Emunator   Judges ⚖️

Credits: Emunator: Arrangement, programming, guitar/bass/percussion (programmed), mixing, mastering Psamathes: Vocals Pixels & Paradiddles: Rhythm guitars, lead guitar (e-bow), drums (kit) Ridley Snipes: Bass (live), vocal mixing Lucas Guimaraes: Guitar (clean) Chromatic Apparatus: Cello Theophany: Guitar (drone, lead), additional vocal editing (special thanks to Chimpazilla and Snappleman for extra assistance with mixing and mastering advice) Notes: This was my entry for Dwelling of Duels, where it placed 7th out of 27th for October 2023's Horror Month. I love competitions like this, because it gives me an opportunity to branch out of my comfort zone and try new things while under a deadline, which means that I actually have a chance of finishing something. This piece, aside from being my first submission to Dwelling of Duels, marks a few other firsts for me - my first time working with a lead vocalist, and my first time producing metal. My catalog of previous remixes probably doesn't imply this but I'm actually a huge metalhead, so to actually be able to pull something like this off was a dream come true. The reference for this piece was Chelsea Wolfe (specifically Twin Fawn), whose dynamic arrangements mix clean and distorted vocals with industrial, gothic, and doom metal elements. I actually had a fairly easy time with the initial arrangement, and quickly recruited a team of performers to help bring the vision to life. Psamathes was an obvious choice for lead vocalist - her entire vibe was PERFECT for the brand of gothic metal I was aiming for, and she was totally on board with the reference tracks I sent. Chromatic Apparatus and ParadiddlesJosh were also no-brainer choices - total professionals who really elevated the arrangement beyond my capabilities. CA also shared some home-brewed horror sfx that he recorded himself, which you'll hear throughout the piece! As far as guitars go, that's where we got a little more creative. I'll give a brief breakdown of how each person contributed - 5 different guitarists (if you count my programmed ones) contributed to the final product. It was truly a blast getting to mix and match everyone's contributions, and thankfully the arrangement was long enough that every part had room to breathe. Myself: Original part writing for rhythm and e-bow lead, sequenced tremolo guitars (1:33-1:56, 4:55-5:55) and feedback effects during the outro Pixelseph: Distorted rhythm guitars, e-bow lead throughout the song Ridley Snipes: Distorted bass (which was actually just a pitched-down electric guitar) Theophany: Distorted noise guitars throughout, tremolo lead guitar from 3:13-3:53 Lucas: Clean guitar riffs from 1:23-3:13 If the impending DoD deadline lit a fire under me to get the arrangement completed, it also completely torched me on the back-end production. I was working non-stop up to the day of the deadline, and only received the drums and raw vocals 3 hours before submissions were due (through absolutely no fault of my collaborators, to be clear! The procrastination was all on me.) I barely left myself with time to mix anything - I literally slapped an Ozone preset on the master, exported the song and uploaded it 1 minute before the deadline, dredging up some horrible flashbacks to uploading my college homework at 11:59pm on the due date. Because of this, the submitted version contained some pretty unfortunate technical errors, namely me forgetting to disable a gain plugin AFTER my mastering chain, effectively clipping the entire track by +5dB. I'm honestly amazed I managed to pull out a 7th place finish with how rough it sounded (it's still preserved in all its sausaged glory here, if you're a masochist.) After the competition, I enlisted some help to give this the proper level of shine that it desperately needed. I continued to polish the instrumental mix, Theophany helped me edit the vocals properly in Melodyne, and Ridley Snipes flexed his producer chops with some really creative vocal processing across the whole track. I then made several passes at the mix/master, working with Chimpazilla and Snappleman over a long span of time while I tried to perfect everything. Finally, after 7 months, it's reached its final form! A million thanks to everyone for the brilliance you contributed to this, and patience while I got it across the finish line. Silent Hill 4: The Room - Room of Angel

@prophetik music Sorry to be difficult - I had to make some edits to this one for Pixel Mixers and I used it as a chance to try to address some of your concerns with the mix as well. The disparity between the quantization on the drums was an intentional choice to make things sound... wonky, same with the chorusing effect you called out - it's Earthbound, I was going for jarring psychadelic effects! But I tweaked the mix across the board and did some stuff to the bass to hopefully address the other concerns. In particular the drums should be sounding a lot more cohesive in this version. New version up in the first post! Hope you dig it.

