midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[.:Superhero:.]

reading the description and then listening to the track makes me question whether you actually know what a 2-step beat is - the first giveaway is that the snareclap (which is way too quiet in relation to the kick btw) isn't on the backbeat (i.e. beats 2 and 4 @ half-time). the kick is super busy and take the reverb off it, there's literally no reason to have a long reverb on a kick all the time in a track like this.

also you say there's a drop but the there's a kick rush and then a synth swell but nothing following it up except a weak synth bass and a siren effect that's too loud and out of time (yes you START the sample in time but everything about the articulation of that sample makes it out of time). protip: pulling everything back before the first big hit into the next section is essential for a good drop, but if you have everything dead for too long all the energy is lost and that big hit doesn't feel so big anymore. you don't even HAVE a big hit here, you just "drop" into 2 synths, a quiet filtered perc line and literally nothing else and at this point i feel like i'm being trolled. did you just forget to place drums?!

yes newgrounds is good for new people to git gud but it's also better if you upload stuff that's more or less completed, at least at a fundamental level. you even say "professionals didn't post their early stuff" - maybe there's a reason for that?

BlueAlpha14 responds:

I did place drums omg you people need earphones sometime XD
I actually make all my stuff listening via earphone, so I don't know what it sounds like with them off.
1. Yeah I did lower the volume on the snareclap, I was afraid it was getting too loud.
2. Okay, yeah the drop sucks. However, it was the best I could come up with. I probably should've used 3x Osc, I'll remember that next time.
3. I didn't think the siren was that loud but then again I can see why it was.
4. How the heck do you feel like you're being trolled? Do you think I would waste a couple days of my life if I was trolling?

Again, I benefit from reviews.

Thanks,
~Alpha

[.:Heated:.]

- don't put so much reverb on everything! its ok for one or two things to have a lot of reverb but it's better to use less on drums. the long reverb on the lead and bubbly background sounds would be ok but it'd be much better if you turned down the wet mix (either in the mixer or on the plugin itself, your call)

- turn off the limiter on the master channel and then turn everything down so that the song never goes above 0dB (you'll see orange/red on the master volume meter when this happens). right now the main filtered lead is waaaaaay too loud, and for dance/"techno" stuff you want to kick drum to be louder than everything else by quite a lot! it'll sound weird at first BUT then you can turn the master limiter on again and you'll get all the loudness back into the everything else.

- good work tuning the kick drum to the key of your song (or tuning your song to the kick drum)! lots of people forget to do this and it drives me nuts. the major modulations in the main theme are actually pretty interesting too. the 5/4 polyrhythm on the fl slayer at 1:07 is cool but because that kick plays a syncopated rhythm too you need a snare or clap on the 2 and 4 in the drum pattern so that the main 4/4 pulse isn't lost.

tl;dr the mix is really really bad but you've got a bunch of good musical ideas in this.

BlueAlpha14 responds:

I'm actually impressed you know everything I did/used almost like you had a midi file of the track.
-Yeah I figured I made it way too amped. I guess I became obsessed with the mastering. I didn't know I could only apply it to the synths however.
-I only put it as Techno because I didn't want to put it as 'Experimental' or 'Miscellaneous'. I'm not that good at identifying genre's. But I may end up doing it. Thanks for telling me about the meter, I'll lower it.
-I didn't even fully understand, but I'm glad I did it right lol. I thought I wasn't using the FL Slayer correctly as it was only at the end. I kinda rushed the end because I was so worried I was gonna lose it and have to start over. I'll play around with some claps and snares to see how well it will work.
Thank you for the detailed review as it did help rather than saying it was good or bad. I will fix the issues and release an updated version tomorrow. I'll probably just update this submission. I hope you can listen to the updated version.
~Alpha

[Lighthouse]

lush af! love the bass pitchbends, actually everything is layered really nicely. i kept wanting this to develop into something more musical but it works well as a standalone soundscape piece.

one thing: the field recording is very noisy, not sure if this is because of sub-par hardware, a very quiet source or a very "blatant" dither. if it's because of normalising/compression then this is the kind of thing where recording at 24/48 is super useful! that said, the noise is worked into the rest of the textures once everything gets into gear. though it would be good to lowpass it and then automate the cutoff in and out in time with that spooky midrange pad; right now it's the only element of the soundscape that has no dynamic movement (which would be fine if it had a strong tonal center to base the track around)

anyway this is neat!

