ChioBam's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Rathunas - Realm of the Wraith]

I really enjoy your mixture of consonance and dissonance here. You never really approach or depart from those consonant chords too abruptly, leaving basically everything sounding dissonant in context, even when it's not. This is something reminiscent of one of my favorite composers, Toru Takemitsu, so it's always nice to hear this idea being utilized so well.

It creates an atmosphere that sways between uneasiness and calmness. Mostly uneasiness. With the addition of all the background noise: the subtle whispers, the string screeching, the cymbals, etc. are all wonderful and important additions. Looks like I'm going to have to reinstall Oblivion. Good stuff, Chris.

[Doswidanja Rodina]

I need to start by saying that this sound pack is delicious. Holy guacamole. You are one of my favorite living composers. The main reason is because you know how to paint a vivid picture with only sounds. Computer generated sounds at that, not even real human expressiveness. The balance is smooth, the voices are warm and brilliant, the harmonies are the right kind of dissonant where I don't feel like I'm sitting through a Berg piece, but you're definitely creating an intensity and discomfort.

There are definitely spots where you've captured that classic Russian sound, but I feel as though you may have been able to implement slower interpretations of Russian dance rhythms or something like that to really give it an authentic cultural flavor, but that's only a passing thought. Your choice of go-to intervals and bass-lines do a good enough job of creating that atmosphere.

I love what you do, Chris. Never stop please.

SoundChris responds:

Thank you cery much, ChioBam. Your words really make me happy friend :) I always try to create a vivid musical scenery. Even i stil only have virtual instruments and no real orchestras (i really hope that will be possible someday) i do think that the virtual ones are created to surrogate the real ones. So its important to try to come as close tho the real thing as possible. Also its important to try to add some human touch. I never quantize. I draw all the cc command lines per mouse. Sometimes i draw a single bar over and over and over again until it sounds well for my taste. Such a track takes quite much time - maybe 30 hours of hard work. The composition itself only takes about 5 - the rest is the editing :D

I see what you mean with the russian dance rhythms / folk elements. I also was thinking of that. In the end i wanted to try out to combine a lord of the rings sound with russian elements and some atonal harmonies as you could find it in an alien movie - this was the result. Maybe that explains that the piece is hard to be categorized.

Again: Thanks so much for your support. I always love and loved your reviews because i do know ver well that you are listening very carefully and have a lot of listening experience. For me as someone who composes since about 3.5 years this feedback always helped me a lot to show me that i am on the right way. There is stil so much to learn and to improve. But thats something i never want to stop trying to do :)

All the best for you and thanks a lot for leaving your thoughts here,
Chris

[To the Stars]

I'm a bit late to the review party on this one. You have a ridiculous library of sounds, Step. Ridiculous. I'm so goddamn jealous. I don't know where you get the drive to work tirelessly on all the nuances that go into arranging and mixing.

There are so many subtle things happening within this arrangement I don't even know where to begin. I've said this time and time again, but your orchestration is phenomenal. You have a fantastic ability to break an orchestra away from tutti which I just don't understand at this point in my orchestration education.

The way you've incorporated the 8-bit into an orchestral setting is a pleasure to witness. I've never heard it done before, and I don't think I'll ever hear it done better than this. Bravo to you.

Best,

Chio

Step responds:

Oh geez, wow. What a review. I don't know where to start! Thanks for the huge boost in self-confidence!

Honestly, I don't know what tips/pointers I can give about the balancing of the orchestra. Thinking back, a lot of the stuff I do while composing is almost done subconsciously. Sometimes I finish a section of a song and think to myself "how the hell did I do this". I guess all I can say is keep on practising and racking up experience until all the tweaking you do on the orchestration becomes natural. I don't have any formal education on orchestration so I just try and judge by what my ear thinks haha.

That last comment really got to me. I really appreciate that. I'm sure there are plenty of excellent chiptune/orchestral hybrids out there though! (in fact, I was semi-inspired by this one, even though it's not quite as chiptuney as my arrangement: https://youtu.be/5tSTEa3G9Ng?t=9971).

