MindWanderer

Dark jazz isn't really my thing, but this is clever and well-executed. Sound quality may not be perfect, but it's well above our bar IMHO. I have no complaints. YES

Fairly straightforward chippy EDM take on the Tetris theme. A bit of orchestra in the intro, but it's crushed to the point where it's hard to call it "orchestral." It's a little repetitive, with 0:38-0:53 looped at 1:40-1:54. 1:24-1:38 is pretty close to that, too. I wouldn't normally call out 14-second loops for being repetitive, but this whole track is only 2:12 long, so 28 seconds of repetition is 20% of the track. The very short length and the abruptly cut-off ending combine with the repetition to make the track as a whole feel underdeveloped. What's there sounds good, but it sounds more like a proof of concept than a complete work. This is borderline for me. The production quality is there, though the intro is a little crunchy, and the whole thing peaks at +0.2dB (though I don't hear any distortion myself). The approach is fine. It's fun. No one thing (the repetition, the length, the ending) is itself a dealbreaker, but the package makes the track seem incomplete. I'm going to mull this one over a bit more. Edit: Since Gario echoed my sentiment exactly, even though I'm willing to give more leeway to the production of the main body, I'll lock down my vote. NO

Metal goodness from obscure but great chiptunes! The energy and arrangement are great. Excellent job taking such a short refrain and making a full-fat, entertaining song out of it. Tons of variation on that simple theme. This is an example we could point to when remix submissions are too repetitive or conservative. Production isn't quite as praiseworthy, though. The percussion, especially the kicks and snares, and the rhythm guitar are really loud. While you can hear the lead through it, there's a mixing challenge when combining chiptunes or other simple waveforms with complex ones, like electric guitars: an instrument with a complex waveform/timbre hits a lot of secondary frequencies, and therefore sounds a lot louder, than one with a simple waveform, when played with equal absolute amplitude. So the lead is clearly audible, but doesn't sit forward in the mix like a lead should. And after listening to it several times, I realized there are accompanying synths that are almost completely drowned out, like an arp at 1:36-1:57. As much as I like what's going on here in general, I have to ask for another balancing pass. Partly this is because the lead really is too quiet, but a bigger part is because there's what sounds like some really excellent composition going on in the background that I just can't hear well enough to appreciate. I want to hear it, so please let me. NO (resubmit)

Starts off a sound upgrade (though a massive one) with liberal VFX clips taken from the game. 0:13-0:36 is immediately looped at 0:37-1:00; it's not long, but early copypasta is a turn-off. Production quality is great, but for the full first minute, there's really not the kinds of development, personalization, and transformation that we look for. However, at 1:11, an original bridge kicks in, and it's pretty darn awsome, and blends in great with a return to the main theme. And then, suddenly, it's over. The whole track is less than 2 minutes long, which is our usual minimum. I really want to be able to pass this. There's about a half a minute of the epitome of the sort of thing we look for, which I really don't want to send back. But it needs to be supported by the larger mix, and it's just not. Add about another 30 seconds of content to where it basically stops at 1:47, and maybe some change-ups to the second loop, and this'll be a sure winner. NO

Emu's comments are all on point, but I'd like to talk about instrumentation, too. The synths are indeed pretty vanilla, which we've mentioned to you before, though they are a notable improvement. But also, you don't have to change leads every other measure to retain interest. The constant swapping around makes the arrangement as a whole feel a little incoherent. It's especially odd when it switches to a sampled "real" instrument instead of a synth. When you're just starting out, I recommend you pick a sound palette and stick to it. Ideally, choose a palette that matches the genre you're going for. For most of this particular submission, you have mostly house textures (though it varies a ton), but the style is more like downtempo. The contrast is jarring. An experienced composer can break outside the box and be creative with sound design, but it's easier to use what already works. Get one or more sample libraries or preset patches designed for the genre you're going for, structurally — lots of these are free — and stick with those for now. Keep at it, and maybe use our workshop forum so you're not waiting for feedback from us for months. At where you are right now, rapid feedback and iteration will help give you the practice and experience you need. NO

What interesting sound design! The minimalist approach highlights the timbre of each unique instrument and how they interact, two or three at a time. It's not everyday listening fare, more like an art exhibit, when you're in the mood to really focus on what you're listening to. Real high-concept stuff. And getting a live guitarist was a great decision: Ryan really knows how to coax interesting sounds out of those instruments. Rejecting this would be a crime. YES

