MindWanderer

I'd like to take a step back and look at what the artist is trying to accomplish here. He mentioned being inspired by The Lonely Trumpet by Parov Stelar, which was certainly not a connection I would have made even if I'd been familiar with it! But listening to that, I can hear the connections: it's held together by a very simple repetitive synth beat which differs only by being present or not present. It does play with energy levels despite that, and the arrangement itself is quite different, but I recognize the intent. I do think that Trumpet works better than this because its boomy kick and sharp clap fill out the space better; in particular, this remix has nothing in the highs except the violin, with not even the hats having that necessary sizzle to fill out the soundscape. The good news is that the performances are top-notch, and I think the arrangement as a whole works. I think this can be improved without changing either of those things. Go back to Trumpet and listen to what Stelar does to keep things interesting and fill up the space. Play around with the percussion and make sure you're letting some highs get through. You can also use arps, swells, sweeps, and drops to add depth and texture and retain engagement. I definitely want to see this back again, so please do your artists' work justice! NO (resubmit)

Can't argue with any of that. It's a kickass cover, barring some fairly minor production concerns, but the fact that the track consists of two loops of the same thing, which is far too conservative. I enjoyed this, but it's not what we look for. NO

Yep, sounds great to me too. There's something vaguely uncanny about the production---the instruments aren't quite as crisp as they should be for being individually recorded and EQ'ed, but not as resonant as they would be as part of a full ensemble orchestra all performing in the same place at the same time. I'm nitpicking, though. Great arrangement. YES

What an interesting idea! I was initially concerned about the orchestral aspect of it, since that overlaps with the source instrumentation, but the liberal use of analog synths, not to mention the darkly gritty style, makes it a very different beast indeed. That's some killer sound design there, and the live euphonium and especially the cello work beautifully. It's not flawless, though. The high-end synths sound like they have too much of a low pass on them. Even for a dark tone, there should be something with a little brightness to it. I'm also not thrilled with some of the bassiest sections. 1:28-1:39 in particular is squashed and staticky. 1:59 and 2:41 don't sound great, either; I think there's a buzzy bass synth in 2:41-3:04 that's buried just enough so that only the buzz comes through and it sounds like bitcrushing, even though it isn't. While overall this sounds great, those super-gritty bass sections give me pause. It's one of those things that didn't bother me at first but grates after a few listens. I'll see what other judges say, and I wouldn't be sad if this got sent back to get those fixed. But the package is good enough that I think I can give it a YES

I personally never understood why people like the Lavender Town theme. I find it more grating than creepy. And then I hear this. Holy crap. I also haven't heard of "atmospheric black metal" as the name of a genre before either, but I sure recognize this. It's been in a lot of dark games I've played recently, like Oxenfree. And this source is an excellent use of the style. One of those "didn't know I wanted it until I heard it" moments. The leads being buried is fine by me; it increases the atmospheric presence and is typical of the genre. I agree that the mixing is slightly flat; it's hard to avoid in this genre, but the leads could be a bit brighter, and you've got some hard limiting going on for large chunks of the track that could use some breathing room. There's even some pumping in the loudest parts, most audibly 4:11-5:10 but also 2:28-3:55 and 6:08-7:07. Fadeouts are also almost always undesirable, but this one bothers me less than most. Atmospheric stuff can fade out, it's fine. Not great, but fine. Yeah, I'm good with this. YES

There's a lot I like about this. The general tone, with the Korg melody over the Behringer bass, sounds as good in practice as it does on paper. Beautifully chill. However, you absolutely lost me at 3:45 when the random drum solo pops in. You could make that work with more intentionality, but honestly I don't think it does with the rest of the piece at all. And it goes on forever. And then the section after it is is a loop back to 1:42, with what sounds like a wholesale copy-paste job. It would probably work if instead you transitioned to a climax here, e.g. a loop with some extra layering, such as an arp or counterpoint. I do have some production notes as well, although they're pretty minor. Your bass has good timbre, but it's too quiet and the frequency distribution needs tweaking. It caps out at -15dB (which should be -12dB; you have about 3 dB of headroom you could stand to get rid of), and is almost completely flat from 0-120 Hz. This particular genre needs bass with oomph. It should be louder in general, especially in the 50-100 Hz range. You can put a high pass at 20-40 Hz to give yourself more wiggle room in the audible frequencies. Pump up the volume, especially the bass, and come up with a different ending, and I'll be excited to put this on the front page. NO (resubmit)