Zack asked me to just give this one a listen, so I figure I'll drop a vote on it in while it's fresh in my head. First thing that jumps out to me is the pristine recording and engineering quality on this track. There's a tremendous sense of stereo placement and depth, even though everything feels very close and intimate. The performances are exactly as on-point as I'd expect from the artists involved, and the arrangement is dynamic and really gets as much juice out of the source as one could hope to get for an acoustic arrangement. This is becoming one of the hallmarks of Zack's arranging that I've noticed after working with him personally on more projects - the arrangements are written with a composer's mindset. There's a lot of interpretation and original parts added to the source material, but it's all born from an understanding of what made the original work in the first place, so the original never feels like it is being sidelined or left behind. Really a beautiful, evocative piece all around, great work gents! YES

I'm in 100% agreement with Kris here - this is an incredible arrangement but the mixing is not suited for the genre and is contributing to a LOT of mud that makes this difficult to listen to and fully enjoy. All of the performances and the way that you integrated them into the synthwave soundscape is flawless, I wouldn't change a thing about this. The main thing that needs to happen is to clear up the soundscape by attenuating some of the unnecessary frequencies, rebalance the volume levels of your instruments with a bit more precision, and go a little bit further with your sidechaining to clean up some additional space so you don't have to crank your leads quite as loud. Unfortunately I do feel like the production issues significantly dampen the experience on this track so I'm going to send it back for another round of revisions. I hope to hear this again! NO (resubmit!)

I'm going to quickly close this one out because I think the above three judges did a fantastic job expressing what works and doesn't work about this track. I love the studious approach to iterating a theme in as many different styles as possible, and keeping it cohesive along the way. But the orchestral programming needs a ton of polish to make it sound more like it was performed by an actual orchestra, rather than just a series of instruments being played off of a MIDI file. I will also add that there's some very massive dynamic jumps in terms of volume. Obviously, some degree of that is warranted, given the shifts in styles, but your quiet parts get REALLY quiet, and it doesn't sound intentional. You can still achieve this effect without requiring the listener to actively engage with the volume slider throughout the song in order to maintain a comfortable listening experience. This can start with normalizing the volume levels and automating them in certain parts, and can be further balanced out with some subtle compression on the master channel. There's so many great ideas here, but this feels like a draft rather than a polished production - I do hope we see this back someday! NO (resubmit!)

Rad. I'm impressed by how much clarity you maintain in your mix, despite everything being pushed to the limits. I don't necessarily feel like everything is clearly audible (the orchestral elements are definitely mixed on the quiet side) but I also don't find that the marginalized elements contribute a great deal of mud that obscures the main focus, which is very clearly on bass, synths, and drums. That's an achievement in and of itself, this could have easily become a total mess. The parts that are in focus are razor-sharp and delightfully engaging all the way through, and you cycle through a number of sources with fluidity as well. Not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I love it. Rock on! YES

