I couldnt listen to the examples; Just askin: were These kinda Ambient Tunes? BC SM kinda introduced Ambient into VGM, and as much as i love Ambient i think it's one of the First to "Fall"; Ambient with some base melodic themes Is kinda Ez to do Alright. Just sayin.

Sounds so modern :) Ty For all the Musik 20 yrs ago maze, and keep rock in!!! (I honestly gotta listen to your newer stuff sometime. American Album lotsa plays But after that...)

Sounds phat on crappy JBL, i Like this new Intermezzo!  You're striking gold methinks! Päd Sounds Amazing and ethnic lead as well!

Howdy, VQ! Also gonna reiterate live review notes for posterity: The judges honed in on the fuzziness happening from 3:25-4:09. It's highly likely to be too much saturation on something. This can be tamed with a high shelf cut around 6-8kHz or by pulling the saturation back about 10%. The modulation/key change into the same section was a great idea that needs the proper preparation for the listeners to stick with it. I think we determined you're going from Ab Major to E Major. Major third modulations are pretty easy to handle as modulations go -- I mentioned going to a shared chord between the keys but you don't have many between these two keys. However, Hemo suggested some tritone substitution action. In this case, do an Ab7 (Ab-C-Eb-Gb) chord into (in this case) a B7 (B-D#-F#-A) chord leading into the change into the E Major (E-G#-B). You can omit the 5ths on the 7 chords (Eb and F#, respectively) if you don't have enough voices to cover the chords -- but keep the 7th intervals spread out to minimize the potential dissonance.

Hi VQ! Gonna reiterate what I can from the live review: Be very selective about what voice is the focus in each section, and pare back parts that aren't providing texture for your rhythm and harmony lines Consider swapping the bass ostinato from Shinobi 3 in the middle sections of the piece with another melodic phrase from your sources; I recommend the descending arpeggio siren thing from Rise of the Robots This is gonna be a groove machine when you're done. It always sucks to go back and start from scratch on mixes but it's worth it in the end!