Gario

Interesting idea. You should start seeing if there's any interest in doing so on here; it would make a pretty cool 10-12 track album.

Introspective is the right word for this, and it's smooth as hell. The spoken parts are a clever touch that you don't hear very often in an arrangement. The production and performances are pristine, as well, which really gives this a nice, polished feel; it seems pretty much impeccable, as far as I can tell. YES

Sounds like the votes on here so far catch the majority of what I'd say, so I'll be glib: the arrangement is alright considering the source, but the fact that it's such a short source being repeated four times as the structure does wear on the track a bit. The variations made on it is notable so it's not an unbearable flaw, but the structure could've been handled in a way to better mitigate this issue. The orchestration is quite good, and the production is up to your normally high standards, so it's still a clean pass from me. Nice work. YES

Oh, I like that low flute in this. If one isn't careful it's a very easy instrument to drown out since it has virtually no power at that range, but it's balanced quite well against the piano in this case. Such a nice timbre. Very nice arrangement you've got going, here; I guess I'll look forward to more posted by you on here.

Y'all might've accused me for being biased if I went and direct-posted chippy tracks, considering it's legit my most favorite thing ever. Just sayin', gotta run it by you guys to make sure it's not just me gushing over a chippy/SNES sampled arrangement. As for this arrangement: yeah. It's a lovely blend of Chips and SNES samples. The moving textures are constantly moving, which lets them fill the space very effectively without relying on instruments like pads or sweeping strings. You gotta appreciate the energy something like that generates. Production is tight, arrangement is solid. Ben's on top of things in this arrangement. YES

Sounds so much more complete compared to any of the sources alone. The samples have a nice, crisp high end, and those Genesis synths have so much lower end meat to compliment it. Blending the two like this works really, really well. I'd say experiment successful!

A perspective from Doug about this arrangement that shouldn't go unheard. Considering the arrangement was made during National Suicide Awareness month it seems very appropriate.

Wha'cha all talkin' about? Having something that's conservative sandwiched between two rather cleverly arranged portions is a pretty cool way to organize an arrangement, in my book. It's not like the middle portion doesn't have it's share of orchestral flourishes to make it into something that stands on its own two feet, even - it's just a conservative portion between two more interesting sections. Nice use of the Harpsichord to imitate the SNES sample almost perfectly, by the way; for a second there when I heard it come in at 1:35 I was afraid I was going to have to turn this down due to sampling Square Enix audio, lol. As far as the overall quality of the arrangement goes, it's a few steps above the normal fare. The humanization is quite good in this; the only issue I could have is with the lead string instruments, whenever they come in. There's a swelling attack that consistently undercuts the phrasing, which becomes pronounced whenever they hold the theme (such as at 4:13). Aside from this, the production and quality of this is solid. Loving what you did with the meter (using 3/4 instead of 4/4) in the opening minute and a half. It's a clever way to get something fresh on an overly arranged source. With themes using a lot of space between phrases it's a useful way to transform an arrangement. Utilizing this technique again at 4:14 (going from 4/4 to 12/16) is a nice way to bookend the whole thing. Yeah, this is great stuff. YES

Hello everyone, This was in a bit of a limbo; I may have bit off more than I could chew at once taking this on again on top of my other duties on the site. My fault more than anyone's, so I'm not going to cut people for it or anything. Let's not despair, though - pushing that next deadline to 10/10. Second WIP's will be due then. I'll start messaging relevant people about tracks they need to send in. I'll be working on listening to tracks that have been sent my way, giving feedback, etc., in that time (like your track, Cyril).

Artist: Guifrog Remix Title: "Dance like Popcorn" Remix File: Main Source: Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow (PC) - "The Sacrifice of Maui": https://youtu.be/BKay0PrLjAs Minor Source: Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow (PC) - "The Flying Duckman": https://youtu.be/3FxJ3hKMIto I used to be scared of lava/volcano themed zones, but then there was The Sacrifice of Maui and the background music seemed to desperately try to warm my heart despite all the firey stuff - no pun/irony intended. On to the facts: 1) The title was my first thought. I wanted to pay homage to an old great friend of mine. He used to say "dançando que nem pipoca" as he listened to dancey music, but we hadn't had contact for years; 2) It starts with the muddrakes summoning the remix (actually, those "tchoomba tchoomba umbrlbrl" voices are my own; the "HO, HA, UHA" part was edited from a sample by Freesound user "qubodup"); 3) The whole track was built in a way that things tend to get more intense as it goes, like gradual popping from kernels; 4) Timbales may be seen as popping kernels too; 5) I showed this to my friend's sister, who's just as special to me. She showed it to him, he got my number and said "Obrigado". According to her, this was a very special gift because this guy's diagnosed with autism and it made him interact happily with his family like he hasn't for a pretty long while. Needless to say, this mix now warms me a lot. Hope it does the same to you.

