JohnFloyd's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[In a land of War and Hatred]

wow!

Excellent orchestration, excellent melodies, excellent accompaniment. Reminds me of both Warcraft and Chrono Trigger at the same time. There's only ONE thing that I can think of that would make this better, which would be either better samples or having it played by an actual orchestra. Just a moment ago I was thinking how difficult it would be for me to rate someone a 5 (which, to me, should be reserved for special occasions), but here I am, giving out a 5. I hope this gets used in animations as much as it deserves.

MaestroSorrow responds:

Many thanks, and again, your right on the money... must find... more... and better.. samples X_x.

One day i'll get around to buying that $2000 VST program with all the instruments of the rainbow.

[_-=[Flying Unmatched]=-*FIXED*]

is it the EQ?

MS,
I liked this piece a lot but right from the start something was bugging me... sort of like Mona Lisa's smile, you know? I'm not 100% sure but I think that it's the frequency range of the instruments, that many of the instruments are sharing the same frequency ranges. If you can EQ each track separately you might want to try picking out a "sweet spot" for each instrument, if not then the only thing you could do would be choose instruments with different freq ranges... or I could be off. Either way it's not that big of a deal. Keep up the good work!

MaestroSorrow responds:

you are ABSOLUTELY right John, and I will tell you why I can't eq every channel individually.

When I load up this song on my computer, just having it SIT there, consumes 84% of my CPU, which means when I press play, I hear more stuttering then an old person on sour steriods and viagra... its not pretty.

So I have to play the guessing game a lot, and predict what it would sound like, it takes about 10 mins (literally) every time I export this piece to listen to what it sounds like, after the 40'th exportation, I grew tired, so I left it.

I am glad you caught onto it right away, more proof you know what your doing.

[Black Coffie]

different interpretation than usual

Acceptable rendition of this jazz standard... This is the happiest I've ever heard this song. My interpretation of this song has always been that the person's coffee is their only friend... your version definitely concentrates more on the "friend" aspect and a little less on the "moaning all the morning, mourning all the night." Reminds me of the uplifting Gershwin songs, like "My One and Only." Great audio quality.

[The Oath]

Nice!

Very nice orchestration. Some of the instruments (harpsichord, organ) sound distorted, which unfortunately takes away from the overall sound of the piece. I'm a little confused as to whether this has any relation to Squall's theme in FFVIII (which is also called "The Oath"), the style is similar but the themes are different; if you were trying to make something in the same style you succeeded!

Love-Hate-War responds:

Sorry, it was mixed in a bit of a rush, I had to submit it as part of an audio portfolio and I was running a bit late, so it may have clipped in places, I think the timpani near the end suffered the worst though. I didn't realise that was the name Squall's song, I thought it was "maybe im a lion"? So sorry for the similarity in name, I do draw alot of inspiration from the music from those games though. Thanks for the great review! :D