We've got a few issues going on here. The lead synth, which never changes, is really unpleasant with how buzzy it sounds. It's like 1/3 note, 2/3 white noise. The other instruments are better, but they're also pretty bland. The kick is really loud and boomy. As for the arrangement, it's a medley. We don't necessarily reject medleys out of hand, but they do need to be unified in some way, and not just several tracks joined end-to-end. This is the latter. Transitions range from sudden to jarring, and there's nothing connecting them except the sound palette. Sometimes they even change keys. There are errors in the transcription, as well. The last measure of the stage intro at the beginning is a semitone high. I thought I caught one or two other mistakes as well. Sorry, but this is really not what we're looking for. NO

Absolutely stunning synthesized instrumentation. There are times you can tell the violin is fake, but a lot of the time, it can pass for real, and even when it sounds fake, it's not that obvious unless you're listening for it. This might be my gold standard for exposed virtual instruments going forward. The structure is conservative, but the part writing and emotion put this well over the bar as far as interpretation go. Since Kris called out that shrill note at 3:25, I wanted to talk about that for a moment. Here's the frequency analysis of just that note after everything else trails off: So, while that G7 may be a shrill note, it's still a note. You can see the harmonics on there a bit, but they're much quieter, and there's nothing above 12k Hz or so. I have really sensitive ears to this stuff, and have voted against many submisions because of shrill notes, but this was just fine for me. This is how you do it right. Superb skill on display on every level here. YES

In addition to the above comments about sample quality, I found this arrangement to be too repetitive. It's tough to take such a short source tune and turn it into something more substantial, but it can be done: you can transform it in different ways (instrumentation, key, or just riffing on the notes), or interleave it with original writing or a different source. In this 2:25 arrangement, we hear the main hook of the theme a whopping 8 times, and although 3 of those times are in a minor key, otherwise the changes are minimal. I do hear some changes, but they're fairly subtle, and the sample quality hurts you again here. You'll want to change things up more than this if you want to retain the listener's interest. It's a fine first attempt, so don't be discouraged. I encourage you to share any future revisions or other projects in our workshop forum to get more timely feedback than a full submission will get you. NO

Simple, effective. And yeah, being led by live woodwinds mitigates Rebecca's worst recurring issue. Not too quiet, either. Some of the timing is a tad weird, and there's a mushy note or two, but no big deal. YES

I'm in full agreement with proph, except that the creative flourishes were obvious to me right off the bat, and I liked the rhythmic change at 1:18 (which sounded perfect with the honky-tonk piano to me). It's some great Eurobeat, but the production needs work. Unfortunately, I don't think the production is quite a 5-minute fix. The master being brought down from +1.6dB to -0.1 max would be, but there's EQ and balance work to be done as well. The kick in particular is super loud, and it needs to both be high passed and quieted a bit. The leads are consistently too quiet. There are some really complex layers going on in the background, which sound great when I can hear them, but I usually can't. I do think this would be pretty easy to fix, but not quite easy enough to justify a Conditional vote. I still enjoyed it a lot, so I do hope we see it back on the panel! NO (resubmit)

While I think the sound design is now adequately modern — barely — the production is sadly not. The snares crackle like mad, the leads are too quiet more often than not, the kicks are too loud and sometimes cause overcompression, and that's just the stuff that leaps right out at me. Now that you're using a real DAW, you can more easily put some real attention into the levels of the various tracks, and possibly reconsider some of your synth/sample choices. The drums in particular could use better samples, and you can get some less dated synth sounds. The good news is that the arrangement itself sounds really good, you just need to work on the sound quality. NO

There's the bLiNd I know and love! The revision deserves all the praise from the previous submission: excellent sound design, perfect production, and now that the copypasta is removed, there's nothing to hold this back. YES

I really need to play this game! At first, I was worried that a chill, piano-driven acoustic remix of a chill, piano-driven acoustic track wasn't going to be transformative enough. I needn't have been; the electronic approach makes this a very different take. Where the original evokes wonder, the remix evokes joy. It's tough to rearrange something so much and still have it remain a faithful homage; not better, just different. It works in a way I wasn't expecting. A real pleasure to listen to. YES

This wears the influence from Monstrous Turtles! on its sleeve, for sure, but does stand out as a unique take. The voice samples and EDM blips add a unique texture. That said, the voice samples in particular wore on me and highlighted how repetitive the track is. 2:29-4:22 is an exact copy of 0:32-2:25, a full 41% of the track. There's some tolerance for repetitiveness in EDM, but that's too much. There should be some type of progression or transformation in the second loop to make it distinct from the first. I'm afraid this much exact copy-pasta is grounds for a NO

