Emunator   Judges ⚖️

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

OK, this is sounding remarkably improved from the last version I recall hearing. I think you've gotten to a point where the arrangement and creative production decisions are good to go, so I'll focus just on mixing here. I'll start by saying that I don't think this is at OCR level quite yet, and this is based on a gut feeling before I dove into any of the analysis I'm about to go into. It's close, and certainly as close as you've ever gotten with this arrangement so far, but there's a few distinct qualities that, when compared to other tracks that we've posted, sound noticeably strange and unpolished. The other judges have rightly called out the fact that everything sounds muffled, like it's coming from inside of a pillow. I'm guessing that this was done in response to previous feedback about the high end being too harsh. I think this was an overcorrection, and although it's objectively more pleasant to listen to, it leaves the clarity and crispness out of the equation that is essential for a well-balanced mix. It sounds like you might have just put a filter over the entire track, which is only very rarely a wise suggestion. I'd recommend dialing back some of those corrections and meet in the middle between this and your last mix. There is also a big dip around 200-300hz which might not seem like a big deal, but it's a very critical frequency range for giving your mix warmth and body. I found myself leaving a lot of holes in my mixes because I frequently heard advice like "cut the low end out of your non-bass/kick instruments" and applied it too broadly. If this is something you did on your mix, I'd encourage you to use a less steep slope on your filter cut, or consider layering in an instrument that plays within that frequency range to fill it out - it will have a huge impact on how the song feels. Conversely, I still think you have too much bias to the 400-1kHz range, where you have a lot of overlapping melodic elements that occupy the same frequency range. Some very subtle EQ cuts (I'm talking 1-3dB maximum) will help clean this up. Here's a screenshot from part of your track viewed through SPAN - while this is just a segment of the track, it looks like this for nearly all of the song so this should give you a nice visual idea of why the track is feeling lopsided. Moving on from EQ balance, I also agree with Larry about the stereo width of the track. I will give you credit for keeping your low-end focused and mono, which helps with stability, and there's definitely a nice wide stereo image on the rest of the track, which helps it feel lively. However, the L/R panning on certain instruments presents some curious choices - the most notable instance of this is the snare drum, which sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the drum kit because of the panning. Sometimes I'll do a ping-pong panning effect on my snare fills, but when you have it only panned to the left side, it leaves things feeling imbalanced. Overall, I think you could reduce the stereo width of many of your elements to bring some presence back to your mid-range - I tried this in my DAW by reducing the stereo image on everything above 200hz by about 25%, and it already had a notable impact. Lastly, the mastering is sounding better than previous versions, but there's still a lot of dynamic range here that is making large chunks of your song unnecessarily quiet. Again, to illustrate what I mean, I'm going to show a screenshot of your waveform: See how there's a bunch of very sharp peaks that are going way above the average loudness of the rest of the waveform? These can add a lot of unnecessary headroom during most of your track and limit the amount of loudness you can get during mastering if you're just normalizing your song's volume so that it reaches 0.0dB loudness. To counteract this, you'll want to shave off those peaks, either by reducing the volume of specific elements that might be causing those peaks (frequently, this is the result of sound effects/transitions that are too loud, or a kick drum/snare that's mixed much louder than the rest of your song, or in your case, likely both) or by applying compression/limiting to your overall song. This should usually be a pretty transparent process, so you'll want to set the ceiling of your limiter/compressor so that it's just grabbing onto those waveform peaks and reducing them, without having a noticeable effect on the overall character of the song. Once you've done that, you'll see that your waveform looks a lot "cleaner", which will give you more room to increase the loudness of the entire song without clipping. To demonstrate this, I ran your track through a limiter and set the input gain to +3dB, and this is what it looks like running through Fruity Limiter: The dips in the purple line show where volume is being reduced when it reaches above a certain threshold.There's very little being done, but if I bounce your song down with this effect applied, this is now what your waveform looks like comparatively (your original is on top, and with 3dB of limiting is on the bottom.) This is a very simplified example; in practice, it's better to do this on an individual track, or group level during the mix so that you're avoiding these peaks earlier on, but even doing this to your master track allows the volume of your song to be more consistent and bring up breakdown/outro so they're not so quiet by comparison. I think if you were to address these three issues - fine-tuning your EQ balance, reducing your stereo width, and properly mastering the track so that you don't have such a wide dynamic range - this would be good to go. Even dealing with 1 or 2 of these would probably be enough to push it over the bar, but since you're clearly willing to work through revisions and take feedback to heart, I thought I'd go into detail about each of the points. You're in the home stretch! NO (resubmit!)