Interesting dark synthwave take on a simple romantic source. Definitely not something I saw coming! There's some rich bass layering going on here. It sounds great on my setup, but I do wonder how it would sound on a setup with a strong bass response. It's pretty light in the highs, though clearly you were going for a darker tone here. Some of the choices are a little weird: some strange timing here, some weak leads there, a touch of dissonance. There's some structural repetition, but each loops makes at least some notable change, e.g. shifting the lead up an ocatave, or swapping or removing the bass synth. I will say that even though the one change is a big one, it's still just one change, and the loops could stand to differentiate themselves more. Also, there's no ending to speak of. There are a lot of little things that bug me about this, but none of it is substantial enough to merit a NO. Overall, it's creative and it has a great tone. There are tweaks I'd like to see happen, but I'm also okay giving this a YES Update 4/13: I just want to make it clear that I saw Larry's vote. I don't believe in counting fractions of a second, and rounding those off makes the count only 5 seconds short of 50%. And his count also skipped a 4-second break in the middle. Heck, there's even 3 seconds of silence at the end that could be trimmed out and doesn't need to count against it. Calling this not dominant source usage is nit-picking IMHO.

The sub doesn't come through on my budget headphones, but the production is certainly fine. It's not tremendously layered, but nothing's unclear. As for repetitiveness, sure. But it's trap. It's supposed to be. There are a lot of repeated ideas, and each loop goes on for quite some time, but the track as a whole is progressive. I have to think about it, but I don't think there's a problem on this front. The one thing that gives me pause is the energy level. That's extremely static. There's a brief breakdown, but no risers, only one mini drop, and minimal changes to the beat. I think that contributes to the feeling of repetition more than actual copying or looping. As a result, I'm borderline on this as well. It's certainly lackluster for a bLiNd remix, but if a new musician submitted it, I'd lean towards passing it. My main objections are more subjective than objective. I wouldn't be sad if this got sent back, but it earns my YES (borderline)

Thanks for sending over that comparison track. It was really helpful in explaining how the length and repetitiveness of this was an intentional artistic decision. I'm not totally sold on it, since lyrics help make a repetitive piece feel less so, but on the other hand I can't understand anything NIN is saying anyway. The production issues bother me more than they do Larry. I immediately checked to see if the track was clipping when I heard that crackle, and was surprised to see it wasn't. There's also an ultra high frequency noise that needs to be filtered out---it's not super loud, and it's right at the edge of my hearing range, but it's stabbing at my eardrums to the point where I can't listen to anything anymore; I have to be done voting for a bit until I recover. I'm not willing to YES this as it is, but a generous low pass will fix the latter problem in a couple of seconds. I'm not sure if the crackle is as quick a fix, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, and I can't enjoy this piece with it there. YES/CONDITIONAL

This is a lot of fun and sounds great, but I'm going to need some help with identifying source material. I saw that it passed album eval with flying colors, so hopefully one of the judges who weighed in on that thread will be able to help out on that front. Edit 11/02: I'll trust proph's breakdown, so this isn't a tough one. I really enjoyed the variety of textures, but it never sounds like a mess. Just entertaining throughout. YES

That all jives with what I'm hearing. EQ is a persistent issue, and there's a whole lot of not-music here. It's fun and creative, but for all the reasons above, it's not the sort of thing we're looking for. NO

I enjoyed this, and didn't mind the imbalanced sections the way Kris did. The bassy intro was clearly intentional and vibrant; the mid-lows seem fine. However, I'm listening on headphones that don't have much sub-bass to them, and I can see from a spectrum analyzer that there is indeed a lot of presence in the subs. That's a big part of what's causing the pumping Kris mentioned, and I can definitely hear that. Similarly, this peaks at +8 dB; the clipping may not be audible on everyone's setup, but it's there and it's causing distortion. The snare sounded fine to me, though the kicks are lost in the mud in the lows. I don't think there's a ton of work to be done here, but it's not a 5-minute fix, and it's pretty critical. I hope you can send this back to us soon! NO (resubmit)

I enjoyed the hell out of this! This Deadmaus-style glitch-house is one of my favorite styles of remix, and you really nail the genre and the energy that such an arrangement should have. Unfortunately, Kris's criticisms are dead on. Your interpretation of the Underworld theme is a lot of fun but it's not recognizable without either a ton of imagination or a clinical evaluation of the notes used. It's the lynchpin of the whole arrangement, and without it, I don't feel like this meets our standards for source usage. Her comments about the mixing are correct as well. It's muddy more often than it isn't, and some sections (like 2:26-2:33 and 4:04-4:10) are a wall of noise. Loud, hissy sweeps and risers, and tons of competition in the mids and mid-highs, combine to make this difficult to really listen to and appreciate. I'm glad you submitted this---it's a lot of fun, catchy as heck, and supremely original---but I don't think we can post it as-is. I hope for your own sake you clean up the production---and it's certainly something to bear in mind for your next submission---but the source usage is still a problem for us. NO

