Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/archive/Authors/Game/Wright_Tim/Awesome.lha - mod.g1a Nice, this is the same guy who sent in that Pinball Dreams mix, which showed a lot of potential. Picked the game over theme from a game with an unlikely title, "Awesome". Yes, it exists. Pretty good original, all things considered. Nice intro with the strings & drums. Production sounds really lo-fi/muddy unfortunately. Melody comes in at :28, and at the same time the song sounded a little swamped with whatever string or vox ambiance you had going on. Great buildup from :55-1:05, and nice increase in the energy at 1:05 bringing in the punchy percussion, which could have used a denser/meatier sound to fill out the soundfield more, IMO. Just personal preference perhaps, but the tone sounded bland and didn't quite gel with the rest of the instrumentation choices. They sounded too upfront, but could use some delay or some other effects. The drum patterns here also sounds a bit too rigid/robotic. Minor point, but the pause at 1:55 didn't quite work to me. I wouldn't have completely faded the track out there. There was also a good point made by Gray that the sounds are a bit unbalanced. For example, at 1:56 you had some nice writing ideas on the support strings that got nearly completely buried. Nice freestylish/original stuff at 2:10 with the lead synth. It could have stuck out in the foreground a little more, but was ok where it was. It was shrill enough at times where raising the volume much would have been detrimental. Drums at 3:53 were a lot weaker and sounded ultra-flimsy. Didn't like the tone on them again. Nonetheless, the writing/concepts/arrangement were pretty solid. And it's good to hear a track that makes proper use of a fadeout ending. The EQing doesn't need as drastic work as the Pinball Dreams mix did, but it does need some more love on the high-end IMO. I know it's literally not that simple, but bumping up the 14K preamp by about +7.5db in Winamp gave a cleaner, clearer sound without ruining the song's atmosphere, so boosting the treble frequencies seems like the way to go. It still sounds kind of lo-fi that way, but not nearly as much. Though I had issue with the drums not meshing well enough, I really liked the arrangement ideas. The source is very creatively handled, and the original writing integrates seamlessly with the arranged sections. Once you get your production skills up, your material will sound that much stronger and polished. I can understand NOs, in that the production is lackluster as is, and the drums could sound less robotic and fit better. Despite the issues, I'm ok going conditional YES (very borderline) if/when the treble's boosted. Otherwise, it'll be NO (refine/resubmit). Don't really see the panel going for this, but who knows. I'm tentative enough where I can change my mind on it as well. I liked the arrangement ideas you had in the DKC arrangement on your site ("Schlong Aqua") once you started getting more interpretive, but that one had weak, boring (and repetitive) drums as well. So it's good to see that aspect of your work improve to some degree with your more recent tracks. Keep up the improvement, please.

Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks - (30) "Promise" Damn, the original is sweet. Just loved the entire feel of the song. Guitar-centric, eh? Wonder how this solo acoustic piece can match up. Certainly starts off aight. Little barren, but understandably so. Main melody starts at :43. Performance is pretty chill, but doesn't really do anything with the theme. Slight awkwardness at 1:37. Heard some brief buzziness at 1:55. Nothing major, just stuff I heard; Vigilante will have to break it down better on technique/performance. My bar's admittedly lower, but this should have been tighter performance-wise. The ending at 2:25 was really abrupt. It ALMOST sounded like the track had skipped, then it just ends with one last strum and a single note. There's some good ideas with personalization in adapting the original to solo guitar, but at only 2:30-long, the piece feels too undeveloped on the arrangement side. Go for maybe a minute or two more of further arrangement ideas, practice the track a little more to put down a tighter, more polished performance (it's already fairly good, all things considered), and fashion an actual ending for the piece and this'll be in great shape. Gray points out it's in mono :'-(, which I saw but didn't treat as an issue, as you're just one guy sitting in front of one mic with one instrument. Dunno if you have more than one microphone at your disposal, or if you're even going to bother using selective delay, reverb or whatever to create a stereo effect and make use of stereo placement, but Gray's right in that either of those options would only help the piece in terms of creating a spacious, 3-dimensional setting, especially listening on headphones. If I were listening to you play this where you actually were, sounds would bounce off walls and whatnot; certain frequencies would be more resonant. Duplicating those types of effects provides a much more authentic feel to the performance. I feel we need a nice, chill solo acoustic guitar piece such as this. Great source choice and good effort for a first submission, Michael. I look forward to hearing your future work. NO (resubmit)

Y'all listening on headphones or...?

