I recently finished my Crisis Core remix “Wings Of Freedom” and uploaded it on several platforms:   You'll just have to turn up the volume quite a bit, as I master all my soundtracks at EBU R 128 loudness standards to around -23 dBFS in favor of dynamics, sound quality and to avoid loudness differences between my soundtracks and remixes (quite a similar level of loudness as lots of the original mixes of soundtracks from the early 80s and thus about half as loud as many modern mixes). Maybe I'll present it in more detail in the remix thread sometime soon and submit it to the judging panel. But before that, I still wanted to finish and present a small, quite interesting mixing sound experiment with mono and stereo signal sources.

Ahah, pretty cool interpretation turning this into a synthwave thing. I was digging it from the beginning. I will say that the saw-wavy kind of arp thing you've got going on for the first minute or so is sticking out to me. It could just use a little carving on the EQ around 2KHz I think, or push back in the mix. My ears were really fatigued by the time they got their first break at 1:00. I believe prohetik is saying the same thing above, saying that it's tough to hear the melody under "that arpeggiating instrument."  I think all these elements are mixed together well; classic synthwave stuff. Your production is on point, though; it gels together nicely without the wall-of-sound that often comes with synthwave mixed poorly. Great job overall. However, whn the drop came back in at 1:35 is when I started thinking to myself that it was starting to sound a little repetitive. By the time 3:00 came around I was thinking to myself that there's only a few bars of music in this that are repeated in order to generate a piece that's 3 minutes long. When I went back and listened to it, I found that it was right; we have essentially just about 30 seconds of music here once you strip out the repetitions, so it's going to fall below the bar for me on arrangement. At 2:50 I was like "ah! finally some new stuff" and then the song just sort of ended.  This needs another pass to address the repetition/copy paste. The source for this is EXTREMELY rich; you should definitely have no problem ideating some more variations with this and still keeping that synthwave feel. You've got the mixing down, other than my nitpicks above, but this needs more variety.    NO (resubmit)

Your sound palette has those familiar Synthwave tropes - the driving beat, the synthetic drums and bass, and the choice of backing synths all work together to bring the genre alive.  Do note that at 0:32, you used the same patch to provide both a riff and the melody, and their identical tone and stereo placement make it hard to distinguish them.  Did you mean to use a different-sounding patch for the melody there and at 1:51?  If not, think about clarity for your instrument parts if you haven't done so already - like where they can be in the stereo field, additional layers if needed, or any separation via EQ tweaks.  Aside from the clash of two patches, it's not overly chaotic in its current state. Source-wise, this track discarded the first 53 seconds and used that as the foundation - that entire stretch that anchored itself in that original E Minor key.  Then, what followed was one loop through almost the remainder of the source, a simple breakdown, and a near-copy-paste of that previous loop before using the source's conclusion for the ending.  You got the right idea with adding the pulsing rhythm synth at 1:41, but there's still more to do - Brad has already mentioned some amazing ideas for changing things up in the second half and adding more variations to the drum writing to keep making it feel fresh.  A "theme and variations" approach to arrangement is fine, but I do want to hear those variations. :) I am all in favor of more synthwave, especially Stardew synthwave - and I see something special in this rough cut.  I would love to hear another version with the copy-pasta problem addressed first and foremost, with further thought taken to drum variation and the dual patch issue.  Do take advantage of the workshop on the Forums and Discord - help is but a mouse click away. NO (resubmit)

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