Emunator

First off, thank you for introducing me to Eluveitie - they kicks ass, and your track is an excellent homage to their brand of Celtic metal mixed with some heavier death metal elements. This arrangement wastes no time getting to the point and stays in high gear pretty much the whole time. It was jarring at first, but the more time I spent with this arrangement, the more appropriate it felt. This is brash and unrelenting and definitely risky, but it actually works out fantastically in my opinion thanks to some incredible performances and excellent adaptations of the two source melodies. This is a bold statement that sounds unlike anything I've ever heard on OCR before. I initially had some reservations about the mixing on the track - my initial impression was that it was mixed too hot, and I actually A/B compared this to an Eluveitie track (Ategnatos was the one I went with) to get a feel for what was an appropriate frequency balance and loudness level for this genre. The comparison actually checks out! Your mix balance does skew towards the high frequencies, which contributes to some ear fatigue on repeat listens, and there are definitely some resonant frequencies that spike caused by the tin whistle. It would be nice to have those tamed just a hair, but overall none of the issues are a dealbreaker for me. Curious to hear how other judges react to this, good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

There's some really cool stuff going on with the chiptune synths here that form the bones of a great arrangement. This remix features some really fun rhythms and modifications to the Corneria theme that are fun to listen to. The mix of live instruments and chiptune synths provides excellent sonic contrast. All of this leads to an arrangement that I really enjoy listening to. The production, however, has room for improvement. One of the strangest aspects of this is the balance between instruments. I understand that you're not working with conventional drums, but the way they're mixed sounds like you put a lowpass filter on your percussion bus for the entire track. This gives a perpetual feeling that you're always about to start filter sweeping up to the full energy level, but the percussion never kicks into gear. The balance of the track suffers as a result. There's also an abundance of high-end buzz in the 10kHz-20kHz range that could probably be EQ'd down by a few decibels to minimize some harshness. Also, is there some sort of notch filter at 500Hz on the master track? There's a really noticeable dip at that frequency throughout the entirety of the track and I can't figure out how that happened. The guitar performance is solid, but the mixing is also underwhelming. I'm not a guitar expert by any means, but it sounds like it's mixed very mono and could benefit from some double tracking or stereo widening so that it fills the space it occupies a bit better. Is it being panned slightly to one side too? For a core rhythm element, its placement in the stereo field just doesn't sit right with me. Tonally, the guitar sounds garage-y but in a stylistic way, so it works for me on a fundamental level. I hope another judge can elaborate on this and identify why the guitar isn't clicking (or perhaps just tell me I'm crazy?) Also, I'm hearing clipping all over this track on my spectrometer - I would take a second look at your final mastering levels to make sure you're not peaking above 0.0dB. The arrangement checks out for me, but I would like to see another pass at mixing before this is ready for primetime. Good luck! NO (resubmit)

The overall texture of this arrangement is absolutely stunning, it really captures the feeling I got from the Lost Woods/Kokiri Forest story arc (especially the scene with Saria on the bridge as you're leaving Kokiri Forest for the first time) in a way that the actual source tune never felt like it did. Really beautiful, minimalistic approach that works surprisingly well! The live ocarina is so expressive and adds a really tangible component that sits nicely with the more ethereal soundscape around it. I also didn't have any issue with the lyrical content or the extended outro for that matter. I have to cosign with Brad's assessment of the vocals - your voice works just fine here, but the amount of gain you had to introduce to crank the vocals up to an audible level makes the vocal take sound lossy. This is much more noticeable because of the call-and-response with the ocarina, which is recorded at a much cleaner fidelity. I'm not sure how this could be addressed aside from re-recording the vocals, unfortunately. I'm also bothered by the constant pops and clicks, that would need to be cleaned up for sure, as well as a proper pass at mastering to bring the volume levels up to normal. That said, I genuinely believe this is one of your best concepts Rebecca and I really, really hope you're willing to take the time to revisit this and polish it up. Thematically, there's so much that works about this that I think it would be worth a second pass to fix the parts that aren't working. It would be a shame for this to not realize its full potential. NO (resubmit!)