I realized I didn't share my reference track in the original submission, that's on me. Here's the track I was referencing here - the whole structure/dynamic curve of the arrangement is followed but specifically from about the 4 minute mark onward was what I was intending to go for here. I know I'm not going to have the same resources or experiences as a band with a full budget for studio engineering, but I think I got reasonably close. Accolades aren't everything, but this album has been consistently highly acclaimed and influential within its genre. It uses wall-of-sound as a deliberate arrangement and production technique to create catharsis and contrast, where clarity of the individual instruments isn't the point during that part of the song. If I missed the mark on executing that or it somehow conflicts with the submission standards because of its inherent nature, that is a different story and a conversation I'm totally open to having! But I'm not just making this shit up to be difficult, there are real artists doing this :) We've always been about trying to understand the conventions and approaches of unfamiliar genres, even if they seem unpleasant or obtuse at first. Here's just a few tracks that have been posted that undeniably require a change in perspective on what makes a "proper" song to appreciate, from a mixing, arrangement or conceptual perspective. I think our catalog is stronger because each and every one of these songs is included in it. https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02443 https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04429 https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04689 https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03970 https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03109 https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04347 If all of these remixes are a-okay but a minute and a half of not being able to hear every instrument distinctly is a bridge too far, that's disappointing but I'll make my peace with it. We've had this same discussion on other songs before so I don't really expect to change any minds at this point, but consider it my last attempt to justify the validity of a production technique that doesn't seem to get the same benefit of the doubt as all of the other unorthodox techniques that have found a place in our site before.

Oooohhh, this is so cool! It's immediately recognizable what source you're covering, but that makes all the changes to the chord progression and harmonies feel all the more engaging. I don't know enough to break this down from a theory standpoint, but it all goes down smooth all the same. Everything finally breaks wide open at 1:49, and I agree that it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. The first 1:45 is just enough to lull you into a sense of security before hitting the listener with some much more powerful beats and more of a rhythmically-charged focus. It's all paced wonderfully, even if it feels unconventional. Love this so much, great stuff! YES

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

Jewbeiiii, it's so good to see you back in the fold and hear that you're doing well man <3 Life is good. This truly feels like you haven't missed a beat since your last trance submission. It's got all the things I love about your mixes - the production is rich and punchy, and you've got a great ear for pulling little melodic hooks out of a source and building off of that. That said, the runtime on this piece is pretty long and I think you've overstretched some of these ideas and sounds past their breaking point. I'm less of a stickler on repetition than most judges, I feel, but even this one felt like it was dragging toward the end. Without any chageups to the way the melody was presented, or any substantial breakdowns or changes in the arrangement structure, it's just trying to make too much. I'd consider approaching the OCR submission as a Radio Edit, or if you do want to keep it at more of a club edit length, the other judges have brought up a ton of great approaches that could add some spice without having to stray away from what you expect from trance music. Real close, I don't think this would require any major changes to reach the bar, but just a bit of fine tuning and variation will go a long way in keeping the song engaging all the way through. You got this! NO (resubmit)

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

Emunator: - Arrangement, Production, Piano/Keys, Programming, Mixing Biggoron: Organ, Orchestra Hits Chimpazilla: Vocal Chops, Additional FX, mixing, mastering Flexstyle: Additional Drum Programming, Beatbox jnWake: Additional Piano, Synth Bass OceansAndrew: Guitar (Solo) Zack Parrish: Bass, Guitar (Rhythm, Clean Lead) Credits: Another month, another Dwelling of Duels competition that I didn't plan on entering until FOMO struck, this time 4 days before the deadline. Once again, I decided to make this everyone's problem by going all-out on a megacollab that pulls together folks from both the OCR and DoD communities. Who's to say whether that cross-pollination is a joyous union of families, or an invasion of filthy technomanga tryhards who are spreading their untz-untz all over the place? All I know is that more OCR representation into the DoD competition this year has personally motivated me to work harder and faster, in totally new styles and franchises that I never would have pursued otherwise. All the love for that community and what they're doing over there <3 Because this track came together so fast, I found myself waking up every day to start on it and then realizing that the song had taken on a totally different style than what I had envisioned the day before. It started off as a DX7-laden new-jack swing groove, which Flexstyle brought to life with a custom Battery drum kit that formed the foundation for the rest of the track. However, when I connected with jnWake the next day, he laid down a ton of different improvised parts that brought the track into a more adult contemporary jazz-fusion style, like David Benoit or Bruce Hornsby. The lines were further blurred when Zack Parrish and OceansAndrew submitted their guitar parts, which, coupled with some brilliantly-placed vocal chops and sfx from Chimpazilla, inspired me to pivot towards a more modern pop vibe lifted straight from The 1975. On the last day, I received some lovely organ recordings (and orchestra hits!) from Biggoron that felt vaguely gospel-esque... so I ripped a page from Madeon's book and recorded some last-minute piano parts and added a gospel choir for good measure! In the end, it became an amalgamation of so many sounds that were important to me throughout my life, and it all slammed together so fast that I just had to see where my inspiration took me, and trust my collaborators in the process. Special shoutouts to Chipmazilla, who did the final mixdown and mastering that lets this track shine in a way I couldn't have done myself. I cannot possibly express enough gratitude to these 6 artists who dropped everything on such short notice (OceansAndrew told me he recorded his solo less than 3 hours before hopping on a plane for a trip) to bring their A-game to this little whim of a track. Thank you all for... err, bringing this song to justice?

