anthonyragus's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Waltz Und Basse]

Holy moly, so dense yet so clean. Cheeky Mozart sonata reference there. Absolutely shredding percussion and strings. What's most impressive is the way you use and elevate your samples and plugins to such heights. Fantastic work.

[WOAH]

This is incredible. Such heavy kick and snare, high hats that could pierce through solid concrete. I love the initial bit after the drop, atonal, hypnotic. There's this one percusive element that hits on the downbeat of every fourth bar. If it were my mix, I would retune that hit about a whole step up to match the key of the song. Do you know what I'm hearing? Or is there a reason for it's bass to be Db that I'm missing? Absolutely sick regardless.

[Lonely Town]

You're approaching perfection. I can tell this is exactly what you were going for, and I can imagine this in so many different uses, contexts, etc.

I struggle to think of feedback. If I were the mixing engineer on this, I would sculpt the snare in two ways, tame the high sizzle and bring out the mid-low body. As it is now, the snare sounds high-passed in an unnatural way to me. I would also ever-so-slightly increase the overall bass level and bring out the harmonic distortion in the bass a bit more. But take this suggestion with a grain of salt. This style isn't my forte.

Fantastic work

Casper responds:

Thanks!

[Dungeons' Garden (Cover)]

Super interesting take on the original. Leavesz is so talented, and I think they don't realize how good they are yet. I love the glock melody at 1:43 and marimba+cello melody at 1:03 and 3:06; I wish they were more present so I can hear them siiiing!

One of the things I've changed over the years, in general, is using way less reverb than I used to, both lowering the volume and shortening the tail. Sometimes I even compress the reverb aux track a bit. You'll still get the spacious feeling of reverb, and you'll gain clarity and focus.

[Cloud Caravan (SNES/Genesis)]

Whoa, that is a HARD SWING. All aboard the swang train, The Super Mario World-sounding keys solidified the nostalgia factor for me. Great chromatic passing movement in there too.

In the "verses", one or two of your bassse are panned to the right. Is this this for balancing something on the left? It seemed a bit right-heavy to me.

What is that sound effect at 0:33 and other spots? It's super interesting.

Jojo responds:

According to someone else, a lot of my songs sound more full on the right channel and not enough on the left. Must be a hearing-perception thing. It's something I'm working on fixing.
It was intentional this time however since I use multiple bass instruments throughout this track and it sounds more alive to place them in different positions.

As for the sounds at 0:33, if I remember correctly it's several sounds layered together for the bellish instrument with a snare placed at the right points to make it sound more popping. And the cha-ching sound is from Mother 3. ^w^

[THE CAVE]

Heck yeah, staccato flute adds levity to any situation. What's the foley / ambience in the background? It sounds like a distant construction site paired with a slightly sample crushed forest ambience with crickets and cicadas. HOW WRON WAS I?? Great work, it's a sideways-head-bobber for sure.

Pan01 responds:

thank you!

and yeah it was meant to sound like there was some kind of machine system inside the cave, i did not hear the crickets sounds in the fx i used until after i posted the song so thats actually a mistake lol

[Ebb & Flow (2022)]

Amazing, you're approaching THE ideal symphonic metal sound. Such good writing and processing. I love the arpeggiating countermelody. This is incredible, and I hesitate to make suggestions, which are more subjective sylistic choices than anything. Overall, if I were good enough to produce this, my take on mixing would be to lower the whole orchestra by between 3 and 6 dB and bump up the solo guitar by at least 4dB (e.g. 01:24 and 02:45). However, the mix does work well for the section from 02:31 to 02:45.

Oh, feel free to reach out anytime if you'd like to use real trumpet. I feel like taking on the challenge of your trumpet writing, hehe.

[It's The Most Crab Apple Lime On A Pear (A Liam Neeson Car Key Christmas)]

...Oh. These lyrics....Oh no....My brain hurts....10/10 Amazing work.

[nice car]

Hey, I had a listen to a few of your tracks (including this one), and I super dig your style. Dark, minimalist, with some kind of liminal space feeling to your work.

RiverK responds:

Thank you! I do love a good liminal space.

Your own library is impressively diverse!

[Venus (Original Mix)]

Heck yeah, I didn't know you were into psy! Great chord progression. I hesitate to make mix suggestions, because everything is glued together so well, but I wonder if the high percussion could be brightened without taking over the mix, maybe high passed higher up and gently raised level, not sure. Oh, is that melody a reference at 7:55? It sounds suspiciously similar to a 2000-ish trance classic that I can't remember right now.