midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Secret of Satera Prime]

rollin my eyes at the foley fx and vocoder intro, but you brought me back with that phaser bass.
love all the rich textures that erupt from the synthwavey intro, but not super impressed with the sound choices after the drop. there's a kinda brittle quality about a lot of the growls and percs (we used to call it "midrange cack", hehe), and while the SID-like leads and arps are really cool on their own they don't seem to gel with the aggressive percussion and FM synths.

also not a fan of the switch to half time drums, there's a lot of energy going into that buildup and it doesn't transfer across the sections. my rule of thumb is that drops without a "gap" between the build and the first big hit tend to work better when you have a 4x4 beat that carries across to the next section - think old school trance and disco. the half time beat suits the epic choir-ey section a lot better i think, but the kicks are probably a *little* busy.

everything else is pretty good tho <3

SoundChris responds:

Thanks a lot midimachine for your helpful and detailed review. There is definitely a lot for me to learn to understand electronic music better. This was a great experience to dive into a new genre and i really enjoyed my first experience a lot - and have to confess that i underestimated the complexity of production skills which are needed here. Thank god i am learning quite fast and i will definitely keep your advise in mind :) I have to confess that i dont even know how the song structure and buildup in electronic music works and what the important aspects are, but i hope that will come soon. I definitely learned a lot with this piece so it was absolutely worth to try it. Peter and i had lots of fun talking very much during the last 2 weeks and talking about the technical issues and stuff. And we both had times where we just asked ourselves: WHAT HAVE WE DONE??? :D Thank god the deadline is almost over now.

Thank you very much for your kind and constructive review!

All the best,
Chris

[Far Light]

dem polyrhythms <3
so much good filter movement in this - love how the little clicky sound morphs into that fat 5/16 synth pattern.

gonna have to upload radio edits for NGADM tho lol :v

Sequenced responds:

marry me

[Bells]

gooooooood shit - love the way the bass bends and wobbles and how it bounces around the octaves. slow attack on the hihats is dope - liking how they pan about too. lots of cool little percussive elements, mostly well balanced! the main hook is neat, that synth brass in the interlude is fuckin dope though. need more of that in me :v the way you play with the wet mix on the bell reverb is a nice touch, and the little fills and extra percs in the transitions are priiiiiimo.

i think that stompy layer over the kick is probably too wide and loud and sounds kinda dumb especially when it starts playing counter-rhythms in the 2nd half, but it's not a bad sound on it's own. funnily enough the main section has about the same overall energy as the interlude, despite how loud that sound is - i think you could've held off on the bass during the interlude to maybe differentiate it more in terms of energy.

but yea, this is really tight! gl w/ school, hope you get a chance to smash out some more bangers like this

HaydeMusic responds:

Thanks for the review your comment have been noted.

Listening to it now, the interlude does seem a little heavy.

I'll try to get to producing again now that school is almost done.

[Resistance]

not digging the choice of kick sample (something more acoustic sounding and less EDM-like would've been better imo), but the overall vibe is pretty nice.

there's actually a whole lot of music theory going on here - i think you'd really like delving into jazz theory. some of the discordant parts definitely work better than others, there's definitely a big risk to writing something that's in many ways rooted in genre conventions (mainly the drums) but then also flips between concordance and discordance in a "purposefully" thoughtless way. the discordant passages that do work are really interesting to listen to tho (e.g. 1:16-1:22).

also the overall dynamics are pretty much for the whole 4 minutes which makes the discordant writing really hard to listen to - i had to tap out at 2 minutes and have a break lol

i applaud your efforts to move out of your comfort zone, keep it up.

Everratic responds:

I thought the same about the kick sample in the beginning of development, but I think I became deaf to my work after listening to it on loop for a while, so I stopped noticing that the kick sounds odd.

I hope this doesn't sound strange, but I get an extremely pleasurable feeling from well-executed discordance and dissonance, even with a lack of contrast. I'm sorry to hear that you had to take a break from it though! I'll keep that in mind next time I use this style again. I think you're right about me potentially liking jazz theory; I'm in the early stages of learning piano, but I've already began playing around with scales and chords that are foreign to me.

Thank you for the review! It's rare for people on this website to give a low score to increase the impact of their critique, but I can appreciate it!

[Cha Cha Malone Can Kiss Bill Withers' Ass]

cool riddim. if you stuck a 909 house beat on top and sidechained everything to the kick you'd have a louis la roche track :v

i really like the phasing clap sound, the open hat sits on top of it really nicely. a lot of the bass elements kinda step on each other once that low reese-ish pad plays out - might be good to sidechain that under the kick a little bit. right now the kick just doesn't cut through like i want it to, and the rest of the percussion doesn't suit a really round, subdued kick sound either. would be cool to cut some dynamics into the hihat pattern, maybe divvy it out across two or three different samples to give it some flavour?

personally i can deal w/ repetition. would be cool to build on this to make an actual 4 minute track and not a 2 minute track played twice - i think some vocal samples and soft, high strings would be nice once everything kicks in. could probably throw a classic long snareroll buildup in as well. anyway this was pretty neat and i'm keen to hear some more developed work from you. peace out

Kalviter responds:

Thank you for the feedback, and apologies about the whole link saga! I must have posted the project link or something. I'm keen to try out the sidechaining suggestions that you mentioned, I've never really used it before and could probably benefit from it. If you've got any tips about that I'd be happy to hear them. I was also thinking of finding some vocal samples (similar to the rest of the Lurker Diaries stuff) but I wasn't sure that kind of tone would suit a more upbeat tune.

