midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[<Zanarkand>]

So... what's new?

It sounds as though you just added some spatial effects to a midi file you found on the internet and sped it up a bit. It's been done. To be fair, I think you have something going with the omitted right hand in the beginning. Having said that, it could only ever reach its potential in an original arrangement. On the GM piano it sounds so dull and lifeless. The reverb doesn't really do much for me (too wet imo). You should definitely automate sustain controls and maybe tempo fluctuations. Also try to offset the timing of some notes by a very small amount to make it sound more natural, espescially in chords.

After about 1m30s I don't really feel like I need to listen to it any further because I know already how it's going to pan out. If you do more VG tune covers in the future (and I think you should to get more practice) you should arrange them differently to give them your own personal touch and to keep the listener on their toes.

Keep it up.

Champius responds:

well,

thanks for your in depth review its appreciated!

and yes the omitted left hand i thought would fit better than the intro that the other 100 versions of this start with,

i see what you mean by dull and lifeless but, i sort of wanted that feel.......i tried making the song itself be as if it were background music in a temple in the game.....if you know what i mean....

i did also add quite a few of my own touches to the song, many of them after 1:30

as for everything else, i'd say that's more of a preference issue....

Anyways....

thanks for the review : ]

[WS - It's Only Fair]

v v v nice

I love the Binary Star meets Portishead meets Cat Empire vibe. My main concern is that the beat feels unnatural on account of the skip which seems to not swing enough and the fact that the kick sound doesn't vary at all in that skip really. If this is part of a breakbeat maybe use the normal rhythm and if it's a bunch single hit samples arranged with some very smart processing then use another very similar kick in the second skip to give it more character and also offset the timing a fraction more behind the beat.

Awesome work! :)

[Winter's Debilitating Grip]

Sexcellent!

I love the feel and how it decays into glitchy stuttering. The 909 ride groove is hot.

The progression is hot, gorgeous chords on a gorgeous synth pad.

I would've liked more distortion on the percs to give them a nastier edge but then I guess the glitching does that. It's sensible, well thought out glitching not that "let dblue's randomizer do all the work for me" glitching.

Loved this from start to finish. Great work!

[Solus- Hardly Known, Yet Loved]

very nice

Gorgeous progression. I can rarely do sentimental and contemplative stuff anywhere near this good.

I do think you should sequence some very slight timing offsets on certain notes in chords to get rid of that ugly peakey attack when several notes play at the exact same time. They'll also sound way more natural if you offset them in certain ways. You probably already knew this but 'tever, just throwin' it out there.

Well done, as usual :)

SolusLunes responds:

You are exactly right. Normally I do exactly that.

Completely slipped my mind this time. :p

Goddamn I can be retarded sometimes.

[All We Want [WIP]]

a very good start :)

I enjoyed the quirks in your melody and progression. I like how the pan pipe sample goes down in pitch slightly when it decays at the end but I'm not sure if that's because you're using a reverb effect for the decay or because you just intentionally shifted the pitch at the particular moment.

As a general rule for mixing down unmastered versions of stuff I try to keep the master peak at -10 and then use an excellent free VST compressor called endorphin to raise the volume, since that plugin was designed from the start to never clip.

What you have now is rather nice, keep it up :D

ErikMcClure responds:

I actually did deliberately decrease the pitch.

The problem being I should probably figure out how to properly master my songs first.

[Just By The Road]

Spooky

I like the way you build the atmosphere at the start.

I was worried about the 4x4 kick cominh in too loud but the way it comes to rest softly in the background is clever.

It could do with a little more variation but as it stands it's a subtle and well thought out tune :)

[-Frenzy-]

Hmmm...

I'll forget that this is in pretty much no way industrial (it's more like electro house with trancey synth presets) and tell you what I honestly think of it.

(Brace yourself, btw.)

Overcompressed. Not the punchy and powerful overcompressed sound typical of electro house stuff. It's the all too common "I put too much reverb and delay on everything and didn't really think about the levels and it started clipping so I threw a default compressor preset on the master bus" sound.

The drums and chord progressions are uninspired even for dance music. The sounds you used have no real personality, they're nothing that hasn't been heard on this site a thousand times before. Okay, so technically the composition isn't bad but it's very bland and forgettable and those preset sounds do nothing to aid the replayability.

Don't get me completely wrong now, there are some good ideas in here (e.g. the bassline rhythm is pretty neat) but the main problem here is the lack of originality and dynamic variation. I mean, post-compression I can pull the play marker to any random part of the song and with few exceptions it will be the have the same volume and tonality. You know how to use automation so use it more liberally and in more appropriate places! Cutoff fade on the square lead at the end is ugly unless you fade the volume out some before it gets to the point where the cutoff value hits the sound's fundamental frequency.

Fair enough, dull and insipid trance/dance/whatever tracks on NG are a dime a dozen and I'm not this harsh on all of them. It's pretty clear that you're at a stage where you should know what you're doing but for whatever reason you've not really made any ground with this new track.

[Farther]

I see what you did there...

Thought I'd check some of your stuff out :)

As soon as I heard the intro I was like "oh hey that title is rather clever". You've got that beat down, I love the whitenoise-y backbeat!

I would only suggest some soft analog hum running in the same channel as the kick drum with a compressor so you get that subtle hissing sound sweeping in before the backbeat like in Closer. Nicely done!

Dj-Fanta5t1c responds:

;-)

[Shadow Symphony V4]

Lovely!

This should be adventure game music for sure. It's the sort of energetic and emotive piece that the Dark Cloud games were missing. I especially like the kinetic string stabs, though I think the pizzicato arpeggios are a little bit forward and may sound better on a piano or harp even.

I thought that this could have used more dynamic variation before that amusing and smoothly initiated change at around 3m19s. The levels of individual instruments were fluctuating a fair amount but I felt that the overall level of the piece stayed in the same region.

Speaking of that change... Makes this feel a lot like ending credits music hehe.

Very well done :D

shadow6nothing9 responds:

Yeah I got to work on my dynamics throughout the main piece alot more and 'thinning' it out. Hey? and harps, wish I thought of that before and that would cool. I'll be sure to add that in this song later.

[DXM - Stop Making Sense]

Nice

Intro totally reminds me of Kraftwerk's modern stuff mixed with some chilled out Infusion track. Very cool and very sassy.

I don't mind the beat that comes in around 2 minutes but there's a lot panned low frequency reverb which is uncomfortable to listen to, If you're using a fruity reverb (or any other reverb) I'd suggest setting the low cut value to about 400Hz and then rolling off <80Hz on the channel's main 3 band EQ. If you have any effects that convert the signal from stereo to mono put them in and then maybe use a send with a panned effect to widen the stereo image.

I don't like the 4x4 kick and I think the backbeat snare is too strong. I think if you had that kick sound with more decay on an offbeat rhythm it'd be quite interesting and more ambient sounding.

As a side note, I think it's cool that you're really going in depth with FL. A lot of people who use it never really bother with all the more advanced and ultimately more powerful features. Great to see someone squeezing the most juice from the fruit ;)

tijnn responds:

Hehe well i'll tell you, i'm no star in mastering at all, i have only been doing this for...

Well probably since 7 months ago.
And to be completely honest with you, I was astonished to see a submission í made on the frontpage, since, well, someone like you can already tell the difference from a pro-quality produced song.

Anyways thanks for the useful tip! i'll try and see what i can do with it for sure.

-DXM