midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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!

[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.

[Space Invaders Deluxe]

really liking the legit disco stylings, that big meaty bass and sassy lead hnnnnnngh. reminds me of virt's stuff on the mighty switch force osts. everything is really well thought out and consistent, maybe too consistent though? like the drop back into that last chorus was a little disappointing and the ending could've been more dramatic, maybe bring the melody up instead of down and end on giant crash or something idk. really nice use of modulations in the verses and great use of triplet fills, really keeps each section separate but still tied to the same instrumentation.

something virt does which i think would benefit this piece a lot is cutting little rests into everything before going into "drops" or when winding down a big chorus. silence really emphasises everything around it, definitely try using it a little! also maybe dial back that phaser effect in that last little bridge section, feels a bit extreme to me.

anyway good work, keep doing this

TheMightyApple responds:

Thanks for the feedback! :)