phosphorusprocedure's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[-GM- Do You?]

A lot of your drum patterns sound like they're pressed in by hand. I didn't pay any mind to it, but I tried doing it the other day (with my qwerty keyboard) and it sounded like total doodooberries. How do you do it? You got one of those mpc things, or a pad thing, or a keyboard or something? I got a midi keyboard, but FL's got this weird latency so it doesn't always translate so well when I try tapping shit in. Is it just a skill thing? Get better over time? I was interested because my drum patterns tend to be kinda boring and I thought tapping them in would be a cool way to spice them up.

Oh, and the vibe samples are sick as fuck. In tandem with that quick little vocal 'do you' -- so dope. Fucking love the part at 0:58.

B-RadGfromOV responds:

Thanks man! Yeah I just stick my drums in with my mouse in Piano Roll! I twerk them of course so it has my swing, slide them over to make the hat/kick/snare wait to hit. That's basically it, and just feeling whether it sounds right. Idk if it always sounds good, but I don't like straightforward tap tap tap hi hats that always line up perfectly, it lacks soul I think.
thanks for listening as always, glad you like.

[RnR]

How'd you do the scratches? They sounded really good!

It would've been dope if there was some part of the beat with a really low bassline and heavy ass kicks on top of the vocals and funky snare pattern. I think I might've heard some kicks at some point but I wasn't totally sure.

The vocals sounded great too. The chords you picked for it were cool. Good amount of reverb on it. I'm wondering how much compression you put on the vocal thing, since I think I might've run into one of those VSTs and it had a pretty slow attack on it, so I'm wondering if you counteracted that with compression, or if it just let you fade in faster.

Cool atmosphere going on in this track.

[slickblade]

Guys got great flow and energy. Got a huge Funcrusher Plus vibe out of this (the low-fi minimalist beat, etc). The bassline's really cool, too. The mix could probably use a few tweaks -- the drums sound a little rough, and the kick and bass have a weird relationship going on, but that's minor. The track's really cool, I dig it.

[Take a second]

I like that atmosphere. The way that sine wave thing slides back and forth is so sleek.

Kick's dope too. I like how the kick is mad heavy but the snaps/clackles are really chill. Gives so much tension. Like a jazz drummer warming up before he's about to pound the shit out of the drums.

BOULLIE responds:

I wish I could play on a drumpad what thomas pridgen can do on a kit...

[-GM- Blue Rose]

I loved the vocals that came in around 0:22. The snare sounded really good. When the saxophone did that stuttered loopback kind of thing, it was a little distracting, since everything else in the track feels/sounds so organic. Otherwise, the saxophone/trumpet/horn instrument was chopped really well. Solid melody for the hook part of a track.

The bass was great. Didn't notice it playing any notes in particular on the first listen, but on the 2nd listen, it was following the chord progression real well.

Piano sounded really good.

On the left, there was this brush drum kinda thing going on I wasn't feeling too much. I don't know if that sound was embedded in the sample and impossible to go without, but I felt like it was detracting from the drums just a tad.

The way the track ended was NICE.

Great track, man.

B-RadGfromOV responds:

Yeah the drum brush was in the sample and I tried to tone it down but it was hard to do that and not muddle the other instruments. Maybe I didn't try hard enough :P The bass followed the chord progression because it is part of the sample, I just did some levelling to bring it out more. It's a really simple beat, just two samples and some drums.

thanks for reviewing!

[Form]

Sounds like some RE4 save point music, like when you're chilling in the cave safe from the zombies and they have that chill ass music playing, but it's still just a little creepy.

Synths sounded cool as fuck. Drum patterns dope as shit. I like the little clicks you had going on in there. Salad Fingers vibe going on throughout. One of those, soundtrack to that video of mitosis happening in science class kind of things. Like, here's the cell splitting. Aw it looks so gross. Not Miracle of Childbirth gross, but the thing looks like a starfish mashed up with a blackhole or something. Couldn't pay McCoughaney 150 million dollars to ride a spaceship into that wack ass universe out the other end of that thing. That grainyness though. Sometimes I say fuck it and put vinyl scratch noise on the bottom to give it that 70s documentary feel. I dunno.

Cool beat, man.

BOULLIE responds:

Thanks.

This is one of the ones that goes along with a scenario in my head

"Couldn't pay McCoughaney 150 million dollars to ride a spaceship into that wack ass universe out the other end of that thing"

I think he's the man with the right amount of sleaze for the job lol
The grain is actually vinyl fuzz. I like to sample the quiet parts of records a lot.

[Rain/River/84/415/8]

I dig the way the portamento sounds in there. Has a chiptune quality to it.

The kick sounds kinda rough by itself, but in tandem with the bass it sounds pretty good.

The part that sounds like an 80s jazz guitar (that chromatic riff around 2:06 sounds awesome) works really well in the track.

Very Aphex Twin. I should start messing around with this Mathematica sound thing, it sounds pretty versatile...

secantwave responds:

Thanks very much for the kind words!

I was in particular very happy with the guitar part for this track. I had developed the basic groove and was wondering where the piece could go from there, and then figured "well, I recently acquired the ability to record guitars at college, why not just try putting a guitar in there and see what happens?" And it turns out it's a lot easier to write catchy riffs when there's already a rhythmic pattern going on in the background.

I am very flattered to be compared to Aphex Twin, although I personally felt like the piece was too straightforward for that comparison.

I've found messing with Mathematica to be very rewarding in terms of how I think about sound and music, and it is quite versatile, if you're willing to do your EQ elsewhere. However, I would only recommend it if you're a) very patient and b) _really_ like math. And of course there are other ways to generate sound from pure waveforms--Mathematica just does it out of the box, and I happened to have a free student copy.

[Night With You and Only You]

That's badass

KingSandy responds:

thank man

[DKIS]

That drum programming is nuts. I really liked the drum sounds, too. Perfect amount of reverb on them.

I think a bassline would've really held the track together, especially during that crazy synth freak out near the end. My ear wasn't really sure what to latch onto during that part. Still an interesting listen. I dug it.

Canas responds:

yeah still tweaking the horn solo prior to the end, we experimented with a few basic basslines but the sound was so full from the overlapping synths we elected to leave one out all together.

Thanks for the kind words!

[~Do the Dishes~]

Mmm. The chords at 0:55 are definitely solid, but I'd probably try a different vocal sample for those really low notes, since the one you used got kinda muddy near the bottom. I dunno, something a little breathier/lighter. Otherwise this track was fucking cool as hell, man.

xxxZigZagxxx responds:

Yeah I have a lot of problem with mud especially when I work with my own vocal recordings. But whenever I try to EQ it out, for some reason it ends up worse. Any ideas for taking the mud out of vocal recordings without removing the energy? lol. But either way I tend to be too muddy in general so I need to stop that lol.

Thanks for the compliments tho man.