Additional ears? You got it. I'm coming in cold on this one so you're going to get all of my impressions - not saying that all of this needs to be addressed to pass a resubmission, but hopefully you can make use of the brain dump. The intro brings some really cool flavor - the noisy distorted elements remind me of Porter Robinson's Fellow Feeling (see the 3:00 mark if you're short on time.) If you're going for random blasts of noise, I think this works - if you're trying to make it sound like footsteps stomping through, it's not giving that impression at all because every stomp is exactly the same. There's no variation in the sample and it reaches uncanny valley territory fast when you play the sample multiple times in a row. This all boils down to what you are going for here, but either way, I think some subtle variation with each repetition of the sample/layer of samples (without knowing how you actually did this) would build immersion. Some of your orchestral elements (flute, glock) are very resonant, oftentimes peaking at their fundamental frequency between 3-6db above everything else. The bells in the intro also feel comparably dry. This will probably get ironed out in your next pass, but I'm going to point it out anyway. The orchestral sequencing sounds workable for the most part, you're getting good mileage out of your samples. It's not the best but I do think you're using them effectively for the most part - the main areas that sound really noticeably fake are the half-step chromatic runs on the strings at times like 2:48. I just don't think the big ensemble patch moves fast enough to accommodate that writing, and would recommend adjusting the lead writing to fit better within the limitations of your samples. I also feel like the intro could use some deeper sub bass presence. It's not that the stomps aren't contributing any bass frequencies, but a big cinematic sub drop or sustained bass to accompany the stomps (see Fellow Feeling) would make this feel much more dynamic, or have some risers building up tension in the low end leading into :49. The decision to intersperse various melodic elements (glock, harmonic strings, cello) was a good one - otherwise, this intro would be way too long. It already feels a bit lengthy as-is, but those additions help pad it out quite a bit and justify the length. However, this gets to the problem of transitions and buildup, which I think is my biggest gripe currently. There is rarely much going on to signal that we're approaching a new musical idea, so even though you have some very dramatic changes throughout your arrangement (which are quite inspired and interesting, I must add!) they come on very suddenly. Cinematic risers, fills, sweeps, etc. are a part of this equation and could definitely be used to greater effect here to bridge your gaps, but there's another element I want to touch on: the idea of movement in your part writing. You do a great job building atmosphere and have all the makings of a very dramatic song, but there's a lack of movement on a compositional level. When cinematic music is clicking well, composition and sound design have a lot of synergy. Right now, you are doing a good job building an interesting sound palette for each individual section, but the underlying chord progression feels weak. It hovers around the tonic chord for most of the time, and even when you do have chord changes, they don't feel properly supported with anything strong in the lower frequencies. This is where a bit of music theory troubleshooting could go a long way - your melody has many opportunities for powerful chord movements that build drama and tension, especially as you lead into new sections, but you're not fully capitalizing on that potential. I don't think it would even require changing up much fundamental about the rest of the parts; just identify the chord progression you're playing and make sure that there's strong support in the bass for whatever chord/root note you're trying to play. I don't know how else to suggest addressing this without studying up on some fundamentals of music theory, but certain chords just move naturally into others and can help you allude to future changes and help transition between vastly different musical ideas in a way that feels rewarding. I think you're running up against some of the same problems I faced before I made the decision to finally start researching music theory. I had a conceptual idea in my brain for what each section of my song was supposed to do, and could support it in terms of selecting sounds and picking grooves/effects/etc., but it boiled down to luck whether or not it worked on a fundamental composition level, and I spun my wheels trying to fix that issue with every other production tool known to man. I think if you were to pick an area to focus on, the big orchestral section starting at 2:36 would be where I'd focus my energy most. Everything else before and after that can skate by a little easier, but when you're trying to make a big melodic orchestral statement, the fundamentals need to be strong first. Figure out what chord you're playing on each measure and map them out in sequence using just a basic patch. I find that it helps to actually just plot my chord progressions out on piano so there's no temptation to get distracted by sound design. See if the song sounds strong and compelling when it's just played on a single instrument, and go from there.

There's a lot going on here but it doesn't ever feel like there's too much going on at once. Every instrument knows its place and how to step aside and share the spotlight when it's appropriate. This lends itself to the "live band, but not really" vibe - even though you've got a ton of different contributors adding their own touch to the piece, it takes a skilled arranger to make it all fit together tastefully, so props to you TSori for making that happen! I would have to say that my only gripe with the final product is regarding tone shaping on certain instruments. The slide guitar is a cool addition but it's drowning in a ton of reverb so that it doesn't really feel present in the mix, which feels extra strange when combined with the distortion on the guitar tone. I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to perceive that instrument and it stuck out in a negative way. Similarly, the piano performance is great but the tone itself feels timid - the piano is almost all transient and not much perceivable sustain, so even though I presume this was performed live with a sustain pedal and/or manually sustaining certain notes, it comes away with this paradoxically-fake sound as if it was programmed in with MIDI. This was a tough issue to fully articulate so I might not have identified the source of it perfectly, but it caught me off guard. Thankfully, despite a few weaker spots in the mix, this is still a joy to listen to and positively highlights all of the contributions that everyone brought to the table. YES

The analog wobble is real! There's certainly a great deal of resonance in the filter envelopes on these synths, but overall I found this to be a smooth set of sounds - because the overall mixdown was balanced with a hefty bass synth that filled out the frequency spectrum, the overall feel of the mix was totally sufficient for me. I'm seeing mud called out in other votes, but again, it feels more like deliberate warmth and less like a mixing-level oversight. The ending fizzled out, but what are ya gonna do? The arrangement has already been covered at length so I'm not going to dwell on it, but in my book, the arrangement approach is fine. The expansion in sound design keeps the first half of the track engaging so that even though it's compositionally conservative, there's something new being offered from the jump, and then you get into more engaging territory with the arrangement as well to round things out. It's a bit unconventional but I don't see any problem with it, and I personally enjoyed listening to this quite a bit! There's a lot to get lost in. YES

Insanely good track to everyone involved, this is the kind of music I want to be making. Y'all are nuts.

