Emunator

Hello guys, this is Showroom Dummy again. Remix name is "Chipped Bone" Original is Mega Man 4 Skull Man stage. My direction with this mix was to make funky house. I played a lot of melodies of the song on my keyboard so there is little copy paste including bassline and the others . My mission was to make a song more complex with time, so after first section it breaks time signatures, extending phrases and many solos. I always want to surprise with the arrangements I make, but I keep the chiptune element in all my work. My favorite is the bassline I put much work in! I hope you enjoy Sorry for any bad english, it's translated. Source:

I agree, there's a lot of untapped potential in the House theme from Link's Awakening and I think you did a nice job exploring a lot of the different possibilities here! Your piano sample is very nice quality, very soft and appropriate for the mood you're conveying. The arrangement itself has strong dynamics, with a very natural ebb and flow as you transition between softer and heavier sections. Your track starts off strong but unfortunately the fact that this is a sequenced piano becomes readily apparent as the track goes on. It seems like there's some unnatural velocity patterns that start to appear throughout the track, but the bigger issue I'm hearing is how rigidly quantized all of the notes are. Not even the most technically-adept pianist would be able to play the notes this accurately to the metronome - you need to loosen up your timing to achieve a more natural flow. Right now, the note timing is just not convincing enough and unfortunately saps a lot of the life out of a very spirited arrangement. There's a rendering error at 4:00 that you need to fix, too! I have no issues with the arrangement or the writing itself but the stiff sequencing is not doing justice to your writing. Experiment with some less-hard quantization and introduce some timing adjustments so that it sounds more humanized, and I think you've got a winner. Good luck! NO (resubmit!)

ReMixer name: Deedubs Real name: Mike DeWeese Email address: User ID #: 52934 Game arranged: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Arrangement Name: Home Is Where the Hearts Are Song arranged: House Whenever I think of a video game tune that brings nostalgia, the "House" music from Link's Awakening seems to bring all the warm memories of childhood back to me. I first played Link's Awakening as the holiday season was coming around, and in coastal Northern California, it would rain a lot during late fall and most of winter. Rain would be falling outside as I'm playing the game on the Super Game Boy. In game, shortly after walking into one of the houses of Mabe Village, I would just stop and listen. The music that played sounded so peaceful along with the rain that was falling outside my house. I often think of calm piano music as rainy day music, so I wanted to give "House" a good piano treatment, inspired by a few tracks from the Final Fantasy IV piano album. I used Cinesamples Piano in Blue for this track because I feel it very much exemplifies the intimate feel I was going for. The arrangement title is a reference to Link's house in A Link to the Past. Thanks! Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S48yGfAksC8 -------------------------------------

I paneled this because there's a lot of cool interpretation to the performance here, it's very dynamic and expressive, but I'm concerned about a couple of things. First off, the recording quality has a HUGE amount of white noise in it. Way more than I would be comfortable passing on any piano mix. Perhaps this is something that could be fixed up in post-production with some help, but right now this track is DOA because of the excessive noise levels. There's some parts of the performance itself that I'm not totally enjoying, either. The transition at :50 was weak/non-existent. The section from 2:25 - 2:40 felt very out of place - I see where in the source you derived it from but honestly, that part just didn't sound good to me. Overall, the performance was a bit sloppy overall - maybe it was an intentional style because the arrangement is very carefree and loose, but I think the performance could have been tightened up, too. Personally, I still don't think this would be a pass due to sloppiness of transitions and overall performance even if the recording quality was fixed up. I thought there were some very solid, creative ideas here, but I wanted to see what the rest of the panel thought. NO

Title: Kremlings Sonota Original: Gang-Plank Galleon. Game Donkey Kong Country - SNES, author: Leandro Abreu Source:

Love how you tease the source tune with your opening ambiance without explicitly jumping into it. Cool textures start things off, though I wasn't a fan of the first synth that came in... that patch just felt plain. Your first lead at :59 was a lot better, I agree with Chimp that it was quiet but you obviously took a lot of time to write an expressive lead line. When everything kicks into full gear, the mixing is a bit... cacophonous. LOTS of midrange frequencies are getting jumbled together and there's very little clarity in those sections. The dynamic contrast between the lighter sections and those is great, but you need to clean up those passages significantly. Chimp is right about the ending too, I think there's a lot of potential to wind the track down in a more gradual, interesting way, but you missed that opportunity here. I'm not totally sure how to feel about this - maybe I'm being too harsh because this is such a frequently-mixed source, and you do have some great ambiance to give this some personality, but the conservativeness of the writing and the generic backing synth patches just don't really catch my interest here. I think with some work you could potentially have something passable on your hands, but there's definitely a lot more room to personalize and give this your own unique flavor, too. NO

