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SipherMT

17 Audio Reviews

12 w/ Responses

Like ear candy

First off, this is a rich and emotionally complex song that i really had an enjoyable time listening to. I usually can value a song by how well it sets an atmosphere. Immersion is key to good song writing, if your song makes people want to punch someone in the face or propose to their girlfriend or take a spaceship to the planet of lesbians, then you have created something worth listening to. Your song really set me adrift in my own imagination and for that i say this is a fabulous work of art. Great job.

Most of the things i find criticism of in your song are very little things that all in all i don't really need to mention but would be good things to keep in mind to avoid in the future. So lets get these things out of the way first.

There were a couple times in your song that i heard clipping, mainly at 0:41 and 0:53, 1:05 and 1:08. Peaking is a bitch to get rid of because it was most likely introduced when you recorded it, so to remove it you will have to re-record that part. Over all it is not that big of a deal that you have peaking in your song. I have heard professional artists have peaking in their music. The biggest concern about peaking in your song is that it broke the mood, at least for me. Maybe because i am trained to listen for things like that, but i bet other people hear it too and think the same thing. I know that in some audio manipulation programs there is a feature that can detect when the waveform peaks. The one i know of is Peak Pro. Another little thing, and i'm not even sure if i heard it, but it seemed like you had some feed back throughout the song whenever you struck certain notes, i can't say which ones because your guitar is way way way off tune. But i am not a guitar player, so i don't know what to listen for in terms of feedback.

Over the whole song i could hear a large amount of static. This was mainly noticeable when it transitioned from the intro vamp to the main song at 0:22 and at the transition to the outro vamp at 2:52 because of the contrast of only one static layer to many static layers playing on top of one another when you multi-tracked the guitar. The part that confused me is that you actually had no static the last 16 seconds of the song...i don't know why. It just very noticeably stopped right at 2:52. This mic static can easily be erased by putting a low-pass filter on all the tracks in the program you use. I know that Logic has a plug-in specifically for eliminating static.

The last criticism i have is your use of reverb at 1:35. The whole piece up till then had none and it was fine that way, then it just completely changed and felt like i was listening to your song in an empty cathedral; that was okay too. The problem i have with that is i think you should probably go with no reverb the whole song or have reverb the entire time (maybe a little less reverb too). It was such a big change and it snapped me from my meditative state back into reality, which was kind of frustrating.

Everything else that i didn't mention about your song you can assume that i loved it. Here are a few of those things in short. The style you have is amazing. You play the guitar with a passion and calmness that really comes out in your melodies. Also your awesome use of the stereo field is fantastic. Most people leave everything in the center which is okay, but is kind of boring and monotonous. You, on the other hand, had every track in its own specific position in the aural stage. It really added life and movement to your song that took and immersed me in your music. And that is what i liked about your song the most, your ability to bring across a series of complex and deep emotions while also displaying your skills as a competent musician. I have heard songs on NG that are just talented guitarists jerking off in your ear for a few minutes that have no depth or purpose to them. Overall, this was a great piece that i will be listening to over and over again.

5/5, 9/10 for the little things.

hamzawy responds:

first of all, i really appreciate the time you took to listen, criticize and rate this music. secondly, i TOO think that the reverb part is...kinda not it's place, right ? yes, but it kinda made me feel like....spaced out, or empty, even empty is a kind of feeling, that's why, even though it's not exactly the place for it, but, i kept it that way. and for the last 10-15 second...maaaaan !! thank you for noticing the static-free zone, i don't know why it kept the static for alll the song, and for the last couple of seconds it disappeared !? anyway, my "equipment" isn't really anything i guess, i would even be ashamed to tell you about it ! but it makes the job done, and i love it...thank you so much, you've been very very helpful, and you gave me a big push forward, i really appreciate it. i hope you enjoy more than one of my pieces, enjoy !

Terrifying

Absolutely terrifying. Not even joking. I came back from getting my ass handed to me by a test for a class i will most likely fail, then i go to NewGrounds and listened to this song for about half an hour while curled up on the couch violently shaking with fear and crying to myself.

The good ol' days, IN STEREO!

After listening to the first several seconds i already made my judgments on your song. I really didn't like it. Then i listened further and my view completely changed. Stylistically it seemed to stay the same, but what you have done that i swear NO ONE EVER does is pay attention to the stereo field. When the happily bleeping synths started to swing around my monitors, i was so excited that i started to do my own little chair dance.
Im not going to lie when i say that i am not a big fan of that type of bit crushed music. The last time i heard anything like that was when i played my Game Boy Color, and that was a while ago. But i enjoyed your fun little song a lot. It made my evening even more enjoyable, so thanks for that.

woodman1985 responds:

I'm glad you noticed that, I made a great effort to throw the sounds around like that. Thanks for the review.

A double-take

At first i was about to blow my whistle on this submission. I couldn't really think how anyone could pass this song as their own. I don't own the original myself, but i have heard it most places whether i want to or not. So i pirated it as fast as i could and did a comparison and i vote i like your version better. Great job.