I don't have a big problem with the production of that one drum, but it is off-beat. Overall I felt like the mix of clean bells and pads with the lo-fi drums worked just fine. I didn't think the "strings" were even trying to be strings, just a synth pad, and I have no problem with that. As an overall package, I felt like it basically worked. The big issue is how nearly the whole thing is overlaid on either a direct sample or a soundalike of the source material. It's just too close. I think that altogether it's just transformative enough to meet our standards of interpretation---although a great deal of it, especially the first half, is not---but the use of the exact same bells makes this not the sort of thing we look for. I think if you replaced that one thing with a reinstrumentation of your choice, even a very similar one, this would probably be acceptable. A bit more reinterpretation in the first half and slightly cleaner timing on the drum would be nice to have as well. NO (resubmit)

Wow, not what I was expecting, for either a SotN mix in general or a mix of this source! What a fantastic little rock ballad. The instrumentals are pretty different from the original, but since the remix is dominated by the vocals, which are melodically identical, there's no problem with source usage. The vocals are very hard to understand. Tera's pitch is excellent, but her enunciaton isn't as strong. The choruses, in particular, when the guitar joins in, are completely indecipherable. I can only make out "dream" and "a different place to"; I wasn't even sure it was still English for a while. The balance also favors the guitar too heavily; even if her enunciation were cleaner, I think she'd be hard to make out. While that is a major criticism, it's my only one. The performances are otherwise stellar; the arrangement is creative without going off the rails; production is otherwise on point. I'd love clearer vocals, but 1) I don't think we're going to be able to get them, and 2) I don't think it's enough to sink this otherwise fantastic submission. Strong work. YES

Yeah... it still sounds like very old remixes. If that's a compliment to you, feel free to take it as such... There are clearly synths with a lot of potential, but buying synths isn't the solution. You can make great remixes with free synths. It's how you use them that matters. Part of the problem is that there's a wide variety of synths used here, and they don't hang together. Choir, organs, synthwave, dark house... it's a hodgepodge. You can make an arrangement work that way, but it's harder than picking a genre and sticking to it. And there are still a fair number of primitive synths that don't really cut it, chief of which is the drums, especially the snares. And it's all snares and kicks. 0:57-1:09 is the strongest part of the track because it has a pad and bass that go well together, a contrasting but not conflicting lead, and none of those cheap-sounding drums. The synths are also all used in a simplistic way. Take 2:02-2:16 as an example: You have a lead here that's doing the work of at least two instruments (melody, response). That could be two or even three different synths, which could be partially overlapping for more sophisticated interactions. 1:37-1:48 is another example, where the runs could be a different instrument (and the instrument you chose here isn't great to begin with). That's not to say this is the only way to do it, but it's a way that stands out to me where you could make things more interesting and modern. The arps in 0:42-0:57 are a nice touch that show some more complexity, but you also have no bass there... Speaking of which, bass is pretty lacking throughout. There are some pads that help, but the first real bass instrument doesn't come in until 0:57, and it's very high for a bass. And then there's again none until 2:02. You're learning, and that's a good thing. But this does need some more work to bring this into the 21st century. NO

Nice mellow piano & drum. Pleasant and smooth. ...and then the synth hits. It's such an odd choice. You say it was added to reduce repetitiveness, but it plays for the whole piece except the intro and outro, so it only replaces one sort of repetitiveness for another. And it's such a bland synth. However, it's arranged well, and played with humanism, and has some reverb to make it sound like it's more or less in the same space. I don't think it's the greatest choice, but it's not a dealbreaker. Otherwise this is nice. It does take a fair amount of creative license with the source material for extended periods, but I don't have doubts about the source being dominant. It checks all the boxes for me. YES

It's a pretty strange source tune to begin with, but this is a whole other level of weirdness. It's vaguely like a bright Daft Punk in places, and in others reminds me of the soundtrack to Axiom Verge, and then there are the deliberately dissonant sections. There are a lot of ideas packed into this, especially for a single-source remix. It's impressive that it manages to feel cohesive with so many changes. It's almost like a mini-suite. I hardly have anything to criticize. The main lead is a little bland, and on one hand it's unfortunate that it's used throughout almost the entire mix, but on the other hand there are so many changes that it's helpful to have that to hold it all together. Without that, it would sound too disjointed. Some of the dissonant stuff is a little too much so for my tastes, but it's intentional and it works. Production-wise, the soundscape is a smidge light in the lows; the kicks especially are thin and lacking in impact. The drums in general are the weakest synth; if I could pick one thing to fix, it would be that. It's not a dealbreaker for me, though. Nice work overall, and yes, I did enjoy it! YES

