MindWanderer

Opens with a very loud pad; I had to turn my volume down. It doesn't muddy the other instruments, though, since it doesn't share space with anything, until 3:28. The lead there is pretty smushed. 3:53 is even louder, and shrill. It hurts my ears. I was waffling on the production until this point, but this part I'm immediately not okay with. The lead at 2:08 was louder and shriller than I'd like, as well. Overall the arrangement is fine. For a chill, conservative mix, it's dynamic and engaging. My issues are with production. The pads are far too loud and dominant, especially given their low-fi, gritty quality. There are also those piercing leads that are just uncomfortable to listen to. Good foundation here, just needs tweaks to balance and the tones of those few synths. NO

Looks like you've got about 110 seconds when you need 121, so you're 11 short. 0:35-0:43 (7 seconds) plays the main hook with a key change on the celesta. That's still 4 seconds short, which I'm unable to find. Certainly there are commonalities, but not as much direct source usage as it felt subjectively.

I'll stand by my position. Music is not the dominant component of this submission, full stop. Joe's counterargument is "the purpose of that rule seems to me designed to ensure that each arrangement contains a sufficient nexus to the video game that inspired it." That's not correct: the purpose is that it contains sufficient use of the musical track(s) that it's derived from. To take an extreme example, if a submission were a radio play-style re-enactment of the plot of Metal Gear Solid, it would have plenty of connection to the game but none to the music. OCR is about video game music, not video game-related audio.

I'm glad Larry posted first, because my one and only concern here is that it goes off the rails with a lot of original riffing. I trust Larry when it comes to needing to timestamp, though — at least, I trust him not to be too generous! Fantastic performances, fantastic arrangement, fantastic production. Excellent adaptation of a tune to a genre. Really just a stellar job all around. This could have been a DP, IMHO. YES

A repetitive 20-second source, huh? Very curious what could come out of this.... ...Well, I would have expected that if I'd read the description first! As it was, a pleasant surprise (other than the explicit lyrics, but ?‍♂️). The groove is super repetitive, but for the genre, that's to be expected, and at least the lyrics aren't repeated too much. The last minute or so drags more than I'd really like, but it's not that bad on a single listen, especially if you focus on the lyrics. The vocoded lyrics are a bit hard to understand. Otherwise, production is of course fine, and the source usage is ever-present (perhaps to a fault). It's almost cheating to call this a ReMix; it definitely counts, but choosing a minimalistic source to use as a base and then just doing whatever on top of it feels sort of against the spirit to me. Still, there's nothing objectively against our standards about it, and the quality is well above our bar. YES

Sees proph's screenshot Lowers volume of music player I can't say I agree with the position that it's mastered cleanly. From 0:28-1:24 I can barely make out even the lead, and I have only the slightest suggestion there's any kind of bass or harmony or anything. All I'm getting is drums. It's better after that until 2:08, but I'm still hearing mostly drums. I can make out the harmony now, but not bass or anything else. Then it alternates between the two styles until 5:27. That section is pretty minimal; not objectionable until 6:33, when the guitar comes in, which is absolutely awash with reverb to the point where it becomes muddy and indistinguishable almost immediately. I get that black metal isn't typically "cleanly" produced. There's a garage-y, wall-of-sound quality to it. But it should still be clearer than this, IMHO. I often use Clementine's "temperature" visualization to spot unusual balance and patterns. Here's what it shows for this track: Black represents (relative) quiet, white represents use of the full spectrum of sound, other colors represent partial presence in lows/mids/highs. This whole thing is either white or very pale colors. Generally, only a climactic section, if any, should look like that. (For contrast, here's your previous mixpost and another very busy metal track by the late great PirateCrab .) Regardless, the amount of repetition is unambiguously enough reason for a NO vote, as proph described. NO

proph nails the critical issue here. Far too much repetition for what we're looking for. It's a great orchestration. Production is clearly sampled but also well over our bar. If it just flat-out ended at 1:56 I'd probably still vote in favor of it despite technically being 4 seconds below our minimum. This should be an easy fix. NO (please resubmit)

Nice soundscape, if notably bass-heavy. I really like the syncopated beat. It's a little meandering and static, but I tried and failed to find any actual copypasta. I would like a little more variety and more of an ending, but I don't think either is strictly required in a remix of this length. It's a novel take on one of the most remixed tracks of all time, so kudos for that. YES

I'm noticing a trend with Pixel Pirates remixes: Great ideas, good energy, but spoiled by the mixdown. This track is no exception. The whole soundscape is mushy and mid-heavy, and most of the leads are buried behind the repetitive orch hit synth. Speaking of that synth, it's super repetitive. For me, it wore out its welcome by the halfway mark, and it still didn't let up. I loved the beat and the original take on this track. It's fun to listen to. But it needs to be mixed much more cleanly, and that one synth needs to be varied, at least on occasion. NO

