Emunator

This is a banger. Your voice and flow reminds me a LOT of El-P. From a pure technical perspective, this is some of the best rapping I've heard in a hot minute on the panel. The pop-punk vocals add a very fresh, modern flair, I really wasn't expecting that but especially on repeat listens, I enjoyed it. There's a lot to love about this arrangement, and there was a lot of care put into making sure that both the beat and the vocal performance is dynamic and cohesive, never feeling like you just dropped some unrelated bars over a beat that happened to sample a Castlevania. The extra effort goes a long way. There's a few technical issues I've heard - the snare feels significantly louder and sharper than the rest of the percussion, and the piano sample feels exposed and weak, but that's not a huge deal. I think the detuning that MW called out feels like a feature of the genre, I've heard plenty of beats that apply a slow pitch envelope to the 808 like this and although it's definitely (intentionally) detuned, it doesn't feel like it's written out of key at all. Good stuff!! YES

@MindWanderer Check out the new version here and see if this addresses your concerns!

This is an easy one for me, this was one of my favorite entries from this Dwelling of Duels month. The first couple of minutes introduces an already fresh spin on the source material, and it only gets stronger as the track progresses and you cut into a more progressive jazz fusion style at 2:17 that reminds me of David Benoits 'Urban Daydreams'. From there, it's smooth sailing through incredibly fluid soloing and unpredictable funk progressions. The breakdown at 3:42 was a contender for the most memorable moment of the track, but honestly, this thing is chock full of them. I think DarkSim hit the nail on the head with the hi-hat - it's just a very sharp sample so it cuts through the mix, but if you used more of a brushed jazz kit, I think it would have sounded fine. On repeat listens, I do think the cut at 4:06 was a little disconcerting but I can't argue that the additional noodling you introduced during the last minute of the track wasn't worth the extra runtime - it totally was. HELL YEAH

Wow, there's some black magic piano production wizardry at work here, this sounds fabulous now! There's a limited number of moments where the piano still falls into the uncanny valley, but at this level of polish, we're just taking minor pitstops into the valley rather than living in it. Much improved, my friends! YES

Artist: Troyificus *RESUBMISSION* OK, let's try this again. As before, this has been made for 'An OverClocked Christmas v.XVII' I took the judge's comments on-board, had a sulk about it, got over myself and returned with a righteous fury! And promptly fell flat on my face again when the wonderful @Hemophiliac told me in no uncertain terms that it still wasn't up to standards. Following which, after so much back and forth that the poor guy is probably sick of the sight of my name, it's reached this point. I'm happy with it, he's mostly happy with it, this is the version that's being submitted to the album, so I'm trying again with the illustrious judge's panel. Happy holidays! Source breakdown: 0:00 - 1:16 source 1:17 - 1:35 original, with source elements added 1:36 - 1:53 original 1:54 - 2:12 source 2:13 - 2:48 source, with interpretation and embellishments added 2:49 - 3:06 source, but it's a repeat of the intro with the descending arpeggio added in

@Liontamer @DarkSim VQ provided a modified version here, please review to see if it changes your votes or introduced any new issues! It's still good for me

Sent these votes to Ivan to see if he's interested in making any tweaks or proceeding with the vote as-is! EDIT: Ivan wants to let the vote proceed as-is.

I told myself I wasn't going to vote on any GSM tracks due to my participation in the competition (and the fact that this track solidly beat my entry in round 1...) but since this seems to be lingering without any votes, I think it's been long enough that I can be objective. Let me put on my objective hat... ...it's lit. This is an easy, easy vote, Zack brings his usual level of high-quality cinematic sound design, with a heavy emphasis on texture and rhythmic movement throughout the arrangement. The fusion between the two themes is creative and seamless. Especially for a 1 week endeavor, this is truly impressive and speaks to Zack's abilities as an arranger and producer. YES

The intro immediately sets the mood with a loose acoustic guitar that evokes the melancholy of The Last of Us, before the choir takes us somewhere even more adventurous and mystical. As I've come to expect, you are rarely content to hover around the same musical idea for long, but it always connects cohesively in the end. Tremendous vision and ambition throughout the whole arrangement, and the execution is solid enough to support it! On a technical level, the mixing feels cluttered and compressed to a degree, the vocals and sound effects appear to be the culprits and could possibly benefit from a subtle low-frequency cut to clear out some of the mud. The vocals occasionally do feel loud compared to the other elements. The ending also came out of nowhere and didn't quite feel properly paced. Just a few minor notes though, this is easily enough for our bar. Congrats! YES

