MindWanderer

It's long, but it doesn't wear out its welcome. Lots of cool ideas, great sound design. I wasn't bothered by most of Gario's crits, although the repeating 16th notes of the bass do leap out once your attention is drawn to them, and they do get really monotonous. I don't hear anything that should keep this off the front page. YES

Very nice orchestration. It's a little conservative, but as Rebecca usually does, there's a great deal of extra depth added via additional instrumentation. Using the female vocals as harmony instead of melody was clever, and makes it all the more striking during the short part where it does take the lead. The male chorus at 2:29-2:44 doesn't blend well with the other instruments and sounds dissonant, but otherwise I don't have any significant concerns here. YES

There are some interesting ideas here, but the vanilla synths, repetitiveness, pumping, and clipping aren't doing it any favors. Sorry, I don't really have much to add--this is just quite a ways away from primetime. NO

The syncopation is a little odd in places, hard to get used to but not objectively bad. And yeah, the lead is quiet in a lot of places. There's some pumping (1:09 really stands out), and I found the sidechaining in the climax distracting. Fade-out ending, blargh. More importantly though, I think source usage is a problem. What I get is: 0:04-0:26 0:57-1:24 2:21-3:01 (drastically transformed and unrecognizable out of context) 3:54-4:24 Total: either 119 or 79 seconds out of 280 seconds = 42.5% or 28.2%. And I feel like that third section is an extreme stretch to count. Otherwise I think this would probably be OK, but unless someone can point out more source, I have to give this a NO

The textures are definitely on the static side, especially that bass. Speaking of static, I really wasn't a fan of the white noise wash that the arrangement opens with (and appears in a few other places). However, it's perfectly adequate by our standards. Mixing is fine. It's definitely creative and transformative enough. It's not very exciting, but it's a quality, mellow jam. YES

I don't think the lack of low-end is as egregious as Gario described, but it definitely is lacking, especially for the genre. You have instruments that should be covering the lower bass range but don't, and the effect is to make them feel insubstantial; in some cases, it's hard to tell what the instrument is because its key frequencies have been muffled. This is a comparatively easy fix, so it should definitely be something to bear in mind. As for humanization, it's sort of in the uncanny valley, unfortunately. Some of it is so obviously fake that it sounds like a 32-bit game soundtrack, which is generally OK, but the sample quality for most of the instruments is high enough that the mechanical articulation is jarring. On the other hand, I've heard much worse; the settings you chose might be overused, but they're pretty good choices most of the time you use them. The worst offenders are in the accompaniment, not the leads, so it's not unbearable. The arrangement is also very solid, and it's a effective, creative take on the source. I think the production quality is high enough, if only barely, to effectively communicate that arrangement in an enjoyable way without any dealbreaking flaws. I would love to see this improved upon but I'm OK giving this a YES (borderline)

Disney is ultra-possessive of their IP, too. OC ReMix hasn't attracted their attention in the past, but it's maybe not such a good idea to push our luck. Nothing wrong with impressions, though.

No kidding about that syncopation being hard to get used to. I found myself enjoying the on-beat sections way, way more than the off-beat ones, although those also featured the pitch bending, which was distracting at best. But yeah, because it starts off with strings as the lead, it sounds more like the attack is just ridiculously slow rather than being deliberately off-beat (although the intent is clear when the saws kick in). It's not a good combination with the driving percussion. Basically, I agree with Gario 100%, except that I don't think I'll every grow to appreciate that syncopation (though I won't ding you for it as a subjective, creative decision, except where there are technical reasons it doesn't work). The strings and the pitch bending are what sinks this. There was a lot I enjoyed, though--the solidly EDM chorus sections and the ending in particular--so I do hope to see you take another stab at it and send it back our way. NO

Well, this is catchy as hell, and despite the deliberate decision to emphasize the "loopiness" of it, is only somewhat repetitive. The percussion is definitely pretty static, and 1:58-2:27 is more similar to 0:49-1:17 than I'd like, but I think it gets by. My bigger concern is balance: the leads are consistently too quiet and are frequently muffled by everything else that's going on. However, the simple synths work in the arrangement's favor in this respect, since they occupy a narrow part of the frequency spectrum and thus have very little conflict. It's a bit of a throwback and not MkVaff's strongest work, but there's nothing dealbreaking about it and it's quite enjoyable. YES

Similarly, I've hoped for decades that they'd do a Mega Man Generations game that told the story of the events between Mega Man and Mega Man X. We know some of the events immediately leading up to X, but as far as I know, nothing about what happened to the original line of robots or their inventors.

