Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Definitely digging and the vox and other instrumentation to start. The sampled electric guitar from :25-:51 sounds pretty fake, but it's initially mixed in a way to mitigate (albeit not mask) the realism issues; less so from 1:27-on; the same exact issues are still there, but once the Zeal melody is dropped out, it's hard not to focus more closely on the guitar and be as forgiving about the robotic tone & sound on the second dose. About 1 minute in, the core beat felt repetitive, but we had some textural changes at 1:22. A-ha, at 1:25, I immediately hear how this started getting NO votes. The splashy drums and overall drumkit sound don't fit this new age-y soundscape, IMO. Weird, fake, behind-the-beat, robotic-sounding, exposed string samples introduced at 2:21; it joins in at a super-blaring volume that also didn't make sense. The strings sustains are probably the worst offender production-wise. Yeah, there's no synergy with this instrumentation beyond the first minute. For the final minute in particular, there's not enough care put into whether the textures sound cohesive, and there's nothing to melodically focus on, at least until 3:09, though the guitar also quickly veers into noodling/comping territory. The piano at 3:09 also sounds very fake; another instance where it sounded complementary in the background (from 2:29-3:09), but then was later more exposed as mechanical (3:09-end) and came off much worse. From 1:25-on, the Zeal theme's also very deemphasized here; that's not inherently a problem, but there's also no melodic direction for most of the rest of the piece. It may be too subjective, so take it or leave it, but consider making the Zeal line more audible for brief moments and/or varying the instrumentation of it in places to ground the arrangement and give the track more direction & dynamic contrast. IMO, you need to either have richer, more realistic sounds for the guitar, bowed strings, and piano OR mask/obscure the issues better when they're isolated or used more in the foreground. Then it's a matter of making sure all of the instrumentation clicks together with the proper tone and balance for everything, which is more difficult, but worth the effort. This has some YESs, but I'mma firmly be right here in the NO (resubmit) column, and it's not a close call for me. There's so much good energy in the arrangement, you're going to think I hate it due to the criticisms. This has so much potential, but the execution's very messy at the moment. C'mon, Harlem, let's see what more you can do with it!

You're gonna feel I dislike your work in a blanketed way. There's genuine skill, but the current mixing/production is needlessly killing this off. The vox at :24 genuinely stinks; it's both quiet AND extremely fake-sounding, so it doesn't add anything. Theme kicks in at :40. The source countermelody is in my left ear (only) from :58-1:15, but it's extremely quiet and slightly behind the beat. From 1:32-1:42, the panning stuck out as being too wide; there was a lot of mud (powerful mud, but mud) that was just blaring in the right ear, but none of that was in the left, so you've gotta watch the balance there. The vox at 1:42 again had an odd quality of being distant and quiet, then it cut off in an unnatural way at 2:00. Anything you can do to improve the vox realism and depth would benefit this piece. Guitar panning was too wide again from 2:09-2:27 (and continued like that during the denser sections, where the cymbals were also panned far right until 3:10). The arrangement's creative and solid, and the final couple of minutes has the epic orchestral metal feeling down pat, Jean Marc, but I'm sincerely not understanding why the mixing and panning's like this at all. From 2:28 until near the end at 3:55, the entire soundscape is just cramped and everything turns into mud. Maybe it's because I'm listening on headphones rather than speakers/monitors, but while the arrangement and energy are all sorts of good, the mixing still needs another pass from me; too much descends into being indistinct for too long. NO (resubmit)

I asked Woody about a possible louder version and he feels it's dynamic enough, just FYI.