Wow... what a crazy concept! An epic orchestral ska death metal medley of Golden Axe, of all things... certainly never saw that coming! Despite the multiple sources and the genre changes, the whole thing hangs together as a cohesive whole, for the most part. The bookending helps, though the transition back to the beginning at 6:10 could be smoother. 3:37 is also pretty abrupt, and 3:37-4:03 really doesn't hang well with anything around it, but that's more for production reasons than arrangement ones... So, production. I don't have as positive things to say about that, unfortunately. The drums and rhythm guitar are extremely loud, to the point of muddying even the melody. In the orchestral sections, the flutes and trumpets join the fight and make the melody even harder to hear---it's nearly inaudible at times. Go to 4:58 for a stark example: those guitar chugs absolutely run roughshod over everything else, except the trumpets riding on top like surfers on a tidal wave. In the choir bridge, the lead guitar drops dramatically in volume, and even though the drums and rhythm guitar are used only for punctuation, they're comically loud in comparison. The choir's performance isn't stellar either. It's hard to hear because of how quiet it is, but it's badly off-key in places. So, mad props for the arrangement. It's clearly a monumental effort, and it paid off nicely. But this does need another pass at production so all your session artists' work can really shine. NO (please resubmit!)

Yep, this fixes my main concerns nicely. The instruments sound great and the balance is much better distributed. The attack on the horns is still a bit slow, so I don't know if everyone else will be on board with them, but that was never my complaint, and they don't sound like toys anymore. I'm still not 100% on board with the ending. It just ends in the middle of a phrase. I can see how it might work as part of a real movie score, in context. There's also 13 seconds of silence at the end that could be trimmed. Regarding the timing there, I think I figured it out: the loud kettle drum beats are causing the trumpets to duck slightly, and that's making it sound like the attack on them is even slower than it really is. It's not a big deal, just an odd little quirk that would be nice to address if we were aiming for perfection here. I have no doubts about this being good enough for the front page, though. YES

I'm not sure if any of that narrative was communicated by this retro, almost synthwave remix, but it stands alone just fine, for the most part. There's some solid sound design, even though the leads are fairly vanilla. There are decent amounts of creativity thrown in despite being driven mostly by the source material. I'm not sold on the glitching that starts at 1:33; there's so little of it that it comes across as an artifact and not intentional. And boo fadeout endings. There's also a synth that starts at 1:03 with a very long tail. At first I thought it was conflicting with itself, but then I noticed that there was a quiet pad that had been playing almost the whole time, which I didn't notice, but has a very simlar timbre, and that's what's causing the conflict. It's more prominent when it returns at 2:35, because the pad is louder. None of that is deal-breaking, though. Overall this is a perfectly serviceable arrangement; nothing revolutionary but a fun listen. YES

I can't argue with any of the above. It's a clever idea, but there needs to be more interpretation and better production for us. NO

Remixing 5 different sources isn't as impressive as it sounds when 4 of them are based on the same motif, but this is still a solid rearrangement of the various themes present. They're smoothly but uniquely integrated together, into something clearly derived from but clearly distinct from the originals. There's still the usual 4 dB of headroom we've come to expect from Rebecca, but it doesn't sound inaudibly quiet to me. Realism is adequate, thanks to the rich layering, though there's some especially mechanical tremolo that goes on forever---I'd expect those poor violinists' arms to be just about falling off. It's good enough for me, though. YES

A fun remix of a classic favorite! Energetic and fun, for sure. I like the creative riffs on the theme, although they're brief. But there are some things holding it back. The whole first minute includes a deep bass pad that sounds detuned to the point of being off-key for me. It sounds extremely dissonant to me, to the point where it's unpleasant to listen to. At 1:35 there's an arp that also sounds like it's off-key, or at least it's dissonant with something else playing during that section. The outro starts at 1:52, and re-introduces that dissonant pad, and ends with a fade-out. Fade-out endings are always a bummer, but usually not a dealbreaker, however, the fact that the fade-out ending begins before the 2-minute mark and goes on for 30 seconds is a big deal. The rest of the piece, that isn't intro or outro, is solid, but it's also very conservative. Most of it is a MIDI rip, though there are extra parts added. The only really original part is from 1:30-1:39---fun, but too brief! I don't normally come down this hard on one dissonant synth and a fade-out ending. In most remixes that would be worthy of criticism but not a NO vote. But in this case, that pad is so loud and runs for so much of the mix (about 1:30 out of 2:30), and the fade-out ending comprises so much of the total length of the piece, that it's too much for me. I'd also recommend having more fun with the main body of the arrangement. Those 9 seconds of originality are the best part, and I want more of that. The arrangement as a whole can stand to be much longer, and more of that sort of thing is how you get there. NO

Nothing revolutionary, but clean and competent. I'm not the biggest fan of the fake ending at 1:27, but it's far from a dealbreaker. My one big criticism is that it does get repetitive, mostly because the iconic intro arp rarely lets up, but there's no straight copy-pasta. I'm not as enthusiastic about this as my colleagues, but I also don't see sufficient reason to send this back. Nice work. YES