First try: https://www.google.com/search?q=video+game+10+minutes+explore+ruins+meteor. Result #11.

Never heard of it, but Google suggests it might be TIMEframe?

Yep, I just put Odyssey down and went to other games. I ended up being very disappointed with the postgame, since every reward is just more moons to get. The Mushroom Kingdom is pretty neat, especially for SM64 fans, although Toadette is possibly the single most badly-designed element in the game. Your reward for 200 moons is a boss rush (tedious, although the remixed robot fight is nice), an art scavenger hunt (also tedious), and three remixed versions of earlier moons (kind of cool, actually--I would have liked more of these, even if they were a bit on the hard side). But the reward for 500 moons is just one awful, long, tedious, frustrating dungeon with no checkpoints, quite a few fiddly bits, and several deathtraps that will almost certainly get you the first time you reach them. And the reward for 100% completion is basically nothing. For context, the 500 moon speedrun is about 4 hours now, and the 999 moon "speedrun" is 17 hours. That says a lot about how tedious literally half the moons in the game are.

I might have missed some transitions/cameos, but: Final Fantasy III: Overworld ("Eternal Wind") Prelude/theme of the crystals Final Fantasy II: Castle Final Fantasy: Sunken Shrine Final Fantasy X: To Zanarkand Final Fantasy VI: Decisive Battle Final Fantasy VI: Terra's Theme Chocobo/Fanfare cameos back to Eternal Wind

I'll echo my eval of this for the album: This is a tough source to work with, the melody consisting of only 6 notes, the bass of just one note, and that's all there is to it. When I saw in the notes that "Angel's Fear" was also referenced, I figured Rozo cheated by using that to pad it out, but he actually used it very little (3:15-3:45 and 5:19-6:20). Otherwise, this does a great job on building extensively on very little. There are some briefly conflicting sections, especially 5:51 on, but I think this is more than passable even with them. It's clever and surprisingly enjoyable. YES

The arrangement is certainly clever, enough to make up for the static lead. I like the Dire Dire Docks cameo, personally. I'm of two minds about the instrumentation and production, though. I understand that the saturation is a stylistic choice, and mostly it works, but when the rhythm guitar kicks in at 0:44, the distortion is severe and it actually starts clipping in places. It gets even more severely distorted, and crowded as well, at 1:14-1:57 when the lead guitar joins. The bell synth, organ, and rhythm guitar conflict with each other heavily there. However, it is authentic for the era when this style of music was popular. I didn't hear "cut-off" audio at the end. It just sounded like the performer took their hands off the keys instead of sustaining it out--a stylistic choice rather than a technical error, and I thought it worked just fine. I think this is close, but the distortion bothers me a lot. Clear up the levels a little and I think this will be good to go. NO (resubmit)

Sorry, 182s seems to have been a math error on my part. Should be 202s to the very end of the fade-out, making it 53.0%. As for starting "prior to each section," I'm not. I'm guessing it's because the MP3 uses VBR encoding, which can cause some variance in where the timestamps line up on different systems. But I put down what I hear. It's also not totally relevant, since 50% isn't a hard rule. The intro and outro are the main offenders, and sure, it would be great if they could tie into some piece of VGM, but I don't think they detract from the fact that this is, subjectively but clearly and overwhelmingly, a "What the Forest Taught Me" remix.

Other than not providing a download link (which helps us analyze a track using tools other than just our ears), there's mostly a number of small issues here that add up: The lead violin, snare, and cymbals are substantially muted. The bass guitar and the bass end of the piano are a little too quiet, as well, which results in the soundscape sounding much thinner than it ought to. The brief synth section doesn't gel with the rest of the arrangement. 0:23 gives us a nice little riser, then a lead-in supersaw (which also lacks impact), and then it's back to acoustic instruments for the rest of the mix, aside from a very subtle synth celesta that I only heard on the 3rd listen. It's confusing, and sounds like it was written by someone who wanted a riser but didn't know how to do it without synths. There are some buzzing sounds (e.g. 0:15) that sound almost like instrumentation but more like something lying on top of the piano and vibrating. I could live with the other issues, but the balance is a big one. The violin really needs to cut through the mix more, and the lack of low end and impactful percussion make the arrangement sound much weaker than it needs to. The arrangement is quite nice, and I'd like to see it posted, it just needs a little more production refinement. NO (resubmit)

