MindWanderer

I like the approach here, for the most part. Lots of rich timbres, and the vocals are done in a novel way. The arrangement progresses through a lot of good ideas. Opens with a very clean, dry synth, then quickly adds dirtier and dirtier layers. It's a strange approach that took me by surprise. I'm not sure that it's wrong per se, but it sounds wrong to me; it doesn't make any sense that synths should need to sound like they're in the same space, they're fake anyway, but the change in ambience is jarring. 0:28-0:48 in particular is gritty to the point of being muddy. At 0:38 the melody is sitting pretty far back in the mix compared to the bass and pads, but it's only for a couple of measures. Balance does continue to be a little weird after that, but not so badly; notably, the drums and pads are quite loud most of the time. The quieter sections (1:38-2:07, 2:16-2:26) are the best-sounding. The ending is very abrupt and kind of inconslusive. Very much one of those endings where it sounds like you just ran out of ideas and called it a day. I'm more on the fence about this one than all the other submissions of yours I've been ramming through lately. The issue with dirty production you sometimes have is in full force here, and the ending really makes the composition feel incomplete. I think the ending is the only part that's really not okay, and I won't send this back over just that. YES

Cleaner orchestral sound than the other submissions in this wave, although it does get a little crunchy in the climax, with some bitcrushing and overcompression. The arrangement is a pretty slow burn, but it isn't static for very long. I think this is fine overall, just watch those levels. Things can be loud without getting crushed. YES

In the album eval, we all liked the composition but had concerns about distortion and balance, as well as timing of the strings. The string timing sounds fine to me, now. However, the crunchiness doesn't sound intentional to me. There's a synth that first appears at 1:02 that seems like it's supposed to be adding an industrial tone, but it's just adding white noise to my ears. It sounds, frankly, terrible, and as it's loud and plays for most of the piece, for me it's a dealbreaker. There's also a bass at 1:28-1:46 that's overwhelmingly pounding. It doesn't play for long, but it bothers me a lot while it does. Finally, the spoken words have way too much reverb. They sound like they were recorded in a bathroom, and not in the same space as everything else. That gritty synth is the one thing that's a major issue from my perspective. The other issues would be passable, but would be nice to have addressed. NO (resubmit) Revision 11/6: Sounds good now. Everything I asked to be addressed was addressed. YES

I liked this just fine when I evaluated it for the album, and I still like it now. Seems influenced by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, especially the section that sounds a lot like the Choir of the Bells. It's a great rock orchestral adaptation of the source with a lot of creative flourishes and some cool pacing. Production seems overfiltered, a smidge light in both the highs and the lows. The guitar especially seems squashed, but guitar over orchestra is pretty darn hard to mix. I'm not hearing any overbearing problems. YES

When this was submitted for the album, I complained about some distortion and the quality of the violins. The violins sound fine now. I do still hear some pumping coming from overcompression, but it's not too bad. Otherwise, this is a great cinematic arrangement. Engaging dynamic progression. Seems like it would work well in a sci-fi epic. Works for me. YES

Definitely not the sort of thing I listen to for fun, but I can't deny that it's done well. As Hemo pointed out in our initial project evaluation, it's a clear reference to Vangelis's work on Blade Runner, even sharing the name of a track on the album; a little too on-the-nose perhaps. The source breakdown was helpful, even necessary. It does what it's meant to do. I don't have any particular objections. YES

We certainly don't need timestamps; it uses the source extensively. Interesting choice to use mostly the very high end of the piano. It sounds like you may have cut some of the harmonics out of the bass, as well. The result is a soundscape that's very mid-light. I'm not a pianist, but this sounds pretty challenging to play. Lots of rapid, rapidly-changing notes. I can hear you having trouble pressing the keys with enough force, with several notes being too quiet or even missed altogether, and timing is slow on occasion. There are a handful of notes that sound flat to me: 1:41 and 1:47 stand out the most to me because they're exposed. 0:46-1:16 is a very strange section, with rapid key changes and just some weird writing. The transitions into and out of this section are abrupt as well. 2:10-2:21 is another section that starts and stops abruptly, and 2:32 also marks a sudden transition. There's lots of little things that are holding this back for me. I'm not sold on the composition as a whole, and I think the performance is holding it back a bit as well. NO

