Emunator   Judges ⚖️

Absolutely beautiful piano tone and recording here. I'm consistently amazed at how dynamic and varied artists are able to get with these ocarina songs - the core is so simple, but you've demonstrated a mastery of your instrument that allows you to spin the source material in so many different directions without ever feeling simply like a tech demo showcase. There's a clear dynamic curve to your arrangement that feels very deliberate, with the exception of the very sudden ending which felt unsatisfying. On a personal note, the way that this was mic'd picks up a lot of the sustain pedal releases, which felt distracting to me. I normally like leaving ancillary room/performer/pedal noises in recordings, but in this case, it felt weirdly isolated as there wasn't a lot of other organic sounds that made their way into the recording. I actually didn't notice the static buzz that other judges talked about - I thought they were referring to the pedal noises but those are still fully present in Chimpazilla's denoised WAV, so that must be something else entirely. Either way, clear pass for me - it's a really beautiful take that deserves all the accolades it's been given! YES

That intro groove is ridiculous. It's clear that you embraced the silliness of the original source, but gave it a bit of a stumbling cadence that accentuates that energy even further and lets it become fully unhinged. The original source feels like a casual, confident stroll along the first hole fairway, whereas your arrangement strikes me as more of a tipsy stumble over the 17th green after you've spent a day pounding beers on the course. Still just as fun, but definitely a different kind of golf ;) This format gives you a chance to really showcase your musical talents without restraint, and I love it. TSori and Zack both bring the heat, but that's, err, par for the course. The loose swing rhythms that prophetik called out on some of the sections feels in-step with the overall vibe of the track, and scans as a feature, not a defect. Listener mileage may vary, but I'm all on board with this! YES

**Impact of Iwata Album Track** Credits: Production Main arrangement, production, programming, additional editing: Emunator Additional arrangement: CNDR Mixing, mastering: ErichWK Brass arrangement, string arrangement, orchestration: Lucas Guimaraes Additional string arrangement: Marissa Turnage Additional Audio Editing: Zack Parrish, Emunator, Ridley Snipes Band Keys/Synths: Emunator Guitar (Lead/Rhythm): CNDR Bass (Writing and Original Performance): CNDR Bass (Performance): ErichWK Drums, Percussion: ErichWK String Section Violin 1/2: Marissa Turnage Viola: Andrew Steffen Cello: Chromatic Apparatus Brass Section Trumpet: TSori Trombone: Brandon Harnish Winds Flute, Alto Flute: Gamer of the Winds Bassoon: Andrew Gossett Sax - Alto: Lucas Guimaraes, Steven Higbee Sax - Soprano: Gamer of the Winds Sax - Tenor (Ensemble): Lucas Guimaraes, Steven Higbee Sax - Tenor (Solo): Zack Parrish Extra shoutouts to Ridley Snipes, Paradiddles Josh, and Hemophiliac, who also made contributions that were ultimately cut from the final track, and provided invaluable feedback along the way! Comments: Emunator: So, this was supposed to be a lo-fi track. I was supposed to be done with this in 10 hours maximum. But sometimes, when the white rabbit presents itself, you have no choice but to follow and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. In this case, my white rabbit was CNDR casually commenting on my lo-fi work in progress: "Hey, this reminds me a little bit of Earth, Wind and Fire." He laid down some scratch guitar tracks to illustrate the vision (some of which are still present in the final mix at 3:50.) From there, we took that concept to the logical extreme - recruiting an entire band and orchestra ensemble to transform the stunning National Park into a bonafide 70's soul jam. The arrangement started with CNDR and I swapping audio recordings and chord progressions over Discord and Facetime to build out a skeleton arrangement, and him laying down guitar/bass riffs to build off of my keyboard instruments. If I had to pick two words to summarize the next 7 months of work that ensued, it would be this: scope creep. Everything that could be performed live, we found a performer for. We went all-out with the orchestration. We spent days on end in melodyne and iZotope RX polishing the recordings. Even the final mix and master was nearly a month-long process, with some full restarts along the way. From the first concept to the moment I finally had a finished WAV in my hands, the process took me over 150 hours of working time and 7 months, and countless hours of work from a host of collaborators who I am now eternally indebted to. Everyone involved put an irreplaceable touch on the finished product, but I do need to shout out a few key players who really made this possible: CNDR, for being the muse for this arrangement and your tireless effort to help work out an arrangement that captured the essence of 70's soul music, and for your killer guitar and bass chops that brought an unmistakable character to the track. ErichWK, for being an absolute machine on the drums, bass, and behind the console - you put in SO MUCH WORK getting the mix to shimmer in a way that I never could have accomplished myself. You are a true professional, my friend. Lucas Guimaraes and Marissa Turnage, who, in addition to performing many of the parts on the track, took my rudimentary MIDI arrangements and transformed them into a full orchestration and also battled MuseScore and Sibelius to get functional sheet music that our performers could actually use. And Zack Parrish, for volunteering countless hours of his valuable time slaving away in Melodyne to get all of our live recordings to line up perfectly, and for dropping in a smooth tenor sax solo at the 11th hour for good measure. Ultimately, the final product exceeded even my wildest hopes and dreams, and I'll always treasure what this team put together. But more than just the outcome, the process of getting to the finish line was worth just as much. I can't stress enough how under-qualified I was to tackle something of this scope, but I've absorbed such an incredible amount of knowledge from each of my collaborators that I'll carry with me into future projects. I'm proud of what we've made and what I've learned about collaboration in the process. I'll leave the final word to CNDR, who, when prompted for submission comments, summarized it all better than I ever could: "Long live the funk." Games & Sources Pokémon Soul Silver: National Park

