MindWanderer

I have to concur with the above. The approach is neat, but the harsh and loud melodica is an issue. And even though you do make use of three themes, the arrangement is only 2:40 long and leans heavily on the Water Island hook, the backing is repetitive (admittedly, intentionally), and the ending fades out, all of which combine to make the track feel underdeveloped. The judges above gave you some good advice, not the least of which was to hit up our workshop forum/Discord for more involved feedback, and I hope you take it to heart. NO

I'm afraid I have to agree with all the criticisms above. The flute is painfully loud and bright, the clarinet performance is squeaky, the soundscape is thin and lacking in character, and the overall arrangement is short and underdeveloped. That's not to say I dislike everything here! The non-clarinet performances are solid, the concept is very good, and the arrangement that is there is well-done. The flute riffing is a highlight. But the issues mentioned above are critical ones. NO

Nice synthwave upgrade to a source that doesn't have a lot to it. I found it a tad repetitive, but that's understandable for a mix that's supposed to be mellow, even moreso one that's inspired by trap. Fits the brief, well done. YES

Nice tone. The slightly shrill leads began to grate on my nerves by the end of the second main section, and I would have preferred some sort of change there to keep things fresh. The bass blaat noises sound a little bitcrushed. But overall this sounds great and does everything it sets out to do. YES

If this ever passes, I'm pretty sure it will be the most-resubmitted remix in our history. Sadly, I don't think this is the time. The sound palette is still very vanilla, and still sounds like you made it with stock synths from LMMS. FL Studio supports dozens of really great VSTs that can give you richer and more varied sounds. Not that you didn't use a large number of different synths; it seems like it changes leads every couple of measures, but all of them are simple and generic-sounding. I agree with proph about the snares being underwhelming, but I have honestly no idea what he's talking about regarding hats, crashes, and kicks. There are hats used all over the place, keeping the 4/4 time everywhere that isn't a break; cymbals are often used as transitional elements; and the kick has an easily adequate amount of bass. The instruments that aren't leads are mostly pads and sweeps, but I hear perfectly fine amounts of reverb on everything else. I think the arrangement is suitable, and the production isn't bad, but your sample choices are letting you down. Using a hundred basic ones is not going to get you where using a dozen good ones will. Hit up our workshops, either on our forums or on Discord, and get some recommendations for free VSTs, and presets for them that will do what you want. I think this will get you most of the way there. NO

I'll be honest, and this may expose my lack of formal musical training, but like DarkSim, I can't recognize source material at all until 2:13. That's past the halfway mark, which makes this less than 50% source material. And I'm personally glad for that, because it gives me an excuse to not have to evaluate the rest of this. It's certainly interesting sound design, if utterly unpleasant. I would probably pass it if it started at 2:04. But I can't personally call the source "dominant" as-is. NO

Just what I expect from ThePlasmas. A pretty straightforward but still excellently-executed metal take on the source material. Great work. YES

This is pretty quiet, especially for a metal mix. I don't quite have to max my volume out to hear it well, but I don't see any compression or limiting going on at all, and there's a good 3dB of headroom discounting the peaks. There's plenty of room for bass in particular; the bass guitar is sitting very high in the the mix, and the kicks are very quiet and thwack-y. Meanwhile, the shrill synths are way high up there, and the lead guitar is also balanced unusually high in the spectrum. The arrangement is a ton of fun, rearranging these two (really three) sources in an eclectic, exciting way. I love me some Castlevania music even on a bad day, and while this isn't the most memorable Metroid music, it works very well here. But I feel like this needs a lot more presence in general and bass in particular to be front page-worthy. Really fill out that soundscape and this'll be in good shape. NO (resubmit)

I have a similar feeling to proph's. I think there's a little more arrangement than he's giving credit for in the first two thirds, but he's right on the money about a lack of humanization in terms of timing and velocity. I'm not normally too picky about piano humanization, but even to my ears there doesn't seem to have been any effort made in this respect. The arrangement in the last third is indeed more creative, but the humanization issues persist. The changes to tempo and timing in the score help to disguise the on-the-beat timing, and pipe organ only has so much potential variation in velocity, but the same issues exist. Great ideas, lots of fun, but the execution still needs to not sound so mechanical. NO

