TheBenjerman's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[FFX_Battle_Theme [Box-Killa]]

Real nice groove man!

I really like this cover, and this a great song to mellow out. The guitar is really well done, and whatever else is in the background. Nice reverb. I really wonder what this would sound like without the percussion. I realize it couldn't really be a stand-alone piece without the drums because of the phrasing, but the whole mellow-reverb-background is sweet dude.

The only criticism I feel I can make would be to mellow out the drums, and go a little easier on the bass drum. There is a lot of it, and it really sticks out in the mix because it is the lowest sound in the foreground. The drums kinda contrast a little too much with your awesome background for me. If you put just a tiny bit of reverb or filtered them a little you could blend the mix a little better.

Now if this was the feel you were trying to get, I do really like it, and in general I do like the drum line. It just feels separate from the melody to me. It's all subjective though. Way to go man, as I said, I enjoyed this piece a lot. Keep up the good work!

9/10, 4/5

[Waiting... (Picture Series)]

I definitely like it.

I agree whole heartedly with aloneagainfriend on "the good" and disagree on "the bad."

The looping IS pretty good, your music box is also cool, it is happy and flowing, and does have a very apt title.

I do not agree with the length comment. This is a perfect example of the artistic sort of piece that can get away with being any length the artist feels fits.

I completely disagree with the percussion. I think that would change the whole feel of the piece, and you would lose a good deal of the serenity. You could add percussion, but it is certainly not necessary.

The higher notes do hurt the ears a bit, this may have to do with compressing to mp3, or maybe clipping. If you export at a lower volume you might get rid of this issue, and you should still be in about the right volume range.

And this is movie music, which is definitely my type of music!

A suggestion which I leave up to your good judgement would be to revisit the melody throughout the piece and see how it relates to your tritonal (is that a word? It should be.) background. The first time the background appeared, the melody resolved the tritone beautifully, but did not do so for the rest of the piece.

Way to go! This is very well done!

5/5 10/10

[CsV - Protosphere]

Holy Poop!

Dude, this is freaking ridunkulous! Keep this up and you will be giving paragonx9 a run for her money in no time. Great instrumentation, nice feel, huge energy! Way to go man! I only have some very minor suggestions:

1st, the section before the piano interlude (about 1:25) could be mixed better. You have a lot going on, and that is great, especially in a song like this, but your instruments are overlapping a lot. I would focus on the melody at the beginning, and then bring that back a little when the counter-melody comes in at about 0:42, just to emphasize the different instruments. I don't think this is a big of a deal at about 2:40 when your second lead instrument comes in again, because that is your big (and effective) finale, and the chaos just adds to that.

2nd, in the interlude (1:25 to about 1:45) you have an ethereal sort of background pad that sounds a little like high strings that really helps complement the section, but might not be quite enough. If you were to reinforce that with a quiet mellow pad or choir or strings, it would make for a much stronger contrasting section.

Now keep in mind that this is my personal opinion, and other people might feel completely different about it. I really did love this piece though, and I only review pieces that I really enjoy. Thank you.

10/10, 5/5, downloaded.

[Psychedelica - Panic Pt.1]

This is a quality tune.

First let me say great job, I really like this piece, I think the both of you did a very good job. Good textures, effective layering, professional mix, and nice melodies. I really like what has been done here. You start off with a build into a dance section, then go to a mellower piano section, then build like you are going back into the dance part, and then drop the bottom out of the whole thing and go into a super chill pad and synth strings section. Then you go back to a recapitulation of the dance theme. Great form etc.There were only two things that seemed a little off to me, and they were the piano and the transitions.

First of all, I thought the build-up at the beginning could have been stronger. If you are going to start slow and speed up, it is generally more effective if you start slower and speed up faster and faster with a steeper and steeper curve on your tempo map. Otherwise you have less of a difference in speed the closer you get to your goal, so it is kind of anticlimactic.

Second, I liked the transition into the piano part, and the beginning of the section, but your processed piano is missing the the higher frequencies normally present, and when you bring your unprocessed drums back in, they overshadow the piano because they still have a little bit of those frequencies. An easy fix would be to eq the drums and drop the higher part just a little.

Third, I really loved the pad section, and I think you could actually emphasize that even more. You just completely tricked your listeners. If you put a stronger transition in there you would be saying "ha, suckers!" instead of the suckers being confused. You could do anything for this.

On a side note, I loved the final transition, I would call it perfect. Each section was great, I loved the variety, and you had a fantastic ending.

All of the stuff I wrote is entirely subjective, that is my personal opinion, and if you did all this for a reason, I say more power to you, you are the artist and therefore you are right. I only review pieces I thoroughly enjoy, and this was one of them. Way to go guys, you did a great job.

5/5 10/10 and downloaded.

Tilkanuts responds:

Thank you for your input. 'I thought the build-up at the beginning could have been stronger' - Holy crap i know what you mean and i WANTED to do that........but the sound i produced crackled a ton because of that tempo transition. my stupid sound card............*sigh* D:

About the piano and transitions, we are both still on the learning side of things, but we are pretty happy with this piece. With that said, we will take your advice into account for future reference and we thank you for your criticism.

Thank you for the review and we are glad that you liked it!

[{Heim} Awakening]

Hmmm...

I like it overall, but there were a few things I would draw attention to:
First of all, the background strings you have throughout the entire piece are good, but might need a little bit of a change, because they get a little stagnant. A slightly longer motive or a few small dynamic changes should take care of this fairly easily.

Secondly, the quality of your synths is a little low, but this is to be expected with synth strings. Strings are one of the hardest elements to emulate synthetically. If you can't get something performed, a general rule is to try to cover it up with other synths that sound better, or to try to edit what you have, i.e. dynamically, through processing, or through layering other instruments on top.

You can disregard any of the above if you want, everything is dependent on what you are writing this cue for. I do really like it, it has a pretty nice atmosphere, and I will leave the compositional aspects up to you. That is personal preference. Quite a nice cue though, I really enjoyed it! I wouldn't have said as much if I didn't really like it.

9/10, 5/5

:)

JeffHeim responds:

First of all, thank you for providing such an indepth review! I really appreciate it, and this will definitely help me out, both in editing this piece and writing for future pieces as well.

Now for the strings...I added solo string instruments on top of the string ensemble, which is what you might be hearing. In the future, I'll keep this in mind and avoid writing solo strings on top of the ensemble strings. Thank you again, I'll take a look at some of the dynamics as well.

[Silver Reflection]

Awesome!

I really like this piece. Nice transitions, good compositional material, beautiful melodies, good fusion. The only criticism I could possibly make would be to edit the individual instruments a little more to try to mimic the way it would sound if you recorded it live. That's always the hardest part about strings. :-/ A little bit of processing and just a little bit of swelling into notes etc. goes a really long way. Fantastic work though. That's some pretty awesome vomit you've got there. :) 5/5 10/10 and downloaded. You rock dude.

BTW, I just wanted to draw some attention to the delay in the violin (or viola) starting at 1:18. That was a nice touch.

Aeris responds:

Thanks :D

I may do a little editing with the cello and maybe viola, my concern when doing that is losing its solidity. But I'll see what I can do :]

Thanks again ^-^

[The Valley - WaS]

Perfect.

This music is perfect for William and Sly. It definitely made a very good game an excellent game in my opinion. Very professional mix, and good use of synths and processing/plug-ins. Not scary necessarily, just dark and peaceful. Way to go.