My stopwatching is a little different, since I don't think it's necessary to omit tiny variations, and Gario's start times seem a bit late: 0:35-1:06 1:22-1:53 2:10-2:57 109s/182s = 59.9% Subjectively, the source seems pretty prevalent, although the additional motif is definitely felt as well. I really don't think it's an issue here. I don't have any other major concerns, either. The flute is a little shrill, the vibrato on the strings a little mechanical, and the bass guitar a little muted, but none of these are significant. Structure is conservative but explores new synergies and justapositions as it goes along. I think it's a fine arrangement overall. YES

The arrangement being conservative doesn't bother me quite so much. The original is so simple that simply orchestrating it for guitar, piano, and violin goes a long way, and that final minute does break the mold. I do have more issues with the production, though. It's noticeably clipping at each of the louder moments, and that really needs to be addressed. The timing on the violin is very rigid, most noticeably in 0:32-0:47, although the articulation is nice. This is almost there, I think, but not quite. The real issue is the clipping. It's very nearly a CONDITIONAL in my book, but eliminating this kind of distortion often introduces other issues, so I'm not 100% confident it can be fixed in one pass. I definitely want to see it back here, though (with an actual title, of course). NO (resubmit)

My main concern here is with repetitiveness. 2:13-3:55 isn't identical to 0:00-1:14, but it's very similar, and both sections are very static, with very few changes to instrumentation, beat, or energy. The middle section, 1:15-2:13, is different from the rest, but is also static, consisting as it does of basically a minute of noodling around the simple theme with a simple theremin with unvarying accompaniment. I don't think there's any part of this that's bad, per se, it just goes on for 4 minutes without giving the listener much to get excited about. Throw in some more variations, whether it's to the melody, the instrumentation, the energy, the soundscape, something engaging that stands out from the rest of the arrangement and doesn't repeat what came before so much. NO

Much better! The (reduced) repetitions have some additional flair thrown in, and the re-equalization helps those little touches stand out better. IMO, the overdriven sections could still stand to be a smidge cleaner, especially in the climax (3:30-3:53), but it's within tolerance. I'd also have loved it if the cymbals were varied up more--they're used almost like a kick here, and the repetitive, ceaseless white noise-like sound cuts out a lot of the breathing room that those dueling guitars need. A little sad that some of the original writing got cut, but it would taken a lot of work to fix and it's probably for the best. I'm also hearing an audio artifact at 1:11, a sort of beep/squeak noise. That should be cleaned up, although I'm not sure it worth bumping this down to a Conditional. If this does get sent back, my #1 request would be to mix up those cymbals, but otherwise I think this is good enough. YES

While I didn't go back and listen to the original submission, I do remember it, and I don't feel like this resubmission is significantly different. Between the compounded grittiness of the synths, the constrained frequency space, and the overall repetitiveness of sound and texture, I have to come down the same way as before. I think any one of those would be tolerable, but probably not two and certainly not all three. Edit: To clarify why I think the bitcrushed instruments are a problem: This technique effectively adds a small amount of white noise to every channel it's applied to. On one instrument, it's fine, stylistic choice, whatever. But on several instruments, all that white noise adds up and becomes an ever-present buzz, which I find distracting and which I think reduces clarity. The soundscape is such that every instrument can still be heard, but it's all through this veneer of mud that adds nothing and makes it all much less enjoyable. NO

I've read that advice, as well as the advice to time it with the dust cloud, but it doesn't do me any good. Unless your timing is already perfect, you'll likely already be in the air when the "hey" comes. And the leeway is literally one or two frames at that point. It doesn't get any faster after 50 but that's exactly when it's too fast for me to keep it up.

Other than the sound being a little too clean compared to the original MSX music, mission accomplished, I'd say. It's a fun little arrangement that doesn't suffer as much as most MSX scores from cluttering and white noise problems, which makes it a little less authentic but much more pleasant to listen to. I don't have any significant problems with it as a remix, and of course it's a nice showcase of SACPC. YES