Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Original Decision: http://www.ocremix.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=64155 Originally submitted June 26--link expiration. Fallthrough OK'd by zircon. * Contact Info o Remixer Name: Ronak Shah (Schmancy on forums, but ignore that) o Real Name: Ronak Shah o E-mail Address: schmancy47@gmail.com * ReMix Info o Remix Title: "Time's Fission" o Game remixed: Chrono Trigger (Not another one!) o Songs remixed: "Crono's Theme," "Brink of Time" (and a shadow of "Corridors of Time") Commentary: It would be redundant of me to comment on the redundancy of Chrono Trigger Remixes at this point, so, too late, I'll refrain. This is my first potential submission (not counting two previous rejections, likely justified), and is a remade version of an older submission, although it is quite drastically redone with "Brink of Time" added on entirely, and with only one or two lines parallel. Still, it can be called a revision. The concept here is this: The game, Chrono Trigger, is essentially about time, its manipulation, and all of that. The song isn't supposed to evoke visual imagery, since the subject is conceptual, as much as to be impressionistic, I guess. We begin with the ever familiar tick-tock from "A Premonition," though the music isn't featured here yet. A pair of mallets enter with aligned lines. Then another, then another, then another. We end up with eight mallet lines. You will note that a few contain molested thematic material, that, at first distinctness, soon blend together and into the background. The clock has been constructed and the marimba gears are working fine. (As it is, the mechanical, impersonal nature of the piece is intended to be human elements used for a monotonous industry) A vibraphone enters with the familiar, though adultered, theme. This continues, building, and other instruments enter. Every note the vibraphone plays is part of the theme, including the melody playing when the low strings enter. The permutation seems to be a little more unfamiliar. Tempo is steady, with a note or rhythm falling on every eighth note, on the eighth note, no more, no less. Or else we'd be blaspheming. H'anyways. The once melodic vibraphone gongs the bells thrice. After a climax, with a little foreshadowing of "Corridors of Time" from below (or "A Premonition, if you wish), a piano sneaks it's head out of the crowd, and the tick-tock has, to the naked ear, inconspicuously vanished. The theme from the "Brink of Time" is introduced, still with tempic precision, but teetering and stretching in dynamics, occasionally flinching as gears skip from rusting and overuse. Again, not a visual representation, but a theoretical, an impressionistic one. Barely impressionistic, I don't know what I'm talking about, really. I'm full of it. After one repetition, percussion takes over again, but rather oddly. The clockwork has fractured, with three in the melody and four in the accompaniment, and little pattern at all to the gears. Tempo holds, but confusion abounds. We transition from earth to water and ice with the flute, in triplets, and the bells, in an inobtrusive five. The vibraphone is back. Lines are in control with each other, but what's this, speed? An accelerando begins, the percussion still calm. But after a while, the percussion begins to tear into chaos, building, building, an explosion of light! And fade. The tick-tock had returned somewhere in this mess, in a last ditch attempt to hold together the band, but died out, falling over the Brink of Time. Hahahahahaokay. The original theme, more true than before, returns, but tempo is shaky now, stretching and leaning and tottering. Dynamics, two, will flinch and crack at the slightest scratching and irritation, theoretically, dissonance. Corridors of Time cast shadows from below, foreshadowed, even, earlier in the piece. Then time breaks altogether, and we have freedom. So it ends. The story wasn't all that necessary, but it explains some parts of the mix. Maybe that makes it interesting? I don't know. I like to ramble a lot. Cheers, ~Ronak~ ------------------------------------------------------ If you were going to do a fall-through or resubmission, you should have been getting that posted directly to the panel by a judge, not sending it through the standard submissions inbox again. Sending it that way did nothing to get the mix on the panel sooner for you. Not sure where the communication broke down, but if zircon approved the fall-through, we should have had this on the panel once zirc saw your fall-through request and subsequently put it up. Sorry for the inconvenience, but hopefully no hard feelings. http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Presentiment" (ct-1-01.spc), "Chrono Trigger (part 1)" [ct-1-02a.spc], "Chrono Trigger (part 2) [ct-1-02b.spc], "The Brink of Time" (ct-2-13.spc) & "Corridors of Time" (ct-3-04.spc) For such organic instrumentation being used, the mallet-based stuff sounded pretty rigid. It doesn't sound terrible by any means though. The drums brought in at :59 definitely didn't create a good texture. They're too punchy for this. The low strings added at 1:09 also sounded completely out of place with the syrupy lead going on. These combinations just don't seem to click together. Moves over into some piano at 1:59 tackling "The Brink of Time" that again sounds decent, but still fake-sounding; a lot of the chords are really thin. All manner of percussion joined in at 2:43, most of it much louder than the piano, which didn't seem to make much sense, but not a big deal. In any case, things chugged along, going into a holiday feel with the sleigh bells joining at 3:12. Nice subtle woodwind stuff in the background to keep things interesting without exposing the sample. Very well done. The track needs something better to pad it out so it doesn't feel empty in the back during that section though. 4:10-4:14 got needlessly blistering with whatever effect that was; tone it down a bit. Ha, nice segue with the clock ticking into the piano at 4:23. Excellent arrangement of "Chrono Trigger" with "Corridors of Time". Argh, a weak resolution at 5:44; doesn't end well, and the sample's particularly exposed as thin and weak. Nah, you gotta go for something more satisfying than that. Rework the texture from :59-1:58 so that the instruments sound more complimentary, get the piano sounding a bit richer, make sure the background is adequately padded so things don't sound vacant when they're not supposed to, and write a stronger ending. Those are the main spots for improvements I'd stress. Solid submission, Ronak, but it needs more work to really get it going. Very promising resub though. Perhaps let this one slide for a while, then come back to it after you gain more experience and knock it out of the park. Either way, keep up what you're doing in the community. NO (rework/resubmit)

