Geekygami's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Sub Nautical]

Nice, makes me think of Terraria for some reason
Personally I don't see any problem with the mix

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Thanks! Not the first time my stuff has reminded people of Terraria. : )

[Hey Suse On The Beach (Instrumental)]

Getting Terraria vibes from this one

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Cool beans. <:3

[Ceminox]

My favorite from you by far.
Far beyond me to even begin to criticize or describe, this is amazing from a mixing standpoint as much as from a composition standpoint.

The sound design is also pretty good.
God, I just love this so much.

[At the Speed of Light]

If Touhou used more synths it'd give you this

[after medi]

While it's overall quite dissonant, I think it's interesting.
I like your choices of instruments, but I feel that the mixing needs a lot of work.

As it is I can't be entirely certain that the song is intended to be incredibly muddy.
The instruments being used suggests otherwise, as they otherwise seem like very harsh instruments (Not that that's a problem, mind you, I just think the global reverb is doing them a disservice.)

If I would give a recommendation, it would be to have duplicated signals for each instrument in their own bus, and making those duplicates have fully wet reverb until you can't hear the dry signal anymore, right.
If you do that, and then sidechain the reverb with the dry signal, you'll get nice, harsh instruments with much more controlled reverb, and you'll be able to tweak it for each instrument individually, which would serve to remove basically all of the mud in the mix.

(Sidechaining is essentially auto ducking the volume of a signal based on another signal, generally speaking. I'd recommend doing that between your drums and the rest of the instruments as well. It doesn't need to be extreme, or even perceptibly audible, it'll just make the mix clearer again.)

... Ah. Remember to cut off unused frequencies from all of your bus signals, and make sure to be selective about which instruments you allow to have sub bass or high amounts of high end.

One more thing. If you were trying to go for wide sounds, using reverb for that will just muddy up the mix, again. You'll want to pan your instruments instead, you can go by ear for that usually. That'll create differing signals in both ears, which creates the wideness you want without muddying the mix.

Circleguy78 responds:

hey geekygami, thank you so much for the constructive feedback :}

(also sorry for my tardy response.)

ye a lot of the decisions I made with this song were a combination of my lack of knowledge in music theory and mixing. at the time, I tried to rework a song I had made previously and give it a more weird dreamy feeling to it. I ended up slowing the tempo, dumping some reverb, and rearranging the instruments for the most part.

sorry if I couldn't delve into specifics here since my knowledge and lingo is still pretty subpar.

again, thank you for the feedback. I will try to apply these suggestions if I decide to do a similar project in the future :D every tip helps

[Metroid]

This is bloody fantastic!

I love everything about it.

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Awesome! Thank you! I had fun with this one. :3

[Planet Escape (remastered)]

When the song started I had an inkling of a doubt I was supposed to keep listening for a long while.

That was the right choice. Despite the very eclectic scales being used, the song kind of grows on you over time.

The production value is definitely up there, everything is perfectly crisp and audible, any distortion that's part of the song isn't due to clipping.

Overall it's impressive.

Happy New Year!

Midnights-Ocean responds:

Thanks so much for taking the time to listen! I think a lot of my music is that way. So happy the production is getting good responses. : )

[Remaster/Arrange: Bad Apple]

I was going to do a remix of A Sacred Lot, and then I stumbled upon this

This is the kind of remix I'm aiming for if I'm being perfectly honest

I'm not entirely sure about the note changes done all over the place, but this is otherwise pretty close to perfect I think

sylvysprit responds:

Best of luck with it!

[Forest of Mischief]

Oh god, that vibe, good stuff.
Brings me back to something akin to a mix of Wizard 101 and RuneScape, or something like Harry Potter