midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Switch]

yea this is good - love the hints at other genres sprinkled throughout (esp. the psy and moombah stuff towards the end, neat af)

would've liked the bigroom kickbass to have a bit more... character i guess? just felt a bit static, would be good to have it throb just a little (lol, cock joke)

2nd drop was kinda disappointing, i'm thinking that a bit more overall dynamic shaping around that last beat before the reverse kick would be good to make the tension a bit more palpable and really sell the anticipation going into that first kick.

no comments on the mix, it's basically perfect. maybe don't duck the square melody so much when the kick isn't present (i.e. 1:48 - 2:02)? idk
ggwp

[.:Superhero:.]

reading the description and then listening to the track makes me question whether you actually know what a 2-step beat is - the first giveaway is that the snareclap (which is way too quiet in relation to the kick btw) isn't on the backbeat (i.e. beats 2 and 4 @ half-time). the kick is super busy and take the reverb off it, there's literally no reason to have a long reverb on a kick all the time in a track like this.

also you say there's a drop but the there's a kick rush and then a synth swell but nothing following it up except a weak synth bass and a siren effect that's too loud and out of time (yes you START the sample in time but everything about the articulation of that sample makes it out of time). protip: pulling everything back before the first big hit into the next section is essential for a good drop, but if you have everything dead for too long all the energy is lost and that big hit doesn't feel so big anymore. you don't even HAVE a big hit here, you just "drop" into 2 synths, a quiet filtered perc line and literally nothing else and at this point i feel like i'm being trolled. did you just forget to place drums?!

yes newgrounds is good for new people to git gud but it's also better if you upload stuff that's more or less completed, at least at a fundamental level. you even say "professionals didn't post their early stuff" - maybe there's a reason for that?

BlueAlpha14 responds:

I did place drums omg you people need earphones sometime XD
I actually make all my stuff listening via earphone, so I don't know what it sounds like with them off.
1. Yeah I did lower the volume on the snareclap, I was afraid it was getting too loud.
2. Okay, yeah the drop sucks. However, it was the best I could come up with. I probably should've used 3x Osc, I'll remember that next time.
3. I didn't think the siren was that loud but then again I can see why it was.
4. How the heck do you feel like you're being trolled? Do you think I would waste a couple days of my life if I was trolling?

Again, I benefit from reviews.

Thanks,
~Alpha

[.:Heated:.]

- don't put so much reverb on everything! its ok for one or two things to have a lot of reverb but it's better to use less on drums. the long reverb on the lead and bubbly background sounds would be ok but it'd be much better if you turned down the wet mix (either in the mixer or on the plugin itself, your call)

- turn off the limiter on the master channel and then turn everything down so that the song never goes above 0dB (you'll see orange/red on the master volume meter when this happens). right now the main filtered lead is waaaaaay too loud, and for dance/"techno" stuff you want to kick drum to be louder than everything else by quite a lot! it'll sound weird at first BUT then you can turn the master limiter on again and you'll get all the loudness back into the everything else.

- good work tuning the kick drum to the key of your song (or tuning your song to the kick drum)! lots of people forget to do this and it drives me nuts. the major modulations in the main theme are actually pretty interesting too. the 5/4 polyrhythm on the fl slayer at 1:07 is cool but because that kick plays a syncopated rhythm too you need a snare or clap on the 2 and 4 in the drum pattern so that the main 4/4 pulse isn't lost.

tl;dr the mix is really really bad but you've got a bunch of good musical ideas in this.

