Miyolophone's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Undertale - Spear of Justice (Orchestrated)]

Wow.

I'm pretty familiar with the original, and this is beautifully orchestrated, without a doubt. You used the piano extremely well, in the context of the full orchestra. Your use of layering, especially in the strings, is excellent, and the chord at 1:11 was a wonderful surprise— I would guess you have practice writing real orchestra pieces before...

My only complaint is that the sort of "canned" sound that many orchestral VSTs have is especially obvious in a piece using only orchestra— and especially in a piece that would obviously sound amazing played by real performers. This would undoubtedly be breathtaking played by a live orchestra... not that you necessarily have access to a private orchestra, of course. Anyway, I only took off half a star for that because I so desperately wanted to hear real instruments, but that's not really your fault.

Overall, I'm very impressed, and thrilled that a piece like this can get featured on Newgrounds amid all the dubstep and more dubstep and even more dubstep. I'd love to see what else you can do with the orchestra in the future. Keep it up!

-Miyo

[Gift]

I like this one! I especially liked the piano ending, and the breaking-glass-ish sound as percussion (not sure what it technically is— e.g. at 0:39), which I found somewhat distracting in Nanobyte, felt appropriate here. My main issue was with some of the leads you used (the one in the "chorus" and the whistling one right afterwards)— they felt pretty high frequency and began to grate on me after a minute or so. It was also a bit repetitive for my taste, but that's sort of a genre thing as well as personal preference, so no big deal.

Anyway, good work! Excited to hear more!

[Undertale - Gaster's Theme [Electro Swing]]

This is good! Very good! Even though Gaster would be, like, 800% less threatening if this were his theme.

What can I say about it? Another awesome electro-swing song from you. My main criticism is that some elements, especially the chords around 1:03, were really overpowering, and kind of droning considering that most of the chords' notes were the same (only the bass note changing). Otherwise, great as always! I don't think it was repetitive at all.

Keep up the amazing work! And I can't wait to see how AL turns out, by the way.

TheMusicalGhost responds:

Hey thanks man! I appreciate your criticism, I'll work on it next time.

I'm glad that you know AL. I'm still working on it (development is very slow, and I have a really busy schedule). Anyways, thanks :D

[Skyline]

Wow. This is really good.

I'm loving those piano flourishes you sprinkled throughout. I also really like those... violin? Violin-ish thing?... solos melodically— they're super interesting.

As AeronMusic said, there was some clipping, but I know how hard it is to master songs made on Apple products loudly, so no huge deduction there. I also wish you had changed up the chord progression in more than one place, but that's sort of personal taste, so whatever.

Anyway, keep it up! Can't wait to hear more originals from you.

acxle responds:

Thank you!

[Into the Wild]

There are some good things going on in this one.

The melody and baseline didn't have the same kind of driving motion forward in some cliché chord progression like I see everyone (including myself) using nowadays until the drop, which was refreshing; then again, I don't have any problem with that kind of directness, so it was fine when you firmly established the chords at the drop. (I know the progression didn't change, but it felt clearer.)

Personally, I wasn't super crazy about the drop in general. Don't get me wrong, it was fine— better than I could do— but it wasn't perfect. There was almost no buildup, so it sorta dropped from the sky for me. I also think the kick should have been more prominent, and just flat out louder. Maybe you could... highpass the... EQ some... okay, I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. I'm sure you can figure it out. Amazing sound design though, as usual.

I felt like the intro went a bit too long without any melody or baseline or anything, and I really, really wish you hadn't thrown in that one last dubstep growl at the end, but those are minor issues, and sort of subjective anyway.

Anyway, keep up the good work, I can feel the improvement!
Cheers c:

MollusK-Music responds:

Honestly, I sort of knew before posting this that what was said would have been said by someone. Best to address everything now.

About the out-of-nowhere drop: It was an intention based off of the song's somewhat jungle-like theme. I wanted to do something that disrupted the peace and the melody and introduced a sort of high-octane sense of danger and intensity. Akin to a lion attack if you will. You never really expect it, then... bam! Fuck's your shit up!

About the kick: Through my speakers it sounds quite loud, even driving through the mix. But, upon further reflection; that was due to the fact that the kick, contrary to my orignal EQ, was bringing out lots of mids and lows. This most likely changed upon an EQ revision when I thought that the kick was rather... papery, if you will.

About the sound design: Thanks c:

About the intro: Sort of agree, also a bit intentional, however. Again, pertaining to a jungle-like atmosphere; I wanted rhythm to rule over the land (if you don't mind the ridiculous wording of that) and melody to be a little whisper bringing the song onward and allowing it to change.

About the closing growl: I've actually been doing that a lot in tracks. I knew in that back of my mind that it wouldn't be too well received. But, my logic was that I needed something to sort of sign off on a track and make it known that I made it. Also, I wanted something like the VR growlified lionsgate lion. Since I am shit at making things sound like animals, I got lazy and just added another bit of bass. You can hassle me for being lazy... cuz I admit to that in full.

Hey, at least I did something a little unique though. I'm glad to hear that you liked (more or less) it.
Cheers c:

(sorry for any spelling/grammatical errors, running low on sleep and too lazy to check again)

[Undertale - Spear of Justice [Electro Swing]]

I did not think this would work at ALL as electro swing... you sure proved me wrong.

