midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Farther]

I see what you did there...

Thought I'd check some of your stuff out :)

As soon as I heard the intro I was like "oh hey that title is rather clever". You've got that beat down, I love the whitenoise-y backbeat!

I would only suggest some soft analog hum running in the same channel as the kick drum with a compressor so you get that subtle hissing sound sweeping in before the backbeat like in Closer. Nicely done!

Dj-Fanta5t1c responds:

;-)

[Shadow Symphony V4]

Lovely!

This should be adventure game music for sure. It's the sort of energetic and emotive piece that the Dark Cloud games were missing. I especially like the kinetic string stabs, though I think the pizzicato arpeggios are a little bit forward and may sound better on a piano or harp even.

I thought that this could have used more dynamic variation before that amusing and smoothly initiated change at around 3m19s. The levels of individual instruments were fluctuating a fair amount but I felt that the overall level of the piece stayed in the same region.

Speaking of that change... Makes this feel a lot like ending credits music hehe.

Very well done :D

shadow6nothing9 responds:

Yeah I got to work on my dynamics throughout the main piece alot more and 'thinning' it out. Hey? and harps, wish I thought of that before and that would cool. I'll be sure to add that in this song later.

[DXM - Stop Making Sense]

Nice

Intro totally reminds me of Kraftwerk's modern stuff mixed with some chilled out Infusion track. Very cool and very sassy.

I don't mind the beat that comes in around 2 minutes but there's a lot panned low frequency reverb which is uncomfortable to listen to, If you're using a fruity reverb (or any other reverb) I'd suggest setting the low cut value to about 400Hz and then rolling off <80Hz on the channel's main 3 band EQ. If you have any effects that convert the signal from stereo to mono put them in and then maybe use a send with a panned effect to widen the stereo image.

I don't like the 4x4 kick and I think the backbeat snare is too strong. I think if you had that kick sound with more decay on an offbeat rhythm it'd be quite interesting and more ambient sounding.

As a side note, I think it's cool that you're really going in depth with FL. A lot of people who use it never really bother with all the more advanced and ultimately more powerful features. Great to see someone squeezing the most juice from the fruit ;)

tijnn responds:

Hehe well i'll tell you, i'm no star in mastering at all, i have only been doing this for...

Well probably since 7 months ago.
And to be completely honest with you, I was astonished to see a submission í made on the frontpage, since, well, someone like you can already tell the difference from a pro-quality produced song.

Anyways thanks for the useful tip! i'll try and see what i can do with it for sure.

-DXM

[Optimisim]

not bad

too much reverb on everything but otherwise this is a nice transcription :)

[Solus- Through the Club Haze]

Ohhhhh yes.

Compositionally I think this is top notch. The sax is nicely articulated and the piano feel and solo is great, if a little too straight but it's easy enough to sequence some intentional timing and velocity "errors" ;)

Drum arrangement is quite nice but that hi-hat sounds like modulated whitenoise, the open hat is especially painful. All the other cymbals seem a little bit too toppy too. I also felt that some of the reverb on the saxophone was unnecessary but at the same time it wasn't really detrimental to the experience like the god-awful hi-hat was.

Again, this is just 100% superb compositionally but the hi-hats and cymbals are a pain :(

SolusLunes responds:

Man, why do my hats suck so much :(

I'll really have to fix it.

[Paragon]

Thanks...

For raising the standard of industrial music on NG. :)

At first I was a little worried by the intro that this might end up being some sort of amateur crunch fest but as soon as the muffled melody came in I was sold on this. Excellent mix, great vocal tone. I especially love how you slowly brought in more and more glitchy percussions towards the half way mark and then dropped them all out again.

The only part of this I didn't like was that first line that was screamed. To me it seems a little forced and detatched from the mood of the rest of the song. I think the second screamed line worked much better since it was a climatic part of the song.

This really makes me want to work on more industrial stuff again. Excellent work!

[[oove] Heartbeats]

Niiiiice.

"I am thinking about making another version of this song ( something like IDM/breakcore/dnb)."

Yes. Oh god yes. But more mellow, glitchy IDM like Schneider TM or Bochum Welt.

I like the piano processes... Very tasteful. They remind me of a dude called Martin Mackerras who wrote a very technical and long (46 minutes) piano piece called "The Waves".

I think you need to turn down the master fader and remove any compression on the master bus or insert the compression before the reverb. The mix at the end gets a bit muddy sounding and sounds overcompressed. could just be ear fatigue though >_<

Great job :)

broove responds:

I actually didn't use the compressor. but I must agree on muddiness.. .on high volumes it sounds heavy.
I'm still not sure about the remix - how to do it and should i do it.. will see.

Thank you for the review though ;)

[Musho Overture]

oh yeah

oh wow man. That beat has me bopping along like an idiot. the intro was a little misleading and a bit too drawn out but the best was sweet :)

I'm guessing your sister is doing the oooooh's? She's not terrible at all, I think the way you've layered her in adds a richer texture to the song :)

This has an awesome fun cheezey feel about it. It's like The Knife meets Queen meets Depeche Mode :P

[My Mothers Gift - Piano]

ahh nice :)

The dynamic articulation is spot on! I think more timing "errors" (gradual lapses in the tempo, dropouts etc.) would be nice to make this feel even more warm and cuddly :)

I think this would loop better had you ended on the IV chord... The perfect cadence feels too final and following the IV it sounds kind of forced wheras the rest of the piece just flowed so naturally.

Great job overall :)

shadow6nothing9 responds:

Constructive, I like that. Thanks, I'll be sure to keep in mind about the tempo stuff, and about the IV, yeah. I think I'll edit most of that chord out and add more of the major ones for a lighter sound.

[Evolving]

getting there...

Better than that heavy metal attempt. That weird, glitchy beat that comes in like twice in the whole song is sweet but that smelly TS404 preset that plays through the entire time and that obnoxious laser sound (.syn preset?) are annoying.

The structure is still is haphazard at best. Not in a sort of ordered chaos way, either. It's like you just made all these seperate patterns and then tried different combinations of them without any real rhyme or reason. I'm not sure whether you thoughtfully wrote the riffs around the bass progression or vice versa or at all. At least most of them sound reasonably tuneful.

It's clear you're improving, I'll give you that much. I still think you should go and listen to a lot of music and study the techniques used, brush up on music theory, etc... Find some zipped FL project files and have a look at how other people structure their songs. Hell, I'll even send you some of my FL files if you want them.

You don't have to copy anyone verbatim but it will help you with ideas to give your works a more clarified direction.