Ef-X's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[search(8-bit ramblings)-slunch]

ah...

I missed your hope sounding tunes. The strength at which the chords came in reminded me of your rendition of Cloud's theme. The sawtooths are just god damn flavorful (as is that beat you introduced 30 seconds in.) This packs so much punchez...oh man stream of conciousness ice cream fudge sunday! (i'll be quiet now...)
_ .
I _ I \ / ----
I I \/ I---
---- (i tried.)

kjhsdgf responds:

hah, yes hopeful tunes are the ones i like!
this isn't mastered at all really, so the chords really overpower the thing, but they were the most important part(since they changed very little for each tune it helped define the mood a lot)

wellp, thanks for the words and symbols!

[unfinished tune - slunchy]

Had it

Creative as always. The melody was wack (in a good way.) I digg'd how as the song progressed, the harmony just kept adding up until that semi-breakdown on the third half. Unfinished or not I like what i herd.

long time coming again: 5/5

kjhsdgf responds:

your unwavering fanaticism is always appreciated, brodiddles!
the tune isn't mine, really. most of it is based off of this classical tune, which is in the author comments.
anyhow, you're pretty much the best fan i've ever had,
keep it real,
and thanks fo' da comment!

[Summoning Circle]

I see what you did there :D

You used the bass drums to break that nice laid back beat in order to transition into the next part of the composition, smart. I view this piece as one of your more rhythmic concentrated pieces. The hi hats and bass drums and snares they all seem to have a different rhythm going, polyrhythmic basically. Perhaps you meant this polyrhythm as a symbolism referring to your title, traditional world music from tribes seem to contain polyrhythms, some of the more ritualistic and religious ones were percussion based only not following one rhythm...I may have swayed off topic and I'm sure you knew that. In some ways the main melody sounds so pleasing even in its dissonance it doesn't sound like something unpleasing, it sounds like it just fits. Ace stuff you got here, I'm curious on the process of creating the drum beat that starts around 2:45 did you by any chance used the phasing technique?

Cinco
de
Cinco

AliceMako responds:

I based this on a viewing of some footage taking at stonehenge, narrated by scholarly types.

It was interesting to a degree cus a number of items displayed were claimed to be of indeterminate use even though they plainly appeared to be percussion instruments.

Anyhoo, glad you like.

The main synth was where all the labour was at in this one, though i did spend a good deal on the vocoded pad i made aswell.

The pattern after 2:45 is a variation of the first meant to emphasize the amount of delay used, so yeah i guess that qualifies as phasing :3

[Rolling in my grave]

Rpeggios

Yeah I gotta admit the bass drum was hard on the ears. The piece is structured in a great way, you tie the beginning and the end creatively having the intro build up and the finishing dropping down. What I enjoyed more about the composition though is the consonant sounds that kick in after all that dissonance, this time around it had a drum n bass lounge/downtempo music influence to it (i heard some clave in there i'm not sure.) 5/5 it.

AliceMako responds:

It sounded so good on my rig but i should have double checked on regular speakers, bit of a shame really because lowering the frequency is easy as pie.

Might reupload it tweaked as such at some point, dunno right now.

I aimed for downtempo and i guess that's kinda what i got :3 there is a clave going on courtesy of two obscene plastic objects ^_^

[Solar Deity]

OH!

YES! Malignant! It sounds like you are being engulfed by god knows what...just you are being engulfed. Took some priority with the effects in this one, using it to lay the background to this tune. Wicked. I wont go into those drums because they are just too good, you really are nailing some sick tunes lately, this is just wow. How did you create those sound effects?

pet od pet

AliceMako responds:

Thanks a truckload :3

Main loop's a frefab, pretty sure it's effects are a filter sweep and a mod wheel manipulated groan bass most likely hooked up to the mod envelope release and the pitch of one or more oscillators.

During the second half i got it to glitch a bit by playing with the lfo rate set in a triangle pattern as the loopplayer in reason has this feature though i more often employ it to get swishy pan effects.

The fretless yamaha is a sample, as is the assembly line alarm obviously.

The interlude is composed of a number of cliché build ups i patterned one after the other, just for the heck of it and the intro/outro are timestretches of the entire track one played forwards and the other in reverse.

Yush, that covers it :D

[Theeketel - Gom Jabbar]

Your beatz...

Have gotten crispier. Whats the time signature in this? it sure doesn't feel 4/4, if it is 4/4 then damn thats a creative way to interpret it. Those synths...oh those synths arpeggio like synths...magnificent way to introduce consonance into the composition. The hollow feeling of the second synth melody really made this doom sounding. Definitely one of my favorites, great balance between consonant and dissonant sound, a hell of a sick beat, and technological greatness. Solid structure as well. FIVE THIS PIECE OF WORK I SAY!

