MindWanderer

Not many remixes of this source; it's very short, and hard to make much out of. And yet here we are, with nearly 5 minutes that isn't really repetitive at all. I mean, it is trance, so there's some repetition to it, but there's a lot of trance that goes on way, way longer than this does. Nice soundscape, with a rich bassline and kicks on the bottom and an eclectic mix of sounds in the top. I didn't think any of the sound design was phoned-in; even when there are simple waveforms, they're chosen judicously and are steeped in reverb. I do think the ending was a little unsatisfying: there's an ending section but then it just sort of stops. That's my only criticism, though. This thing is aces. YES

I didn't timestamp this, but considering its length, it doesn't surprise me that it falls short. Even without that, because of the way it ends kind of abruptly just after the 2 minute mark, it doesn't feel like a complete remix, more like a proof of concept. The performance, composition, and production all sound great. I love the guitar over a cinematic soundscape; it's a rich and unique sound. If there was another minute of VGM added in at the end, going into a complete ending, this would be a shoe-in. As it is, I have to agree with Larry's NO

Yeah, unfortunately, while this would be perfectly servicable as, say, a sound upgrade to 6th-gen console quality, the humanization is lacking, and balance levels are erratic. There's an overall drop in volume at 1:19, and the strings have a wide range in overall loudness that's definitely digital volume control and not velocity. As Larry said, the arrangement is just fine, this just needs work on the articulations to sound less mechanical, and then some minor loudness tweaks to finish it off. NO

Nice mellow noodling around with the Athletic theme. Lots of changes in lead, style, and accompaniment to keep things interesting, and the Underground break is well-placed. Normally ping-pong stereo bothers me a lot, but in this case it mostly works. Pretty much everything about this is a textbook synth remix: nothing revolutionary, but no missteps either. Ultimately a fun little jaunt. YES

Pretty eclectic mix, combining distorted and clean electric guitar, synth, and orchestral elements. Despite being a bit fakey, it's all pretty well done, except for the percussion, which is both primitive and relentless. There are precious few change-ups in the percussion all the way through 0:46-2:08 and 2:29-3:52: 165 seconds out of a 254 second mix, or 65%. That's a lot, and it definitly wore on me well before the end. Speaking of that end, fade-out, ugh. Especially when it's not a bookend or otherwise have anything to give it a sense of closure. It just feels lazy. That said, the arrangement is fun enough, and there's clever part writing all over the place. Neither the drums nor the fade-out are dealbreakers in my book, though they do bug me. Overall an enjoyable mix. YES

I follow CarlSagan42's SMM videos religiously, so I know the context here. Less wacky than what I was expecting, but there's plenty of randomness in there still. It does stick to one palette pretty closely for a long time. The drums bother me more than the leads, since they're on autopilot from 0:10 to 2:22 — basically the whole thing except intro and outtro. More importantly, there's a lengthy loop: 0:09-1:10 is repeated in 1:20-2:21. There are additions to the second loop: mostly SFX, but 1:51-2:21 does have some extra instrumentation. For me, the repetition is too much. Yes, only 31 seconds is strictly copy-pasta'ed (with SFX added), but another 30 seconds hews really closely to the first loop as well. It's over a third of the entire arrangement, and the non-intro/outtro is entirely two loops of the same thing at heart. I think we need to ask for some more variety and development than what we're seeing here. NO

The drums are a little dull, but I feel like they're overfiltered if anything. I don't think they're too loud by any stretch. As for the orchestral mixing, when you have an orchestra and rock instruments and synths and a choir (even a vocoded choir), something's gotta give. I don't think this could have been mixed much better. It's not perfect, but I can hear everything I think I'm supposed to be able to hear. And the sections take turns being more or less audible. Where I do think this lacks is depth. There's no trebel and no bass. The kick, bass guitar, brass, and cello sections have no oomph to them, and the cymbals and violins have no high end to them. Letting them expand more into those high and low frequencies will give them more space to breathe, and give you more freedom to EQ other parts around them, and add clarity to the whole thing. That said, is it a dealbreaker? Not for me. And not just because we're trying to get this into a mixflood, either. I'd love to see it improved upon but I'm satisfied enough. YES

Thanks, I hate it. YES In all seriousness, there's really no problem with this sort of thing. We really do embrace all genres for the site, regardless of our personal preferences — and some of us genuinely like this sort of thing. The mixdown is a little grungy, but I expect that for this genre. There's a little bit of clipping during the big hits, but again the genre excuses it (though it still should ideally peak below 0dB). I can't see a compelling reason to say no.

