Mich's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Into The Eclipse]

Thoroughly enjoyed

That was one beautiful piece of art.

I like the recording at the start, but I'm just curious; where did you record that? It sounds like some sort of hallway next to a machine room, somehow. It does sound great as an introduction to the smoother pads etcetera, although I don't really understand how these machine sounds fit in with the story behind the song. Nonetheless, it works.

I really appreciate your recording work here, you've nicely laid out the sounds in the stereo spectrum, and at some points even in another dimension-I got the feeling there were sounds behind me at times. Excellent re-verb work as well, it shows that you've spent time getting those effects set up properly, to achieve the right depth to your sounds. Either that, or you've actually recorded those in a space with that kind of re-verb qualities.

Anyway, the song gives of quite a peaceful feeling throughout the first 5 minutes, the person dying is lying at peace in a bed. Then at 5 minutes into the song, the theme darkens in a scary way. Everything works smoothly, yet somehow, everything gets dark, things pitch down, more raw sounding synthesizers come in (I hear a faint little saw in there), and it gives an overall scary, doomed feeling. You know the end is near.

Then the more bass-y sounds make way for a couple of lighter synthesizers, to indicate that the suffering is pretty much over, we can be at peace again, on the other side of the door. We've walked into the light, and all is, however quite sad, okay.

Here's where the breathing doesn't make too much sense to me, since the person has passed away, they shouldn't be breathing. Then again, it may be one sitting by the deathbed, who has felt what just happened, and is now breathing heavily partly in relief, for the now deceased person is no longer suffering; and partly in sadness, for they are no longer with them.

That about rounds it up. This is not quite a piece I'd like listening to when going to bad, given the story behind it. It does manage to inflict emotions in the listener very well, and I suppose they are the emotions you intended to inflict as well. That makes it a succeeded mission. Great job.

FatKidWitAJetPak responds:

I really do appreciate your extensive review! As I said in the authors comments, this song is about a man dying in its literal sense. It goes through a complex wave of emotions as he lies in bed, perhaps feeling his body lifting into the air as everything around him slows down to a peaceful harmony. Because he is dying, time around him does not make much sense. Therefore, the sounds that come in are not necessarily in time order. He breathes at the end because it is a sort of flashback in time of him breathing, as he closes his eyes for the final time. It is kind of hard to explain, but most of this song digs deep into the subconscious. However, the very ending is him simply staring into nothing, realizing that he is about to die after experiencing that last second of whatever he is experiencing.

Now that all that mumbo jumbo is out of the way, here is some technical information:

I played it all on my mac keyboard in garageband with hand crafted pads.
I recorded many sounds including the inside of a plane flying over arkansas, my fingers popping out of a bottle, me typing on my keyboard, breathing, and talking to people. i wanted it to be a sort of trippy experience with sounds that could be anything, but at the same time the sounds going on around this man as he is dying in his bed.

I mixed the reverb and stuff using a great VST for the mac called "Ambient" and "Kore Player" with the helpful audio units inside Garageband called "Reverb" and "Echo" for an extra dash of background.

Thanks again. :)

[Sois Side Soldier v2]

Terribly awesome or something

As Spikrodd mentioned, you have an incredible ability to make terrible sounding things awesome.

Since this is not a serious submissions, this is not a serious review either, or something.
SOIS SOIS SOIS SOIS

The laughing was so fantastic. I've said it and I'll say it again: Du(m)bstep is ideal for joke songs like this or Bjra's 'The room dubstep'.
This > Mine.

SOIS

Reanu-Keeves responds:

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

[Tranc(E)Pheonix]

Not bad

Starts off with a kind of laid back feel; the first impression to me is that you sidechain a bit too deep there, but on the second listen that's okay.

You create a nice sort of ambience with reverb effect in there, and I'm digging the smooth drumline.

I'm not much of a fan of what you do around 1:10; the 'extreme' panning and some high-resonance-like effect, it makes me flinch a bit, if that word is appropriate. I must admit that it's creative though, the execution could just be a bit more smooth.

After that effect, the nice ambience comes back with the reverb, nice. I'd like to mention that your bass sounds a bit 'raw' for my liking though, maybe try playing with more sine and triangle waveforms instead of saws; to create a smoother feel to it.

