Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Yeah, I don't mind the minimalist approach here, but the instrumentation, particularly the woodwind lead, doesn't sound realistically sequenced at all. The arrangement wasn't particularly interesting for me, but could be improved by more natural timing and interplay with the instruments so everything would click strongly. Decent initial ideas though, and I wouldn't mind hearing this come our way again. NO (resub)

Yeah, I wish things were more interpretive, but I felt the arrangement was decent. Not quite passable, but some very applaudable stylistic interpretation was there, especially for Call at a Port like Shan mentioned. Light Side Field is one of my favorite tracks by the way, but the rendition of that in particular was thin. The performance is alright, but sounds a bit too synthetic and thin for how it was presented. The performance needs to be tighter, that was my main concern really. Hit the ReMixing forum for tips on getting the acoustic guitar synths sounding more natural, and get more WIP forum feedback. As long as the stylistic interpretation remains on this level, it has a shot at least. Worth keeping for me. Looking forward to another stab at this one on the panel. NO (resubmit)

I think it's sadder that he thought it would be a good idea to save that as a GIF. The bigger travesty? Smoke hasn't sent us Americans any Dutch marijuana. Not that I even want any, but it would be a kind gesture to be sure.

Alright, so I'm gonna break Bev's heart again and jerk this mix around. I've been listening to it and the issues I've had with it have been nagging on me for a couple of weeks. Talking with fellow Js after the other votes came in really crystallized a lot of the issues here. A big problem I had reading other votes here was that analoq, zircon, and The wingless were all in the same boat as me where we all liked the arrangement but felt that something was lacking in the performance. The fact that 3 other judges after me had lukewarm feelings about the performance and/or dynamics not really drawing interest should have set off a flag with me earlier, and the mix did merit re-evaluation. This didn't stir up much of a reaction upon listening, so while the arrangement is definitely above bar, the plunkiness of the performance, the sparseness of the soundfield, and admittedly robotic quantizing of the notes in places were all limiting the performance from being truly stirring and emotive. If this were posted as is, I think there would be a lot of people criticizing the mix on that level. I believe Bev exceeded her own standards here, but not OC's. The performance and her own post-production efforts have become better like I mentioned in my previous comments, but this can be improved and I feel some of the top piano sequencers in the community could provide insight to help her really trick this out and have it captivate and deeply involve the listener. Right now, the arrangement is solid, but this is admittedly too dry and mechanical for me to comfortably remain YES. NO (PLEASE resubmit)

Bleh. Like Jesse said, it's in mono, the arrangement is repetitive & underdeveloped, and it sounds terrible. Dunno the technical differences between General MIDI and, say, Modplug, but well-made tracker stuff doesn't sound this bad, so you get the links to the help areas as well as the "NO MIDIs" portion of the submission guidelines. ReMixing forum Work-in-Progress forum

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff6.rsn - "Tina" (ff6-201.spc) Alright, plunky fakey keyboard, fakey strings, fakey brass, hilariously bad "NEWS" sample. Terra shows up in :40, and we keep groovin' and so forth and some such. Nice brass at 1:04...definitely. Steel stringed guitar at 1:09 was probably the highlight, and MORE brass at 1:21. Hahaha, awesomez! OverLooked ReMix is that way, 'Ili. http://www.olremix.org NO on paper, but YES in my heart

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/metroid.zip - Track 5 ("Kraid's Chamber") Yep, the source tune didn't come in until :47, and even here it was just the verbatim melody with the loops/beats on top. Production was cruddy cruds with a distinct lack of higher frequencies and cluttered, dull sounds. 2:04 had some slight rearrangement ideas, but nothing solid. Lazy ending. Form letter quality. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/riverc~1.zip - Track 2 Watching Tuesday Night Fights on ESPN and I'm reviewing during a commercial. Very bland MIDI-grade sounds and relatively bland arrangement. Too many uncreative/boring sections where you just copied the melody verbatim. Very sparse; not much in the way of polyphony. The arrangement at least picked up in creativity from 1:21-1:53 & 2:18-2:49. Form letter material. Help comes in the form of the ReMixing y WIP forums. NO

I wrote Mick just a few hours ago and it only took him 2 hours to hit me back with the cleaner version! Awesome! Nah, no problems at all. Everything sounds cleaner and more powerful. Props again on this one, and thanks for getting back to us so quickly!

