Kazmo's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Chord Whores! (NG Cut)]

It's nice.

I will admit, I sort of get lost as to where the downbeat is, or the phrasing, it's really wonky.

Oh, now I hear it, it's in 4/4, but it's 5 bar phrasing....gah my head hurts lol.

Keep at it, still needs some more atmosphere, maybe an arp in the background, with a lot of reverb that's sidechained as well, I dunno, it may just fill up the sound. Right now, it seems a bit empty.

It also gets on the repetitive side after 2 minutes. Maybe a new melody can come in?

Either way, this was quite fun to listen to, keep at it!

[Untitled Trance (WIP)]

NEEDS MOAR COWBELL!

LoL

That actually got me hooked, and made me listen to the rest :P

Nice bass at 27 seconds.

I don't really like the arp at 41. Too many arps! D:

Do I hear crickets?

2:42 is sweet, I think it took to long to reach that point though, the pads took a while to build.

3:09 is catchyyyy wooooooo! :3 Needs more bass, the kick seems weak, and the bass lacks subbass.

But ya, so far, this sounds really sweet!

Keep at it man!

ZooSafari responds:

WOOT YAY KAZM0 REVIEW FTW!!! :D

Thanks a lot man, I really appreciate the review! You're probably right, too many arps, should I take one of them out? :o

Yeep! Crickets and frogs!

I love long build ups ^^

K lets see:
Punchier kick - check!
Moar subbass - check!
"This sounds really sweet!" - check!

Thanks a lot bro, will do!

Peace

[Zone 1 [DEMO 3]]

You EQed?

I'm sorry, but that's hard for me to believe.

It's quite mushy in terms of the overall mix.

Feels like a lot of stuff is being compressed to the MAX, which isn't good, especially your lead.

Your bass is really muddy, and is over-powered by the lead.

Perhaps there's too much reverb on the bass, or are you actually using your lead as the bass? That's not all that good of an idea, but you want a distinct bass, and using a mid-lead down there really doesn't sound solid.

1:50 sounds all jumbled up, and doesn't really sound all that good. I'm not sure about direction with this piece. It's quite boring and repetitive. Your rhythm doesn't vary, and there are no FX/transitions. I didn't even hear one Crash Cymbal.

This needs work, and I'm aware that this is a DEMO, your 3rd in fact.

Keep working on it.

jbarnett responds:

thank you for the review. as i may have said before, I dont get many of them. so that makes it hard to fix problems. i will work on it though

[Legend Of Zelda: The Remix]

It's Okay.

I know it's old, but I must say, it needs work. Too bad you lost the project file! :(

Right at the beginning, I didn't like the timing of the triplets, they sounded wonky. Some of the notes are wrong as well, which drove me insane, since I loved this game so much and listened to this song so much back in the day. lol

0:57 is pretty damn cool! Sounds like you took the same pattern though and copied it into another synth. So all the same wrong notes are there >.<

The arp at 1:47 didn't fit very well into the mix, it was quite loud and took over the other sounds, if you EQed the lows out of it a bit more, it may have worked better.

It's also quite short, not a very conclusive outro either.

Mind you, everything sounds quite crisp and there's no distortion. :D

Maybe you should completely remake it, I see a lot of promise in this, the wrong notes can/must be fixed!

Keep at it!

JohnnyFrizz responds:

Umm... what the hell are you talking about? XD

Seriously man, which wrong notes? O.o

And yes the mix is pretty fucked up XD As I said on my description, this is an extreeeemly old remix, so I wasnt really that experienced to know how to properly EQ a song, but notes? Ummm nope, perhaps you're saying that because I simply changed the scale of the song, but the notes are fine...

Thanks for the review, although I would have preferred you reviewed one of my trance songs, but anyways.....

[Continuity (Original Mix)]

When I read the title...

...I thought that you made a song called Continuity.

But then I remembered this is your REMIX of my song :3

On to the review:

The first 2 minutes were a tad on the repetitive side. There was no direction, the bass comes in a minute, and when it does, I like the groove you set.

At 1:30, I wouldn't have minded a little tease of the melody or some pads, something to give direction, as well as suspense.

Quite the long pause afterwards, be careful with that, too long of pauses can give a sense of the song being over, when in fact it's far from it.

I can say though, I can group the song into different portions, thanks to your breaks lol.

0:00 - 1:54
1:54 - 7:45 (this is most of it)
7:45 - 9:19 (nice piano)
9:19 - 9:25 (uhm, too big of a break, sounds like it's over, seriously)
9:25 - end (drags on too long)

Many remixes aren't normally much longer than the original. I'll just throw that out there lol. ( Mine is 3:35 >.< )

Nice job nonetheless though!

heartless1298 responds:

Haha I agree with you on pretty much everything, from the too long of the breaks to the repetitiveness of the intro. The only thing I disagree with you on is the fact that a remix can't be longer than an original. In my opinion, a remix is where an artist takes a song and remakes it with his/her own style as he/she sees fit.