Definitely not a direction that I would have expected Bonetrousle to be taken in. You're definitely onto something here with this concept, I liked the arrangement for the most part (I'm sure some of the more music theory-adept judges can speak to the chords/rhythms and verify that everything is lining up right - the harmonization at :15 between the organ and the rhodes sounds potentially problematic) but there's aspects to this that leave this remix feeling incomplete. Far and away my biggest gripe with this track, and I hope this doesn't come across as rude, is how sterile everything sounds. There's almost no bite or texture to any of the instruments, with the exception of the saxophone, which actually sounds pretty lush! The rhodes and organ are ultra-clean to the point of sounding like you filed everything down with a fine-grit sandpaper. I would love to hear some subtle saturation and reverb to give this a bit of warmth. This should be addressed on an individual track basis as well as on the overall mastering. You could also try adding some very subtle delay or distortion on the organ and rhodes, or even layer some subtle vinyl crackles in the background - nothing that will compromise the chill jazz vibe, just a little something to add texture and color to the mix. To illustrate this, I pulled a screenshot from my frequency analyzer showing how the track looks overall - there's almost nothing going on above 3kHz until about 1:30. The lack of high-end causes this to feel imbalanced and ultimately not fleshed out. Your drums could probably be mixed a few decibels louder, but any of the above techniques to bring out more of the harmonic content in the high end will help. What's going on at 2:03-2:05? There's a lot of pops and clicks for a couple of seconds that don't appear anywhere else in the mix. Definitely something worth looking into. Lastly, the ending is abrupt and leaves things unresolved, so that alone would be a dealbreaker for me. You need to have some sort of resolution for this to feel like a complete musical statement. Not a bad start, but there's still some work to be done on the production end in order for this to pass muster. NO

This is pretty great! To my ears, it registers a little more as metal than darkwave to me but I suppose there's a lot of crossover regardless! The guitars sound thick and well-produced, both in the lead and rhythm parts, and more often than not, they fit well with the synthetic parts too. There's several instances of pitch bending throughout the arrangement that are very well-executed. For the most part, I love what I'm hearing here. This is pretty close in my book, but there's a few parts of this that feel questionable to me and push it into more borderline territory. First off, I have to say that the main synth lead that finally enters at 1:03 was a disappointment to me. It does not adequately cut through the mix, and lacks the expressiveness I was hoping for. Your first minute of the track was a great buildup to that moment when the Undersea Palace melody, but that synth patch and the way it was mixed did not feel as tight. From there, it's smoother sailing - the organ break at 1:21 was much cleaner and added some excellent textural contrast, and the lead guitar that comes in later is obviously much more expressive and also sounds more up-front in the mix. My second main qualm is the rather bland writing on the kick and snare, which follow a very standard 4-on-the-floor rhyhtm that just sounds lethargic. There's a few fills throughout the track, but I would love to hear those happen more than every 8-16 bars when you're in the middle of a transition to spice things up. I know the lockstep beat is a hallmark of the synthwave genre, but I believe you could write a more interesting, dynamic drum groove without compromising the feel you were going for. I'm pretty borderline on this, because I did enjoy just about everything you laid out, but I think this could be a much stronger first submission with a few simple fixes! NO (borderline/resubmit!)

I did not want this song to end. This could have gone on for twice the length as far as I'm concerned. Timmie, your latest remixes have been an absolute masterclass in how to take a popular source in all sorts of directions that are at once fresh and yet familiar. There are so many beautiful countermelodies and arpeggios that I can just get lost in, and the extra production work really complements the chiptune pallette that forms the base of the arrangement. Superlative work!

@Chimpazilla @Rexy @Liontamer @prophetik music Brad has been an absolute saint in helping me diagnose some of the problematic harmonies/chords and I think we've got it all sorted out. I've updated the Dropbox link for the track, if you guys wouldn't mind a quick sanity check before posting, I think it's ready!