Dat's a lame mix title. :'-( Will groove-bias triumph over evil? - LT Hello folks! Let's see if this one tickles you more than my last submission. ReMixer name: Makke Name of game(s) ReMixed: Cauldron 2 Composer: Richard Joseph System: Commodore 64 Year: 1986 Publisher/Software House: Palace Original soundtrack: http://www.c64.org/HVSC/Joseph_Richard/Cauldron_II.sid Right! This is a track from my album 'It's Binary, Baby!', and since it's been free for download from C64.com for a while, I figured I might as well release it here as well. It's the second track of the album, that's why you can hear the last chirps of the intro right at the start of the song. Some of you might know I'm a big Kraftwerk fan (and if you don't, my Crazy Comets remix that's on this very site should've been a dead give away ), and this track is heavily inspired by Karl Bartos 'Communication' album (the track 'The Message' in particular). If you don't like vocoders, stay clear! ------------------------------------------------------ http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/archive/C64Music/Joseph_Richard/Cauldron_II.sid - SIDtune 7 On some level, I'm willing to forgive the relative repetitiveness of the structure here given how little there is to the original (30 seconds' worth). But to clarify, the beat structure clearly changes from verse (:15) to chorus (1:15) to breakdown (1:47) and so forth, so while we're grooving, it wasn't on complete cruise control. For the record, I'm down with vocoders (and that synth bassline). The intro actually didn't sound jarringly abrupt, all things considered. The synth design and production here were ace, business as usual from the top European mixers. Hahaha, cheesy vocals coming in at :45 that present a nice adventure motif (when you're trying to make out the words). They're actually taken right from the game; it's a poem describing the plot. Wish the vocals stood out more from the synths and beats, but everything was fine overall. Nice new writing underneath the vox with that synth at 1:01. The chorus instrumentation at 1:16 was great, playing off :15-:30 of the source tune with some beefy stuff filling out the soundfield. Loving how spacious the soundfield felt with this one; nice use of stereo. All of the expansionist writing intertwined with the source is seamless and logical, with the chorus in particular preventing the arrangement from getting too original and thereby liberal. McDonalds, I'm lovin' it. Don't be put off by the groove here. The arrangement component was very well handled, the throwback to the game by integrating the poem into the song was smart, and the production was solid. YES

ReMixer name: EzpRado Name of game ReMixed: The Great Giana Sisters Synthpop remix of the Giana sisters music originally composed by Chris Huelsbeck. Please inform me if the remix is approved.