It indeed works really well. The instruments are pretty mechanical, but in such a synth-heavy arrangement, that works just fine. Great tone that transforms the original while keeping a lot of the same feel. I'm not as keen on the loop. There are indeed changes to the additional elements, enough that they look very different in my visualizer, but those differences are mainly percussion. There's an extra layer to the vox, an added snare-like drum, the removal of the percussion at the end, and some changes to the SFX. If there are changes in the synths themselves, they're really subtle. It's a 1:15 loop out of 3:03, 41% of the total length. The first 46 seconds of it aren't exact copy-pasta, but to my ear the changes are mostly minor. However, the last 29 seconds of it removes the percussion entirely, and that's a more substantial change. 46 seconds is almost exactly 25%, which is about my limit. I'm not crazy about it but I'll accept it. Everything else is great, no problems. YES

Pretty conservative structurally, but the orchestration adds a lot of depth. I don't see the concern with it being a medley, because it's presented in exactly the same sequence as in the title sequence of the game. I'm happy with the arrangement, although the ending is disappointing. However, in an all-orchestral remix, realism is king, and this is struggling on that front. The timing and articulation are mechanical. Runs have issues where the attacks are running into each other and volume isn't getting all the way up. Balance is inconsistent: it fluctuates between being problematic and hard to make out to unrealistically perfect (where the virtual microphone is suddenly right next to the lead). Reverb is lacking a bit: the instruments are too try to sound like they were recorded in ensemble, The sample quality is fine, but more work is needed to make this close enough to a real orchestra. The lack of realism is the only major issue I have, but that realism carries so much weight in a piece like this that it needs to really nail it in a way that this doesn't quite yet. NO (resubmit)

Starts off with some uncanny but nice-sounding original choir, adding Vampire Killer on piano. Good so far. But then it transitions into this super-gritty and vanilla-sounding version of the theme. Drums are all kick, almost nothing else, and even the kick is thin. It loops this twice with no changes. Then there's a SID-ish breakdown, which is fine but minimalist. Then that transitions back into the plain gritty saws; though there's some original transformation here, the bass and kicks are far too loud. Then, following another loop, it just ends. I hate to say it, but there's a good amount of work to be done here. The synths are primitive and unclear. The drums in particular consist of just one weak 808 and some really quiet vague noises. The soundscape is all concentrated in the mids. The leads are too quiet, and the only layers I hear are lead, bass, and percussion. The source treatment is, by and large, very straightforward and a bit repetitive (though 1:58-2:44 is quite good in this regard). So there's quite a few areas of improvement needed. NO

First of all, hats off for sticking to your guns and trying to pull off a remix using only Caustic. I'm all about low barriers to entry, and a cheap phone DAW is about as low as it gets. Unfortunately, it's still clearly very difficult to achieve. The synths still sound antique, the worst of which are the drums, which are also too loud. The snares in particular sit on top of everything, and Larry's right about the kicks as well. There are also some weird artifacts in the triangle wave that I'm wondering might be a result of that merge function. I don't have any problems with the structure, and I didn't think source usage was in doubt for a moment. (Larry only got down to 51% through aggressively shaving out rests.) But the balance and textures are still not up to 2020s standards. NO

Trance of a short theme is always tricky to not sound repetitive, but on the other hand, trance is probably the easiest way to make a short theme not sound repetitive! And this does a great job of it, really taking that simple arpeggio and adding textures and layers like crazy. I never lost sight of the source tune, even when it was being riffed on like crazy; source usage is at something like 90%. Though I'm not sure the Clouds theme similarity is intentional, they just have the same chord progression. Production is great. Growly bass, rich drums, full soundscape. Nicely done all around. Let's get this posted. YES

I was literally in the process of typing up nearly exactly what Kris said about the loudness and the waveform and debating whether to include a screenshot. So thanks! I too have never seen a limiter wall as flat as that. Actually, she said pretty much everything else I was going to say by way of critique, too. Some of the lead chiptunes are a little dry and piercing, but other than that and the loudness, the overall sound is fine. I really like all the subtle little twists on the source material even outside of the major transformations, and didn't think at all that it took too long to get creative. I'm not that big a fan of the extended transition from 3:13-3:55; although it does eventually get tied back together, that's some serious twisting to get there. Overall it works. YES

Sounds great, just tiny performance mistakes that I'd be nitpicking, but I'm not hearing almost any direct source usage. If another judge can help make those connections, I'll happily give this a YES. Update 4/21: I went through section by section using the breakdown, and I sort of hear it, but I have to work really hard and use a bit of imagination. I don't doubt that it's there, on a theoretical level, and maybe if I saw the sheet music side by side I'd be able to see the common patterns. It's even less recognizable than the controversial Reflecting Pool. I NO'ed that one; I'm doing the same for this. NO

