midimachine's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Intercourse]

hnnnnnnnnnngh

aaaaaaaaaargh amazing lead. this is what would happen if ratatat made a dubstep track.actually i think some crunchy electric guitars would sit nicely in the downtime.

sick modulations, loving the filtering especially. a lot of basslines have really obnoxious resonance but this is really smooth.

909 kick is a good choice for punchiness, much sidechaining going on here? it's certainly cutting through in any case, fantastic!

epiano comes back in nicely, fills out the rest of the space quite comfortably

pads at the start are the only thing that bother me, i think it's just the pitch bending rather than their actual tonality though.

radical stuff. woo!

Quarl responds:

haha, i love ratatat :)

[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

[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!

[(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

[Blades of Hattori Hanzo]

shhhhhhhhhpongley

very nice psy stuff, the leads and chorusey percussion remind of sonicanimation a lot which is pretty great. the gradually increased triplet rolling on some of the leads is something i've never heard before though, refreshing to listen to.

its 3am so i can't pick anything bad about this atm. dont dig the organ sound around 3m50s but idk i might listen to this tomorrow and think it's the shit so whatever. brill track.

S3C responds:

thanks for the review man :]

[Gatekeeper of the Necropo]

bitchin

gorgeous progression, i'd probably end up doing something dumb like compress and bandpass filter the strings so they sound old but idk this is slick.

feels like nobuo vs tchaikovsky to me

S3C responds:

i actually did that to one of the choir sounds haha. and thanks for another review, I probably owe you one or two now.

[zebramuscles]

ehhh

when you have one extremely bassy instrument in a track you need to take the low frequencies out of everything else otherwise the low end of the mix sounds awwwwful on subs.

it's also not a great idea to reverberate low frequencies unless there isn't a whole lot going on in the rest of the mix.

tune was pretty strange and incoherant but not cringe-worthy.

sailingships responds:

the problem is all the stuff i make is mixed on older speakers, not bad ones, but the sub is blown. sometimes ill use headphones too... but thanks for the tip ill keep it in mind.