Emunator

Absolutely stunning sound design. This is absolutely brimming with vibes and texture, and you literally could not have picked a better set of source tunes to make this idea come to life. The mixing glues everything together with just the right amount of reverb and delay without feeling indistinct, and there's never a moment where it feels like you've exhausted your creativity and are just coasting on repeated ideas. The evolution across the arrangement is subtle but effective. Wow, I love it. Incredible work! YES

Completely agreed that the sampled instruments are not cutting the mustard here, and everything feels really locked to the grid. This applies to nearly all of the instruments - piano, drums, and especially the rhythm guitar chugs. It's like there was no velocity or timing changes on anything in the arrangement whatsoever. I don't mean to diss the arrangement as a whole, because it's really a great take and I can absolutely see this passing without any fundamental changes at all, but the sequencing feels robotic as if this was meant as a reference track for live performers. The sound stage overall feels dry and lacking a sense of place, too - more reverb and some tasteful distortion/saturation, especially on the guitars, where it would really benefit to have some more life and movement to the tone, would make this come to life! I rarely ever suggest "find a live instrumentalist" as a solution for fixing remixing issues because I do believe that with enough work, this could easily pass as a solo endeavor with purely sequenced instruments, but I do think that would be the fastest path to success here. Given your proclivity for collaborations, I don't foresee this being a problem NO (resubmit)

Zack reached out and asked about this track, so I'm going to drop my thoughts here as a vote, albeit a rushed one. I love love love the arrangement and sequencing here - this feels so on-brand for Yoshi's Island, and I love the original countermelodies and harmonic expansions on the source. The harmonic changeup around the 3 minute mark was a highlight. The mixing kinda sinks this though - there's a huge amount of mud created between the drums, piano, and bass in the mid/lower-mid ranges, and I think a lot of it has to do with the drum kit used. Whether it's a sample issue or EQ issue, the tone of the drums feels more aggressive than what is called for in this arrangement. I'm also picking up on some balance issues - if everything is loud, nothing cuts through, and I think that's what's happening here. The drums are the biggest offender and I also agree with the points MindWanderer made about the frequency balance being a little on the hot side. I don't think this is something that can simply be fixed with a remaster, since I think there's drum-specific EQ issues that would need to be addressed at the stem/mixbus level, but that would be a good start. Aside from that, kickass track so whichever way this falls, I enjoyed it on a personal level and it's ALMOST enough to tip my vote over the edge, but I really think the mixing is doing this a disservice in its current form. EDIT 11/4/2023: Wow, A/B'ing this track with the original master really shows how slammed the first version was. Giving it a little more breathing room helps it go down much smoother. I still think there are balance issues I would have loved to see addressed at the mix level, but since that's not possible, this new master at least does enough to push it over the bar. YES

I want to put this briefly on hold before it goes any further, I think the drum mixing needs some love. I've been listening on different setups and the drums are barely audible to me! Glad y'all are digging the rest of this, hopefully I can make it even stronger with a bit of TLC!

Gotta agree here, this really feels like a level-up for Lucas in terms of mixing and production quality. I always expect the arrangements to be ambitious and creative, which this delivers on, but the mixing is super tight and definitely sets a new bar for your work! Super good stuff all around.

It's interesting to see how you handle an arrangement that's not as explicitly in the realm of black metal as your previous submissions, but still applies many of the same principles of arrangement to something a little more delicate and emotional. One of the core tenants of black metal, dramatic dynamic shifts, is definitely in play with this arrangement, and perhaps unsurprisingly, I really enjoyed the sudden swings in intensity. I do agree that, with some more nuance to the sound design and some transitional signals (pick slides, drum fills, crashes) you could retain that same impact but slide into the heavy sections with a bit more grace. That said, there's beauty to be found in every corner of this piece, and even with the areas where the execution could have been tightened up, it's hard to deny that this is an inspired and tasteful take on the FF9 source material. YES

