HoboKa's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Jockeys]

I think this is more synthwave than experimental. Might get more views with that tag too. Oh, it's a clitbait song. Ha. That's why it's good.

ClitBait responds:

hahaha, if I tell you the truth, I only make music because I like it. I don't know if it's one genre or another.
I put experimental for all the meaning of the word, not because it is specifically the genre :)

[The Weather in Saskatchewan]

Hey fellow Canadian. Did you mess around with parameters or just slap on a preset? Nice wintery drones. Could work in an isolation-type horror game too.

chronoquest responds:

But alas, I am not canadian! What a loss!

Messed around in Minisynth, this was originally apart of another song, but I couldn't salvage it and it ended up being its own thing. The tune itself's really bullshittingly simple. It's like baroque-era music but instead of trills it uses delay.

Minisynth is actually a really, really good VST to toy with. It can produce some great ambient junk in my personal opinion. Randomizing its parameters leads to some odd, harsh results, that can be easily reworked into a decent sound.

I believe most of the sound for it comes from the LFO, and the Filter itself. I'm in a godawful typing mood so here's some useless bullshit to go along with this information! A copious amount of context is probably needed regarding minisynth because there's a bunch of shiny turnable knobs for it so I'll try my best.

Please do keep in mind that I basically know nothing about music theory. I know I am typing way too much as a reply to a simple question so please don't kill me in my sleep.

If I can recall correctly, here's what I did to make it.

Randomized it (IIRC it originally turned into a harsh godawful mess of a saw wave.)

Transposed it to -10

Turned it into a 'Bell' waveform

Put the filter on (X-2, -Y1) X being Cutoff, Y being Resonance.
Explaination : MInisynth's filter's kinda weird. It has an XY Coordinate plane. Probably sounds stupid but most of the time, this kinda sound results from it.

Did some minor editing for the effects (Phaser's mixed very low, Chorus is mixed high, but it is really low on the modulation slide. There's alot of built-in delay, but it's low on the feedback / filter slide for it.)

Then I set the rate for the LFO 16 bars and the amount for it to -5~. It made the sound go real slow and kept it in the background, rather than the foreground.

I set the Keyboard and Velocity on 'Filter Tracking' to 14.1 and 27.0 respectively. Think of 'Keyboard' being a secondary attack knob for the filter. 'Velocity' radically messes with the filter in this case so I can't describe it.

Then I added an EQ to it, and added some external Delay and Reverb. All three of these being built-in FL 20 plugins.

There's probably some extra junk regarding the Filter Env (I think it's full word is Filter Envelope?) and the Osc Env, but that's generally how I got to this weird sound. I know you probably werent looking for the full barely-legible explanation that probably made no sense whatsoever but i have too much free time.

[Song of the Witches (Macbeth)]

Five out of boiling witch-brew-j00 five.

MyrtVR responds:

I'm so glad you liked it!!

[On the Drift]

Tasteful. Suave. Shaken, not stirred. Can't find anything to harp about. :P

tBAudioMI responds:

Thanks for listening! Glad you enjoyed it! My buddy and I have already started recording the next album.

[Rise]

Nice pitch bending. Was that all done by hand, or did you slap in a Mono-sync thing?
I need to learn how to do that consistently...

Love the pads, bass and beat. Everything fits snugly. And there's actually room, the ceiling isn't maxed. Nice.

NNmusic responds:

I used a mono-synth for the pitch bending. There are some that bend automatically.
Also, thanks for the feedback :D

[Moon Club]

Panning the bass was a tad distracting, but it kinda kept me engaged at the same time. Nice hack. Would be nice if the bass wandered over to the left side, just to be a bit more consistent.

Interesting dynamics. Kinda like that the volumes fade in and out.

RealMrSnuggles responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

[Big Bang]

The clits of my ears have been baited. Well done sir. Love that funky cheese. Dat corruption. Retro vibe. Fun synthwork.

1:45 Nice half-time breakdown. Always appreciated. 007 vibe there. Gets better at 2:00. 2:31...we're picking up again...3:18 we're back to full ham town. In a good way.

ClitBait responds:

I appreciate you appreciating this thing that way

[Cyber Sliders]

OK! This is the snare sample that you oughtta use for 'Love the Blossoms', or something very similar. Right...moving back to this tune... nothing really offended the ear. Seems like the 2nd best of the 4-piece album. PS...somebody purchased it ;)
(oh and if you make any changes with 'Cyan Scene', can you hook me up with the updated versions?)

DigitalBluez responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

& yes, should I revisit The Cyan Scene, any updates to the tracks I made will be provided to those who have already purchased it. Thanks again for purchasing it! It means a lot. :)

[Sassophone]

That saxophone sample is too low-fi for the rest of the stuff methinks. Is that a soundfont? It's too much in the front and in your face. Maybe if you pushed it back, gave it a lot more reverb and made it sound synthy, it'd work better? Just some ideas. That, or hunt for a better sample muahahaah. >:3

DigitalBluez responds:

Thanks for the feedback!

Truthfully, I DID have a great saxophone vst before switching to the one used for this. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, after updating my PC, the vst wasn't functioning properly. It would often glitch, playing a different note during the long pauses. Maybe if I got it to work properly again, I'll re release this track on the album.

Thanks again!