Hey, Djpretzel! My remix name is CountCurt and I'm sending you this remix of the Festival theme from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. It's a game that hasn't been covered yet on the site, but it has a lot of great Zelda music. I've tried to keep a simple, renaissance sound with minstrel instrumentation. It's a short, fun piece and I hope you all like it. Take care. Curt

Contact info: Artist name: Auxiliary Input Real name: Elias Hogstvedt Email: sboyto@gmail.com Homepage: www.auxiliary-input.com User ID: Auxiliary-input Remix info: Game: Megaman III Song name: Megaman III intro Comment: I.. err. Well, it's a remix and I'm quite happy with it. For the full length 128kbit version go Oh, and I hope it's ok that the song is 6.04 MB

*metaphist* aka Paul Ford pford85@gmail.com myspace.com/razorbladekite Ikaruga remix: "*Funk Cannon*" From the Ch.3 theme entitled "Faith" Source: It's been a while, but I'm back with another attempt at Ikaruga! Well, lets see. This started out when I was messing around with a synth vst. I made something sinister sounding and suddenly had the neat idea for the Ikaruga ch.3 melody to fit it. I quickly constructed a lackluster little arrangement, but was stuck on ideas and soon abandoned it. I came back to it a time later, changed the lead to a rhodes, and it started to sound rather funky. So I ran with the funk and came up with what you hear now. I honestly wanted to do more, but due to technical limitations (ie my comp choking on effects) I got frustrated and eventually just wanted to get 'er done, as they say. I had fun with the organ and jazz guitar though, and do like what I've done so far. I hope you enjoy it too.

LINK (revised 10/28): Remixer: 1makes2 Realname-Mike O'Shea Mikesoft121@yahoo.com SONG REMIXED: Zelda-Links Awakening Mysterious woods song title- Zelda Links Awakening Flooded Woods OC Remix This song was made using FlStudio4. I chose do do this song because i downloaded Disco Dans Triforce Majure and Braving Tal Tal Heights and that inspired me to do a zelda song. I Used a Yamaha PSR-225GM keyboard/midi controller and my numark mixer. I tried to get some ambiance into a high paced/high energy song. Either way you look at it it smells like ramen noodles. Enjoy! ---------------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/gbs/zelda.zip - Track 9 Pretty decent. I liked most of the arrangement ideas even if some of the sound choices weren't very hot. At :40, the effects on the sounds made things sound lossy rather than spacious. Some of the highs were pretty nasty with the volume like at :44, for example. (Coincidentally, that wasn't the case with the version you originally sent in. That version was less spacious, but the sounds were more balanced and less lossy-sounding.) The piano writing during 1:02-1:23 was pretty boring, IMO, and didn't work well with the bassline. The brass was also pretty bleh, both in the background and especially the foreground at 1:23 during its solo. Flesh the sound out and layer it up to mitigate the realism issues there. On the other hand, the synth in the background from 1:54-2:46 had some ace writing that worked well with the piano, even if the sound balance there was a bit iffy. On the minus side, the pianos from 3:06 didn't harmonize well at all, IMO, and led the arrangement sounding noticeably aimless. Continued like that when the fakey brass returned at 3:28; the arrangement seemed to lose direction and simply change things up for the sake of being different, affecting the track all the way until the very end at 4:13. Work on production to achieve a cleaner, more balanced soundscape, flesh out the brass parts so they don't sound so terribly flat and fake, and rework the last minute so that it finishes strongly. NO (rework/resubmit)

