midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Running Free]

eno af intro. i'd ease up on the low-end reverbs.

a lot of the electro percs are weirdly thin, in both their tone and sparse usage. i dunno if that was a style choice or a lack of room between a chunky af bass and gigantic stereo string section, but contrasting the thematic sections against the lush intro makes me think it's the latter

not much to say about the break in the middle and the subsequent buildup. that whole section was just stunning.

really fantastic work overall. i feel like it needs a little more (or way less) emphasis on the percussion tho!

Jakey-San responds:

Thank you sir. Admittedly I'm a novice at mixing electronics. Thanks for the tip!

[In Gods Mournful Design]

would've been good to have more breaks from the stormdrum, it's this unrelenting, uncomfortable wall of sound. the choir patch is kinda cloudy, would be good for it to be a bit clearer so that the lyrics were actually intelligible without reading them (also it's "could have saved" hehe) - actually it felt like the phrasing of the lyrics was super stiff at times too. crotchets 4 dayzzzz!

tbh it was kinda hard to get a sense of melodic theme. it feels like you write in a very stream-of-consciousness way which isn't always bad, especially when you tie stuff together well in terms of instrumentation. but it should still be anchored to a strong motif imo - the first 90 seconds or so are really good at this, maybe too repetitious but i've never found repetition to be inherently bad. honestly i don't really like how the melodies interact with the underlying chords - sometimes it feels like you accidentally wrote polymodal music without thinking about it. maybe that's just a preference thing from me though

anything i didn't mention was really good though. great work!

Lich responds:

I record alot of my patterns live from my MIDI Controller and just quantize them accordingly which is why it's most probably very stream-of-conscious sounding. EWQL Symphonic Choirs does sound pretty dated though I agree. It's pretty difficult to get it to sound clear but at least I tried haha. I'll be sure to tone down on the Big Drums in future submissions, I did go abit overboard on this one.

gl in Round 2 <3

[noodles]

deep af. been taking inspiration from the mariana trench?

the more dubsteppy bit with the big snare was such a tease, but i like that you sat on the more mellow beat with the sidestick snare and 808, kept everything more chill and unique. ezpz

Sequenced responds:

oranges

[Majestic They Are]

sounds like the intro for a chicane track, was waiting for bryan adams to start singing haha
the emotion starts ramping up with that clari, nice! the brass/choir layer has a really slow attack which kinda throws it way ahead of the beat, you can trigger those notes a little earlier so they hit their peak volume on the beat.

the drum kit is kinda general midi sounding and have a really different energy to the rest of the song, like you have this really laid back pop ballad beat up against this beautiful, epic orchestra and it's just weird haha. i think a really subtle but large reverb (in terms of room size) on the kick and snare (toms too maybe?) might give them the same presence. honestly, i'd probably just try a totally different approach for the percussion with totally different samples.

otherwise this was really good. i liked the structure in particular, i'm a sucker for pieces with long builds and lots of tension :)

papkee responds:

lots of tension is what I do best beby <3

The horn attack problem was one of those things that I noticed but didn't do too much about. The problem was that Kontakt was having issues loading all the samples for all of the instruments and it was lagging behind a bit.

The drums were something I didn't think sounded too bad, but after listening to the same thing for three days straight you start to not notice things. There wasn't much done to them and truthfully I should have performed them instead of just programming them. But whatever, I had to get the track done before I went down to school for the year.

But thanks for the review and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for this thing.

[Codename: Michael J Fox (NGADM '15)]

fuck yea it's like post-hardcore meets post-rock, right up my alley! the kind of repetition you've used is also right up my alley :) actually i know a lot of chip musicians who write in this style, the similarities are uncanny. awesome guitar playing and writing, the solo with the synth unison at the end is just fantastic. i'd say the drum writing is a bit weak compared to the rest and i'm not sold on that snare sound but there are some great moments for the drums too. really good work man!

JDawg00100 responds:

Thanks I'm glad you dig it! It's strange hearing people compare what I write to different bands and genres, because I kind of just write what's in my head, I don't really aim for a specific style. So it's cool look up what other people hear in my music.

[[NGADM] Undertow]

anticlimax hype! :(
really was hoping for a big epic section after that build with the cello and the big drum fill, it sounds like the first half of a gigantic prog house track that you didn't have time to finish. lots of nice sounds in here otherwise, though that noise sweep into the snare and the pitch bending riff are a wee bit cheesy. good luck!