Thanks for the lengthy review. Whenever I do another Trance song, I'll be sure to include all the suggestions listed, especially the teasing of the melody in the intro. I forgot to do that xD.

[Zeviron - High Flyer]

Stray snare?

I really like the beginning, quite soothing. Maybe add some more stuff going on though, like sweeps, FX, stuff like that.

I really found your snare patterns quite annoying. Just when you think the song is going somewhere, the snare backs off, it's driving me insane! I wouldn't consider 0:51 deserving all that suspense that the snare honed it, to be honest.

This is nice though, quite relaxing.

When the kick came in (1:17), I didn't like your kick/hat combo, sounds really rough, and gives the feeling of distortion. A different closed hat may give a better outcome.

2:34 sounds disjointed, and fairly random. I doesn't quite match the mood of the rest of the song, and the transition into it was anything but smooth. A sweep down into it, or a crash with a delay would make it a bit smoother, there's got to be another way around it though.

This part though, I feel that it's too, 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 for me. There's nothing interesting going on with the melody.

Overall, what you have here is a decent piece that needs only new drums, and a couple looks into transitions and variety.

I'll also have to say that I felt this went on for longer than I would have desired it to, due to the repetitiveness.

Yup, that's my 2 cents. :3

Zeviron responds:

Sorry about the late response :S
But thanks for the review.
Pretty much everything you pointed out I'm now trying to work on, especially varying the melody.
I can really see where you're coming from with this, so thankyou for your advice... It really is extremely helpful to me :D
And the percussion at the start will be sorted out aswell, so that it's not all stuttery and higgeldy figgeldy.
Thanks agian for the review, and your advice.

[(J-Yo) Lost In Time]

Over-compressed.

This is dance, not trance.

The lead by itself, at the very beginning, sounds really clean, but then everything else comes in, and I can I hear it fade away, that's thanks to the over-compression. The overall song is too loud, you have to leave space in a song in order for it to 'breathe'. Right now I feel the song is suffocating.

There's too much compression, everything comflicts, your crash is messy and your hats are bland. Your snare takes over the mix, and there's not enough bass.

The song drags on too long, it's quite repetitive.

One compressor in the master isn't going to solve your problems, as much as we wish that was all that was needed. This needs some focus on balance, EQing, and compressing individual sounds/groups of sounds.

Hope this review helped.

[Mango Juice [WiP]]

The beginning scared me!

I wasn't sure how loud it was going to get! That upward sweep took my breath away!

Nice entrance, I will admit though that the chord progression seemed to start a little soon, but nonetheless, you got the groove going.

I'm hearing strings in the background (0:44), and they sound like they're conflicting chordally with the rest of the song.

1:12 - 1:33 seemed a little out of place when it came to the overall song. I feel that the song could have went from 1:12 to 1:33 instantly, rather than having the plucks come in for 12 bars (which is odd, normally it's either 8 or 16 bars).

So far though, this is sounding solid, I think the lead is a bit loud in the higher range, and lacks the mids, so it sounds really tinny.

But ya, keep at it man, I see great promise in this!

[ParagonX9 - Chaoz Fantasy]

Okay so uhm...

...what's with all the commotion?

Yes, the beginning is really nice, but that's all I can say that is actually decent.

The rhythm is below par, and I hear this weird sound every 3rd beat of each bar, up until the lead comes in. The kick lacks bass, and the rhythm is very tinny, and the snare has no life to it, it's just some midtone smack.

The lead at 0:48 is so annoying, it's pitch sounds very unstable, and I'm not talking about the sustain effect it has as you hold the note.

The piano keys are good, it's a nice break from the other sounds.

This song lack drive, it's very....boring. There's pretty much no bass, and the sounds chosen are so thin, there's not enough texture. There's also no real structure, it's everywhere. 1:12 - 1:24 seems so pointless, should have made that part longer.

The outro fails. Sounds like you're building back into something, and then it just stops. What kind of an outro is that?

As much as people like saying 'one of the best submissions ever!', it most definitely isn't. Your newer stuff is much better, although I could argue and say that you haven't really improved MUCH, since your newer stuff sounds much like your old stuff in a sense.

I've been meaning to review this sooner, but I wanted to see if there was anyone else that seemed to feel the same way as I do.

A couple years ago (2007), kevs91 left an honest review of your work, and I noticed that he was so correct, probably more correct than I am right now, since this was written in 2007. All I'm saying is that, for it's time, this song still wasn't great, it lacked many elements that could have made it more full and interesting.

Someone else also said that the Chaoz series is overrated, and I agree with him on that as well. These Chaoz songs all sound too similar to each other.

In the end, NG is just so used to hearing your style, that they think it's the best thing since sliced bread. In the real world though, this song is sub-par.