midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cosmos traveler]

lots of confusing rhythms for a trancey breakbeat thing. take fruity limiter off while you're mixing cause there are clearly some instruments that are too loud and end up taking precedence in the compressed mix. like it just sounds really messy compared to a more the sound design is ok but feels very preset, that string progression is not super interesting either. i do like that soft rolling piano sound and the rough bass. duck the bass synth under the kick so the low frequencies aren't slopping all other each other, though.

CrisTheGamer responds:

Thank you, I will take your advice and I will adjust the volume for my next song.

[~SW~ Annar]

you say you focused more on melody (which pays off in a lot of aspects btw) but this still feels technical and unrelenting like most of your other stuff and has plenty of atmosphere to boot. the breakdown is definitely my favourite part.

the drum programming and polymetric counterpoint make for a challenging listen in all the right ways, yet everything has a really well defined place in the track despite the mixing caveats. i think the sound design is a bit weaker than your usual output, but the crunchy pad and pseudo-guitar lead are totally on point. really nice work!

SkyeWint responds:

sup.

I guess it is pretty unrelentingly technical. Honestly, I was slightly worried I was overdoing it with some of the runs since I was slightly emulating PirateCrab and Kor-Rune in the pseudo-guitar work (definitely Kor-Rune with the drums). Half of me wishes I had an actual guitar and the other half of me is like "lol no way I could play that well".

The drum programming was easily some of the hardest stuff in this - I really wanted a rhythmic counterpoint going along with the melodies and similar. A lot of the time it mirrors the melody's rhythms and even plays along with the toms a few times.

Funny thing about the mixing btw: When I started mastering, I found that I had mixed it almost completely consistent with an even frequency distribution: white noise almost perfectly mirrored it, with the one caveat of the bass being slightly heavier (as normal). Normally the treble of my tracks are slightly lacking or the mids are. One of the two. So this made it super easy to master it with ridiculously high amounts of limiting, hence why it's loud as all hell without really being muddy much at all.

[-DOWN PROWN 1.02-]

it's kinda just a bunch of random default FL sounds thrown together innit? haha

there's a certain quirky lo-fi charm to it and that constant 808 kick gives it some consistency - if you boosted that kick and made the tail shorter so that some of the other instruments ducked behind the beat you'd be able to make a pretty interesting deep/future house track out of this. i also liked the way you used the pitched snare on top of the melody, got a real pc music vibe about it.

work on your intro, builds and outro though cause those parts were kinda random and shitty in this song. the percussion is also kinda dry and doesn't really fit with that supersaw melody which is drowning in reverb - gradually drowning all your percs in reverb and then cutting the reverb entirely just before a drop is a actually a cool thing to do for buildups!

IPSBLT responds:

Haha,not really ;D But you can say your random feeling starts from my idea.In this song i used stuffs i've never used before,like Sakura or Toxic Biohazard;and also toms,industrial snares and hits.
To be honest,i dont really think my work here is that random and shitty...But yeah,i'll try to improve on the next song because this song is just an experiment anyway!!!
Thanks! (definitely try future house next :)

[~Echo~ Trust Issues]

i'd make kick tail shorter on successive hits to give the bassier synths more room to breathe. the amens need to come up just a bit. don't drop the low bass away when the riser comes in. loving the vocal lead and the big chord stabs. the heavy phaser drop is really neat! looking forward to the finished product :)

aliaspharow responds:

Thanks man :D i actually cut the tail pretty short but i guess I'll cut it shorter and see how that feels. I actually did a lot of what i did following a 2013 sub focus tutorial that apparently a lot of people have seen lol. Solid advice as usual Midi! Thanks for the consistent reviews! Love your submission as well :) not sure I'd have a chance if i was against you lmao

[~SW~ Thurm ins_wa_]

get fucked! this is really fantastic. rockin that 7/4 so hard

SkyeWint responds:

