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Hopefully we get some other entries!

This is a good method that works for me a lot of times. In fact I think most of my most transformative mixes come from "shower humming".

Were you actually looking for a mod review? (If not, just pretend this is regular critique.) ARRANGEMENT I'm not very familiar with these sources, but after listening to this back and forth, it seems to be a fairly conservative arrangement. Not necessarily an issue in and of itself, but in terms of OCR guidelines, a ReMix that sounds too close to the original generally doesn't demonstrate as much interpretation as it could. What I would suggest is deviation in the (i) structure, (ii) rhythm, (iii) harmonies, and so on. I have this feeling that you maybe listened to the original and tried to be faithful to it, and ended up having very similar note sequences on each instrument; from what I can tell, this ended up being not too far from an instrument switch on a nearly exact transcription. A nice analogy is plagiarism (sans the connotation); if you look at someone else's work and just try to reword it, chances are you might not really reword it that much if you really like their wording. But if you don't have that person's work in front of you, and you just try to come up with the same ideas in your own words, you have a much better chance of making a more original work that satisfies the assignment. OVERALL I like the result personally, and I can appreciate the melodic variation you tried later on in the track. The pacing is alright, and I didn't find it all that repetitive. [In terms of "would this be accepted on OCR?" though, probably not.] ----- ADVICE? If I were to have remixed these two sources, my approach would be to listen to each source and try to internalize the melodies over a few days or weeks. From the melody, I would imagine my own harmonies, or perhaps try to hum one melody on top while the other source is playing. When I come up with something neat, then I start writing from scratch with no pre-loaded MIDI. As an easy example, try humming the "chorus" from the Super Mario 64 credits theme on top of the Pokemon GSC Goldenrod City theme. That's one I found recently!

Not sure if this tidbit of advice will help, but here's how I finished American Pixels. That was a 5+ year project, tons of excitement at the front-end, and then it turned into... work. And here's the problem, I have a family and a full-time job, so I kept hitting the snag where I'd work all day, spend time with the family, have a pocket of free time at night, and then... not have any energy left. That, or there'd be this sense of "yay, I have time to work on music... and oh no, I feel obligated to work on that project and I'm really not in the mood..." So, that happened over and over, and occasionally I'd have a magic day off (holiday, whatever) where I'd get a wonderful 4 hours in a row to myself... and during those moments, I could tap into the creative juices and get it going again... but man, those little magical windows were rare. Like, once every few months rare. It got really frustrating seeing an album inch to completion in those sporadic bursts. The answer for me: wake up earlier. I'd set my alarm for 4:30am, be in my studio by 5am, and get in a solid hour, hour and a half every morning. My brain wasn't yet tired from the day job, I was rested and fresh, and the stuff that seemed like work before now seemed fun again. And, it actually helped my happiness level, so even though I was sleepy, I was giddy at work considering the progress I made in the early morning hours. And then I just had to ride and chase that feeling until things were done. It was tough to get started, but then it became strangely addicting.