Emunator

As a proponent of shamelessly mashing up two extremely popular SNES source tunes myself, I tip my hat to your gumption here. There's certainly a lot about this approach that works - I do think some of that is simply the strength of the original compositions, but the blend of elements on a compositional level is pretty cohesive. I have no nits to pick with the arrangement here, and it doesn't surprise me that this was made for a composition-focused community challenge, because I think that's the strongest aspect of this piece! So the good news is that you've got a solid foundation. I hate to say this, but didn't find the sound design to be very engaging. Everything feels fine and competent, but compared to some of your other submissions where sound choice, I can't help but feel like the sound design component of this track is keeping it from being something greater. I find it very hard to quantify this feeling, so I hope you don't mind me being a little more unfiltered and subjective than I would normally be when voting. Everything feels serviceable, but nothing is really inspiring me. It's hard to say this especially because I can tell that there was a lot of work that went into fleshing out these sounds with different effects and selecting a wide range of patches - it's not like you just loaded up a couple of soundfonts and called it a day. I think this might be a level of personal preference for more unique sound design, so take it for what it's worth. All that said, I will express that I think the drums cross over from a matter of personal preference to a more quantifiable critique - these just sound bland here in terms of creative processing and programming. Trap drums live and die by unique fills and rhythms, and this feels like you leaned way too much on a single loop. It's extra-noticeable in the hi-hats because they poke through the mix so much due to their dryness, but it's basically doing the same short rhythmic pattern ad infinitum. At the very least, I think this aspect of the song needs to be reworked and expanded on in order for me to sign off on this. Brad also touched on some mixing critiques that I'll also cosign, but those never really escalated to the level of a dealbreaker in isolation. I know I'm probably putting off bad vibes with this vote, but I do think there's plenty of potential with this arrangement. If the drums were reworked to introduce more variety/fills and a processing chain that blended better with the rest of the song, I'd probably be able to sign off, but I also felt it was worth expressing the feelings that I came away with that were more subjective too, because you've submitted multiple songs that felt much more inspired and ambitious in terms of the sonic world you created with them and I'd love to see you lean more into those impulses here and on future songs. I hope this comes across in the spirit it was intended! :) NO

The issues and merits of this track have been covered pretty well, so this is going to be mostly a recap from me. There is a lot of promise to the concept of a super mellow, soft electronic take on this source material, but the sounds being used are fairly basic, with the exception of some occasional vibrato effects on the lead synth, there's not a lot of effects or development happening on the sound design front. The sounds themselves are well selected and pleasant on the ears, but there's not much happening with them. When you start to explore automation of the various parameters in your synths and effects, you can do a lot to keep even the chillest arrangement engaging by gradually evolving and varying your sounds. The Workshop would be a great place to learn about some of the techniques you can use to spice up your sounds and arrangement. I also would suggest experimenting with different percussion sounds and layering different loops throughout the track, rather than relying on the same core beat unchanged for the entirety of the song. Using organic or unconventional sounds as a percussive element can bring your grooves to life and make them sound more unique. For lo-fi/chillout genres, this is especially important to find ways to keep your percussion interesting even if the beat itself is uncomplicated and slower. There's definitely a vision here and you can totally get to a point where you can execute on that vision, but I'm afraid this would require a lot of work to bring it to that point here. Keep at it and use the resources that the community has, and you'll get there! :) NO

