Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

The opening was some of Haroon's familiar sound, and sounded nice and clean until the low-end support came in at 0:15 and made things sound more muffled. When that support dropped out at areas such as the first iteration of the melody at 1:08, everything sounded clean once again. Haroon needs to look into how to tweak the bass thumps to prevent their inclusion from obscuring the rest of the sounds. Again at 2:17, I had those same problems with the bass thumps during a more uneventful section, and at 2:44 when the music thickened up with even more activity, the high-end frequencies could have been toned down a bit, yet those were all considerably minor problems I felt inclined to point out. Otherwise, once I compared things with the original and observed the direction FF moved things in, the overall rearrangement of Mitsuda's "Shattering Egg of Dreams" worked really well for the dance/trance genre, and the production is just over the bar IMO considering the issues I had with it. No matter what Haroon says he did with the production, it will be an issue, because it needs improvement. Personally, I've heard decidedly more interesting remix material from FF's body of work with more unique structures and sound choices, but it's not difficult for me to see that he gets the job done here. I was originally gonna NO this on the production side, but putting it on the shelf and listening to it again two days later showed me that it wasn't as bad as I thought, and I felt the product was much stronger on the rearrangement side, which was more important to me and enough to change my mind. Not an enthusiastic YES, but that doesn't change the vote. EDIT: Or does it? I'll always say that Vigilante is the best judge we've got, as he breaks everything down so easily. The lead is indeed anemic, no getting around it. I'd rather hear this polished up with sharper, non-gimpy sounds, a thickened up texture, and the harmony brought out to a more prominent position, as it does in fact do a disservice to Haroon's skills. I think the rearrangement is very passable, and the production still didn't bother me as much as it'll bother everyone else, but there IS a lot of imbalance in the production that holds this back from sounding very good, and I don't wanna improperly downplay that in my vote, which ultimately wasn't enthusiastic enough to begin with. I'll do a rare flip-flop and say NO go. I liked it, but this could and should be worked on to overhaul the sound quality and bring it to the level it should be at.

No prob. tef actually just mailed me back 2 hours after you posted: Thanks a lot to Jack for considering the tweaks at the end there. Definitely a hot effort here, and with "Drop and Roll" and "Airborne" out I'll always be looking forward to tefnek's future stuff. Great work again!

Gray was probably gonna vote YES on it (you know how he be), but he didn't get here in time... So go ahead, Dan. Drop one in his coffeepot. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Non sequitur BLACK MAN EDIT for Xerol & SnappleMan's amusement: <SnappleMan> Also, that lead is ass <SnappleMan> you've gotta get a more buttery, and less assy lead <SnappleMan> and switch it up, nigre <SnappleMan> get some variation in that mofo <SnappleMan> as my black associates would say <sadorf> lmao <CXI> I've never actually heard any black person say "get some variation in that mofo" <CXI> though I gotta say I eagerly await that day <SnappleMan> Bah <SnappleMan> then you dont know cool black people <SnappleMan> Larry says cool shit like that! Yep. Get some variation in that mofo.

Not bad. I've already checked this out maybe 15 times and I actually liked it, but this could use more work. Once 1:35, the drums are cool, definitely, but the lead is obscured by them and the sounds smoosh together. Pretty damn cool overall, just hook it up with the production, especially so that droning sound is a little less pronounced. It needs to accentuate the music, not dominate over the top of it. Reanalyze the various levels and I'd be down with a resubmission. NO

Indeed. And I like you.

I wasn't getting hasty. Nonetheless, pardon me. [/listens to entire song] So 4:32 of a 7:11-long track is the original melody, tempo and instrumentation, verbatim, with a lil' sumthin'-sumthin' extra on top, like bongos. Looks like a submissions violation to me, and not hard to call either, especially given the reconsideration of Kaijin's mix which has exactly the same issue. Like I said, NO OVERRIDE.

Too bad about this one too, because there is tons of potential here. The intro was excellent, and I liked the choice of instruments for it a hell of a lot. Strings needed to be tightened up, without a doubt. The horns from 1:45-2:04 were both flimsy-sounding and sloppy, and then things just got so ridiculously out of sync from 2:04-2:31 that even a complete non-remixer n00b like me was screaming "QUANTIZE DAMMIT!" This one definitely didn't have any real movement and that abrupt ending at 3:04 was just not what the song needed to close out with. There were lots of promising sounds and I often heard good countermelodic activity, but try to explore more ideas for the song to move somewhere while also tightening up the timing issues. Redevelop. Refine. Resubmit. NO

