MindWanderer

I was waiting until the music was pretty much done before looking into visual artists. Most of the music is done, but there are a few key pieces still missing, and I've been kept busy at work lately. A couple of your most polished pieces are along the lines of what I'm looking for--your Andre the Giant, appropriately, is nicely realistic. And I'm hoping to get multiple artists involved--I'd love to have portraits of each of the wrestlers as an "insert." I'll definitely hit you up a little further down the line.

I can't argue with any of what DA and LT had to say. It's a good foundation but, between its similarity to the source and its lack of dynamic transformation, it needs to go further. NO

I really like the new section, other than the peaked notes. I do think it's far too long for the piece, though, derailing the mood for too long.

Your first link is condescending. Your second one says it's not possible, and the workaround is just to write in triplets (or whatever) and ignore the time signature.

The check-in has passed and the promised cuts have been cut.

I'm personally of two minds when it comes to source usage. On one hand, Gario's timestamps seem accurate for overt source usage. On the other hand, there's a lot of material that is clearly derived from the source--the riffing on the motif Gario mentioned for one, but more importantly the funky bass that forms the foundation for the whole thing uses the same chord progression as the bass motif of the source and sounds like it's just a radical transformation thereof. The timestamp is only 9 seconds short, which is a large percentage of a 2:10 arrangement, but for me it's close enough given the subtle connections elsewhere. What I'm not ambivalent about is the sound palette. The guitar and drums are great, even the piano is fine (although it could be mixed more clearly) but most of the lead synths are so bland and thin that I have a hard time listening to them for any period of time. I feel the same way about some of the accompanying synths (like the organ Gario liked), but since they're not center stage, they're passable. Fortunately, I think both are fairly easy fixes. Choose some different synths to carry your leads, with more flavor and resonance, and either add 9 seconds of overt source usage to an existing section, or extend a section to add 18 seconds of overt source to the overall length, and I think this will be good to go. For now, though, NO (resubmit)

It's ground we've seen visited before, but the results are still distinctly unique. There were some novel twists on the melody I certainly enjoyed. I have mixed feelings about the mixing. It's nontraditional, with the Green Hills melody line pushed behind the other elements much of the time, but it comes across as deliberate, and you can still hear it. On the other hand, it clips by almost a dB, and that's an objective problem. You could still achieve the intended effect without clipping. The sidechaining obscures the distortion, so it doesn't sound that bad on my setup, but not everyone may have the same experience. The ending is weak, practically nonexistent. My conclusion is the same as Larry's: Strong arrangement, lots room for improvement in the mixing (and in the ending), but adequate overall. YES (borderline)

There's a lot of clever arranging going on here, but the balance is seriously off. The leads, both guitar and synth, are too quiet everywhere except the intro and outtro, overpowered primarily by the rhythm and bass guitars but even by the synths and percussion in places. Also, I'm not sure about source usage. 1:36-3:17 and 3:55-end don't seem to have any source usage that I can hear, and that's more than half the arrangement. I have to admit that I'm not listening too closely, though, because the mixing is already a dealbreaker. But if there is source usage in those sections, it would facilitate the voting process if you could spell out how the source is used there. It's a good start, and I'd like to hear a revision with the leads in the lead. NO

For such a simple and conservative concept, I loved this way more than I was expecting to. The slaps add such a lively percussive element, it's hard not to feel the groove. Balance is a bit iffy at times. The slaps are great, but they're a little loud throughout. The accordion is a little loud in the bridge (2:21-2:37), and the lead guitar loses volume near the end of the remix (about 3:04-3:42). There's also about six seconds of silence at the beginning that should be cut out. My biggest concern is with how conservative this is. The structure is almost identical to the source, except for the intro and bridge. The rhythm guitar plays the same chords as the source, just with a different beat. However, the accordion does add some texture, especially at the end. It's clearly more than just a cover, so I'm okay giving this a YES

