Phonometrologist's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Toronto Uprising]

You write too much; I can't keep up listening to all of these. I just love how your brain is able to come up with these on the fly-- true artistic expression. Your sound design with you rhythmic character has always been quite a joy to listen to. These reviews really haven't been much of a review as it is a statement to how much I admire them. This track in particular takes me back to my Unreal Tournament days. Respect!

zybor responds:

UT games are the best! good old days on LAN with friends and schoolmates. sadly nowadays i only play with bots. :P

thank you so much for your awesome review!

[Elves of the West]

Very well. The arrangement behind the vocals is what made me have to say something. Very delicate writing, and the chord progression is very moody. This is quite enjoyable for a haiku of a track.

Grandvision responds:

Ah hello, thank you for your kind comment. I always want to make any instrument sound unique in a way, and play around with it, and that bears the same for vocal libraries too but there's still so much one can do. Now the only problem is to release longer tracks.

[Exfiltrate]

No criticism here. Just wanted to say after having several listens, and amongst your other works, that you really just have a good ear to the aesthetic and emotional kind of score. Your melodies and harmonies really are so accessible to listen to.

Mattashi responds:

Thanks a lot Phonometrologist :)

[_sequence/02/!%passage#_]

I've been going back to listen to this and your previous track for quite a while. Wish I had access to recording analogue. Love the sound you're able to capture. I'm a fan... eagerly awaiting for more.

Azhthar responds:

Hey! Thanks a lot for the feedback! I´m trying to do more analogue stuff. Actually I just got an old, cheap tape machine from e-bay. I´ll try to record some stuff with it when I figure out how it works... Hopefully it´ll work out and won´t sound awful ;)

[Jim's Theme - Piano]

Man this is superb! I prefer it this way, and I personally find it a bit of a challenge to transcribe a piano piece into another arrangement as opposed to starting to write with the instruments forthright. As others have said, "Smooth!" Quite right. It almost seems it started as an improv since your ideas just flow from one to another, but I'm sure you then polished it at some point during your writing process. Your musical intelligence really is high when it comes to freely writing these melodies and progressions. I personally don't improvise and it takes quite a bit of time for my ideas to be fleshed out properly. From the start of the piece, the bass line really hooks me in. Another tidbit, when I listen to the motif starting at .28, my thoughts turn to a Pixar movie.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

Why hello there! It has been a while :)
I'm super excited to hear you enjoyed this! I actually had a really fun time composing this one. I did indeed polish it while making it, and like most of my piano tracks, it started as improv. Well, I added the intro later, actually, but the process started with me just playing around xD
While the piece is short, it has all the parts I wanted it to include, and it has as much structure as I feel it needs. I prefer it as solo piano as well :D

I strongly recommend improvising. I've done it on the piano before I even started to play actual songs! Needless to say, it didn't sound too great back then :p
But even if I don't have a very good pitch recognition (compared to how it should be right now), I tend to have a fairly adept understanding of which chords and melodies work together, etc. I think improvising, has given me a lot of freedom when it comes to playing. It's quite liberating not to limit oneself too much! My main rule is: "If it sounds good, and works; go for it!".

That said, I think it'll be a while before I learn to polish music to the extent that you can do it :)
Since this is so different from my usual style, I was surprised by how 'smooth' the composing process was as well. I don't write that distinct basslines all too often, but I guess I must've done it often enough to be able to work it into this piece, in the very least.

As for the Pixar feel, this was actually partially inspired by "You've Got a Friend In Me", which is featured in Toy Story. An even more obvious inspiration is Cait Sith's Theme, from Final Fantasy VII.
Other than that, I just did what I wanted based on my general feel of how jazz is, in general. I actively tried to use more than just one scale too, in order to practice that element as well.

Well, this response turned out to be a bit long!
Btw, I'm going to have more free time for almost half a year, than I normally would. If you happen to get some time at some point too, we could perhaps think of starting on that collab we talked about ages ago :)
Not for about a month at least though, since I still have a few projects to finish up. But I'm looking forward to working with you if you feel up to it at some point!

Thank you for the nice review, man! :DD

[Ever-Changing]

Awesome! Great movement and sounds-- inspiring to get up to in the morning.
The varying dynamics in this piece works so well.

zybor responds:

thanks :3

[The Dream (with vocals)]

I really dig this one. It has the right tone, i.e. the chord progression, melody, and vocals. It has everything it needs for a great intro, but what it desperately needs is the percussion to really jump out at me in the mix. It's too laid back within the rest of the music. I think it's really just the only thing it needs and it is quite a simple adjustment to increase the faders on that. Perhaps is what Lucid means for it sounding a bit flat. Trying increasing 10k in some of these percussive instruments too for some grit and see what happens... might be a fun experiment.

backwardecho responds:

Thank you for your thoughtful words and useful advice! This song might be a decade old, tossed on here more or less to present my vocals (and I was actually about to exchange it for something else but then LucidShadowDreamer kindly commented and I just couldn't after that lol)

I'll definitely take what you said to heart if I revisit this song, as I do plan to remix older material along with future projects, where I also seek to improve my elementary understanding of the mastering process :)

Thanks again!

[Neon]

This is nice. Definitely an enjoyable ride with the right rhythm, melody, and chord progressions. Good choices of mixing too.

JDawg00100 responds:

Thank you for the review! I'm glad you liked it

[Tribute to Detektivbyrån - Re-recording]

This is a fun piece. I like the finger work in the right hand in regards to the rhythm. The chord progression is nice as well, but the chords are so fleeting that it is as if it conveys a mind wandering. Did this start as an improv? I say this only because I would have liked a more linear train of thought regarding the chords leading up to the 38 second mark. It's a bit translucent regarding your chord choices that it's hard to really grasp a single idea for very long. I think it's great that you're able to play a piece from a couple years ago as if you just wrote a day ago. Quite a remarkable memory.

LucidShadowDreamer responds:

The aim was definitely to make it a fun piece, at the time. I remember selecting some kind of polysynth instrument on my keyboard, and just thinking about the band's style, and I started creating it. I made the entire peice in one go, from start to finish, without thinking too much about the progression I wouldn't really say that much improvisation was involved, since I had a surprpsingly clear idea of what I wanted to do. Every now and then I guess composers get lucky, ~inspired~ this way. I occasionally make songs where I simply start composing at some point, and then just roll with it; I even wrote a blog post about this style of composing long ago (not going to link it because it's old and bad, haha).

There are so many different ways to compose, and to think about composing. Right now, I'm working on a piece where the ending was finished long before the middle sections. In fact, there are still a few parts to clean up. It'll be my best solo piano piece of the year, for certain (I hope I manage to finish it this year; I am almost finished. I just need to be able to play it well too, which is turning out to be more difficult with my newer and more advanced compositions).

So long side-notes aside, the reason this reminds you of an improvisation, is probably because I created it in order from start to finish, and simply quit when I decided I was done. I don't remember on what timescale I did it anymore, but I'm guessing it probably only took an hour or so.
That said, I think the piece stays true to the theme throughout, and there is even some hidden repetition in there. I think I could've easily made this into a full-length (whatever that even means in regards to music, but I mean a 3-4 minutes long) piece, only repeating the chord patterns and melodies that are already in there. But alas, I did not. Well, I guess I don't necessarily regret it.

I did have to relearn the piece! Surprisingly, I remembered most of it since I find the melody to be pretty catchy, and most of the chord choices simply make sense with that in mind (adding to that, the arrangement doesn't really change around all too much). But I think I spent some 10-15 minutes refreshing my memory using the old MIDI file, before I was able to play this piece from start to finish again.