I definitely feel like this is an improvement overall, despite not fully hitting the mark on the mixing. On future attempts, I would employ more surgical volume automation on your backing parts, or sidechain your leads to your rhythm synths more, because there's moments where your leads still don't feel like leads (the flute especially gets buried) but you don't really have anymore headroom to work with to make those louder - you need to make sacrifices elsewhere. It's loud and a bit overcompressed, so if you wanted to keep working on it, there's gains to be made. All criticisms aside, this is definitely still a super-fun twist on the source material, adapting it to a new stylistic palette and introducing a ton of fresh ideas. It's a fresh spin that feels totally fresh. You've peppered a ton of creative ideas throughout the arrangement, including the walk-down at 1:29 which is incredibly engaging and snaps me back into the moment before leading into a powerful presentation of the chorus. There's tons of spirit here, and that ultimately prevails over any technical hiccups. YES

Artist: Gaspode One of the first games I played on the Amiga was Menace, a side-scrolling shooter with a great soundtrack. The main theme in the game is only about 2:45 min. long, but it contains a lot of energy, melodies and changes to play with. The title-theme is a little bit slower. And between the main and the boss theme there’s the iconic danger-sample which sets the mood for the boss. I tried to integrate all three themes in my remix. More info about the game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menace_(video_game) Games & Sources: Name of game(s) arranged: »Menace« Name of individual song(s) arranged: »Title«, »Main Theme«, »Boss Theme« (don’t know if these are the real titles) Track list: 0:23 == 1. Title - David Whittaker 3:53 == 2. In-Game - David Whittaker 6:45 == 3. Boss - David Whittaker Title Theme:

This starts off with some beautiful wintery bell textures before you chop it up into something decidedly groovier! I was thrown off at first by the sharp cutoff on the bell sounds but once the beat comes in, it works really well in context. There's a lot going on here within the 5 minute runtime, but none of it feels superfluous or overstuffed at any given point. The mixing is some of the clearest I've heard from you. It helps that the source samples you're working with are also very high quality, but this feels hi-fi in all the right places, and the lo-fi textures are used deliberately for creative effect and never come across as a shortcoming in the mixing. There's a few issues that I'll go into, but this hits far more marks than it misses, and the marks that it hits are right on target! You've created a very beautiful, unique soundscape that is brimming with creativity. I've come to expect nothing less from the artists involved! My main beef with this track is the lack of beef in the 808/bassline throughout - I totally get what you were going for, but it feels like it's playing too high on the octave to really function as a bassline and fill the role it's intended. I also appreciate the creative idea of the call-and-response panning starting at 2:11, but the sample is mixed loudly and it ends up feeling more disorienting. I also noticed that the cello in the intro felt strangely distant due to the heavy reverb, and didn't blend super well with the rest of the soundscape, in addition to being panned quite far off to one side. Not a dealbreaker but worth noting. The acoustic guitar also doesn't quite feel like it lives in the same space as the other instruments. Easy vote for me at the end of the day, despite my reservations about a few elements not blending into the soundscape quite as cleanly as I'd like. Nice work! EDIT: 12/17 - still good for me! YES