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/dkq.rsn - "Forest Interlude" (dkq-10.spc) Really plain synth lead coming here; anemic and flat. The hand drums were alright, even though they sounded fairly unnatural. The synth coming in at :37 didn't sound very melodic at all, it sounded pretty flat, even when doubled. Already a minute in and I'm not really feeling it, but 1:16 changed the direction a little bit with some decent freestyle-ish material laid over the source. Nothing here's really establishing prominence over the other instruments, which is pretty critical for the melodic content. Sounds like the percussion and supporting synths are louder than the actual melody. [shrug] We finally tackle something from the source tune other than the intro at 2:13, but there's really no meat to the arrangement at all. Nice accenting provided by those strings showing up at 2:37. The arrangement meanders around at 2:52 with some poorly-written freestyle work that merely used motifs from "Forest Interlude." 3:31 dropped all of the elements out and basically retread the arrangement style except with strings now filling out the background to make things sound more ethereal during the fadeout ending. Aside from the use of the strings, the sounds never changed around much here with some effects or brought in any new ideas. Meh. Just never any real direction here with the arrangement; never goes anywhere at all. The lead needs more meat to it (I think it actually ruins the rest of the texture here), the sound balance among the instruments needs to place the lead in the forefront, and the phrasing during the freestyle-ish parts needs to sound coherent instead of random. The use of panning here was alright though, and you achieved some fairly clean sounds, which is commendable. Keep working at it, Ross. I'd actually say work on some original material for a little bit to refine your composition ideas so that your melodies sound more coherent. NO

OCR-Hosted NSF - Track 1 Yeah, Aaron's right. This was too plain and didn't bring the sheer power I expected from hard trance, though it was a decent effort. 3:07 had a synth come in that I thought would start off the source material, but didn't actually get into the second set of notes in the melody until 4:23. Those SFX clips were pretty lame at the outset, but used very quietly in the background during the Excitebike melody they had their place. The usage of actual Excitebike material was over at 5:14. The mix was too long with a whole bunch of meaningless (in the context of the guidelines) original material 7:18. Not even close to enough arrangement here. I was hoping that some of the synths involved here were meant to sound like when the player was riding the bike, but recalling the actual game, that's not true here. Glad you're still submitting Yuji, but I'd rather listen to something of yours that very expressly deals with the source material you chose, like the brilliant Zillion 'MelodicTrance'. NO

If anyone's got high expectations for a Street Fighter Alpha mix, it's me. Starting out, the track was already too muddy. Ryu's theme kicked it at :25 on bass, and the supporting elements totally washed the piece out. I heard some almost happy hardcore-ish percussion work in the background but it was very subdued. Not a fan of all the sounds bleeding into each other this way whatsoever. The spot at 1:44 where the bass was briefly loud made absolutely no sense cuz it was never used again. What was the point? Same with the lone SFX usage at 1:54. The arrangement was really dragging out by the 2-minute mark. Some tacky cymbals showed up at 2:06 and didn't leave until the very end. The melody on the bass guitar dropped down at 2:17 and just didn't work. The ending at 3:00 was pretty scattershot on the composition and just abrupt overall; there was no build or transition to it. Bleh, what a mess. NO

The track basically looped at 1:32 & 3:06. The woodwind first used at :51 sounded awfully fake when exposed, but the layering of them worked well. Cool instruments for an ethnic and organic feel, cool groove, nice panning and production. Keeping it. Too bad this never developed into anything instead of looping 2 1/2 times. From the looks of the sub letter, this may possibly not be interpretive enough to pass, but I leave it up to Gray or another Suikoden fan to verify that. If it's not a cover Kitsune (or I suppose even if it is), provide a lot more interpretation & variation and resubmit. NO

OCR Hosted NSF - Track 4 ("Wicked Child") Aight, we've got a live one. The track was a bit too loud and could have been pulled back a bit. Not overly interpretive for the first half or so, but there was good trade-off and interplay between various instruments and synths during each verse and chorus, and of course the expansiveness of this compared to the NES original was apparent. The drums could have used more variation, but didn't really get on me for essentially performing just a time-keeper role. Oooh, now we get into the goods at 2:44 with some good rearrangement featuring an organ synth. Notes were too fast to be realistic, but it was reasonably well sequenced. Then the SOLO is where it's at 3:20. The sound was too loud and there was a measurable degree of clutter most of the way through, but I think the overall package was solid and those issues weren't TOO detrimental in terms of listenability. If any Js wanna NO on production issues, I have no problem with that, and can agree on some level. Dizzamn, why haven't I heard of Sixto before though? Nice work. YES

