DavidOrr's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Trumpet Vs Violin]

Love the interplay between the two instruments! Fun idea — keep it up!

Tangerine responds:

Thank you!

[Postcard Shuffle]

This is gold -- absolutely love the harmonies and rhythmic displacement caused by all that syncopation. Masterfully done Ben, that subscription to your site is worth every penny (and then some!)

BenTibbetts responds:

Thanks so much, David, I appreciate that!

[Giant by the Cliff]

Thanks for sharing this track, and the shoutout! I really enjoyed the core ideas; the melody throughout is quite memorable. I love your involvement of the full orchestra, as well as your soloistic moments at the beginning and ending. A lot of great intuition and design here!

Onto the points of thought: it felt a bit overly recycled to my ears -- consider exploring some ways to create a sense of progression in the music. Some ideas would be to modulate, change up the chord progressions, change meter, change tempo, or find different combinations of the instruments at your disposal to create new textures. You've got a great sense of overall structural arch, but transitions are a little abrupt (i.e. the ending).

As you continue your orchestral writing, consider ways to move away from chordal writing and explore interweaving melodies and countermelodies to create a more flowing and seamless texture. This is something I have personally struggled with, as it does contrast the writing principles of many other genres. Some exercises to work on this would be to try to write melodies and chord progressions that aren't even bar lengths (3, 5, 7, etc.), or try taking a melody and harmonizing it several different ways. These aren't necessarily principles to follow when writing music, but they're great exercises to expand your thinking and musical vocabulary.

Tangerine responds:

Will do! Thank you so much for the feedback. I'll work on what you said. Thank you.

[Montague Falls]

This is beautiful, Ben! Absolutely love the recurring chordal theme; it vivid, evocative, and extremely memorable, and your use of it is equally efficient. Would love to hear this performed live!

BenTibbetts responds:

Thank you! This would be fun to perform. It was composed in Cubase, but perhaps I'll write out the sheet music sometime.

[Piano Sonatina (LIVE)]

Wonderful performance and masterful use of sonata form, Ben! The proportions lend themselves very nicely to repeating the development/recap section. Love the little details like accented 2nd beats at the close of the exposition, as well as slightly varied recapitulation. Textbook example of sontata form and all it can do.

2nd movement sounds very "Tibbetts", with a graceful use of ornamentation and organic modal mixture. Great contrast from the first movement. Only thought here is that the very "classical" dominant V7 chord to cadence into the 3rd movement feels a bit out of place to my ears. Have you considered perhaps using a dominant a 9th or 11th to give a bit more color to the sound? I feel like that might work better contextually. Something to think about, anyway.

3rd movement -- love that modal mixture at the start, fresh harmonic sequences. Very tight, coherent design. Ending felt a bit abrupt; have you thought of adding a bit more time before the last chord? I could hear 2 or 3 beats here; or perhaps a fermata on the rest so the performer can decide.

Again, great music and performance. This is one of the greatest study pieces in sonata form I've come across. Is sheet music available? Would love to use this with my students.

BenTibbetts responds:

Thank you very much, David! I think your suggestions are spot on; I'll make those changes and send you a PDF.

[Demo Reel Mashup #1]

Great work, this is a textbook example of a good demo reel. Keep it up!

DL2Electron responds:

Thanks man. Your demo reels inspired me to make it this way!

[Party Crashers]

Wow, thanks for the cover SJ! I've seen a couple of covers of the track, but this is definitely the most creative.You do a great job taking liberties with the harmonies while keeping the original material intact. I love that cut to piano at 2:10!

Any chance the game is available to play online?

SourJovis responds:

Thank you! I actually preferred to make an original song than do a cover for the game, but the programmer wanted me to do a cover, so I took as many creative liberties as I could, to still make it as much my own thing as possible. I like your original song very much and it was very interesting to work with. I tried to avoid listening to other covers, because I didn’t want to be influenced, but I later looked up the other covers on Newgrounds and found out they were quite good. There’s the the jazz version by Camoshark and the dramatic cinematic version by PeterSatera. They sound quite different than the original, and Camoshark and PeterSatera both put a lot of themselves in it. Still I think nothing beats the original. Good job on that one.

[Polargeist]

This is really cool! I love how you mixed this -- there's a lot going on in the mids, but you did a great job cutting out room for each instrument to sparkle. The loop works very seamlessly, too!

I would have loved to hear something a little different at the break at 1:27. A little solo by the lead synth would be a great place to set up the reintroduction of the melody at 1:40, and add a little shape to the overall track. I like to give loops some shape (i.e a climax), and heightening the tension and anticipation going into 1:40 would be a great way to do it!

I've been meaning to get Omnisphere for a while, as I've heard a lot of praise for it over the past few years. It's great to hear such a strong real-world application of it :)

Step responds:

Great to get a review from you man, thanks for dropping by!

"This is really cool! I love how you mixed this -- there's a lot going on in the mids, but you did a great job cutting out room for each instrument to sparkle."

That's actually very relieving to hear. To be honest I secretly hate mids. Of course the mids are where the meat of a song is, so hating them isn't very healthy, but it's just so easy for the mids to get cluttered! It's why for my orchestral tracks it has become literally a habit for me to subconsciously lower the mids of a lot of the instruments I use, although I find that East/West's instruments are inherently mid-heavy anyway so good thing I do that.

"The loop works very seamlessly, too!"

You're not the first to say that; looks like I got something right! Thanks :P.

"I would have loved to hear something a little different at the break at 1:27. A little solo by the lead synth would be a great place to set up the reintroduction of the melody at 1:40, and add a little shape to the overall track. I like to give loops some shape (i.e a climax), and heightening the tension and anticipation going into 1:40 would be a great way to do it!"

I actually had an idea really similar to that! That part at the end has a saw synth and a square synth playing at the same time, so I thought I'd have one of those playing the main melodic line, and the other playing solos on top of it. I'm not very good at harmony though, haha, I'd probably fail at that.

Great idea though, certainly something to keep in mind.

"I've been meaning to get Omnisphere for a while, as I've heard a lot of praise for it over the past few years. It's great to hear such a strong real-world application of it :)"

Thanks a million for the review! Means a lot.

And yeah I'm pretty sure it's impossible not to like Omnisphere. I love it to bits (even more than East/West, and that's saying a lot). It's an incredible plugin, I highly recommend it!

Thanks again.

[Ode to The Interviewer]

This came out great Ben! Love the intro and the entrance of the piccolo -- what a great take on the original!

BenTibbetts responds:

Thank you David!