Version 2 update notes: <**ADDENDUM: New 808 Bass VSTi, Violin VSTi and their associated written parts courtesy of Zack (once again saving my ass, LOL). TYVM for the feedback. Hope the quick turnaround and adjustments made help. ♥> COLLABORATORS [FEAT.]: Zack Parrish = *Live Acoustic Guitar, *Fretless Bass VSTi, *Glass Harp / Armonica VSTi, *Cello VSTi *Children's Choir VSTi & *Pipe Organ VSTi # Festive greetings, J's! Originally done for The Coop & Dyne's *17th* "An OverClocked Christmas" unofficial album, this is my chill take on NieR's Snow in Summer, with quite a few very appreciated, last minute collab additions courtesy of Zack. Although this will be my third year contributing to the album, (the previous years done with tracks from Snowboard Kids, Secret of Mana, and Mega Man X3--respectively), I have been wanting to remix this song since the first time I participated back in 2021. It had taken years to finally conceptualize it in full, (and giving up on a couple of not-so-great mash-up ideas for it,) but I am happy it has finally come to fruition in 2023, where now I can feel confident in creating and mixing its transformative content and executing the plan to do it with. And, honestly, I am glad I finally put my mind to the fire and kindled the courage to open up the source MIDI and take a look, otherwise I would have never known just how thoroughly complex and harmonically-driven the source was. With source usage, it is throughout the whole song, start to finish, with no repeats. I said to myself..."why break and recreate something that is already beautiful?" Instead, I elected to *add* to it, rather than *subtract*, starting by changing the instrumentation entirely to fit a whole different genre bend. This arrangement is akin to the relaxing vibes in my remixes for "A Wish" (Secret of Mana) and "Big Snowman" (Snowboard Kids), yet it is not as somber as "The Frozen City" (MMX3). I am not a huge Christmas-y person, however, I love many things that are "Christmas-spirited / adjacent", as well as a few fairly traditional ones that make an exception (e.g. "Carol of the Bells"). I tried to encapsulate those aspects of Christmas songs I do really enjoy in this mix, such as: lots of strings, pretty bells & chimes, choirs, plenty of percussive elements, pipe organs, ritzy piano, jazzy bass, etc--but, employ them with a bit of a twist; a nice undertone of Lo-Fi / Hip-Hop, indicative of the snappy percussion and plucky bass, as well as the low flute / whistle-y, whiny / minimoog saw synth that has an East-West Coast/90s flair (i.e. that "oooo-weee-ooo" you hear in a lot of Oldskool Rap tracks, such as "Big Poppa" by Notorious B.I.G.) There...wasn't really much to my creative approach this time around, as my focus was mainly considering what I could do to showcase a different spin and feeling from its original incarnation without "breaking the mold". An...iteration that had equal parts the feelings of hope and happiness, and solemnity and loneliness that could be invoked during the (generally) joyous holiday season, against the original's more depressive emotion, that filters up and crescendo into the feeling of almost...oppression--religious fervor turned into militaristic battle music midway through the song. I never got to play NieR (although I own the original and Automata), so this is me taking the raw emotion I felt from the source alone, without context or ties to the game, and changing it into something very..."me"...I suppose. I just know the first time I listened to the source, the choir pulled me in and the drumbeat lulled me to stay till the end, and I wanted to simply mimic that ebb and flow in a "me" manner. This one is probably one of my more "conservative" remixes, but I'm a firm believer in not all songs being created equal nor should get the same treatment, and I did not feel this one needed to be bombastic or as over-the-top with the sheer insanity some of my other pieces of work came to be. It's subtle, it's Xmas-inspired, and my hope is that this one can make it in for the holidays. I know I had only submitted one other Christmas-related track, and sadly MMX3 / Blizzard Buffalo was rejected and did not make the cut. I will return to it shortly, however I hope people enjoy this one, and this one has a chance. Have a Merry Christmas and thank you for the time and consideration to give this track due judgement. I pray for the best. Games & Sources: NieR Gestalt & RepliCant Original Soundtrack; Track 1 - 夏ノ雪 Snow in Summer; Composer(s): Studio Monaca & Keiichi Okabe et. al.; Release Date: 21 April 2010; Publisher / Label: Sony Music Distribution; Producer: SQUARE ENIX

Beautiful blend of acoustic instruments covering a lovely selection of source tunes to start off. Everything about this is nearly perfect, with the exception of the percussion, which just isn't working for me on any level. The drums are way too loud, not sequenced with a lot of humanization or variation, and the samples themselves are immersion breaking. If you could fix (or hell, even remove the percussion) this would be an easy pass! NO (resubmit)

I'm falling in line with @Chimpazilla on this one - you bit off a LOT with this arrangement but man, is that arrangement a triumph! Easily one of your strongest to date, especially for a solo endeavor. I am not going to pore over details here, but I did find the mixing at the :15 mark until the drums kicked in to be the most problematic. In my book, it would be a damn shame if this were not fixable and this wasn't heard by the masses. I do hope Ivan is able to make some changes to balance certain parts and clean things up a little more, but I think this is comfortably above our bar, flaws and all. YES

