itbegins's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Diskovr - Ascension]

The piano chord @0:17 has a note off and sounds ugly. Nothing interesting really going on, you might want to try playing around with delay and reverb to give the piano some charasteristics and flavour. You should hi-cut the kick from around 10k to eliminate the irritating highs.
The drop doesn't really have an impact at all mostly because the lack of a proper sub bass, you also seem to have a nice snare roll going on the buildup but you lose the snare after the drop? If you want to have the main part have a bit of a buildup of its own you can let the beat go without the snare for 8 bars or so and add it to give the track some kind of drive. You should get some hihats rolling too, the beat is really bland right now.
The mix is a bit poor, instead of adressing everything by its own im going to direct you to look into some proper eq tutorial ( http://www.dnbscene.com/article/88-thinking-inside-the-box-a-complete-eq-tutorial is a really good one). The track gets really muddy towards the end, the instruments dont have room to breath and stack on top of each other creating a mess.
Composition wise its basic dance stuff. Try spicing it up by creating little variations of the melody/melodies, changing synths and stuff. Try listening to some big names and analyze the tracks, what keeps them interesting? The hook? Crazy synths or melody? Variation? Really solid mix? Etc etc..
Tl;dr below mediocre dance track, but don't give up, look into some production techniques, keep at it and have patience. Lots of it.

ksthultz15 responds:

I appreciate the review. The piano chord @0:17 is actually not off. It is a basic 6th chord. If you understood music theory, you would understand that. Also, the piano does have reverb and delay on it. I wanted to keep it subtle so its not gonna be in your face. For kick, I experimented with cutting the highs but it sounded filtered and I didnt like it. I could've added snares i guess yea. I didnt add hi hats because I already had a lot of highs with the pads and saws. And for the mix, I use a different mixing guide. I've mixed down this song the same way I do all my songs. You are honestly the only person that did not like it. Kick snare and bassline, then lead, then percussion. pads, chords and vocals next, then ear candy. It got "semi" muddy because of the instruments being filtered. I appreciate your review, but it seems like a lot of the things you said contradicted many of the things dozens of other people said. I'll let you know how big time producers say. Expect a PM fairly soon from me.

[The Glimpse]

The athmosphere is nice! The track gets quite epic as it goes on, but also pretty messy thanks to the over-the-top reverb on everything. The chord progression and melody are nice and I like how it revolves around them instead of effects and fancy tricks. Not bad at all, but go easier on the reverbs as it makes the track messy since everything kinda just piles up on top of each other.
It brings to mind a vast desert scene with ancient obelisks rising through the ground.

Blacklawn responds:

I see. I'll reupload it with less reverb.