Vig

yikes. this has lots of beginner mistakes. the beats are generic, there are sections when everything but one isntrument drops out, it's repetitive as hell. WIP forum could still be of some help, at this point. NO

I agree with larry, it relies too much on the sample, which has very little to do with the sims. the music that is here is cool, but it's underdeveloped. you could get away with the sample if you put a little more work into the music. NO

heh...the intro is cool..but this track just sounds so generic to me. I'd rather not vote on this unless i have to. for the record, i think the drums are fine. Expecting everyone to have DanB quality drum sequencing is ridiculous. Rejecting this track because the drums arent interesting enough is a might harsh, especially given the context of the track.

Larry's Notes!: to "transpose" means to change a song's key. This remix is not transposed from the original, and even if it were, it wouldnt be the word you meant to use. This has been another episode of: Larry's Notes! So this remix is conservative...it sounds good, and your initial take on the original is fine, close to the original, but you add a little flair. that's fine, as long as you then develop the track in your own direction, which you dont do until the very end. I'd say keep the first time thru the melody, then skip ahead to the sectionaround 2:10 where you do some creative stuff, and develop the shit out of that. More you, less original. NO

NO, I think I'll vote now, just to shake things up. First of all, the piano comping is simple as possible...playing the triad on the first beat of the bar. the guitar sounds really akward. it's probably the sample. it particularly sticks out when it does "slides" and when it is the lead instrument. By 3 minutes the song is getting tedius. You changed to minor, but it's the same groove, same rhythms, and there are no new ideas. You do an admirable job altering the dynamics of the song by speeding up/slowing down, and also by making the piano a bit busier, but there seems to be no reason for it...the piano just gets busier, but not in a particularly interesting way. I think you just need some new ideas, mix it up a bit, rather than just making everything play more notes once in a while. I'd lock, but half the votes arent votes yet.

larry's right about the cutoff. i cant tell what i think about the intro. on one hand it's minimalistic, on the other hand it's corny. the vocal recording obviously has some hiss on it. the singing is good, but not good enough to support the song. Right now, the vox are waaay out front, and everything else in the song is cheap. this is made particularly obvious during the instrumental sections, which are laughable. put more thought into the composition of the instrumental parts..right now they are placeholders. NO

i wouldnt call what kicks in at :55 a "melody". the first two minutes kick ass. slow build. works really well. but then there's a complete drop...followed by something completely different. once this section builds up all the saws blend together. sounds like mush. jagged-tooth mush. make the composition a little more cohesive. drop the second section, work with the first. NO

the density is cool. ah there's a lot going for this track. the horns are a bit loud. there are generally some volume balance issues. sections like 1:20 are repetitive and clumsy, but then sections like when the guitars come in 1:45, that's great. again, some volume issues, the lead is quiet, and i'd say there ought to be more going on with the lead. then the horns come in and drown out the lead. work on volume and trimming some of the fat. the ideas are cool, but they are beaten to death past their usefulness. oh and there's no ending. work on that. NO

cute. the horns sound a little akward during the faster passages on account of the sample's attack. the song is just too short. develop more. NO

Intro is pretty bare. the body is fairly...rough. the guitar is unrefined. On top of that, the dynamic is the same all the way through. tighten it up. NO

so you've got this groove going...but there's little arrangement going on. the groove never changes, it just follows the melody. at this point this is just very simplistic. NO

yikes...the guitars dont sound remotely realistic, neither the sample, nor the part played. So really..this song is quite monotonous. The same rhythmic themes are present throughout the whole song. This is true of the drumloop, which barely changes over five minutes. Honestly, how many dotted-quarter notes can we be expected to take? It's also true of the harmony instruments. this makes the track incredibly tedious. Harmonically, the verse consists of power chords a half step away. Not just two power chords, but two power chords played for whole notes. BORING! There are entirely too many melodramatic whole notes in the guitar part. The chorus sections add some dynamic variation, but all the rhythms are exactly the same. Production problems i find secondary. The vocals arent bad at all, though they could be more present. NO this track is rhythmically tedious. please make the harmony parts more sophisticated,or barring that, less monotonous. Same of the drums. once this problem is fixed, then you can fix the "acoustic guitar" part, then we'll worry about any other problems.