BlueAlpha14 responds:

I'm actually impressed you know everything I did/used almost like you had a midi file of the track.
-Yeah I figured I made it way too amped. I guess I became obsessed with the mastering. I didn't know I could only apply it to the synths however.
-I only put it as Techno because I didn't want to put it as 'Experimental' or 'Miscellaneous'. I'm not that good at identifying genre's. But I may end up doing it. Thanks for telling me about the meter, I'll lower it.
-I didn't even fully understand, but I'm glad I did it right lol. I thought I wasn't using the FL Slayer correctly as it was only at the end. I kinda rushed the end because I was so worried I was gonna lose it and have to start over. I'll play around with some claps and snares to see how well it will work.
Thank you for the detailed review as it did help rather than saying it was good or bad. I will fix the issues and release an updated version tomorrow. I'll probably just update this submission. I hope you can listen to the updated version.
~Alpha

[Rowdy]

not a fan of that guitar vst (or any other tbh), sounds very fake and rubbery. the voicing isn't particularly guitar-like either so you could probably replace it with some other instrument without much trouble. it already sounds more like a harpsichord already so that might be an option.

the percussion is neat! might be cool to cut out the lows frequencies from the higher-pitched rolling kicks in the second rhythm and layer it over the first rhythm? basically i just want more stuff to happen cause the bad guitar sound only occupies a narrow range of tones for the entire piece and there's a lot of space to fill.

really not liking how the piece develops beyond 1:13, the chromatic modulations don't really make any sense and the guitar sustain gives horrendous dissonance between chords. nothing wrong with dissonance per se, but that dynamically flat sustain and harmonic movement which isn't even tangentially related to the rest of the piece make it seem like you kinda ran out of ideas and threw some random notes together.

keep at it tho - as boring as it might be i think you should write some more consonant music (i.e. stick to 1 scale and use conventional chord progressions) before embarking on more compositionally experimental endeavours.

[Lighthouse]

lush af! love the bass pitchbends, actually everything is layered really nicely. i kept wanting this to develop into something more musical but it works well as a standalone soundscape piece.

one thing: the field recording is very noisy, not sure if this is because of sub-par hardware, a very quiet source or a very "blatant" dither. if it's because of normalising/compression then this is the kind of thing where recording at 24/48 is super useful! that said, the noise is worked into the rest of the textures once everything gets into gear. though it would be good to lowpass it and then automate the cutoff in and out in time with that spooky midrange pad; right now it's the only element of the soundscape that has no dynamic movement (which would be fine if it had a strong tonal center to base the track around)

anyway this is neat!

SierraRising responds:

I´ve been hoping to hear from you again, your reviews are always very detailed and useful! I would have liked for there to have been more variation, but I mainly wanted to try out an ambient atmosphere this time.
I have yet to learn about mixing my own recordings into tracks. I use a Tascam DR-05, and it´s fairly good, in my opinion, though I´m open to suggestions for possible upgrades in the future, if you have any. I have another similar ambient piece scheduled for tomorrow or the day after, so I´ll try using the cutoff technique you mentioned.
In the meantime, thank you very much for the review! Very helpful, as always!

[Darkness source]

pls upload at a greater bitrate than 128kbps and make sure you render the entire song before uploading. the synth at 0:59 is super muddy and all the piano/pad stuff sounds distorted underneath it.

the high strings at 2:06 seem to come in out of nowhere because there's no precedent for them anywhere else in the track. also i dont know what feeling you are trying to express.

[Pixel Demolition]

ok let me elaborate on what tweedledum has mentioned below:

after about 10 seconds in there's a lot of different melody parts and riffs playing at the same time without many breaks and it goes for the whole song like that. that's difficult to listen to because our brains are dumb, and it also creates dissonance at certain parts because the riffs aren't designed with counterpoint or obligato in mind. individually, each of the parts are decent - why not spread them out across the track more and give the song some more definite structure? the part at 1:21 is really well done and sounds great cause there's one cool melody with a subtle counterpoint and simple arpeggios and it works! wish it was longer tho.

also the drums don't sound very good cause the synths are too loud so when everything hits the master limiter (or 0dB if ur a dum dum and don't have a master limiter) the attack of the kick and snare gets squished under all the crunchy synth stuff.

Edman520 responds:

Yea I noticed those things especially with the drums. Thanks for the feedback!

[some psy trance]

needs more phasers

seriously tho that 303-alike synth is on point.

Sequenced responds:

boners

[how to make #1 on itunes]

needs more lil jon

Sequenced responds:

needs more cock

[I am the greater audio portal]

no fart sample 0/10

Sequenced responds:

I'm sorry