Emunator

This is really lovely! Perfect marriage of styles, your original harmonies fit flawlessly. I'm not listening to this on my mixing headphones so I can't provide much feedback there at this point, but I wanted to chime in and let you know how much I loved this! Will definitely be following this thread as you update

Having not heard the original submission for comparison, I must say that I love what you did here! Your production sounds fantastic to me, I particularly appreciate how you handled the string stabs and percussion. You've got a really cohesive sound pallet matched with a triumphant, brisk arrangement that takes a very difficult source and reigns it in rather nicely. I think the pure-Penelo sections are the strongest part of this arrangement, there's some residual awkwardness from the Edward melody at times, but overall it's a very smooth, enjoyable fusion. And yeah, it bites a LOT from Diggi Dis' style so I appreciate you being up-front about your inspiration, though you put in enough detail work to make this your own. Definitely my favorite track from you that I've heard so far, this will be seeing some airtime on my own personal playlists Great work T! YES

Easy call for me now - the only concern I had with the initial sub was the first minute and a half, and that section of the song is now showing sufficient development and personalization. The switch to a swing-rhythm was a huge highlight and very smoothly executed, and the production is just as rock-solid as last time. I'm happy you sent this back so swiftly! YES

1. Rosalina 2. Banjo-Kazooie 3. Eevee

Oh hell yes, I've been dying to hear this song remixed! No critiques here, just wanted to chime in and say that you made me a very happy listener with this track! EDIT: Upon further inspection, it turns out that all of your contributions to this album are really awesome. Keep sharing and submitting this amazing work with us, Zack! You're definitely one of the most promising up-and-coming remixers I've seen on the site in quite a while.

I like the vibe you've created here, it's a solid improvement on the original source. Good drumwork and production overall. However, this feels like more of a 1-and-a-half minute sketch that has been looped twice and fades out. I don't feel like any new ideas or anything are introduced past the 1:30 mark. This makes your remix feel more like background music to a game (which, to be fair, it would work perfectly for) than an actual arrangement. For OCR standards, you need to introduce more ideas and vary the structure of your arrangement to keep it fresh the whole way through. The fadeout at the end also doesn't do much to help this feel like a standalone arrangement. In addition to that, the sequencing on many of the melodic elements in the track seems rigid and heavily quantized. This applies mainly to your leads, but when the bassline or the e-piano chords are more exposed, the velocities feel like they need more variation so they don't feel as static. Lots of work needed on this, but you have a solid beat and a good foundation needed on this, I wouldn't be surprised to hear this at a more passable level with some more work put into the arrangement and the sequencing of some of the other instruments. NO (resubmit)

Love this theme, it really lends itself well to the anthemic metal style you chose here. I love your lead tone and performances across the board. Production sounded quite nice to my ears, not overcompressed with a lot of room to clearly hear every part of the song. Unfortunately I'm not hearing much interpretation in terms of melody or structure from the original - while it's true that there's a level of expressiveness and intensity added in the rhythm guitars, lead performance and drumwork, this does not do much to differentiate itself from the sources, either. I could see how some judges might find that sufficient enough to make this work as a ReMix, but I feel like the level of personal interpretation on the original is not quite sufficient here. A couple of other nitpicks - the strings in your intro sound SUPER fake and completely lacking in articulation, and don't really get this track off to a good start. Also, there's a weird fadeout on your synth at :09 that sounds awkward on headphones... that buzzy synth needs a longer, smoother decay so it doesn't drop out of the soundfield so suddenly. Lastly, your fadeout ending sounds lazy and inconclusive, I would have loved to see a more climactic, definitive closure to the track. I can see how this one might swing either way, because your performance and metal adaptation is one of the better ones I've heard recently, but I personally don't think there's enough rearrangement or interpretation from the original to make this work by OCR standards. Solid track either way, though! NO