NES version - http://www.zophar.net/nsf/ngaiden3.zip - NSF Track 8 SNES version - http://www.alpha-ii.com/snesmusic/spcsets/ngt.rsn - (Miya, K. Nakabai, L. Shigeno) "Powerplant" Up until :48 when the melody came in, everything was pretty boring and unengaging. The intro definitely didn't work as far as building up to the meat of the mix. Now beyond :48, the lead was absolutely way too loud, topping out the frequencies and piercing my ear as it continued. By 2 minutes, this just got old. Really, really boring with practically no development. The addition of some faint strings at 2:36 was too little too late and the ending was limper than Prot's penis. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/castlev3.zip - NSF Track 2 Yeah, I pimped these for VGF a few weeks ago. The FF6 poem was kind of amusing actually. Pretty cool stuff if you're a Daknit fan, but yeah, this won't fly here I'm afraid. I'm not a sample whore, but the sample quality is way below what we're looking for now. In effect, the submissions standards have passed BD by. The production's very solid though, which is honestly somewhat ironic given that the actual music itself is so scattershot. Not much going on at all regarding rearrangement; this sticks pretty close to the original. When the melody came in at :53, it just sounded completely incoherent with regards to the harmony involved. I'd go as far as saying that it's a step down from the original. After one loop, it's more of the same stuff at 2:20, so on the development side this doesn't pass either. The various voice samples were a cool idea, but didn't fit comfortably with the music like they should have. This tries to sound Gothic while also being a dance mix but ultimately ends up as a poor execution of both styles. No go. NO

Not bad really. Some of the elements and tone involved here indeed reminded me of djp's "Trip the Light Fantastic", and I thought this was pretty cool. The woodwind lead was way too loud, somewhat shrill, and very unatural-sounding, which detracted from the groove here. The electrosynth in the foreground isn't bad at all, but when it's by itself (e.g. 1:54-2:39) it's ultimately pretty flat. Good use of all the very light percussion instruments to give a little energy to the background. At 2:08 when the guitar came back, that's when I saw what Vig was talking about. That would have been a great place to add some new ideas and give this some notable progression & movement. I dunno how closely this follows the original MIDI, so I would've much rather had that to compare things with. Nonetheless, all the issues Vigilante pointed out are definitely what you need to address to get this one going. I liked what I heard though, so I'd love to see this resubmitted with some additional work. I'm feeling the potential here especially since the sounds are fairly decent, though it will take some effort to present more rearrangement ideas, help fill up the space a bit, and break up the repetitiveness. NO (develop some more & resubmit)

I've had and enjoyed this for weeks. Awesome shit. I would have rather it functioned more like a rearrangement in the manner of SID of Rage, but this is an excellent mix even if it sticks much closer to the original ("Under Logic"). This is certainly intense, energetic work. YES Thinking of Hornpipe2 doing the same thing way back, I was also gonna say, yeah, should this replace "SID of Rage?" Vig has a good point above, but no one would ever actually submit mix revisions to the site that way, so I'd prefer not to reason over the situation along those lines. Dan (GY) seems like he wouldn't mind SID of Rage being replaced, but if he wants it to stay, I'd have no problem with it. The tracks are different enough so that they both deserve a spot. Make that decision his call.

The only thing this is even remotely "on par" with is Vejita Cutman. And we got rid of Vejita Cutman. NO You've gotta consult the ReMixing forum here and reanalyze your approach at mixing from square one, Claado. Everything needs improvement.

The horn samples are terribly used, the percussion is all about "tap tap tap" and this is completely underdeveloped. At least the piano sounded good. Dunno if it just covers the source material, but oh well. NO

Overall, this was a nicely crafted piece compositionally. Not particularly innovative, but in theory it would work as a Zelda movie score piece like Setu intended. Samples are pretty exposed at some points. The movement of the strings from note to note is noticeably unrealistic, and (minor detail) that wind instrument from 3:16 to 3:30 was bad. The resolution with the string samples was bad as well at 4:48, which sounded exposed and thin right then and there. More importantly though, the production is crud, and it's an easy denial merely on that. Surely this could be mastered better. Tighten this up, please. NO

Gman? That's not the Gman I know, that's for sure. BAHAHAHAHA! 0:11 made me laugh so fucking hard. It makes Retentions of Conflict that much better in my eyes hearing that sample again! I love you, djp. Thanks for making my day. NO

The messed up intro was cute. Too bad it didn't get better after that. Totally generic/crappy sounds, no production work to speak of, and it's just a cover of the original. The ID3 tag says "1999" for the year. Sounds about right. NO

