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Seems like we're pretty much in unison about the ending and vocals being an issue, even if whether it's passable or not is in debate, so I sent the artist a request to fix that ending specifically while mentioning the issue with the vocals. Here's hoping for a fix.

Not sure if I'd call myself a pro, but I've done quite a few collabs, and as a matter of fact work is in progress to wrap up another collab, with me using Logic Pro and my collab partner using Pro Tools. As you said, you probably have to resign to sending audio back and forth, but that doesn't mean you have to commit to something right away. What we did for the aforementioned collab is up front get a rough sense of who would roughly do what. Essentially who would focus on arrangement, who would do mixing & production, who would take what parts (e.g. leads, drums, bass). It ended up with me doing the bulk of the arrangement work, after my collab partner started me off with a very bare bones MIDI piano part that I rearranged, restructured, expanded upon, etc. Typically I'd work on it for a bit and share a rough WIP render that we would discuss a bit about on what needed changing, and then I would work on it some more. After the arrangement was fleshed out enough, we both would soup up our parts (polishing up the midi, recorded performances, etc) and I sent over my finalised parts for my collab partner to mix. The big reason why this works well is that we had good communication throughout the process and up front were able to divide the work without getting in each others way. That's also what I suggested. Another approach I tried once is a bit Frankensteinian; I did a collab where I did have the DAW the other guy was using (Renoise), but I didn't feel like leaving Logic Pro and switch back to a tracker. So I simply loaded up his project in Renoise, rewired Renoise into Logic so I would have the audio of his parts in my own DAW, and simply wrote my own parts and did the full track mixing in Logic. A bit cumbersome, but it worked. Hope it helps!

This pretty much resonates with what i was saying about hearing underdeveloped sections too many times and not being able to imagine them any other way. @Mazedude definitely has the right idea and it's been working for me as well. I'll wake up at 6am, get the usual morning habits done and by 7am i'm at my desk for a dedicated 2 hour period where i will concentrate on music production. Than when 9am hits i'll start to work on my more essential things like University work. That way i know i got two hours done and even if the progress i made was little, i know that i still made progress and i'm being consistent. I find i have a lot less anxiety by starting work in the morning since i've still got the whole day ahead of me, which free's my mind a lot because i'm not feeling pressure from the hours in the day running out. I hate doing anything that requires deep thought in the evening and would rather just read or watch Netflix. Now i don't feel guilty about having chill evenings. Actually getting up at 6am is horrible though.

Sorry, all I checked was that it played back alright for me in Winamp. I know @Master Mi has done a remix for this tune. Maybe he could chime in with what midi he used, and maybe he'd like to participate this round?

Based on what you just told me, it sounds like you're being quite ambitious. Why are you making a 23 track album? Why are they over 1 minute each? Change the rules to fit your workflow. Unless you're doing it for someone else, then let it flow naturally. YES - make your plans but if it doesn't go to that plan thats ok. Plan on making a 10 minute epic? Its ended up 3 minutes long? Ok fine, NEXT TRACK. You say you have an album of 23 wips. Ok. You don't need to use half of them. You could finish off 5 of them and call it an EP? How long are said tracks? Well they could be 2 minutes each if you so desired. Take it where it is heading naturally. Trying to beat out a preconceived idea is not the way to go I find. Try just... letting an idea flow and don't worry about sticking to a brief so rigidly and just see what happens. You might find you finish more stuff and you enjoy yourself more to boot. Guidelines are great... but don't let them hold you back.

A solid, pleasing remix with some clever humor. It's ab-solutely worth a listen

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.