Casper's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

196 Audio Reviews w/ Response

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 … 16 … 20

August 5, 2024

The song feels a bit all over the place thematically and definitely gets better as it goes on, but for a first attempt at color bass it’s fairly well rounded! Intro sounds more like something closer to dubstep with some slight cyberpunk undertones but, like the rest of the track, is brought together by various effects and transitions. The synths themselves sound great, although the processing is a bit rough around the edges, and there’s definitely some harshness at various times. Something that seriously drags the track down are the drums, mostly sound selection. Snare can easily get obnoxious on replays, there’s times where they are too spaced out and the lack of hi hats/shakers/foley fails to add something rhythmically interesting to fill the background. I don’t know if you were inspired by this, but there’s times when I listened to your track that reminded me of “Shiver” by False Noise. I know that track isn’t color bass but it’s similar in atmosphere/theme and I think you did a great job creating the overall vibe of the song, but you should give a listen to that song to notice how it fills dead space with ear candy and how it uses diverse drum sounds throughout the track. Sorry if I was too harsh on some things, I just think you have a lot of potential and would hate not to see you making some light adjustments to your future songs to hopefully get some major recognition:) My final score for your track is 7/10

Artackni responds:

Don't worry about the feedback being too harsh, it is way better than not saying anything bad about the song in order to "not hurt my feelings"

One of the main reasons for such emptiness is that I usually make really fast songs (200+ bpm) where high tempo helps with it.

I definitely did improve my percussion by a ton after releasing this, which hopefully will be seen in my NGUAC song as well as songs that I finished but can't release yet for various reasons.

I personally like how the snare works with the 1st color section but it does definitely need some variety, one sample for the entire track with 3 distinct parts is not enough. And the same snare doesn't work as well for the 1st section, for example.

As for the harshness of a lot of the sounds, I took notes and will not repeat the same mistakes, hopefully.

Thanks for detailed feedback :D