Liontamer

I thought the drums were pretty empty and, drowned down by the guitars, had little presence in the piece. The guitars and padding did a decent job setting up an airy, distant mood; so why would the percussion sound so much drier? At least by around 1:19, they were pushed more into the background, obscuring how dry their sound was. Also, the way the drums got WAY louder at 3:04 was like swinging the pendulum totally in the other direction, making it too loud and interfering with hearing the rest of the piece. It's a solid attempt so far, and I like the dark sound of the pads and foreground elements, but the textures were never cohesive on account of the percussion never being mixed in the right way, and the bass work nearly being drowned into submission. I'd love to hear another pass at the production to improve some things here. Some potential here though. NO

The track was 3:17-long, so I needed at least 98.5 seconds of overt source usage to be cool with the arrangement. I wasn't very worried about it, but it seemed like there were enough breaks from the source that I should check it. :00-16, 17-19, 20-25, 27-37.5, 39.5-45.5, 52-57, 1:04.5-1:11, 1:16.5-1:25, 1:30.5-1:41.5, 2:08-2:17, 2:29.5-2:39, 2:54.5-3:04, 3:07-3:16.5 = 110 seconds or 55.8% I could have missed some other usage as well, but it doesn't matter in the end. That said, the first thing that really stood out was "Whoa, this could use another pass at the mixing." As soon as it reached :14, I thought this sounded extremely crowded, and different parts really seemed to mud together in the same frequency ranges. It just kept doing it as it built up at :26 & :39. If y'all told me this was the 96kbps or 112kbps encoding, I would have believed you. Basically, :14-1:07 and 1:30-2:07 were the problematic areas to me; 2:17-2:55 as well, but less so. I definitely love the arrangement; I also am sad-faced over how swamped this sounded. It probably will make it, and I'd have no problem with it passing as is. It's an awesome interpretation, but I'll always just want to hear this cleaned up some. The lack of clarity is just enough for me to not be able to look past it. Sorry, Chris. If it doesn't make it, it would just take some EQing touch-ups to get it passed. I'd absolutely hate for this to not get posted in some form. Best of luck with the rest of the vote. NO (refine/resubmit)

Really loved the constant source usage throughout. Thanks for the breakdown to make the connections pretty obvious. This is an absolutely standout example of maintaining dynamic contrast and evolution throughout an arrangement with a slower, deliberate tempo; just because an arrangement is slower-paced doesn't mean it needs to plod. The instrumental switchups and various dropoffs & buildups in the intensity were all smartly handled. I'll definitely be using this as an example to point to. On the negative side, I wish the mixing here was cleaned up during the beefiest sections. The clutter of the mixing job in parts prevented this from sounding its best. For example, the synth from 1:01-1:23 was kind of buried; it seemed as if the electric guitar from 1:23-1:48 was mudding with other background parts; same criticism for the padding from 1:48-2:14. None of this was remotely enough to push this toward a no, but I'll always hope for a cleaner version. I'd love a fresh look at the mixing, but what's here more than meets the bar. Great arrangement! YES

Ooofs. Yeah... this isn't clicking, IMO... Yep. The dynamic curve was pretty flat here; this plods along most of the way was relatively sparse ideas. That was the most significant thing holding this back, IMO. It's also worth pointing out that something sounds kind of dissonant when the "Sky Chase Zone" countermelody is in from 1:18-1:34 & 3:02-3:17. Yep. Worth noting, the piano sample was serviceable, but the timing was too rigid throughout 1:50-2:24, undermining the emotion behind the writing. I thought the bass was fine, but yep on the ride. NO

The volume seemed a bit high, but had an interesting intro. Pretty beefy beats at :20. Oooooh, no... when the melody came in at :40, the mixing became a mess for a bit. Definitely too cluttered during the densest areas. The leads should have cut through more, and they also weren't particularly expressive. The more saw-style synths just created noise and didn't add a thing to the piece except crowding. Air horn at 3:38 & bubble SFX at 3:49 sounded too gimmicky, IMO, but whatever; that's not gonna swing a vote either way. Vig's right about the sparseness of the writing. The TEXTURES are loud/dense, but as far as the partwriting and tone that are contributing, again, a lot of the leads handling the Mystic Cave melody sounded very plain and very flat. The pace was really plodding and the dynamic curve of the composition was too flat. Play with some rhythmic, tempo or instrumentation changeups; just something to give this more life and variety over time. NO