This is a very cool stylistic homage that really doesn't get touched on very often, I think this is something that listeners are really going to appreciate. It's a smorgasbord of horror-soundtrack tropes that's arranged in a very clever way. I love the instrumental variety here, as well - you utilize a lot of sounds that aren't often heard in remixes. It's all very fresh. Diddy Kong Racing gets way too little love, too, so it's wonderful to see more people tackling this excellent soundtrack! My only real gripe with this track is the weakness of the drum kit. I absolutely get the style you were going for with that section, but the weakness/simple riffs of those drums make that section feel somewhat underwhelming. I really can't justify rejecting such an otherwise-strong arrangement on that merit alone, but I do feel like it's a weak link that's worth pointing out. Mastering the track with more compression might have also helped there. Other than that, solid stuff! The mixing gets the job done and the one real gripe that I have doesn't significantly detract from everything else you've gotten right with this arrangement! YES

I'm falling a little bit between Larry and Chimp on this. I personally wouldn't be as generous as her, but I think I enjoyed some of the subtleties of your arrangement more than Larry. At the core, your beats are pretty neat, although they do ride the same grooves for a while I think your beat writing is interesting, especially the hi-hat and kick rhythms. It's a cool adaptation and I felt like there were enough breakdowns that it didn't feel too static, even if those breakdowns didn't last very long. This track is very close to the original source, melodically, but the adaptation to dance style earns you some points. It's a conservative arrangement, but you've got enough going on to differentiate this from the original. The arrangement was repetitive and toward the end it did feel like you were just treading water, but I didn't find that aspect of the track to be a dealbreaker. I'm not a huge fan of the synths that Larry critiqued either, but I didn't think they were that bad! I'll agree that the sound design is underwhelming, but for the most part it works for the style you're doing, and everything is pretty cleanly articulated and sequenced. Mixing is a little troublesome, easing up on the compression and taming your bassline would give this a bit more breathing room. Maybe lower the volume on your hats just a touch. I actually feel like this is really close, I think you've got a lot of solid feedback to go off of from the judges above and I'd love to see what you can do with that input to improve this and hopefully tip it over the bar! NO (resubmit!)

This is a cool sounding mix on its own, pretty well-produced with nice sequencing and sample quality. The only thing that sticks out to me is the unnatural articulation on the choir patch, which makes that stand out like a bit of a sore thumb. Not a big deal, though. I can see this working great in the game itself. However, the short arrangement, fadeout ending, and overall very conservative treatment of the original source tune seems unfortunately outside the scope of what we're looking for on OCRemix. I don't believe this goes far enough with interpreting or expanding on the original when viewed in context of our site standards, and the arrangement itself is so short, I think it works better as music for a game than as its own arrangement. Other judges may view it differently, and I hope this doesn't discourage you, but I don't think this is a proper fit for OCR. Sorry! NO

Contact Information ReMixer name: Salavander Real Name: Ben http://www.soundcloud.com/salavander Track location: attatchment, and Submission Information Name of game arranged: The Binding of Isaac Name of arrangement: "Bisclaps" Name of individual song arranged: Repentant Composer of original song: Danny Baranowsky Link to the original soundtrack: http://dbsoundworks.bandcamp.com/album/the-binding-of-isaac-2 Comments: This is the song I created for the Community Remix Mod of The Binding of Isaac. I named the song 'Bisclaps' after a comment about my song in a video by NorthernLion, who referred to the clapping and snapping sounds in the song as "bis-snaps and bis-claps." This was a shoutout to another YouTuber, "Bisnap," who also plays The Binding of Isaac. ------------------------------------------ Source:

Actually agreed with Flexstyle, I was having a hard time putting my thoughts into words on this. This is solid work from you and clearly above our bar, but everything is very tightly-quantized and so clean, it feels a little bit safe and restrained. I'd love to see just a bit more attitude to this mix! Arrangement is rock-solid, sample quality is great across the board... it's just a little underwhelming to me. No disrespect, I think you've got a solid track here that people will enjoy regardless! YES