Right off the bat, I'm hearing some cool textures and modulation, and the cool sound design continues throughout the arrangement. There's a cool sense of dread in the pacing of the arrangement, it feels like it's constantly pulsating and brewing towards something, but never fully explodes (this is something I really appreciate, and not a critique!) The drums are probably the weakest part of this arrangement, they are mixed very dry (especially the toms!) and up-front in terms of volume, so it highlights the fact that you're working with some pretty basic samples that are not sequenced with a ton of nuance either. I notice that your tom fills consistently don't resolve to anything on the downbeat, like a crash or an impact, so they feel detached and lackluster. I also found the glitch fills, such as the one at 3:00, to be not particularly effective because the fill doesn't lead into anything - it just happens and then the track returns back to the same exact energy, with no impact or resolution. I'm not sure if I'm explaining this right, but although I like the idea, I don't think the execution lands. The mixing feels rough around the edges, particularly in terms of volume. The intro bass comes in loud and hot, and in general it feels like your levels are cranked up too high and the elements are competing with each other. Although everything is generally audible, I feel like that's more because there just isn't a lot going on in the soundscape, so it's not the most effective way of filling out your frequency range. Arrangement-wise, this is actually really good, exactly in line with what we're looking for in terms of expansion on the source material and giving it your own personal touch. But the mixing and sound choices, as well as the implementation of the drum and filter fills, leaves a bit to be desired before this is ready. Really strong start though, I hope you find the feedback useful and get this back to us! NO (resubmit!)

Link Main ReMixer name: TheManPF (User ID: 35318) Additional artists: Zach Chapman; Ian Martyn Submission: Game: 3D Pinball: Space Cadet Name of arrangement: Into the Black Hole Songs arranged: Main Theme (https://youtu.be/Zyyn5rvmJ9I) Original composer: Matt Ridgway System: Windows Year: 1995 Comments: Ladies and gentlemen, brace yourselves... we're going to SPACE This track was arranged in October 2022 for Dwelling of Duels, theme Maxis games, I thought it would be fun to try to cover something that doesn't have "Sim" in the name, then I found out Maxis developed the space cadet pinball game that came with my Windows pc all the way back in the late 90s, I used to be a computer games kid, so I played this a lot, along with a lot of other small, shitty computer games. I never knew this game had music though. I expanded on the original motif a lot, and even sprinkled a few references to other pieces of music, namely "Also sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss (more commonly known as that one song used in 2001: A Space Odyssey), and "Sun of Nothing" by Between the Buried and Me, I only changed the key so as to fit with the space cadet's theme (SIKE, they're actually in the same key already, what are the odds????). Everything else in the arrangement is developed from the motifs of the main theme of the space cadet, the melody is very fast, so in a lot of parts I break it down into smaller chunks or use it as a background element so as to not overwhelm, since I try to go for more of a slow burn with this. I also used a bunch of NASA recordings (they're publicly available on their website) for the intro and outro. In this story, an astronaut is tasked to explore the first ever black hole, and slowly starts up their spaceship, and blasts off into the void of space. Slowly but surely, they get closer and closer to the black hole, but just as they're about to make it, they get scared, and decide to turn around and float into the sun instead (where Sun of Nothing comes up). During this reflective moment, they try to collect themselves and decide if this is a task worth doing, but eventually, they get motivated, and regain their strength back, turning around and once again flying into the hole, getting closer and closer until everything gets distorted into a big crunch. The ending reflects that this astronaut reached the black hole, but whether they survived or not is up in the air. I actually came up with this story long after the song was done, which is a super fascinating thing to me, how you can come up with interpretations for pieces of music that weren't necessarily thought about when they were made, this is the image this song brought to me, but anyone else is free to have their own interpretation! Yay! This song placed 3rd out of 13 tracks in Maxis month, with the help of my awesome friends Zach and Ian, who played bass and synths respectively. I did everything else aka arrangement, sequencing, mix, and electric guitars.

