la-yinn's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[You Make Me Feel... (DnB)]

Very mellow, for sure. I can appreciate this for what it is, the break in the 2nd half is very nice and fills up the piece well. I do think you could add more dynamics or modulations to the main driving pad though. Experiment with automating the reverb and cutoff together to drive the piece forward a bit more. You can also add another pad as a second layer and then automate that aswell to make them flow over into one another, complimenting the main melody.

Perhaps some lyrical samples at the intro and mid sections could fill up the gaps currently present in the mix. If all else fails, don't forget to master the track so that it's a tad louder overall. You have a lot of room to do this without ruining any transients.

As it stands it's pretty cool though, I enjoyed listening to it! Reminds me of a lot of mellow jungle tunes. Keep at it. :-)

Fun fact, I remember Big Bud from when I first started listening to Bassdrive.com 15 years ago. He just released his promotional mix for his album, think I still have it on my pc. White widow remains an absolute jam to this day. I tried looking up 'Alzair' to get an idea for what style you were referring to, but both youtube and google left me hanging.

xanxoepico responds:

Ay thanks for your criticism, I definitely could've worked on it more, but I kinda ran out of ideas, and I've also been on a very relaxed mind when it comes to music due to jamuary Lol

Also I messed up the track I meant was "Alzir" not Alzair XD

[Why Do Anything At All]

You exist so that others may appreciate you being your existential, wacky, groovy self.

Stay groovin, stay existing. Cut the meaninglessness though. Youre better than that. :-)

Side note, it's cool to come back to this place and still see familiar names around. I really need to pop in more often.

Quarl responds:

I'm better than nothing, the next blog I write is gonna be a cascade of videos and pictures of our cat that just passed away. Allow me a little sadness right now la-yinn, I'll be manic again in a month :3

edit: theres a sense in comfort seeing them old names <3

[3 AM]

Dude. Tune! I feel like between the mixdown and the arrangement, the mixdown is the real winner. That break is very crisp and tight. Maybe a bit too overpowering for the rest of the track though.

I feel like the intro could introduce some bass elements and have them stick through the bridge to fill it up a bit more though. And the piano is kind of out of place; probably FL Keys? I hate FL keys. Only way to make that work is to layer itself with many notes octaves up and down and to seperately adjust the volume of the notes to 'pick the right frequency' if you will. Oh, and a fuckton of reverb. And some volume attack on the notes. And pre-transients. Really, it just sucks. Dont use FL Keys.

Tune though! Dont expect this kind of work on NG but sometimes you land on nice exceptions.

5TanLey responds:

It's actually the giant piano library for kontakt 5, but I managed to make it sound like fl keys lol.. too much compression maybe.. or I could try some other vst

anyway, thanks for your thoughts :)

[CRX - DEBRIS]

With the kick in the 4x4 rhythm at the start, it did remind me a bit of old ut99 tracks like 'Run' hehe. But the main theme is a bit too light for gory shooters, blame the trance-y synths ;-)

I like it, the parts with the pads feel really fleshed out and I definitely like the way you EQ your break, feels crisp and tight! I feel like your arps could use some sidechain next to the slow uplift/downlift qualities to them because they feel slightly dry and repetitive, some more modulation would do them justice, or change up the pattern a bit. This can be best heard in the intro, where there's not too much variation.

Feels more at home for a galactic / space-themed game rather than a shooter imo. This would fit really well as a battle theme in FTL for example, but it'd need some more background ambience like the rest of that particular sound track. Anyways, cool beat.

[Sonic Forces - Sunset Heights]

Im usually scrolling down the DNB page for anything industrial or neurofunk related, but a part of me remains impressed with videogame remixes. When they're done *this* right, at least. It could just be me but I feel like the lead melody during the drop could've been ever so slightly louder.

Either way, this was 3 minutes well spent.

PaulyBFromDa303 responds:

Thank you very much for that input that really means a lot! Yeah the volume was actually something I really struggled with. Once the full version is up on my page you'll hear the Hawaiian guitar a lot more prominently as well as the steel drums. But even then I still had to compress the guitar +60% and somehow, I too feel like it wasn't enough. Perhaps this will be something to investigate once I get a chance to use those instruments again

Thank you again for your honesty. I love reviews like this

[I Love Him]

145 and 183 BPM? Stay you, Quarl.

This had better not be the last thing you upload this year! The audience demands 76BPM moody synths on triple speed breaks. Bonus points if there's a cat with shades on providing riddim on them tambourines.

On a more serious note, belonging to a job ain't the hell hippies make it out to be. Speaking from experience; that shit beats being broke and depressed any day of the week.

Edit: cat with shades on, with the shades being broken down the middle. (As if that needed mentioning ...)

Quarl responds:

I just printed 100 hard copy CDs for a new album and plan on uploading a digital version to soundcloud as soon as it comes in.

The process of remastering old rsn. files meant I didn't have a lot of spare energy for new tracks but now that it's behind me NEW TUNES SOOOOOOOON OLOLOLOLOLOL.

Keep it fresh la-yinn <3

[drift]

It's a bit of amen break with a badly mixed synth looping over and over again.

No, as in, thats what it is.

Do better mate.

SchattenDnB responds:

sorry that i'm late but i just want to thank you for your response. i will do my best to get better at this sort of style

[The Tower]

See, I was just gonna check up on whether regulars from years ago were still around but then you go ahead and mix in them mario coin blings into a breakbeat and now I've been stuck here for the last 15 minutes.

C'mon now. Just riddim-queue-loose.

Quarl responds:

haha, I haven't seen your name in ages. It sucks how artists and creatives can sequester themselves into anti social microcosms, myself included. FYI, a few golden oldies...

Parathile is now owning face in the DNB scene under the name Emperor. Cornandbeans became Space Laces and did work with Excision/Datsik. Look up his soundcloud page, his shit is filthy. Haywirehaywire is now just Haywire and is doing quite well as well. Stan-SB is rocking out as Fox Stevenson, still doing his pop drum and bass thing but he's obviously the best at it.

There are plenty of other NG oldies that are active and such but for drum and bass, those peeps ^.^