midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[generic psy trance]

dok dok dok dok dok dok dok dok

Sequenced responds:

It's catchy

[Sierra Rising - Mara]

hats are suuuuuper loud! i thought it was weird the way they sway at first but i ended up enjoying that a lot, though if they sat under the kick/snare instead of on top it'd be better. i don't think the piano reverb is an issue, actually it kinda blurs the notes out and makes them sit really nicely with the pad sound. the kick could do with some boosting, just to bring it a little bit below the snare (which is perfect btw).

the main thing with your melody is that you have very few repeated phrases at all within it, and since it's a really long melody it makes it hard to remember. you also use some strange voice leadings which clash with the underlying chords (e.g. 3m14s). my rule of thumb is if you can sing or hum it out loud it's probably a good melody. honestly if your melody and chord progression was half as long and you just repeated it twice it'd already improve things quite a lot!

overall your sound design is pretty interesting, and you've identified melodies as a weakness already. keep it up!

SierraRising responds:

I´ll be sure to lower the hats next time. Actually the high end in general could have probably been lower, come to think of it.
I never thought of singing or humming my melodies out, that´s really cool. The melody actually does repeat twice, and I probably should have left a bit more memorable repetition, it´s just that repetition has been a huge problem for me and I wanted to end that.

Thank you very much for the review, it means a lot to me!

[Liquid piano 2000]

this would sound 1000x times better if the piano was something like that old thin alice deejay 90s pulse lead and the kick was way louder and the water/bird noises were really soft (cause they sound kinda dumb, soz) w/ more reverb.

snare rushes without a crash or something to finish them off sound really weird. the last two notes on the pan flute are redundant cause your melody already resolves to the tonic and there's no chords underneath to give them context. but overall i actually quite like this cause i've been listening to (and making!) heaps of twee dance tunes lately.

UserSigon responds:

I thought about making it into a really dance track with saw pulse leads and stuff but I wanted to keep the original theme of the piano
The kick is intentionally softer, so you're kinda right this is not a dance song but at the same time it tries to be but fails hard; it's just a weird mix but I kinda like it

Gotcha on the snare rolls, thanks for the tip. It did sound weird, but couldn't figure out how to fix it. I think I understand what you mean for the last two notes (if you mean the real last two notes of the song); it's A) i should have added chords at the end or; B) i should have ended 2 notes before, since it was the tonic C# anyway

thank you bro this was helpful

[Cosmos traveler]

lots of confusing rhythms for a trancey breakbeat thing. take fruity limiter off while you're mixing cause there are clearly some instruments that are too loud and end up taking precedence in the compressed mix. like it just sounds really messy compared to a more the sound design is ok but feels very preset, that string progression is not super interesting either. i do like that soft rolling piano sound and the rough bass. duck the bass synth under the kick so the low frequencies aren't slopping all other each other, though.

CrisTheGamer responds:

Thank you, I will take your advice and I will adjust the volume for my next song.

[~SW~ Annar]

you say you focused more on melody (which pays off in a lot of aspects btw) but this still feels technical and unrelenting like most of your other stuff and has plenty of atmosphere to boot. the breakdown is definitely my favourite part.

the drum programming and polymetric counterpoint make for a challenging listen in all the right ways, yet everything has a really well defined place in the track despite the mixing caveats. i think the sound design is a bit weaker than your usual output, but the crunchy pad and pseudo-guitar lead are totally on point. really nice work!

SkyeWint responds:

sup.

I guess it is pretty unrelentingly technical. Honestly, I was slightly worried I was overdoing it with some of the runs since I was slightly emulating PirateCrab and Kor-Rune in the pseudo-guitar work (definitely Kor-Rune with the drums). Half of me wishes I had an actual guitar and the other half of me is like "lol no way I could play that well".

The drum programming was easily some of the hardest stuff in this - I really wanted a rhythmic counterpoint going along with the melodies and similar. A lot of the time it mirrors the melody's rhythms and even plays along with the toms a few times.

Funny thing about the mixing btw: When I started mastering, I found that I had mixed it almost completely consistent with an even frequency distribution: white noise almost perfectly mirrored it, with the one caveat of the bass being slightly heavier (as normal). Normally the treble of my tracks are slightly lacking or the mids are. One of the two. So this made it super easy to master it with ridiculously high amounts of limiting, hence why it's loud as all hell without really being muddy much at all.

[-DOWN PROWN 1.02-]

it's kinda just a bunch of random default FL sounds thrown together innit? haha

there's a certain quirky lo-fi charm to it and that constant 808 kick gives it some consistency - if you boosted that kick and made the tail shorter so that some of the other instruments ducked behind the beat you'd be able to make a pretty interesting deep/future house track out of this. i also liked the way you used the pitched snare on top of the melody, got a real pc music vibe about it.

work on your intro, builds and outro though cause those parts were kinda random and shitty in this song. the percussion is also kinda dry and doesn't really fit with that supersaw melody which is drowning in reverb - gradually drowning all your percs in reverb and then cutting the reverb entirely just before a drop is a actually a cool thing to do for buildups!

IPSBLT responds:

Haha,not really ;D But you can say your random feeling starts from my idea.In this song i used stuffs i've never used before,like Sakura or Toxic Biohazard;and also toms,industrial snares and hits.
To be honest,i dont really think my work here is that random and shitty...But yeah,i'll try to improve on the next song because this song is just an experiment anyway!!!
Thanks! (definitely try future house next :)

[~Echo~ Trust Issues]

i'd make kick tail shorter on successive hits to give the bassier synths more room to breathe. the amens need to come up just a bit. don't drop the low bass away when the riser comes in. loving the vocal lead and the big chord stabs. the heavy phaser drop is really neat! looking forward to the finished product :)

aliaspharow responds:

Thanks man :D i actually cut the tail pretty short but i guess I'll cut it shorter and see how that feels. I actually did a lot of what i did following a 2013 sub focus tutorial that apparently a lot of people have seen lol. Solid advice as usual Midi! Thanks for the consistent reviews! Love your submission as well :) not sure I'd have a chance if i was against you lmao

[~SW~ Thurm ins_wa_]

get fucked! this is really fantastic. rockin that 7/4 so hard

SkyeWint responds:

<3 7/4 dnb for the win, friend

[~Echo~ Understated (Instrumental WIP)]

haha, my jams! i really like the way the prog house chord stabs sit against the trap beat.
snare needed a bit more tone and less snap, feels kinda harsh as it is. lead is too harsh at its peaks as well imo, but i love the pitchbends and vibrato. would've been great to hear a fully structured piece with a real ending n buildups and stuff :(

aliaspharow responds:

i nose v.v
wow i updated it at midnight and forgot to press submit... well enjoy the slightly better mix for what its worth

[A New Future]

i feel like the timing stuff sam mentioned isn't so much about tempo as it is single beats or steps in bar having a bunch of different things kinda flamming on top of them. it can just sound "natural" but a few times in this piece it sounds sloppy. the trills and grace notes on recorder are especially bad sounding when they don't sync up properly. you can tell a story about confusion, but you don't have to play sloppily to do that.

i actually though your stereo was ok, the ping pong delay on the backmasked guitar was a nice touch. simple but not distracting which is fine by me. lots of good ideas and nice standalone melodies, but there are a few moments (1m05s in particular) when the guitar and recorders don't really counterpoint well together. the tail of reverb on the recorder sounds great, sounds like there's an early reflection accentuating those hard high-mids though. might be worth just scooping that out a little, or carving some dynamics into the high notes (through playing or automation, doesn't matter). actually if you scooped high-mids and lightly compressed the recorders seperately they'd probably come out really nice.