Liontamer

Hey Alex, sorry for the wait on a formal review here. That said, as a judge, I'm happy to give you my feedback now. This was melodically straightforward, but you did a nice job expanding the part-writing here, which is always a viable direction, especially for something like BotW's minimalist soundtrack. When the rhythm guitars joined in to fill things out more at 1:40, the soundscape became a bit muddy/muffled, but it wasn't a huge deal, just an area where the mixing could have been a little clearer. That said, you filled out the soundscape nicely, and fleshed things out well. I'm not sure why this was taken down from your SoundCloud, but I'm glad to have checked it out on YouTube. Go ahead and submit this (send a WAV too, if you still have one), and I'll be sure to directly approve it for posting on the front page; this can bypass the judges panel, IMO. Tremendous work!

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Sorry for the wait on hearing back on a review, but glad to check this out now. I'm not bothered by anything being "too conservative" here, as you have a lot going on to set it apart from the original song. The lead seemed to be too loud relatively to the rest of the instrumentation, but not big deal. There's something about the backing string stabs and synths that seemed I guess off-key with the lead instrumentation, and made the writing feel unfocused and scattershot. I mean, right from :10 and later at 1:01 and other times, there's a metallic "pang" sound that sounded off-key. A musician J who knows theory could explain what I'm sensing more clearly. The ending was also a let down; probably not enough to mean a NO vote on the panel, but it was pretty sudden and underwhelming; see what you can do for something with a bit more substance, especially with this only being 2:39-long. Solid base here, Damon. Just need to smooth out some of the clashing writing and make sure the ending's fully developed. Otherwise, this is solid per your usual quality.

[This is an automatically generated message] I've reviewed your remix and have returned it to Work-in-Progress status, indicating that I think there are some things you still need to work on. After you work on your track and feel that you'd like some more feedback, please change the prefix back to Ready for Review and I'll review it again! Good luck!

Hey Catherine, sorry for the wait on hearing back on a WIP review. The main pervasive issue here is how mechanical all of the sequencing sounded. Aside from the hand percussion stuff, pretty much everything sounded robotically timed and looped, and most of the attacks were at the same intensity. You did have textural changes here, but the overall every level remained very similar throughout, so along with the timing basically being locked to a grid, this was a very flat, droning piece that couldn't maintain interest and felt like it wasn't developing in spite of the changes in the writing when you listen closely. The hand percussion sounded the most organic, so that was a nice touch, but the timing and realism issues were a deal-breaker.

First off, sorry for the wait on a review for your piece, H0us3C0rP3. That said, I'm on the judges panel, so I can give you a bit more authoritative of a POV. On the judges panel, this might get dinged on the production side for some of the synths/sounds being plain, as the synths were pretty vanilla, but the arrangement was personalized pretty well, and I think you did a good job using these tools. It's clear a lot of care went into varying up the textures and providing contrast from section to section. More melodic interpretation would have been a plus, but no hate on going for something structurally conservative as long as other aspects were significantly treated with interpretation. Here, the beats and tempo were changed along with the sound palette to help give this a different enough feel. Props on not retreading any arrangement ideas until just a brief reuse of some of the verse material about 3/4ths of the way through. I enjoyed the extended winddown for the close; it seemed like it might just repeat the initial notes from the source until a fadeout, but you changed the lead sounds a couple of times while reducing the volume to keep presenting creativity right until the finish. If you haven't submitted this one already, I can't guarantee it would pass (because I'm only one judge), but this would likely have my vote. Nice work!

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To me, that's a non-issue. It may bring into question whether the usage of the source material is "dominant" when taking the Submission Standards into account - and I know DS didn't explicitly say it was that level of an issue - but to me, wholly original lyrics that aren't derived from the source are OK as long as the instrumental adequately provides that source tune connection. For Joey, please resubmit this. Again, for me, this just needs production adjustments; the arrangement itself doesn't need to be touched. Also, please send lyrics for anything you're involved in; whenever it gets passed, we try to include lyrics in the files and on the site for fans to have. Looking forward to hearing this one again!

