midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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?

[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 :)

[Elfire - Suck]

wooo! here are some words.

its funky and bouncy... like a electro remix of a psyclon nine song or something.

a few instruments stepping on each others' toes at a few parts, especially in the low end of the spectrum. some of the frequency overlapping is sidechained out but i would've filtered the lows out of more of the instruments (especially the saw leads and grimy synth basses) just to give the kick more room to breathe. i mean the kick already pushes a LOT of air so even if you want a bass heavy mix you already have it right there imo... i suppose if i was mixing this and i felt i needed more bass on the off beat i'd make a group for all the major synth elements appearing in the low end, put a hp filter around 100Hz and sidechain the wet mix of the filter to the kickdrum with a peak controller or something.

all that aside though, the mix is pretty clear and the general lack of percussion is a good, good thing for this track. you've left a whole lot of room for all the filth and grime. faaaantastic synth manipulation and layering, lots of stuff going on. on the lack of percussion i think that crunchy backbeat snare-ish sound could do with being a touch stronger, i really want it to smack down on the 2 and 4 but it doesn't quite have the dynamic lift that it needs imo.

also the structure is inconsistent. there was this lead that came in towards the end (around 4m55s) and i was like "hmm there's not much time left, where is this going to go" and then it fizzled out and ended abruptly. there was just an overall lack of a cohesive theme to tie all the random riffs together... then again the chord progression could be enough of a constant and i might be nitpicking or completely out of my depth with the whole ebm thing. the ending fix is as easy as exporting with the "leave remainder" setting if you use FL and if you don't just stick the ending markers a few bars down the track and you'll be peachy!

so i've sort of rambled about my gripes with this but overall i quite liked it and regardless of the structure it managed to keep me entertained for six minutes which in itself is an achievement. very very solid track which could really shine on a professional level with a bit of polish in the low-end. rad!

Elfire responds:

thanks for the review! really helpful.

Yeh i agree the low end souds a bit muddy in this mix, i had a decent mix but its all on my old pc and i just got a whole new setup, only moving over some finished mixes. was gonna start all over again, still got a few tracks left over that issnt really well mixed and dunno what to do with. so yeh this is the tail end of my last project pool i thought someone could maybe make use of.

And yeh i think your right about the 2 + 4

-Elfire

[Wander of Thought - F-777]

woo

i like random structures sometimes but they don't always build a cohesive musical narrative. i think there are parts here that make sense and parts that don't but anyway it's slightly irrelevant. sick little production exercise, my favourite part was the hard nrg bit after 4m10s, i'd have gone to town on that with a 303.

pretty cool that someone your age is capable of nearly world-class trance production!

[Shylent]

hrmmmm

i want to hear this without drums because it'd probably be a whole new experience.

i mean the drums are good on their own but in my mind the kind of ambience you have going in the background can carry the track on its own.

sort of like "grass" by aphex twin

bobby-bullets responds:

I always loved the drums in some of Akira Yamaoka's music, so thought I'd try to replicate that. Also was trying to hide the lack of synth.

But thanks! ^-^