Overall I had the impression that the song didn't really lead anywhere, but maybe that's just part of the style. Where aiming for something 'minimal' -like? If so, good work.

About the outro: I think keeping the hi-hats and such in there would've worked well, as you cut back to simply the kickdrum all of sudden. You could cut a bit of that silence at the end too by the way.

Summarized: good work, but could use some little improvements. I hope my review can help with that. :p

Mans0n responds:

YES! exactly what i needed! real criticism! thanks for the honest helpful review!

[First Musings]

Minimalistic, but a nice vibe.

As the summary states, I like the minimal feel you get there at the start.
It creates some sort of comic feel at first. When the second instrument comes in, you get a nice atmosphere going.

The instruments sound very realistic, you've got a nice plugin there.
At one point the notes seem a bit random, but they're all nice and harmonic (you're way too good at harmonics, lol).

The strongs come in unexpectedly, but very fitting. You get quite some energy going there, I like that.

About that crackle - it actually gives it some sort of lo-fi feel, which I like. Maybe you could experiment around with that effect intentionally a bit.

I hope you're still going to extend this into a full song, it's a really nice song you've got going.

Keep up your stuff man. :)

-Mich

loansindi responds:

Thanks for the review MICH!

Sometime I hope to approach a full orchestration, but minimalism is all that really works out well for me. I really liked this one, starting with the bassoon.

Garritan's sounds are fine, except for the brass. I think the key is a bit of reverb on the individual instrumentation.

I'm curious which point seemed random, there are definitely spots where melody was less driven by the structure of the bassoon.

I think the instrumentation all works together, the clarinet and violin speak together quite well.

I really wish I knew where the crackle came from. But yeah, it does kind of feel like vinyl, now that you mention it.

I want to extend this piece, I think I need to work on increasing orchestration next.

[SN |Pristine| SN]

Nice glitchy and lo-fi

Unlike Supersteph54, I do like me some glitch from time to time.

I like how it started out crackling in a really lo-fi style. You have a nicely set band pass filter there too.

Reverb-y closed hihats are good. Flawless transistion to the full beat.
I think the beat is quite in-your face, perhaps a little too bassy to fit with the rest of the style.

You've got a very nice ambience going in here though. I guess with delayed and reverbed synths.

The glithy effects on your drums are very well done (what did you make that with?) Maybe the climax of the song could've lasted a bit longer, but overall, it's a very nice product.

Keep it up and such!

-Mich

SessileNomad responds:

AWW hey its MICH

thats not a band pass filter, i just EQ'ed them with like very little highs and no lows

the beat being in your face...i dont really know what to say about that, personal taste i guess, i like it though

hmm i could have had a secondary climax right after it, coulda been good

the glitchy effects on the drums are just arpegiations, really simple to do compared to other glitch effects

peace out

SessileNomad

[Ziende Ben Ik Blind Geworden]

Radio friendly song :p

As the summary states, this is pretty much a tuypical radio friendly song.And that doesn't have to be a bad thing at all.

The piano melody was played very well, and you can feel the emotion put in it by the player (you?), because fo the velocity changes.

I like how the piano changes through the song. It gets more character. Then those strings give a bit more melancholy (if that's the word) to it.

The only thing why I'm giving not a ten is the lyrics structure. The song would've been more interesting fi there were different verses instead of just the same verse repeated.

But in all, very nice work by all of you. Try submitting it to some label or so, they might like it ;)

Keep it up!

- side note: I'm from Belgium, Flemish, so I understand the lyrics.

mjattie responds:

hey well, you're right about the lyrics. (but we're lazy :P)

Yes I played the piano and the singer of my band sang the vocals.

Thanks a lot michimself, we appreciate the feedback!

[Hardball!]

Nice on the drums and effects part, but...

I must say, you've been very innovative on the drum patterns and effects in this song, good job; they kept it interesting over the 5 minutes.

I think this track has good potential to be a really bad-ass drum 'n bass song, but there's one thing that really bugged me about it.

I had the constant idea there was some annoying sound through the whole track. After listening a few times I noticed this was just a bunch of very loud, extremely low bass frequencies.
Admitted, the genre's name is drum 'n BASS, but you still need to keep your eye on some meters.

