midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Frequency Overload]

that flippin' piano...

I really think the piano should be far more dynamically varied, especially when it does that fast pedal point melody from 1m03s onwards. It becomes a really ugly wall of sound in that section.

It also sounds like you added a compressor to the piano after the reverb. Do not want! In fact, I would never compress a piano at all unless I was after a really grimey, old radio sound or something.

If you used cheesier, old school analogue drum sounds I would accept this as new wave.

SessileNomad responds:

lol look at my comments i put it in new wave simply because i didnt know where to put it, but since i wish not to get more shyte about it, im changing this to dnb

um, i did not compress the piano...sooooo...

alot of your lingo isnt makin sense to me, but i will try to decifer as best i can

peace and thx for honest review

[Super Loop]

ehhh...

that main arpeggiating synth lead is obnoxiously loud, it should sit somewhere halfway between the volume it starts at and where it fades in to now. yeah, you might want to fix the timing on the doubling lead it completely kills this.

percussion and stuff is nice. that "Soft and louder" sound could be achieved by eq-ing a wide, sweeping dip of around 3 or 4 dB between 1.5Khz and 3Khz on the kick drum, followed by some sidechain compression. if you use FL Studio put a fruity send plugin right after the eq and put your compressor on one of the inserts, that way you can add another compressor (meaning a different plugin) after the fruity send, so you have the characteristics of both compressors at once.

this is pretty clearly not new wave, btw. probably more trance than anything.

LK412 responds:

How the hell did this get in new wave it was probably my stupid brother. Anyways thanks for the suggestions and when i figure out what they mean ill definitley edit this song. and whats a doubling lead you mean the arp? Thanks for the review!

[dragonforce 8bit]

a little disappointing...

the 32 bit drums and spatial effects (reverb and shit) were a big let down since i was expecting a bit of raw 8 bit goodness in its true form. despite that, this is pretty cool. it stays fairly true to the original.

dragonforce solos are a bastard to transpose because its just li or totman fucking around on the fretboard and not thinking things through properly. my advice would be to just take it one bar at a time and maybe even timestretch the original song so you can hear the notes played slowly.

[Loop1 {SKOX}]

fun

the loop does flow you tard, albigs. it skips a little because flash is shit at syncing sound properly.

fun little loop. quite good for what it is.

[(E-E) Locked Submission]

none too shabby

you should whack the default compressor on the master bus and pull the value on the fader to a little under 79% cause there's some mad clipping when you start to lowpass filter everything.

I very rarely use reverb on bass drums or bassey instruments in general, but if you leave it on here then i'd suggest pulling the low cut value to somewhere like 500Hz. reverbing low frequencies can make an otherwise clean mix start to get very messy.

did you had extra treble to those hats? they seem extra thin and toppy.

i really like the warm pads and the wide bassline. could use a fair bit more variation on the whole but this is some nice ambient tech backing music at the moment.

keep it up :)

Everlasting-Elements responds:

Yeah, true.
The hats were a special pack and I added a special FX to them and stuff. A stereo enhancer. Some sort of EQ, I'm sure. I dunno. I toy around with it a lot.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, though.

[Emergenct Room]

hey now

1.62 is a bastard score for this.

the intro is a bit simplistic and almost cheesy sounding with that fl default vocal sound. once that snare fill comes in though it gets consistently better from there. pitched 808 snare fills are HOT.

i think the choir sound is a bit loud. those 808 toms are right on the money... oh synth arrangement is in full force now and this is tre nice. i like it muchly! it makes me feel like uploading some of my hip hop beats... maybe.

S3C responds:

well its 1.95 now, I cant complain :P, hopefully it will get a little higher once (if) it recieves more votes.

i completely agree with you there on your first point, the stock vocal sound at the beginning is pretty lame by itself, but it was just thrown in more or less for filler. I got lazy with the track here and didnt make more usage out of it.

Glad you like the 808 sounds, when I used to make hip hop beats all the time, I always try to throw in a pitched snare fill :P

As for the choir sound, that is a valid criticism, however since theres no vocals or dominant melody in the piece, I dont think its that big of a deal.

Thanks for another review man! And yes, DO upload your hip hop beats, I am interesting in hearing them :)

[In Saturn's Ring]

hrmmmm

interesting composition. intro sounds like it was recorded with a microphone in a different room to all the instruments.

1m12s-ish: i like the dueling guitars and filtering herein. the piece consistently builds interest from this point. little voicey synths and dischordant organs remind me a lot of kwwrr.

sounds like the kickdrum is slightly off center. it starts panning a lot in the outro... very odd but it makes for an interesting listen since it's not painful like hard panned low frequencies can be...

DonaldFletcher responds:

Thanks for the great review. The original version of this had a rougher kick (a 909 drum sample if I remember correctly) that I kept more in the center. For this runthrough I managed to get a better, cleaner one going, so I was able to leave it at least a little off center to help balance out the bass guitar and piano as well as the other drums, plus do its own thing when appropriate. I was actually a little iffy on that, so I ran an EQ over it just in case anyone had the bass up too high on their headphones!

I'm glad you noticed what I was doing with that intro - I pulled an old trick out of my ass for that one. That process actually runs through the whole song but it sounds best there due to the soloed guitar and otherwise minimal instruments. That guitar got the most attention in this regard. I wanted to give the listener the impression that they were standing in a room with the live instruments playing on a stage in front, with the processed sounds coming from speakers sitting 90 degrees to either side. Lots of work, but I think it paid off.

And I'm really happy you liked the 1:12 part. That was probably the most fun to write out of everything in this track. I'm looking for an excuse to do that again. Maybe two tracks from now!

[Snakewalk]

bouncey

i like the way the strings set the scene and then get swept up by the rhythm. sweet beat.

No-SideBoy responds:

Thnx 4 ur comment.

[Lucaspiration]

hrmmmm

i think that main warbley bass could use some subtle blood overdrive. or maybe not a not so subtle blood overdrive with the wet mix turned down a lot. its just a little bit too smooth and needs a bit of a harder edge imo.

Pissomatik responds:

Actually, I was trying to do the opposite. But, that gives my an idea where to go with it. I still need a good smooth low bass though. Like pretty much subwoofer and nothing else. Hey, if anybody has the subwoofer.fst file for FL Studio please send it my way. They killed it in later versions and I'm having trouble tweaking the knobs just right. Thanks for the review and to whomever might have that fst.

[Give Me Cowbell]

heh

i think this has already been stated but having made the cowbell the theme of the piece it could do with a lot more dynamic and rhythmic variation. it's still a cool little motif to have in there.

you talk down the quality of the mix when it's nothing to really be apologetic for. the reverb and everything is kept well under control and doesnt get drilled by master compression until that high piano comes in at 2m17s. if that went down a lot in volume it would improve that section of the mix by a lot.

quite enjoyable. do extend this in future.