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To me, the tempo and relatively samey pace did have this drag for me as well; this was a flatter/duller energy level than I expected for such a long piece, but that was more of a personal taste thing. Any suggestions for tweaking the arrangement would be more like "nice to have" things rather than anything fundamentally wrong with it. The only thing that stuck out for me that I would have changed was the one spot where the time sigs briefly changed from 2:10-2:26; it didn't serve much purpose and broke the flow of the piece, but I'll live. Other than those crits, this was a reasonably personalized arrangement and the mixing was solid. Great source tune choice, and I like how Patricio gave it a grittier energy. YES

I've added a link in the first post to this mix at 3x speed. For the NOs on recognizability, listen to the sped up version, then go back and listen to the sub and see if it's still a NO-go due to the slowness. But the source is definitely there in a very straightforward way.

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In this context, my bad grammar , "gotted," was intentional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic

Indeed! We work in reverse. (Working on this.) I gotted ‘em. [sic]

The track was 3:29 long, so I needed at least 104.5 seconds of overt source usage for VGM to be considered dominant in the arrangement. 35.5-57.5, 58.75-1:06, 1:22.5-1:53.5, 2:09.5-2:58 = 108.75 seconds or 52.03% overt source usage Close, but the source usage checks out for me after giving this a lot of time to marinate and initially having similar timestamping conclusions to Gario; there were some liberal portions where the notes were different or simplified but the source rhythms and patterns are clearly followed. That said, to follow up on Jive's POV, IMO the arrangement recognition standards can't come down to whether we think a casual listener could pick out the source usage enough; we have enough cerebral arrangements (Navi's Final Fantasy X-2 "Chauffage au Gaz" strongly comes to mind) where the A-to-B source-to-arrangement connections are there yet not obvious at all. We once has someone on YouTube say that Rozovian's Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Eye of the Storm" was unrecognizable and thus too liberal. This mix wasn't an example of going that out there, but the point still stands that the judges are the ones more carefully examining the arrangements, and fans generally aren't. And, of course, differences of opinion on an individual level are fine with me. The trades between the arrangement and original writing were seamless, and you could easily think Dave's original motif was taken from that source or somewhere else from the SoM soundtrack. Nice shaker, tambourine, and ocean SFX accenting the piece, and the percussion and bass work are always exemplary stuff. Dave's work always has an organic flavor to it despite the lack of live instruments; one part good tools, but also understanding how to use those tools. Nice work! YES

Good, intense energy here, and nice work adding some Christmas/holiday instrumentation touches to the picture. The background writing was pushed back more than it had to be, and I think you could have had more clarity in the soundscape while still maintaining the track's intensity. Finally got some breathing room with the brief dropoff at 1:53 and again around 2:15. With the chorus at 2:26, it felt like a cut-and-paste of 1:11's section, but it was brief before moving onto some other new arrangement ideas followed by some awesome soloing. 3:34 with the same chorus section being repeated again as a cut-and-paste. At least when 4:04 retread 1:30's section, there was more intesity to it to present a difference from before. I'm just picking apart some meaningful issues with arrangement and production that addressing could have made into a more thoroughly developed and polished piece, but there's no doubt that this is a very well-personalized cover that packs some power behind it! Welcome, Glyndwr! YES

Just some brief comments on this version since I heard the first one. I initially wasn't sure why the main melodic line was pushed back during the build, but the "Theme of Love" melody was front and center at 1:06 after the extended build, so I'm ultimately OK with the source being downplayed to start. I heard the little touches to the beats first starting at 1:39 to create some variation; nice work! That's exactly what I was talking about, just incorporating some subtle differences with the beats and some swooshing SFX embellishments that make textural variation apparent without having to do something drastic. The piano at 2:43 having more body and realism to it would have made the final section stronger; the last few notes in particular were so exposed, but I'll live with what's there because the sum total of the arrangement's solid. Nice work, and thanks for being able to revisit this, Austin! YES

The beats are still meaty, and the arrangement remains energetic, but there's a REALLY washed out and muddy/muffled sound to this still; it makes 0 sense, and this mixing would need to be addressed for me before we could post this. Once the soundscape thinned out some at 1:30 you hear the difference, but at 1:59 it's just cluttered again, with 2:15-2:45 particularly sounding very washed out. On headphones, this sounds pretty poorly mixed now, so I'm not sure how this has 2 YESes at all unless headphones aren't being used (I did compare with my usual control track to be sure it wasn't me messing up my listening settings). Not sure what changed between this and the previous version, but this made it a tougher sell instead of getting closer to YES, and it's 100% on the production level. I'm not mad, but it's a waste of a resubmission to mess up the mixing like this. NO (resubmit)