Not a big fan of the piano sound here; it definitely gets by, but it has just that bit of rigidness that makes it very clear it's not a real piano. The first half of the arrangement felt a little by the numbers and the piano sample lacked the richness of a real piano (which can't be helped) and prevented things from sounding as awesome as they could have. In any case, the arrangement here got it done, so let's not miss the big picture. 3:16, 3:18 and a few other spots had some quick pops that unfortunately made it through; most won't notice them, and it wasn't a huge deal. Let's go. YES

You've been unbanned! HOORAY!

Depending on who you ask, that's all you guys do.

Those electric guitar samples at :25 definitely ain't foolin' anyone. Not a fan of how jumpy the "performance" sounds moving from note to note; it does give the sound a different kind of feel that's not like a real electric guitar, but the sequencing was pretty robotic. Beyond that, the mixing was SUPER murky, as pointed out by Vig and Deia. That said, even if the mixing were great, the super fake and rigid instrumentation was the biggest dealbreaker, and there'd be no way a piece with guitar "tone" like that would make it. The bass stuff and bowed strings at 2:43 sounded better in comparison, but it's nothing that would save this piece. The brass sequencing also sounded too fake as well. The ending also cut out abruptly. The arrangement has decent, creative ideas, but there's absolutely no polish put into this presentation. If you don't bother to humanize sequenced parts AT ALL for a piece that's meant to come off as a pseudo-live performance, there 0 chance it would pass. Wish I had something more enthusiastic to say on that level, but on the production level, this left a lot to be desired. NO

We laughed in between takes. It took 10 minutes total. 5 minutes to write the lyrics, 5 more minutes to record my two takes. I might have the piece of paper I wrote them down on somewhere (collector's item), but it's been 9 years.

Nothing we haven't solved before. Prepare for a colon-cleansing bowel movement of music!

Solid update. It could be better (not because of the organ), I'm still thinking about the mixing. The overall sound was still too heavy on the reverb in a lot of places, IMO. But the drums in that one spot were layered (minor), and the guitars cut through better (major). The balance among the parts was improved a bit, and most important parts have ENOUGH clarity and presence to be appreciated. It's not perfect, but I was on the borderline before, and it's good enough to me to get by now. From form letter rejection to a YES in 2 moves. Not bad.

No, it's not a matter of the bar moving up there. If something passes years ago but is held off (which generally happens for project mixes submitted early in an album's development), it isn't re-evaluated in any way when it's time to post it. In the case of "Shinesparks," it was conditionally accepted on improving the production (addressing the pervasive distortion), which was never above the bar. Nowadays though, we'd just reject it on account of the production being jacked up and ask for a resub rather than give conditional YES's (to avoid situations like this). Why wait so long? Aside from periodic asks/check-ins, we're pretty relaxed. So I'm checking in one last time with the artist to see if we can anticipate any touch-ups, or we'll just reject it since the conditions for the conditional YES's haven't been satisfied.

Original Decision (Resub from form rejection) Contact Information > ReMixer name: HeavenWraith > Real name: Antanas Palaitis > Website: http://www.heavenwraithmusic.net > Forum userID: 50325 Submission Information > Game: Metal Slug 4 > ReMix Name: Eau Charix > Original Name: Furiously Hello once again. I've polished the piece following the advice you've all given me and some little nitpicks I've noticed myself since the last time I've submitted this track. Though, the only thing I couldn't make myself change was organ playing the main theme, I'm sorry and I hope it won't tick anybody off. On the bright side, I gave it more presence and backing pads, let's see how that'll work out. And lastly - thanks for your time. P. S. For convenience, you can call me Anthony, the international version of my name. P. P. S. And thanks for doing a great job of posting lots of mixposts/rejects recently. ------------------------ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpph3E6KtfM

Having heard the 192kbps version (included in the first post), there's a little bit more clarity than before, but that alone wouldn't address the various issues here.