<3 7/4 dnb for the win, friend

[~Echo~ Understated (Instrumental WIP)]

haha, my jams! i really like the way the prog house chord stabs sit against the trap beat.
snare needed a bit more tone and less snap, feels kinda harsh as it is. lead is too harsh at its peaks as well imo, but i love the pitchbends and vibrato. would've been great to hear a fully structured piece with a real ending n buildups and stuff :(

aliaspharow responds:

i nose v.v
wow i updated it at midnight and forgot to press submit... well enjoy the slightly better mix for what its worth

[Running Free]

eno af intro. i'd ease up on the low-end reverbs.

a lot of the electro percs are weirdly thin, in both their tone and sparse usage. i dunno if that was a style choice or a lack of room between a chunky af bass and gigantic stereo string section, but contrasting the thematic sections against the lush intro makes me think it's the latter

not much to say about the break in the middle and the subsequent buildup. that whole section was just stunning.

really fantastic work overall. i feel like it needs a little more (or way less) emphasis on the percussion tho!

Jakey-San responds:

Thank you sir. Admittedly I'm a novice at mixing electronics. Thanks for the tip!

[In Gods Mournful Design]

would've been good to have more breaks from the stormdrum, it's this unrelenting, uncomfortable wall of sound. the choir patch is kinda cloudy, would be good for it to be a bit clearer so that the lyrics were actually intelligible without reading them (also it's "could have saved" hehe) - actually it felt like the phrasing of the lyrics was super stiff at times too. crotchets 4 dayzzzz!

tbh it was kinda hard to get a sense of melodic theme. it feels like you write in a very stream-of-consciousness way which isn't always bad, especially when you tie stuff together well in terms of instrumentation. but it should still be anchored to a strong motif imo - the first 90 seconds or so are really good at this, maybe too repetitious but i've never found repetition to be inherently bad. honestly i don't really like how the melodies interact with the underlying chords - sometimes it feels like you accidentally wrote polymodal music without thinking about it. maybe that's just a preference thing from me though

anything i didn't mention was really good though. great work!

Lich responds:

I record alot of my patterns live from my MIDI Controller and just quantize them accordingly which is why it's most probably very stream-of-conscious sounding. EWQL Symphonic Choirs does sound pretty dated though I agree. It's pretty difficult to get it to sound clear but at least I tried haha. I'll be sure to tone down on the Big Drums in future submissions, I did go abit overboard on this one.

gl in Round 2 <3

[noodles]

deep af. been taking inspiration from the mariana trench?

the more dubsteppy bit with the big snare was such a tease, but i like that you sat on the more mellow beat with the sidestick snare and 808, kept everything more chill and unique. ezpz

Sequenced responds:

oranges

[Majestic They Are]

sounds like the intro for a chicane track, was waiting for bryan adams to start singing haha
the emotion starts ramping up with that clari, nice! the brass/choir layer has a really slow attack which kinda throws it way ahead of the beat, you can trigger those notes a little earlier so they hit their peak volume on the beat.

the drum kit is kinda general midi sounding and have a really different energy to the rest of the song, like you have this really laid back pop ballad beat up against this beautiful, epic orchestra and it's just weird haha. i think a really subtle but large reverb (in terms of room size) on the kick and snare (toms too maybe?) might give them the same presence. honestly, i'd probably just try a totally different approach for the percussion with totally different samples.

otherwise this was really good. i liked the structure in particular, i'm a sucker for pieces with long builds and lots of tension :)

papkee responds:

lots of tension is what I do best beby <3

The horn attack problem was one of those things that I noticed but didn't do too much about. The problem was that Kontakt was having issues loading all the samples for all of the instruments and it was lagging behind a bit.

The drums were something I didn't think sounded too bad, but after listening to the same thing for three days straight you start to not notice things. There wasn't much done to them and truthfully I should have performed them instead of just programming them. But whatever, I had to get the track done before I went down to school for the year.

But thanks for the review and I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with for this thing.