Kris, the lead guitar at :42 that sticks around for much of the arrangement is playing the main melody from :07 in the source. Granted, it's definitely altered by virtue of the genre adaptation, but I hear it. Here's my breakdown: :42-1:17, the lead guitar is riffing off of the theme from :07-:22 in the source (35s) 1:18-1:38 is derived from :59 in the source, as you identified (20s) 1:36-1:45 has source present in the bassline (9s) 1:46-2:06 is a retread of the melody from :42 (20s) Total - 84 seconds out of a 180 second track (being generous and not counting some of the silence at the end against the total) = 46% source usage I think the big issue here is the first 42 seconds of the arrangement don't seem to have any connection to the source material. I would love to be proven wrong here if there's something I'm missing, but right now, this is very middle-heavy in terms of source usage, which gives this a more liberal feel than it would if the source was spread out more evenly, or if the main Great Bay Coast melody was introduced earlier. With my current assessment, I'm inclined to NO this on the grounds of the source not being dominant enough. Production-wise, I thought this was pretty appropriate for surf rock, although the lead guitar was just a bit too quiet. That's really my only qualm, everything else worked well for the genre you were shooting for. I'm curious to see if other judges agree with my breakdown or if they picked up on something I may have missed! Enjoyable track in its own right either way, Daniel! This would be a pretty easy resubmission in my book if the source usage was just more dominant. NO (resubmit)

I think Kris is right on the money with her gut feeling here, but to me this was more clearly problematic. I love the minimalist approach here, but that also leaves the instruments fully exposed and unfortunately showcases the points where the sample transitions are less believable. The decay/release on the choir felt too fast in the intro. I also agree with her impression of the flute, it needs a bit more of a natural cadence to the vibrato and expression. At moments like 1:03, you attempt to sequence repeated notes that I don't think your sample library is equipped to handle, those sounded unnatural. I picked up on similar issues with the strings, too. I also thought the bassoon (?) sample had an unusually buzzy tone that I can't quite put my finger on. I think the strength here, as I've seen in several of your other arrangements, is in the additional embellishments you make to the writing. The little harp flourishes and percussion really stuck with me in a good way. However, I don't find that the instruments that are really doing the heavy lifting (strings, flute) are just not sounding great in this exposed of a context. It is very conservative, and I am also on the fence about whether there's enough personalization introduced in the harmonies/countermelodies to consider this a substantive upgrade, but regardless, the exposed samples are just not cutting it for me NO

For what it's worth, there's some additional source usage that sounds like the 7AM chord progression and a reference to the 9AM melody (among other songs on the OST.) Larry didn't mention any qualms about source usage, but there's some additional elements that aren't explicitly present in the Rainy Day theme. Anyway, onto my vote. As you can probably tell, I'm a huge Animal Crossing nut and am intimately familiar with the soundtrack, so I greatly appreciate the concept that you decided to run with here! I've always found the environment of Animal Crossing to be mesmerizing and tranquil, which your track captures very well, while still introducing some of your own personal flavor Onto some of the issues, though. Larry did an exceptional job breaking down the issues with the arrangement. I found this to be underdeveloped because it's a rather short arrangement that also has long stretches of non-musical content (rain sfx.) When you cut those sections away, you're barely left with 2 minutes of material, much of which is built on the same beats and patterns. There's not enough evolution throughout the arrangement, which is a necessity to prevent your track from feeling stale. I also thought the fadeout entirely to rain that was utilized multiple times throughout your remix felt lazy from an arranging standpoint - I would love to hear some more deliberate musical transitions to link together your ideas, and some more changes to the sound pallet between each section as well. The production is off to a good start, the sounds you've chosen all complement each other well, but the production leaves a bit to be desired. I did not find the piano sample to be particularly suited for this style of music - it has a tinny, mid-heavy quality without many low or high frequencies, so it sounds like a very low-quality sample. I can't tell if the sample itself actually is low quality or if it's just your EQ curve, but I think this would be much better suited with a piano that has a bit more low end presence. I wonder if the rain sample that you're using is introducing too much mud into the mix. I can't tell for certain without seeing the project file, but one trick you can try is to add an EQ that cuts out some of the low end of the sample (a good starting point would be a low-cut around 200Hz) but automate the mix of that plugin so that it only kicks in when the bass/beat are active. It sounds like you sidechained your kick to the rain, which actually feels somewhat unnatural to me the way that it dramatically ducks the rain on every beat - I think a selective EQ (or a more subtle sidechain) might achieve the same effect of cleaning up your mix, but feel more organic. There's also a noticeable lack of high end content in the mix overall. Right around 1kHz, there's a steep drop off that can be seen below. My spectrometer looks like this throughout most of your track, so it's not just an anomaly - your writing itself is lacking anything significant going on in about half of the frequency spectrum. This is something you should really address in the songwriting part of your track first rather than trying to fix this with EQ and mastering. Some sort of melodic counterpoint that resides above 1kHz, or maybe double your arpeggio up an octave... anything to balance the frequencies out would help make this a much more compelling arrangement to listen to! (If you're not familiar with this plugin, I'm using SPAN, which is a free VST plugin that shows the frequency balance at any given point in your mix. I highly recommend using it for situations like this, and also to check the loudness of your mastering! https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/) I love the concept here and would love to see you expand further on this, but I'm afraid this feels more like an initial concept than a fully-realized arrangement. I hope you find some of this feedback helpful, whether it's applied to a resubmission of this arrangement or your future work. Happy to chat if you have any further questions! NO (resubmit)

