Mataro's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bassix - Fixed]

Extreme-G anyone?

This was awesome, crazy, fast, and awesome. The only thing I didn't like were those samples in the beginning.. Maybe it's just me, but sounds like that just shouldn't be in music xP

Other than that the rest of the song was pretty good. And I still want to know how the hell you make drums like that, I shall force you to teach me the ways =.=

Great stuff overall, I don't have much to say.. It's not really my territory.

Keep it up!

[A little ditty]

This was... Bizarre.

And yet for some reason it fits. The bass was really strange..

Not much to say here other than the fact it would oddly fit perfectly in some sort of town of an RPG :P

This was fun, not much else, but it was fun :P

Good job. :D

[NES Madness]

What the hell? o.O

I couldn't remember whether I ever did pay your page a visit.. So here I am now. If I didn't come before, pardon me. -_-

This was crazy, and I wish I could make drums like that.. I really do >.<

The melodies were cool, if not overpowered a bit by those blasting drums.. But it's DnB so that's to be expected :P

This was cool, really cool actually. The breaks were pulled off great with the NES sounds.. The end was kind of harsh but maybe it fits.

I really don't have much to say other than I made an NES song a little while ago.. Using a max of 4 channels and pure NES sounds straight from the chip :P

I might as well submit it xD

Good luck! :D

[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

[Karco -- After the Nova -]

Bloody well brilliant!

This was incredible. And quite frankly I loved the kicks, the WHOLE way through! They started off sounding like something from Donkey Kong country, which for the most part had a brilliant sound track.

I have to say, you've struck a gold mine of reviews here, I would have killed to get this many! Well maybe not, but I would have streaked >.>

This was fantastic, the pads were great, and it definately gives that feeling of being in the wake of cataclysm. The piano had a wonderful progression. The hihat.. I don't know. It added the hi range that this needed, but it seemed a tad out of place. Perhaps a phaser and reverb on that as well would have worked nicely, the ending was great, but perhaps a tad sharp.

I'd like to see a nice fast paced song with the same feel..

Same instrument techniques, call it 'Persistant Survival'. The rebuilding after the explosion so to speak.

Either way this is very refreshing, excellent job! Keep it up :D

5/5!

Karco responds:

Huh, the first person who likes the kicks as much as I do... cool. :)

A gold mine? Not really... I just review a lot. XD I haven't been reviewing as much as I used to, though, so in turn I haven't been getting as many reviews lately... so it's nice to see someone give me that rare review. :)

I actually have an extended version of this song... I think I'm going to make a few touch-ups to it, upload it if I feel it's good enough.

The hihat sounded pretty good to me... hmm. It actually did have some reeverb, I guess I should have made that reeverb more audible. And... a phaser? What's that? Any chance you can PM me and tell me what a phaser is? XD

A fast-paced song with the same feel? Hmm... that would be something for me to try. Don't know if I would upload it, though, depending on how well I do... actually, you just gave me an idea for my work-in-progress, Atmosphere. I'll keep it in mind.

Thanks a lot for the review! Glad you like it. :)

[Eternal Melody]

I'm here,

because I took note of the generous and helpful reviews you left New-Milkman.. And I'm glad, because you seem like a pretty decent person.. Not to say the AP doesn't have a fair amount of them kicking around, but rather that there are FAR more people that probably shouldn't be here. And of course I never saw you in the AP :P

But onto the actual song, excellent use of what I can only call a formant. This is fantastic, and almost is simple to the point of being exceedingly enjoyable. The hits, incredible! Although, if I may, try not to strech samples anything more than a key up or down.. It, though maybe still sounding fairly nice, tends to lose alot of believability.

I actually have a good 'orchestral hits' soundfont if you want it.

My only beef with the song is that some sort of pad after the hits to fill the song out would have been fantastic, but I didn't deduce anything from your score seeing as how this is your first time.