Very creative adaptation, Tornado Man sounds simultaneously familiar and totally foreign here, somehow. As I've come to expect, the piano performance is intimate and skillful without being too flashy. The lack of dynamics to such a short, slow arrangement poses a bit of a conundrum - what's here is solid and definitely passable in my book, but there's not a TON of substance to this arrangement either. The ideas are presented clearly, but there's not much of a curve to the track and it ends very quickly. I'm a little bit stumped, I think I'll need to mull this over because this decision will almost definitely boil down to a matter of whether or not other judges find the arrangement to be substantial enough, and I feel like it is a very subjective call either way. EDIT 6/4: Yeah, after revisiting this I can safely say that this is just not substantial enough as an arrangement to really meet OCR standards. I hate to kick something like this back because it is quite nice, but we need to hear just a bit more content to make it work! NO

ReMixer name: Pl511 Email: UserID: 48825 Name of game: Megaman 9 Name of arrangement: Waltz of the Wind God Name of song arranged: Tornado Man Stage Comments: This is definitely one of the harder things I've tried to achieve with an arrangement - creating a standard 3/4 waltz from a 4/4 source. While the first few phrases came quite easily, a couple of the main motifs don't lend themselves to 3/4 incredibly well without quite a lot of adjustment to make it sound more natural. As a result I feel like the extra effort that I put in to make the track flow a bit more helped a lot in giving a more flowing and fragile side to the original, quite chaotic and fast-paced theme. Just for notice, the entire track was recorded in a single session. -Pl511

Not sure how I feel about this yet, so I'm going to drop some random bullet point thoughts and revisit this later... - Arrangement is very long and feels directionless, despite a lot of variation in the patterns and lack of direct repetition, the arrangement feels repetitive - Ambiance is strong and well-mixed - Piano sample is a weak point, tinny and low-quality. Unfortunately since it takes the lead role so often. - Strings sound well-articulated and help "punctuate" track - Lot of intelligent writing and transitions, great mixing of sources No idea how I'm going to vote on this one yet, but there's a lot to like here. EDIT 8/23: I'm revisiting this track after some time away, and reading Palpable's vote really helped crystallize my thoughts on what is keeping this from working. I don't want to detract from the good work you've done here, because this is a solid track that you clearly put a LOT of effort into, but the lack of focus and haphazard melody/chord writing is preventing this from clicking. I won't retread too much on that because he really nailed the feedback there. I'm still having a big problem with the piano sample here and I can't tell if I'm just showing my piano bias here, because nobody else has really commented on it, but I'm getting a very tinny, low-quality "FL Keys" tone from it and it just takes me out of the ambiance of the track. It sounds like the current sample you're working with has been nicely massaged with EQ already and you're just running up against the limitations of your samples. Perhaps if the arrangement/part writing were cleaned up and focused I could sign off on this with the current production quality, but I do feel like the piano sample quality is dragging this down. To recap though, I think the arrangement is probably the biggest hurdle that you need to overcome with this track. Keep at it, if not with this remix then with another submission, because you've clearly got chops! I just don't think this is working 100% in this form. NO