I was holding off on voting on this one because there was something off about it I couldn't put my finger on, but NutS nailed it: slightly more repetitive and less transformative than the usual Gario work, especially the intro, which jumps right in without much preamble. The bright ping-pong arps are on the relentless side, too, and aren't well balanced by the thin bass. Still, none of that is really significant. It's a fun arrangement and clearly achieves what it sets out to do. I can see why Gario was insecure about it but it's still a solid piece of work overall. YES

Here's a link to the source by itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDsXUvUt11k I personally don't feel the "stagnation" issue DA has, but the lack of low end is a serious one. It detracts from the impact of the whole thing and makes it seem more monotonous than it really is. I suppose the breakdowns DA mentions suffer the most from the lack of lows, since there's briefly no melody either, but really the issue is pervasive. I think the awkwardness of the drum mixing is because you have a really nice, meaty kick that's the only thing occupying the low end. As a result, it sounds particularly dominant. The ending is definitely lackluster as well. It doesn't even fade out at a point that makes sense--it would have been trivial to just draw those last notes out and end that way. Good ideas, fun arrangement. Occupy the low end and end the track more conclusively and I think this will be fine. NO (resubmit)

Let's try this again! Rather than starting with signups, let's just see if there's interest. Let me know. If anyone would rather do a more traditional elimination-style tournament, we can do that too, but as of late the team gauntlets have been more popular.

What leaps out to me immediately is the EQ balance. Most of the instruments are clustered in the mid to mid-low range, and there's a whole lot of conflict. Bass, arps, SFX, percussion, and about half the range of the leads all occupy the same space. The buzzy bass is responsible for a lot of this. As a result, a lot of the complex interplay is nearly inaudible. The arrangement itself is pretty conservative, but there is some structural rearrangement. It would be easier to evaluate if I could hear the accompaniment more clearly, but I'm inclined to think it's OK on this front. It just needs a lot of work in the EQ department. Filter out some of those buzzing frequencies, give the leads, arps, and counterpoint more presence in the high end, and maybe rethink the use of piano (which is a very tricky instrument to work with in a crowded soundscape). I think that'll get you most of the way there. NO (resubmit)

I can't argue with anything Gario said. The piano is thin, the soundscape is thin, the synths are plain, the two vox effects Gario mentioned are too loud. It's much better where you're using the full frequency spectrum (0:29-0:51, 2:42-3:40), but those sections have some balance issues. I'd also have preferred it be a little less repetitive, but it's not too bad on that front, especially considering the source. Try taking this to the workshop forum for some more detailed feedback and I think this could work out to something pretty cool, but it's not there yet. NO (resubmit)

This opened up with some SNES-style synths, so I was optimistic I'd be able to get behind some 16-bit chiptunes here. Unfortunately, there's a lot here that's holding the mix back. First, it's quite repetitive, with the same motifs played with the same synths many times over. As near as I can tell, the entire second half is a copy-paste of the first half (minus the intro and ending), and each of those halves consists mostly of the same melody repeated twice with an intro and a bridge, meaning that the main melody is copy-pasted four times. The percussion is even more repetitive, maintaining the exact same pattern for the vast majority of the piece. The energy level is also largely unvarying and fatigue-inducing. Second, the parts don't line up well together. Melody, pads, bass, etc. are all doing their own thing. There's no harmony, there's no call-and-return, there's basically nothing to indicate that any of the parts were written with the other parts in mind other than that the major sections change at the same points. To be fair, the source isn't great in this regard either, but that raises another point: The arrangement is very conservative. The bulk of the part writing is lifted directly from the source. I'm picking out only very small portions that are sufficiently transformative for our standards. Balance also needs some improvement. In many places the melody is too quiet, in other places it's the bass that can barely be heard. The ending is lacking, too. There's just a quick riff at the end of a loop. So, sorry, but I think this still has a long way to go. I'd take it over to the workshop forum to get some more detailed advice before submitting again. NO