I'm feelin' generous, if only to figure out what this is - LT Really this is sort of a industrial dnb mashmix of Several Silent Hill 3 mixed in with my own style. this is my own work, i made sure that the quality is good. So far this is my best song i have ever done, and my first remix of any song to date. when and if you decide to post it put it under B-Newman. Deep in the Hill < > This is hosted on my website so don't worry about not being able to hear it. ------------------------------------------------------ Silent Hill 3 Original Soundtracks - (24) "Hometown" & (22) "Sun" For the record, you need to provide information on what track(s) you're arranging. The only connections I could find are the direct sampling of "Hometown" for the first few seconds, then the direct sampling of the vocals from the first 35 seconds of "Sun" from 1:04-1:39. The onus is on you to give us the information we need or lead us in the right direction. Given that the Silent Hill series have had a lot of tracks that don't end up on official soundtracks, there's a chance what's being mixed doesn't have a source on the official soundtrack. Anyway, stuff like the melody starting at :07, I had no idea where it was from. Definitely had a nice overall vibe and atmosphere, but the track was being dominated by industrial instrumentation and vox that seemed to have little to do with any melody. I heard a countermelodic deal going on in the back from :40-1:03 with that scratchy instrumentation, but again, no connection from SH3 to make. The sampling of the spoken vocals from "Sun" from 1:04-1:39 was a crutch for not doing much on the arrangement side. It was obvious that you stopped sampling the vocals after their first 35 seconds, because that's when the background music joined them in "Sun", making them unusable from than point on. In other words, lame as fuck. For the melody on top of the sampled vocals, I couldn't figure out where any of that was from. Same with the rougher-sounding melody at 1:43, and the track basically meandered to the finish with that melody and the spooky vox. Not really much melodic direction here. Even when you have rough melodies in play, they're not really developed or explored in a substantial way. Sounds like more of a remix or original track than a rearrangement, but I guess the world will never know. Brush up on the standards and guidelines here before you send anything again. NO

*Remixer info: *Name: Gager Real name: Gustav Gager E-Mail: gager@boremail.com Webbsite: http://sveg.sytes.net/gager/musik.htm * Remix info: *Game: Megaman 3 Tune: Sparkman theme My own comments: This is a dance version of the "Sparkman theme" from megaman 3. A longer version is on the way that will be played at the local club. Its a great tune and it really gets you blod pumping on the dance floor. I got inspired to do this track when I lisden t my friend who just learned this theme on his midi keyboard. I used a program called propellhead reason and the track is made up of five analog synthesizers, one sampler and two drum machines and a few effects.

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 122 "Crazy Motorcycle" Good intro. The atmosphere for some reason sounds rather distant and lossy, not at all like the first version. During fuller section like 1:15, the textures actually seemed surprisingly thin and hollow despite trying to sound beefy. The claps/beats were pretty flimsy in particular. Not sure what happened on the production side, but I didn't recall having any concerns like that on the previous version, yet here they are for this one. Throughout most of the track to boot. In any case, much like last time, I liked the arrangement. With even more connection to the original than before, I liked all the ways you reworked "Crazy Motorcycle" here. On the whole though, the arrangement dragged a bit and felt rather samey, as it kind of cycled through the same maybe 3 textures over the course of the track. You'll probably get some criticisms on that level from panelists and fans, but looking beneath the surface, there was a subtle sense of dynamic changes from section to section that made this ok. You did more than enough to pass in my book on the arrangement side, but this could have been markedly better. I'm a bit underwhelmed due the the issues I had, but I'm still gonna go borderline YES. Nonetheless, this needs to be spruced up if it's posted. As it, it sounds way too lossy. The repetitiveness of the various textures from section to section was a negative, but not a dealbreaker in light of how substantive and interpretive the arrangement approach was.

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Kids Run Through the City" (ff6-120.spc) Nice music box-style intro. Shifts over at :31 with some 16-bit style sounds before throwing it for a loop with the corn cob geetar or whatever that is at :36. I liked the strumming on support to fill out the track, as that wasn't in the original. Variations coninuted with a woodwind at 1:02 which was pretty shrill. The bassline behind that was all new. Switched over into acoustic guitar and tambourine at 1:30 with a relatively good crossfade. Loved the constant harmonization of the melody here. Ugh, the soundfield sure got crowded from once things got really busy from 2:01-2:28. Harmonica was there for all of a couple seconds from 2:16-2:19 and 3:01-3:03 which made little sense. The production's a bit imbalanced, but there's nothing so wrong with it as to dramatically hurt the presentation. There's nothing wrong in principle with a fadeout. Despite keeping the melody the same, guy never once used the same supporting writing as the original, instead choosing to rearrange that while arranging the melody for the respective instruments used. The track has a very personalized performance despite the cover arrangement of the melody, the textures constantly evolved, and there's plenty of subtle additions, rhythmic variations and rearrangement ideas based off the supporting parts of the source tune in the back. Hey, this is pretty pimp. Perhaps I just don't mind tuning as much, I dunno, but I didn't here anything bad in here in terms of the performance. As far as the arrangement goes, you look beneath the surface and there's a lot of good things to be found. He changed the genre, he made new countermelodies, he altered the instrumentation and dynamics. We have plenty of other cover-ish mixes that employ the same techniques. The overall presentation is definitely a creative and unique take on the source material to me. Best of luck on the rest of the vote. YES