Your ReMixer name: Unknown Alias Your real name: Nick Williams Your website: https://nickwilliamsmusic.bandcamp.com/ Your userid: 53465 Name of game(s) arranged: Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil Name of arrangement: Sorrowful Ocean Name of individual song(s) arranged: Seaway, Opening Theme, Calm Sea, Going to Lunatea Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil is one of my most fondly remember games from when I was younger. The dream like atmosphere to the visuals and music always just had such an effect on me. One thing I always loved was the dynamic music that would play when going into a cave, everything in the song would become much slower, more simplified, and have much bigger reverb. Because of how much of an impact this games' soundtrack had on me, when I decided to join the forums and try to make something for the site, Seaway from Klonoa 2 was one of the first things that came to mind that I should do. Source material used: Seaway: http://youtu.be/zvj3BLNYNk8 Opening Theme: http://youtu.be/-Qqhfq7YkwQ Calm Sea: http://youtu.be/LVRSlX183GE Going to Lunatea: http://youtu.be/9HSIg9L3J-U Here is where the source material is used throughout the mix: - Opening 2 chords of Seaway at 0:00 to 0:15 - Main melody of Seaway at 0:15 to 0:30 - Bass solo at 0:30 to 0:45 with Seaway's main melody at 0:37 to 0:40 - Second section of Seaway from 0:45 to 1:19 - Transition from Seaway to the Opening Theme at 1:19 to 1:27 - Opening theme from 1:27 to 1:42 - Transition from Opening theme to Calm Sea at 1:42 to 1:53 Using the opening arp from Calm Sea - Using the idea and bassline of the Calm Sea track to create a breakdown from 1:53 to 2:23 - Piano solo using new chords, similar bassline, and same melody to Calm Sea 2:23 to 2:39 - Solo continues and picks up speed at 2:39 to 2:54 - Drum fill from 2:54 to 2:58 that transitions back into Seaway's main melody - The chords, melody, and bassline from Seaway with some added strings at 2:58 to 3:28 - Going to Lunatea's melody is used from 3:28 to 3:58 with the solo violin playing Seaway's melody from 3:28 to 3:32 - Original part to break out of Going to Lunatea at 3:58 to 4:14 - Piano solo from 4:14 4:29, Seaway's melody is played from 4:21 4:23 - Seaway in a different key and the solo violin with some more intensity to the drums and piano at 4:23 to 4:59 - Climax from 4:59 go 5:14, solo violin plays Seaway melody one more time from 5:07 to 5:14

Wow, this source actually translates REALLY well to jazz. Some nice ambiance opens up your track and you jump right into it without wasting much time. Your chords are pretty fantastic here and sound great on that hard electric piano sample. Overall, I'm feeling the lo-fi vibe of your instruments and the treatment of your pianos/organs. Right off the bat, the drums sound like a weak point to me. Pretty rigid sequencing (all of your hi-hats are at the same velocity and sound hard-quantized) and very dry mixing makes them not sit well with the rest of the instruments. The transition around 1:15 brings in some bigger-sounding drums but the samples are still very dry. This is the main critique I have of this track that I would like to see addressed. :48 sounds odd to me, whatever instrument is playing that arpeggio has a slow attack that does not sound natural for that riff. Additionally, the bass patch that enters around 1:27 is mixed loudly and sticks out too much to my ears. Overall, the mastering on this sounds like it could be brought up slightly louder without causing any unwanted loudness. Really strong showing here, I love this arrangement but the drums and a few other mixing nitpicks are putting this just below the bar for me. I really want to see this on the front page but I think a few more revisions are warranted before it's ready for that. Good luck! NO (resubmit!)

Hi OCRemix. Here's a link to my remix. I've also attached it to my email in case y'all don't like Soundcloud. ReMixer name: Savino Real name: Will Savino Email address: website: https://soundcloud.com/will-savino/ userid: 53881 name of game: Fallout 3 name of arrangement: Megaton Rock Name of song: Main Title Composer: Inon Zur Original: youtube link here Everything else: I love the main theme, especially the really ambiguously hopeful nature of it, but I really wanted to have a different harmonic take on it, something that better reflected the sort of jazzy element of the Americana aesthetic used throughout the Fallout series. I also like using sounds that are clearly electronic but have an organic nature to them. And while I avoided the militaristic drums and horns used in the original, I still want the music to be just as propulsive, hence that ostinato rhythm I use throughout. I hope that's all I need. Thanks a lot, guys!

It was really insightful reading your writeup on this track and making the A-to-B connections from elements from "Blood Theme" that you incorporated into your own mix. Conceptually, I feel like this is a very successful track at creating the foreboding, moody vibe you were going for. I really dug the subtle integration of the bells throughout the track. The source usage goes off-rails at times but I had no problem identifying this as a Magus remix. Mixing-wise, I thought your string sample was weak and contributed some muddiness during some of the more energetic piano sections. Your piano sample still sounds a little on the fake side and starts sounding indistinct when you start playing heavier on the low notes, but it's a pretty appropriate tone for this mix and I think the realism is good enough to pass muster. The wind sound effects felt very lo-fi, but it's not a big deal. There's still room for improvement on the sound quality/mixing front but I think this is above the bar, thanks to a pretty solid arrangement and concept that I feel mitigates any of the sound quality issues. YES