Ah, almost a sort of double entendre. Cool. I'll make sure it finally get updated in the next few months.

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mo2 - "A Bad Dream" (mo2-041.spc) & "Eight Melodies" (mo2-111.spc) In my opinion, the arrangement is excellent. The pace is slow, which may bore some, but deliberate given the creative theme and thereby doesn't detract from the substance. (I see what you did there.) The performance aspect of needs some finesse. Within various phrases of notes, especially the stronger ones, the velocites sound the same, making things seem needlessly robotic (e.g. :42-:47). Overall, the performance also feels too rigidly performed at times. Could be quantized too much. After a reasonably flowy part such as 1:39-1:52, the melodic part sounds more robotic. Then you get later sections, such as 3:02-3:50 where the rhythm hand is so mechanical, that the track tends to drag on that level. The note-to-note dynamics seem decent overall, but they need more work. Someone else will have to confirm or deny. The atmosphere feels a bit thin. Might need more sustain effects to fill out the soundfield a bit more, but it could also just be a taste thing. Some better performance dynamics alone would be enough to push the piece up in my estimation. The ending is also too abrupt. Create a little more build towards the notion that the piece is about to wrap up, then let the last note at 3:50 trail off longer. Good stuff so far, Charles; I'll be keeping it. Hope you continue to work on this further, and I'm looking forward to your next submission. NO (resubmit)

did you take my ones then or should I fix something? Your resizes don't look that good, bro. But perhaps try some other colors. Maybe Coop and Evilhead can also give it a try and y'all can get more of the characters from those links I gave earlier. Can anyone do some nice resizes of the Phantasy Star peeps in this animated GIF?

Agreed (i.e. y'all need something for Ken). Even if stuff takes a long time, when it's done, it's done. I'd rather feel entirely satisfied with the output than wrap it up early.

Dammit, Dj Redlight is male. He is not female. Call him Ash instead.

I subscribe to the Vigilante doctrine. If patently unremarkable, then that's not a pass.

If Matt's working on a website, wouldn't that give some people a little elbow room to finish something quickly?

I love how I completely disagreed with that back when I first heard the mix. I thought Will took a completely bleh, unmemorable original and turned in into something good. Too quiet, but otherwise a solid track.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/wizwar2.zip - Track 6 Pretty empty track to start off. Lead synth is really defaulty. So are most of the other sounds too. There also aren't really any effects used here to personalize the sounds or fill out the soundfield beyond that overused "BOOM" sound first used at :50. Texture is pretty plain as a result. Feel finally changed up at 1:35 with the introduction of some new sounds, but the texture is still relatively sparse. Sound balance could be improved too, especially after 2:04 as most of the synths just mush together indiscriminantly once you added some new stuff into the picture and started filling out the soundfield more. The track does develop over time, but the samples are weak and there's no finesse on the production side to make up for it. You've given it some good effort to personalize your arrangement approach though. You've gotta go for less defaulty, richer sounds and learn how to balance them properly to give your arrangement ideas the best treatment. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/quat-3.zip - Track 4 Word, thanks a lot for the source link, Allen. The stuff in place is ok, but I wasn't impressed with this as is and don't understand a YES. The groove is so plain and uninteresting, both in the sounds/synths chosen and the ho-hum beat patterns. Everything sounds pretty vanilla and also cookie-cutter for Allen's style. 1:11-1:39 rehashes the arrangement with some overly mechanical piano underneath. Finally something different with the lead synths at 1:39 to change up the feel, at least a little bit. Very phat & beefy "BOOM" transition at 1:56 though to the next section. Lead and supporting instrumentation shifts focus briefly from 2:05-2:43 before going back into the more saw-style lead until 3:34, and then heading for the finish. Bleh. Dynamics barely ever changed the entire time. The arrangement had a decent degree of variation, but with the saw-type lead and looped percussion patterns being used most of the way and never changing, everything dragged and sounded too samey over the long haul. Even on the arrangement side, some iterations of the stuff could either be cut out or you could have worked to change the tone of the synths you were using to provide some style changes. If you're going to keep the structure intact, then at least change up the instrumentation style so that this doesn't get boring. For that matter, work on something more sophisticated than these overly simplistic, and ultimately boring grooves. You've got good stuff in place, bro, and this sounds like you can work further on it to get it to that higher level. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, it's definitely fine with me. I defer to the "pants-crapping good" analogy that the Pretz of yore has made in the past.