For being your first hack at it, this was unbelievably awesome! At least compared to my first attempts at writing melodies.. Which ended up with a lot of projects in the 'recycle bin', exactly where they don't belong. They were outright trash and there was nothing worth salvaging from them at all :P

Awesome job, I'm off to review your newer stuff now :D

Karco responds:

Wow, my first review for this song, in... what, two months? Reviews for some of my latest would be more appreciated, but if you apparently want to see how I improved, fine with me. :P

Yeah, I tend to give as much helpful advice as possible where needed. I'm sure plenty of people do. :)

Now, tell me... what's a formant? A typo? Hah! Simple to the point of being exceedingly enjoyable... well, frankly, this sucks compared to my other songs, save the melodies which I plan to use in a remix, remake, or sequel of some kind someday. The hits... they came with FL and it was in my nature (at the time, of course - I've grown out of this! XD) of using anything that sounded cliched and cool to use them. That you think they actually worked more than I think they did surprises me. Orchestral hints? I'm interested. Send a PM my way. :)

Yeah, actually, I didn't know what a pad was until I started making my first song, Dark Storms at Sea. So, naturally, I didn't bother looking for one to hold the song together.

For my first, I'll agree it was good... not to the degree you say it is, but a bit more than decent. Thanks for the review! :)

[Old School Techno (Loop)]

Well..

I gave you high scores this time, not because you're new, but rather because well.. The programs you are using are so incredibly nightmarish that I commend you for getting anything half decent out of them.

The drum tool was decent, in the sense that it was more or less usable, and for the fact that it had some mediocre samples, not the worst, but far from anything 'good'.

The "bass" synthesizer, if it can be called that, was so incredibly scary that I feel sorry for the people that had to use it.. These won't teach you much at all. I believe these are more or less for novelty or for tinkering with by somebody with WAY too much free time.

I reccomend you get the demo of FL 6. Sytrus is a CPU hog but at least it's got other nice stuff in there, and you'll learn faster because of the better quality.

You'll be able to jot down ideas readily, among other things.

The demo has absolutely no restriction other than the fact that it prevents you from saving anything. But since you probably won't be making anything you'll want to save to make sure you can tune to perfection anyway, it shouldn't be a problem, and I promise you you'll learn faster than you thought possible.

Tell me when you get it, then I can really start teaching you some concepts, and you'll better understand what others are trying to teach you as well. Considering what you've done with the tools you have and the experience you have, I am quite shocked at the quality. Great things will be coming from you in due time :P

Remember, the Loops of Fruitiness is your bestest friend.. Unless your a Cubase/Reason/Other kind of person. But I think most everyone would agree, FL is the way to start nowadays.

As always, good luck! :D

[March of the Clowns]

Well.. You told me not to buuut...

I chose to review this one first, and well... I commend you highly on your starting. After checking through some of your reviews it seems you have been more or less blessed by Karco. He's left some seriously huge reviews that even I may have tough time topping.. xP

You've done some strange stuff when it comes to the melody, there is no real build or anything, which is part and parcel that this is your first song.

Now, I don't really know what to say on something like this, because when you're just getting to grasps with music it's hard to understand what people are talking about. -.-

Like if someone were to say to me that I were not staying in key or scale and that I was not using the time signature effectively, I'd probably reply with something like "There is rules for keys you can use? O.O" and "How the heck am I supposed to use something effectively if I didn't know it existed? >.<".. Luckily I had some grade school years of music under my belt, so I did have a wee bit of practice :P

Which leads me to a question, what program are you using to create this stuff? It doesn't sound like anything I recognize.. Let me know via PM, and I'll see if I can organize a little bit of tutoring for you :D

I personally use FL, so if you happen to use that then all the better :P

Finally, I apologize for the fact that this review really isn't a review. But at such an early stage it's more important to understand the fundamentals rather than seek critique. Because honestly, I could just say 'Improve everything', but that doesn't get anything accomplished, so instead I'll see what I can do about gradually introducing new ideas to you, if you're willing of course.

Remember, PM me! And good luck! :D

New-Milkman responds:

NOW someone gives the bad score it deserves :P It is my first song, and I personally can't stand listening to it. Ihis was mostly to see how well I would do in the AP, but I was smiling for so long when I first posted it.

I have about no musical knowledge, even at the time I am writting this, but I am half-studying music stuff... so I know what everyone is talking about.

So you challenge Karco's reviews, eh? Well, you both are crazy, and you both know what you are talking about throught your reviews. Even if the review isn't really about the song, it still helps the same, if not better. For beginners, anyways...

Thanks for the review!