MindWanderer

This is certainly a vast improvement on the repetition front. There's a lot of re-use of the main hook—a lot—but there's plenty more here. I particularly like the new last section, where the change in the harmony line changes the character of the hook. I'm not as big a fan of the big church bells, though; they sound off-key to me. I can't explicitly hear the brickwalling issue Kris mentioned, but I can certainly see it. There's just no reason for that kind of aggressive hard limiter. Please apply some proper compression instead. It'll make everything sound that much better. I actually think the bass solo is fine, given its length; the bass is rich and has a lot of harmonics in the mid frequencies that help it stand alone, for a little while. There's a lot of room for improvement here, for sure. I wouldn't mind seeing this get sent back for some tweaks. But I also wouldn't mind posting it as-is. YES

The bass dissonance stands out to me, as well. I think it's detuned in a problematic way. It's not an instant dealbreaker for me, but it does bug me. They're a little on the loud side, too. I see what Larry is talking about with the end being a little aimless, but I can tell what it's doing up until 4:18. After that it seems really chaotic, but it's only a bit over 20 seconds. The tail... what is with those pop/click noises? There's a music box motif in the beginning, but a music box would never make those noises. They sound like really awful clipping, or maybe a phonograph needle skipping. It's terrible. I really like the overall tone of this, and I think the arrangement is fine. The detuned bass detracts from my enjoyment, but doesn't eliminate it. I think the only thing I object to strongly is the artifact-like sounds at the end. That makes me a CONDITIONAL

Ooh, SID sounds. I love the tone to start off with, wondering why it got a NO already. And I do see why: the source usage is funny. It's hard to tell in the YouTube video, but I actually downloaded the MIDI you referenced (and attached it to this post for reference), and the harpsichord line is much easier to pick out there. And this is a remix of that line, not the main hook. It's an odd choice, but we allow this; it's not technically a standards violation. So let's move on to the other aspects of the mix. It's very loud, for one. Chiptunes, especially SID, sound a lot louder than other instruments of similar absolute volume, because they have basically no timbre, and thus use the full waveform "efficiently." That's something to watch out for. This makes it so that when things get dense, which pretty much everything after 1:34 does, it's kind of overwhelming, with everything slamming into the limiter full-force. It's especially shocking that things get so loud given how quiet it is for the first 44 seconds, even the drums; less dynamic range would be appropriate here. But the other main problem is the ending. There just isn't one. At all. I don't know if this was a render error or what, but we need to have something that sounds like an attempt at an ending and not the audio file just being cut off. It's too confusing. I don't think this is too far off the mark. An ending of some sort is mandatory, and you should work on the levels so there isn't so much difference between the quiet and loud sections and you're not hitting that hard limiter so hard all the time. But I think the arrangement and composition are fine. NO Edit: I could have sworn I downloaded the current version, but I guess not. This does have a fade-out ending. Not the most overwhelming ending, but it's better than nothing. I still have a beef with the levels; it especially bugs me how the drums in the intro are straight-up quieter instead of having the velocity decreased. It's not totally necessary with a synth drum, but it still sounds weird. I don't think the levels are quite a dealbreaker by themselves, though it's borderline. I can give this a YES (borderline) mi2escap.mid

I YESed this before, and it's even better now. The bass is still a little loud, but it's a nice full soundscape, and it moves through ideas at a good pace, to a solid ending. There is some overlap between the chip arp and the steel drums, briefly, and the whistle lead is definitely too quiet, but otherwise I can hear all the parts clearly. I'm not picking up any problematic pumping. I concur that there's room for improvement in the mixing, but I think it's above our bar, I don't agree with the complaints about emptiness or overcompression, and if Larry thinks that bass is buried, something's wrong with either his setup or his ears. YES

Source usage certainly is the elephant in the room. I can catch suggestions of the source material, but they remain suggestions, and they're not very long. However, even with a source breakdown that justified it, I'd have a hard time passing this. It's a very slow burn, spending whole minutes on grooves than barely vary; even for vaporwave/trance, it needs to be more engaging. The drums are indeed LOL-worthy, being barely audible. As proph said, it's very quiet, except for the one tire-screeching section, which is far too loud in comparison to everything else. The soundscape is quite narrow, with a lot of sub (which I can't hear on my setup, but I can see it on the frequency plot) but no mid-bass or highs to speak of. NO

