you on that. This had a pretty icy feel for me. Not blisteringly cold, but just.. Chilled.

Having said all that, this isn't perfect. The percs that start up about half way through were a tad.. Random. Not rhythmic enough. Kick sounds great, if not a tad lonesome, and the drum progression was basic at best. The wobbling synth is great though. By far the most stand out part of the track for me. Sounds awesome. I did like how you did some filtering on the rest of the drums aside from the kick, sounds great, and light. I would have liked to see some sort of hat rhythm though. How about some icy clangs in place of hats? Oh well. Intro was amazing, by the by. Couldn't have been better. I loved that lightly distorted synth.. Sounded perfect.

Great job, but not stellar. Love it though. 8/10, a download, and a 5/5, because I'm feeling nice ;D.

Keep it up, Cutting-Christ. Good stuff, can't wait to hear more! :D

Cutting-Christ responds:

Wow. Thanks for the long review and great critique. ^_^

Also, the random-sounding drums may have been because I changed the time signature to 3/4 in one part of it and it's difficult to get rhythmic 3/4 drums? I dunno, just guessing.

[_-={Newgrounds Spectrum}=-_]

Son of a..

You gone dun' it again! Why haven't I reviewed any of your stuff lately? Well.. Lack of internet probably had something to do with it, but that's no excuse! This is so utterly, brutally awesome that it is.. Er, awesome? Sure, we'll stick with that. Excellent job all the way throughout. I don't even know where to begin, it's so spectacularily well done. Truly professional, as usual, MaestroRage.

I honestly wish I could say more, or give you something to improve on or something of the like but to be frank, you're so bloody far ahead of me that I really don't see this getting much better.

You're work is absolutely brilliant. I'd pay for it.

I haven't much more to say.. Really, I don't know what I could. Excellent job, keep it up, and I'll keep listening. 10 out of 10, 5 out of freakin' 5.

MaestroRage responds:

Well the way I see it, you probably were being eaten by grizzly bears which delays the desire to visit Newgrounds. I understand my friend, I understand :'(

And internets has a say in all this too.

You won't have to pay for a single note I pop out Mataro, for however long I exist! Thank you for the review, i'm glad you liked it!

[The Sky Dive]

Pretty cool.

The guitars sound great. And a couple of the riffs sound really awesome. The drums on the other hand are a little bland and seem to be lacking a bit of punch.

What the hell is with the total change in song half way through? o.O

I'm going to make the assumption that these are loops that you got god knows how. So your arrangement skills have a ways to go. If you actually played some of this though, then excellent job with that. You just need better composition throughout. There didn't actually seem to be any bass, which was kind of odd. But it works, so long as the other two guitars didn't seem so.. All over the place. The synth towards the end is alright, but the effect is a little out of place again.

Really not much more to say.. It's your second song, so it's pretty damned good in that regard. I'll give it a 7 and a 3/5. When you release any more songs, let me know, I'd be happy to come by and review them for ya'. Keep it up.

SamuraiGuru responds:

Ok, so this review is incredibly old and you may not even use newgrounds anymore, but this was done with a web program called orange mixer. Its all samples that you pretty much just choose the length of and the rest is done by pre-recorded instruments. Mainly, i was playing around with sounds which is why everything is so effed up half the time, XD. But thanks for actually listening to the song and reviewing, im surprised.

[Karco - Message]

This is the song, right?

Or maybe it was another one? x.X

Let me know. :x

Always the techno guy, you :P

Overall, it's pretty cool. The arp is a little too powerful, and the bass is a little quite, it's got a lot of treble to it. Which isn't bad, it gives it a sort of floaty feel. The piano sounds great, but it's a little quiet. It also sounds a little out of key for some reason. Maybe it just needs to be a tad sharper, and a little brighter. It seems kind of out of sync with the rest of the mood.

The percussive elements all sound good, but they're still kind of generic. It's your average 4/4 kick, with the offbeat claps. The hats on the other hand have a really cool kind of roll to them, but they could be even cooler if they panned a bit more.

It's your average trance song, overall. It's nothing special or particularily unique, but what's there is done pretty well. I understand that you can't go back and do anything because of a corrupt file, which is a shame. This could be really cool with a few breaks. A lowpass on the arp, and a switch to a sort of broken up breakbeat with some bit distortion while the piano takes the real spotlight for a moment there would be really cool. Maybe even some strings run through a flanger or, better yet, the love philter.

All in all, at present it's an early demo. It's what you can expect of an early demo, that it's lackluster but full of possibilities. It's a shame it won't get finished because it could have been damn cool :D

Having said that, I'm fifenin' it anyway because I think your stuff deserves a little more attention regardless. The ten is just because I think ten stars look really pretty :X

Karco responds:

Yeah, this is the one, I haven't really submitted anything else recently...

Honestly, I thought the arp was fine, but seeing as that you and the other reviewers thought it was strong, I suppose there's some reconsidering to be done.