Credits: Emunator: Arrangement, keyboards, programming, additional mixing Flexstyle: Arrangement, programming, mixing, mastering Comments: Emunator: Mike and I always do our best work in real-time, and this one covers in-person studio sessions at both of our houses, and a couple of virtual Zoom mixing sessions as well. We started off with Mike programming the beats and that nasty custom 808 patch and me playing all of the melodies and riffs on keys, but things eventually went a bit off course. By the end of the process, we both contributed arrangement ideas, drums, bass, and more toward this twisted spin on hip-hop, inspired equally by 24/7 lo-fi study playlists and hard-hitting drill beats from artists like Pop Smoke or Drake. Our original concept was strictly meant to be a cozy lo-fi romp through the forests of Lumbridge, not a care in the world as you chop trees, build fires, and kill cows. But the call of the wild was too strong to resist, and things turn dark as you approach the edge of the woods. The temptation of riches and power becomes too strong to ignore, and you step over the line that has forever separated civilized society from the lawless expanse that lay beyond. You're in the wilderness now. You're overcome with insatiable bloodlust, the urge to vanquish your foes becomes a roiling tempest within your spirit. There's no turning back now, this is what you were made for. Glory shall not be denied. You approach your first unsuspecting victim, wielding a longsword made of iron and a steadfast heart made of gold. And with a swing of your blade... Zero damage. Huh? Crap. Your foe turns around, sly grin on their face, and with and a single crack of their Abyssal Whip, it's all over in an instant. As the world fades to black around you as you teleport back to Lumbridge, you hear the echo of their parting words... "~~get rekt, n00b~~" Flexstyle: I'm infamous for not having played hardly anything I've ReMixed, but not this time! I spent so much time in Runescape as a kid in the early/mid-2000s, and this theme is burned into my brain from that era. When Wes and I sat down and decided we wanted to remix something together in a more lo-fi style, this is what came up, and I'm glad he was willing to run with it! I contributed a bit of arrangement and some sound design, and tightened down the final mix/master. Now all we need is a good rapper to drop some PK-ing bars for this Wilderness trap (beat)....anyways, enjoy this new flavor from the two of us!

Forest Haven pops in briefly on the lead bell melody at 1:46 :) It's a subtle thing that's mixed and mashed with the main Zelda theme, but the ascending riff at 1:46 specifically is :11 in Forest Haven (or Kokiri Forest if you will, I think they share the same tune.) I wasn't sure if I was even quoting a Zelda song during the creation process so I had to look it up to verify what I actually used when I was writing the submission letter!

I find myself siding with the YES's on this - there's ample amounts of creativity on display here and the execution is pretty strong for what it is. I find that the main flaws with this track are the same issues that I've expressed with other VQ subs lately, where a good round of editing and culling would likely result in a stronger product, but I don't think that trying to finesse the EQ/balance/mixing would really result in a stronger product. From my vantage, the issues underlying this are more to do with the arrangement and writing phase of the process - it's not that any of the ideas present are bad, but you have too many of them vying for attention and that's introducing complications to the mixing process that can't always be solved with mixing tools. I already feel like this track is teetering on the verge of being completely overcooked, but as it stands, you pulled it out of the oven just in time to still have something edible and actually enjoyable. There's lessons to be learned from this to make a better cake next time around, but it's hard for me to honestly say that you don't have a pretty good cake on your hands if we're just looking at what's in front of us :) Onward and upward from here, I say! YES