There's some really cool stuff going on here - some excellent transitions and heavy chugs. Production seems pretty nice across the board, and the arrangement is thoroughly interpretive. The ending came on a little suddenly for me, but it's not a huge deal. Personally, my issue is solely with the lead guitar - the rhythm guitars sound passably convincing in this context, and the drums/bass are just fine, but the lead guitar is just not expressive or humanized enough to pass muster. I personally think you could push this over the bar just with getting a live performer to play that lead line. Since the lead guitar is present through so much of the mix, unfortunately there's really no way around the fact that the lead performance is rigid and lacks the human quality that a live guitarist will naturally introduce into their performance. NO (resubmit)

Huh, maybe it's just me that was overthinking things here! That definitely happens to me with genres I'm more personally familiar with, so I want to reiterate that I definitely enjoyed this in its current form despite my above ramblings, so I want to make sure that doesn't convey as unnecessarily negative to the artist when this is published In that spirit, I will remove the "borderline" qualification from my vote since I don't really think it applies anymore.

I'm going to share my judge's vote again as a public review, because I really fell in love with this track when I heard it on the panel! Truly one of the best arrangements I've heard this year. ... I have to say that this floored me on first listen. From a production standpoint, I'm impressed at how spacious and open this feels when considering how much you have going on and how heavy some of your riffs are. When mixing metal, it can be tempting to just smash the volume of everything as loud as it can go and brickwall your master, but I admire your restraint in choosing to leave some room to breathe, and I think your end result is all the better for that decision. Arrangement-wise, this reminds me quite a bit of SixteeninMono's debut mix from 2016. Like that submission, your arrangement feels like a slow burn towards an intensely-satisfying climax, but the journey to get there is just as fulfilling. The whole song is full of beautiful textures and nuanced but powerful guitar performances. Some personal highlights include the harmonies from 1:09-1:15, as well as the entire breakdown and build that starts at 2:05, which went in a really unexpected minimalist direction but makes perfect sense in context of the rest of the arrangement. And I can't sing enough praises about the climax at 3:06, which provides an incredible emotional catharsis to cap off an already-stellar mix. I know I spent my whole vote basically gushing over this, but it really is one of my favorite songs I've heard since returning to the judges panel. I really hope you send more our way soon!