I agree with the YES votes here - the sequencing feels a little phoned in but the sample quality is excellent and there's enough expressiveness and round robin variation baked into the samples that it still sounds great to my ears. I wouldn't have pinpointed the stereo spread issue myself but I do hear it now that it's been pointed out, good call to @Chimpazilla for identifying that! Ultimately, this does feel like a sketch to a certain degree, and I think would benefit from another layer of polish, but the strength of the arrangement and the sample quality is sufficient to put this unconditionally over the bar. Good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

I dig this - it's not the most ambitious arrangement and definitely feels like something that would play in a training arena before the actual big battle, but for what it is, it works! It makes me feel like the lack of more chiptune-hybrid arrangements like this in the actual Smash Bros soundtracks was a missed opportunity, because this would fit right at home in game. I feel like the guitar is fine here - I think there's sufficient movement and articulation, the problem is just that the slides/fret noises on the guitar, where a lot of the movement seems to be happening, is masked out by the percussion so the dominant frequency cutting through is in the mids. Could be totally off base and maybe it is just sub-par samples/sequencing, but regardless, I didn't find that to be a terribly prominent aspect of the track in the first place so I'm fine signing off in spite of a (in my opinion) pretty mild shortcoming. YES

This is deeply ambitious and very well well executed, brimming with atmosphere and personality without foregoing the vibe of your original source material. We had a conversation over Discord at one point where you were questioning what your strong suits were as a remixer, and I'd argue this arrangement exemplifies so many of the things that make you stand out as an artist. You are a very talented arranger and know how to synthesize many disparate ideas into something that actually flows and takes you through a journey. You have a gift for throwing everything at the wall in the name of ambition and experimentation and making it stick. You play nice with collaborators and know how to come in with a clear vision that others can actually work with. You are bold and brave - there's really no other way to pull off something this grand without a good amount of fearlessness. All of it comes together to make something that's extremely satisfying from start to finish, even if there are some technical wrinkles in the execution. Bravo!! YES

Just a quick cosign to close this out - the vocals registered as rough when I first listened to this in the inbox and upon further scrutiny, they need some TLC in terms of pitch correction and the way they sit in the mix. I agree that the vocals feel more natural during the heavy parts, and the last chorus sounds especially powerful when you start hitting the high notes. Other judges have already covered what needs to be done here. Additionally, I want to suggest revisiting the mixing on your drums/bass/guitar, right now it just doesn't seem to match the punch that you're going for. The kick feels like it's lacking punch and has too much bass, and the snare feels like it's had the high frequencies scooped out to the point where it barely cuts through, especially in the final section. It just feels weak. The rhythm guitars often feel like they get buried in the mix. Without hearing your stems, it sounds like you've got a lot of frequencies building up in the low-mids/mid ranges that is causing a lot of masking, and I'm not always sure that the instruments that should be standing out are actually cutting through. I would suggest looking at the dominant/fundamental frequencies for each of these instruments and making complementary EQ cuts/boosts depending on what you want to cut through. These can be relatively surgical and minimal, following the same advice that Chimpazilla suggested. This will do a world of good for the clarity of your mix. Not there yet, but there's a lot of promise and heart and I would really love to hear a resubmission! NO (resubmit)