Agreed with the above. I don't think it does enough to stand apart from any of the three versions for our standards. Only about the last 30 seconds leapt out at me as something really different from the source material. (Also the tail of the last note is cut off.) For the record, this would need a different name to be posted. Sounds great, just not what we look for. NO

I have to admit I was biased against this within the first second. First of all, my moodbar visualizer looks like this: That's a track with basically no dynamics for a full three minutes. Now, not every type of change shows up on a visualizer like that, but it's not a good sign. The other thing was the lo-fi faux-vinyl crackle that runs through the whole thing. I'm not a big fan of lo-fi effects in general, but in this case it's particularly loud, and seems to be intentionally designed to cover up that lack of dynamics and depth. It's not doing this track any favors. So, on to the arrangement. Nice mellow e-piano take on the source material. Odd to have clean-sounding drumstick taps with an obviously synth drum kit. Other than the change in tempo, instrumentation, and the occasional "breakdown" sections where the drums cut out, it's structurally the same as the original. It's two loops of the A section, two of the B section, and another loop of the A section, after which it ends abruptly. While there's no single thing here that's a dealbreaker, it's underwhelming overall. It's 3 minutes of a constant, static groove that doesn't really do anything interesting, either with the source material or by means of interplay with its own motifs. It's a solo e-piano piece that uses a static effect to fill out a thin soundscape. I'm left feeling like this is a proof-of-concept and not a completed arrangement. There needs to be more depth and more variation to hold the listener's interest. NO

Great arrangement. Pretty conservative overall, but it takes a lot of dips and twists that keeps it fresh throughout. There is some room for improvement on the performance front. There are off-key notes and squeaks sprinkled throughout. I don't think it's enough to push it below our bar, but it definitely sticks out as a weakness, and I can imagine it bothering listeners with a good sense of pitch. Still a lot of skill on display here. Overall a fun take and an entertaining listen. YES

Is the title "The Lonely Loner" or "The Lonely Lover?" The post has the former but the filename is the latter. Nice little synth-rock ballad from Will. Sounds as good as you'd expect. Nothing to complain about here! YES

Firstly I want shout out to TheVideoGamer for a wonderfully made midi. Wouldn't have made this without it. I've never played this game personally and while I do love racing games, I can't say I have any desire to go back in time and try this out. The song felt like a nice canvas to paint my aesthetic on in a way that is conservative maybe constructively but in atmosphere is transformative (I hope). The original is a lot more gritty and has that hard, club techno vibe you'd hear in Blade or something like that. I think what I ended up making is a lot more ethereal in a way but not too much either. This is flawed in its own way (drums lol) and not for everyone but I think this where I stop with it before I move onto the next one. Was very fun getting outside my comfort zone! Games & Sources: Game: Group S Challenge Track: Cut the Corner

Funny what bugs people in different ways. I never would have picked up on the drum, hat, and arp patterns not lining up—I can barely notice it even when listing for it—and it certainly doesn't bother me. Also funny that we got two submissions for this source in close proximity, when I'd never heard of it before. (Well, I have played Earthbound, but decades ago.) It's a fun, light, dynamic arrangement. Lots of interesting elements, easily enough to keep the listener engaged for the full 5 minutes. Although it's ironic that it fades out, suggesting that the arranger didn't manage to stay engaged themselves! I actually didn't really like 4:05+; it feels like extra ideas that the artist didn't manage to squeeze into the main body of the remix and just tacked on at the end. Otherwise, this is strong stuff. I think structurally it could have been improved, but all the pieces are there. YES

That waveform isn't even sausage links. It's a kielbasa. Just one long sausage. proph has this right on every front. There's not enough interpretive arrangement for what we look for; it's mostly just an instrument swap, with a little bit of complexity added to the percussion. Three loops of the same thing and a fade-out. And the overall sound is washed out and steeped in way too much reverb. I'm afraid this just isn't what we look for in the personalization, instrumentation, or production aspects. NO