Gorgeous plucked textures and orchestra to start, this feels like a significant departure from your usual work - I wonder if these are the same sounds you've been exploring on Flowstone Saga. Only time will tell, I suppose. From there, we go into more traditional OceansAndrew fare - soaring lead lines, thick rhythm guitars, and a variety of synths, which is just as gratifying now as it always has been. The extra symphonic embellishments go a long way in keeping things dynamic and enjoyable. I will say that the mixing here feels sub-par in a couple of ways. The lead guitar EQ curve feels strange, for lack of a more specific term, and it doesn't blend nicely with the rhythm guitars, which often overpower it. There's a huge impact at just before the 3 minute mark that seems to distort due to how loud it is, which just feels like an oversight. In fact, a lot of the sounds in here feel like they're pushing against the limiter needlessly, which is causing pumping and a general feeling of overcompression. Not the end of the world - everything is more or less audible and the compression falls just short of distracting, but the mixdown ultimately feels like a first pass instead of a final product. C'est la vie, the rest of the track is so solid that I can't imagine a world where this doesn't pass as-is. YES

I'm into this! I am in the same boat as Lucas where I don't quite know what I want to do yet, but you can definitely count me in for *something* :)

Banger alert! This track comes in hot and stays there. The synth design is really expressive, even if it doesn't venture too far outside the realm of Genesis FM sounds. I don't really mind repetition in an arrangement as much as other judges, and the ideas that are presented are executed well. Mixing and mastering is solid, let's ship it. YES

The lead performances here are fabulous, that's not in question whatsoever. I also would have liked to see more dynamics in the part writing on the piano as well, but I'll also call attention to the EQ/reverb levels on the piano. Because the piano lives almost exclusively in the lower registers, the reverb starts to build up heavily in those lower frequencies. In the future, I would recommend sending your reverbs to a bus so you can apply an EQ shelf/cut somewhere between 200-500hz to reduce some of that low frequency mud. A little dip to the dry piano itself would probably also clean up the mix slightly. All that said, this is just advice for the future - this track is very clearly over the bar and should stand as a solid entry to our catalog even in its current form. Nice work y'all! YES

I found myself unfortunately siding with MW/Prophetik on this one, loving the concept but feeling like there's not quite enough connective tissue to link the bones together. Just a couple layers of texture or some additional flourishes would put this over the bar from a sound design perspective and keep it from feeling too plodding or static. Arrangement-wise, I think this could have been trimmed up and still gotten the point across, or if you were feeling ambitious, find ways to differentiate the second half from the first, but as it stands, the length isn't justified. I know project files were lost here and edits aren't possible, but hopefully the feedback can get implemented down the line in future stuff. You've got the creativity locked down, just need that last bit of polish til you're reaching that finish line with consistency! NO

I've been coming back to this one many times and struggling to reach a verdict. There's a lot of things I do like about - the adaptation of the source material, the overall "vibe" of the track, and the arrangement itself, at their core, are really enjoyable. You did a great job making this into your own on the arrangement level. The tubular bells are a great touch. I can see how this won some judges over on that merit alone. I can't point to a singular issue that sinks this, but at the end of the day, I ultimately feel like the sound design and mixing lets this down. Many of the sounds used are so simplistic in tone, and the balance issues with the mix serves to accentuate these deficiencies rather than mask them. There's a lot of potential for a really groovy rhythmic cadence, but with the bass and drums being mixed so far in the background, it never feels like it locks into a groove I can really feel. The picked bass sample at :54 has a lot of potential, but it just draws attention to the fact that the bass in the rest of the track feels phoned in and doesn't have nearly the same amount of character. The rhythmic elements feel detached from the melodic ones rather than working together. The lead bell tone is very plain sounding, so coupled with the fact that they are sequenced pretty rigidly and frequently play long uninterrupted stretches of melody without anything else going on to pad it out, you draw further attention to an aspect of the track that is fundamentally not very strong. I think Rexy's suggestion about other pads/arps/keys is also one to explore. It's a lot easier to get away with using stock-sounding samples when your instrumentation is fully fleshed out. But I also think that finding ways to add more interest to your part writing, especially the lead melody, would go a long way. Here's just a few ideas that come to mind, none of which are "must-haves" but just different approaches you could explore: Listen to your drum groove and explore ways to get them to work together rather than just coexisting in the same space but never really talking to one another. Be more intentional with your velocities on a micro scale - first look at the groove you want with your beat and accentuate the on-beats and off-beats, then you can subtly track your bass and melodies to that rhythm so that there's more of a cohesive pulse to the track. Change up the lead sound occasionally with some call-and-response action with other instruments - Flexstyle said it best about music being a conversation rather than one instrument standing up and speaking their peace uninterrupted, and I will second this suggestion wholeheartedly. Selectively layer in additional belltones/keyboards during certain sections of the song. Try to put yourself in the headspace of a pop song and visualize your arrangement from a verse/chorus perspective, where you want the verse to be more subdued and the chorus to hit a little harder. Punching up certain sounds and adding or removing layers with intention can help signal to the listener where they are in the arrangement. Get a little wilder with your delay - for example, using dotted delay patterns or a stronger ping-pong effect, or automating your feedback amount toward the end of melodic phrases, for example, is a great way to add some spice to your melody lines. Just because it's a sequenced melody line doesn't mean it has to be stagnant, there's a LOT you can do with processing even the simplest of synth sounds. This same philosophy can apply to nearly any creative effect. This is one of those tough votes where no singular issue is bad enough to drag the arrangement below the bar, but there's also nothing especially captivating that pulls it up over the bar, either. I think my final verdict is that this concept absolutely has potential, but it requires more boldness, ideas, and, perhaps most importantly, intention with what it's trying to do. I do hope we see this again and I'm wholly confident you can bring this up to par, Troy :) NO (resubmit)

