MindWanderer

I love this source tune, highly underappreciated, and one of my favorites from FFIX. At first I was in agreement with proph and NutS: it is very conservative for large sections, with 1:1 instrument substitutions for the most part, many of which are just sound upgrades of the original instrumentation. But the more I listened to it, the more the differences stood out to me. The quirky instruments and effects add a fair amount of character, there's a nice arp added at one part, and the bridge is original while maintaining the tone of the rest of the arrangement. The samples aren't exactly a highlight, but they're serviceable, and with the wacky samples you don't expect too much realism. Balance, too, could be tweaked, and it's definitely mastered more quietly than necessary, but it's not egregious. There's certainly room for improvement, and all of my fellow judges' criticisms are helpful and appropriate. But I think this does enough to squeak by. YES (borderline)

I'm a bit torn on this one. On one hand, it does a nice job of mimicking the minimalistic style of the source material and expanding upon it with some different instrumentation and substantial riffing. On the other hand, it's five and a half minutes that don't have a whole lot of variation. In particular there are a couple of simple motifs that are repeated over and over again, and they really start to grate by about the 3:35 mark. I keep going back and forth on this one. Sometimes I find myself paying close attention to some clever interplay, other times I'm tuning out or getting actively irritated by the repetitive elements. I'll come back to it later.

Yep, I have nothing to add. This is one of Bluelighter's best, IMO. Not too conservative, not too liberal, both of which are easy traps when doing a piano arrangement. Lovely choices throughout. YES

Being an orchestral take on an orchestral source, I was worried at first that this would be more of a sound upgrade than a ReMix. It's definitely more than that, more like an expansion of the original. Not quite a "reinterpretation" but there's definitely a lot of material added that makes it more than an upgrade or a cover. It would fit in great as the title theme of World of Warcraft 2. The performances are a little mechanical at times, especially the runs of staccato violins, but it's well outside the uncanny valley. Production is beautifully rich and clear. This will thrill WoW fans, I'm sure. Let's get it up there. YES

Just rubber-stamping this one. I hear the timing issue Rexy mentioned, but for jazz that's perfectly acceptable, normal even, and it's minor besides. Excellent arrangement and production, and very impressive given the timeframe involved. YES

Source-wise, I'm inclined to give this a pass. The source's arp runs through pretty much the entire arrangement, twisted sometimes but recognizable. Arrangement-wise... wow, this is weird. I listen to music in Clementine, and I've attached what the moodbar in it looks like. A "normal" piece will have a pattern that has some black (quiet), some white (full spectrum), and the rest some dull colors where one part or another of the spectrum dominates. A poorly-mixed one will be mostly gray. I've never seen a piece with such a vibrant, clear pattern, which reflects exactly the avant-garde approach taken here. To me it goes beyond "experimental" and into "unpleasant." The transition at 1:10-1:13 was actually painful. 1:35-2:32 or so--generously--was too static for my tastes. That said, I generally cut arrangements a lot of slack if what they're trying to do is a legitimate, if unconventional, approach. Which this is, and does. I'd like to see what other judges have to say, for sure. I'm going to give it a vote I've never used before, because it's for sure not a YES to me. ???/Conditional (on removal of harsh frequencies in 1:10-1:13) Edit 10/1: Since it's for sure not a YES to me and no one else YES'ed it either, let's just call it a NO

Yeah, unfortunately the tweaks to the original are pretty darn subtle. They're there, but it isn't enough to make this more than a cover. It's a very good cover, and I can see why you were excited about the end result, but it's not the sort of reinterpretation we look for. Also some of the singing in the ending is a bit flat. I'd love to hear more from you if you get some more out-of-the-box ideas. NO

Starts off as a pretty vanilla metal cover of the source, but branches out after one run-through. It's a great arrangement. Production needs some work, though. It lacks clarity severely, with everything squashed into either the mids or the sub-bass. The lead guitar in particular is constantly muffled, and as it's the star of the show, this is a dealbreaker. In 1:34-1:58 I didn't hear it at all until my second listen. I really only have that one issue, but it's a big one and it'll take some doing to clean up. I definitely want to hear this again--I'm sure I have a dozen remixes of this in my collection already but more doesn't hurt! NO (resubmit)

