ArcaneSoul's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[A Dream of Air]

i could imagine all the things you could do with a midi. Almost all of your melodies have impressed me to an amazing extent.

I never asked, how much time alone do you spend on JUST your melodies. Infact how did you become so good at them?

johnfn responds:

i've been meaning to write something up about melody, maybe just for you, or anyone else who was interested. It got so big that I blogged it. Man, I love talking about myself. http://johnfn.newgrounds.com/news/post/763976

[Madness [2012]]

Ok so suddenly after my song getting a feature which has guitars, everyone is gonna start using guitars? XD

Anyway not much to crit here so ill leave you with a nice 5 stars and a 5 vote (and don't forget fav).

Bafana responds:

Thanks for taking the time to review!

Checked out your track too, I've always thought electric guitars have a place in dance music. Look at The Prodigy for an example!

[Mad Madness]

You use operator and ableton?

Dude......i really need to learn how to use that thing lol. Shit sounds ridiculously sick O:

Kind of overcompressed but all the cool shit in this track make up for it. I think i might actually follow you for the hell of it XD

piggemz responds:

yeah dude abletons where its at. and LOL the waveform is totally square. sometimes i do silly mastering techniques... like adding the same waveform of the whole song on top but an octave up (which i did for this). i might remaster this later. anyway thanks again, ima follow u too

[From Far Away]

*gives all of his software to you*

NOW DO SOMETHING AMAZING WITH IT! No seriously, some day you should try to upgrade your drum samples or use other instruments. Like your melody making skills are almost begging for an upgrade XD

johnfn responds:

The good news about this piece is that I made all of those sounds out of 3xosc (except the piano), so I am slowly getting better at instrument synthesis. I mean, a month ago every instrument I used was a Nexus preset lol. I found some samples so I'm going to start messing around with them.

[Exploring]

The beat is kind of funny sounding. I would suggest maybe tweaking it a little.

The glitching is such a nice touch to the song too as well! As if i am taking an adventure through somewhere. 1:30 the kick needs to be a little more prominent or punchy.

That is all i can find out for now. Are you going to be extending this or is this the final product here?

johnfn responds:

The beat was something i realized was screwed up, but forgot to fix. i'm working on writing down whenever i notice something is wrong.

The kick i turned down right at the end, it was kinda hurting my head when it was louder. Maybe I can fix that...

I will probably tweak this, but I don't see myself extending it much longer.

[Secret of the Ruins]

I feel like you may of found your hidden talent which is glitch music. Please experiment with this more as i feel like you may of found something your REALLY good at.

Also, regarding the project im working on right now, i have reached the part just before the chorus/drop. Do you think after the chorus (unless you wanna do that part) we should add in some glitched stuff for the hell of it?

johnfn responds:

Yes. Let's glitch ALL OF THE THINGS.

I don't know if I would call it a hidden talent... I just LOVE the sound of glitched stuff, so I end up obsessing over it. But I do agree that there is something there. The first time I was messing around I realized how much extra depth vocals gave to a song... vocals make a song sound so much more organic. I am foreseeing a ton of glitched stuff in my future.

[Ethereal]

*GASP*

OMG IS THAT....GLITCHED VOCALS?!

YOU, ME, COLLAB, NOW <3. Dude seriously this is awesome. I am always so horrible at vocal slicing and yet you do it so well. Why is everyone good at this except meeeeeeee? D:

johnfn responds:

Hah. I think I just got lucky. I shoved them into SliceX and pretty much did nothing and they sounded good. I couldn't even get the pitch bends to work properly, so my song is in the key of B rather than the much easier C...

PMED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[EnV - FireFrost]

This sounds HEAVILY inspired by archie. Is it im geussing? Also a little bit of clipping too i noticed. Needs a bit more eqing and mixing but overall great track.

Envy responds:

:) maaaybe.

[Recalcitrate [WIP]]

Remind me, what is your vsts? They sound so unique and different than most others for an example sylenth1 and nexus (tho nexus is good at everything else EXCEPT leads). And also are you still using sytrus? If you are you should really maybe try to make a tut about how to use it because everything in there is just too damn complicated.

ErikMcClure responds:

z3ta+, Ogun and Harmor were used in this. If everything sounds unique its only because I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing so I flail around randomly until I make something cool by accident =:3

[Flight]

How long? Highest mines has probably taken is like 5 minutes which is usually if i have alot of sound in it.

Love that nexus pluck. I have not yet found an excuse to use it. The snare i kind of don't like the choice but whatever. I think a good name for this would be "Journeys" imo.

You should try and experiment with other sounds btw. It would add some variation. Like your melodies are amazing i just wish you would maybe mess around with some other vsts even if it is like an fl vst. Hell in freestyle that pad i uesd during the sub kick part was from sytrus.

I did like this though so try to keep it up.

johnfn responds:

Probably close to 5, although I didn't time it. But FL was acting up.

You're right about using additional sounds. I was pretty lazy about this. I think it's because the saw I use is really versatile so it never really sounds bad.

I try to incorporate something new in every song. This song was db_glitch, last one was decent buildups, then sidechaining, etc. I suspect that new sounds may take me more than one song to really figure out though...

Thanks as always for the lighting fast review. And you gave me something to think about, too.

(I also thought about naming it Journeys! But then I thought of the band Journey... bleck :P :P)