Yep, that pad was the major barrier to this getting passed, so swapping it out clears the way. Oddly, I'm still in disagreement with my fellow judges about one point: Since the source consists of a pad, two notes, and a laugh effect, I don't think there's any amount of arrangement that could be considered a remix just using the pad and the two notes. The votes above at most mention the adaptation of the laugh in passing, but it's used as a recurring motif that repeats many times throughout, sometimes worked into the melody, sometimes in the backing, and I think it's a critical part that really helps tie it in. If I hadn't picked up on it, I would have voted NO on this. With it, this is an easy YES

Pretty darn good, especially for a week's (plus) worth of work. It's a clever way of mashing the two themes together, and the overall tone is great. It is a little more subdued than I'd prefer. There's a lot of presence in the sub-base, but not so much in the audible bass range. There's not much in the highs, either; other than some occasional leads, there's a pad in 3:29-3:56 (where there's no bass), and that's about it. It's not uncommon for the genre to go for long stretches with a shallow soundscape, though, so it's not a dealbreaker. Not much to complain about here. Well done. YES

A Gario resub? Was not expecting to see that. I'd have remembered a Gario NO if it had happened any time in the last few years. Of course, I recognize it from the project. I never realized it wasn't actually published already. There's lots of complexity, and even though the synths are narrow-spectrum, they do still get cluttered in the mid-highs when everything is firing at once. The pads in particular eat up a lot of bandwidth: 2:49-3:47 is all busy enough that I'm losing stuff. That's my only complaint, though. Happy to help this get up on the front page. YES

Even after the correct source was identified, the source connections still seem loose to me, and would benefit from some timestamping. But the mixing, as Brad and Kris pointed out, is a dealbreaking issue regardless. NO (maybe resubmit with a source breakdown)

Obviously this would need a different title if it were to pass, but... Yeah, those levels are mad. Nothing, then a rapid fade-in to an assault on my eardrums. Even with my volume turned down by almost half, those pounding drums are uncomfortable to listen to. Then we have vanilla, static synths on top of a beat that barely changes at all. I don't hear any deviation from the source material, either; sounds to me like a simple MIDI rip. Sorry, but this isn't what we're looking for in any respect. Arrangement, production, instrumentation, interpretation, and dynamic interest are all out of line with the things we post here. I hate to be so harsh, but I strongly recommend not only hitting up our workshop forum and/or Discord for advice, but listening to more of our library and reviewing our submission standards before submitting again. NO

I don't think the performances are all that bad, though I agree there's plenty of room for improvement. The mixing is more of an issue; there's frequent pumping, some muddiness in the busier sections and transitions, and the kicks cut right through everything. But the arrangement is actually my biggest hangup: There are the tape deck FX and a little bit of riffing here and there, but mostly it's that plodding drum line under a very conservative take on the theme, and I don't think this is interpretive enough for us. NO

I don't have as many problems with this as my fellow judges above. There might not be a pad, but by 30 seconds in, there's bass, arps, and rhythm filling out the soundscape, so it doesn't feel empty or incomplete to me. The samples are of course fake, but there's no effort to make realistic instrumentation here. I do think that there's a lack of ideas here. The entire first minute takes its sweet time adding elements in, one or two at a time, then dropping some out and adding them back, before getting to the actual melody. The rest is a fairly minimal expansion of the source material, of which the main hook repeats many, many times. Balance isn't great but isn't horrible. The bass is quite loud, and the leads are inconsistent: the flute is much too quiet, and the strings and steel drums are a little too quiet, but the saw is fine; it doesn't sound like you accounted for how timbre can affect how loud a sound seems to be in a complex soundscape. The master volume doesn't seem too loud, and although I can definitely see the brickwall limiting proph mentioned in the waveform, I don't hear it. There are indeed a lot of little issues here, but to me they don't add up to enough to merit a rejection. There's certainly room for improvement, but there's enough here that it doesn't get in the way of my enjoying the piece. YES