Yep, I don't have a lot to add. It's good clean fun. I didn't even notice how shrill the glitch effects were because they're short and fit in well. They're hard to ignore now that I'm aware of them, though. YES

Dee dee dee, ba ba ba da! I definitely got the influence. It's a great swing arrangement, and a superb job of extending a simple source. Production isn't perfect, with the guitar chugs overlapping with pretty much everything, but I don't hear an issue with the drums. 0:39-0:48 is pretty problematic, where the lead and bass are smack on top of each other, and 1:23-1:40 is real mid-heavy, but I think the rest is more than passable. I don't think realism on the brass is even remotely an issue; we've passed brass that sounds much worse than this. I wouldn't be too sad if this got sent back to get the mixing cleaned up a little, but I think it's well above our bar as-is. YES

Unfortunately I have to concur. Great performances, really enjoyable as a piece of jazz music, but it's too far removed from Dire Dire Docks to be postable here. I'm sure we could boost it on social media if you shared it some other way, but we just can't host it ourselves. NO

There's some fun sound design here, but most of what you've done is a 1:1 instrument swap. The most problematic is the droning pad of the original, which you kept, and sounds really unpleasant. Compositionally, it's two loops of the source material, with very few changes between the first and second loop. The drone changes timbre, but I'm not hearing any other differences. There isn't even an intro or an outtro, just an extremely long decay into over nearly 20 seconds of silence. Production sounds mostly pretty good, but we're looking for more in terms of arrangement. This sounds like it's a MIDI rip, taking the exact source material and swapping the instruments out, as well as being two loops of that same source material with little variation and no addition. We need more in terms of both transformation and dynamism. NO

Funny thing is, I got very different impressions but came to the same conclusion. The first thing I hear is a really loud bass triangle wave. Like, so loud I feel it in my gut, even with my fairly low-end headphones. The whole thing is mixed unnecessarily loud, and even clips, but that bass triangle is overwhelmingly loud even beyond that. I can only listen to this for so long, so I apologize if I missed any issues. I don't have a problem with rigid piano in an otherwise synth soundscape. And I don't hear a noise at 2:07, but there are about 9 seconds of silence at the end that should be trimmed out. I do totally agree with Larry about other points, though: it loops the main hook far too many times, and the percussion kit is underwhelming (I mostly here just a severely low-passed snare). It is a good start, but watch the volume levels and try to use more than just the main hook to tie it together. The source material has several other melodic sections you can borrow from, as well as changes in harmony, and you can always throw in some original writing as well. NO

Great sound, great beat. Nice mix of techno and ethnic-sounding synths. A lot of fun to listen to. My one concern is repetitiveness. Now, it's trance, and trance is supposed to be repetitive. And there's not much copy-pasta here. It's progressive trance, done the way progressive trance is supposed to be done. It works for me, with the genre consideration. YES

Opens with a massive wash of reverb, a little off-putting as an opening. 0:50-1:40 is looped exactly at 1:40-2:30; 50 seconds of the first two and a half minutes — a full third of the arrangement at this point, and also a pretty conservative cover — is also an early deterrent. However, after that point, it picks up. Nice riffs on the theme, and the soundscape is a pretty solid example of synthwave with chiptunes. The piano breakdown is a particular highlight. The ending is a bit of a letdown, though; 4:45 and 5:00 were both more natural endings, and it just kept going until it sounds like you ran out of ideas. Production-wise, it's a little mid-heavy, but I can hear most everything clearly. The pad conflicts a little more than I like, but I can live with it. Overall, there's a bunch of things that could be improved, but they're not huge and I don't think they add up to a rejection. I'm happy to go with a YES

Really nice melancholic black metal here. A really long arrangement, but it's not even remotely repetitive. Mixing blastbeat (thanks for the vocab word, proph) is extremely difficult; I don't care for it at baseline, but this is done as well as it reasonably can be. The rest of it is mastered better than most black metal. Since it's so long, timestamping source material is tricky, but subjectively it seems like there's enough. Really strong work here overall. I wouldn't have objected to this being a DP. YES

I re-listened to this without first checking on my original vote, so I was really surprised when the SMM1* mashups began. In retrospect they make perfect sense as a way to extend the original without making it overly repetitive. And I would say... it almost works. The problem is that some of the mashed-up sections sometimes sound great (the first 5 notes of Underground are especially great), and sometimes clash badly. 2:39-2:41, 2:55, and 3:24-3:30 are the bits that clash. 2:55 is just a single clashing note, but 3:24-3:30 is a whole key change that really doesn't flow with everything around it. It feels worse than it is because the two longest problematic parts are (almost) at the start and the end of the mashup section, so they're the most impactful. After a bunch of listens, I find that the problem bugs me less the more I listen to it rather than more, so I'll add in my own YES * And one SM64 cameo — cheeky, since SM64 isn't one of the game modes that SMM2 covers. Bob-Omb Battlefield isn't even one of the SFX you can choose in-game.