Having voted on a few of Neon X's pieces now, he's got a formula of sorts for his stuff -- i.e. melodically conservative but personalized genre adaptation bookends with a more interpretive middle -- but it's fairly effective. That said, the copy-pasta of :23-1:07 from 2:10-2:54 was too much repetition without variation for a relatively short piece, IMO. This piece was less interpretive than his past ones, and I thought the copy-pasta hurt it. No less energetic, and a case could certainly be made that the genre adaptation is substantial enough to survive a ding on repetition and thus a lack of development, but I'm not there. Really awesome so far, and if you're willing to see what other variations and techniques could be employed to differentiate 2:10's section from :23's, then this would be an easy call, even if it were just several more subtle things; anything varying up the instrumentation, melody, rhythm, and/or tempo could be a welcome evolution without feeling like you have to overhaul anything. See what more you can do, Neon, but nice work thus far! NO (resubmit)

The track was 8:38-long, so I needed to hear the source tune in play for at least 259 seconds for the source tune to be dominant in the arrangement. Thanks a lot to proph for his thorough breakdown explaining the arrangement, which definitely made things clearer. The B and C sections of the source were so much less memorable, but the arrangement mainly deals with the most known melodic portion, so it thankfully wasn't difficult to wrap one's head around. :00-:37, :47-:57, 1:13-1:35, 2:30-2:47, 2:58-3:10, 3:24.5-4:21, 4:38-5:08, 5:15-5:36, 6:23-6:52, 6:59-7:22.5, 7:53-8:00, 8:03-8:06 = 268 seconds or 51.73% overt source usage I'm sure there's other times one could count, I'm just IDing what I could to justify my vote re: acceptable source usage. Great concept, strong sound. IMO, it's mixed too quietly and it could have a cleaner less muddy sound, but those aren't huge issues for me, and the arrangement easily carries it. Nice job, Woody, and congrats on attempting a new submission with what was clearly a lot of personal growth under your belt since the last time you tried. Very impressive! YES

Mixing of the lead guitar at :47 makes no sense being so far back and practically swallowed into the soundscape. Electrosynths from 2:17-2:33 were super bootleg, but at least they're decently produced. The organ from 2:48-3:00 was also pretty fake, but used in a way where the sound just came off as stylistic. Less so for the fakey strings from 1:52-2:01, but those were very brief. The ending from 3:48-4:21 with the repeating bars and fadeout went on so long that it ended up hurting the finish and feeling too much like a cut-and-paste way to end it. It could have faded to 0 around 4:07 and saved it from becoming overlong. Spirited and expansive metal adaptation that easily clears the bar on that level, IMO. No idea why the encoding's so low at 128kbps, though unsure how much better this would sound at 192kbps or above. I'm going to say YES on arrangement, with a tentative NO on production/mixing. Right now, too many parts are blending together at similar levels and panning, so something's gotta be tweaked and improved there. We'll see if any of the musician Js agree, but bolstering some of the faker-sounding parts (e.g. strings at 1:52, synths at 2:17) would be nice, and figuring out how to restore some higher frequencies and get the overall mixing sounding more balanced would be great. Nice job so far, Marc, and would love to see this posted in some form. Don't forget to submit a WAV or at least a 192kbps MP3 (rather than 128kbps). NO (resubmit)

Cool original opening. Very comfortable fusion of the source tunes alongside Peter's original composition ideas working countermelodically and adding texture. Such great execution here, I love it. Timing it out to show Super Metroid's Brinstar theme as the primary source. :31.5-:55, 1:03.75-2:28.5 (SM); 2:29-2:47, 2:50.5-3:35 (M); 3:38.5-4:21 (SM); 4:21-4:39.5 (M); 4:42-5:01 (both) Happy to give this feedback of course, but man, what's this track doing on the panel? One could argue it's overlong, but I enjoyed it; the sounds, textures, and density of the piece morph and evolve over time. Nice work, Peter! YES

OK, slowed things down and went for some cinematic Avengers-like orchestration, you've got my attention. The mixing's not great in the sense that many of the parts other than the booming drums seemed to bleed/mud together into an indistinct mass (e.g. 2:13-2:29), but the overall presentation was strong and the arrangement included tons of dynamic contrast and creative variations on the source theme. :02.5-:09, :11.5-:18, :21-:34, 1:08.5-1:56, 2:02.5-2:10.75, 2:13-2:29 (adapting rhythm of opening backing pattern), 2:34.5-4:20 Just timed it out to make sure I was hearing the "Mute City" usage in most of the arrangement and was not being swayed by the unique concept. The brass articulations from 3:04-3:42 were a low point for me, because the samples were pretty exposed, but I'll live given the relative strengths of everything else. The way things faded after the final note at 4:24 wasn't completely abrupt, but it was still too fast and that final note should have trailed off for longer to make it sit like a real resolution. The mixing's not ideal, so I could understand NOs on production and wanting another pass at it to clean it up. That said, on the seesaw of what works vs. what doesn't, this tilts toward YES. Creative arrangement with less than ideal mixing, but that's all good with me. Very cool approach, Vijay! YES