Haha, here's the best part; my most recent submission was rejected by a vote of 3 No, 0 Yes. Guess which three judges? We didn't plan that, but that IS pretty LOAL~!

This is awesome. End.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/tmnt3.zip - Track 1 ("Let's Go Turtles") Recording quality still sounds pretty hissy, but that wouldn't stop a killer arrangement and performance. Drums at :38 definitely sounded like they were in a completely different place, plus the tone IMO didn't gel with the sax. Bass work seemed pretty cool, but was drowned out a bit, partly because the hizz covered it up. The sax harmonization was still a bit shaky/raw in terms of the timing, and the performance probably should have been smoother and less dry, but it's a legit step up from the previous version. From 3:04-4:36, the electric guitar work and bass was a lot more audible and contributed well to the freestyling going on. There's just something though about the sax and weed's guitar not sounding right as tandem leads. Hate to seem like I'm putting it all on Koelsch, but it's his sax that's squeaky and dry here. Arrangement is solid, but the sax needs to be modified to better mesh with the other instrumentation both on the performance and production side. If you also adjust the sound balance and effects so that the various parts sound like they're all in the same room (as none of the 3 players sound together IMO), this would be golden. Perhaps have another mixer take a look at the separate recordings/files and give you their input. NO (borderline/resubmit)

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ewj - "Buttville ~ The Descent" (ewj-07.spc) Ain't that a bitch. Once this started, I could tell which source it was and was already feeling the arrangement creativity. Nice job layering the guitars at :24, before adding some swirly effects to pad the piece out at :34 and switching over to piano from :45-:55. The switchover to the piano came about very abruptly, and the piano sounded very robotically sequenced. I liked the stuttering percussion, but the beats had no meat on 'em. Hahahahaha, holy shit, that was a cool concept stuttering the guitar like that the first time from 1:17-1:28. Didn't work out quite as smoothly as one could have hoped, but the execution was pretty good. Though I understand how the tone of the beatwork is inspired by the original, the the simplistic beatwork patterns definitely dragged on though. The strings you're using to pad the track out don't fill ot the track nearly enough. Piano coming back at 2:25 is pretty fake, though decently produced. In tandem with the strings though (2:35), everything sounds too synthetic, and the mechanical sequencing of the piano close was a weak way to end things. Good arrangement concepts so far, Chris. On that level, you don't seem to have many problems on the creativity side. There's loads of good ideas here, the acoustic guitar and stuttering effects featuring pretty strong execution, but the rest not being executed nearly as well. You gotta refine the sequencing and production on your synthetic elements to get something that both flows more smoothly and also fills out the soundfield; the performance of those parts right now sounds too jerky and inhuman. Looking forward to a resub of this one, as well as any other future work. Too bad about your guitar pickup, but you showed promise attempting to turn lemons into lemonade. NO (resubmit)

Pulled a Wingless right there! Go bro!

