djpretzel

Agree with criticisms, namely: Volume a bit low (though choir at times is overpowering) Choir not always well-integrated with overall palette (see above) Repeats melodically/harmonically/structurally; first half not distinguishable from second half by much other than instrumentation... The most nagging thing, to me, is that every note of the neat, slightly sinister trade-off melodic exchange that you could call the "chorus" remains static, and is quite close to the source. There's a missed opportunity here to establish variation by altering the melodic line, ending an octave up or down, or somewhere in between.... it's a playful, chromatic motif, so modifications should be all the easier to incorporate, but... no. It stays the same. This does eat at me, and rather a lot. Every time I hear the phrase play out the same exact way, I deflate a bit. It's arrangement potential that is repeatedly squandered, in my opinion. Not every source/arrangement calls out for altering the melodic line - it's not a mandatory thing - but I feel that this one really did. However, w/ regards to the judging process, I have to force myself to think of this as a random mix by a random artist. Evaluated next to Rebecca's other work, I think the concerns above would tend to push me to rejection. Anonymously, however, there are a bunch of cool textures going on, the atmosphere is spot-on, and I like the tempo variation as well. In the vacuum in which we aspire to evaluate submissions, I'd this give it a: YES (borderline)

@Jorito Yes please, much appreciated!

We've gotten three WAVs from @Sixto, we've confirmed @OceansAndrew abandoned his track & won't be revisiting, and I'm pestering @Flexstyle about the status on his track. @Rexy has been assisting. For OA's track, the source is (apparently?) relatively popular/critical, so this might be one we want to fill in the gaps for...

@Gario Stop making political tweets for a minute and submit the album for eval

Neat! Was always a huge fan - had the huge gallery/compilation books, way back when, and would pack them on family trips. Hopefully this sees his work preserved online for eternity - although new stuff would also be great.

For EDM, specifically, this is pretty darn good: https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Dance-Music-Production/dp/0956446035

And... The vision of the site has always been to have a big enough tent for both; we could have fewer headaches, and probably more followers, if we stuck to popular games, or genres, or gave flagrantly disproportionate emphasis to either, but then I'd have to punch myself in the head every day and die w/ regrets, etc.

Done; @HoboKa, this issue should now be addressed.

Somebody set up us the bomb Sorry, just had to.... as @Gario wrote, this year is going to be a little lop-sided. Part of that is that we're finally doing some things that are long overdue - new YouTube videos, for one, but also a new site design should be live before 2020

This was indeed disabled; if at any point in the future we wanted to support a dark theme, one big issue with the richtext paste is that it carries over background color (usually white) as well as zany fonts, etc. In a perfect world, IPS would offer a filter that let us keep certain formatting and discard the rest, while also ensuring proper contrast, but we don't live in that world. So we have two options: allow the formatting, and know that it will result in a bunch of extra HTML cruft & stylization that is tied to dark-text-on-white-bg, OR, disable the formatting and do plaintext, with the "workaround" being recreating the formatting after the fact within the forum software. @Liontamer @Gario @DarkeSword This change is definitely affecting at least one use, @HoboKa, and perhaps others - any thoughts on whether we should change back?

Had a lot of fun with this one, which is my personal take on a genre-staple synthwave/retrowave arrangement of this MUCH slower source from Lufia II, for the album. Big bass, big drums, lots of different synths, filters, modulation, sidechaining. Lots of those things. Plus a couple of sleazy, big-hair fakey-guitar solos, courtesy Orange Tree's Evolution: Infinity. Normally I'd use Shreddage but this particular lib is tailor-made to a certain 80's sound I would then have had to recreate, etc. Source connections should actually be pretty apparent, even with the genre shift, speed up, & changes to the progression... original melody is chill & relatively straightforward, so I was happy with how it worked under considerable re-tooling. Title is a fun Shakespearean nod, and I associate car revs w/ the 80s & synthwave in general, so why not? Credit to https://freesound.org/people/manychefsbroth/sounds/151877/ FILES: SOURCE: - djp

Great energy, no issues, and as mentioned, the solos are FUN. YES

Done Might tweak the mastering a bit and the very end, but it's usable as-is @ 3'30" - fun!