Credits: minusworld - arrangement, production, electric guitar, VST programming Graham Hardaway - bass "Stunt Course on Easy Street" was one of my earliest Dwelling of Duels (DoD) entries for Fresh Month in 2022. It's a blues cover of the Training Course theme; I used the SNES version as a reference. Paperboy 2 is a silly and simple game about stopping breakaway baby carriages and gun-wielding robbers with flying newspapers at its core, but it's a game I remember fondly because my grandmother had at her house when I was a kid. The simple I-IV structure of the Training Course theme fits into a blues form easily, so I did my best Stevie Ray Vaughn impression, turned the rhythm into a shuffle, and added a horn section (Hollywood Pop Brass VST) because why not? :) Not much else to say about this one. Hope you enjoy it! Paperboy 2 - Training Course

Artist Name: Gaspode I stumbled across this beautiful melody, which is only 15 seconds long. But I tried to remix it anyway. Over time the remix grow in a strange kind of way, unlike a real song-structure this is more like meandering. Games & Sources Name of game(s) arranged: »The Legend Of Zelda – Oracle Of Ages« Name of individual song(s) arranged: »Nayru’s Song«

Resident Donkey Kong Country fanboy here, sending you a DM :)

This is an easy call. The production quality and performances are masterful across the board, and I truly don't hear a weak link. When the brass and strings come in, it's an instant classic - those sound truly stupendous. I have to especially shout out PocketCrow's mixing abilities here - you make this sort of production quality sound effortless. I really have nothing but praise to sing for this - it's a triumph from everyone involved and the artists who put it together. YES

Alright, so this might be a first - due to a misunderstanding, both Larry AND myself did full writeups for this submission without knowing it! So, here's my full commentary, now in review form! :D H36T continues his hot streak of modern cinematic reimaginings of classic JRPG themes, this time with a dramatic take on “Bonds of Sea and Fire” from Xenogears that leans into the idea of contrast on multiple levels. Although the final product that you’re hearing now is pristine and polished, the process wasn’t as straightforward as the end result might suggest - it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get here. I’ll let the artist explain: “Given everything I've learned since I've made this song, it sort of pains me that I can't revisit it easily. The original file is lost to the ether and while I could try and recreate some of it and do some new things here and there...some things are best left in the past and its time to move forward. Thus we come to this song, which if you know anything about Xenogears, sort of represents the past itself. The approach I used is mostly straightforward and adding pieces here and there that represent me as a musician and my influences. In that way, there is my past wrapped up in this song as well. The second half adds some newer elements and I see this as more of the "fire" to the first half's "sea." The end...is a bit unfortunate and I wish I could go back and fix some things and change others. But as with the past, there is no fixing this guy and he is who he is. So as god once said, "come as you are." and as such, I bring "Back to the Sea, Back to the Fire" for judgement! Maybe this old dog of a song will teach me some new tricks through evaluation.” Astute listeners may have picked up on the fact that, despite the submission letter suggesting that the project file was lost to the sands of time, what you’re hearing now is actually a resubmission. The first iteration was initially rejected by the judges panel, albeit in a split decision, with the majority of judges taking issue with the overall conservative nature of the arrangement, especially in the first half, as well as the “choir practice” at the end of the arrangement feeling detached from the rest of the piece. These are all critiques that H36T himself preemptively called out in his own submission letter, but after the first rejection, he dug deep within himself and his hard drive and was able to recover the long-lost file to take another stab at it. Nearly a year later, we got a revised version addressing the criticism from the first submission: “Another year, another resub! I've been pretty good so far at taking a second look at things and trying to correct errors and be more creative. Let's see if I can accomplish the same here. Funny story, in my original submission, I misspelled my own track. However, I actually liked the typo better! Something about blackening over the fire sounds cool. Anyway, though I thought I lost this track, it was sitting out in the open named something completely different. Unfortunately, that meant another track was lost LOL. Seeing as I don't know what track that was....I'm not too sad about it. As far as the update is concerned, I reworked the ending to be more related to the song at hand and added a bit more flavor in the middle. There are some technical mishaps here and there I'm sure but I'm not sweating them. Here is hoping you like this updated version! Until next time.” A little goes a long way here - the extra personalized touches really add a lot to the first half of the arrangement, such as the lush vocal padding, tasteful orchestral percussion fills, or the hint of tension between the flute and choir at 1:37 that alludes to the more overt dissonance that appears at 2:15 and 3:11. All of these minor additions keep the first half fresh; even though H36T plays it close to Mitsuda’s original source material, you can still feel the artist’s personal touch coming through. Around the halfway mark, we dive into a more personalized, dramatic approach featuring more original flute riffing and a very cinematic-sounding supporting string section. We finally wrap up with a grand cinematic swell of strings, choir, and flute that teeters on the edge of falling apart but ultimately finds a satisfying resolution in the end (the metaphor really writes itself here.) The contrast between original and source material, tonal and dissonant elements, relaxing and dramatic moods – between sea and fire, if you will – all adds up to a result that respects the intention of the original Bonds of Sea and Fire, while also taking it to a level that simply wouldn’t have been possible on the original PS1 hardware. On a personal level, I have to commend H36T for his persistence and willingness to approach feedback with humility and grace. Putting yourself in a position to receive intense criticism on a piece that you’ve poured your heart and soul into that ultimately results in a binary “yes or no” vote can be intensely vulnerable. However, he’s consistently proved willing to take that feedback in good faith and channel it toward becoming a better musician, while also not sweating the small stuff in the end. To me, this ReMix is a case study in what makes a successful resubmission - humility, persistence, self-awareness, and a little bit of luck all played a factor here and I hope other budding artists take note!