In your submission letter, you mention that this was created in the span of a few hours, and unfortunately it shows here. There's a solid arrangement underneath this, but there doesn't appear to be much effort put into making your instruments sound like they're actually played by human performers, which is critical for an orchestral arrangement. Not to put you down, but I really think you need to devote more time to polishing and fine tuning your orchestral arrangements in the future, because this sounds very rushed and underwhelming to me. I know I've heard more expressive, refined arrangements from you in the past, so keep at it! This one's not doing it for me, though. NO

Haha, your influences are , you did an excellent job emulating and expanding upon this style. I've been going back and forth on this a lot... the other judges make a very valid point regarding your sequencing and overall repetition. I expect this will likely get kicked back for a resubmission, but I'm going to go against the grain here because I think it's fully enjoyable in its current form. I know that a lot of synthwave artists utilize rigid synths with little to no articulation, which makes me feel that the way this was written was a deliberate stylistic choice, and not a oversight. On the one hand, I can imagine how amazing this would sound if the synth guitar was replaced with a more emotive, live guitar performance. However, I actually feel like the leads are genre-appropriate and have a very pleasant tone that doesn't detract from the rock-solid foundation you've built beneath it. I've listened to this about a dozen times now, and I only find myself enjoying it more and more with each listen. I gotta go with my gut here. If this does ultimately get rejected, PLEASE RESUBMIT! This is a really, really good arrangement. Best of luck either way! YES

Some of the criticisms that Kristina brought up definitely irked me a bit - the length of this track coupled with the overly-catchy nature of the original melody really grated on me over time. I think this would have been better off being about a minute to a minute-and-a-half shorter, but that may come down to personal taste, on some level. That said, I appreciate the lengths you went to keep the details varied throughout the song, there's a lot of wonderful personalized tweaks keeping this fresh. You have a ton of great ideas laid out here, and the production is only slightly flawed and more than does justice to the arrangement at the end of the day. Definitely not my favorite mix from you, but I admire what you did here and I have no real problem signing off on this! Good to see you submitting again. YES

Thanks to Chimp for the detailed breakdown, it definitely helped make this vote a bit easier! Yeah, I'm digging this.. The relentless hyper-D&B isn't my favorite style, but you executed it with a lot of finesse and managed to pull off the glitching and insane melodic wankery with a good amount of tact. Mixing is super-clean, which must have been very hard to achieve here, but you did good. I think this track was designed to melt faces and it does a pretty good job accomplishing that - not much more I can say! YES

I haven't submitted any of my own remixes in over 3 years now, but I have been slaving away at this track on a semi-regular basis since December 2011, trying to get it to a point where I'm happy with it. It's come a long way, and admittedly after such a long gestation period, there are some areas where I'm still not totally satisfied, but at some point you have to call it a day and say "I've done enough." This likely isn't the last time I'll touch Phendrana Drifts... there's really so much content to be pulled from the original, I can't possibly fit all of my ideas into one remix! Stylistically, this plays similar to my previous submission, Footloose Falls, by incorporating a house/electronic groove into an ambient/ethnic foundation, but this time I tried to flesh this out into a longer, more diverse arrangement that covered a lot more territory. This includes an extended ambient intro, solo guitar outro, and a cameo section from Super Metroid, integrating the bassline and a brief melody from 'Brinstar: Plant Overgrowth Area' during one of the breakdowns. BIG PROPS to Ergosonic for coming through at the 11th hour to provide live recordings so you all don't have to listen to my crappy sampled guitars He's such a talented guitarist and it's always a pleasure working with him. I've gotten endless feedback from the likes of Flexstyle, Chimpazilla (sorry I still left in the crash cymbal that you hate so much!) Radiowar, Theophany, DjjD, timaeus, Phonetic Hero, Will, DaMonz... and so many others. You guys rock. It feels good to put this track behind me after so many years, hopefully it's up to par! I promise to try and ramp up my musical output in the coming years. Sources: - Phendrana Drifts (Deep Space Area) - Phendrana Drifts - Brinstar

Definitely one of my favorite remixes to be posted recently. I love that Shaun has broken out and experimented with different styles and approaches lately, but at the same time it's always such a treat to hear a return-to-form such as this. You're so good at this style