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/so.rsn - "Calm Time" (so-12.spc) Been looking forward to this for a quite a while. KyleJCrb and I were both egging Hale-Bopp to sub this a while ago as soon as it came out in Dwelling of Duels for the March free month and snagged 5th place. I played this on VGF56 and was really impressed by it. I still think the drumming from the drumkit was too plain and now that snare was a bit too loud compared with the rest of the music, but I liked the little touches thrown into this remastered version, including more overall volume, more prominent vocals and richer vocal harmonization. Awesome shit with "Calm Time" given the authtentic pop arrangement treatment. It does a great job of adding speed and power to a very cool source tune, and the vocals filled in some of the "melodic gaps" of the original with even more substance and well-conceived lyrics. SnappleMan also hates this track with a passion. So many reasons to YES. Great work, David. Looking forward to more quality stuff from you.

Don't have the original from whatever Twilight Princess trailer was involved, but it doesn't really matter. The composition was underdeveloped repetitive and didn't need to be this long, the sounds were overly quiet, all of the high frequencies were non-existent, the samples were MIDI-grade and not used to their best, especially the light brass and pizzicato strings thrown in there, and the various in-game SFX from whatever Zelda game/trailer you got them from were tacky and placed too loudly over the top of the music. Deep and moving for the undemanding. Genuinely admirable effort all things considered, but the ideas are too simplistic and the instruments/sounds aren't used well. NO If you want to get in touch with another blind arranger who may be able to give you some tips, Dre, you may want to contact AURORA (aurorasword@melodymail.com) over at VGMix.

http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - 18 Flying Battery Zone 1 Very cool intro for the first :15 playing the original to segue into the mix. The arrangement was fairly conservative, so fans of that approach would be feeling this, but it needs more. It's not enough to transition into something that isn't too different from the original. If you go conservative in handling the melody, you have to really get expansive and interpretive with any countermelodies and supporting instrumentation involved. This mostly got by on instrumental and supporting instrumentation pattern changes, along with some slight playing around with rhythms from 1:30-1:45. Good to hear some piano brought in at 1:45. The drums got repetitive quickly, so vary up the timing and patterns more, and present something that's not so plain in sound and rhythm. Distrorted saw-type solo section from 2:13-2:40, with the melody coming back at 2:26 which had some better rhythm alteration ideas here. 2:42 went for the close and retread the beginning material at 2:50 for the finish. Really play around with the Flying Battery melody more and bring more creative ideas into the picture, on the arrangement side as well as with the production via more effects and processing. The ReMixing & WIP forums can help you improve your sounds & production and get more feedback before you next submission. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/zelda.zip - Track 47 http://www.ocremix.org/detailmix.php?mixid=OCR00364 - "Stainless Steel" http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Overworld" (loz3-04.spc) & "Dark World" (loz3-12.spc) http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 57 "Windmill Hut" Good stuff. Pimped it back in late May for VGF: Kind of generic synth drums and claps sprinkled in the intro, but I can live. Cool pattern underneath the arranged melody up until :42. The Wind Fish melody arrived at :43, and there's AE referenced in there at :58, along with an "Overworld" reference at 1:00. Really disliked the trance kick foundations here at 1:30, as it just comes across as the type of electronica where a bunch of the haters out there think OC is "all elelctronix crud 'n crud". Cool reference to "Dark World" at 2:20 and then "Song of Storms" at 2:27 while Wind Fish was briefly referenced a few times. Ben has some great ideas here in terms of layering the melodies of different source tunes together. Those machine-gun-like synth drums fading in around 2:56 were fairly thin, so I wasn't feeling those, but otherwise, the production was pretty sharp and the whole track sounded clean but possessed a lot of fullness y power (lil' Spanish flava). Very nice arrangement of Wind Fish again at 3:11, really playing around with the rhythms and phrasing. Would have loved the Middle Eastern motifs at 2:12 & 3:41 to have been used more frequently, but it's no big deal to me. Well put-together and a great third ReMix. YES

ROFL! 25 and over the fuckin' hill! Yeah, I had lost all faith in that man until he funked it with this track! [DarkeSword] [/DarkeSword]

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/mmx.rsn - "Chill Penguin Stage" (mmx-11.spc) Yah, we no wantz yo MIDI rips. Thank u.