[AIM - Faith in Freedom]

hey this is really good
i feel like the soundscape gets cluttered and claustrophobic at ~2:31-3:10, i think spacing out the crunchy synths more, or maybe just more dynamic mastering in general, would help keep the atmosphere of oppression (a good thing!) without physically sounding oppressive (not as good a thing!).

really like the intensity of everything. there are a lot of subtle details, though i think some of those higher string pads towards the end feel a little overbearing in conjunction with the vocals (e.g. 4:17-4:27). really like the variety in the sound design, good use of complementary tone colours.

structurally, i would've liked stronger theming. the piece develops in an interesting way but doesn't really seem to sit around a tight idea - i have a lot of ideas about musical storytelling that i'm not super good at articulating though so i might leave it at that. i will say the flowy vocals are a really good glue to hold the piece together, but i don't get a strong sense of melodic cohesion. this is the part of reviewing that i hate cause it's all subjective n shit :v

anyway this is fkn good, keep it up. here's hoping your living situation improves so you ain't bangin tracks out of a car anymore!

zybor responds:

Holy cow midi reviewed!!!!! :O world would explode. Thank you so so much for your well thoughtful review dude!!! And thank you for listening!

you are accurately described what were wrong in this track and what i should improve in here. thank you for that.

:)

[GearWax- Bomber (WIP)]

pls quantize stuff that you record yourself playing, the timing is not very good
also why is the main part of the song why quieter than everything else?
royalty free samples are fine btw

Iosun responds:

Thanks for the response, but this is not finished yet. I quantized a lot of the recordings and finished the mixing, but understand this was hard to mix because of how much drive the whole thing had.

[Blue Moonrise]

the resampled vocal parts are totally my aesthetic rn, just need to smother them in reverb right before you hit the drop then cut it right out when the beat comes in :v
actually i think this could generally use a little more reverb/delay, it definitely feels a little too dry to me (although i've been overusing reverb lately :v). i like the panning on the harpsi, would be good to give the bongos the same treatment! try combining a really short reverb with the one you're currently using for some of the drum sounds (mainly the bongos and clap - maybe the hat as well?) just to give them a bit more space and help them feel a little less dry and tinny.

i feel like the slow, flowy downtempo trap part works better than the 4 to the floor section towards the end - i think it's just that 808 hihat, it's not strong enough to carry the offbeat on a strong dancey rhythm imo. also maybe sidechain the bass synth volume to the kick, or at least the low band of the EQ, cause it tends to intermodulate with the kick tone in a bad way when they play at the same time.

i like that your melodies aren't overly elaborate, but the fast harpsi riff is a little overbearing - just needs to come down in volume really. overall this is a pretty good track, keep it up

[Awake the Sleeper]

if you uploaded this here 8 or 9 years ago it would've probably been very popular :v

feels a little needless to critique something you made a long time ago. the vocals definitely carry this track though so it'd be cool if you revisited something in this style with more aggressive/dark sound design. thanks for sharing!

backwardecho responds:

Yeah, the song itself is a bit simpler than what I normally compose. I did have more aggressive and dancier work in the past that was privileged to be played in clubs/compilation, but that was another life. Thank you for your review! I was going to return the favor, but realized I'd already reviewed your kitty song.^^

[Untitled 75 (PxTone)]

this has a really nice megadrive aesthetic, would be cool if the soundfont had more interesting pulsewave instruments but the sound design is still fairly solid - i like the use of low noise in some of the quieter sections, builds a really nice atmosphere without being obnoxious. would've been good to have more stereo range, even just a ping-pong effect on the lead echos would be magical.

i like the chord progressions and the way you develop the piece structurally, there's some really nice modulations here and there (especially at the end before it loops, so good). none of the melodies struck me as being particularly memorable so it felt a lot like a bunch of different solos rather than a cohesive theme. this isn't even necessarily a problem with the piece, i just generally don't gravitate towards long and elaborate melodies :v

anyway this is good, keep it up!

Random-storykeeper responds:

Oh wow, thanks for the review! PxTone doesn't really allow for advanced mixing, but I could probably mess around more with it post-export.

Hmm, I'm not really sure how to make memorable melodies without being overly repetitive about them. I guess I had progression in mind more over memorable parts. But thanks again for your thoughtful feedback! :D