Hey dude, thanks for all the feedback you've been doling out on the workshop forums! I checked out your soundcloud and you've got a lot of really cool, diverse pieces in there. Hoping to hear a lot more from you in the future! What DAW are you using to produce? Overall this feels about 95% there, in my opinion. Mixing is sounding beefy and genre-appropriate (as far as I can tell - I'm not listening on my judging headphones at the moment) and your guitar tone kicks. Great rhythm guitars and drumwork, no complaints there. The only real issue I have is with the leads, I feel like you held back on that aspect of the track. 2:46 - 3:33 is one place that jumps out at me as needing some additional melodic flair on the lead guitar. You had some cool stuff going on for the first part of the song, but it feels like you missed an opportunity to get a bit wild and interpretive with the source material during this section. The ending also came just a bit abruptly for my tastes, I think if you were to submit this, getting a cleaner fade to let everything decay naturally would be awesome. Love what you've got regardless of the critiques, but I feel like you could have pushed this just a bit further to make that last section more awesome!

I love this so much It reminds me so much of some of Bladiator's old piano remixes. I can't believe there aren't more remixes of Kirby 64 out there, this perfectly captures the bubbly, quirky nature of the game. Your piano performance and arrangement skills are enviable!

I approve! Sorry I had to be a dick in the judge thread; like I said your mix sounded awesome on its own, nothing against you or your musicianship, but I feel a lot more comfortable about passing this new version with regards to the OCR standards. GG Lemon! Love it

I like the concept a lot here - I've wanted to remix Aquatic Ambiance in a trappy/futurebeats style myself and I think you're off to a fantastic start. Cool treatment of the source and lots of cool rhythmic modulations to keep it fresh. The biggest problem is how unrelenting the bass is. It's dominating the soundfield a lot right now - if you adjust the volume slightly, EQ out some of the mids/highs but keep the low-end of the bass, I think it might strike a more natural balance. I think Michael also brought up an interesting point about the delay, and I totally agree - some sort of salient riff to establish more of a rhythm would make this a lot more interesting and well-paced. I'm gonna be honest too and say that the sound effects and chanting toward the end felt mostly superfluous and didn't really add much to the track for me. Others may feel differently but I just wasn't digging that part Really liking the breakdown at 1:17-1:40, that sounds pleasant to my ears. Overall liking what you've got going here, but the trap bass definitely needs to be revisited to achieve a better balance with the track overall. Will keep an eye on this thread!

Gotta agree, that lead synth makes this fall short overall. I don't think the sound jives well with the rest of the instrumentation, and the sequencing is unexpressive. Your rhythm guitars are pretty beastly, but it suffers from the same problem I hear in a LOT of metal mixes - the lead is almost completely buried because the rest of it is so loud and compressed. This mix is also very static in terms of instrumentation... not much to be found in the way of breakdowns or instrumental changeups. This feels underdeveloped, like it just needs a couple additional ideas/variations to make this feel less stale. I'd like to see this spend a bit of additional time in the incubator and have it sent back to us! NO (resub)

Excellent, I loved your last two submissions - you have an excellent way with massive genre fusions, and the source is interesting, so let's see where you take this... This really lives up to the expectations set by your past few mixes! I think you raised your personal bar for incorporating so many disparate elements into one track without it being a total mess. In fact, this is quite cohesive and well-arranged all-around. Electronic drums, traditional orchestral instrumentation, funk bass, ethnic flutes/vocals, metal guitar... I don't know how you pulled it off but it all fits quite nicely! Source is plenty present but expanded and elaborated upon in many ways. No issue there! My only real complaint with this mix is that the big moments never seem to have as much impact as they could. This rides a comfortable dynamic level for most of the track, and although the writing itself has plenty of peaks and valleys, the mixing falls just a little bit flat. Not a big deal to me in the grand scheme of things, but I thought it was worth mentioning to see if anyone else might be able to elaborate on that, if they feel it's an issue. Additionally, some of the sequenced instruments (the ethnic flute :54 and the lead synth at 1:49) are getting buried in the mix and sound slightly muddled. This is a pretty easy call for me on the merit of the arrangement, but there is room for improvement. Naturally, with an arrangement this ambitious and dense, not everything is going to click 100%, but what you got right more than makes up for any shortcomings in my opinion. Good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