This is a mix for the upcoming album 'BadAss Volume 3'! ReMixer name: pu_freak Name of game(s) arranged: Chrono Trigger (SNES) Name of arrangement: The Dark Defender Name of individual song(s) arranged: Magus Confronted Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: For BadAss 3, my aim was to create an album of mixes that make you feel evil, sinister, or twisted. To achieve that, people should either have something bombastic or epic in their mix (like the Imperial March), or make it creepy and twisted. I've always used one example for the latter category: the 'Blood Theme' from Dexter. To that end, I wanted to make a mix of my own in 'Blood Theme'-style. The mix starts the same as Magus' Castle theme, with brooding low strings and howling wind in the background. However, when playing the real Magus theme, I only use the two chords that are present in the Blood Theme (two chords that are twisted in itself). In the 0:29 - 1:20 part, I've used music bells that are very close the the background motif used in 'Blood Theme'. I couldn't do much else in terms of recreating the Blood Theme-vibe, since incorporating non-VGM is unwanted of course, but I think it's enough to remind people of the Blood Theme and to give the same creepy and twisted vibe. To increase the twisted feeling, I've made a dynamic panning and volume for the music bells, and the music box later in the mix. Furthermore, some intstruments (most notably the piano at the end) have a chorus effect, making them sound more distorted. Big differences in volume throughout will - hopefully - also instigate an unsettling effect and the mix featured brooding strings throughout. The uses of music bells and music boxes should also add to the creepy feeling. In terms of vibe, this mix combines the feeling of my Pokémon track on OCR and my Gilgamesh mix from BadAss 1. The mix is a bit shorter than usual for me, but that's because you can only do so much with two chords (and I even cheated once at 1:16 by using two other chords). I've not fully used the source (which has to do with the very limited chord progression I could use), but the source is very recognizable I think. I've been more on the liberal side of OCR - this is no exception - but I think people will have more ease recognizing the source here than in my Pokémon track. In any case, good luck with the judging! Source: - Magus Confronted - Blood Theme (For reference only - not actually featured in the remix)

I just got this message from Mak earlier today before this hit the panel... anyone have any ideas here? I've never heard of anything like this, but it may explain why the mastering is not improving.

Hey dudes! Love your previous work, and I firmly agree that Nier has one of the most mindblowing soundtracks of any game from any modern game console. It's really beyond incredible and I'm glad that you guys were inspired and brave enough to tackle it. I got excited when I first downloaded this becuase I've heard some really effective melodic dubstep lately that fuses beautiful vocals and lush soundscapes with aggressive basslines and pounding drums. Listening to your track, I think you absolutely nailed 1 those things, did a solid job with 2 of them, but fell a bit short on the remaining one. I'll go into more detail on each of those points below. The vocals are absolutely on-point, and I have no complaints there. Katskachi nailed the performance, especially the accent, and like you said, it's difficult to believe this wasn't an officially-released acapella. I'd like to see them mixed a bit more loudly and possibly with touch of a grand concert hall reverb to give it just a bit more of an epic feel, but that component of the mix was a slam dunk in my opinion. The drums are solidly produced and varied, not much to say in that respect! The hi-hats are the only part that stick out to me as rigid, maybe a little massaging of the velocities would help that part not stick out so badly. The dubstep wubs and fills are a little bit generic, it's a bit of a mixed bag but I feel like your bass work is serviceable at its core. Nothing that I haven't heard before, but I think it works here on a writing level. The mixing poses some problems that I will get into a bit later. The one part of this track that I think is really lacking is the rest of the soundscape... To be blunt, it's pretty empty most of the time and I can't help but think how amazing this would sound with some lush, evolving pads to fill things out. The part of your mix that I think got the closest was from 2:48 - 3:04, where you begin to introduce some string swells and choral vocals, but even that felt like it was missing a strong low-end presence to fill out the track. Most of your padding elements play only in high octaves and are mixed very quietly, and it feels like you missed an opportunity to make a really detailed, texturally-compelling remix. Conversely, I think your bass mixing is way too loud and up-front... there's very little subtlety, even for the genre. The normal bass that fills out the track when the aggressive bass isn't present, however, is relatively quiet and lacking in sub-bass frequencies, so those portions of the track feel even emptier by comparison. A quick nitpick - the strings work fine as a backing element, but the articulation when they take over lead-duty from 3:05 - 3:29 is not very realistic at all. A patch with a more natural articulation and a quicker attack would suit you better for that section. The lack of humanization is hurting that section, unfortunately. I'm going to link to a reference track that you may or may not be familiar with - take a listen to this and compare the depth of texture with your mix and I think you should see what I mean. I know you're not going for exactly the same sound, but in my opinion, if you could achieve more of a balanced soundscape like this, with the dubstep bass mixed lower (but still audible) a more dominant sub-bass presence when the wubs aren't involved, and more thought put into fleshing out the rest of your track out through pads, delay, or other effects, you'd have an absolute monster of a remix on your hands. I certainly don't want to imply that your track needs to be on this level in order to pass our panel. However, right now the thin soundscape and overly-loud bass patches are not doing proper justice to your vision here, IMO, and hopefully having a track to reference might better explain what I'm getting at with my feedback than words can. Hope this wall of text isn't too intimidating or discouraging - on the contrary, I see a LOT of potential in your mix and a strong foundation, especially with the amazing vocal performance. As an avid listener of your previous mixes, I know you can create some very full-sounding mixes (your Phoenix Wright arrangement comes to mind) and I'd love to see you take a second pass at this with some of this feedback in mind. If this doesn't end up passing the panel and you're willing to revisit, feel free to reach out to me directly and I'd be happy to provide more personal, specific input on this track! Good luck! NO (resubmit!!!)