http://project2612.org/download.php?id=95 - 01 "Magical Sound Shower" From now on, nearly all Genesis soundtracks will be linked from Project 2612. Use the VGM input plug-in with Winamp to listen. Much better than using GYMs/YMs. The source tune was surprising in that at the 2 minute mark there was a ton of additional comping-style ideas in there that I didn't know were coming. If I hadn't have known better, I might have attributed that kind of stuff to someone else's ideas, rather than the original composers. Whole tune is 3:32-long. Shows you just how much OutRun I played as a kid. Opening sounds like some ultra-tame DDR intro only to settle into a barren playthrough of the source material by a delayed keyboard. Beats FINALLY kicked in at :40 to start filling out the soundfield, but everything sounds muddy and lacks punch. The bassline of the mix is pretty obscured by the beatwork, and the piano even struggles to establish itself as the primary foreground player. Eeeeew, some HORRIBLE sample for the sampled steel pan at 1:44; sounds absolutely awful and clearly wasn't meant to be sequenced with these ugly machine-gun style attacks. Some other scratching thing (I guess the braking noise sampled from the game) briefly made an appearance at 2:38. What was the point? 2:50 goes right back into the same stuff at the intro, except it says "Checkpoint!" instead of "Get Ready!". Lame recycling of the previous material to drag the song out. 3:24 adds some sort of poor woodwind sample (or whatever it was) as an additional layer on top of the recycled arrangement from the beginning to provide the most minor of minor instances of dynamics and development. I get to 4:26 with a little less than a minute left wondering if it's literally gonna keep plodding along with the theme, and it sure does. Start at ReMixing and learn more about the programs and sounds involved in the hobby, ask people for feedback at Works: OCR (they're always willing to help a lady), and continue working from there. This suffers from poor sounds, poorly-USED sounds, and a boring, repetitive, and needlessly drawn-out arrangement. That's about as basic as I can put it. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/dragonsl.zip - Track 5 Not to poo on the original track, but I didn't see what was so hot about it. Only about 33 seconds long, not really catchy. Then again, people in the community make great arrangements from bleh stuff all the time. Opened up with some quick chiptune homage, I guess direct-sampled, before bringing in some very flimsy beats and bass at :06. Source melody arrives at :21 along with a woodwind on counterpoint. The instrumentation is so lacking of energy. The percussion patterns are way too simple and plodding. The 1:43-2:03 section has the woodwind and bass taking the lion's share to change things up briefly, but the overall energy level and plodding beats meant that the dynamics didn't really change. The last section from 2:03-2:50/end was another iteration of the first part with no meaningful changes. Top off with an aburpt, non-satisfying ending and it's an easy call. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda2.zip - Track 8 Nothing really more than an overly conservative arrangement with decent instrumentation. Soundfield felt a little murky, but that was the least of the mix's problems. Instrumentation did little to vary over time. Hit another chorus at 1:18 and I was hoping it would go somewhere new... 1:30, nope. Another verbatim iteration of the theme. Finally something slightly different at 1:55 to provide some contrast. Before I could even officially bet myself that it would swing right back into the same older stuff, there it went right back into the exact same chorus at 2:21, basically rehashing everything until the end/3:31. Will he go for the abrupt ending or the fadeout...??? Abrupt ending it was. Cookie cutter, repetitive, uninterpretive arrangement approach; ho-hum sounds and processing. NO