You certainly did manage to do something new and creative with an overdone source. Interesting sound choices. The loud, grungy pad results in a soundscape that's less clear than I expect from violins, and indeed from the rest of the palette. It's not objectively bad, and I appreciate what you were going for, but it does detract from my ability to enjoy it. I would have at least pushed the pads back a bit to let the violin shine. Marissa's part-writing really stands out as a highlight, and now I kind of want an acoustic or mostly-acoustic remix of this that puts her front and center. Otherwise, I love this. Worth it. YES

I wasn't familiar with this genre, so thanks for explaining it. Definitely not something I was expecting to hear today. Great tone; your choice of instruments seems eclectic but it all works well together. The crazy ending is, well, a little crazy, but clearly it's intentional. I can't really find much to criticize here. Checks all the boxes for sure. Easy YES

I really need to get around to playing this game at some point. What great music. Beautiful music box-like opening. Trombone is a weird choice here and doesn't really fit the pastoral sound palette created by the other instruments. It's also often mixed quite quietly even though it carries the lead. Then at 1:35 the piano takes the lead and is also much too quiet. The bass is filling up the whole spectrum pretty much everywhere, and, other than the percussion, only the flute is mixed loudly enough to cut through, including when it's not the lead. Nope, I take that back; starting at about 2:09, the flute is pushed too far back as well. I love this arrangement and the ensemble performance. But I think the mixing isn't doing this any favors. Kick that bass to the back and let the other instruments take turns being leads or accompaniment. NO (please resubmit)

Seems like this piece is designed to resonate emotionally with listeners familiar with Stormblood and with a connection to Indian culture, history, and art. I am neither of those things, so to me this isn't anything more than a pretty piece of music. It certainly is pretty, though! The sitar and bongos are used tastefully with the synth soundscape. There are those two repeated sections, but the way the first repeated section is repeated again, but doubled, it's still effective at retaining interest, increasing energy slightly, and still tying it all together. This is how you can do copy-paste right. The word for this as a package is "elegant." It's tasteful, it's culturally relevant. It's the sort of thing pretentious art critics gush over, and as that's basically my role as a non-musician judge here, I'm happy to give it a YES

I don't think this was repetitive at all. Sure, the piano motif was used extensively, but it's the glue that holds the piece together. The strings, chimes, pads, vox, FX, and probably more that I'm not consciously picking up on are dynamic throughout, never repeating and constantly taking turns. And even the piano changes things up enough that I don't think it would be an issue. I don't think it needed the lo-fi effects, but otherwise this sounds great. YES

Opens up with some synth-led metal. Does some weird things to the source tune which make it less melodic and cohesive. 1:54-2:17 especially sounds disjointed and rambling. The melody is from the source, but the timing is strange. At 2:18, there's a sudden tempo change, and a piano joins in, which quickly takes over. At 2:50 you have a piano arrangement with a completely different tempo and instrumentation; there's nothing but an awkward transition to tie this in with the synth rock that was the first 2/3 of the piece. This part is a great piano arrangement. The guitar and synths do join back in at 3:19, and this transition is pretty good, but then they go back to playing the first source as a sort of very short bookend The overall impression is one of two unrelated songs joined together in the middle and at the end with brief mashups. That said, the performances are certainly solid. Production is fine. It just feels to me like the arrangement doesn't know what it's doing from one minute to the next. The synth rock Main Theme and the piano Missing Perspective seem like two different songs stuck together; they're stuck together fairly well, but they still don't sound like they started off related at all. And then the timing of the first half is hard to follow. For this one, I'm going to have to go NO

Hoo, opens up with a loud wash of reverb right in your face. The whole intro, through 0:50, is a wall of sound for me. All I can make out is beats and echoes. I can hardly even distinguish individual notes. Then the melody kicks in, and I hear notes, but they're on the quiet side compared to that continuing morass of reverb. At times, e.g. 1:31-1:40, I can barely even tell whether the lead is playing. It took me multiple listens to even notice there was even a melody in 2:09-2:58. Did I even listen to the same track as the judges above? It must be, because it's definitely Chemical Plant + Brinstar, but this isn't "clean" production by any stretch of my imagination. It's a great idea, but I can't hear half of it and I can't appreciate the rest. It's all echoes on echoes on echoes. NO

