Emunator

These are just going to be first impressions from voting, so take this all with a huge grain of salt! The City Is a Warm, Dead Waste: I love the variety here! It reminds me of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin in some ways, it doesn't surprise me to see a few Team Whip alumni on this one! Guitars are kickass here, and there's a monster amount of synth variety too. There's a solid amount of cohesion with the sounds chosen here, though I'm somewhat less sold on the arrangement itself - lots of great ideas but I think it'll take me some time to grasp where the arrangement is actually taking me. I think there's some reverb fine-tuning to do here, a lot of the elements feel overly boomy, which takes away some of the bite from elements like the drums. Other than drums/guitar, I actually surprisingly can't pinpoint individual elements contributed by each artist - there's a lot of sounds that feel like they could have come from anyone, which is pretty neat! 🏆Duel of the Shifting Sands: Ooohhh, 8-bit plus! I'm not surprised at all by that, but I'm not used to hearing it with all the extra bits and bobs, and I gotta say... I dig it! A lot. I think there's untapped potential to process the chiptune elements a little more dynamically, but overall, the blend works pretty damn well. 3:02, hell yeah! This is a great way to drive this home. I was on the fence about which track would get my vote, but this section really clinched it for me. Overall, I saw a huge amount of potential and TONS of great ideas thrown out from both entries in this duel, but this track feels like like it has the edge in terms of focus and cohesion. 🏆Seven Fists Under the Sakura Tree: Motherfucker, you guys are not playing around. This hits IMMEDIATELY off the rip. That fill at 1:06, excuuuuse me? I think this has a bit of the same "washiness" that I noted in "Warm, Dead Waste" where there's just a little bit less clarity to the mix than I would like, but I don't think the track suffers too much as a result. Ok, and now we go into something completely different at the end that somehow also works? I was trying to write out my highlights as I went along, and I just couldn't keep up. The sound choices, writing, production... y'all are crazy for this one. This is going directly onto my Smash Bros. playlist. This is going to be hard to beat. Sakura Wa Karenai: Ok, so that's how you're gonna play this. The production on here is IMMACULATE right off the jump, I can hear some strong DJ Mokram influence on the world instruments, then some psytrance beats come in and I immediately know who's at the helm. The production on here feels a little tighter, but I'm waiting for the moments like Team Rage had in their entry that REALLY knocked me off my feet. Oh, there's 2:06 - that's more like what I'm talking about, but it still feels like you're holding back on the energy levels. We've still got time to go though, so we'll see where this goes. 2:42 really jumped out at me in a completely different way, but it was a powerful moment with the entrance of vocals and that beautiful FM piano. The sound design in this section is off the hook. OH BABY SHUFFLE RHYTHMS now we're cooking. Ahhh, this matchup is TOUGH. There's so many brilliant ideas here and there's actually quite a bit of connective tissue to bridge them all together, but will say that the energy management falls just a little short of my hopes. The mix is incredibly clean, from the instrumentation to the mixing/mastering, but it feels like there was room to push the intensity further. I still loved this a ton, and you gave the other track a serious run for their money, but Seven Fists takes the crown in this matchup for me. 🏆Only Trust Your Mix, Techniques Will Never Help You: this title sounds like something I would hear in an incomprehensible Youtube Short production tutorial, I'm curious what the title alludes to! This starts off with some pretty straightforward but catchy, bright rock that reminds me of old Sonic Adventure music, the lead performances are top-notch. I don't feel like this track was as ambitious as the other ones from Team Rage in terms of ideas, but it feels like perhaps the most cohesively-executed of the three, and just because it's more focused, doesn't mean that it's any less impactful. The seagulls are a nice touch too, reminds me even more of Sonic Adventure when we hit that part. Crazy breakdown at the end, this was really good! You Make the Sun Shine (In My Heart): Aww, so cute! This is definitely the hardest matchup so far just by virtue of the fact that each entry were clearly going for different things. The other two matchups, although executed very differently, ended up going for relatively similar energy, but this is the kind of diametrically-opposed matchup I love to see from GSM. The lead vocals are confident and fit the bill really nicely - some slightly awkward moments where the lyrics and the melodic phrasing don't perfectly sync up, but that's to be expected on a short timeline when you have to add your own lyrics to the equation. Across the board, I'm hearing brilliant synth riffs and excellent sound choices. I love the vocal harmonies that I assume colorado weeks contributed? 3:25 onward to the end of the song is when everything really clicked for me <3 The area where this struggles for me is the mixdown - it doesn't feel like it's quite baked yet, specifically in terms of relative volume levels. The lead doesn't always feel like the lead, and there's certain elements (like the synth bass at 2:40-ish, for example) that feel inexplicably louder than everything else. There's also several elements that don't quite feel glued together with appropriate level of bus compression or reverb to really give this a sense of place. When both tracks are full of great ideas but in totally different ways, I need to fall back to execution, and in this case, I have to trust the mix from Team Rage. There's no dead air this round, every team brought the heat in terms of concepts and energy! Execution was a little more of a mixed bag, ultimately I feel like any of these matchups could have been swayed with different levels of polish on the execution, which means that you all hit the mark in terms of blending the sources well. I am well familiar with the time crunch element of GSM, and it does tend to play out tougher for more ambitious, multi-genre concepts that will always take longer to polish. Even though I ended up generally voting for the tracks that felt tighter and maybe took a few less stylistic risks, it's not for lack of enjoyment of the more ambitious ones! If you didn't get my vote here, it just means that I thought the song needed a little more time in the oven - everyone did excellent work and I enjoyed it a lot!