Yeah, this is much more a Thriller arrangement/cover than being a soundalike, and it's also at the expense of referencing the GnG source. Loved when things focused more heaily on GnG from 2:19-on. I enjoy it in a vacuum, but it's still too referential to Thriller for our guidelines, so MindWanderer's quotation of the Standards is accurately applied here. NO Override

It's a pretty bread-and-butter genre adaptation to start, but hits hard and personalizes the sound well. I liked the original writing ideas introduced at :47 as well as 1:04 and 1:20; subtle things that nicely helped put your own stamps on this treatment of the theme. Cool liberal variations of the melody 1:36 followed by some original vamping afterward. Bro, just great ideas throughout the middle to make this unique while surrounding by the more conservative parts at the beginning and end. Nice energy throughout! YES

Source tune is fuckin' sick, I love this kind of stuff; great tone, nice oomph to the percussive and bass elements. With this arrangement, there's a softness to the instrumentation that's majorly holding this back. Texturally, this is much emptier than it should be once things kick in at :27; I'm sure the musician Js can better elaborate on it. The drums just have no oomph at all, the padding-style background flourishes first used around :45 are too quiet, and while there's several parts active, the track still sounds hollow throughout. The sequenced guitar is serviceable though exposed, but it had a strong tone and was an overall solid sound to it; ensuring the instrumentation around it adequately fills up the soundscape would help the sampled guitar not be as exposed. When the organ takes over at 1:53, it almost sounds like the other instrumentation was globally reduced in volume. Maybe it's actually the guitar levels dropping after the change from the chorus back to the verse at 1:35; maybe my ears are playing tricks on me and it's just the bassline levels sounding more subdued, but something's going on there and the organ sounds way too loud and stapled on top of the other, much quieter instrumentation. It's less of an issue when the organ first appears at :45 though, but the organ does occupy a lot of the space at the expense of other instrumentation having the full impact. It may seem like I'm shortchanging the substance of the arrangement itself; it's a strong concept that carries over the energy of the original while also comfortably integrating some original writing ideas and vamping to personalize the approach. My sole issue is a pretty significant one though, i.e. properly fleshing out the soundscape, which may also involve changing how various parts are mixed relative to one another. Happy to have another more knowledgeable (read: actually knowledgeable) judge expand upon that POV. Keep at it, Chris; lots of promise here. Even if this isn't the track that would get you posted, you're well on your way with output like this. NO (resubmit)

Odd little source tune; cool, but odd composition for the first 30 seconds before settling into a nice reprise. Lots of tension in the original, so I'm curious to see if it's retained in the arrangement. String articulations were definitely too exposed as very fake in the intro from :30-:42; obviously, everything here's sequenced and there are similar realism issues with the brass and vox as well, then the piano sounding pretty bad with its cameo from 1:49-1:50. Aside from those issues, the instrumentation was serviceable and above the quality bar; the smaller detail/realism issues do needlessly ding this though. Structurally, this could stand apart more from the original vis-a-vis our arrangement/interpretation standards; this does have a somewhat different tone than the source because it's not beat-driven, and there's additive orchestration to help flesh this out and present somewhat different texturally, but this orchestration nonetheless doesn't feel interpretive enough when you listen side-by-side with the source. It's a solid orchestral cover approach, but I'd love to hear some additional ideas (either interpretive or wholly original) to help complement this. That said, the concept just seems to be a straightforward orchestration approach and there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it just isn't a fit with the level of interpretation we're looking for. Good stuff, Chris, and if you're willing to revisit this, I'm sure you could add to or expand on this in a way that could get it above OCR's bar. No matter what, looking forward to what you've got cooking in the future. NO (resubmit)

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