I didn't hear the original submission. My initial impression is that this definitely doesn't seem like a 3-NO remix, so that's a good start. Opens with environmental effects that tastefully interweave melodic elements, great way of establishing tone and source together. Loud bass drop, but I don't hear any clipping. The part with the organ is pretty darn dense, though, and seems slightly distorted. After a couple of minutes of this dark take, it transitions to piano; a smooth transition, but it's a complete tonal change. A minute and a half of this and briefly back to the dark bassy stuff before an environmental ending. I can't say I'm feeling any of proph's crits. I'm not hearing a lot of repetition; each section is at most one slow full loop of the source tune. There's plenty of atmospheric whitespace to add depth without sounding static. The mechanical piano "playing" doesn't bother me much when it's largely a synthetic piece anyway. My one big gripe is that the middle piano section really doesn't go well with the beginning/ending, but the transitions into and out of it are smooth enough that it's not jarring. Overall, it must have been a massive improvement from the first version you submitted. Strong work. YES

Great start, for the first 30 seconds. Rich and melancholy. After that, though, the volume issues start. At 0:34, the first "crunch" hits, and it's overwhelmingly loud and grating. It goes downhill from there, adding more and more layers without doing any EQ or other adjustments, so it steps all over itself. The angry German voice is so loud you can't hear anything past it but drums. So yeah, proph had it right: Conceptually, this is fantastic. It just needs a healthy dose of production work so that everything is audible and clear. NO

Whoa. Lots of faux age distortion making the whole track warble. There have been a lot of lo-fi tracks in the queue lately, but this is a whole new level. I'm surprised it doesn't have more of a crackle to make it sound like an old record. The source wasn't immediately recognizable, but after a couple of listens it sank in. I'm amused that Larry had no problems with it in the previous vote, because his usual surgical timestamping method would result in cutting out like ¾ of the notes here. Nujabes's stuff does tend to cut out pretty abruptly, with no ending to speak of, so I see where you were coming from. This track is much the same. You ended it with a mass of distortion, so it's clear the track wasn't simply cut off, but you didn't write a musical ending of any kind. It's a cop-out; while better than just ending in the middle of a note, it still doesn't do what an ending needs to do. Even a fade-out would work better. I don't like the age effect, but that's mostly personal preference. My big beef is that ending. I almost never NO a remix based just on the ending, but this one's really bad. Even the distorted warble doesn't end on the tonic, which would be so easy. Maybe not a 5-minute fix, but not much more. So I think my vote has to be the same as Larry's was last time. NO (resubmit)

That's some dirty metal you've got there. I always have trouble with these "DOOM-inspired" remixes, because DOOM's soundtrack is surprisingly clean, and these remixes typically aren't. However, it is clean enough to make out the melodies, buried as they are under the drums and chugs. I'm of the opinion that this style of mixing is objectively wrong, but the entire genre does it this way, so I can't really object to it on those grounds. The approach is creative as hell. I didn't have any problems picking out source material despite the (intentionally) messy production. Great stuff. YES

Opens with a sample from Bravely Second (a confusing choice!); given that this is a SquareEnix game, which we can't accept samples from, this is instantly a CONDITIONAL at best. That has to go, for legal reasons. I had to double-check to make sure the guitar wasn't also sampled; it's buried so deep under those massive, pounding beats that I can barely make it out. As near as I can tell, it's just a layer of these soundscape-dominating beats played over the two sources layered on top of each other, and repeated many times until it fades out. It's an interesting starting point, but it needs a whole lot more fleshing out to become an entire song. Also if you're going to put your melody in the background, whatever is lying on top of it has to be absolutely masterful; it's very challenging to pull off. NO

This is pretty quiet overall. I see it peaks at exactly 0 dB, but it doesn't seem to have any compression. I had to turn up my volume by about 25% over normal. The flutes are almost inaudible. I thought the cello was quite nice in the beginning, but the ensemble violin sample is very much not; it sounds extremely fake and mechanical. Then when the cello returns at 2:56, it conflicts with the violins and loses all its nice timbre, not even sounding like a cello anymore. The brass has a better tone, but no brass ensemble is ever going to end a note all on the exact same millisecond. So I have to agree with proph: The arrangement is quite good, with a lot of nuance and creativity, but the sample quality and production fall well short of our needs. NO (resubmit)