ProudAardvark's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Flying_Fortress_Of_Chaos]

"Number Nine"?

Lots of great sound design and cool texture work along with the groove. Good stuff.
My wife adds "it's pretty catchy, I like it"

[Lost in Memories (Demo)]

Verry Pretty!

Hey man, this sounds wonderful; right out of a soundtrack.

Only critique I can give is that the piece sort of rambles a little bit in terms of form; I'd like to see it go somewhere, arrive and return back to the main idea. Added to favorite artists list.

[Dark Astral Emotions]

Creepy Soundscape...

I really liked the chainsaw attack in the intro; very nice arpeggio sound once the trance stuff gets going. Great blend of music and sound design.

GarstikWalz responds:

Thank you very much !
YAAAA, the chainsaw rocks. Was hell to find it :)

[For Great Scotland!]

...But you can never take our bagpipes!

Amusing! Would like to hear some more highland flavor in the song aside from just the pipes. Bass drum? Celtic flute melody? Some Scottish percussion after the build up at :49 would be cool.

Rest of the song was well produced but a little bland; think you can do better here overall by using more Scottish flavor to tie everything together. Looking forward to hearing more of your stuff. 4/5 7/10

[Dreaming of the Portal-Remix 3]

Some really intricate detail

I really enjoyed this, lots of intricate detail in the sound design work and texture.

I also tend to go for distant and dreamy ambient gong / bell noises. Good work! I'll check out your album, looking forward to hearing it.

[~BH~ On The Edge]

Epic in Conception

Wow. Found this from the underdog thread on the audio forums. This is fantastic. Echo comments below that the melody is instantly compelling and strangely familiar. The textures keep shifting around in a variety of interesting ways, while maintaining intensity throughout. Mix is good too, thick without being muddy.

ErikMcClure responds:

Thanks :D I don't really like the mix myself, but whatever xP

[The Ordained Warrior]

Great potential

The mood is great, and I love your description of the scene. It really set the stage well.

The overall impression is a little more plodding/synthy rather than dreamy and mournful. The quantization is really not helping you there. Try playing in your flute part live, or at the least using some humanization scripts on it top make it sing a little more. It sounds very stiff right now.

Thanks for sharing this!

roensb responds:

its funny you should say that it sounds quantized because i did it on a midi piano and did nothing to change it so the part is played by a human. seeing as you think its stiff im not sure how i can change my own piano skills to make it sound more human

[Waltz with Death]

Very moody and soulful

Slick production value, very nice work. Piano could be slightly more expressive, but that's totally minor. (no pun intended)

String entrance sounds ever so slightly synthy.

Lilting godfather style section was especially good. Woodwinds sound very realistic.

Looking forward to hearing more of your stuff, adding to favs.

[The Rise of Evil]

Wonderful stuff, kept me happy and surprised

I love the solo vocal (is that voices of passion?) and the orchestration eruption is fantastic. Sounds like a pro soundtrack, and a good one at that.

The bongo/conga entrance is especially compelling. Very Danny Elfman.

Added to favorite artists.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of my stuff.

[Sleeping in the rain]

Very peaceful.

The mix sounds like it is slightly underwater to me, but obviously if you're a pianist not an engineer that isn't very helpful. The upper notes on your piano sound very strange... is this a synth that you added or is there some sort of filter on the recording?

Was this improvised?

Thanks for sharing this, looking forward to hearing more of your stuff.

DeForestB responds:

Yes, there is an amb piano and classical piano sound playing at the same time. Also, I used arpeggio (very touchy and sometimes messes up my song, but it has a cool grand piano effect) and release (sutain effect) for the middle part of the song. I used transpose, then at the end, I upped the pitch with my recording software.

The recording has some issues, but still... as a completely improvised song (yes, this is improvised), it seems to go pretty well. It only took me 10 minutes to do all that technical stuff.

One early Saturday morning I thought to myself, "What would happen if I turned on recording software and just started playing random notes on my Yamaha MM6...?" So that's what I did for about 30 minutes, and I had a creation!

Random notes can become something beautiful... so is this a gift? who knew...