Yep, clean production, smooth integration of the sources, just solid all around. I just have a few tiny nitpicks: those weird chords prophetik mentioned; there's an instrument that sounds like a triangle that starts at 1:44, always hits with a double note, and sounds at kind of random locations and with random panning that I find distracting; the bass (piano?) at 3:23-3:31 sounds weird as heck. It's all minor though. Otherwise it's just that ending, which really does sound bad as-is. A single final drumbeat would probably be good enough. YES/Conditional (on the ending)

It's funny, forums seems to have died out but nothing really replaced them. Reddit-style commenting makes it impossible to discuss things in a conversational format. Discord is a throwback to old internet chat rooms, where it's incredibly difficult to find old comments or discuss more than a handful of topics at the same time. I for one appreciate the old format.

It's a decent mashup, a nice coherent combination of the three sources that doesn't sound like a medley (although the sources have some commonalities that make this easier). However, I'm not fully sold. It doesn't feel like a 4:30 mix with multiple interwoven sources, and it took me a while to realize why it felt longer and less interesting than it was. Partially, this is because the lead synth present in most of the mix gets a whole lot of stage time. Synth pieces like this usually switch up the lead more often; this only changes it for the bridge. It wears on you after a while. But the bigger issue is the percussion, I think. The hats and kick are incredibly weak, and there's not much to the snare either. They're so passive that they make the arrangement as a whole lack dynamic energy. Also, there's a lot going on in the mids. The harmony, rhythm, snare, and the high end of the bass are all occupying the same space, and they're pretty wet. You can hear the parts, but they're pretty muddy. Finally, this is pretty quiet. Over 2dB of headroom that there's no reason for. There's a good foundation here. Switch up the leads and liven up the drums and the bulk of this will have been addressed. The rest is some minor production tweaks. Pretty good for your debut effort! NO (resubmit)

Definitely ditto on the loudness issue. That needs to be addressed without question. I agree that the didge could afford to take a break, but it seemed fine to me--although if it gets louder I'm not sure that will remain true. As for the enunciation: based on how prophetik pointed out specific lyrics, I'm guessing he either understands Japanese or knows the lyrics extremely well. For me the enunciation was adequate, but that's because I have no idea what I'm hearing and the vocals might as well be gibberish. Personally there's enough here for me to pass it, however, if anyone else understands the Japanese and concurs with proph that the enunciation is horrible, I'll defer to their opinion. YES/Conditional (on mastering and no further concerns about enunciation) Update 7/1/2020: That'll do. YES

The orchestration is pretty good, and the arrangement is clever, but the production and realism aren't up to the same level. The lead brass sounds... not awful, but clearly synthetic, and as the lead it needs to not lie in the uncanny valley. The other instruments could use some work, too, notably the staccato strings. Production-wise, space is an issue. The instruments have drastically different amounts of reverb and clarity, so some sound like they're very far off and others closer, some sound like they're in large spaces and others in small ones. The solo bass guitar has a nice tone but doesn't belong in the ensemble--it would take some very clever amping for a solo instrument to sound that clear next to an orchestra. The voice clips sound completely out of place with how clear and crisp they sound, plus I question the decision to use them in this genre. There's a lot of creativity here, and clearly you know your way around an orchestration. Bring up the quality of the instrumentation and this will be a great addition to the site. NO (resubmit)

It's a nice soundscape, but this is seriously conservative. Most of the sounds are just a sound upgrade, and the arrangement as a whole is nearly unchanged. There are a few synth frills thrown in, but overall it sticks very closely to the source. The second loop is also very similar to the first, with just some of the backing textures changed. It's very pretty and a nice cover, but it doesn't have the kind of interpretation we look for. NO