LOL, I never thought I'd hear a Youtube Poop sentence mix in an OCR submission, but there's a first time for everything. I just played Wand of Gamelon for the first time this weekend... man, that is a bad game. As much as I appreciate the concept here, this feels sadly underbaked to my ears. The percussion lives on auto-pilot, and isn't a terribly compelling groove or set of sounds for most of the arrangement. The first half of the arrangement is highly simplistic, which is unfortunate because the back end of the arrangement proves that you do have some sauce, it's just that everything comes together far too late in the game for it to feel complete. If more of the arrangement felt like the last 30 seconds, this would be a slam dunk for me, because I really love the brass and synth noodling and the richness that they add, but it takes too long to get there. If you could beef up the first half of the arrangement, I'd love to see this on the site, but we're not quite there yet. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, super strong vibe from the rip. There's a ton of energy present here, I feel the Babymetal influence even though this is definitely more synth heavy. I don't think this necessarily needs to be reinventing the wheel with the backing track but I don't disagree that it feels autopiloty all the same. The lead guitar ramps up the energy significantly when it's present, and those moments are definitely a highlight for me. It does, however, feel jarring because it highlights how much is missing from the other parts of the arrangement. I wish there was more variety and ear candy during the bulk of the arrangement to make the disparity between the guitar solo and the rest of the song less staggering. Vocally, I don't have any gripes with the concept, but the mixing isn't really bringing them front and center, but also has them too prominent to pass as a backing element. They're existing in limbo that feels more distracting, so I would recommend either carving out some space in the backing elements so that the vocal can be more present, via EQ cuts or sidechain ducking, or embrace the vocals as more of a rhythmic textural element and mix accordingly. Right now it's in a weird middle ground that's not entirely working. Echoing the drum critique too - it's not terrible but a touch more presence and punch would help this feel more balanced. I appreciate the concept of the gating at 2:37/3:04, but I do hear a bit of a pop as it disengages on the last beat... it doesn't feel like it's quite timed right and maybe needs the slightest fade out on the volume envelope, or a timing adjustment. I don't disagree with Chimpazilla about using something different for the ending transition. There's a lot to like here, and it's definitely put together competently but there's a bit of a "death by a thousand cuts" feeling where a number of elements that only feel 75-80% locked in are adding up to a result that's not reaching its full potential yet. It can definitely get there, though! NO (resub)

What's there to say here? It's absolutely stunning - CA has become one of the most reliable collaborators in the community by delivering tight, well-recorded, and emotive cello performances, so it's no surprise that his solo work is held to an even higher standard of quality. The performance and technical engineering quality is unimpeachable. The entire mix and master sounds warm and present, with just the right amount of reverb. The arrangement, although fairly safe, clearly surpasses the bar for creative interpretation just due to the expressiveness of the performances, not to mention a myriad of other fills, dynamic changes, and harmonies that elevate it even further. YES

This starts off super heavy on the ambiance before jumping into some Noisia-esque bass swells that feel incredibly cinematic. I admittedly had high hopes for how this would progress, and to your credit, I think you've brought some excellent sounds and ideas to the table. For a lot of the track, it works well, but Brad correctly identified that there are some production choices on the beat-driven parts that are holding this back. The lack of sidechaining from your kick drum to the secondary elements is preventing this from truly locking into a groove, and also contributes a tremendous amount of mud. Whenever you have your kick going, you need to be doing some level of ducking on your pads, strings, bass, and even a little bit to your leads - otherwise, there's simply too much going on in the frequency spectrum. There's also a noise layer that appears to be present in the background for those sections that I would back off on significantly - at the very least, throw a high pass filter on it so it's not competing with the bass/kick so much, but ideally that should also be receiving some sidechain treatment. The guitar sounds fine to me but is also VERY loud - I think you need to be more surgical with the volume level adjustments on each element in the mix. Be deliberate with which instruments you want to be front and center in each section and back off on the gain for the other parts. I actually don't really have an issue with the sound choices overall - I think with the right mixing treatment, this could absolutely work as-is. Although I don't think the synth elements are necessarily more engaging than the original, you do substantially differentiate your arrangement through texture, orchestration, and atmosphere. It feels very ambitious and cinematic and I enjoy the concept tremendously. At its core though, the mixing needs work so that the sounds gel with each other and contribute to the groove, rather than stepping on each others toes. NO (resubmit!)

Artist Name: MET∆TRON I was set to perform for the first time ever at VGMCon 2023, but my car broke down on the way there and I was forced to go home. The theme of that year was Zelda and I thought it would be fun to do something from the dreaded CD-i games. I wanted it to sound like something that would have been made around that time, so it's got a lot of Korg M1 in it for maximum 90's cheesy goodness.

