midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Ultimate Beat (for sale)]

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

DO IT

[Chicago Summer Night (WIP)]

yesssssss

pleaaaase finish this, it has such fantastic atmosphere and attitude. have you ever heard of flex blur? reminded me of his stuff but in its own unique way.

there are a few parts after 1:30 where the synths started stepping on the drums, volume-wise. i still loved this and want more more more more more!

DonCarrera responds:

:D

Positive reviews like these make me feel so damn good, and thanks for some actual constructive criticism - a rarity on the web as people tend to be too afraid of offending others.

And that flex blur sound was just a huge coincidence. This was mostly inspired by experimentation alone for hours and hours on end until a cool sound was achieved.

Edit: - yeah, more than one person already requested I finish it, so I think I will now. It's just lots of work without dblue glitch or VSTs!

[Tale of the Unnamed]

niiice

feels like i'm playing shogun total war or something. liked the use of 13/8 at the end :)

Cleod-9 responds:

Thanks!

And nice, 13 eighth notes, you figured it out! You should get a medal of some sort =]

[Taste of a Silver Apple]

ohai jim matheos

Okay maybe not quite, but I definitely got glimpses of Fates Warning while listening to this. Among other things. Very cool!

Jojipo responds:

Haha Fates Warning? Not sure about that, but it definitely got some Dream Theater influences, which I'm a huge fan of ;)

[Jenga Ship]

homsaaaaaaaar

good lord, all i can think of is homestar runner now

"yeeeaaaarrarrarr.... you shanked my jenga shiiiip!"
"we're playing connect 4."

the song wasn't fantastic but you get 8 for reviving awesome, obscure nostalgia in me.

[Cat Fish]

aaaaaaaa so cute

I used to make cute upbeat IDM like this all the time a couple years ago and listening to this makes me want to start doing it again.

the drums are my favourite thing about this... they have this mathematical feel but they don't sound formulaic or randomized. actually they remind me a lot of tidy kid.

i didn't really like the rest of the instrumentation, mainly the piano which i feel is a bit too full to be carrying such a fragile and delicate sounding melody but the strings are really lush and carry the mood fantastically. good luck in the NAC broski!

Quarl responds:

thanks sir.

[nuRea sKeeve]

whooooo

cooool, it's kinda like schneider tm meets kwwrr! aaaargh i kinda hate the dry, dissonant dance piano at first but it grows on me a little. wish it could be a little lower in volume, still. maybe if it wasn't a piano and like some weird legato synth... either way there's merit in the composition but the cheesy piano does grate a little, especially against the smoothness of everything else.

glitchey percussion is great, got some dave brubeck wacky time signatures there. did you get the sounds yourself (e.g. via opening random file types as raw audio data) or are they from a sample set? i like the big rumble-y kick/bass sound. i think the hissing snare sound has some dc offset (not uncommon with glitch sounds) so if you have a means of centering it that'd probably be a wise thing to do to make the listen more comfortable for headphone users.

Quarl responds:

i know what you mean with the piano. i was gonna upload a version without it but... i dunno? also, i haven't had reliable cans in a few years. every time i put some on im horrified by my music :p

as for the drums, they're just out of the reason factory sound bank with a few minor edits. i usually slice, layer, compress, side chain, and all that jazz but for idm i usually just make my loops with a few nice kit samples. nothing impressive. i've used an old school imac app to grab raw data and turn it into sounds before so I know what you mean, but that wasn't the case here. know of any modern apps that can do that?

[choir of love]

probably sounded like a good idea at the time

but the lack of thought kinda shows haha

at least it's all in key though! maybe scoop some of the midrange out of the instrument, give it a more ethereal quality? i dunno.

Lithirion responds:

it sounded like a horrible idea at the time. I did this all in one shot with a computer keyboard. it was just for the fun of it. i expect a 1 lol XD ty for the review.

[3xOsc project]

cool

intro is far too quiet and so is the kick. for the kick i'd layer it with a short, BP filtered whitenoise click and instead of using the pitch envelope for the sweep i'd use slides in the piano roll cause the pitch env is limited to only 2 octaves and that's really not enough if you want it to be punchy enough to cut through the rest of the instruments.

the reason i don't use 3xOsc much is that it tends to have a pretty brittle sound in the high-end and the waveforms are full of artifacts in the higher notes but it's easily the most versatile synth that comes with FL. this is a good demonstration of that versatility.

[Intercourse]

hnnnnnnnnnngh

aaaaaaaaaargh amazing lead. this is what would happen if ratatat made a dubstep track.actually i think some crunchy electric guitars would sit nicely in the downtime.

sick modulations, loving the filtering especially. a lot of basslines have really obnoxious resonance but this is really smooth.

909 kick is a good choice for punchiness, much sidechaining going on here? it's certainly cutting through in any case, fantastic!

epiano comes back in nicely, fills out the rest of the space quite comfortably

pads at the start are the only thing that bother me, i think it's just the pitch bending rather than their actual tonality though.

radical stuff. woo!

Quarl responds:

haha, i love ratatat :)