Starts off as a nice, simple reorchestration, wisely leaning on the live flute performance. Typical Tripp, with a conservative arrangement but rich instrumentation. The men's choir is... problematic. It's tremendously fake-sounding throughout, with some especially weird notes at 1:47 that threw me right off the groove. The part around 2:00 is strangely written, and around 2:05 is crazy, with voices singing all over themselves and modulating in an extremely inhuman way. At some points the same voices apparently can't make up their minds whether they're baritones, tenors, or castrati. 2:57 sounds like a wrong note, and it's followed by a section where the lead (marimba?) is completely buried. This is mostly pretty great, but that choir is, to me, unacceptable. This would probably work just fine if you took the part out completely, and would certainly work if you just substituted it for strings or something. Not quite a CONDITIONAL but close. NO (please resubmit)

Starts off pretty conservative, mostly just an instrument swap/upgrade, until it gets to the jazzy improv section, which it does take in different directions and expand on. The break in the middle that uses Field of Hopes and Dreams works as intended, so from the 2:00 mark there's certainly enough interpretation. As for "ramping up the adrenaline," I have mixed feelings about that. The original is pretty fast-paced, and the remix uses the percussion line pretty much verbatim. Also, a lot of the depth in the original comes from the piano, and here the piano is significantly squashed to make room for that meaty bass. The result is that the soundscape sounds thinner, even though it's technically hitting all points of the spectrum. The 1:21-2:00 jazz solo in particular sounds mid-light, and 3:35-4:02 sounds high-light. The middle (2:00-3:35) demonstrates great use of energy management, though. The sweep FX at 3:24 is particularly juicy. The chords in 2:44-2:57 don't sound right to me. I don't have the musical vocabulary to explain it, but they sound off-key to me. The lead synth at 3:35-4:02 is pretty unique, and works well there. However, when it returns in staccato form in 4:23-4:30, I don't think it works at all. It just sounds strange as staccato stabs. Ugh, fadeout ending. There's room for improvement in a lot of areas, but none of my concerns are really significant. I'd prefer a beefier soundscape, especially the piano, but on the other hand the production is clean. And those chords in the middle sound very wrong, but they're brief. I wouldn't be sad if this got send back for revisions but for me, I don't think anything here adds up to enough to require it. YES

Oof, that lo-fi, pumping intro is a tough sell to start off with. And the sidechaining thereafter is pretty severe. Soundscape is pretty cluttered overall. You have rich synths combined with orchestral instruments, and they're stepping all over each other. 2:43 shows a seriously vanilla synth as the lead, and it's squashing everything else into mud. The length is also a tough sell. At nearly 7 minutes long, there needs to be some transformation as the piece goes on, even for trance. I think this can get away with being pretty long, but not quite this long. The last minute or so in particular doesn't really add anything that wasn't there in the first third of the arrangement. There are clever ideas here, and I like the idea of mixing gothic orchestral with trance. It just needs to be a bit tighter progression, and to be cleaned up a bit. NO (resubmit)

The accompaniment certainly does pump, and yeah, by the 2:00 mark it's certainly dragging on despite the variety in the lead (although that too does repeat: 0:33-1:11 is repeated at 2:07-2:44, about 1/5 of the arrangement). The addition of the bass line at 1:00 is welcome but it's not enough. Which brings me to the other bit that's pushing this over the other way for me: soundscape. That bass is awfully bright and there's nothing else in the lows except the kick. Between the issues that my colleagues brought up, plus the acceptable repetition of the lead (which would be acceptable in a vacuum) and the imbalanced soundscape, this one's just under the bar for me. Fun, but needs a few tweaks. NO (borderline, resubmit) Edit: It was brought to my attention that there is plenty of bass that I couldn't hear on the headphones I was using. When I switched headphones, I could tell why: There's a lot of sub-bass here, in the range you more feel with your gut than hear with your ears, but not so much in the more musical range. My vote is moot now, so it doesn't really matter this time, but it's something to bear in mind for the future.