Forgot to update this a while back, but after NemesisTheory/Maurice was made aware of the potential issue, he looked into as well, and it matches the info I found on Psykosonik and the creation of the music being prior to the game. Unfortunately, that confirms it's ineligible as source material for OCR, so the submission can't be posted.

Not just the queue; real life as well. But it's boiling down to 1) more submissions than ever, 2) a higher percentage of submissions being too good to reject with the form letter, 3) less availability and enthusiasm from staff, and 4) a need for new judges. We're actually ahead of the usual pace of posting mixes, but we're also passing a higher percentage; we may have come to a point where the overall community has gotten better than where the bar currently is, but we're not going to raise that bar because this is a hobbyist community and we can't have it unreasonably high. After the FF6 album release & Kickstarter fulfillment is done, we'll be addressing this, but it boils down to rejecting more submissions without paneling them (raising the bar on the form letter rejection), letting inactive judges go & whip-cracking the staff, and testing some new candidates to bring in some new blood. In about a month, I'll have more free time to address the inbox side of it, but I'll chip away until then. If the artist doesn't do anything, possibly. He's known about the issue for a while, but his source files are pretty far away. We're nice people, and we'd hate to reject the track, but fixing it likely won't happen. I'll remind him one last time to send something or we've gotta ice it, but it looks like it wasn't meant to be.

OK, let's assume plagiarize could be too strong a word. That said, the wording isn't "a bit similar", it's TOO similar. For whatever reason, you believe you had reworked the information enough. The reality is, you didn't rework to nearly the extent that you believe you did. When you actually compare your WIP bio in parts, it's way too close to the MMN articles' structure AND phrasing. I'm just going to compare writings to highlight WHY Polo rightly criticized this. It's not meant to embarrass or shame, but it IS to make clear that even if you somehow didn't see this as being too close, it still was like trying to create a thesaurus version of the MMN story. If this were a submissions judgement, it would be commended for attempting to put one's own spin on things, but rejected for being too close of a cover. If you want to drop it, that's fine, but don't be discouraged from taking on other bios, as you've already written good stuff before. Just keep in mind that you've got to pull from as many good sources as you can and then synthesize all of that into your own voice on describing the character's story. While the MMN article may have a great breakdown, and it may seem like that needs to form the base of the bio, it shouldn't have held so fast to the structure and wording. Again, I'm trying to be clear just how many times this happened, so that Polo's POV is clarified.

Just to underscore what Polo's saying to Mirby re: sourcing: Do. NOT. Plagiarize. Phrasing. It's lazy, and you can always figure out how to restate ANY sentence fragment.

You can just quit the program like a typical application any time during the day, and it won't be using CPU. If you have the Web Control page open when you do this, a notice will pop up telling you that Folding@home has been disconnected. If you don't have the latest client (7.3.6) installed, I'd do that too, and uninstall any older clients. The older versions of the program installed as "Folding@home". Newer versions install as a folder names FAHClient and an application names FAHControl, so you have to uninstall the old application as well, not just install the new one.

He should compare the two with Palpable's insight, and flip his vote. We're allowed to mess up every once in a while; that's why we have the voting and analysis by the group, to catch when someone else's call is way off, in this case on the level of source usage. I've been there before, but Vinnie did a great job here elaborating on where the connections were. Man, :32-:47 was loud and cluttered. Same with 1:19-1:35 & 2:41-3:13. Why is so much of this flooded? The brass from 1:51-2:07 was very obscured, and the string accents might as well have not been there, they were so buried. The arrangement was a pass, even though Vig didn't study the source tune enough. But, dude, you're offending my ears with this volume and clutter. Why do I have to play the I'm-an-old-man-you're-hurting-my-ears card, when it's your fault this thing's too loud, Mak? Tone this down some, it'll still sound great. Again, you compare a track like this to "Consent (Make Me Dance)," and the difference is night and day. A track doesn't have to be flooded to be loud. It'll probably make it as it, but if you're willing to tone the levels down a little, this would be an easy pass to me. NO (refine/resubmit)