Hello, OCR! Round 2 for the wubsteps! Although it's more like Melodic or Harmonic dubstep now, I think. Seriously though. NieR. It's all I have to say, or should say. Probably, IMO, the best soundtrack of 2010 easily, and quite possibly one of the very best of the entire last generation. Keiichi Okabe didn't just knock it out of the park with this soundtrack, he knocked the park out of the city and into orbit. Ever since 2010 we had the idea of remixing one of the songs, specifically this one (Kainé theme) but honestly, the mere thought of it depressed us. How could we ever top it? Well, we can't. We realised that this month and just decided to go with it and honor/tribute to it as best as we can. Luckily we had help! Katskachi is an amazing vocalist who, initially, made me think she just grabbed an acapalla from the void in the internet and sped it up. Really talented individual for sure. Couldn't have done this without her! Details: Your ReMixer name: Digital Element a.k.a. DigiE. Your real names: Maurice Willems & Sanjay Sampatsing. Your email address: Your User ID: 2761 Additional details: Name of game(s) arranged: NieR (PS3, Xbox360). Name of individual song(s) arranged : Kainé Escape, Kainé Salvation -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gilH6f2hHk (Escape) -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDftyQ96ZVs (Salvation) Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc. Since the song is in 3/4, drum and bass turned out to be a challenge we couldn't tackle. Dubstep is more suitable for this since the rhythm is pretty slow, but 'violent' or rather, has a big impact. Since the source itself is such a melodic brilliance of a thing, it seemed like mixing dubstep with orchestral backing and slowing it down (yet speeding it up more than the original, how about that) would work out nicely. We think it kind of did. We hope you agree! It feels weird writing this. It feels weird knowing we tried to remix NieR. I say tried, because I'll never accept whether it's any good or not. We like the song, we like the result, sure, but the source is too god-tier to believe it actually accomplished anything. But again, we hope it did! Enjoy the song, guys and girls! <3 Remix Name: Kainé Absolution. With kind regards, DigiE.

Wow, excellent source tune. I'm always worried when I see a submission with a 5+ minute source tune that I'm unfamiliar with, but I really enjoyed listening to the original. The source usage in your track is surprisingly straightforward and easy to pick up on, the string patterns in the original translate really nicely to rhyhtm guitars. Based on your previous couple of submissions, I was expecting to hear more of the same problems present here in terms of mixing and overcompression, and to an extent they still are present here. However, I actually found the production here to be a little bit less unrelenting than I'm used to, so that was nice Your leads were clearly audible and not nearly as buried in the mix, and although this might sound a little bit subjective, I didn't feel as much ear fatigue as I did on tracks like 'Technomagmar.' Curious to see how this sits with the other judges. The synth pads from 2:12 - 2:33 were pretty lame, if I'm being candid. Very bland patch without much subtlety to them. The synth that doubles up with rhythm guitars for the rest of the song after that also feels unnecessarily dry and doesn't really contribute anything to the track.The rest of the synths aren't much more interesting, but aren't quite as up-front and dry so they don't really bother me as much. I don't mean to be a dick, but your synth work is not really adding anything to the track here, and I think that's an element of your music that could stand to improve across the board. Your guitar chops are solid as always, and this time, I don't think the mixing sinks it dead in the water for me. But those synths... They're not a main focus of the mix so I have a hard time rejecting this track on those grounds (especially since I feel like this is on-par with some of your other recently-posted mixes) but I really think that part of your mixing toolbag is lacking and it would be really great to see you take your synthwork to the next level in future submissions! YES (borderline)