Matt, your Maynard impression is pretty damn on-point, and you also came prepared with the FX processing to nail the iconic Tool sound. Major shoutouts to Seph on the screams too, I didn't know you had that in you! I remember commenting in the DoD listening party (before I knew it was you guys making the track - I should have known!) that there were some sections that felt particularly imbalanced in terms of volume, but that appears to have been totally ironed out in this version, because everything is crystal clear and sitting in just the right spot. The bass and guitar tone, in combination with the vocal processing, are the perfect mix of sludgy, aggressive, and clean at all the right moments. And it should go without saying that the instrumental performances are incredibly tight across the board - I can tell you all had a lot of fun with this. I have a few minor gripes with the mixing. I didn't really pick up on this before, but the vocal sibilance is really coming through hot on my current listening setup, and could use a bit of taming on the consonants. The kit drum, specifically the kicks and (to a lesser extent, the toms) feel mixed a bit too clean and clicky, almost like you would mix for an EDM track rather than a rock track. Everything is distinct and the clarity is excellent, but something doesn't sound QUITE right for the genre and I think the clarity on the kickdrum is the culprit. That's all I got for you though - the rest of the mix is really, really good. Easy yes on all fronts, you guys are powerhouses at your craft! YES

I'm coming into this fresh-ish, having not voted on the original track. What I'm hearing is a well-balanced, punchy mix with some really cool delay-based atmospheric effects that give this a totally unique feel, despite using a pretty traditional set of complementary instruments. There's a tremendous amount of personality and swagger here, and enough going on that, even though the beat is fairly low-tempo and unassuming, it still propels the arrangement forward and makes for a track you can really bob your head to. The arrangement breezes by, running through a lot of ideas but still managing to remain cohesive, and not feeling like you just threw everything at the wall indiscriminately. It's a really great piece that came together well. I find a few of the synth elements to be a little shrill, partly due to the octave that they're written in, but in the future this could also be mitigated with a dynamic EQ or compression to tame those frequencies. It's also worth considering lowering the range of bells and flutes specifically, which tend to have some of the most shrill high harmonic content, but this is hardly a dealbreaker - just a comment for the future. Great work on the resubmission!! YES

Delightful! It's a medley of all the things that I love most about Rebecca's arrangements - delicate rearrangement and fusion of themes, a cohesive soundscape, and a cast of supporting instrumentalists that fills in the gaps where her programmed orchestra has historically fallen a bit short of realism standards. This whole suite of tracks is transcendent and beautiful, definitely one of the easiest RET submissions I've judged in a minute :) YES

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

I don't understand any of the time signature stuff Brad said, but the changes in rhythm can be immediately felt without even breaking down the time signature changes. The overall vibe is completely different without becoming unrecognizable. Your arrangement has a distinctly Yoko Shimomura style, thanks to the energetic piano writing, but the orchestra is programmed extremely tightly and professionally and pairs super well with that. It's clear that you approached this with a composer's mindset, as if you were rewriting this theme for a completely different context but still squarely within the Dark Souls universe. I really can't find any technical fault here that wouldn't be extremely nitpicky and unproductive - I think you accomplished exactly what you intended to do! YES

There's something about the Earthbound soundtrack that brings out the best in anyone who touches it. I admittedly wasn't familiar with this source prior to the submission, but it's amazing to see how much juice you've squeezed out of such a minimalist, deep-cut original. I think it's the juxtaposition of quirky, mechanical and often dissonant source material, along with an undercurrent of real human emotion that flows through the core compositions that makes an arrangement like this possible. It's a delicate balance to strike, but successfully threading that needle is what has yielded some of my favorite remixes on the site from artists like Rellik, sci or Ridley Snipes. Admittedly, this is much more organic and emotionally resonant than Shieldeater's previous submissions, but it doesn't fully abandon the psychadelic edge that was present there, either. There's plenty of ear candy and tape warble and out-of-left-field fills that keep you on your toes, but it's truly special to hear that merged with such warm chord progressions and touching performances. This will easily be a mainstay on my personal listening rotation, this one is a stunner! YES