Well, this is... definitely not the sort of music I normally listen to. Takes a bit of work to wrap my head around. There's actually not much repetition. There is one notable loop: 0:14-0:54 is repeated at 1:46-2:26. Also 1:06-1:19 and 2:37-2:52 are nearly copypasta. A total of 53 seconds out of 3:41, 24% of the arrangement. Other sections are similar but not identical. My own rule of thumb is 25%, so this is close, but also a certain amount of repetitiveness is typical for the genre. Otherwise, everything seems to be on point. It's remarkably well-produced for club music, though it is quite loud. The Lavender Town theme is used thoroughly and appropriately; though I honestly don't understand why people love it so much, this is a great use of it. I can't see any reason to hold this back. YES

Its volume was certainly the first thing I noticed; I had to turn my volume down quite a bit. But then we get a fun groove driven by that buzzy bass, and some run riffing on the theme. A bit conservative structurally, but there are more than enough twists on the theme to stay different and interesting. 100% agree with proph on the bass being problematic: it's too loud and it almost never lets up. It's quite fatiguing. It really would have been nice to have a different bass from time to time. That said, the bass being too loud is really the only production issue. The percussion is great and the other layers work just fine. Arrangement-wise, even though there isn't any original writing, the pieces of the source material are rearranged into something sufficiently novel. An ending would have been nice to have, but that isn't a dealbreaker either. Lots of room for improvement here, but also much stronger work than many of your submissions. I'm happy to give it a YES

Starts off sounding like a sound upgrade, but 10 seconds in diverges into original writing, where it stays until 0:52. There are hints of Brinstar's chord progression in the bass here, but that wasn't cited as a source. Fortunately, that and 1:11-1:33, and then 3:27-3:45 are the only sections that aren't clearly from the source, so, at 69% source usage, it's technically within our standards. It's just really weird for a remix to have so much original writing up front. The lead horns sound terribly fake. Sometimes you can get away with fake instruments in an otherwise all-synth mix, but this is not one of those times. It's just unpleasant, exposed, and in your face. At 2:40, there's an interesting call-and-return section with a new synth, but the "return" part is so quiet it's almost inaudible. 2:49 brings us back to the Item Room theme, overlaid on a loop of the Norfair theme. I don't think it works; there's no harmony, the timing is different; they just don't go together. At 3:05 there's some transformation that brings it back together, but it only lasts for 10 seconds. 3:25 has the Norfair theme weirdly start a loop and then immediately fade out, to be replaced by a return to the original writing, which is a loop of 0:32-1:11, then abruptly cuts back to Item Room as a bookend. There isn't any one thing here that's a dealbreaker to me, but between the sound design and the disjointed layering and transitions, I have too many concerns. NO

For other judges: here's a timestamped link to the track without the voiceover: I'm stlll researching whether the track actually appears in the game.

Very conservative arrangement here. The sound palette is very similar overall, with similar industrial backing instruments and a similar theremin lead. The remix does condense the theme to focus more on the melodic elements and less on the interstitial ones, but overall the sound and feel hew closely to the original. The fade-in intro and fade-out ending add to the feeling of being ripped directly from a game. Overall this comes across as more of a remake than a remix. It's an enjoyable listen, and the production quality is top-notch, but all in all I think this falls short on interpretation for us. NO

Wow, 8 minutes of solo organ. That's a hard sell to retain interest. Even without direct repetition — which would be impossible in an improv piece — I frequently found myself wondering when it was going to be over. The sustained drones add to the feeling of monotony. That said, there's a bit of genre bias here on my part. I'd have a hard time remaining engaged with any 8-minute long organ solo, and I can't deny that it's a valid style of composition. It's just not for me. The length is pretty much necessary to convey our required amount of interpretation (I checked out more of Woody's discography, and there are plenty of shorter arrangements that wouldn't meet our threshold.) And given that this arrangement is literally irreproducible, and can't be resubmitted (except for production tweaks, which I see no need for here), and can only be a YES or NO, I see no reason not to give it a YES

I don't agree with Emu at all: this does feel like a pasted-together medley. The transitions are abrupt and even change keys sometimes. There's not a lot of transformation, either; the sources are more or less transcribed verbatim. And of course the ending just fades prematurely, not even on a loop. In addition to the textures never changing, they aren't great to begin with; this buzzy, bland lead wouldn't be a good choice even if it were used only briefly. And the kick is extremely loud and boomy. I encourage you to hit up our workshop forums for advice going forward. It doesn't do you or us a lot of good to submit a bunch of remixes to us that all have the same issues. On our forums, you can get tailored feedback faster and iterate more, rather than waiting months to get a full panel vote. NO

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