I couldn't have said it better than Prophetik did, so I'll keep this brief in agreement. There's some lovely synth tones and a solid foundation here. When you got more expressive with your solo around the 3 minute mark, things really came alive! It's abundantly clear that you've got the chops to make a bangin' synth ballad based on that section alone, but I think this track needs some trimming for length, and further development on the backing elements that make up the bulk of the song. When you're working at such a slow tempo, you've got to find smaller ways to add that flair through drum fills, texture, or one-off riffs that keep things engaging throughout the duration. There's absolutely a passable track here, but it's not there yet! NO

I agree right off the bat that this is a track that would really benefit from the chiptune++ treatment. I am certainly not suggesting that you HAVE to do that if you want to retain a purist approach, but I do think the impetus is higher to work around those limitations with a more ambitious arrangement or more dynamic programming, and unfortunately what I'm hearing doesn't really cross my threshold for that. It's close, and there's a lot to love about this, but the whole track feels very constricted and never really takes off as a result of this. The drums lack depth and impact, so even though you're clearly going for an EDM-esque drop, I don't feel the dynamic contrast compared to the buildups that come before it. It's missing that chest punch, wall-of-sound that I know this could have achieved. The repetition doesn't bother me as much as the other judges, but I also don't think this particular track brings quite enough to the table to make up for the lack of depth that is inherent in pure chiptunes. I know you have it in you, your PVZ track feels like it achieves what I'm describing perfectly, as well as some of the tracks you've shared in Workshop hours (get that Sea of Stars track to us, stat!) However, on this piece, I just can't sign off on it without further development to the arrangement or sound field. NO

The track is 404'd now but I happened to have it downloaded from a previous judging session - in the future, if you're using the upload function, please make sure that you don't do anything to move it until it's done! I do feel like there's some meaningful progress made on this iteration, but unfortunately the balance is still terribly skewed toward the high frequencies in a way that's very unpleasant. Are you using any sort of monitoring software like SPAN to look at the frequency distribution in your mix and check your overall loudness levels? Even if you don't have the most ideal listening setup or can't afford a perfectly treated room or expensive pair of headphones, you can compensate for this by using reference tracks from professional sources that you trust are well-produced and you like the way they sound. I start nearly every project like this, and keep a downloaded copy of reference track(s) in my project file at all times so I can see if I'm on target in terms of frequency balance and loudness. The mixing and mastering is unfortunately still a dealbreaker and is going to require some further learning on your part to get the actual mix sounding right. Here's one possible resource that might help: I admire your persistence! There's still some learning and adjustment that needs to happen before this is sounding ready for primetime. NO

This is an easy close-out. I have no idea what was going on with the first version that was holding it back, but nothing seems to have made its way into version 2. This isn't nearly as sophisticated as some of your more recent work, and I'm sure some of that can be attributed to writing and sound design decisions that were made with 10 years less experience, but in spite of its simplicity, your production quality and the performances (actually, I just read the original submission letter and the vocals were apparently done with some sort of plugin? Never would have guessed this wasn't a collab!) bring it all together now. Better late than never! YES

This is a slam dunk of an arrangement, it reminds me a lot of Pistolero by Juno Reactor with the fusion of western-style acoustic guitar and goa beats. It fits like a glove. Matt has mastered this genre and it's hard to find any significant fault in his execution. Having played Flowstone Saga a lot, I have an extra level of respect for what he did with this source! I don't have a lot of specific commentary to give here, but I'm happy to sign off on this without reservation. YES

Yeah, just hopping in for a quick co-sign with the judges above - this is a very interesting sound design experiment and I would encourage you to keep trying things like this, but it doesn't come together into a listenable final result for a couple of reasons that have already been broken down. I'd love to see you take some of these ideas and really work on the songwriting and production components behind it, but as it stands, this feels like an experiment that needs a lot more time workshopping before it's ready to stand alone as a solo piece. NO

Quick co-sign with Brad - this is surprisingly well produced, mixed, and mastered, but the arrangement hews a little too close to the original material for how short of an arrangement this is. There's a TON of potential here and the good news is that your production is already solid, I wouldn't suggest changing much about that at all. But the arrangement itself needs to differentiate itself more from the source material and/or add some more interpretive components to the mix. If you can do that, you'll have an easy winner here! NO (resubmit)

Yep, @prophetik music has the right take here, unfortunately. This is super cool and I feel like a live video of you running through this would pop off on Tiktok/Youtube Shorts, but it's not in line with our submission standards so I'm afraid this is a no. Really enjoyed the listen though regardless! NO