I have to concur: it's clipping, it's pumping, the sounds (especially the percussion) are extremely vanilla, the arrangement is repetitive and pretty close to the original, and the soundscape is frequently thin--you have large sections where the bass drops out and isn't replaced by anything. That said, I don't mean to be discouraging. There is some creative addition to the source material here, and I like where your ideas are going. It's hard to tell how much of the issues are with the composition and how much is you being hamstrung by Auxy. There are good, budget-friendly DAW's for computers, and if you must use an iPad, the DAW's for it are pretty cheap. NO

The overall soundscape feels quite thin for epic orchestral rock. I can barely hear the bass at all, and the kicks have a lot of high-end "thwack" to them but not a lot of "thump". That's really the only problem I have here, but it's a substantial one. A lack of bass cuts the heart out of a track like this. It's a great arrangement, I love the approach and the execution in general, but it doesn't sound complete. I'm going to think about this one a while longer--I love what's there and I hate to send it back, but it just doesn't sound the way it should. Edit 3/23/20: I listened to this on some better headphones. It's missing some of the more melodic bass frequencies, but there's plenty of sub there. It'll sound bad on cheap sound systems--budget headphones, a phone's built-in speaker, most car stereos--but it's acceptable otherwise. And the arrangement is killer. YES

It's EDM that's hard to dance to. Not necessarily a dealbreaker but it's very, very odd. However, I'm willing to give it credit for uniqueness. More importantly, it really is quite repetitive--when I checked on it to see how long it had been going for and how much was left, I was shocked to see I wasn't even at the 2:00 mark; it felt much longer than that. Combine that with the vanilla synths and this feels a bit amateurish and dated. If it were in a traditional four-on-the-floor style I think this would have been appropriate for OCR in the mid-oughts--in fact, we have many remixes much like it on the site--but not so much today. Liven the arrangement up and this will be fine by me, although you should expect a divided reaction to the timing. I'd personally prefer it if you followed prophetic's suggestion to embrace it and make it work rather than to reduce it to 4/4, but you should think about doing one or the other. NO (resubmit)

Nice arrangement, excellent idea to back the original with a (simple) epic orchestra and layer the vocals. The vocals do sound a bit robotic--either Stephen has a very unique voice or the autotuner is working overtime. Otherwise I think this is pretty great, and unlike anything we have already on the site (a real challenge, 4000 remixes in!). YES

I actually think the pad is a bit overkill here--it's so rich and omnipresent that it's conflicting with some of the other synths, most notably at 1:46-2:34 and 3:13-3:32. That's my biggest concern. Otherwise, mastering seems OK to me; the drums are loud but there's not a lot of them, and even with 1.9dB of headroom it doesn't sound quiet. Even though the textures don't change, the pacing does, and I think that's enough to maintain interest. The ending is indeed a letdown but that's not unusual for the genre. If this were to get sent back I'd prefer to get the conflicts between the droning pad and the other synths cleaned up, but to me that's the only thing close to a dealbreaker and it isn't quite. It's a clever interpretation of the original, with a rich soundscape and a consistent vision. YES

I've been thinking about this one since Gario created the thread, and yeah, there's no one dealbreaker but it's little things that add up--the lack of humanization, especially on the harpsichord, and the low degree of personalization being the biggest factors. Everyone's comments above are on point. NO (resubmit)

Very conservative, especially considering how many instruments are direct sound upgrades of the original. The second half branches into some original content for the melody, and adds SFX clips (taken from the game, I believe), then riffs on the original melody, but keeps the other lines intact. Then there's a brief segment taken from another track from the game (I forget which one, it's been a long time since I played this game). The soundscape is also lacking. The rhythm guitar in particular is lacking depth, but so is the lead. Overall the whole mix is mid-heavy; bass is quite quiet and most of it lacks anything in the highs. There's also periodic pumping and distortion due to overcompression. It doesn't clip, but you hit the compressor hard to avoid it. And my, those four-on-the-floor hats are relentless. I've definitely heard them more than enough after a couple of listens. This is a good start, and it's fun to listen to. Mostly it's just little things that add up, each one of which is borderline at worst, but taken together I think they bring this below the production and arrangement guidelines that we look for. I'd love to hear a revision, though, with more creative arrangement and another pass at the soundscape and compression. NO (resubmit)