Keeping this short, but just to add my 2 cents at djp's request, the vocal performance and some of the other elements of production also didn't sit quite right with me. There was a lack of energy in the vocal performance and saxophone that did not match the quality of the arrangement. I also found some of the lyrics to be awkwardly written (i.e. "I really want to feel safe") but would be okay with this if the vocal production was cleaned up at bare minimum. This is an excellent arrangement but a second pass should hopefully make this a no-brainer YES vote. NO (borderline)

Hey there! I love the glassy, breathy texture in the intro, I would have liked a slightly cleaner fade-in so it's not starting so abruptly, but that's not a big deal. There's some great synth sounds in here that work great with the Forest Interlude melody. I liked the drum break at 3:03, that was a great transition that hooked my attention! There's a few areas of concern I wanted to point out that would help improve this and get it up to OCR standards: The mix could definitely use some sidechain compression to clear some of the space and give more of an implicit sense of rhythm to your track. I'm not sure what DAW you're using, but this is a good resource to understand the concept of sidechaining regardless of what program you're in if you're not familiar with it already: Basically, you set up your mix so that your kick drum (or any other element, really) will proportionally "duck down" other parts of your mix so that your kick hits harder. One good place to start with this would be sidechaining your kick to your bassline - right now, as others have pointed out, the bassline sounds repetitive and doesn't have enough dynamics to sound interesting. This will not only help your beats cut through the mix better, but more importantly, it will give your bassline some extra movement. It sounds like you've attempted this effect by changing the velocity of the bass notes (apologies if I'm wrong here!) but this would be a more precise, organic way of doing that. I would also consider doing a more subtle version of this effect on other instruments like your strings and pads to clear out space in your mix. The drums still sound a bit flat to me overall, mainly from a sample perspective. The kick drum sounds fine to me, but the snare gets repetitive. One thing I like to do in my own mixes is include multiple snare samples and have a different snare drum hit on the 2 beat and the 4 beat, or layer them differently throughout the song. The tambourine also doesn't really work for me, it just seems like a weak sample and isn't dominant enough to carry the 1/16th note rhythm. Some accents would be fine, but I think you need a sharper, better-quality sample for your hi-hat rhythm. The transition at 2:54 is weak - some sort of sweep effect, cymbal crash, or anything else along those lines would help that chord change have more impact. Some sort of transition effect is definitely essential there to go along with the writing. I thought you ended the remix at a strange point - it cuts off right in the middle of a melody and doesn't offer any sort of resolution. Maybe try playing around with something similar to your introduction, but gradually break the track down to its simplest elements, or even add some original writing of your own, which leads me to my final point... Although you did a lot to change the sound design of the original into a more synth-heavy direction, all of the writing is still more or less direct from the source material. If you're just looking to make a cover of the original with no intention of submitting to OCR, that's totally fine and you can ignore this critique, but if you were to submit to the site, this would definitely be brought up on the judges panel that the remix is too close, melodically, to the original Forest Interlude song, and you would need some additional changes to the structure or the melody of the song. Take this feedback for what it's worth, depending on what you intend to do with this track. I hope you don't find this feedback discouraging or unwanted - I enjoyed the foundation of your remix very much, but I still think there's a lot of room for improvement if you're willing to pursue it, especially if you planned on submitting to the site. Good luck, let me know if I can clarify any of this or provide additional feedback

Absolutely LOVE Click Clock Woods There's some pretty whimsical flourishes that expand on the original here, and I really love some of your additions to the the backing instrumentation in general! This conjures some excellent vibes and has some interesting ear-catching moments throughout. However, I found that the rhodes was not a suitable lead for most of this track - the sample itself felt sterile and lacking any bite, but more significantly, the performance felt lethargic and not humanized. It doesn't seem to be sequenced in the way that a human would actually perform the instrument. There was kind of an awkward swing to it that didn't seem to line up with the rest of the track's groove. When the bells came in at 1:06, it sounded a little better, but in general, the lack of expressiveness and general production quality on your lead instruments, especially when everything is so exposed and minimalist, sinks this submission I'm afraid. I'm not going to dwell on the overall mastering because it's been covered on many other tracks, but I'll mention it for posterity's sake - it's very quiet and lacking in master compression. Would love to see you revisit this soundtrack, but I don't think this submission is the one that will get onto the site. NO