The instruments are flat though half-decent, the vox in the back didn't work, and the percussion was weak. Please do more then just play the Zelda theme for 2 loops with some strings. A Zelda theme cover. Great. Not a chance. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/metroid2.zip - GBS Track 3 I actually thought everything was pretty solid. Some of the samples could be better, but even for more of a cover arrangement I thought this was really good. I dunno why Vig thought it sounded bare. I was disappointed that the interesting turns this mix took were just from the GBS, but I thought the instrumentation was good and the sounds generally worked well together. Enough changes were present throughout where there was notable development, and a lot of stuff was added here. One particular thing: the layering of melodies from 2:49 to 3:03 didn't click at all. I had to listen to both the source material and the submission a lot to compare the two, and this is actually a fairly similar situation to the vote we had on CT "Rhodes to the Past". However, I think there's a lot more going on with this one than Fatty Acid's mix, IMO. I don't see how Vig could YES "Rhodes" and then NO this one. YES

You could apply some of the negative criticism given to "The Final Summoning" on this mix as well. There's a difference between enhancing the original with an approach like this, and then simply combining original composition with the NES stuff. The music of the first 2:45 had practically nothing to do with Metroid (game sounds notwithstanding) and that's over half the track. 4:32-5:02 had the exact same problem as the intro. Once things changed at 2:45, I felt what Sly added was a lot more satisfactory and interpretive. It wasn't enough at all though. Just because the wholly-original trance work added underneath the NES track fit like a glove doesn't mean that this is enough to make it here. Frankly, I don't even believe that the music fit as well as Vig says. Find a creative way to lop off the first half of this, create a shorter intro with some actual arrangement, and resubmit. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFX_psf2.rar - "People of the Far North" A little while back I heard an nearly complete WIP of one of bLiNd's remixes for Project Majestic Mix Trance, "White Skies," and that got me very familiar with the source material. Checking the "People of the Far North" PSF, this is the same tempo and the instrumentation is practically the same. Verbatim = lame, and the additions here weren't much. Some of them were off-key with the melody. I stopped it at 3:14. I'm not gonna bother. I don't even care what the second half is. NO OVERRIDE

Yeah, I agree, this isn't too bad. The horns are weak though with unrealistic attacks, the synth guitar is disappointing since it has potential, and I'd love to hear a little bit more going on with the percussion. The groove isn't too bad. More rearrangement please. I've heard the original hundreds of times and this doesn't do much to it. NO

Wasn't really feeling some of the bubblier stuff at 1:46 (especially since the flute didn't sound good) with the percussion you had. It didn't really work well in tandem. And I realize that the quick shot of strings at 2:01 wasn't supposed to sound real, but it was still pretty bad. But that's just the small stuff. Came across as kind of scattershot, but the ideas here were changing enough where I wasn't just bored. Enough people have used the in-game sound effects as beats & interludes that it's become kind of a cliche idea, but ultimately I liked how Walnut used them. By 2:10 though, this was kind of treading water on the development side. Though it was cluttered, I'm not sure why there weren't any fuller areas like 2:45-2:57 earlier in the mix. There's lots of stuff going on here, but it's actually pretty bland once I've listened to this 15 times. Can't really put my finger on what this needs, but I just don't see this as being over the line. Someone's gonna be able to articulate that better than I can. I could see this possibly getting some YESs. Lots of effort here. Enough that I wouldn't mind hearing this resubmitted. NO

1 minute through and there's no activity, with everything at unacceptably low levels. Production is awful in that NOTHING is positioned correctly. The beats in the foreground should be in the background. Everything even remotely melodic should be in the foreground. This would sound incredibly better if Spiker literally did just that. I don't know how this is on the arrangement side, but it doesn't particularly matter here. Nice/promising ideas here for a laid back track with lots of percussion work, but you gotta rethink the approach here. NO

There's really not much for me to say on this one, because I can't offer much advice. The rearrangement is already excellent. It's just that the delivery is incredibly flat to me. The intensity of the piece never changes much from section to section. Small point: at 3:22 when the strings made their resolution, you really here one last MIDI string exposed and it doesn't sound good. There's so much reverb that for the first 1:34, a lot of supporting elements, primarily a horn, are in the back and washed out. At 2:15, you hear more things happening once the drums get going, but in effect none of the dynamics changed. I'd hope there's a way to reanalyze the mastering to keep the style here of letting the melodic notes flow smoothly from one to the next while allowing everything here to sound more grandiose and natural like it's obviously supposed to. NO

Hahahaha. C'mon, it's not as seizure-inducing as Vig says. Ryu7x's Megaman 8 mix "Synthetic Future" (which I loved) had essentially the same formula as this. Crazy ZANY beats with the original on top. This has a lot more rearrangement going on than that mix, but man, was this ever...yeah. It's not even half-bad (Prot: That's it! You're off the panel!). Kinda dips down into 3/4ths-bad territory with all that "ICE CAAAVE! CAN YOU ESCAAAAAAPE?" stuff. That must have sounded much cooler in theory. There's room for improvement, but nothing that I'd think would bring it up to par here. NO