Oh my goodness. I keep forgetting I need to be looking at all this music being posted in here; every once in a while you run across a true gem like this one. Your singing is crisp (both your full voice and falsetto), and the other performances are solid. The lyrics pull from Undertale both thematically and literally ("Just let me WIN!" *tears up*), and it all comes together amazingly. Needless to say, the arrangement is top-notch, to boot. You didn't say if you were going to submit this. If I find this in the inbox one day I would be a happy little Undertale fanboy. Once your Patreon enjoy exclusive access for a while, think about sending it our way, maybe!

But don't you need medals to access Debug Mode to get more medals...? I mean that would work great later in the collection process, but still... lol.

Heh, there's a great place to grind out the Blue Sphere medals, if you ever want to just hammer it out in an hour or so for completionists' sake: Stage 1, Act 2 has two posts that are about 5-10 seconds apart from one another. Easy to bounce from one special stage to another by simply running up a hill to one pole then back down to the other pole again and again. The state of the savepoints resets when you go through a special stage, so this can be repeated indefinitely. Of course you could also just despise blue sphere, which is a different problem altogether, but the rewards for doing them are pretty nifty (loving the playable copy of Mean Bean Machine and "& Knuckles" that gets unlocked, for example). The stage that is literally just a single spiralling path to the center takes forever, is a mental drain and is challenging for the wrong reason (you go cross-eyed looking at the same thing for two minutes straight getting to the center, urgh)... It's the worst, I hear you on that.

EVAL Oh my, this is bouncy and fun. The addition of the kick gives this a different energy, which does help separate this from the source material quite a bit. That being said, I do understand your concern with this being conservative - the instruments are often a higher quality of what the source used prior and the structure is similar - but there are some departures from the source material that help give this some new life (like using a different source like a bridge toward the end - very nice touch). It might've been a safer choice to utilize some different instrument choices, but I think this would still be okay on that front. The production of this is pretty slick. The whole thing sounds like there's a considerable amount of stereo spread over the whole thing, which for headphone users (like myself) is quite distracting. Spread isn't bad, and on speakers it would sound fine, but centering the spread of your reverb and/or instruments would give this track a more defined sound overall. The instruments could use some TLC to the humanization. The levels and phrasing sound good on them overall, but the articulations for the brass are stiff when repeating the same note. Normally performers would have more deadspace/silence between quickly repeating notes in order for the listener to hearthem as more than one note being played out (like at 0:58, for example). There are some moments when the instruments repeat phrases or notes where the dynamics have no variation between iterations (like at 2:38 - 2:45 on the guitar). It's not an extreme issue, but it's something you'll probably be called out for. Overall, between the conservative instrumentation & first half of the arrangement, as well as the humanization issues I'd say this would be a pass, but not a strong pass. Pending on how much the stereo spread affects the other judges, I'd argue that should be toned down, as well. If you want a more secure pass, tweaking the articulations where they get stale, adjusting your stereo spread and changing up the instrumentation a bit here and there would help make this an easy pass. Regardless, nice work on this!

I come from the future to announce that, yes, Sonic Mania is an amazing game. I don't even like the Sonic series that much (S3&K being the only objectively great game even from the classic series... fight me), but Mania freakin' nailed it. The final boss could've used some more pizzazz than was present (even the penultimate boss in S&K was a monolithic mech - so awesome), but otherwise the level design, the music, the feel of the gameplay... it's all great. I can't say 'Sonic is BACK, baby!', but he did have at least one more amazing game in line with the original spirit, at least.

Looks like Dracaemelos is getting her wish, here - Mazedude's got her back, there.

On the bottom left corner of Discord there's a button that begins a video chat (it looks like a camera, I believe). This begins a video session for the channel, which people can join at their leisure. Hope that helps.

It's definitely a different approach to the source material; it stands on it's own with the different reharmonizations used throughout, but it definitely stands firmly in the source material. The sound design is pretty eclectic, which works great for the most part. The guitar, while well performed (nice job, Sagnewshred), didn't blend into the soundscape as well as I would've liked. It sounded like it was in a different space than the rest of the synths & drums, with the EQ balance and reverb levels being notably different than the rest of the arrangement. That's a small gripe, though, and definitely not even close to swinging my vote - everything else, from the synths to the performances are spot on, and the arrangement is great. I'm looking forward to the finished product as far as the album is concerned, especially considering the standard of excellence that has been pushed through our panel so far. YES

RebeccaETripp Rebecca Tripp http://www.crystalechosound.com/ ID: 48262 Game(s): Final Fantasy 6 Song Title: Ecstatic Heights Songs Remixed: Mt. Koltz Comments: Link to the track:

... Did I just get Rick Roll'd? Those drums are quite distinctive. The arrangement sounds pretty "classic OCR" in the sound design, and the arrangement is pretty conservative. The changes in the style of the source and additional bridge squeak this one by on the acceptability scale, but it was pretty close in that regard. The differences that ARE there are pretty slick, though - the variations to the theme, the extensions of the material, and the additional bridging section are tastefully done. I appreciate the more intense drums and hats on the second iteration of the track, too - it does just enough to keep the part sounding interesting. The production values are pretty solid in this one. The mixing is generally very well done, too, though the lead sounds just a hair piercing at 0:30. It's pretty unabashedly four-to-the-floor, and the fills are very... Rick-rollish? The hats and filters on the drums do give it some much needed variety, though. It's not a bad little package, here: decent production, acceptable arranging, some cool ideas to help it stand out. It's not the most fresh take on the source, but it does precisely what it needs to do. Nicely done. YES