Nice source selection! I haven't heard anything from Sonic Lost World, but this is nice. I know this is going to sound like I'm coming down hard on you, but this seems to play to your strengths, but ultimately falls prey to the same issues that many of your previous submissions have had. I'll do a quick breakdown of some thoughts on this track, both positive and negative: +You've got a great ear for arranging and mixing multiple source tunes together. On an arrangement level, I feel like this is a pass. Sources are present but mixed well with original writing. +You always have a wide range of instruments that keeps your tracks sounding fresh -The whole intro sounds tinny, lacking in any low frequencies. This part should sound a lot more lush - try layering in a deeper pad or sub bass, and replacing your flute sample, which just isn't working here. -The bass seems... not so bassy? Can't tell if it's a sample issue or how you EQ'd it, but it sounds weak. -Overall, this just seems rigidly sequenced. The e-piano Green Hill section at 2:24 is a very noticeable example where everything is hard-quantized to the grid, and doesn't have the expressiveness needed for such an exposed solo section. Not sure what to say here, there's still a lot of mixing issues that you need to address. The arrangement is ace but as a whole I think you still have some kinks to work out before this can pass the bar. NO (resubmit!)

I absolutely 100% concur with all of the critiques Deia gave. I don't think there's much more I can offer in terms of feedback on the arrangement itself. I strongly suggest taking this to the WIP forums to brush up on production/synthesis tips to help improve your production. In addition, I would recommend listening to any one of these mixes (4 separate links there) that I randomly selected from the past few years that are in a similar style to yours, so you can get an idea for how the OCR quality bar has shifted in the years since your previously-submitted mixes were posted. There has been a shift in expectations and unfortunately, I don't think this submission, as it is, meets the production/arrangement standards as they stand today. Good luck! NO

You're killing me here... I LOVE how this sounds in a bubble, and the transition to swing was really unexpected and fun, but the first half of the song is pretty much verbatim from the source. I actually synced your remix and the source in two separate windows and sure enough, they fit almost perfectly. The shuffle rhythm helps personalize it, but by that point I feel like too much of the runtime has been spent treading through cover-territory. The straightforward chiptune sound pallet works just fine here, but when your instrument selection is ALSO so close to the source tune, I just don't think there's enough personalization to meet OCR standards. Love your work Ben, but I don't think this is gonna cut it for me. NO

Guys, I really want to like this... I think the concept behind this adaptation is very inspired, and it's clear you're talented performers, but as many times as I've listened to this and tried to wrap my head around it, it just comes across as messy to me. I feel like there's too many competing instruments and melodies that don't align with each other. There's a lot of harmonic clashing going on between the flutes, guitar, and cello. When one of the instruments is taking a break or only playing melody accents, such as in the first :45 seconds or from 1:42-2:02 are nice, if a bit rambling, because you guys are giving each other some room to breathe. Sections such as :57-1:20 or 2:49-3:04, however, sound like a huge jumble. I feel bad for saying this but there's times where it feels like I accidentally opened the track in two separate and the track is playing from separate start points. There's very little synergy going on between the many instruments and it's resulting in a lot of clashing. I think you need to scale this back in order for it to be more listenable. I want to stress that each of the individual performances were very solid and the concept was exquisite, but the execution is falling short because of how disjointed everything feels NO

First off, I'll say that this is pretty well produced and well-put-together, but I'm on the other side of the fence in thinking this is TOO cover-ish. I can tell by listening to this side-by-side with the source, which nearly the exact same length as your submission, and the two tracks progress almost perfectly in tandem. I don't feel like enough effort has been put into personalizing this or making it your own aside from the genre adaptation. Maybe there's some nuances to the arrangement that I'm not picking up on, but to me this seems too much of a straightforward cover to be suitable for OCR. I'm curious to see how the rest of this vote goes! NO