http://www.zophar.net/gym/SK+SONIC3.RAR - 07 "Hydrocity Zone 2" The lead was somewhat tepid introing in, but I'll willing to see where things go with that lead pad along with some nice belltones (:06) and hand percussion (:10) creeping in. The drums at :21 are kind of plain and loopy here, and for some reason the strings are panned pretty strongly towards the right channel with nothing to fill out the left, plus the string samples are a bit exposed. Alright, :43 got things going with the supporting beats from Hydrocity Zone much like I remember from last time, the first real usage of the source. I could tell I wasn't gonna like the brass sample again thank to it's first appearance at 1:05, but the performance on it was handled alright. No glaring performance issues there with me and things were arranged around a little bit. There's just something plain and flat with the drumwork from 1:10-1:31 that makes me feel as if it doesn't drive quite the track along; less plain patterns and more good fills like the one you were using could spice things up. I also noticed that the some of the higher frequencies didn't play much of a factor here; boosting those up a bit could sharpen things up and give it some shine, which the whole track is lacking, as it sounded noticeably dull in my headphones. More panning and separation is likely needed to get this sounding as good as it could. 2:01-2:16 finally reached the source tune's pretty conservatively handled chorus as most of the elements dropped out, but then went back to the freestyle original material until 2:31. Good job making the lead elements much more prominent in this resub. Before, the drumwork had all of the presence but you scaled that back appropriately. 2:31 brought the melody back in with some arrangement that was relatively conservative but changes some of the notes around a bit. I do like the new support instrumentation and ideas going on with the bassline and strings to try to accentuate the melodic material. The Hydrocity chorus was basically taken verbatim at 3:04 then doubled from 3:19-3:34, though the whole track was too loud and cluttered during that whole section, so please clean it up. Decent original stuff until 3:49 as well. The tempo was changed at 3:49 with some lounge-style keyboard and effects going on, and I liked how the phrasing of the melody was changed a bit, especially compared to the rejected version. The electro effects sounded totally out of place after 3:57, drowning out the melody and making the timing seem awkward. Those effects hurt the abrupt tempo change at 4:09, which did help arrange the source tune again in yet another instrumentation variation. Had another original section at 4:25-4:39 with some hand drum action that felt a little too loud, but was a worthwhile addition overall. 4:29 had more verbatim melodic usage, but the backing elements were good. Meh, not a fan of the beats returning at 5:07 whatsoever; switch it up. The synth brass was pretty fakey the whole way through, which was disappointing, because I think it could have sounded better. Hate the last drum and cymbal shot ending. The cymbal fades too quickly, and that kind of close is just tacky to begin with. It's not worse than the gunshot ending, but it's still not any good. I'd just say let it fade out or maybe warp the sounds a bit as you fade. Now that the beatwork got scaled back a bit, the arrangement more prominent like it should be. I respect how you used the baseline of the original as the foundation of the track and then at least changed up the support instrumentation of the track during the melodically verbatim sections. The meat of the composition didn't change from the last time around, but you get props for making some detailed but notable improvements. If the sound of the drumkit could be improved, I'd love to hear other Js weigh in on that. Plus I think the track needs to sound a bit sharper. Especially in lieu of some of the sounds/samples not being icy hot, if there were no hangups in the mixing and production that would make a YES a lot easier. Dunno if people will criticize the length. I'll admit that this sometimes sounded like it lacked direction, but to me it didn't drag on the way a lot of these 5:30-7 minute subs have tended to do lately. Overall, I'm really borderline on this one, Caio, but gotta go with the NO and push for one last go at revisions (please). I think the arrangement was conservative on the surface, but showed itself to be pretty creative. The arrangement was still weaker last time, but I didn't give it enough credit the last time around.

Track starts off with no power. The note movements all fudge around; there was a gratuitous use of constant attacks rather than having virtual bow movement be responsible for the notes changing. There's no sense of anything being grounded here; the intro's composition is just unfocused and wallowing in reverb. Better stuff moving over into the piano, though the fakey synth bass at 1:04 was weak. "Radical Dreamers" melody came in at 1:14, and it's not interpretive enough. The strings joining on support were attempted to be used with subtlety, but still sounded exposed and too synthetic. FINALLY some additive ideas with the support instrumentation at 2:10, though the soundfield became pretty cluttered. Things could use more panning and separation here. Then some actual rearrangement of the source material at 3:01, though as things faded down around 3:05-3:14, we got the weak synth bass making another cameo appearance. The minimal approach after 3:14 with pads, light vox and hand drums was alright, but really doesn't take the source in a substantially interpretive direction, just one where motifs from "Radical Dreamers" are used in a very liberal last section. Work on humanizing some of the instrumentation more, pan and separate some of the sounds for a more enveloping atmosphere, and scrap the overly conservative stuff and get some real rearrangement ideas. "Mostly cover" + "pretty liberal section" has been shown by precedent not to be taken, so I'm not gonna take it now. On the plus side though, this was still an interesting listen and your skills have improved. Glad to see your work headed in the right direction, Brad. NO (resubmit)