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Tina" (ff6-201.spc) http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFXI_psf2.rar - 102 "Vana'diel March" Fighting a losing battle at this rate, but I played this on VGF83, so I'll bite. The arrangement was simply great. Kind of funny how "Dueling Consoles", though a great track and arrangement IMO, really suffered from some excessively crowded sections, whereas the simpler construction of this allowed the typical Shna tricks to be in play without seeming too disjoining or cluttered. I still don't reconcile a sophisticated 2A03 chiptune approach with being a guidelines violation. If production somehow leaves "much to be desired" (which I don't even remotely agree with here as it is), then a stellar arrangement should be able to get by regardless and that's what this is. Nothing but wonderful variations on a theme that I don't even like. This stupid bitch actually makes me like Terra's theme, can you believe it? I almost refuse to, but as always, there's no bias. Good dynamics like the softer sounds of 2:20 served well to provide a nice break from all the beatwork. I think the beatwork could have been more active in spots so that the track didn't feel a little empty at times, but it was a minor issue. Might has missed a theme at 2:56, but I do believe that was some FF11 snuck in there from 3:16-4:07 for the people with good ears. 3:39-4:07, I felt the volume should have been pulled back a bit, as some of it was piercing, but otherwise good stuff. Even going NO on "Dueling Consoles", I'm glad it passed in order to offer something different that the unwashed masses out there normally wouldn't have access to. It's a shame IMO that the mere base sound choices here somehow hold this back when the arrangement is nothing but interpretive, sophisticated, and accessible. YES

http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/archive/C64Music/Brennan_Neil/Samurai_Warrior.sid - Subtune 2/3 For the record, this game is called Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo, not just Usagi Yojimbo. Well, checking out this SID, the arrangement certainly has a LOT of creative freedom in terms of where to go, since this source is only 10-seconds long. Man, this is expanded upon nicely. With something so minimal to arrange, this somewhat liberal approach building off of the original's melody works so well. Too bad these beats and lil' bells and whistles repeat ad nauseum. "You can fly-y-y-y!" Can I? CAN I???!!! Choir sampling from 1:46-2:07 sounded really cheap, before going right back into the same groove as before. Ah man, lame. This could have gone in some other direction to keep the arrangement ideas fresh, either by writing more rearrangement or changing up some of the instrumentation. Then there's no meaningful ending either? Damn. Scrap the cruddy sampled choir and introduce more variation and dynamics into the piece and you have an easy winner. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/sectionz.zip - Track 25 Yeah, some pretty fake guitar opening things up here. Voice stuff coming in at :13 sounds so lo-fi and loops for way way way too long. Everything already sounds really lossy. Nonetheless, some decent concept for your intro based off the intro of the source tune. Source melody finally comes in at :54 working in tandem with the lil' fluttery counterpoint or whatever you'd call that second part of the source. Synth design is way too plain. Beatwork is coo in principle, but needs more power, plus it's repetitive/recycled like a motherfucker. Overall, there really aren't too many things going on at once to create a genuinely complex piece of music. As such the piece feels really underwhelming, like there's a lot of untapped potential in both the sound choices, and especially the arrangement, which didn't really develop much over the course of the 3 minutes. Cool ideas so far, but they could really be taken to another level IMO, Jesse. I'll be keeping this, as I like what you had in place so far. Perhaps keep working on it. NO

Not softer. Simply more balanced. Right now, it's too difficult to distinguish among the sounds during the loud portions of the track, with the drums in particular crowding out the rest of the instruments while sounding loud and indistinct themselves. That's pretty much my call on it.