Contact Information Your ReMixer name: Ｓｙｎｔｈｍａｇｅ░Ξｖｅｎｇｌａｒｅ (or if you prefer Synthmage Evenglare) Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged : Knuckles Chaotix Name of arrangement: Synth Into Summer Name of individual song(s) arranged: Door Into Summer

ReMixer: janet-wallace Name: Janet Wallace Email: User id: 38384 Game: Final Fantasy IX (Square, 2000) Arrangement: Kingdom of Eternal Ran and Sorrow Song Arranged: Burmecia's Theme Composer: Nobuo Uematsu Game system: Playstation 1 Game genre: RPG DAW used: LMMS About the remix: This is a track meant to be appreciated under different states of mind. A set of Rhodes Pianos playing on both left and right channels to create a sense of urgency, followed by a 8-bit synth and a background drone that further accentuates the melancholy in order to create, or in this case, recreate the desolate, oppressive atmosphere of Burmecia, Kingdom of Eternal Rain through sound. My intention with the Rhodes percussion was to make something that sounded like water ripples clashing against the ground, and I was inspired by one of Peter Gabriel's songs, "San Jacinto'', while composing it.

Previous Decision I'm so glad you all liked my track. Thank you all for the incredible feedback. I've taken another shot at this and tried my best to address all of your comments. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Artist: Lucas Guimaraes, Charles Ritz Oh man, this is a fun one. To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Ocarina of Time, Ro Panuganti, David Russell, and David Erick Ramos have all teamed up to produce a community charity album called Through the Sacred Realm. I knew that I didn't have much time, so I pitched a simple test: Can I emulate the style of Nujabes? I shopped it around to Charles Ritz with a demo that *kinda* got there. I was messing with every technique that I could. The main technique that got used on this track was writing the arrangement to be slower, and then speeding it up with changing the pitch. Similar to how hip-hop and video game music artists will often pitch samples, but with the full track being the sample. I specifically went after the sound of his second album, Modal Soul. I wasn't quite feeling what I had on the demo, but a few people gave me one piece of feedback that helped: It emulated Nujabes vibes. Charles came back to me close to deadline with a piano track that REALLY vibed with some placeholder bass and loops from splice. It was already sounding pretty good, which gave me a lot of confidence in producing the rest of it. He came up with a revised bass track while I focused on getting the drums there. To go extra on emulating Nujabes, I threw in a lot of sound effects for the ~atmosphere~, I added some Oboe (performed on the EWI 4000s with SWAM woodwinds) and we worked together to add in some vocals. I then mixed it, and then mastered it separate from the one on the album. (Just wanted to get some mastering practice in!) The biggest lesson this project posed is just how far a couple of well done pieces can take you. For a while I've been struggling with producing my tracks instead of just arranging, but this was one where every step of the way, we worked together to see if the changes we were making the track better. This was definitely different in the process, and I'm not quite sure how to replicate it again (I'll certainly try!) but I'm very glad we made it. It's the most collaborative experience I've ever got to have with a track and I hope to share more of those experiences with other people, - including Charles. Source:

Notified artist with the current votes, until we hear back, please feel free to continue voting like normal!

The quality of the arrangement and performances here is undeniable. I have to echo the issues brought by the rest of the judges panel though and call out some obvious balance issues with many of the leads being drowned out by the bass. A few key places where this stood out to me the most was the melodica/violin from :15-:48, the brass ensemble from :48-:55, and the guitar solo at 2:48, which feels like it's being crushed under the weight of the bass and the unrelenting snare writing. You've got some amazing performances and solos that I can barely hear. To be blunt, I think this needs another pass at mixing to really reach its potential. This is a real close call - I usually skew on the side of "with something this full of good stuff, let's keep technical issues in perspective and not hold something flawed but ambitious back from the community" but in this case, I think some of those amazing things are actually being held back by the mix because of how inaudible they are. Think you guys could take a second stab at polishing this a little more? NO EDIT: Yeah, this is good now! YES

"Badass" barely feels like a sufficient enough descriptor to cover what you've made here. You've taken perhaps the most unsettling original song in the entire Celeste soundtrack and ramped up the dread to new heights with sludgy guitar riffs and a deep bass tone that evoke the ice-cold heaviness of Deftones. It's polished and gnarled at the same time. The clean guitars come in at just the right time to provide some contrast to the heavier sections surrounding it. The drums hold things down and know when it's time to get flashy for a few really well-executed fills. What more is there to say? You done good. YES

Wickedly lush chiptune arrangement with an amazing sense of movement and progression - I never feel like we're treading water at any given point. There's truly a great sense of movement on a macro and micro sense, with some perfectly-executed filter sweeps and transitions to jump from section to section, as well as a tasty array of arpeggios and rhythmic bits to keep your heart racing. Easy peasy. YES