Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

I too enjoyed the Orwellian voice intro. Track hits hard and is arguably too bright, but I'll live. It's like taking Helldivers to the club, this is cool. When the Orwellian spoken lines come back in at 1:32, they're too loud, so you can't as easily understand what they're saying, much moreso at 2:02; again, small potatoes, but spud's worth noting. Nice change in the supporting writing at 3:29, I definitely like that bubblier sound. Interesting threading of the needle between upbeat and dystopian. Stay calm, stay vigilant, stay free! YES

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I was fine with the previous version, though I can certainly empathize with why it got voted down. There's a very stilted quality to this from the drum programming, but I feel what's here overcomes this. Same with the synth timing for the line at 2:25 and the bass at 2:41, it's not pleasing. Second verse, same as the first, the overall interpretation and treatment carry it over for me more than the stiff timing holds this back, but I can see the case for arguing otherwise. I've heard plenty of tracks where the metronome-like timing is a feature not a bug, and this isn't a case where it's the same. For me the live guitar and the some of the synth design are solid enough as well to walk it over the line. :-) YES

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In the shadows, we stay busy. ;-) Joining us as a Sage, we now have @Treyt, who's shown off a lot of skills, enthusiasm, and potential since his fateful forum post nearly three years ago! We're proud to announce some staff promotions with the twin magic of Sages @pixelseph & @paradiddlesjosh stepping up to become two of our newest judges! We had some fun internally joking that they were a package deal, yet I'm happy to say they both independantly have done well and proven themselves capable to help us out in this new capacity on the panel! We've also honored to have another judges panel addition in @jnWake, who cut his teeth in OCR way back and has massively grown since becoming a Dwelling of Duels regular! All three of the new judges should help us NO every VGM arrangement submitted to us with more speed, politeness, and class. ;-D Be sure to use our resources in the Workshop forums and our #workshop Discord channel and you may just get some feedback from our new staffers!

Artist Name: Michael Hudak There was an awful lot going through my mind when I made this, but not much I want to actually say... I approached this piece like I was painting a picture as much as I was making a piece of music (I'm an awful visual artist). That's often how I work, but for a ReMix I'm a slave to the source, so it's exciting to find more ambient sources that I can find a reflective quality in that also happen to be from a game I love. The source is based around the following (seemingly endless) arpeggio progression: Ax6, Bx6, Cx3, Ax4, Bx7, Dx7, Ax3, Ex6, Fx6, Gx3, Hx3, Ix4, Jx3, Kx6, Lx6, Ax6, Mx6 I don't know what these chords are, but essentially what I did was this - Line them up the proper order, use some as arps, use some as held chords, test out instruments with different granular synth and reverb sends (sometimes just using the sends' audio and ditching the instrument VST audio after bouncing them separately into the track), and start painting. Lots field recording snippets. I faded out a lot of the transients in lieu of the smeared nature of the song, but kept some because I like how they sound and the rhythms they generate. There are all kinds of extra bits of melodic content floating over top of these arps in the source, and I was happy to ignore them, aside from the magical bit at 1:58 that appears at the very end of my version. It's a quiet master, but it's ambient/post-rock/room noise/whatever, so I think it's fine. The dynamic range is much more important to me in this particular case (I think it's around 15 LUFS of range). Originally, I had a bit more in the subs in the mix, but I rolled them back because they were too overpowering and IDM-like. The granular plugins I used were Fritz Granular Engine, which is part of the Reason rack, and Imagiro Autochroma. This write-up looks a little pretentious reading it back. A couple of the songs I listened to while making this were "New Grass" by Talk Talk and "In a Silent Way" by Miles Davis. Now it looks even more pretentious! Games & Sources "Ancient Temple Dungeon" from Skies of Arcadia is the lone source. YouTube link. That is the official song title listed on the game's OST. Yutaka Minobe & Tatsuyuki Maeda are the composers.

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For the instrumentation, it's OK, albeit stilted, particularly the drums; nothing has velocity variations as the patterns repeat, so that's part of everything quickly feeling stale, stiffly-timed, and plodding. Drums in the opening are plodding with no meaningful round robin attack variations, which exposes the sample. You weren't kidding about the drums being repetitive. I can hear how the track subtly but steadily grows in textural complexity, but because you just have the same core bars repeating over time, everything feels very stale. The additive part-writing's not bad in a vacuum, but maybe of the more ornamentation-like lines are mixed in so quietly when they're introduced that there's minimal textural effect (though the changes do stack over time). Melody arrives at :34, and it handled with some decent energy. The bassline's not bad, but it's not very audible with the way that it's mixed. Better changeup at 1:44 with the drums getting WAY more interesting, but the lead becoming buried. Then back to the plodding drums at 2:08 and some keyboard-focused original writing that was very quietly mixed and should have been way louder than then the rhythm guitar writing. Melody's back again at 2:42 with a higher lead that's piercing, but I'll live. The backing writing has decent energy, but it has only one gear, so it feels like a total cut-and-paste job (aside from 1:44-2:08) and dragged this way, way down. EDIT (4/3): I'm just voting on the initial/V1 version that was sent, mainly because the V2 version, as different as the leads & additive writing were handled, still had plodding drums that guaranteed it couldn't pass in either form. The other version you sent had more of a melodic focus on the chorus section of the source, but it had the same overall repetition and lack of dynamics. All in all, you'll have to develop your concepts more, which you seem aware of in your submission comments vis-a-vis the repetition. Keep at it! NO

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The vote's already closed, so I'll just tack on some brief comments. Rux Ton's a high bar to compare to, so forgive me for sounding as if I'm saying you have to sound as polished as him; OCR's bar isn't that high, so at least you don't have to reach his standard. :-) Levels appear to be insanely loud right at :13; had to turn my volume pretty far down. At :57, the beat-writing's underwhelming, and the synth briefly handling the melody also sounds generic. Very weak claps at 1:51, zero power and a flimsy sound, so your builds aren't paying off in terms of then delivering intensity (e.g. shifts into 1:51 & 3:09. Claps were thin at 1:29 as well and the kicks at 1:40 seemed to be lightly distorting or at least too punchy yet lacking any body behind them. I agreed with Chimpazilla that the limited number of parts leads to a samey sound over time that's also dragging the track out. Good potential here though, Matt; explore how you can vary up but also intensify the tone of your instrumentation. It's not all about volume. NO (resubmit)

Artist Name: AceVanWay This is a trance remix of the boss battle theme, The Darkness Nova. I referenced sheet music when creating the track, but came up with my own instrumentation. Once the music has been transposed to my DAW (FL Studios), I tweak EQs, mix and master the track. Thanks for listening. AceVanWay Games & Sources Track: The Darkness Nova Game: Legend of Mana Composer: Yoko Shimomura Source Track: Reference Track:

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