AliceMako responds:

Rawr! >:3

Glad you like, it's my second Dune inspired piece, or rather a portion of it as the track in full is too large to dump here but still alltogether too cool to keep to myself :D

It's in 4/4 believe it or not, however every pattern employed is off beat, or back beat however you wanna define it so i guess that's the cause for confusion.
( i don't have a classical music background so i can't really elaborate beyond that )

This is allso my first foray in using sidechaining as opposed to my usual ritual of eq tweaking and individual volume tampering to get the compressors hooked up to the individual instruments to harmonise/clash pleasently.

I got this idea from a tutorial i failed miserably to copy whilst watching crazy karlheinz stockhausen force a string quartet to play in airborne helicopters for a composition. ( yes i don't see the connection either but there you have it )

Progressing from the general upbeat if somewhat foreboding start, paul knows he'll get tested that day etc, to the first synth, the reverend mother commands him to put his hand in the box using the voice and explains the test, and finally the second synth, as he instinctively tries to pull back she warns him not to for she'll kill him if he fails :D

-cue the horror- prompting him to recite the litany against fear, compare the track i named after that with the panicky notes used here, it's quite a contrast.

[Planetary Katharsis]

woot

Alright, mo' like it. Tribal to the very core...to the very essence...hell your near-obsession of production and synths reflect on the percussion. Enjoyed the level of sounds in this piece, everytime the melody got the end it increased in volume matching the snare-like sound of the drum. Everything sounds balanced in this piece.
wait for it...
you guessed it...
5/5.

AliceMako responds:

Had this on repeat for quite a bit while reading, hence it stayed a loop. It does have a kind of tribal uprising thing to it i suppose.

Thanks :3

[This Too Shall Pass]

ahh :D

The days i decide not to visit your page I get two new songs (or a song and a loop.) Frankly I would have never expected you with a 4/4 beat or a straightforward beat (not meant in a rude way,) however it does give the song an extra push to it. Those wacky (a staple of yours) atmospheric effects in the background are so diggable...

AliceMako responds:

Thanks, don't recall exactly what i was trying to do with this at the time apart from listening to bauhaus and watching horror flicks, so yeah it's not all me heh

[Spring Acid]

For a special fee...

I see you got into the spring mood. Good to see emphasis on the drums if only for a bit (reminiscent of the track that got me hooked, spirit helper.) I would go out speed jogging to this sound near nuclear power plants. Really don't have much to say for this one :( not that its a bad thing, i still love how it came out. Repeating the beginning in the end is always a technique I appreciate. 5/5.

AliceMako responds:

yeah it's kinda bland, i whipped it up to impress a visitor i had over and i managed to remember saving to disc what i improvised.

Anything you say is worthwhile to me because you felt prompted to do so, i care because you do, ever read that before? :3

Glad you like <3

[Mojo Hand]

Gosh

I really don't know what to think about this one...the one word that comes to my mind is Juggernaut. I imagine a katamari-like unstoppable object rolling down a hill in slow motion while destroying everything in its path. Oh hold it, believe it or not for me the first batch of melody sounded dissonant however the second batch of melodies sounded consonant to me. You know I am always curious to find out your approach to this piece, technically speaking since that is what you digg.

AliceMako responds:

Yeah i do dig that, disregard the last sentence i wrote earlier, i wrote up a long ass tech report then ran out of characters, wiped it and kinda told myself it was too much x3

To abbreviate, i'm working on getting patterns layered, kinda like those too far and few in between dark ambient tracks mr nine inch nails does.

The first melody pattern is probably dissonant sounding cus that's no plain delay unit you're hearing, it's the same signal routed through twentytwo equalisers all played at a half second slower pitch then the one before it.

(if that makes any sense x3)

Allso i made a conscious effort, like in the previous upload, to absolutely scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of what i could wringe out of a single oscillator on each seperate synth i used, i.e not only are there no samples in this ditty even though i carbon copied a frefab loop as the template, meaning that every instrument you hear is actually a synth, but i allso managed to crank everyone of them out of a single oscillator per instrument used.

Completely off topic but related ; the bulk of my work doesn't see the light of screen anywhere cus my business is making noise, the abhorent kind that really nobody cares for. (anything that ends up here is easy listening and i've politely removed the "things" nobody could bear long enough to opt clicking zero vs hitting backspace :D )

Notable exceptions being deviants of some sort or another but it's not my place to comment on my audience, i exist by their grace after all <3