A juicy steak amongst a sea of meatloaf

I'm tired of listening to generic, shoddily made electronic music on NG. It just seems that the really talented artists kind of skip over the part of their musical ventures where they release to open source sites and go straight to the part where they make money. So we listeners/reviewers on NG are left with the amateurs and wannabes to coax them in the right direction to musical perfection...often without success. I just had to say that because i want you to understand just how much of a pleasure it was to jam out and dance to your song and almost punt my cat out the open window on accident here for a few minutes until i plunge myself back into the void of blandness.

Now a few specific things. I have not been using synths and other VSTs enough to recognize when someone is using factory presets, but i can guess because usually they are not of the best quality and pretty shallow. Your instruments are intricate and have depth and motion to them that make it easy and an exiting experience to listen to. I particularly love the overall use of volume automation. It really drives the soul of the piece how on every beat the backgrounds fade and the drums are for a moment the only sound heard. I especially love in the beginning how the base synth keeps jumping up an octave (or a 5th or something), and when it jumps the volume suddenly increases and then fades when it starts the pattern again. That effect makes it seem as though the music is lunging through my monitors at me, adding a third dimension to your piece. Finally, at the 1:27 mark when the beat finally drops and i got out of my chair to start flailing myself about my room like a person having a seizure, I loved how you interplay silence into the melody it to give everything a sort of stutter feel that made imaginary lasers and lights flash and pulse in my head as though i was on the stage of a European techno music festival with a crowd of tens of thousands moving like a sea in front of me. (have you ever been on a stage in one of those? Its unreal, you get sea sick)

This is indeed worthy of being played at clubs and mega-raves and you should see about trying to get this out there to the rest of the world that would pay good money to hear this. Incidentally, i would like to ask your permission if i could use this song in sets for dances, raves and the like. Also i would like to ask your permission if i could marry you.

takeflight responds:

Thank you so much for this extensive and inspiring review! I can't begin to tell you how much this made my day. First off, of course you can use this song any way you wish lol, any kind of exposure would be great really. I used a heavy side-chain effect with this song which is something I've only recently started to master, so I'm glad it worked out well in this case. I've been to clubs with ridiculous dance floors, but I only wish I could go and experience this techno festival you speak of, it sounds epic! Thanks again, and let me know if you post some of your music!

Has great potential, but needs work

I hope you were joking about the "please rate high" part, because if you seriously expect people to rate something based on what you want them to rate it as, you are kidding yourself and i can't believe you are taking yourself that seriously. You will get a score based on your submission alone and not what you say you should get.

Now about the music:
For about the first .5 seconds i really liked it with the glitchy MPC style horn stabs. Then it seemed you just looped the same pattern for next 39.5 seconds. I have worked with most major sample libraries and i could immediately recognize the generic, unaltered drums you were using. My teachers have removed every sample drum sound from Reason and Logic and any other sample player in our tech labs because everyone has heard them before and they are honestly pretty bad. If i want to use drums in a song, I have to record, edit and mix drum loops and samples of my own. This is tedious and boring work, but it really is worth the effort. Disregarding the repetitive and obscure nature of your rhythms, your song will sound ten times as good if you produce your own samples.

Like i said earlier, the first moment of your piece had me expecting great things. Often on NG i listen to a piece and i can immediately tell if i will like it or not. So this disappointed me greatly because i listened to the whole thing expecting more awesome horn stabs or in the very least, more rhythmic variety.

This piece has great potential. I can already hear the chest pounding break-beat/jungle style drums flow perfectly with punchy horn accents in my head. If you decide to redo this piece, i honestly can wait to hear what you come up with. Keep on trying and never give up, no matter what jerks like me say.

xsnrgman responds:

Fair enough, then! Maybe you misunderstood me about the please rate high comment. I simply meant, in other words to not blast my ratings with low scores just because it's really short and incomplete.

Guess what? I don't think you're a jerk for giving it a 3. If anything, I appreciate the criticism because without it, I won't know what should be improved in a song, and what I should add more of.

I mentioned in my previous submissions that I have real trouble using FL Studio. I was going to try Music Maker but had trouble with installing so I'm stuck with FL for now. I really want to add more of that beginning 1 second part but had problems with recording the track and ended up with this drum loop. I actually had a decent synthisizer thing going with a melody but for whatever reason, it got lost in the recording process when I transcoded to mp3. I'm sure you understand what a bitch FL can be for some people.

I can tell you that in the future, some way and some how with trial and error I will have better quality songs and loops posted here. Bear with me and thanks for commenting!

Also, if I may ask: what drum program you use to make it sound "not so generic"?

Great excecise in lowing blood pressure...until...

Having only visited Seattle, i can't say i have been on many ferry crossings. Only once have i taken a ferry from Seattle to the other side of the water, im not really sure where, though.
When i closed my eyes, i could see the gulls drifting behind the boat, seemingly suspended in the air. The beat and what seemed like a recording of water being tossed on to rocks really put me in a calm and meditative state....then you played a wrong note. I'm not going to lie that i laughed a bit when i heard the first comically placed augmented fourth. But then it got annoying when it kept happening again and again. If those were on purpose, ignore me. But if not, feel free to still ignore me, but i would recommend re-recording it with fewer slip ups.
Great song and exercise in lowering blood pressure...until the augmented fourths.
4/5, 7/10 for the breaking the mood.

ericdrebin responds:

Sorry you didn't like the augmented fourths. Yeah, they were on purpose, although maybe a little jarring in retrospect...

I'll review your stuff if you want.

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