Jimmypig responds:

To be honest i had no idea what I was doing when I wrote this, I don't really like house, all I know is that not a lot really happens in house music so I tried to emulate it.

I did try adding load to the ending section but it just sounded overdone then and cheesy, plus EVERY single one of my songs is a big explosion of symphony. I'm glad you like parts though, I must have done something right. Thanks for the review! :)

[One of Those Days]

vocals need a wee bit of comp/tape sat? generally the performance sounds half-hearted rather than just understated, would've been cool to jump up the octave at some point and really project a bit cause i feel like your voice just isn't roughly textured enough to sit so low the whole time. there's a few parts where sometimes the phrasing doesn't sit well with the piano rhythm either but generally it's alright. the lyrics are hella fun and i really like that dark, yet kinda honky piano sound (honky like a goose, not a honky tonk haha). gl m8!

ChronoNomad responds:

Yo, midimachine! Thanks for lobbing some solid feedback my way, it is greatly appreciated. You're not wrong, though I'll have to put at least some of the vocal blame on a stubborn cold that I can't quite seem to kick. Can't say that I've had a lot of vocal mixing experience overall, and this is my first time doing anything of the sort in FL Studio, so tips and tricks of the trade are crazy helpful. I'm sure that makes this song a rather risky gamble in the ADM, but even here I want to try out new things...as utterly nutter as that might be.

I am pretty jazzed to hear that you dig those Bluesy lyrics and the dark, honky (not tonk) piano! And I'll be looking in to your compression and tape saturation suggestions, though I do prefer to maintain a certain level of vocal dynamics. Incidentally, I did bump up the octave for the section at 1:56, thought it is admittedly for a relatively short duration, and maybe it's hard to tell due to the added filter.

[Chip 'n' Swing]

kinda bad chip sounds :( actually reminds me of gxscc haha
the composition is really really nice tho. arpeggiate those chords maybe? nice stuff :)

Yahtzei responds:

Haha, guess what xD I used GXSCC. I know that's something of a crime in the ol' chiptune community, but I can't *quite* be bothered to learn all the intricacies of Famitracker just yet. Still, thanks for the review, man :) I've seen quite a few of your reviews on other people's work, so I know that, at the very least, you're honest. I'm glad you liked the composition, though ^^ with decent composition, I can always work on the sound quality later. Thanks again and good luck!

[Bright Morning]

intro is super cringe! the sound effects you used are just way too dry and ham-fisted.
piano is kinda muddy, got dat default FL keys vibe - maybe go for a brighter tone and scoop some midrange out with an EQ for that oldschool jungle/rave piano sound? kick and snare don't cut through like they should, get yer sidechains on bud.

lacks a strong melody or catchy hook, at the moment it just plods along with the piano riff and quiet supersaw pad. this track also needs a bassline super bad, like it really feels unfinished without it. have a look for some more unique drum sounds, or process them a bit; right now the whole track sounds like a bunch of FL presets thrown together. there is some good overall musicality here but unfortunately it's marred by a bunch of pretty serious flaws!

keep it up bud

5TanLey responds:

Finally a rev that actually says something to me, thx dood

[Blue Midnight]

first thing you need to do is turn a bunch of stuff down, the whole track is exploding with compression - if you turn the master limiter off and you see red then keep turning stuff down. there's probably quite a good track here but it just gets so messy when everything builds up.

actually if you made the kick shorter or EQ'd the sub bass out of it you'd definitely have a lot more room to be loud. you almost always only want one bassy sound playing at a time and the kick is overlapping with the bassline (and almost everything else too hehe). also upload your stuff at a quality more suited to 2015, just because you're using classic trance synths doesn't mean you should be using a late-90s mp3 bitrate :P - you also get the benefit of about half a decibel of extra headroom if that means anything to you.

ANYWAY the song itself is pretty standard euro dancey stuff like i was making in 2003. would be good to have more percussion in the buildups, like a big 909 snare rush or noise sweep. i wish i could be more help on the composition side of things but this is really hard to listen to for more than about 10 seconds with the way you've mastered it. nice try, keep it up!

JMSy responds:

thanks but there is no mastering, compression or limiter on it...just single synths each eq'd seperately, guess my mixing is off though.

NOw aside the production stuff the song itself...YEP i guess thats my problem all my songs sound like 99-04...mix of trance, rave, euro dance....i really wanna get with the times but my memory musical bank is stuck in my youth lol...ah well cheers for review.