What a vibrant sound palette! I kind of expected the guzheng and erhu going into it, but the soundscape is nicely filled out with sylvan synths. The first half is a little predictable, but a treat to the ears nonetheless. The pad from 2:00 on is a bit loud, and making it quieter would help make the rest of the complex instrumentation shine, but I'd be willing to give it a pass. I'm not personally as keen on the second half. I appreciate the more EDM approach to it; it's full of energy and creativity. But the balance is a problem. The overall soundscape is a wall of noise; there's a ton of detail that's lost because there are so many layers fighting for space. 3:50-4:11 is the worst offender, with a supersaw that just crushes everything beneath it, but the rest of the second half all has the same issue. That's not to mention the sidechaining, which for me is way, way over the top, relentlessly pounding away for over a minute and a half. Fadeout ending, meh. And this section has the offending loud pad as well. I'm really ambivalent about this one. If it had ended at 2:54, I wouldn't hesitate to give this my stamp of approval. Balance could be improved, and using that as ending wouldn't be great, but the first half is easily strong enough even with those issues. But from 2:55-4:44, it's mostly a wash of pulsing saws to me, and I don't think it sounds good at all. Rebalance that section so I can actually hear music and I'll be all over this. NO (please resubmit!)

Starts off with some nice clean guitar over an almost bagpipe-like syth drone. Good sound. Then we encounter some production issues. The rhythm guitar chugs are really loud, especially when the lead changes to a square wave. On the other side, the cymbals are too quiet; the hats are almost inaudible at times and the crashes are muffled. Structurally, it's a fairly conservative cover up until 1:40. It does swap instruments around and add a few layers, but I'm not at all sure it's interpretive enough for OCR. Then at 1:40 it goes completely off the rails for the last 21 seconds; this part is interpretive enough, but it's not coherent. It's also barely 2 minutes long, which is our soft minimum. Soundscape-wise, there's something unnatural and flat about it that I can't put my finger on. It sounds like maybe the bass is filtered just a hair too much, in addition to the cymbals having too much of the highs cut out. Maybe another judge will be able to explain it better than I can. Regardless of this last issue, I do think this needs some production tweaks, and more importantly it needs to be developed more into something transformative in a relatively cohesive way. NO

Opened with Gregorian chant, okay, you got my attention. ...And then it's immediately almost a cover of the original, with extremely similar synths and the reverb turned up to 11. Wow, the reverb is just annihilating everything; add the thick pads and you can hardly hear anything else. It's just a wall of noise. And it's loud; I had to turn my volume down 25% because it was hurting my ears. It does introduce a few smidgens of original content periodically, and at the 2 minute mark there's an original bridge (with some shrill pads that hurt my ears even with the volume turned down). But mostly it's a very conservative approach overall. So I'm afraid this is problematic on two fronts. One, the structure and instrumentation remain similar to the source material. Two, the production needs some improvement: reverb needs to be tuned down to make the palette less muddy, instruments need to be rebalanced to make all instruments audible and the lead stand out in front, and the piercing pad needs to be turned down a few notches. Don't ever think of submitting as "wasting our time," though. We're here to judge, yes, but also to provide constructive feedback. We volunteer to do this work because we love it and we believe in OCR's mission. As long as people are submitting what they believe to be their best work in good faith, we never mind taking the time to listen. We share in your appreciation of the medium and your joy at what VGM means to you. Never stop creating. NO

Crunchy is right: the kicks have a noticable amount of crackle to them that I personally found distracting, and pump a little bit, too. I was a little surprised to open this up in Audacity and see that there was plenty of headroom at all times, because it sure sounds like it's hitting a hard limiter and getting distorted. The grungy synth used as a pad doesn't help; it adds some texture but mostly it just adds white noise. That said, after playing this a few times, the approach made so much sense that it had me doubting myself about whether it was really all that different from the original. (It totally is.) Quasi-industrial grunge is a perfect genre for this, and the additions fit in completely naturally. The performances are on point, too. This is one of those remixes where the remix could become more iconic, in some peoples' minds, than the original. I do really dislike the grittiness, especially of the kicks, but I won't throw a hissy fit over it, and everything else is great. YES

