ClockworkNick's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[-Stage One-]

Nice overall effort. I think the beat you chose might not really fit the whole chiptune thing when we're talking about games. Nice melody, but your sound samples are similar and in the same tonal area or octave if you will, which makes things pretty hectic at some points resulting in a not clear tune. The melodies are mighty fine but you should try to make it more coherent and clear to one's ear. Try changing octaves when things get wild in order to keep it discernible.

[Music Box]

Whoah this is sweet. Really fantastic melody mate. The only reason that i didn't give you 5 stars is because you didn't end your cycles properly. What i mean by that is that your transition between the repeats of the melody was clumsy. Your last chords, before entering a new part or before you go back for one more repeat of the same melody should either show anticipation or a definite end, closure of that part. Instead it was shaky both in the middle and the end. The trills at 0.23 were a bad way to conceal what you couldn't do, as was the arpeggio in the very end. It's just a bit of chord theory or experimenting some more until you've found something that feels and sounds right.
But overall, it was kickass. Nice!

[Hard Love]

Nice idea, you should fiddle around with it some more. You got a nice vibe and nice string etudes going on there but it feels like you did it in a few hours hence the 2.5 stars. Overall you have a nice and coherent structure but i know that you added an extra chorus just to fill time and use that crescendo on 2.53 somehow heh. It was a nice touch but overall it felt like a time filler more than something that really adds to the song. Keep at it mate!

Earel responds:

I write something about your comment two years after, when i understand english a bit more than before !
So first, thanks ! It's my first real track and i'm glad to know there's some things good in it.
About the extra chorus. I didn't want to use it as a time filler. This is the way I wanted the song to finish and i really wanted to use the crescendo strings. When I heard that i had a sample like this, i was "Wow, this is what i'm looking for !"
And you can hear the same sample in other songs i made ^^
I really like this sample, so i wanted to use it, and about the end, i wasn't thinking like "eh, it's too short, let's add this here and it will be okay"
Sorry to answer two years later ^^
And thanks again !

[World 1 - Level 1]

Hey mate!
Well to start off, your bass line is way out of time, meaning it's all over the place, and hearing it without the beat at first it threw me off. Try to keep it simple, bass in general is about girth and giving emphasis to the beat. It has to keep everything together, because you have a standard beat, your melody on the high end is nice and easy going but it lacks what the "glue" between the melody and your beat, which is the bass. it's like i'm listening to 3 separate tracks. Good effort overall tho

SoundGalaxyOfficial responds:

Thank you for your feedback!

Yes, I understand your opinion about the bass.
Well, originally it was only an experiment of mine that
how can I make 3 melodic tracks to sound much full or sound like there are more tracks then just 3.
I tried to break the limit with this musical solution. (The bass is jumping around, almost like having 2 basses at some points, at least that was my basic idea for this "3-melodic-track-limit-breaking mission".)

Originally I'm an organist, playing a lot of fuges and polyphonic stuff for years,
so maybe that's why it's not so automatic for me to listen to these 3 tracks as 1 solid thing.

Later I might try to make another version of this with some more traditional use of the bass.

Thanks for your tip again, you made me think about to change it!

Have a nice day! :)
- Sound Galaxy

[Sacrifice]

It's almost spot on, the only problem i found is that it's a tad repeatable, i think you could have experimented some more on where you can take this, your crescendo builds up to the same thing but the melody i believe isn't strong enough to get it home on its own. To better understand what i'm saying you should take a listen, if you already haven't, to Zbigniew Preisner's Lacrimosa (Tree of Life) In Lacrimosa Preisner found a strong melody that is so captivating that allows him to drag it on and on, not saying you should be Preisner, but when you're talking war you're talking sacrifice and i think you covered only half of your theme's potential. I love your choir samples, what did you use for that?

SoundSpectre responds:

Hi, thanks for listening and thank you very much for the feedback, i have had a few people now tell that perhaps it is a bit repeatable but at the time i was so much in the zone of what i was creating and liked the chords so much that i repeated them adding new elements stemming from the chords every 4 or 8 bars. When i first started to produce music years ago i was into electronic music and i think i carry over the methods a bit too much i think, trance was one of my main styles and imo trance is the art of repetition and when done right can be hypnotic, but i think i am starting to learn a bit more from this style and will continue until i master it but also i will still experiment and use elements of my electronic love as well, i don't like to limit myself to a genre box too much as i like to just create from the heart, and i used symphobia 3 lumina and shevannai for the choir samples.

[After The Storm]

Hey mate! it's really sweet tune you got there. My reason for 2.5 stars is that it's not that interesting as a composition the way it is, and don't take this the bad way, i mean it has potential, the part where the strings come in is wonderful and seamless, i would like you to take it a bit further and add on it because it just leaves me at a point where i'm like...yes....yeeeees.....ooh...that's it? You nailed down the "after the storm" vibe, but i think you could build it some more. Also i read you used EWQLSO for this, and i must say it sounds wonderful, pretty damn close to the real thing.

Keep at it mate!

SoundGalaxyOfficial responds:

Thank you for your tips! :)

Don't worry about the stars too much really :)
I just need feed back, like yours,
and those tips can give me some new ideas how to continue a song if I'm stuck at a point,
like this song. I'm stuck with it, so I just uploaded in a "temporarily finished" form, so maybe somebody can give some advise what else I should do with it.

Yes, I think everybody is right here who mentions the length of this song-y.
I plan to at least double maybe triple its length, and when I have the new long version, then I will re-upload it.

Thanks again for your thoughts and tip,
and have a nice day! :)
- Sound Galaxy