@prophetik music@MindWanderer@Chimpazilla Tagging to bring attention to the timestamps in the first post, since Larry stealth edited these in ;)

This feels like the musical equivalent of not being able to decide what to order at the bar, so you just order a flight of all the seasonal drinks that are currently on tap. That approach doesn't always pan out, but in this case, when every drink on the menu is a banger, you really can't go wrong :) Yeah, trendy EDM subgenres blended with copious sound effects is a tale as old as time, but in all honesty, you really have a great handle on the production and mixing side of things and there's a load of creativity in the underlying songwriting, so the end result achieves far more than the standard "slap some sound effects and loops over a generic EDM track" approach. As a fan of bass music myself, I really dig what you put together - the off-kilter rhythm at 1:02 was a standout highlight for me, but there's no weak link here. \m/ YES

I hate to be that guy, but that long of a stretch with audio only in the left ear is a non-starter for me. Mono/lo-fi is totally fine, but this is just painful to listen to. The rest of the track has some great bones, but the frequency spectrum does not feel like it's filled out properly in the low end, like the bass is an octave up from where it should be. All of the core components sound very good and appropriate for the genre but those two aspects are immediately putting me off here. There are other nitpicks to be had, and I think Brad did a good job covering them, but the frequency balance and (especially) the left-ear panning is enough to sink this sadly :( NO

It's... fine? Yeah, I feel like I'm coming to the same conclusion on all of Jordan's submissions lately. The underlying production quality is absolutely undeniable, and the adaptation of the source material is brimming with creativity at its core, but the arrangement is phoned in. It's very obvious when making comparisons to his older tracks, where the arrangements were much more unpredictable and high-effort. I'd love to see a return to that, but all that said, there's a lot of greatness here that can't be ignored. I'm also a lot softer on repetition than some of the other judges, so at the end of the day, it passes the vibe check. Barely! YES (borderline)

You know, I had a whole vote written out about to agree with Larry on this in which I rejected this track on the grounds of mixing and less-than-ideal sequencing. However, on repeat listens, I found myself charmed enough by what this remix got right that I think I flipped my own vote in the process. Yes, the right hand piano is stilted and overall, the tone is overcompressed which highlights the lack of realism in the sequencing, and the beats (especially the snare) is way too loud for this genre. The (lack of) ending is a downer. However, the reharmonization that you did with the piano chords is really tasty, and there's a surprising amount of depth to the part writing across the board. Normally for me, in-game sound effects in remixes are, at best, transparent, and at worst, distracting or a total dealbreaker, but I'm happy to say that every one of them you used here fit quite naturally in a musical way and add some much-needed variation throughout the piece. The vibes are right here. At the end of the day, I get the argument that Larry's making, but I feel like that applies to tracks under the two minute mark for me, which need to make a much more convincing case for why they are a fully-realized idea IMO. I don't think that a longer or more varied arrangement would necessarily do anything one way or another to outweigh the downsides on the production side, and for the genre, the duration and arrangement are appropriate, if not groundbreaking. I'm curious to hear how this shakes out! YES

