50Steaks's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Morning Frost]

Alright, well now you have forced my hand.
My uploads slowed down since 2020, and I was worried that I would lose the motivation to finish the project, but your quite thorough reviews became the thing I looked forward to the most when posting a song (for the most part). I’m glad you went and spent valuable time of your day to review all my songs (barring Kansas) and, as such, I have done the same (a while ago, but still I thought it would be a nice gesture).
Anyways, enough of that. This song completely went under my radar. You released it and nothing showed up on my home page at all, then you released the swing of things and I randomly found this. This is such an improvement over what songs I had to offer that were 8-bit for many reasons; it corrected all the things I did wrong. It’s super original, catchy, and something I would see as an overworld theme in some modern top down adventure game. Really well done here, and nice tempo change as well.

[TGRI - The Swing of Things]

Getting back into the swing of things, I see?
I’m sorry, the opportunity was too golden. Anyways, my opinion of this song instantly shifted when I heard you describe it as a jazzy battle theme. At first listen, I was unsure because I was expecting even more emphasis on the swing background harmony than what there was, and perhaps a harmonica to bring that feeling home. However, this uses brass more than those classic instruments, which implies a grandiose feeling associated with a boss fight. Two main issues with this song, despite how catchy it is:
1. The intro. Having JUST piano for like the first 1:09 gets a little repetitive. You mentioned this in the description, but this is repetition based on lack of variety rather than repetition of melody (I think you were right that the melody works well for the feeling of the song).
2. The outro, although this one is more of a personal taste than a real issue; the fakeout ending didn’t quite work for me, although I do appreciate you trying something new. My main hypothesis for his might be the fact that the piano at 2:45 just replays the same six notes as the melody at 2:43, just adding another measure to the melodic phrase. It might have been more satisfying if you instead just finished the phrase with those six notes instead of playing them twice. Anyways that’s really honestly a huge nitpick and, so you’ll still get the five stars for taking a well established type of music and putting your own spin on it in a fleshed out way.

Tangerine responds:

When a golden opportunity comes, you gotta take it. After listening to it back a little bit, I do see how it gets a little repetitive. Would you have any ideas on some things I could do? Bring the brass in a little earlier? add cinematic strings in the background when the melody is first introduced? I'll probably figure something out.

Yeah, the ending was a little rushed at the time I made this. I have a bad habit of holding onto songs for a while before I finally post them. I don't know why I do it. I just do. In my recent songs, I have been taking the endings much more seriously and I've put more thought into them. An ending is like the aftertaste of food. The food could be great, but a bad aftertaste will ruin the whole thing.

[At the Speed of Light]

I can’t believe this legendary song is already ten years old. There are millions of people today currently alive on earth that are almost in middle school that are younger than this; I feel old.

[automate]

I’m not sure how you keep pumping out these tracks, and they’re all bangers of course and just super fun to listen to one after the other. However, I also am beginning to notice that your style of music restricts variation to a certain degree; it kind of feels like all of your songs blend together, which is a double edged sword in my opinion. On the one hand, this is a very unique style of music and, if someone is looking for it specifically, you’re the only one who makes it properly consistently. On the other hand, if they’re looking for literally anything else, there isn’t much else to find. The reason I say this is because there’s a very tricky balance between variety and still keeping a baseline, and I also have been trying very hard to strike it. At first, I was solely trance/dance/techno, as indicated by the first 25 or so songs on my account. Then I decided I’d go completely off the rails after I released Wyoming and experiment with literally everything including discordant jazz, real instruments, remixing classical pieces (and remixing in general), and dissonant chords (note: I think you’d be really good at jazz music, but that’s just me). After that jazz thing I made I decided to tone it down and just start returning to my roots in the form of more electronic music, and I think I’ve found a happy medium at this point (subject to change). Point is, variety is the spice of life, and it would be really cool to see you try other genres or major variations on your favorite genre. Thanks for reading!

trevor8 responds:

thank you so much, i always love your analyses! i am definitely a creature of habit and branching out of my comfort zone has always been difficult. i consider everything on here as work in progress, and hopefully refinement? i am trying not to be cheap or redundant, but i absolutely agree that i have a cycle of about four or five types of sound design that i gravitate toward and it does keep me awake at night wondering if it is all blurring and what comes next. i have thought about taking a hiatus sometimes to sort of gain some perspective and space, but then i get really neurotic that i'll lose something in the process, or become preoccupied with something else entirely? sorry, i am kind of just wondering aloud here. anyways, i really appreciate your time and consideration.

[Allium]

Alright that’s one of the better of these types of beats, and for being someone who only started making music 2 years ago, I’m thoroughly impressed. I will say one thing: you need to go on discord and message a GD moderator to be whitelisted, although I will scout you nonetheless because this deserves to be heard.

Rainful responds:

Thanks for the kind words! I'll dm a mod :)

[~NK~ Figures]

Yeah I’ve never been much of a dubstep fan, but this song sticks out to me, specifically because of 2:07. That part just hits different than any other dubstep I’ve ever heard, and has earned this artist his greatest song and, in my opinion, one the magnum opi of the whole genre.

[9. Toaster Love]

This reminds me of the Wikipedia article on cock and ball torture; the heavy metal-esc screaming fits perfectly with what this character is actually doing in the song, which makes it quite interesting to listen to. Unfortunately you do get knocked down for making me wince every time he says a word (lyric-wise), but the weird and creepy outro is so random and unexplained that I consider it to be a representation of the remains of this dude’s destroyed cock.

guyfromKillerRAT responds:

I definitely do like to hear interpretations of things I did in songs without verbally explaining. I believe that your interpretation very much does sound like something I would do. Is it true though? Well, I'll leave you to decide that.

[Let's Skip Christmas]

This is how I feel about Christmas every year now. Finally a NEW original Christmas song instead of the same 10-15 that have been overplayed since the beginning of time. I swear the last new one I cam remember is Mariah Carey, and yet this is the next.

[carrier]

Wow. This blew me away, not just because it sounds so different than what you usually post, not just because it is in 6/8, but the structuring and melodic blending you use here is not of the ordinary. This is genuinely something I could just randomly hum the melody of, similar to a lot of classical music. The percussion is actually my favorite of all your songs so far, it’s great. The time signature really is the “signature” of this song and it was executed really well. I see some producers attempt a 3/4 or 6/8 time only to make a 4/4 track with swing, but this is anything but that. Also I love that outro that you can tell is coming, but only subconsciously so. Really really well done here, as always, and I’m glad to see you try something a little bit different.

trevor8 responds:

thank you so much!