This certainly packs a lot into a short runtime! Although it's a fairly straightforward cover, there's a lot of personalization added to this thanks to the enthusiastic performances. Seriously, the rhythm guitars especially sound badass here, and there's a ton of variation to keep this fresh throughout. The chiptune synths, while not anything groundbreaking from a sound design perspective, added a surprising amount to the arrangement and fit really nicely with the rest of the instruments. I find myself agreeing with just about everything Larry said, but fall on the opposite side of the bar - for such a short and conservative arrangement of the source material, I think things need to be absolutely ironclad, and there's a few things that, on top of the arrangement feeling just a tad bit undercooked, make it hard for me to pass this in its current form. The high end does sound slightly scooped out of the snare, and the balance between lead guitar and rhythm guitar is not perfect... for my money, I'd like the lead to be more present in the mix. I also echo the sentiments that the ending was underwhelming, and would have benefited from something more conclusive. Ugh, this is a hard vote to make because, in a vacuum, this is thoroughly enjoyable, but when viewed in context of the OCR standards, it falls short, mainly due to the straightforward and underdeveloped arrangement and some minor production issues. I wouldn't be upset if this passed, but I would feel a lot more comfortable signing off on it if even a few of these qualms were addressed. NO (borderline)

Love this source, easily one of the most memorable pieces from the Smash Bros. franchise I think you're onto something with the concept of transforming this into an instrumental hip-hop track, and you've got some interesting things going on with the percussion and some really interesting original writing that are worth exploring. I know you were concerned about too much dissonance, but I actually found that to be a strong point of the arrangement, I appreciate the contrast between the more grounded sections and the dissonant, original writing. However, Larry succinctly covered some of the issues with this track, many of which lie on the production side. He correctly identified that the dynamics of the track are flat, and there's not a sufficient difference in punch between the different sections. This can be achieved through a number of ways, but I think a strong place to start would be layering in additional sounds and textures to thicken things up. Maybe a synth pad with more bass frequencies, or a more dominant bassline so that there's more content in the low frequencies than simply a kick drum. This will also help the issue with sample quality - although you're using a nice variety of instruments that complement each other without growing stale, the samples themselves are not very great quality and sound very robotic. Having more going on in your soundscape can help mask some of the imperfections in the sample quality. The overall mastering and mixdown of the track feels unfinished, too. Looking at the waveform, there's almost no compression going on, so the waveform seems to peak whenever the drums are present, and sound unnaturally quiet whenever they're not. I strongly suggest looking at the volume levels of your instrument and throw a compressor on your master track to tighten up the mix - some extra cohesion between the instruments would go a long way in helping this sound more like a finished effort. This is not where it needs to be yet for OCR's standards, but I admire the effort and hope you'll continue to refine your craft and keep sending stuff our way! Good luck! NO

This is so amazing, what a great opportunity to bring such talented musicians together. I really, really love this

Pretty rad! I love the predominant use of the glassy tones here. Lots of complex writing and varied sound design keeps this engaging while still retaining the signature chillout vibe you were going for. Things got muddy during the busier sections due to the high level of reverb on your leads and the presence of the supersaw stabs, for example, so on future submissions, I would suggest trying to rein in your reverb slightly (maybe try using a send track and EQ'ing the reverb signal itself so you can sculpt the reverb signal to reduce mud.) It's an easy trap to fall into with chillout arrangements. I also feel like your leads in general sat rather quietly in the mix - a very slight volume boost to give them more presence might not be a bad idea. In spite of those issues, this sounds good enough to my ears as-is! There's room for improvement on the production side but there's a lot of creativity in both the sound design and arrangement that helps this succeed on its own merits. Nice job! YES