I vaguely recall hearing the first version from Dwelling of Duels but didn't listen with the most critical of ears. I'm approaching this resubmitted version with fresh ears. I love anything from the original Mario Party soundtrack, and you captured and enhanced the vibe really well! The mix definitely feels rough around the edges in its current form, which I think stems from multiple different issues. From the jump, the balance between percussion feels off, and this feeling persists through the rest of the song. The hi-hats, and later the shakers, along with the hand percussion (bongos? congas?) feel substantially louder in the mix than everything else, and they don't feel like they exist in a shared space with the kit drums. I can appreciate that this may be a stylistic decision to an extent when considering things like reverb levels and tone, but the volume balance feels off at a base level and that feels distracting. The percussion and performance, however, is great - I don't think there's any problems here that can't be fixed with some re-balancing. This is harder to articulate without seeing the project file, but I feel like the kick and bass are crunching a little too hard together. This might be a combination of overcompression or sub-optimal attack settings on the compressors, too much saturation on the kick/bass, or timing issues where the kick and bass are too synced up on the transients and are causing spikes when both play at the same time. As a nitpick, 1:58 feels like we get a brief moment where the kick and bass stumble and have a sloppy rhythm, but it bounces back quickly. I love the guitar tone and performance here, it adds a ton of life and movement to the piece that I think is essential to keeping a song at this tempo from feeling plodding. The marimba also contributes to this positively when it appears, with the lone exception of 2:35, which just doesn't work well as such an exposed lead instrument from a writing level. Unfortunately, the electric piano in the intro and later at 1:53 is underwhelming - it feels notably programmed and stiff compared to the other instruments around it and is also extremely quiet in the mix. This unfortunately does not start the track with a positive impression and feels like a weak link overall. I'm not totally sold on the execution here, though the concept is surely one that is well-suited for OCR. If this doesn't pass in its current form, I'm 100% certain you can get it there - at the very least, tightening up the balance on the percussive elements and cleaning up the e. piano would be enough to push this over the bar for me, but I think there's other things you can do to bring out even more of the potential here. NO (resubmit)

Yerp - pretty much what my two esteemed colleagues above said. It's a wonderful concept and I have no argument that you didn't achieve exactly what you set out to do with this track. It's a brilliant demonstration of the concept of phasing and it works perfectly with this source material, but from a sound design and arrangement development perspective, this is too abstract for our catalog. I could see this concept laying the melodic groundwork for a remix that IS viable here. If you were game for that, it would be sublime - I'm sure of it. If not, this piece already does exactly what it needs to do, it would just need some sonic expansion beyond what's presented here. NO

Huh, I thought that I voted on this when it was on the panel. I definitely listened to it many times, and really enjoyed its simplicity. It leans into all the elements that I enjoy most about your music, and the extra context from the writeup makes it feel all the more special. Lovely work!

This is not at ALL what I was expecting after what I've heard from your other submissions - I'm impressed to hear you step out of your comfort zone like this and execute so well on the first pass. Overall, this was a solid effort and I can see why this has split the panel. This starts off with some very immersive orchestral string swells and a well-used vocal sample to draw the listener in. No issues so far, this sounds great. To touch briefly on the arrangement, I think jnWake correctly identified that it's close to the source, though I don't think I would have immediately noticed that myself because of how much you transformed the original through different instrumentation and flourishes. I think this is a definite pass on the arrangement front. The elephant in the room is the flute - sampling yourself into a virtual instrument is a bold choice, and although it certainly lends this piece a certain "vintage rompler" quality (I've affectionately referred to this as "Playstation 1 orchestra" in the past) there's an uncanny valley feeling that we're left with that unfortunately takes me out of the experience. It's not quite synthetic enough to feel intentional, but not hitting the mark for realism on the faster runs and embellishments, or the vibrato, to pass as realistic. I could forgive the vibrato, but honestly, the grace notes sound really awkward and immersion-breaking. Would it be within your capability to record those runs directly from your flute so it captures the natural legato between notes that help blend those effects more smoothly? I think even if you went for the sampled approach for the lead instruments, patching those runs in with a live-performed sample would be a huge improvement. The mixing is also a concern - there's no MAJOR missteps, but there's some consistent volume imbalances that, if dialed in by a decibel or two, would blend the piece a lot better. The flute is loud, and I think there's probably some of the saturation automation you mentioned that's causing the flute to crunch even harder. The end result is that the flute feels abrasive in the mix when it should be feeling more smooth, so I would ease up on that effect slightly. Other than that, I agree with the balance suggestions jnWake called out. This is really close, but because the flute takes such a central role in the piece, the rest of the track would need to be really ironclad to make me willing to forgive the issues present with the flute, and it's unfortunately not tight enough to tip the scales for me. Really cool approach though, and it was great to hear you try something so different from your usual fare! NO (borderline/resubmit)

Proph has the right call on this based on our source usage guidelines, but this was wickedly enjoyable. "Yami Yugi, big piece up on the neck" killed me, love that that line made it into the chorus so I got to hear it multiple times 🤣Great delivery, great lyricism, excellent sample flip and production on the beat. Because the source usage is based entirely around direct samples from the source and isn't terribly recognizable as a Wario Ware arrangement in this form, this isn't the kind of submission we're looking for. It's a shame because I thoroughly loved listening to this, and Brad is right - if not on OCR, this will find a home elsewhere online and people will love it. If you guys are able to put together something that doesn't rely on direct sampled audio from the original game and has more substantive development on the instrumental side, I'd personally love to hear it. NO

What are you doing all the way down here? This has all the makings of a successful track - minusworld at the helm of the arrangement, a couple of clutch collaboration partners, and a banging source tune. Mario Party 2's soundtrack has always felt like it's begging for a triumphant rock opera upgrade. I don't have the rhythmic vocabulary to describe what you're doing here, but the prog is felt on a visceral level nonetheless. The transitions are handled deftly, which is usually the primary pitfall that prog rock arrangements can fall into, but cohesiveness is not a concern here at all. There's always something exciting happening - for being a song about outer space, you left no dead air across the 5 and a half minute runtime. It makes moments like 3:45 all the more gratifying when you finally let off the thrusters for a moment and just let it coast, and although the voice clips aren't going to be everyone's cup of tea, it felt appropriately tongue-in-cheek for me! Yeah, this is ridiculously satisfying, and did everything I could possibly want a prog rock arrangement of Space Land to do. I can't find any gripes worth noting - let's get this posted! YES

Yeah, honestly "additional piano, synth bass" doesn't really capture the scope of how much jnWake's "bullshit" helped sculpt the sound and direction of this piece - it was absolutely integral to the final product and this would not have come together without his contributions. More Wake+Emu collabs in 2025 for SURE

^ what she said 😆 Seriously though, I recall giving some very in-depth feedback on earlier versions of this track, and I am happy to say that this feels much further along in terms of personality and production quality than what I remember! The pace may be slow, but you're almost always moving in the right direction, and I admire the tenacity. I'll address just a few of the most prominent things that I heard to try and give some actionable advice, since others have done a good job giving a comprehensive overview of the song and what needs to happen with it. I actually like the idea of the church organ and the choir in isolation, but there's nothing pinning it to the rest of the song, so it feels tacked on. The jarring transition into the beef of the arrangement makes this intro feel detached, and when it returns at 2:10, the fade-in feels similarly unnatural. I think the idea can totally work, but the intro doesn't have enough time to develop. What I might try is actually extending the length of your intro, and starting with just the choir and organ and then fading your synth arpeggio in gradually over the next few bars before dropping into the EDM section. This can give each of those musical ideas some space to signal the upcoming transitional change to an electronic palette, without throwing too many brand-new ideas at the listener all at once. Chimpazilla did a great job addressing the lead synths so I'm just going to agree 100% with her critique there on what you got right and what needs work. 1:10-1:15 has some squelchy synths that are mixed very loud and sharp, almost like they're clipping unintentionally. Bring those down in volume. The backing synth plucks at 1:48-2:03 cause a similar problem - they are just as loud as everything else in the soundscape, but are clearly not intended to be the main point of focus, but because of how they're mixed, my ear can't help but focus on them. The hi-hat is also very loud and panned off to the right side - it's not playing a very exciting rhythm (not that it needs to be) but the mixing makes it hard to pay attention to anything else. This leaves me feeling everything feels like it's demanding my attention, and as the old adage goes... if everything is urgent, then nothing is. I'll highlight a few things that I liked about this to point out areas where I think you're on the right track. The filter sweep synths and rolling bassline from :13-:28 was great at establishing tension. I love the variety of sounds you used in here, it shows that you're experimenting to create a unique palette of instruments that has something original to offer. Overall, the use of filter sweeps makes the mix feel kinetic and engaging, there's never any points where you're dragging on the same ideas without any variation. I think you could probably stand to develop some of the ideas further and give them room to breathe before moving onto your next idea, but a short, punchy arrangement is definitely preferable to one that drags on too long. I don't feel that this arrangement comes together cohesively yet, but I certainly feel more of your artistic voice here compared to earlier versions, and the execution is leveling up slowly but surely too. This can definitely get there! NO (resubmit)

When I first listened to this, I actually clicked off after hearing the first few seconds because I was not vibing with the mix quality... coming back and listening to the full track, I realize the joke was on me the whole time! Nice fakeout. Definitely getting the physical modeled string feel from this too, good call on that @Hemophiliac. It sounds well above our bar for realism, though if we're getting nitpicky, there's a few points where I hear unnatural note cutoffs, like 3:06 in the cello. The phasing issue was already addressed but I also heard it too. There's clearly a great deal of care put into both the arrangement and programming here, weaving a number of different themes together delicately and getting really creative with the rhythm and harmony in the process. Any nitpicks I have are only that - nitpicks. Nice work! YES

I can't remember exactly how the previous submission sounded, so I'm also coming into this ostensibly blind. I really like the tension and atmosphere you've created with this intro, and although there's a few things I would have done differently myself, I think this intro serves its purpose capably. I don't have a lot of critiques, even the way you glitched out the string section at :53 was really cool, and signaled a change to come. When the beat drops in, my enthusiasm for the mix diminished slightly. I didn't find the sound design to be nearly as compelling or full-bodied, there's a lot of holes in the frequency spectrum that might not feel as off-putting if the intro wasn't so lush right before it . The strange thing is that, although there are relatively few things going on, it still feels muddy. It feels like you might have a lot of sub buildup from your kick drum that isn't audible, but nevertheless is muddying the soundscape. I can't tell for sure, but it might be worth looking at it through an EQ to see if there's a lot of inaudible rumble from your drums. Another thing that can help is shaping the stereo image of your low-end instruments, and making sure that the low frequencies of your bass are summed to mono. Sometimes, if you have sub frequency content bouncing around between stereo channels, it can lead to a mix that just sounds unstable. Also, check your reverbs to make sure you're cutting out low-frequency content that can clutter up a mix as well. Any of these things can lead to what I'm hearing in this mix, where your elements should feel punchy and immediate and they just don't. Once we progress further with the arrangement and you mix more of the orchestral/sound design elements with the beats, it feels better. I still think the drum programming is underwhelming, but with the strings adding some much-needed texture, it comes together reasonably well. I don't feel like anything quite reaches the highs of the intro, unfortunately, but I don't want to hold that against you as long as the rest of the track is up to the bar, and honestly, I'm borderline on it. There's a lot of great ideas here, the arrangement is dynamic and creative and shows a lot of vision, but just on a gut level, the execution still doesn't feel like it's there yet :( Chimpazilla used the word "disjointed" and, from a processing standpoint, I agree with that. This is very borderline for me, but I think I need to trust my gut here - I absolutely hear what you're going for with the 90's techno-influenced sections, but the production doesn't communicate that to me yet. I'd be happy to 1-on-1 this with you if it ends up not passing, since I'm sure I can give more actionable feedback if I can get into the specifics with you on individual elements. NO (resubmit)

Totally on Larry's side (twice in one day? What a world we're living in) in terms of the string mix - the writing is great, but the articulations used feel too sluggish and lack the proper transient to really cut through the mix. Once the rest of the instrumentation kicks in, the impact of this issue is mitigated. As I go through this, I think the overall mastering on the track needs some attention. I don't usually comment on mastering in my votes, because usually I can isolate frequency balance issues to specific instruments, but in this case, I think the whole thing is just too bright. You can hear this in the drum kit, the sibilance in the voiceover, and the harsh tone of the strings and guitar that leads me to believe that there are mixing issues being accentuated by a mastering chain that's not ideal for your arrangement. Seconding the crits on the drums, those just don't hit like they should. I don't have any issues with the writing, but the kick has a lot of audible click, the snare lacks presence in the mix and feels like it's scooped out of the midrange too much. The rest of the kit sits alright, though the cymbals are extra harsh due to the issues I mentioned in the last paragraph. The voiceover is a great addition, my only issue is with the mix - for the first half, it feels like it sits too far forward in the mix on certain words, which suggests a lack of compression and volume shaping to get more consistent peaks. Then, when the rhythm guitars enter, they are getting totally lost. I don't envy your job of having to mix that, but the VO noticeably goes from too audible, to not audible enough. I'd do some very selective EQ cuts on the rhythm guitars wherever the fundamental frequency of Chris's voice resides. The arrangement is tremendously dynamic but the mixing and mastering is causing problems. I haven't touched much on the arrangement and performances because those are rock-solid - your high placement in the month should speak to your success on a conceptual level and I absolutely enjoy everything you brought to the table here, but the mixing/mastering needs some TLC in my opinion. NO (resubmit)

I am immediately hearing a common problem play out with this track that I hear on a lot of sequenced orchestral tracks, and that's using patches with too long of an attack for the writing you're doing and not accounting for it by shifting the start of your samples so that the attack syncs up with the beat. When you combine these slow attack instruments with staccato elements like the chromatic percussion or drum kit, it ends up sounding loose and sloppy, and I'm hearing that on much of this track. For me, it's a dealbreaker - the ensemble brass and strings, especially at moments like :26, you have some excellent writing but it falls flat due to the sequencing. Additionally, I think you could experiment with using more aggressive articulations on some of your lead melodies - throughout the arrangement, I feel like it's hard to keep a finger on the pulse of your song because the leads and supporting instruments are generally mixed around the same level, and it's very rare that something jumps out at me and says "pay attention, I'm the lead melody!" even though, if I pay attention to the writing, I can hear parts that are clearly supposed to be fulfilling the melodic role. This is an issue for me because it adds up with the muddiness mentioned above, and further makes the song feel indistinct and flat. Unfortunately I can't sign off on this yet - other J's have given some great technical advice on how to fix these issues, but I have to say that it had more of an impact on me and I definitely think this needs another pass on the mixing and sequencing before it's ready. NO (resubmit)

Celeste really translates so well to metal in a way you'd never expect by listening to the original source. The way you translated the rapidfire ostinatos (I especially loved the sweeps at :35) to guitar shows that you definitely know your way around your instrument, so the bones of this arrangement are really solid. You've added more than enough personalization through unique writing and expressive performances to clear our bar, but I agree with the gentlemen above that the mixing is not helping this live up to its full potential. Starting with the drums, those are easily the biggest area you should focus on when (hopefully not if) you choose to polish and resubmit this track. The programming feels too locked to the grid and sterile, and it's accentuated by the way that the drums are mixed. The kick comes through with way too much high-end click and not enough low-end oomph, so it feels pasted on top of the track rather than giving it a rhythmic pulse, and really draws attention to how rigid those double-bass kick drum patterns are programmed. Those need some velocity and very subtle timing adjustments to really feel like there's a human being behind the kit. On a similar note, the drum programming issue is compounded during moments like 3:25, where everything is highly rigid in its syncopation. Great work on getting your guitar performance so lined up, but instead of feeling punchy and climactic, it comes across as robotic, so I don't think that hit the mark. Once you've cleaned up the drums, my next area of focus would be on the frequency balance between your individual components. Make sure you're applying a low-cut filter on anything that doesn't need it. Your bass and kick should live in that low region, as well as some of your heavier rhythm guitars, but anything else is probably just contributing mud and reducing clarity in the parts where you really want the low frequencies to hit hard. Hemo also suggested some bus compression and overall glue to the mastering to tie all of the elements together, which is a great suggestion to get this sounding fuller-bodied. Also gotta double up on the critique of the ending - that fadeout didn't need to happen and took the wind out of your sails just as you were reaching the summit of your arrangement! Full send it all the way to the end :) Love this arrangement, you did justice to the source but the mixing needs some work. I highly recommend you take this to our Workshop Office Hours, since @paradiddlesjosh and @pixelseph will absolutely have some guitar/drum-specific techniques that can help you reach the top! NO resubmit (you can do this!)

Loved this arrangement when I heard the first WIP back in Workshop Hours, and I love it now. Never would have guessed this was a Sim City arrangement, wonderful choice of source. I have very few gripes until the vocals come in. I love the creative textural addition they add, but man they are LOUD in certain frequency ranges. I think there's a confluence of issues at play here - the panning is very wide, there's a specific frequency where the vocals peak as they're panning, they're rather dry and don't have any sort of reverb/delay trail to blend them in with the rest of the song, and the overall volume is loud on top of that. This is a showstopper for me because of how many times it repeats, it's honestly distracting in a way that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the vocals and everything to do with how they're placed into the song (which is a good thing - this should be easier to fix!) Beyond that, the orchestration quality was solid enough to pass my bar, with some dings for realism on the lead instruments (oboe/bass clarinet specifically.) Those two instruments are also panned right on top of each other, mixed quietly, and drenched in a lot of reverb, so while the writing seems to suggest that they're harmonizing or doing more of a call and response, they feel more like they're stepping on each other more often than not. I think you need to evaluate the volume levels and stereo field placement for those leads specifically to make sure they have their own space in the mix to accommodate what you're doing with the arrangement. Overall, this piece has a strong vibe to it and is easy to get lost in, in a good way. There's some very emotionally impactful moments and a lot of layering to the orchestration that shows how much care went into bringing this to life. There's really just two core elements that aren't clicking, and unfortunately because they're such critical aspects to the song, I can't sign off on this in its current state. I think you could get this up to par without much fuss though! NO (resubmit!)

Yep, exactly what the two gentlemen above me said. I'm not going to muddy the waters by trying to restate it, but this has a SUPER high amount of potential and reflects a really clever arrangement and some enthusiastic performances, but the level of polish makes it feel like a sketch in most regards. There's a lack of separation between the instruments in terms of stereo separation and EQ/frequency masking, the sax performance and volume is inconsistent, and some of the supporting instrumentation has moments where it's exposed and highlights the lack of realism in the programming (see: the low piano notes.) Lots of actionable advice above, hope you're able to bring this up to the bar because there's a killer arrangement in here! NO (resubmit)

Interesting choice to start out with an 8-bit demake - assumed that the original source would also start off in a similar way but I was surprised to hear how different this feels from the original. When listening to your remix first, I immediately thought you were remixing Dedede's theme from the original Kirby's Dreamland, and while I can totally see how you adapted the melody from the source, the subtle changes you made to the phrasing gives it a totally different feel. On the production side, I'm hearing those frequency holes Brad identified and it's preventing this from reaching its full potential. The bass is not pulling its weight in the low-mid frequency part of the spectrum, so I'd consider combining EQ boosts with another layer to either your bassline, or another instrument entirely to fill out the parts of the spectrum that are lacking. The leads are also not cutting through the noise during the busier sections - it sounds like the lead volume level is set the same throughout the track, which leaves your lead perfectly balanced during the quieter sections, but nearly inaudible when the breaks kick in. The breakbeat sections are going to shine so well once you can strike a better overall frequency balance and get the leads to cut through more. I also agree on the repetition - there's so much unique stuff going on within each of your sections, but when you hear it presented nearly identically a second time, it doesn't feel like a resounding climax like I'm sure you intended. Varying up the countermelodies, adding some glitches, and changing up the transitions in and out of the sections to be more distinct are all ways you can approach this problem. Really cool stuff going on here, but it needs a bit more TLC to reach that potential! NO (resubmit)

This is really nifty - I know this source inside and out through Super Smash Bros, like most listeners likely will, and you latched onto the essence of the original in such a great way. This is incredibly satisfying as a listener. It's funny, the other judges mentioned the guitar being too wet, and although your submission comments referred to this as a metal arrangement, my brain heard it and immediately thought "this is mixed like a surf rock track." It's not necessarily something I dislike either, it's just unconventional and doesn't seem like something you may have done intentionally! There's some very strange hard-panned hi-hats in the middle of the mix but that was the only thing that felt truly out of place - the rest was just a little curious and ultimately didn't impact my listening experience in a negative way. There's some great feedback to take into account for your next one, but you rocked this one just fine! YES

I listened back to this and see the argument for the NO more strongly this time. I was obviously very borderline at first, so there's no need to hold this up - let's get this polished up and hopefully the next version will jump over the bar rather than barely eeking over it.

Time to play the game of "are the sour notes actually sour or just some weird Earthbound shit?" Hmm, yeah I don't love that alteration to the chord progression, I can see why Flexstyle decided it was a hill worth dying on. Things get way too crunchy there. I also felt the first note of that guitar solo at 2:11 in my bones, and not in a good way. The rest of the solo was good, and offered some much-needed expressiveness to the song, but man, that was a jarring start. Aside from that, the lack of groove to the drums and bassline actually bothered me more than the rest of the judges. The hi-hats are incredibly sharp and in-your-face in the mix, and they're playing a VERY static rhythm so the first thing I notice about the song is how rigid it is. That ends up drawing my attention to the fact that the rest of the drum kit, the bassline, even most of the melodic synths, have the same issue. I know that, to a degree, this is a genre convention but there's a lot you can do with simple velocity/micro-timing adjustments or even delay/effects to add some of that rhythmic life back without having to actually change your part writing dramatically. I don't think this is a massive dealbreaker relative to the sour notes mentioned above, but it impacted my listening experience a lot more than the rest of the judges thus far. At the very least, if you're not going to adjust the drum programming, that hi-hat needs to come down in volume. Sorry, but I don't think this is there yet! NO (resubmit)

Much improved Mel! This has a lot more of your personality cutting through in all the details and texture, I have no reservations now. Your arrangement always took two sources that were a natural fit and gave them space to bounce off of each other, but now the sound design and detail work makes it feel all the more special and cared for. YES

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

"paintballs to the wall" LOL I think Brad has a solid read on this track that generally aligns with how I'm feeling about it on a personal level, but to be totally honest, I find myself torn on whether or not it's sufficient enough to pass. There's a lot to love here - the goofy concept is well-supported with a variety of well-utilized vocal clips and strong sound choices. There's a lot of repetitiveness on paper, but I don't feel it that strongly because there's enough frequent changeups, one-shots/fills, and new ideas introduced that it scans as more of an inherent quality in this style rather than laziness in production or arranging. Sure, there's a lot that I would have done differently if I were producing this, but just based on what's in front of me, it passes the vibe check. Not very scientific, I know, but to my ears, there's enough variation going on that the plodding drums don't really have that much of an impact on my experience. The one area where I'll diverge from Brad is with the guitar - I actually found it rather charming in a very-obviously-MIDI-programmed sort of way. It'd be one thing if the rest of the track seemed to be striving for realism and these guitars just missed the mark, but I don't think it is. We're very clearly in silly territory here with the sound choices and programming. I do have to give credit that the mixing quality of the guitars and synths feels really satisfying and well-balanced. Yeah, I'm okay with this actually. I do wish the ending fadeout was cleaner, so that might be something to fix before posting, but it's a "nice-to-have" for me. YES

My last vote boiled down to a "death by a thousand cuts" situation where a number of shortcomings were adding up to a mix that felt indistinct and overwhelming, despite a really strong arrangement with a ton of really engaging elements. I'm happy to say that this clears things up substantially - you're still working with a really challenging set of sounds to blend together, so the execution isn't perfect (I'm not in love with the snare tone, and the overall mix still feels aggressively hot and a little harsh) but this resubmission feels like "success by a thousand little tweaks." Nothing fundamental has changed, but all those little things you did to polish the mixdown certainly pushed this over the line for me. Well done! YES