I don't think it's necessarily too short, but the 2-minute guideline is there for a reason: it's very difficult to both respect the additional material and transform it in that short a time. In this case, we have a genre transformation, but it's basically just a slowed-down instrument swap. There's 20 seconds of interpretive material at the end, and that's it. We need more. NO

I actually don't mind the composition here. I do see how it's a bit follow-the-bouncing-ball in that the vocals are usually echoing one of the instruments, but that didn't really leap out at me on first blush. I hate to say it, but Jett's vocals being pitchy is a real issue here. In such a minimal environment, it's hard to ignore, as are the timing inconsistencies. The other problem for me is that the bells have a piercing harmonic to them that hurts my ears and gives me a bit of tinnitus. They could stand to be low-passed a bit, certainly cutting out the 17kHz+ range. Ultimately, this approach needs the vocals to carry the piece, and they don't. Certainly doing more with harmony and percussion would help, but I'd personally vote in favor of this even without that if the vocals were better. NO

It's not often we get a remix that goes less off the rails than the original, but here we are. Quite conservative for a while. When other instruments get added in, it really does get quite heavy; I didn't understand what proph meant by that at first, but now I totally agree that it's the right word. The bass is so loud, so repetitive, and has so much presence that it's crushing everything else. Listen to 2:02-2:17 for a good illustration; the bass is so overwhelming that it's muffling the lead, even though most of the bass presence isn't even where the lead is. The climax (3:10+) is quite dense overall, not leaving the instruments any room to breathe at all. That said, this is quite personalized, the performances are excellent, and it's just generally fun. The production bothers me enough that I wouldn't want to listen to it too many times in a row, but it's not enough to send this back over. YES Update 12/4: The new mix isn't worse. While the bass is not quite so heavy, the overall mix is still quite dense, with the ensemble leads especially sounding quite smushed. Still, it was a YES before and it's a YES now.

Opens with a very loud, rumbling, distorted bass pad. I have to turn down my volume by 25%, and it still sounds really unpleasant to me. Of more concern to me is source usage. The source is a drone in two pitches and two notes. Literally the entire thing consists of a two note "melody," a one-note/two-tone pad, and a "laugh" effect. This remix uses a similar pad (same pitch, different timbre). The original writing here uses the same chord progression as the source, but we have a long-established tradition that chord progression in and of itself does not constitute source usage. And finally, the "laugh" has been broken down into its component parts and remixed into a melody: directly once or twice, then riffed on extensively. It's clever, but it took me literally a half-dozen listens before it dawned on me what was going on here, even with Zach's explanation. I'm extremely borderline on the question of source usage here. The connections exist, but they're in no small part academic, and I think few people will put them together without having it spelled out for them. Most of the melodic writing departs significantly from the inspiration. Fortunately I'm not in a position to have to decide one way or another, because that pad is way too loud and blown-out for me to get my vote. I'm very curious to see how the rest of these votes go. This is extremely clever, well-performed, and demonstrates a lot of proficiency and intuition about music theory. I'm really not sure whether it's too loose and esoteric for the majority of our listeners, but I need that pad adjusted anyway. NO

I really like the French café feel to this, which I got even before the vocals kicked in. That combined with interleaving You Are Not Alone in as a bridge made this sufficiently transformative to me. It's smooth enough that if you don't know the sources, the addition is mostly seamless, except that it pushes the singer's range a bit below their comfortable range. The singing is simple but adequate, although it does get a trifle flat at moments. The conclusion is unfortunately the most dramatic of these, literally ending on a sour note. My nitpicks are nitpicks. Overall this was well-realized and creative. YES

Wow, that's loud! I had to cut my volume by a full 50%. The votes above mine capture the major issues. Production is a major issue, with balance and distortion issues throughout, and it's also far too conservative. Along with that conservativeness comes repetition: 0:38-1:06 is repeated at 1:50-2:18, and the ending is a loop straight back to the beginning; this makes the last minute of a 3-minute piece a repeat, and 1/3 of a piece being repetition is too much. NO