I ran your track through a spectrum analyzer and noticed that even at 20hz, it was constantly peaking around -18db. The peak through the song was -2 db (at this frequency), which is actually far too high.

I suggest cutting off the bass under 40Hz, as those are pretty low frequencies already. Such frequencies (the more at this volume) make your mix very muddy, and kind of noisy.

Perhaps it'd be a good idea to try and make an all new bass, located at slightly higher frequencies. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing to dive to the really low (sub) frequecies regularly, but you don't want to have it as a constant bass around there.

I hope that gives you a bit of an idea what to work on; I reckon you could make a really good DnB track once this issue is adressed.

Another tip I want to give you: Keep the overal (master) volume level under -6db, to avoid clipping.

Hope I helped!

PearlDrummer516 responds:

Thanks a lot on the drum comment. Being a drummer, I often find myself really focusing on the drum sections of my songs. I'm glad you enjoyed them. As far as mixing goes, I've been seeing lately that I have a lot to learn. When you speak of running songs at certain hertz, and peaking at certain decibel levels, I have no idea what that means. Perhaps you could educate me in a private message, or link me to a site with a written explanation or video tutorial? Also, if you could explain clipping?

Anyways, I want to thank you for the great, informative, and constructive review. Those are the reviews are really enjoy, as they help me to become better. I'm also glad you think the song has potential. The fact that you were able to vote a seven on this song, even with all the faults in mixing clearly shows that you overall enjoyed the song, and that if I clean it up, it can easily be a 10. Thank you Michaël for your time!

- Arron -

[Invention No. 2]

You make fun stuff when drunk.

Pizzicato strings definitely sound nice with that little melody you have there.

Maybe you would be more statisfied with the brass if you simply lowered the volume of it a tad bit. The moment it comes in I just feel like 'that's too loud'. No shit, lol.

At first I got the idea that the panning was a bit faulty with the pizzicato strings and the brass to the right, but when you introduced the harp it made more sense. Nice play.

I've got an idea for something you could (perhaps in a sober state);
extend what you have, and add some 'heavier' strings to it, perhaps cello or contrabass.

If you really want to go with it (which I doubt you do though :p), you could merge the track with some metal recording, and make once big fusion track of it. I know you could do it.

Anyway, good work loans, keep on it.

loansindi responds:

Yeah, now that you mention it the brass is hella loud.

Extending it would be doable I think, if I just established a few variations on themes.

The thing about the metal though, I'm just not a lead player so I'd have to bring someone in for that part.

Thanks for the review

[Post Dr.Pepper]

Nice and mellow

As I just read in your response to MH16, nifty use of a guitar amp here.

It has this kind of mellow, relaxed feel to it. (If that's the proper use of 'mellow').
Nice use of those string, pretty typical in hip hop (or am I wrong there?), but they add to the nice feel of it.

To be honest, I would've like it better if you had made a more 'complex' drum pattern to it. To give a slightly more speedy feel to it than it has now.

The drum samples and/or the processing of them were pretty top-notch though. Simple and clean.

Sorry for the not-so-lengthy review, but I can't really say much about hip-hop as I barely listen to any- which makes it automatically hard to review one. Hope it was a bit helpful anyway.

Keep it up dude. :)

Syntrus responds:

Yeah analog strings like that and the Nanotron (mellotron emulator) I used were standard at one point in hip-hop. Thank you for the review!

[SR - Sleeperhold -demo-]

Very soothing

I like the combination of guitar and more 'electronic' sounding instruments.

It sounds all very simple, yet quite perfect. It got me in a really lovely mood, to be honest.

Maybe you could add a bit of stereo width to the guitar track you can still hear out the end. (I don't know how else I'd tell you which one I mean).

Your bass is very simple, just ongoing tones, which fit the style well. I'd turn down the volume on it just a bit though, I'm listening on my headphones (which have a better bass response than AV40's (which I have too).

Your drums are nice breakbeatish, a nice soft layer over the rest, which makes it a calming song. Keep this up!

SineRider responds:

Thanks for the review Mich. I'm thinking of doing a little more with this one, I just haven't had the inspiration yet. I did notice the bass is a bit loud. I'll make sure to fix it up a bit when I finish up the next version.

a helpful review? well what do you know