Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

The keyboard's tone was noticeably thin, but it certainly gets by. Funked up note at :50 (too high), but recovered quickly enough that I'll just mark it as a speedbump and move on. Nice original ornamentation throughout to compliment the arranged melody. Cool original writing from 2:35 (though another off-note at 2:50). Nice genteel aproach from 3:18 until the finish for a softer touch that made you pay attention. Somehow, that last bass-y note turned off-key around 4:24 and then hung around fading out, ah well. Sure, a few lil' splotches that should have been ironed out, but otherwise lovely for the Mothers! Thank you for finally bringing Mother 3 to OCR, Sebastian, we appreciate it! :-) YES

The intro wasn't promising as far as standing apart from the original, but there was more edge to the guitar performance after :23. I did catch what proph noticed about the bass sounding odd from the intro until :22; it didn't bother me personally, but it's arguably too much. The drums did feel underwhelming and with a quality disparity of those uncanny valley samples juxtaposed with the very lively guitar. The plodding snare writing was sapping energy from the killer guitar work, even though the fills were good. I liked some of the fills and writing, but the overall feel of the drumkit was repetitive, plodding, and underwhelming with the core snare pattern. The melodic line of the beginning of the chorus (:50-:59) was very quiet compared to the backing guitar; it doesn't HAVE to be punched up, but didn't necessarily seem intentional. I did like the brief moment from 1:19-1:29; even though the drums sounded thin, it was an extremely cool way to adapt that brief part of the source, and easily the most transformative part of the arrangement. 1:29-1:48 had some good original writing on top of the theme via the guitar soloing for some more personalization of the approach. Nice use of the 1-Up SFX at 1:18, that was a nice touch. Not a huge deal because they were couched reasonably well in the soundscape, but the strings from 2:17-2:26 were pretty fake-sounding; they're actually a decent element and add good texture throughout the piece overall, but they were higher in that particular section and more exposed, so it was worth calling out. 3:05 with "The Street of Rage" cameo was a nice piece of personalization, especially as the finish; I would have loved the instrumentation approach here to sound/feel more distinct from the source in the way that you did with the "Street of Rage" cameo, but I don't inherently have a problem with what's there. Fairly solid for a more cover-ish/sound upgrade arrangement approach. Definitely want to get this posted in some form, and I could also see the case for passing this as is. IMO, the snare drum pattern being bland, mostly metronome-like, and seemingly lacking round-robin style humanization/variations from verse to verse (i.e. not overtly different-sounding enough) was holding this back. proph seems to think this only needs some minor adjustments, and I get where he's coming from; aside from the drum issue, it's otherwise well in the right direction, Andy! If this doesn't make it as is, I definitely hope you're open to some tweaks to the drum writing/programming to really get this sounding its best. It's a pleasure to see something from you in the inbox once again! :-) NO (resubmit)

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Cool arrangement concept! Well produced too, in the sense that there are some fairly default-y/vanilla-sounding synths in spots, yet they have a full and spacious sound. The main problem for me it that there's too many instances of default-y sounds paired with overly quantized/stiff/locked-to-grid-sounding timing that's undermining the energy and presentation here, for example the lead at 1:46, the bass & beats at 2:01 & 2:11, both the lead and countermelody at 3:14, the lead from 3:34-3:47. Even the live guiitar, for example at 2:38, doesn't feel that expressive, it lacks fluidity. If you can adequately address those issues, I can shift my vote. Lots of potential, but ultimately, this doesn't sound ready yet, even though I understand where the YESes are coming from. Even if this passes, tibone, you should see how you can tighten this up! NO (resubmit)

One could argue the arrangement's transformational enough to bear the wholesale repetition, but I wouldn't here. I definitely dig the slowed down approach, the groove, and the overall instrumentation. Cool stuff, just see what you can do to differentiate the second half from the copy-pasta layout! Strong base here, so please don't drop it. NO (resubmit)

My vote from 2021 remains the same: The arrangement aspect of it is just too minimal. Just two repeating lines of the stripped down source tune that desync and wind up back in sync. A fun audio gimmick, but not a developed arrangement by any stretch. And that’s OK, it just falls outside of our arrangement standards. I'll add that the source tune itself has more ideas to mine or be inspired from like the string accents (arrive at :12) or textural/dynamic changes (1:14-1:39 & 1:58-end), so consider adding in some arranged accents, or trying something else entirely different that's additive (since the base pattern keeps the source usage). It'll sound like I'm saying you have to reference other areas of the source; that's not necessary, but there needs to be further arrangement development due to the premise as is not offering enough of that. NO

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Original Decision Artist Name: Michael Hudak This is a phasing music piece that repeats the riff from "Guardian Battle" over and over, which I think reflects nicely the relentlessness of the Guardians themselves. I first made this in '21, and have since made tiny tweaks off-and-on over the years. About phasing: Phasing is an approach to minimalist composition in which two identical tracks start playing at the exact same time and tempo, but slowly move out of phase with each other as one track speeds up or slows down while the other remains the same. As they begin to slide out of phase, first you hear a doubling effect, then a delay that becomes more and more pronounced, and then finally they become totally de-synced as new rhythms appear and different combinations of notes overlap. Steve Reich popularized (many say came up with) the idea in the 1960s with his piece "It's Gonna Rain". He took two tape machines with the same tape, started them at the same time, and after a few minutes they began to move out of phase due to one of the machines playing very slightly slower than the other - "process music" as he called it. He would expand on this idea over the next several years with "Come Out", "Piano Phase", "Violin Phase", "Clapping Music", and "Drumming". Reich would become one the most influential American composers of the 20th century in large part to his phasing music pieces. About this piece: Obviously, a DAW will play a loop perfectly for as long as you want, so I started with a ~4-minute loop at 160 bpm, and another starting at 160 but eventually ending at 158 using an almost flat tempo automation ramp. I wanted to get a vintage tape machine sound like in "It's Gonna Rain" and "Come Out", but also the reverb of the orchestral space in "Piano Phase", so I tried to combine those lo-fi and hi-fi sounds. I ended up creating two more identical tracks by filtering out the low end and bringing up the white noise. The hissing, more airy tracks slowly pan out as the more midrange-y tracks pan in, and vice-versa. The loop is an octave higher than the source; I experimented with the original octave but it didn't "pop" the way I wanted it. It became too much of a low-midrange drone. There are some slight granular effects that simulate the grinding low piano in the source, but overall I REALLY had to resist the urge to add more bells and whistles, and to just rely on the purity of my initial idea of Reich + Guardian riff. As for source usage, it's ~100%, if - and here's the gray area - IF you can train one ear (either one - it's easier with headphones) to discern the source as the tracks move out of phase. The bit from 0:04 in the source is always playing, but whether or not it's recognized is on the listener, hence my incredulously long write-up for submission. For ~15 seconds at the start it's played by both tracks at once, and again for ~15 seconds at 3:25 after everything comes back into phase. 3:32 has the only appearance of the melody that happens in the source at 0:12. In the end, I couldn't resist adding it. Thanks for anyone tasked with judging this one for taking the time to read this long explanation, and for considering another left-field submission. You won't hurt my feelings if the lo-fi aesthetic or the esoteric nature of the piece disqualifies it from the main page. Just had to finally close the book on this one either way. Games & Sources Source arranged: Guardian Battle Steve Reich compositions that inspired this ReMix: It's Gonna Rain; Come Out; Piano Phase; Violin Phase; Drumming.

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