midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[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! ^-^

[Suicide Juggernaut]

relatively cool noise

i quite liked the modulations towards the end and kind of wished the whole 2 minutes was that interesting. how did you go about making this?

bobby-bullets responds:

Thank you, kind stranger! I used the very beginning of the song for my first Noizecore track (which I can't post because it might get released online with Furious Monkey Records hint hint), I thought the beginning sounded cool so I made it into a short noize track.

I pretty much just slowed the fuck out of some background noise (forest, cars, bells, etc.) then noized it up with some Fast Dist and a couple Parametric EQs, then recorded an automation of moving the sliders up and down and across. Easiest thing I've ever made! ^-^ But I still think it sucks, that's not a self-esteem issue, that's my artistic opinion. Took me fucking 10 minutes almost, and I don't think my 10 min of effort shows.

[Dark Skys (WIP)]

niice

oh man, this synth at the start reminds me of OSI so much. particularly the song "Horseshoes and B-52s". in fact the way this whole thing plays out so far is rather like them too except for the drums which are more jumpy and playful. i really like where you're going with this!

watch the levels of everything because you have a bit of clipping which is really noticable when the kick is trying to pump through. with bass guitars i usually roll off everything below 80Hz and that probably sounds counter-intuitive BUT it gives the kick drum room to pump in the sub. same goes for electric guitars in general, roll off stuff at 120-150Hz to give room to the bass. when everything has it's own place in a mix like this it can make things sound so much clearer and heavier.

Maskeddude responds:

Hey thanks much for the heads up on the clipping. I haven't tossed it through an equalizer yet but I will definitely pay closer attention.

[Subjugate (Build 1.0 Instrmt.)]

is there reaaaaaally room?

if you throw down some harder drums i can see this getting a bit hairy unless you rock some sidechaining but this instrumental on its own is well mixed and spacious. some pretty outrageous panning with the nasty glitch synths, but that's the way i like it... big broad stereo images are where it's at now.

very few people use synth guitars as well as you do, self included. are you rocking any external amp simulators? nice distinct guitar tone here...

okay i like this but you must see this through to completion!

StaticStigma responds:

Wow, thanks man! I'm actually extremely suprised at how well this song is being recieved. I'm hoping I'll be able to salvage the project file off my crashed laptop so I actually can finish it. I began adding sound samples, and if you want I could link you a couple tests. It was getting pretty rediculous.

As for the synth guitar, I used ReFX Slayer 2, tweaked the hell out of it, and did a shitload of EQ. Nothing special was really added to it at all. I'm glad it's actually enjoyable, hahaha! I also use a lot of note velocity tweaks to make sure no single note ever sounds the same.

Thanks for the review, and I hope I'll be able to recover this beasts project file so I can blow you all away, I guess, haha!

[Elfire - Zombies and cocaine]

weeeeeeeeeeee

sick backbeat noise and backing percs. kick is nice and solid with tasty fuzz underneath, v good.

felt like to me it was going to build up to something completely sick and noisy but kind of fizzled out in the last section but it loops quite nicely which is cool.

so yeah in general very nice production and sound design. you just need to make it climax a bit more heavily (twss!)

[Fruity loops tester :)]

sliiick

some nice grating distortion here and there, interesting percussion and what not.

very bass heavy mix so i feel some pointers about bass are in order. make sure that you don't have more than one bassy instrument playing at a time (and if you do make sure that they're tuned to the same pitch, or an octave above/below each other).

keep low-end sounds in mono. there's a simsynth boom patch that comes in hard and fills the left and right with bass, in headphones this is very unpleasant to listen to. having a well balanced and interesting stereo image is a good thing, try panning the other percussion elements to different (yet relatable) places.

anyway this is a decent job for a first time. the more you use FL and read about how to do stuff the easier it is to use, and the cool thing about it is that eight years on i'm still learning new stuff i can do with it. hope to see more from you.

[(SA) 8-bit fun]

not really 8 bit but

cool melody and adheres to 4 note polyphony (2 square, 1 triangle, 1 noise).

if you were transfer this score as is into a program such as famitracker this would sound 100% authentic, no doubt. some weird harmonic movements at places but otherwise pretty solid, all things considered.

SeriousAdam responds:

Thanks hehe i tried

["HardStyle" WIP]

HARD NRG WOO

this reminds me of the tracks i was diggin between 2000 and 2003. hard nrg stuff like brooklyn bounce, dj scot project and that jazz. so as far as whether or not this is happy hardcore or hardstyle everyone is completely wrong. HARD NRG woo!

there are parts where the master track seems way over compressed (especially that bandpass filtered sweep at 1:38-ish) so maybe pull some of the levels back on the background synths and lower the wet mix of some reverbs. the way it loops is pretty convinving, i wasn't watching the progress bar so i thought everything just dropped out and the piano came back in. so... maybe just drop that back in to get the track moving again idk.

production is a wee bit dated, nrg well and truly went out of vogue in like 2005 but it's a good listen with a great lead