Liontamer

It's a cool genre adaptation with a basic but decent groove, no question. But beyond that, this was too conservative, repetitive, underdeveloped, and dynamically flat for the submissions standards here. The core beats were plain and looped for basically the whole time, and once you've heard the first verse & chorus up to 1:07, you've basically heard the entire scope of the piece aside from some minor textural differences via sweeping SFX and robovoice drops. The energy level did have some subtle changes, but was still pretty flat; there were opportunities at spots like 2:29 to do something more dynamic or varied, and that ultimately didn't happen. NO

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The lil' "tick-tick-tick" percussion sounds seemed to cut through too into the foreground too much, and the soundscape was pretty muddy from the get-go. From :41-:56 (and again during other retreads of the chorus like 1:44), it seemed like one of the backing parts became out of sync, because the track quickly sounded disjointed; not sure what broke down there. More discordant and disjointed stuff when you combined different section of the theme from 2:41-onwards. Not trying to be mean, but I wasn't sure if this was just trolling in audio form, because it sounded really sloppy. I agreed with Smooth4Lyfe that this was a straightforward (and repetitive) cover, too conservative for the interpretive arrangement standards here. The part-writing was too basic, and while you did personalize the sound, the mixing wasn't clear at all, and the textures & sound design weren't sophisticated. A bit disappointing of a result compared to your Sonic Spinball "Toxic Caves" mix, which had more variation and creativity in the writing, and more competent production quality. It's unfortunately nowhere near ready for primetime vis-a-vis the Submission standards here. Needs a ton of work; not to be discouraging, but it seems like your energy's better served moving onto a different arrangement concept if there are no plans to start from scratch here.

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Sorry for the wait on formal feedback for this one as well, Ben, but you have a good base here. At 1:56, the bow movements/attacks of the strings sounded very exposed. The sudden rise in volume at 2:16 with the brass didn't make sense either, but you're aware of that. Arrangement-wise, the first 2 minutes were a (good-sounding) super-close cover, but thankfully you branched out into other instrumentation and expansive part-writing to flesh this out. This one suffered from more obvious exposure of mechanical-sounding samples; there's serviceable, but if some parts and thin AND don't sound humanized, it stands out. I'd run this by folks in the Music Composition & Production forums with a rundown of what you used to make this to see what feedback other folks have. It's not far off from where OCR's quality bar is, and possibly could pass as is, so if you were definitely done with this, then go ahead and submit it. But some production refinements would make sure that passing wasn't potentially in question. That said, the arrangement side of this was solid, so that doesn't need to be touched.

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Sorry to forget about following up on this. There are still times where it's obvious the strings aren't real, and some later parts where big brass swells sound too thin/clean but that's never been the production cut-off here. Checking this out once again after your revisions, it feels to me like this is solid enough, no problem. I can't say for sure if this would pass as is, but I'd feel pretty confident in, and IMO I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good, especially in light of the strong arrangement here. Send this on over, and please include a WAV if you still have one available. Nice work, Ben!

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Hey Alex, sorry for the wait on a formal review here. That said, as a judge, I'm happy to give you my feedback now. This was melodically straightforward, but you did a nice job expanding the part-writing here, which is always a viable direction, especially for something like BotW's minimalist soundtrack. When the rhythm guitars joined in to fill things out more at 1:40, the soundscape became a bit muddy/muffled, but it wasn't a huge deal, just an area where the mixing could have been a little clearer. That said, you filled out the soundscape nicely, and fleshed things out well. I'm not sure why this was taken down from your SoundCloud, but I'm glad to have checked it out on YouTube. Go ahead and submit this (send a WAV too, if you still have one), and I'll be sure to directly approve it for posting on the front page; this can bypass the judges panel, IMO. Tremendous work!

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Sorry for the wait on hearing back on a review, but glad to check this out now. I'm not bothered by anything being "too conservative" here, as you have a lot going on to set it apart from the original song. The lead seemed to be too loud relatively to the rest of the instrumentation, but not big deal. There's something about the backing string stabs and synths that seemed I guess off-key with the lead instrumentation, and made the writing feel unfocused and scattershot. I mean, right from :10 and later at 1:01 and other times, there's a metallic "pang" sound that sounded off-key. A musician J who knows theory could explain what I'm sensing more clearly. The ending was also a let down; probably not enough to mean a NO vote on the panel, but it was pretty sudden and underwhelming; see what you can do for something with a bit more substance, especially with this only being 2:39-long. Solid base here, Damon. Just need to smooth out some of the clashing writing and make sure the ending's fully developed. Otherwise, this is solid per your usual quality.

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Hey Catherine, sorry for the wait on hearing back on a WIP review. The main pervasive issue here is how mechanical all of the sequencing sounded. Aside from the hand percussion stuff, pretty much everything sounded robotically timed and looped, and most of the attacks were at the same intensity. You did have textural changes here, but the overall every level remained very similar throughout, so along with the timing basically being locked to a grid, this was a very flat, droning piece that couldn't maintain interest and felt like it wasn't developing in spite of the changes in the writing when you listen closely. The hand percussion sounded the most organic, so that was a nice touch, but the timing and realism issues were a deal-breaker.

First off, sorry for the wait on a review for your piece, H0us3C0rP3. That said, I'm on the judges panel, so I can give you a bit more authoritative of a POV. On the judges panel, this might get dinged on the production side for some of the synths/sounds being plain, as the synths were pretty vanilla, but the arrangement was personalized pretty well, and I think you did a good job using these tools. It's clear a lot of care went into varying up the textures and providing contrast from section to section. More melodic interpretation would have been a plus, but no hate on going for something structurally conservative as long as other aspects were significantly treated with interpretation. Here, the beats and tempo were changed along with the sound palette to help give this a different enough feel. Props on not retreading any arrangement ideas until just a brief reuse of some of the verse material about 3/4ths of the way through. I enjoyed the extended winddown for the close; it seemed like it might just repeat the initial notes from the source until a fadeout, but you changed the lead sounds a couple of times while reducing the volume to keep presenting creativity right until the finish. If you haven't submitted this one already, I can't guarantee it would pass (because I'm only one judge), but this would likely have my vote. Nice work!

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