What a lovely track. I'm finding myself particularly torn here, because the content that exists is absolutely stunning, and easily the most accessible track I've heard from Michael to date. When all of the instrumentation comes together, it's truly sublime. However, the track doesn't really kick into full gear until 2:20, and less than a minute later, it's over. This is a strange case where one section of the track sounds so excellent that it makes the rest of the arrangement feel underwhelming by comparison, and I would love to hear the arrangement developed and pushed further in the remaining sections. I'm struggling to come to grips with the structure of this remix - I've come to expect more of a deliberate, climactic buildup from post rock arrangements, whereas this track seems to be broken out into more discrete sections where the energy level jumps more rigidly. I can't tell if there's anything objectively wrong with this, or if I just have certain expectations based on my experience with post rock. After multiple listens and several days to stew over this track, I still can't quite put into words how I feel about it. At the end of the day, I think this is worth passing in its current form. The textures are beautiful, the live performances give a lot of life to the track when they come in, and there's plenty of source throughout. I feel like this could have been a much stronger showing with a more developed, deliberate arrangement structure, I can't deny the quality of what you've already laid down Good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

I agree with Rexy on pretty much everything here. You've got a super high-energy approach with some badass guitar performances and drum writing... like, I cannot understate how heavy some of these riffs are, but the mixdown is problematic. I'm also picking up clipping all over the place on this track, which absolutely needs to be addressed first off. I'm also wondering what happened with the guitar leads at :11 and 1:26? They sound so buried in the mix, but they are also too distinct and exposed to really pass as a backing element. If you're able to fix the clipping and address some of the other latent mixing issues, this would be an easy pass in my book! NO (resubmit!)

Very creative fusion of sounds, I've always been a fan of this 9-bit fusion style and I appreciate the creative liberties you've taken here! Your chiptune synths are all expressive and fun, and I didn't have any major issues with the quality of the acoustic instrumentation either. Not the most realistic samples in all cases, but they get the job done to me! This is close to a pass for me, but I have a few issues that I think need to be addressed before this is ready to post. First off, I thought the drums were a very weak point in an overall-solid package, primarily from a mixing standpoint. The samples you used seem anemic and just don't have very much energy to them, which could be remedied by way of compression, distortion, and some selective EQ boosts to allow certain formants to cut through better, or perhaps even swapping your samples out for better quality ones. The writing itself, while not totally on autopilot, does feel phoned in to an extent, so I would not be upset to hear a resubmitted version of this with some more prominent fills or more energetic, groovy riffs. The other issue I have is with the overall mixing/mastering of the track. There's a lot of headroom left on the track, and an apparent lack of master compression to glue the track together. I would normalize the volume of your track and add some compression to your master chain - perhaps this might even help breathe some life into the drums, too. Love what you've done here, just a few areas that could use a bit more TLC Hope to hear this one back again! NO (resubmit!)

Having not heard the original sub, I can say with confidence that this sounds GREAT to my ears! I'm loving the energy in the mixdown, each instrument is clearly audible and whatever loudness/overcompression issues may have been present before seem to have been ironed out nicely. Guitars sound punchy and thick. I am in love with the variety of synth leads and the energy they each bring to the table, and similarly, the drums are pulling their weight in a major way and always manage to keep things rhythmically fresh. I honestly can't find any major faults here - nice job ironing out whatever issues may have been present in the original submission, thanks for taking the feedback into consideration and using that to make something that sounds even better! YES

For as strange of a remix as this is - I will admit that I had to sit with it for quite a while before tackling it - it really makes a lot of sense how you got to this end result from the source you're remixing. It's weird, but it feels surprisingly natural. This is a track that I'm sure will not resonate with all listeners, but especially along with the context provided in your submission letter, I absolutely think this is the sort of musical boundary-pushing that we should be encouraging here, and perhaps it will expose listeners to a genre they might not have otherwise been familiar with. This is a challenging and deliberate effort and I appreciate what you've done here! I agree with the consensus here that the mixdown is very clean and there's not a lot that could be chalked up as "accidental" - the noise that others have called out at 1:45 is about as close as this track comes to that, and I will agree that the noise is a bit harsh, but it's not a dealbreaker. Nice work Michael! YES