I definitely voted on the original submission but I don't recall it very clearly, so I'm going into this resubmission essentially with fresh ears. The intro hits us immediately with some tense, brooding analog buildups. The bass frequencies feel sparse and underpopulated but it leaves room to grow off of, and could easily be chalked up to a stylistic decision. I'm just used to hearing cinematic tracks like this with a bigger sub presence. Many of the synths and individual elements feel exposed and I can't help but feel like some sustained drone/ambiance used throughout the piece would help make this much more rich. At 2:15, the soundscape starts to flesh out and I'm feeling this more - it's a slow burn, but we got here. Your sound selection across the board is pretty great, feeling modern and in-line with Aquaria's aesthetic, but bringing some of your own flair to the table as well. It's simultaneously retro and modern. I do recall the previous submission feeling quite aimless in terms of arrangement, so I'm happy to say that doesn't seem to be the case here. The dynamic curve is much more deliberate and makes for a much more cohesive experience. The spoken word interlude is great from a conceptual level, but the vocals feel far too loud and don't blend in with the rest of the sounds. They feel pasted on top, and this highlights a general issue I'm having with this arrangement: I don't think that reverb and other creative mixing effects were utilized effectively to glue all of your elements together. Take the delay tail on the word "Aquaria" at the end of the poem. It feels like you're trying to create an atmospheric delay throw, but because there's so little diffusion on your delay, it actually feels more like you're just looping the sample over and over again, and it breaks the immersion for me. This is tough for me - the arrangement and sound design are strong points here, but I still am left feeling underwhelmed by the atmosphere and immersion due to certain elements (specifically the vocals) feeling too loud and inconsistently mixed with the rest of the soundscape, and a general sense of sparseness in the mix due to limited bass frequencies and lack of padding elements. I do think this gets by on the strength of its arrangement and concept, but I still think there's room for improvement on future submissions if you approach this style again. YES (borderline)

I hard-disagree with the idea of rejecting this on the grounds of the ending - I think it's fine and I've certainly heard the tape stop/record skip ending used in other contexts both in and out of the OCR sphere. "Mass of distortion" feels like a hyperbole compared to what I'm hearing, it's just some tape warble effects and saturation. That decision feels like like a stylistic decision to me, I'm very surprised to see this with a NO vote on solely that reason. Ending aside, this track represents a significant improvement over the original submission. This boasts a much fuller soundscape that better matches the production quality and richness of the material that inspired it. The drums could still stand to be a little more organic and humanized (most drum kits in this style were sampled from actual live breaks rather than sequenced, and there's certain times you can really tell that this was programmed in manually from one-shot samples) but it's lightyears ahead of where it was in the last version. Thanks to the revamped mixing, you can even hear elements like the wonderful vocla harmonies that, apparently, were always in the arrangement but never really grabbed my attention before. It's a vibe. YES