Agreed. It's not just that it sticks out, but it's also the sole percussive element, and it's a pretty static part, and it feels quantized & flat in its dynamics. It's a production problem AND an arranging problem, to me. I wouldn't reject the mix solely on the tambourine, but since I also agree with the above comment on transitions, I feel like those are substantive "dings" that combine for me to vote: NO (resubmit) I tend to err on the side of approval when splitting ties or weighing in on divisive evaluations, but there's not really a compelling point of policy here - this is just a question of whether you feel like the abrupt transitions AND the stale tambourine add up to warrant rejection, which I do. I think the tempo here could be bumped 2-3 bpm, the tambourine part rewritten for variety/dynamics, and a couple of the more jarring transitions eased into (one way or another), and it'd be fantastic.

Lovin' that theme - gotta be @jk, right? Looks like a lot of fun.

@Meteo Xavier Thanks for stepping up - any issues with @Rexy as your co-director & channel of communication to staff, since she's a newly-appointed judge? If that works for you, we'd love the help. First order of business is verifying from existing artists w/ finished tracks that they're okay with releasing under new management. Don't want to make any assumptions. Second order of business is wrapping up any WIP/unfinished tracks and getting the music to 100% Third order of business is pursuing album art that jives with FF3 but also the first two albums, FF1/FF2, since it's basically a continuation, even under new leadership After that, it *should* be mostly crossing T's and dotting I's - director & artist comments, flood picks, etc. Sound good? @Gario & @Theory of N are helping with overall album coordination, tagging them so they're aware. Would love to see this happen this year, but more important that it does indeed happen!

@Gario Yeah that's basically it - we only do artist bios if the album website decides to feature them, which is less common these days. Track comments ALWAYS good. BTW I've got 1'30" on my mix and do hope to finish it shortly!

At first I thought this was a joke thread, but I suppose these mini consoles are moving enough units that it makes sense. The Japanese lineup seems preferable, although Ninja Spirit was (and is) a pretty amazing ninja/platformer style game. Bonk's Adventure was one of the most popular games on the console in the US, so perhaps its absence is due to competing copyright ownership... or they're just sitting on the announcement so they can generate some more buzz.

Definitely digging this, and as a fan of all things Goonies, I love the mix title. Wonderful space/reverb differentiating the parts; still plenty of clarity & crispness. Hope you submit!

Aight I got like a minute of something that resembles retrowave, and I'm gonna stick with it, cheese guitar solo & all ::)

Hey I opened Ableton and... thought about the arrangement, for at least ten minutes It's something! The easiest, fastest, and most fun approach is to turn my relatively sad/somber source into, well.... something funky, and even a little disco.

The electric guitar's harmonic distortion feels strangely static; for an effect that's supposed to channel a certain amount of living chaos & motion, it struck me as odd how it sounds the same when repeated. ...but that's the only bad thing I can say Absolutely wonderful, pleasant, slower interpretation with some sublime details on the individual parts. This is very much how I want to hear this theme YES

Apologies for the delay; I honestly don't know which way to go on this one. It's VERY arguable on the "recognizable use of source" angle - *unless* you speed it up, it is... temporally challenging... to track the notes, over such durations, and connect them to the source. That being said, since I am uncertain, I believe we should err on the side of an expansive & inclusive definition of source usage. I *could* see this mix being removed in a future lockdown if we need to reel things in and determine that accepting this arrangement marked a "point too far" in terms of the threshold for this particular consideration, but I don't want to hold things up any longer, I'm curious to see fan/community reaction, and in all other regards it's a mesmerizing & quite creative piece of music. YES (possible future lockdown candidate)

We're proceeding with this action for all videos and will see how it goes; we are equally concerned about diversifying support for the site AND also the promotion/marketing angle, since we believe YouTube highlights monetized content more aggressively (or, if you prefer, tends to de-emphasize non-monetized content)

Not only endorsed, he personally oversaw the implementation of our patented Bus Allocation Determination & Tailored Universal Normalization Algorithm.