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda2.zip - Track 8 Cool swirly stuff for the intro, though those strummed strings sounded way too fake and robotically sequenced. Decent rise in intensity at 1:32 moving into the source melody, though aside from all the crazy effects, you weren't doing much creatively with the actual source tune. There was a pretty simple countermelody, but that was about it. Those beats were really flimsy as well. Source chorus at 2:30 also sounded really spartan and the contribution of the layering at 2:43 with the guitar synth was negligible to building up the piece. All your leads were too quiet vs. the swirly soundscape, plus the arrangement factor was so minimal. Good stuff with the belltones at 3:35 to provide more countermelodic ideas, but the development of the source material remained near verbatim. Decent closing section at 4:03. The interpretation of the actual source material was very minor, with only some sparse countermelodic ideas occasionally added in there. There's never any fleshed out combination of melody, harmony, and or countermelody at any time, plus your sound balance downplayed the lead instrumentation in favor of the swirly pads and limp beats. You relied too much on the background textures here to give personality to the piece, so IMO you focused on the wrong aspects of working with the original music in terms of the standards here. Keep interpreting the source in your mind first. NO

Don't use temporary upload sites in the future. Especially in the case of you wanting others to hear it after the decision, that Megaupload link will eventually die off. Google Pages would at least offer something more permanent, yet flexible. http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF9_psf.rar - 305 "Black Mage's Village" Yeah, the intro is pretty abrupt, though I didn't think that was a huge hit against it. Still, some buildup would be more logical. Once you hear how the ending was as abrupt as intro, the criticism multiplies. Now it just implies you didn't know how to write an introduction or ending. Good writing idea with the pizz strings at :28, though they sound like mud in the background. The bowed strings sounded a bit jerky with the note-to-note movements, but effort was put into the sequencing and production to downplay the syntheticness, which was good. I agree with weed though that there's a fairly inhuman/static feel to the whole thing though. The overall production on this was fairly full, but really muddy and lo-fi. Despite the valid complaints about the violin lead being too dominant, I liked how the supporting instrumentation varied up over the course of the 2 3/4 minutes. Dynamically however, the energy is the same level for most of the mix. See what you can do to change that through some added transitions that slow the mix down and/or change the texture more substantially (e.g. changing leads or the tone of the existing lead more often). Promising work so far, but it needs a lot of polish to excel. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/usf/MarioKart64_usf.rar - 28 "Victory Lap" It's cool that you were inspired by a Mariah Carey pop style. In essence, I can see what you were going for. However the end result isn't particularly strong. Intro was WAY too quiet. The drum tone starting at :33 was really out of place here, not to mention that it didn't fill up the space well. Then again, NOTHING filled up the space well here. Things were pretty empty and flat most of the whole way through. Especially for the beginning, you gotta properly flesh out these sounds with processing/effects and more parts so things aren't so barren. Your pads and strings have no meat on 'em at all; it's unfortunate hearing something like 1:11-1:33, which sounds very Carey-ish in the writing, have 0 power behind it. The tempo change at 2:08 was subtle, but really abrupt and awkward to me; would perhaps flow better if you bridged the two tempos with something brief. The arrangement ultimately didn't have enough time to develop given the time alloted. And, unfortunately for you, Vigilante's observation of "literally 30 seconds after the track starts to escalate, it's over," was all too true. With that cruddy percussion especially, if you're trying to emulate another style, it's important to emulate it fairly faithfully. You need to listen to more of Carey's work and compare the percussion sounds being used. Cool concept, but lacking in execution. Keep striving for experience and improvement, Jaycee.