Credits: Emunator: arrangement, sequencing, piano, mixing Chimpazilla: additional mixing, mastering Name: Infinite Collapse Game: Final Fantasy 8 (primary), Final Fantasy 4 (secondary) Sources: Compression of Time, The Red Wings Comments: This is my round 2 entry for Darkesword's Game Set Mash!! competition. Once again, I had 1 week to take a source of my choosing (in this case, Compression of Time) and create a mashup with a source chosen by the opposing team. I used this as another opportunity to do an arrangement in a style that I've always wanted to tackle; the resulting effort was a direct homage to Jon Hopkins, one of my all-time favorite producers and a huge personal inspiration in the way he approaches sound design. I feel that anything pertaining to Jon Hopkins requires a bit of context, since his music is not the most immediately accessible. Typically, his songs are very long explorations of an extremely simple chord progression, frequently only 1 or 2 chords for the entire duration. Nearly all of the development is accomplished through sound design and subtle evolution as the arrangement progresses. He makes heavy use of distortion and glitch effects juxtaposed with beautiful melodic tones in a way that is paradoxically beautiful and visceral. The two tracks I found myself referencing most during the creation process were "Everything Connected" and "Feel First Life". With these references in mind, I basically threw as much against the wall as I could possibly within the span of 1 week, and I'm extraordinarily proud of the results. While I mostly want to let the arrangement speak for itself (preferably enjoyed on a nice pair of headphones or a big booming subwoofer,) I did want to particularly highlight the transition section from 3:27-4:16, which was a monumental task in and of itself to get to work smoothly. I automated tempo, reverb and delay on the master chain, and even added some random automation to the master swing levels on all sequenced instruments to introduce some off-kilter polyrhythms before diving back into the final chorus. I wanted this transition to feel like being sucked into a black hole and being split apart into atoms, and then being spat out and gradually falling back together again. The whole song is written as an endless loop, starting off with a singular piano note and building up to infinity before collapsing back down to that same singular note. Who knows if any of this will translate to a pleasant listening experience, but everything about this was very deliberate - hopefully you find something to like here! ... or maybe I spoke too soon. In revisiting this with some fresh ears and some outside help from Chimpazilla, it turns out that my original mix/master WAS too heavy on the needless distortion and was pretty painful to listen to. So she helped me get a fresh coat of paint on this one by walking through the project file with me track-by-track, and then helping with some additional mixing and a fresh master that sounds LOADS cleaner without sacrificing any of the grit Reference Tracks:

Stealth updating to remove an audio clip in the middle of the song that wasn't sitting right. Shouldn't fundamentally change anything here but posting for transparency in case anyone's downloaded the earlier version or if Larry wants to revisit.

This felt restrained to start, but there's some really cool arrangement of the theme and some really fun synth patches (love that flute!) The fun here is all in the rhythmic changeups that are emblematic of big room, I found so many different rhythms to latch onto as I was listening to this. I definitely agree that this is one of your most successful outings to date, and it's really gratifying to see the small ways you've improved your craft without necessarily straying too far from the Pixel Pirates formula! I felt like the kick didn't have quite enough beef - it might be because it's pitched up so high and has relatively little sub presence. A little more compression and maybe saturation might have helped, but it's totally functional in its current state! YES

Haha, this is actually my biggest criticism of this track. The execution here is quite solid - I feel like there is room for more incidental textures/foley sounds/ambiance/ear candy throughout the track, but there's plenty of personalization and sound design going on to make this your own and pay homage to that classic Vangelis sound. Great choice of source material to apply this sound palette to, as well. Loved this on the album, this is a very easy YES

I was a fan of your original polka submission but the live performers and mixing assistance ramp this up a whole another level. I also feel like the arrangement here is even stronger in the way that you transformed such a dramatic piece of boss music into... well, this. You really didn't hold back any punches (or belches) here. It feels like a fully-realized vision of what you've been doing for a while now and I'm really happy to see you get here! YES

Damn, the rhythms on this thing are nuts across the board. The sound design here feels very Yu-Gi-Oh! to me before even listening to the source. The 2:55 changeup will be YMMV for listeners but I for one loved it. The piano at the very end serves as a great coda to wind things down after 4 minutes of insanity. I love this, it's a fantastic showcase of a lot of ideas that are neatly tied together despite a very chaotic presentation. YES