Artist Name: Emunator feat. Ridley Snipes, ErichWK Credits: Emunator: Arrangement, production, mixing Ridley Snipes: Kit drums (sequenced) ErichWK: electric bass Chimpazilla: mastering Comments I picked up this track as a last-minute addition to the Pixel Mixers Earthbound compilation - the Summers source is pretty unassuming, but it had some interesting chord movements and frequent key changes that I thought would provide a fun opportunity to attempt something a little more liberal and interpretive than I usually do. Inspired by chillwave/indie pop artists like Washed Out and Tame Impala's more psychedelic work, my arrangement latches onto a few specific motifs from the original and treats them as standalone hooks. At :42, the original "Summers" briefly dips into a different key before coming right back up to the original melody again. I subverted that by staying in the transposed key for the rest of the arrangement to introduce some drama to this happy summer vacation. Trevor and Erich go nuts on the drums and bass respectively, we get a little synth solo action, and it all winds down. No frills, just vibes. Enjoy! Games & Sources Earthbound - Summers, Eternal Tourist Trap

Not going to rehash the source usage debate at length, it checks out. I agree that the overall feeling of the production is flat, which is a shame because the arrangement is pretty dynamic and covers a lot of territory ranging from cinematic to synthwave to rock. The instruments and synths are all well chosen, but the overall mix doesn't really instill a lot of character into the parts you've written. Chimpazilla called out the lack of high end sparkle and I agree with this - some light tape saturation or an exciter on certain elements would bring back some warmth and character that this is missing, either on the master chain or at the mixbus level. In addition, the rhythm guitars feel almost pasted on, notably starting at 2:09. It almost feels like the rhythm guitars were sequenced with how rigid they are, which is a shame compared to the lead guitar which is far more expressive. I think this is something you'll look back on a year or two from now and hear a number of ways you could have improved this, but even in its current state, it's certainly serviceable! And the arrangement is very strong, so I have no problems passing in its current form. YES

Y'all, I think we're overthinking this one. It's a jam band roots rock arrangement, a little bit of slop and grit is good for the soul. The only thing that I would consider to really be worth noting on the technical side would be the overall compression/master quality, which leaves very little room to breathe and makes this sound a little less pleasant than it could. I didn't even find the ending to be too abrupt - the song has already said what it needs to say by that point. Viewing this through the lens of a jam band playing this at a dive bar or in a garage rehearsal space, this accomplishes what it sets out to achieve just fine in its current state. This isn't trying to be a perfectly pristine studio-quality recording and I don't think we should be judging it by those standards. YES

Artist Name: Lucas Guimaraes, Emunator ft. Stemage, Chromatic Apparatus NOTE: THIS TRACK IS FOR THE PIXEL MIXERS SILENT HILL ALBUM. IF THIS IS APPROVED, DO NOT POST UNTIL THAT COMES OUT. Lucas Guimaraes - Arrangement, Master Emunator - Production, Mix Stemage - Guitars Chromatic Apparatus - Cello hey you know how I do something different for each cover? Apparently this one's twist is 'giving it a more conservative treatment'. Half-joking aside, I don't think there's a whole lot too interesting to say about this one. I grabbed Stemage, CA, and a mandolinist. My big goal with this track was to have it be my return to Pixel Mixers albums. And then, well, a lot happened during this and a lot happened after this. The very, very short explanation to a long story is I just wanted this track over with. But then I thought about it later - I don't think it was just that. I know I've often harped on other people for having their arrangements be too conservative, but there's just times where the original source tune already lends itself well as a song instead of an infinite loop. Kaze no Ne from Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles is a great example of this. I've brought it up in DoD reviews that both arrangements I've heard of that track are very conservative. But I always emphasize: That's not inherently a bad thing if you know to make other elements stand on their own. Okay, that's enough talking about structure. So my original vision of this was a combo between psychedelic rock and synthwave, which we met in our weirdness. In my journey to get this track over with (delays in performers, bit of a block with the arrangement, etc), Wes (Emunator) offered to help with the mix. Funny enough it only started as drums, but it turned into the full thing. Then he passed it to me to wrap up. Also worth noting, this is my first track with Stemage since Hallucinatory Province. That's like, a 6 year gap in-between tracks. Yeah... uh, we definitely need to keep doing more psychedelic songs together (I was going to say "Psychedelic stuff" but that might have other implications.) I'm trying to make my gaps in-between working with collaborators less long, whoops. ? I hope you all enjoy!