http://s87139486.onlinehome.us/sc2mods/Ur-quan.mod - "Ur-quan" Hahaha! Not the most musical chorus to a source tune that I've ever heard. I had to pull the MOD up in DeliPlayer just to make sure the file wasn't corrupt. Cool intro though the organ-like lead was pretty flat. Good spacey effects to set up a minimal atmosphere that would eventually fill up, as evidenced by the fade in of your starting at :34. :59 seemed like you were trying to really amp up the energy level, but none of the sounds had any meat on 'em besides the ambient sounds/effects padding things out. You need more substance in terms of the lead, countermelodic and harmony parts, as there's really not much going on here. I agreed with zirc that the drums were patently out of place here. They did nothing to ground the track and focus it in any direction. It's not necessary to make good music, but the jist of the site is to take game melodies and work with though, so having some sort of direction with your own song structure is key no matter what. Hate to merely echo, but I also agreed with zirc's comments regarding the shortcomings of the overall structure. There's too much intro/outro material, and barely enough focus on arranging the source in the middle. Decent potential, but I'd scrap this one and see what other ideas are brewing as you look to gain more experience. Right now, the foundation here doesn't seem strong enough to rework without a huge chunk of time. It may be better spent experimenting new ideas and techniques. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFX_psf2.rar - 102 "In Zanarkand" I'll be upfront that I was bothered by the lack of realism in the sample usage. Right in the beginning, that exposed string sounds so thin and inhuman. The note-to-note movement sounds decent but still jerky and mechanical. The sequencing is decent overall if you're not demanding (aside from that very impossible run at :05), but I thought the layering and effects sounded very simplistic and didn't create enough depth to the sounds, thereby not working enough to compensate for the tone of the string samples. The samples making this one up got a bit more exposed (i.e. worse) once the brass and drum samples worked their way upfront at 2:16. The change in the supporting instrumentation at 3:15 further exposed the brass pretty badly. Again, nothing meaningful done on the production side to compensate for the crummy samples. Also nothing done on the articulation side to at least give off a realistic performance to the pieces. Everything sounds so thin, jerky, and robotic. Yeah, though a "relatively" conservative arrangement, you did a good job adapting the time signature and personalizing the approach. I don't even think you need better samples. I just believe you need to use your exisiting ones a lot more effectively. Flesh out the sounds more and refine the note-to-note movements and you could pass this with these existing sounds, Brad. I'll take some work, not simply for this mix but for the future, but you've gotten this far. You're capable of even more. NO (resubmit)

y'all smell like poo. vote on other shit.

Ohshi, TRANCE! Get away! Get away! Get away! NO Wait, resist bias clearly inherent in the panel against trance! [rethinks...] Ohshi, TRANCE! I be movin'! I be groovin'! YES Wait, resist bias clearly inherent in the panel towards trance! ... ... ... http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 216 "People Seized with Life" Aight, so I thought the synths and some of the processing ideas were a bit bland. I'm admittedly a bit more of a fan of edgier and unique-sounding techniques from the heavy-hitting electronic guys like SGX, but, shit, check out the arrangement on this one. Without even substantially referring to the most familiar verse of the source melody, Alex built a pretty strong, interpretive trance arrangement. Focused a lot on interpreting first verse of the original, which was a pretty interesting approach; I'm sure some people familiar with the source will be disappointed that the chorus from the original didn't factor into this much. The effect on the string-like synth filling out 1:32-1:50 sounded a bit low-quality, but it's a minor issue. Section from 2:39-3:17 felt notably cramped and the melodic content of the arpeggiated synths simply cluttered together with the bassline and beats. Pretty messy and grating, IMO. Some effect that you stopped at 3:17 seemed to remedy the issue. Ending at 3:42 cut out a bit abruptly there. The constant buildups and breakdowns ambient employed kept the energy and interest level high throughout the course of the piece. Solid arrangement that goes into very interpretive and evolving territory without ever losing sight of the original. Looking forward to more, Alex, very impressive. YES

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 204 "On That Day, 5 Years Ago" Final Fantasy X Original Soundtrack - 321 "Suteki Da Ne" (see: 119 "The Sight of Spira") Well, you made the female go YES, YES, YES!!! I dunno how the hell my vote is supposed to top that. Indeed, the recording quality could be better, but this is certainly strong enough. Good intro from :00-:34 based off "On That Day...", which I could already see connecting very seamlessly to "Suteki Da Ne". For a solo guitar piece, the atmosphere was a little too empty for my personal taste, but I like how you really changed the tone of the original. Sounded like a flub at 2:02; pretty jarring to me. Slightly less jarring buzziness at 2:13. Minor stuff. Things started dragging a bit on the arrangement, but you wisely varied things up at 2:39 & 2:50 by accelerating and decelerating the tempo. Last section at 3:00 probably could have used a more dynamically contrasting finish for something arguably more interesting, but particularly effective harmonizing of the two guitars for the close. The resolution was admittedly a little ho-hum to me, but overall I can't hate on this "simplistic" but solid arrangement. It's not gonna punch you in the face, but clearly would rather intend to wisk you away to sleep. Decidedly understated. Nice debut, Mike. Keep 'em coming, bro. YES