I've been bouncing back and forth on this one but I definitely hear the cello following the contour of the source. I think there's a level of subjectivity when we get into territory like this, but I am okay with counting that toward the overall source usage tally because the rest of the source is more overtly connected to the original, so it feels more like a supplemental connection on top of something overt rather than the only connection. If the entire arrangement hinged on such a loose connection throughout its full duration, it would possibly be a different story, but in this specific context, I'm okay with it. This is definitely just my personal subjective feelings but instead of relying purely on stopwatching, I feel like it's important to take into consideration the context in which the source is used. H36T, I think these passes would be a lot cleaner if your source usage was integrated a little more evenly throughout the arrangement, rather than large chunks of source bookended by completely original writing, but at the end of the day that can still be a valid arrangement technique and I think it works effectively here. YES

This title had me cracking up. I actually didn't find this to be too cluttered, abrasive, or poorly mixed - the balance felt appropriate for the genre and all of that wonderful ear candy you put into the arrangement is clearly audible. Transitions are snappy, the synth design is totally cohesive, bypassing the limitations of chiptune while fully embodying the spirit of the style. This reminds me of some classic 2010's-era OCReMixes from artists like Ben Briggs, Tepid, or Rayza in an incredibly nostalgic way. Easy pass from me, good stuff guys! YES

Hahaha, I was struggling to figure out what source this was at first, but once the lead flute came in, it was such an epiphany. That's actually genius, I don't know how you came up with this. Really brilliant adaptation. The backing instrumentation ranges from serviceable (the piano) to pretty darn good (the drums.) At the end of the day though, the lead flute really sells this concept. The only reservation I have is the overblown notes at :57 and 1:45 - for lack of a better explanation, they sound like they are mixed in a completely different space and much louder than the rest of the flute recording. I feel like there might be something at play with the recording quality, almost like it's getting blown out compared to the rest of the notes, but I can't quite be sure. Maybe another judge with more instrument knowledge ( @prophetik music? ) could elaborate on what's happening, or maybe just complaining about how a flute is supposed to sound. Either way, this is seriously radical and I'm unreserved about passing it in its current form. Good stuff mate! YES

What a delicate, measured approach! Really beautiful palette of melodic instruments combined with a lot of fun percussion and synths that give this a propulsive bounce. Mixing is clean and samples are very well sequenced, although I do agree with proph that a touch more master compression would make this sound a little fuller. The fusion of themes at the core of the arrangement is handled well, and of course the Prelude cameo is never NOT going to be welcomed! Welcome aboard, stranger! Good to have you back YES

I definitely had my reservations about this during the first thirty seconds - the piano sample felt heavily compressed, bright, and not the highest quality sample, and there wasn’t much more going on with the instrumentation so we’re left with a very exposed soundscape playing some very simplistic lines. Once the vocals come in though, I’m getting on board, and with that lush chord at 1:30 I’m totally buying what you’re selling! There’s a great dynamic curve to your arrangement and some moments where the lead guitars and vocals just sound massive. This arrangement really rewards patience and demonstrates a great understanding of what makes The Secret Song such an effective arrangement. There’s a few balance issues between instruments that other judges alluded to that I will also second. The intro piano feels too loud, the guitar leads are a hair too loud, and there are moments that the lead vocals dip too low in the mix and don’t cut through as much as they ought to. None of this amounts to a dealbreaker by any stretch. If there’s one thing I could suggest based on this and other submissions of yours I’ve listened to recently, maybe look into a new piano sample library or ease off on the compression when playing right hand melodies. I feel like that sample sticks out like a sore thumb here, especially when it’s not supported by ensemble instrumentation. In lieu of a whole new sample library, I have another possible recommendation to try - I will often have two different signal chains for my melodies and chords when writing with piano in a dense mix, so that you’re not compromising the lushness of your chords but also maintaining more dynamics in your melodies and not slamming so hard against the compressor. Just some ideas to consider that might help what I perceive to be a weak point in many of your mixes ? Let’s go! YES