Artist Name: BurningMagma I grew up playing the My Singing Monsters games in California ever since I was a kid, so I wanted to make a tribute for the series, and try to bring in that tropical vibe to the original songs. Also, I was inspired by another ReMix, titled Dovahkiin in Jamaica. It's amazing to see how far the franchise has come and how it impacted my childhood! Anyway, the VST plugins I used were: Instruments: Zebra 2, Kontakt 7, Kontakt Factory Library 2, Shreddage Drums, Shreddage 3.5 Stratus Free, Pearl Concert Grand, Freelodica, and Vintage Organs Effects: Fruity Limiter, SampleX v3, kHs Gain, Fruity parametric EQ 2, Fruity Reeverb 2, Raum, Initial Dynamic Eq, Ozone 11 Equalizer, Pulsar w495, and SSL Native Drumstrip v6 I hope you enjoy listening to this track as much as I enjoyed making it! Games & Sources Games: "My Singing Monsters Playground" (no quotes) by Big Blue Bubble Composers: Dylan Cole, Sam Clark, Tom Meikle 0:02 to 0:15 - the bass is a reference to the Air Island theme from 0:00 to 0:15 0:08 to 0:15 - original piano! 0:15 to 0:22 - the lead corresponds with the Water Island theme from 0:27 to 0:41 0:22 to 0:28 - the second part of this lead goes with Water Island again, but from 0:13 to 0:27 0:28 to 0:41 - in the background, you can hear a variation of the Hub World theme from 0:28 to 0:41 (hey, same timestamps!) 0:41 to 0:55 - the lead corresponds with the Air Island guitar from 0:41 to 1:08 0:55 to 1:08 - this part of the lead goes with another part of the Air Island theme, and it's from 1:35 to 1:49 1:35 to 2:01 - original melody! Sources:

Hot damn Michael. You know sometimes when you can't quite find the words for why something sounds amazingly produced, but you can feel it on a visceral level? That's what the production on this track does to me. Every single sound feels deliberately placed, and there's not a single space in the frequency spectrum that feels neglected or overemphasized. "Empty but full" is an absolutely perfect way to describe this, and I think you've made some tremendous strides in the quality of your mixing and mastering to help achieve this effect. The better frequency balance, spatial presence, and attenuation of harsh frequencies is absolutely felt here. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that this sort of triumph simply wouldn't have been possible a year or two ago, and it speaks to the level ups that you've made as an artist in that time. Even the arrangement itself feels like it flows more naturally than some of your previous genre-bending mini-suite sound design experiments. Would it be going to far to even describe this as a pleasant listen? I don't think so. I'm not sure how you do it, but keep doing it. YES!!!

Honestly, I hate you guys. I don't think I will ever recover - physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually - from the smackdown this track put on me in the first GSM competition. I put out what I consider to be one of the best pieces of music I've ever made, and you just stomped all over it with your stupid synthwave bleeps and psytrance bloops. It's perfectly viable to reject a track on the grounds that it hurts my ears, so why not on the basis of it hurting my feelings? NO ... ... fine. It's good. Really good. I find that the team atmosphere of GSM lends itself to tracks that can sometimes feel like a mashup of everybody's ideas, "executive boardroom style", and I can't say that this doesn't feel that way to an extent, but you exercised such a great level of creative control over the parts that you have that it absolutely works in this track's favor. It feels like an adventure, and psytrance is the perfect musical foundation for this kind of approach. It's a genre that relishes in its buildups, breakdowns, and unexpected hard stops and left turns, and man you've got a lot of them here. It helps that every section of the track is engaging and brings something new to the table, but you transition so expertly between them that the time just flies by [Editor's Note: I wrote this out unironically and forgot the name of the remix title. Any puns are entirely coincidental.] This absolutely does not feel like 6 and a half minutes long. A well deserved victory my friends! YES

Wow, thank you all so much ? I made this track on a whim and needed convincing to even submit/publish it at all, I'm really pleased to see such a positive reaction to it.