This is brimming with creativity, it reminds me a lot of your Koopalings track in that regard - I never would have thought to take the source material in this direction, but now that I'm listening to it, I absolutely see how you made the connection and got here. The soundscape is sparse, and I do find myself wishing that the tampura drone contributed more to the bass presence of the song, but things start to fill out by the end. There are some imperfections in the sequencing and performance to be found as well; you straddle the line between unpolished and raw, but I think you fall on the right side of that equation more often than not in a way that evokes a live jam band improvising their take on Koopa Road. In the end, creativity wins out - a well-deserved gold medal finish for DoD and another one for the books Alexis! YES

I'm not sure who Jesus Chic Acevedo is but every time he shows up on one of your songs, it instantly becomes a favorite. The initial string swells hit like a ton of emotional bricks before going back into a more delicate waltz. Ahhh, the dynamics on this track are superb. Incredible use of atmospheric elements combined with a more traditional orchestra setpiece. I was listening through this track and thought I was coming up near the end, only to find that I was barely halfway through, and I mean this as a compliment! It speaks to a very economical use of your arrangement, making sure that there is never any wasted time or dull moments - every movement feels like a whole world unto itself. Yeah, this is really good. Some of your best work to date. YES

Credits: Arrangement, production, keyboards, mixing: Emunator Mastering: Chimpazilla Comments: This track is a spiritual successor to Beginnings, which marked the start of my journey into lofi music production. Enter the Twilight Realm is a riff that would frequently worm into my brain, and on Christmas Eve of 2023, I finally decided to do something with it. Like Beginnings, I didn't listen to the source material during the creation process, simply pulling fragments from my memory and piecing them together like a warm patchwork quilt. Lofi music frequently feels like searching through a box of memories that I forgot I possessed, and this track sort of evokes that same feeling for me. This track was finished in two days and under 10 hours, with Kristina providing a beautifully lush master. Thank you for always helping my work shine, my friend ?

Astral Tales has provided a new version. @XPRTNovice @Gario @Chimpazilla @MindWanderer @prophetik music Let's see if this is enough to flip anyone's vote! I was a YES on the previous version but this one sounds even better to me.

You know, I came into this thread looking for an easy closeout, but I left feeling the same way as Larry - I think there's more to the source material than credit has been given for. The continuous rolled piano chords feel pretty directly tied to the source to me and are present throughout much of RET's arrangement. Without having ample time to timestamp it, I do think this piece warrants further discussion and that we've definitely had more nebulous source material, or more nebulous interpretations, than what I'm hearing here at first glance. Who wants to be brave and bust out the stopwatch here? EDIT: OK, so Rebecca was the brave one all along. The Hero of Time(stamping) that Hyrule has been waiting for! After checking the chords 1-to-1, it may not be exactly the same notes, but I'd be hard pressed to make the argument that this is not a remix of the Lightroot theme. The presentation of the melody as a sequence of sparse rolled piano chords is similar enough, and the intro sounds almost identical so it puts the source material clearly into the listeners head so that you're not left grasping for straws at the onset. The soundscape is fleshed out substantially too, so it passes the smell test in terms of expansiveness as well. When your source material relies so heavily on rests and space between melodic phrases, the usual timestamping approach is going to make it seem like there's not a lot of overt references to the original, but in context, I've argued that silence can be a form of source usage itself, and I think that especially applies here. The rolled chords are the lighted beacons that connect everything together and provide frequent enough touchpoints through the arrangement that you never stray too far from the source material. Thanks Rebecca for your diligence in mapping this out! This is good to go in my book :) YES

Chromatic percussion is one of the areas where I find Rebecca's work to shine the brightest, so right from the jump I was intrigued. The moody strings lend a sense of progression to the arrangement. There's a lot of noodling here, but there are a few moments where everything coalesces into some really lush, beautiful sweeps, particularly starting at 1:55, that really makes the whole listen worthwhile. Really beautiful stuff! Seconding the critiques about the mixing having some buildup in the lows/low-mids that could be cut out by some EQ dips in the low-mids and cutting below the fundamental frequency. I also hear some unrealistic sequencing in the velocity of the marimba during the last minute, particularly when you strike the same note twice in repetition. All critiques aside, for a piece like this, the mixing and sequencing gets the job done and accomplishes what it set out to do very nicely! YES

Messaged Jortio about this, he's going to make some tweaks based on Brad's conditional vote and Jack's feedback as well.

Aritst: Lunios This is an acid house spin on Lower Norfair fitting with the era of the game being the mid to late 90's.