The opening sounded overly simplistic to me, so I had concerns to start off with. Then some nice harmonies, okay, we're getting somewhere. The glitching was a smidge too glitchy for my taste, but it served to add an interpretive element. Percussion was simple and definitely didn't seem like it came from the same chipset, and it was too loud, but good energy. 1:07 is a great example of where the snares in particular are too loud; some of the detail work here is almost inaudible. 2:02-2:21 is also poorly balanced, and several parts are unclear. The one thing that prevents me from passing this wholeheartedly is those loud snares. While I'd certainly prefer to get a version with that issue corrected, I don't think it's quite a dealbreaker; I can hear most of what's going on, and the production isn't otherwise problematic. Good writing carries this over the bar, IMO. YES

After listening to this track a few times, I was fully prepared to come back and add my YES to the YESes that just already be here, and was surprised by the only existing vote being a NO. Sure, the kick is pretty loud, but that's the only complaint I was going to make. Well, the ending could be a bit more satisfying. But it's a great arrangement, with great performances. The trumpet is superb, the bass is funky, the concept is unique. I could justify calling this a Conditional on the kick having its volume cut by a bunch, but it's not required to earn my YES

I have almost the opposite reaction. I love the little riffs that subvert the source material, and really enjoyed the arrangement, for the most part. It is out of ideas at 2:29, for sure — back to the unmodified source material and then the lazy fade out. Changes in lead would be welcome, but there was generally enough to hold my interest. The big exception is the percussion, which runs out of ideas about two seconds in. Virtually no changes except for about 15 seconds that drop the hat (and are otherwise unchanged). Of greater importance is the production. This has the same issue as the last several Pixel Pirates tracks I've evaluated. It has the same mushy, narrow soundscape, with overlapping frequencies and a lot of white noise, especially a pad with way too much reverb. There's a lot of work to be done here to make each instrument crisp and audible, and the soundscape full. Also, the beginning of the track pops in mid-note for me. Rendering error maybe? But it needs a bit more breathing room to avoid that glitchy sound. NO

This is indeed a fun approach, using EDM synths and an energetic groove to create something exciting. However, there are a few things about this that would need to be improved for us to accept it, IMO. Production. Many sounds conflict with each other and make things harder to hear. The biggest issue is the white noise that runs the whole time. From the seagulls, I assume it's supposed to be ocean swells, but it sounds more like a crowd to me. Either way it's too loud and muffles many other instruments, especially the pads. Also, the lead that starts at 1:15 and 1:53 is too similar in pitch and timbre to several other instruments and comes across as too quiet. 0:33 instroduces a rhythm instrument of some sort; I can't even tell if it's a piano or a guitar or what because it's so muffled. It's too conservative. The structure is mostly the same as the source track, measure for measure. The instrumentation is changed, but the notes are nearly the same, in the same order. The drums you added, which are a big part of why this is interesting as a remix, are too static. They're the same pattern for nearly the entire time they play, with only brief exceptions. It's fatiguing. "Fanfare" at the beginning sounds like a direct sample from one of the games. Square Enix doesn't allow us to accept arrangements with samples. I personally have had enough of "Fanfare" cameos to last me a lifetime, but if you really want to use it, you need to create your own version. So, good start, good ideas, but needs improvement in both production and arrangement. NO

What a strange arrangement! Some nice acoustic guitar, then the lead becomes this vanilla saw with stylish portamento. Then it gets all wubby. The second half is even stranger, with a lot of original material and distortions of the source material. I'm not at all sold on the sound design or structure. Both synth leads are pretty bland; the first one especially stands out because it's layered on all those acoustic instruments. 1:06 onwards almost sounds like an entirely different track, with only brief hints at similarity to the first part. Also, nearly everything from 1:06 onwards leans on that same lead, and having no lead changes in an EDM-ish piece like this is both unusual and fatiguing. I'm having a hard time deciding how much of my dislike is objective and how much is subjective. Certainly the more objective metrics of production clarity and source usage are fine. The sound design is great other than the leads, but of course leads are a big deal. And while it's disjointed, it's not so disjointed that it feels stapled together. So I'm going to lean on the side of YES

Oh, my, yes. I'm afraid I lost interest in this after a minute, and by the 2-minute mark I was double-checking to see how much longer this was going to go on. There's a lot more material to work with here, so mix things up and branch out a little. Great fundamental idea, just needs to be fleshed out more, especially for something as long as 4:30. NO