Fragments, indeed. This takes the hooks, primarily from the title screen theme, and mashes them up heavily. Going from memory instead of referencing the track was a great idea, as it let you create something that was unique and inherently memorable. Lo-fi isn't really my thing (as with pretty much anything that's intentionally produced "badly"), but I recognize that this is done appropriately for the style. It works. YES

"Unwilling transformations" is the whole theme of Dragon's Trap, so that makes perfect sense! I agree that it's a really strange soundscape. It's very mid-bass-heavy, with only a piercing triangle and tambourine occupying the high end. There's a cymbal, but it seems slightly filtered, and and the drums sound heavily filtered. There are lots of parts, but they're crowded into a small frequency range, despite being expertly EQ'ed, ducked, and panned around each other. So it does feel hollow and incomplete. The length of it also contributes to that feeling of being incomplete. The end sounds like it's supposed to be a drop into a climax or solo, something to bring up the energy level, but then it's just over. So yeah, "not fully baked" is a good description for how I feel about this. I'm coming down on the side of NO

It is indeed quite short, conservative, quiet, and thin. Those are the things that leap out at me right away. Structurally it's unchanged from the original, but it is genre-transformed and key-shifted, and there's some simple original part-writing. The background orchestration is pretty basic, though. This is borderline for me, too. Production is borderline, orchestration is borderline, development is borderline, interpretation is borderline. Altogether the issues are adding up enough for me to fall just on the other side.\ NO (borderline)

Haven't had a good chiptune submission in a while! And yeah, this is a good one. Tons of fun, and everything clicks nicely. It's sort of quasi-8-bit, since no real 8-bit system would have this many channels, but that's what lets you get a full, complex soundscape. Couldn't disagree more with Kris about either the limitations of the genre re: mixing or the instrumentation being static, as this runs through more specific waveforms than I can count. The ending is a bit of a letdown, but everything else is great. YES

This is a quote-vote for me, although I'd say there's more than a little muddiness. I'm actually confused how you managed to managed to reduce the sound quality so much without seeming to do anything besides speed it up. This is a definite NO

I had some initial reservations about source usage, since the main groove is pretty far removed from the source material, but after a few listens I get the connection, so I don't feel the need to timestamp the rest. It's pretty standard house, but it's house done well. It's repetitive, but that's the genre, and there's hardly any actual copy-pasta going on. Production is a little grainy and lo-fi, but it's not a dealbreaker. Definitely better than a lot of the Pixel Pirates submissions we've gotten of late. I'm on board. YES

I was about to chide Larry for not giving a serious review, but... yeah. It's hard to find words for this chicanery. You've got a recording artifact or something at 1:43, I dunno. You should get that looked at. Seriously, though, this sounds pretty great. For our usual definition of "great," anyway. 1:31-1:37 is a smidge muddy, but I'm nitpicking. YES

Ooh, nice rich soundscape to open this up with. Great tone. Gets a little muddy and buzzy at about 0:39. The muddiness clears up when the melody starts, but it still sounds scratchy. Quite a slow burn to get there, too. And then the accompaniment gradually gets louder while the lead gets quieter, and becomes muddy again. A few harmonies here sound wrong to me, too. 2:43-3:19 is seriously busy. Lots of parts all doing their own thing, steeped in reverb. It's really hard to even listen to, much less make out. Then 3:33, wow, this is loud. And yet it took me a second to even hear the melody; it's way, way in the back. Everything is drums and rhythm guitar. I knew this remix has a split vote already, so I avoided reading the other votes until I got this far. I was surprised there were any YESes at all, because it's so muddy. Emunator citing Viking Funeral for the Damned was smart, because I definitely hear the similarities, and that one was a direct post. And I had a hard time seeing why that one passed, too! So then I followed the trail of influences to Emperor and Dimmu Borgir, as well as the name-checked Vacuity by Gojira. Emperor is clearly the closest comparison. And the thing is, not only is the mix of instruments a little better by them, especially for the orchestral instruments, they're also vocal, and the vocals are clearly mixed in the front. (Dimmu Borgir and Gojira are mixed much, much more cleanly on every level; they're closer to what I expect from black metal.) So this does get more credit than I was originally going to give it. Orchestral black metal is a tough sell. For my own personal preferences, I wasn't keen on the mixing for nearly the whole piece. But with some context and consideration for genre, it really is only 3:33-4:26 that's below tolerance for the genre, IMHO. The funny thing is, if that section had something else to it (screaming/growling vocals, choir, orchestration) and the lead was still that quiet, I'd easily forgive it. I'm actually more borderline on this than I expected to be. I think there's a lot of room for improvement in the mixing and use of samples, but it's those 53 seconds of near-inaudible lead that are the make-or-break issue here, and I'm coming down on the majority opinion. NO (please resubmit) Edit 7/24/23: I listened to Shade Empire, as Emunator shared below. They certainly do mix the lead guitar below the rhythm guitar and especially the drums. They are, again, primarily vocal songs, but there are lengthy sections with no vocals. And I didn't mean to imply that mixing orchestral black metal, or any orchestral metal, is by any means easy; I've frequently commented that it's extremely difficult, combining all the sonically-greedy instruments of two genres that are already nontrivial to mix. There are clearly passionate fans of this style of music, including people who actively enjoy mixing which would be considered "bad" in a vacuum. And we don't want to have standards as high or higher than those on display in professional albums (a distinction which somewhat loses its meaning in this Spotify age; I frequently hear music on there which is definitely below our bar). In that light, I'll defer to the fans and flip my vote. YES