Contact Information: ReMixer name: Bryan EL real name: Bryan EL email address: website: www.bryanel.com userid: 34748 Submission Information: Link to remix: Name of game(s) arranged: Donkey Kong Country Name of arrangement: Factory of Fear Name of individual song(s) arranged: Fear Factory Original Composer: David Wise Link to the original soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v18pEFQb3EM

Personally, I thought this compo last year had a great method of pushing out timely arrangements while giving artists two weeks to mix (which is twice the normal time for something like this). Staggering the remixing periods so you always had two rounds of remixers at any one time was a solid strategy for giving people that extra edge. I would like to do more Castlevania music myself. I'll give my picks soon.

Whoops, didn't catch this one - I didn't catch the download notification about five months back allowing downloads on Soundcloud. We should probably give this one some quick attention for the artist. - Gario Link: ReMixer name: cloud (Cluster) Real name: Rolla Campbell This is my main email adress UserID - 34128 This remix is inspired by the voice lines of Mei from Blizzard's Overwatch. Named: Worth Fighting For Source: Overwatch Victory (Track 17) I had a lot of fun making this one, and a friend told me I had to upload this to you guys. I hope you enjoy! Thanks, cloud (cluster)

Lectori, salutem! Remixer name: Jorito Real name: Jorrith Schaap Email: Website(s): YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Joeirot Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jorito Userid: 3899 Remixer name: Sagnewshreds Real name: Sam Agnew Userid: 32371 Submission information: Name of Game(s) Remixed: Secret of Mana Name of Arrangement: Beyond the Big Infinity Names of songs arranged: Flight Into The Unknown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA96aHvbnsQ) Link to the remix: Comments about the mix: Originally Sam (Sagnewshreds) claimed this track for the Secret of Mana album, but due to time constraints he wasn’t able to do a full remix in time. Since I felt that this was an iconic track we needed to have on the album, I offered him to collaborate, with me taking the lead in the track and Sam helping out with guitar parts. We started talking about his original idea, which was chiptune with guitars. I tried some things, but couldn’t come up with anything good. In stead I opted to take a different route, and after my first synthwave track “Shovel Power” I felt it would be interesting to explore the genre further. I started out with the ‘chorus’ part from the source track because I figured that’d make excellent material for the typical Italo/synthwave staple background synth stabs. After I added some gated Linn drums, some typical bassline patterns for the genre and messed around with the melody from the source, the rest fell into place very naturally. Of course I couldn’t resist and try to add some chiptune anyway, and that was a perfect excuse to incorporate a chiptune solo too. Since I knew that Sam is a great guitar player, I also added some guitar leads in there, and as he requested I reserved a nice space in the arrangement for the kickass guitar solo he cooked up. Add copious amounts of reverb for that 80s vibe, slice it until it grooves, season it with some more cheesy synth sounds, et voila: 80s synthpop cheese! Bon apetit Cheers, Jorrith

EVAL Hmm, I can dig this; it reminds me of a slightly more hip version of LA Noire, with the smooth jazz and some added effects, for color. The tone and atmosphere of this track is pretty great. As far as how it'd fare on the panel, though, there are a few things that would hold it back at the outset. First and foremost, that kick is mixed loud to the point that it clips - the actual waveform is slicing at the top and bottom every time that kick hits. Tone down the kick levels so they better match the rest of your instruments. There are a couple of "performance" concerns and realism issues that catch my ear, as well. The piano utilizes some sustain pedal, which is great, but it doesn't release in time. This causes what I refer to as 'pedal mud', which just crowds your track. If you ever want some ideas as to how to work the pedal's magic Chopin actually wrote out his pedalling; you could spend a little time checking out how he designed his pedal and release timing and figure it out from there. The simpler bit of advice, though, is to just to release the pedal when the notes start clashing (like when there are some passing tones or the chord changes). The dynamics in the piano are a little stiff, too, but overall they're handled alright. The strings all sweep into the picture, which gives them the distinct impression that they're sequenced. I do not know what you're using, but often this is because of how the sampler has the attack set on the instrument. If the attack is something like 500ms or something, change the envelope after the first sweep in a phrase so that the notes don't all sweep in the exact same way, since real string players wouldn't sweep into every single note. If the sample itself sweeps and it's not the attack envelope it'd be wise to consider using another instrument for those lines; instruments like that are more suited to being used like pads and not used for countermelodies. Overall, the track does feel like it meanders a bit, but I think the elevator-like style has it's advantages, too. It does have it's highs and lows, even if the instrumentation is a bit static, so that helps. I think you'd be okay as far as the arrangement goes. I wouldn't see this track passing if it were submit as it is - the clipping and sample realism issues would definitely hold it back. Mix the levels on that kick better and see if any of the realism advice helps and you would have a much better shot on the panel.