I'd have to disagree with the piano, it sounds in tune to me. I can see where you're coming from with volume, though. Unfortunately, the .flp corrupted, so I can't fix it anyway.

The average 4/4 kick and the claps on every other beat are part of a normal trance song - the only creative variation that's really left open to the artist (as far as I know and have heard so far in every trance song I've heard) is with the kicks and claps on the transitions, snare rolls, and in the hihats throughout the song. I'll definitely agree that these are some of my better hihats - adding panning might be a bit distracting to the listener in my opinion, though...

Interesting ideas you have there. Again, it's no early demo, but an older render of a project file that had come a LOT farther before corrupting and becoming unusable.

Thanks for the high ratings and the review!

[FYRG (Final)]

Awesome.. Kinda.

I felt that the guitar itself was extremely well done. However, the song lacked something.. Some real punch perhaps. It actually reminded me of running through DooM2 quite a bit. Pretty nice job here..

Is that guitar real? Sounds too perfectly in sync.. You're either an ace guitarist or you got a real nice synth! (By the by, if it is the latter, please share which synth! :D)

Hating4AM responds:

Actually Jrayteam6 did the guitars with Slayer 2 VST plugin (synth) on Fruity Loops 6. I did the drums (custom) on Fruity Loops 7.

[Karco -- Stained Chrome --]

This could have been more diverse

But I still liked it. This was cool, would work well in some sort of FPS if it had some more layering. The break there was great, but when it came back in, that would have been the perfect time to introduce a new layer. The whole dropping tempo at the end was kinda weird.. It works, but a nice thunderous rumble to smooth it a little bit would have been awesome.. Now that I have written my thoughts on this, I shall get to work writing the message :P

As always, good luck! :D

Karco responds:

Hmm... nothing to add, thanks for the review. Everybody's getting all over my case on diversity today... :'( Hah.

And good luck to you too, Mataro. Thanks for the review, glad you liked it. :)

[Karco -- Troposphere --]

I dunno what's so repetitious..

This sounds pretty friggin' sweet if you ask me :D

It's weird because it definately is simple, and it definately is trance.. But on the same note, I doubt I could recreate something of the sort. -_-

The lead moog(?) is basic but it works very nicely. The drums were again, basic, and yet they worked very nicely. The shift in them was very welcome and the bells were excellently introduced. Makes me want to do something like this :P

Aside from that there isn't much to comment on, the ending is too harsh and a tad weird. But whatever. I LOVED the hits! They were perfect! Absolutely perfect in all their distorted rumbling glory!

And I don't think there is much else to comment on.. I can't wait to hear more!

And as a final note, I got a little proposal for you.. I'll give you a PM about it. Good luck!

Karco responds:

Finally, someone who isn't stressing diversity as much! :D Again, I wanted to submit this in trance but I misclicked. >:(

Nothing to add in this next paragraph... yeah, those hits are cool. Too bad they're samples... if only there was a VST like that. That would be so cool... :D

Thanks for the review, Mataro... I'm glad you like it. :D

[Karco -- Aster Revisited]

Would be a ten..

Except your EQing on this one was a bit sorry in some parts. Excellent intro.
Decent ending, and not a whole lot of diversity.

This, however being somewhat repetitive was still pretty damn cool. The lead could have been better, but it was neat. The support synth was pretty cool. What bugged me most was the choir. Which sounded AWESOME in the background, absolutely fantastic. But when it started to take the lead, it sounded completely unnatural and out of key. It just wasn't cut for that kind of exposure.

Other than that, great riffs. Awesome composition. An overall fantastic job at creating a dark song considering how long you've been at it. You improve fast! xD

This has the feeling of one of those songs where you learned a lot of new things and made a huge step forwards with one single song.. But it still has that rough feeling of being inexperienced. Now I'm no master musician either (my current audio page is a bad indication of what I can do though.. >.>), but being inexperienced means I can spot others of similiar level. :P

And were definately pretty equal. xD

Keep it up!

Karco responds:

Yep, this is during a phase of mine when I couldn't figure out my quality. Nova, compared to this and a few others, is famous for this. (It was actually BASED on samples! XD)

Choir? What choir? There's no choir in this song. But if you're talking about that one harmony synth that takes the lead later on... well, I was making it louder so people would notice it. Maybe... maybe I overdid it. Just a little. :P

The melody is actually back from January... it's a cool one, back from the time when I was trying to top Dark Storms at Sea, which was a BIG jump in skill level.

Yeah, I improve quickly depending on how much I learn... and how much I buy. XD Actually, the big jump in skill started, in my opinion, with Phantom Zero and started showing with Nova.

Don't worry, I don't take offense from being called inexperienced... I'd have to have a big ego to think of myself that way.

So what if you don't think your audio page isn't a good indication of your skill? You deserve a few reviews for reviewing a few of my songs... and being smart enough to review my first, my latest, and a song from a different genre from my latest so you know what I can do. You're the first person who's done that, apparently intending that.

Thanks a lot for the reviews, glad you like my songs! =D