A resub from 2009?! Well, we'll see where this went. Very minimalistic take. The "lead" instrument is a bass triangle wave, along with some simple beats. Piano and square wave are used for flavor. Occasionally the square plays the Corridors of Time melody, but otherwise it's in a supporting role. Source usage is still a little hard to pin down. There's a lot of usage of the chord progression and the pads, but those are subtle and I wouldn't count them as source usage. What I do count is 0:57-1:15, 1:42-1:48, 1:59-2:14, 2:44-3:57, and 4:09-4:14, a total of 117 seconds out of 286, which is 41%. On top of that, while I find this minimalist approach interesting it is, well, minimal. It's very repetitive and very quiet. The soundscape is very thin, which of course it would be when only percussion and a triangle wave are playing most of the time, accompanied only occasionally by a square wave and a very quiet, monophonic piano. If I didn't know this was from 2009, I'd consider it a bold concept in minimalism. This might have been considered pleasantly atmospheric back then, but by today's standards it just feels empty. I can see arguing the source usage (though the way Larry stopwatches, I'd expect him to come up with even less), but the repetitive minimalism isn't doing much for me. I like some of the arrangement decisions, blending your original hooks with the source material, but I think we need something a little less skeletal. NO

Whoa, wasn't expecting hard rock from a remix with "blues" in the title. Opens with some nice clean rhythm guitar, but then the lead guitar comes in very muddy. It's a weird transformation from studio to garage. It's not quite a cover. It stays close to the source until 1:29, where it loops into the hook an extra time instead of doing the next section of the source. Then they line back up again, and the remix does cover the omitted section (which repeats in the original). So they're nearly identical in structure, except that the remix gets one more loop of the hook in, in place of a loop of a different section. It also loops the hook in a straightfoward way in the ending, instead of what the original does, which is a significant riff on that. The result is that the remix feels much more repetitive than the source, fitting in two more loops of the hook in place of other content in the same amount of time. Generally speaking, a change in genre is usually considered sufficiently transformative, as long as it's not a 1:1 instrument swap. This is just more than that. The drum writing is actually quite good. But DarkSim is right: other than the drums, I can't pick out any novel writing at all, and the only arrangement changes actually remove content from the original rather than putting content in. And even that's done in a very minimal way. I'm afraid I'm coming to the same conclusion, and am just as unhappy about it. This is a great approach, and the tone is mostly good, just a little (inconsistently) dirty, but try as I might I'm coming up short when it comes to transformation. It's clearly not a "MIDI rip" since it's played live, but it's still an instrument swap. It's a very, very good instrument swap, but that's not what we're looking for. As DarkSim said, just a short section or two of original writing, or even just substantially transformative riffing, perhaps in place of the 1:29-1:43 loop, and this would be in a much safer spot. As it stand though, regretfully, I have to add my vote of NO (please resubmit)

Lots of good stuff has been said about the arrangement so far, and I agree with all of it. On the matter of bass, it feels a little light to me, but the bass synth and kick have enough low end to me that I don't feel like anything's egregiously missing. I didn't notice there was an issue at all until my fellow judges pointed it out, and I don't think it's enough reason to send this back by any means. YES