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/Authors/Game/Joseph_Richard/Cannon_Fodder.lha - rjp.JON (Bless you DeliPlayer) Hahaha! I checked out rjp.WARX4 in the source archive, and it's Amiga-style reggae and shit! Crazy as hell, it's so cheesy, someone's GOTTA remix that with new vocals inspired from that one. weed could do something good off that, I mean it. Aight, getting to the actual mix. Not a bad intro. Melody came in at :24, but VERY softly and somewhat obscured. Whatever woodwind was playing the lead was really flat/MIDI-grade and unrealistic, and the interpretation of the source material was minimal. Don't have the strings dominate over everything the way they do here. The atmosphere changed at 1:41 with a decent break in the source material before going back in at 2:02. The supporting patterns basically repeated ad nausuem and the compostion was extremely plodding. Having the melodic content play second fiddle doesn't work in most contexts. Not bad for a beginner, but this was poorly mixed, which ultimately made this a tiresome listen. Heh. Not a bad idea for the ending, I suppose. Didn't have to be so long, but at least it's different. Hang in the ReMixing forum, Sam, and learn how to create better sound balance (as well as scout out some better free soundfonts for the woodwinds and brass used here), and post stuff to the WIP forum to get some comments that would steer you away from the mixing/production decisions you made here. NO

Good intro. The drumkit entering at :14 was kinda plain, but it was a solid pattern and was relegated to the background quickly. I really didn't like how the drums were so loud, let alone the whole mix. It's been a problem I've had with some of Mike's past stuff, so I gotta point out that I think it hurts the piece, and undermines the use of volume to create dynamic contrast. I know its hard trance, but I don't like the way the mixing was handled most times here. The sounds were relatively indistiguishable and poorly seperated during the chorus sections when one particular electrosynth joined in and it seemed like everything mushed together (e.g. 1:10-1:39, 1:53-2:07, 2:36-2:50, 3:04-3:43). The arrangement dragged on a bit as well, but was well alright for the genre, though I would have prefer more variation. As long as you don't pay attention to the repeating piano pattern arranged from the source you can hear other synths involved handling other aspects of arranging "Fighting". Gonna be a hardass again and say NO, looking for the resubmit. I would listen to the clearer sections and think "I'm being too tough on this," but I'd reach the chorus section and be convinced that this could be done with less volume and clutter. I feel it could be done without hindering the approach here, still sounding strong like hard trance and posessing ethereal effects like dream trance, and I could have gone some more melodic variation of some sort within the arrangement. Side note, too bad the phased piano didn't make more of an impact here, though it was indeed a great idea for the ending.

Fairly decent sequenced piano, though I want the realz! Nah, I'm asking for too much. Wish the piano had more body here, as its syntheticness was apparent just listening to it, but it had reasonably good performance dynamics going on. We move into some more upbeat stylings at :50. I was bleh on the string sample coming in at 1:04 for some of the note movements, but the arrangement is really creative so far. Dope key change goodness for the source melody to be sure. Sexy stuff at 1:28 with the accordian. Slightly off-timing around 1:33 though. The percussion was pretty sedate and should be spiced up further. Right now, it's just too looped and robotic sounding. Vary it up. I forgot the name of that instrument used briefly at 1:57, Gray mentioned it to me once. That was so cheesy, I'm like "nah, don't do that" in my stream on consciousness, and the exposed claps were also lame. Boooooo. Not to be a hardass, but if the arrangement wasn't so hot, I'd no for weak sounds. To me, it feels like the mix lacks a lot of body as a result of all of these samples sounding so thin and though you definitely took pains to make things sound as realistic as possible in the performance, it did occasionally feel rigid due to some of the note-to-note movements with the piano, lead strings and perc work, and CURSE THOSE CLAPS. Nonetheless, the arrangement was the most important part. I won't lie, I'm kinda bleh and would love to hear an upgraded version of this, but everything checks out on the arrangement side and the sounds are handled decently despite how they completely detracted from the performance for me. There's gotta be better stuff out there involving free soundfounts, but nice work nonetheless. Heh. "Moontang." YES