ReMixer Name: DusK Real Name: Dustin Branscum Email: Website: http://www.itstartsatdusk.com User ID: 24328 Game: Guild Wars 2 Arrangement Name: "The End of Madness" Songs Arranged: "Battle on the Breachmaker", "The Nightmare Within" Platform: PC, Mac Composer: Lena Chappelle, Maclaine Diemer Release Year: 2012 Source 1: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/guild-wars-2-battle-on-the Source 2: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/the-nightmares-within Comments: BOSS FIGHT! The idea behind this one was to create a sort of modern-style boss music for Scarlet Briar (one of the big bads in GW2) utilizing her actual final boss music, but in a genre completely different from the source. Along the way, I ended up incorporating elements from "The Nightmare Within", which never actually appeared in-game but was used in the trailer for a content release. This was a lot of fun to do, as Lena and Maclaine's music usually is (I'm up to 7 released covers of their music right now), because it's quite a bit more melodic than many of Soule's works for the series. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this piece. Under-repped VGM fo lyfe! #WeMissYouMokram Source 1: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/guild-wars-2-battle-on-the Source 2: https://soundcloud.com/arenanet/the-nightmares-within

I don't think I've been happier to see anyone's name in the submissions inbox than this. Skrypnyk is one of my favorite remixers - despite having produced only a handful of remixes, every submission has been singularly memorable in its own right. The original 'Escape into the Twilight' was my introduction to Skryp's work and has remained in my listening rotation for the last 7 years, so hearing a proper reprise is a real treat for me personally! This version utilizes most of the same building blocks as the original, but the heightened emphasis on drums and the swirling, bugged-out effects really shows how Skryp has evolved as an artist in 7 years time. Glitches are plentiful but tastefully-implemented without relying on simple dBlue glitch patterns, and never compromise the mood of the track. One particular detail I loved was the little audio clips that are barely audible throughout the track, contributing to the dreamy atmosphere and creating some very memorable moments when they "peek through" the rest of the soundscape. The detail work absolutely makes this track for me and helps it stand comfortably apart from its predecessor. Source usage is tricky here - this actually feels more liberal than 'Escape into the Twilight,' and that track was already called out by the panel for toeing the line with source usage. Part of the reason is that there's very little overt source usage for the first two minutes of this mix. Hmmm... seems like a source breakdown is in order. Song length is 4:21, the first 3 seconds and last 5 are dead silence so I'm measuring based on 253 seconds of material: :04 - :36 - Background arp from source [32 s] 1:45 - 1:53 - very faint whistling of the 'Dreams, Dreams' source [8 s] 1:53 - 3:23 - main 'Gate of Your Dreams' motif on piano + background arp occasionally [90s] 3:39 - 3:47 - whistling again [8s] Total: 138 seconds / 253 = 54% source usage The whistling is a very low-mixed element in the track that I didn't even pick up on first listen, so I can see how that might not count in some judges' eyes. Also, I was pretty generous with the 90 seconds of usage because of how heavily modulated the melody was, but the backing arpeggios on the music box definitely helped keep that section tied to 'Gate of Your Dreams' most of the time. Because of how minimalist the source is, I'm inclined to give this the benefit of the doubt on source usage. It certainly FEELS like a 'Gate of Your Dreams' remix to me. One last thing - I know Skrypnyk always gets his exports as close to 4 minutes and 20 seconds for... reasons, but this cuts off very abruptly a few seconds before that so I'm not sure if that was a deliberate choice. Not sure if I'm feeling that, any chance we can get a cleaner fade on that last note? Really curious to see how this vote goes, I'm obviously a huge fan of this track on a personal level, but despite the liberalness I still objectively think this would still be a wonderful addition to our catalog. Good luck duder! YES