I love everything up to 1:40. there's your intro, all set. great groove, vox are unpolished, but they work anyway. perhaps more reverb would work better in this context. unfortunately, from here rather than elaborating and bringing the arrangement to a climax, you just kill everything and then bring it back up to a rather subdued plateau. this song doesn't have a climax, and it fizzles out after the intro. Get rid of everything past 1:40, use that as your intro, and make the mix go somewhere. escalate. NO

anyone care to explain this one for me?

groovy, sexy. first problem i notice is the ELP. first of all, the release is odd..at some points the sample sounds chopped off. also the comping is rather boring. simple voicings, simpler rhythms. Also there are a few wrong notes, such as 1:12. The next section retains a sweet groove. the bass is pretty good throughout. The section after 3:00 is a little akward. the panning guitar (?) is a bit akward, and the ELP problems remain. The elp is really dragging this mix down. NO

unbalanced, lacking texture, crappy drums, undeveloped arrangement. NO

the paddy things at the beginning have an odd release. ah :45=sexyness. The bass and bell-esque instrument work incredibly well. I wish the samples were a little smoother. The arrangement almost excuses the poor sound quality, but not quite. I'd like the track to be longer. otherwise, please work on the sound quality and resub. there are some great moments in this track. NO

the drums sound very bare..and that...string(?) that comes in sounds fairly ugly. Okay I can see you're going for the minimalist/lazy approach. unfortunately minimalism has pretty much zero chance of succeeding with instruments that sound this bad. Arrangement is also plodding. NO

So...the delay on the pads is unrelated to the tempo of the song which=bad. Aside from that, generic, simplistic arrangement, clipping. NO

This is sloppy as larry says. quantize more. up to about 1:45, the arrangement is rather repetitive. The break at 2:00 is really sloppy, and the drum solo is really poorly sequenced. the bass plays that riff, and the drums only play when the bass does, but not with the bass. either have the drums play the same part, or even better, have the drums make use of the empty space. furthermore, the riff the bass plays is akward to be repeated so much. top it off with a weak ending. NO

You guys are completely nuts. YES EDIT: I've told the judges what I think about this mix at length, but to recap for the public, I disagree that the cluttering gets too bad. at parts the acoustic piano comping is a bit...akward, but it's never too cluttered. assuming that by strange "note combinations," larry means "chords," or "harmonies," then they are objectively not there. there are no wrong or even nonconventional intervals in the segment cited. larry, this criticism is just going way too far. Saying this kind of shit looks like you're making stuff up. THe issues of the vocals and the URL: they dont bother me. I like the vocals just fine, i dont think they detract at all. If you dont like them, or are morally opposed to the URL being in the song, for the love of crap just say as much and lets get him to remove it and lets post this thang.

i enjoyed this mix untill about :50. the intro was moody. the drums are bare and unquantized. the groove is sparse as well. after this point there's lots of repetition and lots of emptiness. the whole mix is sparse. fill in the spaces, clean up the drums. NO

the groove is great the atmosphere is thick and well constructed. the problem with this remix is there's no arrangement. it's just the same four chords repeated. do something with it. NO

I'll go out on a limb and say YES on this one. The production is not bad. The hiss is barely noticeable, and i think it's perfectly within the acceptable range. As for the complaint that there is a lack in the high-end...frankly i dont think a track needs to have completely even EQ response to sound good, and i think demanding completely flat winamp levels is ridiculous. I wonder if you would have mentioned that if you had listened to the track with your eyes closed. The strings dont sound terribly real, but they dont sound bad, and they are certainly listenable. The overall level of the track is fairly low. The arrangement is good. Creative and effective. The performance also shows considerable progress. there are still a couple places that make me cringe, but koelsh's playing has come a long way from his earlier submissions. I wouldnt call the production "strong," but it's certainly adequate, and the arrangement pushes it over the edge.

The introduction, to be honest, does not fill me with confidence. Pausing at :20, i predict a fairly generic techno remix that often feels sparse, with a groove that never changes, has nothing more harmonically complex than a major or minor triad, and has little relevance to the original. holy cow. The melody isnt even in the right key. All my predictions were correct. NO