I really liked the rhythms of this one, and the transitions to G# at 1:42 and to 3/4 at 2:50 was quite cool. That said, I have a couple tips on what to work on, in my opinion at least:

-The thing that irked me the most was the dissonance in either the 2nd or 3rd measure (not sure how you set it up)— the second chord that's played, at any rate. The original is modal to some degree, I think... or maybe just melodic minor, or something... anyway, that measure or two (the IV chord) in the original is major, which you kept in the melody (diatonic with G major) but didn't keep in the chord, which was G minor. Wow, I just spent a lot of space trying to describe that, sorry... hopefully that made sense. Anyway, it repeated a bunch of times, and nothing else was dissonant... I thought I should point it out.
-In general, it felt kind of sparse... I don't think you ever had more than 3 types of instrument, or like 5 different individual instruments playing at once. Some more layering would add a lot in my opinion. Also there are a lot of other ways the piano can play besides that ragtime-y, choppy sound... just sayin'.

(Also pretty sure the piece is originally in 6/8, FYI... it's a subtle difference)

But anyway, I did really enjoy it, just to be clear... I just don't usually find it very helpful to find a bunch of lists on things I don't need to work on for my own music, so I try to avoid it in my reviews.

Keep up the good work, man! Seriously!

TheMusicalGhost responds:

Ahhh thank you so much for the lengthy review, I'm glad you liked it~

I did not understand all of them (I'm a noob, okay?), but yeah I get you. I knew I should've changed the chords, but eh... I'm not that good at writing songs. I also don't know what any other instruments will the song if I layered them. And sorry if I didn't know the difference between 3/4 and 6/8 songs >.<

Thanks again. I did find these tips very helpful. I'll consider these the next time I make an electro swing song.

[-Oasis-]

So this is where I put my constructive criticism, right?
Cons:
-...
-...
-...
-I give up, there aren't any
I really have no problems with this track, it's peaceful and uplifting and I really enjoyed it! Now, that's not to say that there's other things you couldn't try, but I'm not taking off any stars because it's not "bad" that they're not there:
-I'd really love to see you deviate from that four-chord pattern a bit. Hearing the same chords over and over again can get a little tiring. You can often replace the progression or parts of a progression with a totally different chord and still have it sound basically normal.
-Along those same lines, it would be great to have something interesting melodically happen at some point, like a significantly different theme, or a key change... I'm a sucker for key changes but no one ever listens to me :( Even a tempo change would throw the listener off in a good way.
Just ideas if you want some more, though it doesn't seem you're lacking. Great job Kyron!

Kyron20 responds:

Thanks! I agree, I probably could do something other than the same chord progressions. I'll probably try something in my next electronic one. I tried a key change in a track I never released, but I've never really remembered to do one. With this one, doing a different theme was a bit hard, especially with the marimbas. The samples I was working with couldn't pitch bend like I wanted them to, so I blended them in with a Harmor patch that could pitch bend. It was kind of difficult to get it so it didn't sound like two clashing notes, but I probably could have experimented with a different pattern. I'll be sure to try and mix things up a bit in my next song :)

[-Second Chance-]

This is great! I agree, the mastering and mixing were extremely good, and I also agree that this could be even better with some vocals. I also really like the automation and sound design... what VST do you use for the synths?

Keep up the awesome work! Might steal this for a GD level. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Kyron20 responds:

I use Sylenth1 and a little bit of Massive. Both are great synths. I find that Sylenth has more flexibility in a shorter amount of time, and is easier to use, and massive has a cleaner sound and can make more complex sounds with some experimentation. Shoot me a message if you want more information, and I'll be happy to provide!

[Undertale - Asgore [Electro Swing Remix]]

You just got scouted... recently??? Newgrounds is broken, you should have been scouted long ago.

This sounds surprisingly good remixed as a swing piece. It does get repetitive at times, but I suppose that's a result of remixing a loopable song, and it's rare that I find an artist who puts as much thought as you do into the piano parts in general. I would recommend, though, that you change up the chord progression even just a little at some point... or a key change might be nice... but still, awesome job.

Keep it up :D

TheMusicalGhost responds:

Thank you!

Yeah, I thought so. I should've made variations to the chord, and as well as the piano. Thank you for your recommendation. ♥

[A Piano BG Loop I made]

So you decided to join me on a trip out of our comfort zones, huh? ;D
This is good! The chord progression was interesting-- not the generic dance progression that I see a lot nowadays-- and the rhythm was well-syncopated and fun. (Though the rhythm you used-- dotted quarter, dotted quarter, quarter-- is a common dance rhythm, so I think you could make this into a really interesting dance song if you felt like it.)
If you want to go even farther out if your comfort zone, try using another theme as well! It can even be the same chord progression, but then you have more material to cycle through and change.
I still wouldn't exactly call this a background loop, because it was so rhythmic and had clear energy, but this is still a really nice piece you have here... keep up the musical musicness, I like where this is going.
Oh, and the chord change was fabulous. Respect.

Cheers c:

MollusK-Music responds:

Thanks! I really appreciate the critique. I'm glad you liked it, and I completely agree it's not a great BG song, I really just had no other way to label it. Though, it being up-beat and all, might actually make a reasonable boss tune, idk.

Anyway, I'm really interested in improving my musical musicness. So if there was anything you wanted to share about any sort of musical techniques, I would greatly appreciate it as always.

As you said, and as far as this goes, I may make something of it. Or send it to mah boi, Karaplex/Windlux, since I kind of owe him something of the sort to collaborate on.

Anyway, thanks again. Cheers c: