Emunator   Judges ⚖️

Artist Name: Stavrin Please note it takes a while to get to the part of the track where the Into The Zone recognisable riff from the game gets played in full, please give it a chance before thinking it sounds nothing like the game music.I wanted to make a drum & bass track around that theme song and also using sound fx from the game. Thanks for listening, happy to make any changes suggested. Title Screen Into the Zone (Options)

Emunator: Arrangement, programming, additional keys/percussion, mixing Chimpazilla: Additional pads/fx, final mix, mastering Flexstyle: Programmed drums jnWake: Keys/synths Zack Parrish: Electric guitar, electric bass Comments: This song was my entry for the April 2025 Dwelling of Duels competition. The theme for the month - rhythm games - didn't immediately strike any inspiration for me, so I was planning to sit this month out. It wasn't until I was at VGM Con with a group of DoD regulars, watching The OneUps perform (my first time seeing them on stage in 16 years!!) and they played their cover of this theme that the vision finally clicked. I don't know this game at all, but I'm intimately familiar with J Damashii's classic rendition. As with anything that man touches, I don't think I can do a better version of it myself... so instead I just set out to do something different. I went for a saccharine slow dance-friendly ballad inspired directly by Carly Rae Jepsen's All That, and pulled it together with a lot of help from a familiar cast of characters that should all be familiar faces from previous month's entries (all 4 of these collaborators also featured on my Phoenix Wright arrangement from last year.) Chimpazilla and I worked on the final mixdown of this track in person at her home studio, which was a really rewarding experience in its own right. Y'all helped bring this to life in such a beautiful way, thank you!! This is one of my most directly-conceptual remixes - to put it simply, I wrote this as the soundtrack to the high school prom night that I never went to. The plot goes something like this: you're awkwardly floating around the perimeter of the school gym, too shy to ask your crush to dance. Then, a voice comes on the loudspeaker and announces that, due to an impending cataclysmic event, the world will be ending soon and the band only has time for one last song. So, after a moment of contemplation, you summon all the courage you have left, go up to her and ask for one last dance. The rest, I think, speaks for itself. Letting myself make something this direct, a little cheesy, and painfully sincere took a bit of time to warm up to, but it was also wonderfully cathartic. If the world is ending, might as well go out on a high note ❤️

My first listen to this track was on a single airpod while sitting at the OCR Merch Booth at VGM Con, so I have to imagine that this second listen will give a clearer picture of what's going on! Out of the gate, the sound design is not necessarily offering anything groundbreaking, but the fusion of acoustic instruments with a more traditional mellow EDM synth palette sets the stage nicely for the dynamic arrangement and fluid melodic adaptation of the source material, which I think is this mix's strongest asset. The drum and bass programming is incredibly nimble, and overall speaks to a great understanding of the source material and its potential. The string swells during the last minute are great, though I was underwhelmed by the realism on the strings when they were more exposed at the very end. It feels like the tremolo swell has an unintended click when the dynamics fade kicks in? The trumpet mix is indeed a little uneven, like Joe said - some points it gets lost and others, it feels like it's towering way over everything else in the mix. Not the end of the world for me. I don't think this is your most polished mix from a technical standpoint, and the actual drum/synth sounds admittedly feel a little basic, but what you did with them is enough to sell me here! At the end of the day, the foundation is solid enough to support a litany of creative part writing decisions and an arrangement that goes a lot of places in such a short time. YES

Just chiming in to mention that I've sent a finished mix of Resident Evil 4's Save Room theme to VQ, so that's at least one track down for this project! Excited to hear what everyone else cooks up ☺️

I still really like the intro here, it sets the stage really great without ever taking too long to ramp up the intensity. The vocal interludes add a very organic feel that the rest of the instrumentation is unfortunately lacking to varying degrees, but the programmed instruments are pretty serviceable. I actually thought the trumpet sounded more believable than the flute, although the flute was much more expressive due to the vibrato in the sampling. I really wish the flute could be played live, to really sell those legato transitions between notes, but judging based on what we've got here, it does the trick. The balance on the backing instrumentation is much better this time around, so there's no points where anything feels jarring. I do think this is the kind of track you'll look back on with more experience under your belt in orchestral programming and have a multitude of new techniques that you could use to improve this, but just looking at what's in front of us, I'd say you got it close enough to pass this time around! YES

Well, last time I dinged this for lacking verve... I hear the verve now! It's been so long that I forgot what the original one sounded like, but I can't imagine levying the same criticism against the version I'm hearing now. It's really got a lot of spunk and personality. There's a solid groove in place, the synths and drums all feel like they belong to the same space, and everything feels quite warm and cohesive. I still find the arrangement and part writing a little weird, for lack of a better word, but thanks to the overhaul on the mixdown, it feels more like an intentional kind of weird, like I'd expect from a modern-day Earthbound recreation. Surprisingly clean result for how loud it's mastered - I'd ease up on the master limiter in the future, I'm hearing just a touch of crunch here but everything is very clearly audible. Nitpick - I think you've got some low-mid buildup due to some of the synths and bass peaking in some of the same ranges, so I'd be careful to not let that range get out of control. Great job guys, this is ready for primetime! YES

Not really listening with a super critical ear right now, but in case I forget to come back to this, I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed this! It started off feeling like a pretty straightforward cover but there was a lot of depth in the harmonies and buildup as things went along, I really enjoyed what you did with a theme that is very near and dear to my heart. Good to see you around again and I hope this one comes through the Judges Panel when you're ready for it :)

Fuck you man, you think you can swoop in at the last minute and churn out a brilliant track all on your own and then get second place? Get a load of this guy, everybody. This source was literally made for you - I'm actually starting to believe that the entire Kirby series body of musical work was invented just so you could have source material to remix to perfection. KNOWER is a great analog here, it's pretty much non-stop controlled chaos that teeters on the edge of being a mess, but falls on the right side of that line 100% of the time due to your technical competence and musical vision. It's brilliant. And I hate you for it 🤣 YES

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!

Breaking news: that old mixdown sucked. @XPRTNovice@Chimpazilla@Liontamer@prophetik music or whoever, I updated the first post with a new re-mix and master in addition to changing out the synth sound that Brad was having a hard time hearing (it was there but it was all click and no tail, so I can see why it wasn't audible.)

Ohhh yeah, jnWake hit the nail on the head with the Tropical Freeze vibes. The kalimba and bamblong bring so much character to the table. What a cool spin on this source material from a textural and melodic perspective. The heavy rock transition later in the arrangement is cathartic and unexpected - I was surprised on the first listen, but by the second, I couldn't imagine the song without it. Critique time. The vocal choir monosynth at 1:55 is carrying a very dramatic, expressive melodic moment in the arrangement, but it feels like there's not much else going on around it in the mix, so it sticks out like quite a sore thumb. The high note swell at 2:17 does not work for me, unfortunately. I see what you were trying to go for, but since nothing else in the soundscape seems to be supporting this transition, the lead ends up getting really loud and then petering out unceremoniously a few bars later. This could absolutely work, but without any transitional sound effects or sweeps, it's very hard to tell what this part of the arrangement is going for, especially in context of the full-blown changeup at 2:40. I know it's a bit cliche for me to suggest sound design/fx (though I'm glad someone else said it before me, so it's not just "Sound Design Man Recommends Sound Design" 😵‍💫) but I think that moment could really benefit from something to help convey the intent of that transition and better signal the impending change in dynamics that is being established. The drum mix is definitely muddy and dull, despite the really intense writing, I don't think it's hitting as much as you intended. There's a lack of snap/punch in the kick and snare that, if resolved, could give the kit drums more presence without compromising the washy, consuming sound you currently have going. Without knowing what drum tools you're using, I can't suggest anything with certainty, but if the kit allows you to tweak individual kit elements, I would start by bringing some high-end back to the snare and perhaps easing off the compression, or using a slower attack, so that the transients in your drums still come through. All that said, these are more nice-to-haves than a mandate - what you have here is undeniably transformative in more ways than one, and none of the nitpicks push the song anywhere near "unlistenable" territory, so I'm fine giving this an unreserved yes and leaving these as suggestions for the future :) YES

Add this to the list of source material that I only know because of Dwelling of Duels, though my familiarity with it dates back all the way to 2006's Silent Hill month when ansgaros covered the same song. Let's see what you can do with it! Starts with some excellent mood-setting ambiance, I can tell we're going to be in this for the long haul. Wow, this arrangement goes places. I was attempting to play-by-play this at first but I got so caught up in the journey that I had to just let it play out. Seph called out Bowie as a strong parallel, and I agree with that completely, but I'll also throw out Opeth as another reference - this feels like it lives in the same stylistic realm as their more prog-oriented songs like Burden. I can't stress enough how much I loved this arrangement, I think it's one of your best. Joe brought up some really well-informed critiques about the vocal mixing, and I agree at every step. However, if I was looking at this in a bubble, I don't think the vocal harshness is enough to make me say "if the artist was unable to make any fixes, this should not be posted on the site." There's an abundance of things you get right here, and the vocals are audible and clear, and there's much more to the arrangement than just that element. I would LOVE to hear some of Joe's critiques implemented, but I'd be hard pressed to make a case that it should be held back in its current form, either. YES (but maybe we can get some tweaks to the vocal mix if it's not too much trouble? no worries if not)

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)

This one starts off with some classic Omnisphere bells and synths that gel together flawlessly. Everything is buttery smooth about the pads, bass, and melodic elements. I can see how each of the decisions you made in the reworking process contribute to this feeling. Then, around the 1 minute mark, you slide in some incredibly fun shuffle rhythms that feels completely different from the intro, but goes down smooth all the same. No chaser needed :) The only beef I have here is the piercing high-end percussion lines, I'd love to hear that (or, not hear that?) tamped down with some high-shelf action. I also would have liked to hear a little more sound design/effects to lead into the final resolution at the end of the song, but it already works well enough as-is, so that's more of a "I would have done this differently" approach. Nice work! YES

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!

Oooohh, the opening phasing is a treat for the ears on headphones, this is starting off strong. Excellent mood setting and sound choices across the board, it was very immersive. The guitar tone is especially good here and, as I've noted on your previous submissions, is a highlight of the track, but the synths aren't slouching either. I think this is one of your most effective sound palettes that I've heard to date! When we hit 1:07, some of the problems with the mix jump front and center because you've left the problematic elements completely exposed, and once I hear them in isolation, the distracting effect persists through the whole song. I'm talking about the room reverb on the kick and snare, and how you can hear the reverb on every single hit. It ends up feeling like the reverb is its own percussive element that offsets the groove, rather than blending it with the rest of the instruments like reverb should be doing. I also agree with the drum compression issues noted by XPRTNovice, and would also agree that this critique applies to the bassline just as much. It's hard to tell precisely what's going on, but the bass presence in the song feels skewed toward the transient, and conversely feels deficient in the actual bass frequency range. It ends up with neither of those instruments doing what you really want them to do in the mix - maintain the pulse of the song and fill out the low frequency spectrum. The transitions are ambitious and, unfortunately, seem to miss the mark more often than they hit. There's already been some good advice shared to button those up with drum fills or effects, and I second that wholeheartedly. Oftentimes, I think the issue is simply that you cut off the leading elements from the previous section too quickly as you jump to the next section, and it would help glue the parts together better if you let those sustain for longer as you transition between time sigs. I'm not the expert on mixed-meter so I'll mostly defer to the other judges on the specifics here, but it's definitely an issue I felt before I even got into analysis mode. Ultimately, you've crafted a really ambitious, creative arrangement using some of your best-designed synths to date, but some of the foundational elements are letting this down. The issues with the drum/bass mixing and the transitions, unfortunately, are spread across nearly the whole track so it's harder to handwave their impact as isolated nitpicks. I do think these elements need some TLC before this reaches its full potential. NO (resubmit)

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

This is a no-brainer closeout. This source material adapts PERFECTLY to this small ensemble format, which allows both the rhythmic and melodic elements of Hollow Bastion to shine equally. The performances are tight, the mixing gives it a lush sense of space while still retaining a feeling of intimacy. I'm not as picky of a listener as Brad is, so if the technical performance aspects pass his bar, it solidly leaps over my layman's expectations as well! YES

FTL_Arpeggio Clip Isolated.mp3 This is the arpeggio I'm talking about at :20-39. I have an autopanner on it so it's definitely bouncing around the stereo field but it's there. This motif is directly from the source and repeats for almost the entire duration of the remix (shown on this pattern in the screenshot) The chord connection might be easier to grasp with MIDI. These are the underlying root chords starting at :08 in my remix - the guitar is voiced differently and has some color notes, but this pattern below is direct from the source as well (the original has it played on a very detuned synth.) If it's mixed in a way that feels too removed from the source, I can live with that. The original source doesn't have much to work with, so I had to lean on chords and backing elements to make the connection. Hope this helps x2! :)

Hearing these Orwellian voice clips over a classic electro beat that sounds straight out of the early 2000's is hilarious to me. I've always complimented Kris for her ability to mix with absolute pristine clarity, but one of the things I've really enjoyed about her collaborations with Treyt is how that spit-shined polish meshes so impossibly well with the gritty, distorted textures that Treyt is known for. The synths are shimmering and the beats are produced immaculately, and Treyt's guitar and (presumably) more heavily modulated and crunchy synths are the perfect foil to each other. Thank you for doing your civic duty, patriots. Your contributions to society are unimpeachable. YES

I see walls of paragraphs all above me, so there's probably no chance I'm getting through this one with a clean vote... not sure how I missed voting on this during the judge test myself! I love the foundational elements of this piece, juxtaposing a deep 808 synth with some very grimy, industrial percussion drenched in reverb and some plectral instruments that feel like they could have been pulled straight from Castlevania. On a conceptual level, we're hitting the right marks here. The end result is washy and messy, but in a way that feels appropriate - the leads don't necessarily cut through, but do they need to? I'd argue that this works perfectly well as more of a vibes-focused track where the melodies are sidelined. The 808 feels rather tame though, like it wants to be a commanding presence that grounds the rest of the ambient elements in something more concrete, but it doesn't really feel that way in the mix. This is common when you have a bass that has tremendous sub presence but little upper harmonics, and can usually be rectified by either adding some subtle saturation to the bass (preferably using multiband saturation so you don't introduce issues with the sub frequencies) and/or by cleaning up competing frequencies in the low mids from your other elements. I would imagine that the industrial/orchestral percussion layers probably have a lot of low-frequency content that doesn't need to be there. Make sure you're low-cutting your reverbs too! Low freqs can build up there and dull the presence of your bass and kick. The muddiness is the only thing that I feel actively detracts from the listening experience - the rest feels like it can be chalked up to a stylistic decision, so I personally side with the YES votes that this does enough stuff right that the bass mixing shortcomings can be a "learn from this next time" rather than a dealbreaker on this piece! YES

Source: Chords 0:08 - 0:35 are pulled from the detuned chords from 0:00-0:30 in the source (32s) Plucky backing arp from :20-:39 is the main arpeggio from the source (9s) Monosynth at :39-:59 is the same arpeggio (20s) 1:00-1:20 uses fragments of the source arpeggio across various instruments, as well as the chords from :58 in the source (the descending F#>F>D# motif). 1:20-1:42 is an original progression but the plucky chiptune arp is playing melodic material from :58 in the source 1:42-2:22 you already caught in the guitar/backing arpeggios (40s) 2:42-2:56 - the strummed guitar chords are a different rhythmic interpretation of the motif from :58 in the source 3:03-3:43 has the same backing motif there, it's just not very prominent. Your call if you want to count this! 3:43-end plays the melody from :58 in the source on the plucked chiptune synth Hope this helps! I started to count it out but realized that the source is pretty much all over this if you look at duration, so it's more a matter of whether that source usage is prominent enough in the mix when it does appear.

"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." I really appreciate this take from @Liontamer because it speaks to the dilemma I faced when listening to this. It obviously feels like it's inspired by new-wave tracks from the days of drum machines where the rigid quantization was very much intentional. I see what you're going for here, but I think the lead synth programming still has plenty of room to be more expressive without subverting that feeling, with subtle modulation and expression or fills. The lead guitar breaks out of this rigid lockstep in a way that's very satisfying, so I have an immediate reference within the song for what it sounds like when you have a very expressive lead melody on top of the machine-like drum and synths that unfortunately makes the first half of the track feel underwhelming by comparison. That said, I was already pretty borderline with the last submission, and I can't deny that you did a great job of addressing nearly everything that we brought up. The mix is much cleaner, there's no more individual elements poking out of the mix in a distracting way, and you cleaned up some of the crunchy chords. While I do think there's room for additional development, I think this now sits comfortably above the bar. Great work taking all of the feedback to heart and putting it all together to push your arrangement where it needed to be! YES