Jeez, this is cluttered. At first it seemed like it was just going to be some brief stuff to complain about, but from 1:35-onward, the vocals were getting buried, and the soundscape was stuffed up. The vocals from 2:47-2:50 were mud, but 2:52-3:36 was more upfront, though 3:31 started getting cluttered heading into the chorus. From 3:43-4:37, all the guitar work and padding was just totally indistinct. 5:46-6:10 was pretty muddy as well, then the final vocal verse was also cramped. Yeah, I'm not pulling the old man card, but you could go deaf listening to this, and not in the fun way. This could totally be pulled back and still sound just as dense and intense WITHOUT so many sections of this turning into a muddy pile of noise. It's too bad, because the arrangement is awesome, but this is unfortunately another piece where too many parts are stepping over one another and preventing the writing from being discerned and appreciated. Good luck on the vote, but IMO, you'd do wonders cleaning this up and sending it back. NO (resubmit) EDIT (10/25): Brandon sent in a tweaked version of his own accord to clean this up some and make the vocals more upfront. It's a nice improvement, IMO, without undermining the energy of the piece. The arrangement was excellent, and I'm totally on board now that things are cleaned up on the production side. YES

Opened up with a pretty interesting sound; nice and ominous. Melody arrived at :31 with a purposeful distant quality to it. 1:00 featured some bowed string coming in underneath, along with some countermelodic string work at 1:16. Nice start here that got me intrigued. The mixing seemed very strange at 1:30 when more elements were introduced. You had a pretty powerful orchestral ensemble playing very strongly, yet the sound of the orchestra was muted and placed way the synth lead; the orchestra should have been surrounding the lead, not stuck behind it. The style changed at 2:00 with the addition of some rumbling. Really bad brass articulations from 2:04-2:07. The bass kicks introduced then were powerful yet quiet. Actually, pretty much everything was super quiet, which makes 0 sense. Why were the levels so muted? The vox created a lot of background mud, obscuring the brass and absolutely burying the supporting string from 2:36-3:05, which might as well have not been there. Everything was 1:30-on was a cluttered mess. Usually, Vig notices these things, so I'm not sure why he didn't hone in more on that issue. Also, the melodic arrangement on the brass from 2:06-3:06 became plodding and boring by the end of the track. You need to create more melodic interpretation or instrumental variations for the lead so that the arrangement doesn't drag out. The supporting instrumentation is gradually building up was a good technique, but the leads were flat. Things were going well, Stefano, until the soundscape became super muddy from 1:30-onward. Figure out what changed there to cause the sound to go from clear to muddy and fix it, and make the second half of the arrangement more creative and varied as well. NO

On the production side, I thought this was muddier than it should have been, and while the beats were nice and beefy, I also thought they could have been toned down. While this had great energy, it was too flooded. The string and brass opening was definitely on the weak/fake side, but it was serviceable. I actually thought the ending sounded a little worse/more exposed in that regard, especially the final string decay. But I agree with the others that those bookends weren't poor enough in the big picture to reject the piece. On the arrangement side, this almost completely ignored the melody, so I had to wrap my head around the backing writing of the source to understand all of the source usage. That said, it's definitely there practically the entire way, it's just without the more memorable melody, so a lot of people who only fixate on that will think there's little to no connection here. This arrangement had simple but good original writing integrating with the backing writing of the original, though the mixing had entire sections where even those backing patterns were pushed too far in the back. The flooded sound of the production is almost too much for me to allow, and it should be cleaned up a bit, but for the most part the instrumentation remains distinct ENOUGH that I can look past the mixing issues. Good work here, Tyler; welcome aboard! YES (borderline)

It's just 4 notes; that's not enough to describe that whole MMZ theme as taken from Zorro. Don't worry about it.