Turrican Original Video Game Soundtrack - 06 "The Great Bath" I can see TO's not familiar with the original, cuz what's listed in that Mirsoft archive definitely isn't it. I can see why he didn't make the connection though. For some reason, UnExotica's .LHA archive doesn't have "The Great Bath" in it either. This is a pretty popular source tune though in the Amiga arrangement scene. Pretty conservative take on the source, with the most noticeable interpretation being the drums, and everything pretty much being left intact with this overly simplistic and muddy atmosphere. Once stuff wasn't played by glassier leads and shifted to the synthier lead at 1:11, this sounded way way worse. There's no sense of judiciousness in terms of crafting the soundscape here. I think the piano and drums barely have any delay on them, making the muddier stuff on top seem really out of place. Murky. Muddy. Messy. NO

Loudness isn't necessarily a bad thing. Roe's naturally leaning towards a louder sound. He's done this mix in a way that it's loud, while still being technically efficient. As long as it doesn't clip and fits the genre, I don't see how you can reject it based on that. I don't think it fits this genre at all. I think a somewhat less compressed sound would sound powerful without making the loudest sections sound imbalanced and indistinct.

Metal Slug 2 Original Soundtracks - (04) "Judgement" Played this back on VGF83, so I've had a chance to hear this before. What a crappy source tune though. Those voices bug the crap out of me, and it's such a lame track in the first place. It does spell "Judgement" with an E though, so props for that. GODDAMN son, this is way too loud. Bah, it's a Roetaka piece, so it's always gonna be needlessly loud, I dunno why. Guitar at :39 went for the source chorus and sounded absolutely buried under the drums. HAHAHAHA! Comparing this to SSH is way out there, I'm sorry. Not that I'm looking for SSH-quality sequencing, as I don't mean to diss Alex, but this isn't as sophisticated and, when used without doubling, doesn't sound very good. I thought the guitar tone in places was awfully flat (e.g. :39-58). Doubling them at :59 helped alleviate some of the issues I had there. Whenever the drums are in play though, like with :59-1:12, they're just dominating over the top of the guitars and bassline and making the soundfield sound like a cluttered mess. 1:39-1:52 is just so loud and poorly balanced, I can't imagine why anyone would think it sounds ok with this ridiculous amount of sizzle. The bass sequencing done at 1:59 is alright, but isn't ridiculously strong. 2:12, again with these loud, washed out drums. Jesus, the cymbals were sizzling so loud there. I can't believe no one else is complaining about this stuff. Tons more clutter and sheer volume from 2:39-3:08 leading toward the end. Like everyone else, I feel like the overall texture and sound selection was better than most of Alex's previous pieces. But the production is still holding this back substantially. It's just way too loud, abrasive and overcompressed. Personally, I didn't feel the arrangement was strong enough or cohesive enough to make up for this kind of overly swamped, cluttered sound. I don't see why such a problematic production approach that has hurt other subs in the past seems hunky-dory in this instance when it's causing the same old problems. Even though the track's probably not clipping, that's clearly not the problem here. NO (resubmit)

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkq - "In a Snow-Bound Land" (dkq-25.spc) I'll admit, I thought the source sounded cool for the first few seconds, then it just hit a spot where the rest was no good. Disappointing original. Melody's completely unmemorable, so I had to let it marinate for a while. What a strange intro. I liked the string lead at :07, but the rest of the instrumentation didn't seem to really gel. You had some straight up MIDI-grade keyboard crud interspersed in their for a TERRIBLE sound quality disparity. The tone of the drums just don't fit at all, and their pattern is way too basic and repetitive. Then all of a sudden at :47 you have these gross, ultra-fake MIDIish string runs where the notes are playing too fast. Vox used briefly in the background was too subtle to play any meaning part and fill out the soundfield. Soundscape was very cluttered and imbalanced the whole way through, plus there was a distinct lack of dynamics. Too bad, because the overall energy was admirable. At 2:44 when you started another loop of the arrangement, I was like "BAH, not again", until I realized you were going for the (weak) fadeout close. Poor textures and sound balance the whole way through, plus undeveloped arrangement ideas and cruise control dynamics means NO. Definitely keep at it though, like zircon mentioned, as I'll be holding onto this piece. You show promise behind the surface, so hang around the ReMixing & Works: OCR forums to learn more about whatever programs and samples you're using and follow that up by getting feedback from the community on your next piece of music.