SierraRising responds:

I´ve been hoping to hear from you again, your reviews are always very detailed and useful! I would have liked for there to have been more variation, but I mainly wanted to try out an ambient atmosphere this time.
I have yet to learn about mixing my own recordings into tracks. I use a Tascam DR-05, and it´s fairly good, in my opinion, though I´m open to suggestions for possible upgrades in the future, if you have any. I have another similar ambient piece scheduled for tomorrow or the day after, so I´ll try using the cutoff technique you mentioned.
In the meantime, thank you very much for the review! Very helpful, as always!

[Pixel Demolition]

ok let me elaborate on what tweedledum has mentioned below:

after about 10 seconds in there's a lot of different melody parts and riffs playing at the same time without many breaks and it goes for the whole song like that. that's difficult to listen to because our brains are dumb, and it also creates dissonance at certain parts because the riffs aren't designed with counterpoint or obligato in mind. individually, each of the parts are decent - why not spread them out across the track more and give the song some more definite structure? the part at 1:21 is really well done and sounds great cause there's one cool melody with a subtle counterpoint and simple arpeggios and it works! wish it was longer tho.

also the drums don't sound very good cause the synths are too loud so when everything hits the master limiter (or 0dB if ur a dum dum and don't have a master limiter) the attack of the kick and snare gets squished under all the crunchy synth stuff.

Edman520 responds:

Yea I noticed those things especially with the drums. Thanks for the feedback!

[some psy trance]

needs more phasers

seriously tho that 303-alike synth is on point.

Sequenced responds:

boners

[how to make #1 on itunes]

needs more lil jon

Sequenced responds:

needs more cock

[I am the greater audio portal]

no fart sample 0/10

Sequenced responds:

I'm sorry

[generic psy trance]

dok dok dok dok dok dok dok dok

Sequenced responds:

It's catchy

[Sierra Rising - Mara]

hats are suuuuuper loud! i thought it was weird the way they sway at first but i ended up enjoying that a lot, though if they sat under the kick/snare instead of on top it'd be better. i don't think the piano reverb is an issue, actually it kinda blurs the notes out and makes them sit really nicely with the pad sound. the kick could do with some boosting, just to bring it a little bit below the snare (which is perfect btw).

the main thing with your melody is that you have very few repeated phrases at all within it, and since it's a really long melody it makes it hard to remember. you also use some strange voice leadings which clash with the underlying chords (e.g. 3m14s). my rule of thumb is if you can sing or hum it out loud it's probably a good melody. honestly if your melody and chord progression was half as long and you just repeated it twice it'd already improve things quite a lot!

overall your sound design is pretty interesting, and you've identified melodies as a weakness already. keep it up!

SierraRising responds:

I´ll be sure to lower the hats next time. Actually the high end in general could have probably been lower, come to think of it.
I never thought of singing or humming my melodies out, that´s really cool. The melody actually does repeat twice, and I probably should have left a bit more memorable repetition, it´s just that repetition has been a huge problem for me and I wanted to end that.

Thank you very much for the review, it means a lot to me!

[Liquid piano 2000]

this would sound 1000x times better if the piano was something like that old thin alice deejay 90s pulse lead and the kick was way louder and the water/bird noises were really soft (cause they sound kinda dumb, soz) w/ more reverb.

snare rushes without a crash or something to finish them off sound really weird. the last two notes on the pan flute are redundant cause your melody already resolves to the tonic and there's no chords underneath to give them context. but overall i actually quite like this cause i've been listening to (and making!) heaps of twee dance tunes lately.

UserSigon responds:

I thought about making it into a really dance track with saw pulse leads and stuff but I wanted to keep the original theme of the piano
The kick is intentionally softer, so you're kinda right this is not a dance song but at the same time it tries to be but fails hard; it's just a weird mix but I kinda like it

Gotcha on the snare rolls, thanks for the tip. It did sound weird, but couldn't figure out how to fix it. I think I understand what you mean for the last two notes (if you mean the real last two notes of the song); it's A) i should have added chords at the end or; B) i should have ended 2 notes before, since it was the tonic C# anyway

thank you bro this was helpful