Anyway, thank you very very much for the review!

[The Journey From Here]

This is sounding pretty damn good, man. Your sound patches are fantastic, and really compliment the material. I've made an almost identical review earlier tonight, but I think it's even more applicable here:

You spent nearly three minutes developing one theme. Don't get me wrong, it's a great theme, and you can spend as much time on it as you want, but this is nearly a three minute piece, explore the sonic spectrum a little! I noticed right as the piece was ending, you started using brand new material. You tease us with material we've never heard before, but then you stop the piece! That's the perfect time to keep the piece going. You spent three minutes developing one theme, perhaps you should spend some time developing another one.

One thing I've learned in my time composing is that structure is very important. Even if you do something simple like Theme A, Theme B, Theme A, then End, you have a good, solid piece. But if you put all of your eggs into one basket, you better hope those are some damn good eggs, you know what I mean?

Anyway, you have a real nice thing going for you here. I look forward to more content, Aleksandr!

Best,

Chio

[Eterna]

Twenty or so seconds into this lovely piece of music, I thought to myself: "My, he is developing this theme nicely." I continued to think this until about two minutes and twelve seconds into the piece. Which is just the issue I had with it, is that it developed one theme for nearly two and a quarter minutes. Don't misunderstand, it's truly a lovely theme and you executed its entire development beautiful, but it sounded a lot like the beginning and end of the piece with no center.

A lot of music uses form like A-B-A', or A-B-A-C-A-D-A or something like that. Consider introducing new material to this piece. Not only will it expand the duration of the piece, it will also give the listener something to look forward to. Like I said, the theme you provide for us is absolutely wonderful, but imagine if you combined that with a contrasting theme and returned back to your initial theme, perhaps in an A-B-A type of form.

All that being said, this is of course your music with your own intentions. I have no listened to any of your other compositions and am therefore completely unaware of how you handle form in general. This is just my two cents based on what I'm hearing right here and now. Either way, I enjoyed these two minutes. Bravo.

4/5

[In a Dream]

You know, I don't think you've ever composed something (or arranged in this case) that I haven't thoroughly enjoyed, and I've been following you for a while. You have a very deep understanding of orchestration and balance with music, and as a composer that's such a skill to have. Things that are supposed to be in the foreground are in the foreground, and the things that are supposed to be in the background are in the background, but regardless of their respective roles in this mix, all of it is clear and easy to pick out, and that's a telltale sign, to me, of good orchestration and mixing. So a fine job to you. But, I'm no professional, and you're the artist; I'm sure you hear flaws that I simply don't.

Either way, very well done. 5/5

Step responds:

Wow, thanks for the hugely encouraging review! You're very perceptive. The idea of balancing foreground and background is something I ALWAYS pay particular attention to. I think I've become very accustomed to making that kind of separation, and even though I'm not perfect at it, I think it's one of my stronger points. However, it also makes counterpoint very hard for me, since I'm used to having one foreground voice and everything else accompanying it. I find it hard to balance instruments together when there's no clear foreground/background separation I can make, if you get what I mean.

Anyhow, thanks for the great review!

[O Come O Come Emmanuel]

Your diction is so interesting. I love what you've done with this.

[The Concert]

Your orchestration is beautiful, man. A+ work as always.

SoundChris responds:

Thanks so much ChioBam - i tried my best in those intense 2.5 days :D

[Argentinean Memories]

Granted this is a collaboration, what you create never ceases to be an authentic and immersive musical experience. There is a great deal of variety to be found in these three memories, and they capture your descriptions quite well while creating a unique set of colors. Thanks for the upload.

5/5

SoundChris responds:

Thanks you chioBam for your support and kindnes - highly appreciated good sir! At the beginning we wanted to do 3 independent short pieces but since we had to hear thats against the NGADM rules we had to combine all the tracks to one single piece - which was hard. But in the end i think we did it. Thank you very much and all the best!

[Trombone Tea Time]

So lanky.

samulis responds:

An interesting choice of words.