This is a super easy vote. It’s absolutely stunning in terms of performance, harmonies, and instrumentation, and the mixing is fantastic as well. I don’t have much to add to the play-by-plays that other judges have laid out, but I fully agree with the accolades and think this is one of your most successful arrangements to date, Logan! Bravo ? YES

Right off the bat, we’re met with some really lush complementary guitar, synth, and saxophone tones that all play well together. There’s a lot of breathing room in the mix despite the number of instruments and sounds present in the mix - nothing ever feels like it’s competing for space. JayC did a wicked good job on the mix, as did all of the instrumental collaborators. I can absolutely hear the King Gizz influence here in terms of both tonality and the complex arrangement that takes a scenic route filled with numerous detours that come out of nowhere, but never feel unwelcome. Rad stuff guys! YES

Count me as one of the judges who’s generally on board with H36T’s style of arrangement, so it’s no surprise that I found myself really enjoying this on multiple fronts. The original writing fits seamlessly into the vibe of the original, even if it is segmented rather discretely into “original” and “cover” sections. 2:07 is a particular moment that really caught my eye, when the low strings harmonize with the cello line. The new drum groove toward the second half of the track leads to some really interesting rhythms. There’s enough moments where your original additions and sound design elevate this beyond just being a cover in my book. Couple of nitpicks - I loved the tone of the cello and the expressiveness on the sample, but when it was super exposed starting at :31, the legato transitions felt a little choppy. Not as big of a deal once the supporting instrumentation came in to pad things out. I understand why you settled on a fade-out ending, but this one felt particularly weak. Even dropping the drums out and letting the instrumentation fade naturally on a slower curve would have been fine, but this just happens too abruptly. Overall, I’m sold here despite a few non-mission-critical reservations. Keep ‘em coming! YES

Remixer(s): Emunator feat. Gamer of the Winds, Sirenstar Name: Black Ice Mire Game: Metroid Prime 2 (primary), Super Metroid (cameo) Sources: Torvus Bog, Prologue (Super Metroid) Credits: Emunator: arrangement, sequencing, production, mastering Gamer of the Winds: alto flute Sirenstar: Additional vocals (intro and outro) Additional Contributions: Chimpazilla: Additional mixing, mastering Zack Parrish: Vocal processing Comments: I'm finally closing the loop on another arrangement that's been stagnating for WAY longer than it ever should have. I started remixing this in 2015 and, over the course of the next 8 years, put about 65 hours toward finishing it and ultimately not getting very far from where I started. I was locked in loop mode for years and unsure of how to actually transform it into a complete musical statement. In 2023, I finally broke through that creative wall and started making rapid progress. The concept is pretty simple - what if Torvus Bog was done in the style of Phendrana Drifts? I've always found the Metroid Prime series to be one of the most technically impressive, atmospheric game soundtracks, and way ahead of its time in terms of sound design, so I challenged myself to capture the magic of those textures and sounds with my own tools. The bulk of the sound design was built in Omnisphere. I also chopped up some drumloops from the original sample pack called Uncivilised Grooves that Kenji Yamamoto used heavily in the original score to really give it that authentic Metroid Prime industrial organic vibe. Lastly, I employed a copious amount of Shaperbox 3, a new plugin I recently purchased which helped add a rhythmic pulse to everything from the bassline to the iconic Prime sine lead. I'm not saying that you can always just throw money at shiny new plugins to get over creative block, but in this case... that's pretty much what happened. What started as a sound design experiment really started to come together in 2023 with some help from Theophany, who helped me workshop the track and gave me some pointers on how to make my bass way less boring (check out his own Torvus Bog remix that he released earlier this year that I tried really hard not to consciously rip off as I was finishing this!) Gamer of the Winds and Sirenstar also contributed some wonderful live elements, adding additional air and organic texture to the soundscape that I couldn't have pulled off on my own. Extra shoutouts to Chipmazilla for your help with getting the mix and master sounding great, and to Zack for lending his Melodyne skills as well. Thank you all for helping me get this one to the finish line!