im-leia's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cody Travers]

Atmospheric as all hell, I love this so much. I've had a hard time nailing down the '80s' sound, but you've done it very well. Mixing is a little inconsistent (start of second drop vs a few seconds after; that supersaw-ey synth is a little loud) but I'm totally in love with the snare and the kick. Awesome job!

AudioLion responds:

Man, I struggle hard with mixing and mastering. I took a pretty long ~5 year hiatus from making music, so this is my first song back in a long time. Really appreciate the review. Thanks for the listen.

[omit]

This seems like another uncooked track. I fear the EQ on those drums you did does more harm than good - Instead of helping the vibe, it more interferes with it.
In other words; fill up the drums, make 'em meatier. Complicate it up. It confuses and messes with the vibe of the chords to put what you have right now on top - it feels wrong to my ear.

[flight]

I'd recommend you do more with this. It's a good start, yes, but it's uncooked. Add more chords, maybe a tiny, glitchy drum beat? More unique pads to fill in some space? Whatever floats your boat.

[syndicate]

I like the original sample quite a bit, but I don't think the beat does it justice. Something more acoustic (but not necessarily un-processed, of course) - Deep kick on 1, thick snare on 2, with a ton of improv in between.
Of course, this is biased. I'm not too much of a fan of this type of beat, but it certainly has a place.

[idk]

I enjoy the lo-fi-ness of this. Short as hell, but that's not a bad thing.

[Return]

Short, simple, and very neat. Drum beat is mad. Nice job!

[Play it To Me]

Mesmerizing. That muddy bass is... weird. I like it! It's really interesting to focus on and listen to. I like the beat too. Jammy as fuck.

[Don't Worry We Got Warp Speed]

chords! what the hell! this is nuts!

[Horrible sidechain]

Check your limiter (By ear, your synth sounds like it's going over it's own limiter), and try an automated sidechain (so that you can have more control).

If you're using Fruity Limiter to sidechain, I recommend you stop until you get a much much better grasp of it. Even for me, it's hard to create a good sidechain with that plugin, so I prefer to create Love Philter sidechains.

I'm guessing by your use of 3xOsc that you're on FL Studio; if that's the case, try using Love Philter to create a more fine-tuned sidechain.

Turn off it's filter and create a volume envelope that lasts as long as one beat (making sure the Tempo option is enabled!), then make it loop (There's an option if you click the upwards arrow) so that it's synced with the beat; so that every time the beat happens, Love Philter's gonna duck the volume for a bit.
It's less 'automatic', meaning it's not truly activated by the beat and you're going to have to enable and disable it manually and/or with automation clips, but it gives you so much more control. Play around for a while, figure out what works.

One tip for that is a lot of the time, you're best off ducking the volume entirely, but sometimes (if you still want your audio to be a tiny bit audible on the beat) you can raise that just a bit. It doesn't take much.

I've heard that others like to use playlist automation clips linked to volume, but if you do that please don't automate the mixer knob. Add a Fruity Send and automate Dry instead, so you still have control over your mixer knobs.

I hope I could help!

["Training Montage" - Theme]

Clear as fuck! Production and mixing on this is spotless!
Music is great too. The chords and melodies are amazing, and I enjoy the guitar work very much. Percussion is insane, by the way. This is 80s as fuck.

This whole track is immensely exciting and satisfying for me to listen to. Thank you so much for making it. Mind spilling some of your production/mixing secrets?