MindWanderer

I hear the other judges' crits about the production, but it doesn't bother me much. It's a piano mix with a little bit of synth accompaniment for flavor, and the piano component is excellent. I'm with Larry regarding structure, including the "stop," which I felt flowed perfectly well given the context. The strings aren't great, but I actually liked how subtle the drums were, since they emphasized the piano rather than drawing attention away from it. There's room for improvement, but for me this is a decent YES

I'm very curious what direction they'll take the X-Men movies if this happens. The X-Men movie series is quite successful, though not as strong as the MCU. Would they keep it going? Would they reboot it (for real this time, not with time travel shenanigans) to integrate it with the MCU? They rebooted Spider-Man and Hulk, but the most recent movies with those IP's were bad. They probably wouldn't integrate them. For one, they have two different versions of Quicksilver (although the X-Men already had two different versions of Bolivar Trask, and technically the X-Men version is Peter while the Avengers one was Pietro--and they could just completely leave him out safely anyway). And for another, Hugh Jackman is done, and lacking Wolverine is a huge blow to the series, so a reboot that brings him back would be welcome. Plus, the X-Men continuity is absurdly complicated at this point and a fresh slate wouldn't be a bad idea.

What a strange choice of source! For the record, that YouTube source is actually a medley of 5 songs, but 4 of them are nearly identical and the middle one is an expansion of the others. Billing this remix as based simply on Bounding Through Time would seem fine to me. It's a repetitive arrangement on the face of it, but so's the source. It's progressive though, never giving the feeling that it's retreading the same ground, but always adding and expanding to it in engaging ways. It's not for listeners expecting excitement around every corner, but that's not the point. I could do without the old-timey static crackle, but it's handled well. Production seems crisp and clear almost throughout--it gets a little muddy at 3:41 with the introduction of the reeds, which do conflict with that static, but it's not a big deal IMO. I like it. Let's get it up there. YES

I find the connection to the source tenuous at best. Maybe one could draw the connection with an extremely high-level analytic approach, but to a layperson, which most of our listeners are, it's just not there. I'm also not a fan of the sounds used. I find the mechanical bell that the remix opens with, and is the only instrument for the first 42 seconds, very irritating. But what really drives me nuts is the squeaking noise that starts at 1:24--it sounds like a broken cassette player, and it's extremely hard for me to listen to. Sorry, but I'm afraid I'm just not on board with this at all. It's an interesting intellectual exercise, and very creative, but I don't think it's right for us. NO

I'll ditto Nutritious's distaste for how the intro was executed; there are ways to get that old-timey choppiness without it sounding quite so much like a hard cut. But that's my only concern here. The performances, including the new drums, are great, and the arrangement explores new territory enough to stay interesting without ever losing touch with the source. Trim out that silence at the end and this is good to go. YES

Can't argue with anything Gario said. The vocals are a little wetter than the instruments, but it's not a big deal--I hear mics treated like this in live venues all the time. There are a few flat moments, but not many, and no worse than the original's vocal performances IMHO. That fade-out ending is a huge bummer; not only was it unsatisfying, but the overall structure of the arrangement didn't make it seem like that was where it was going to end, so it felt more like a sample than a complete track. That ending is my only significant beef, but man, it's a big one. I don't think it's quite disastrous enough to keep this off the front page, but it makes this whole thing hard to listen to, knowing it's going to sound like part of the song is just plain missing. But what's there is good. Edit 2/16: I was extremely borderline on this anyway; I'll happily tilt this over for the sake of consensus. Edit 2/19: I don't feel like the new ending is an improvement at all. YES (conditional on fixing ending)

I'm sorry, but I'm still hearing a lot of crackling. Tried it on multiple headphones just to make sure it wasn't my hardware, but no: there's distinct crackling at 0:44-0:46, 1:49, 3:22, and 3:32. I think I hear some quieter distortion here and there, but it's mostly drowned out by the music and isn't a big deal. It is, however, significantly less cluttered, and the volume is more consistent now. I'd personally prefer it if 3:14-3:21 were a little quieter, as it's painfully loud when I set my volume at a level where I can hear the quieter sections clearly, but it's brief and that's more a pet peeve of mine specifically. Fix the crackling and I think this is good to go. YES/CONDITIONAL

I was going to say the exact same thing, only referencing a different compo and Welcome to my Kastle. @Rozovian: Yeah, the last month or two have been slow. But most of this year has been vastly faster than it used to be. Pacing is always going to be irregular because we all have lives, but the days when the queue had multiple submissions in it that had been sent in a year or more ago are long gone.

Also, just because we NO a track doesn't mean we think it's bad. We've sent back submissions that were great covers, or that would have been great as a part of a score for a game or movie, or that are standout pieces of music all around but don't tie in to the VGM enough or clearly enough. A NO is not necessarily a critique of the general quality of the submission and is never a statement about the artist in general. All it means is that it's not specifically what we look for as part of our curated and themed collection of remixes.

I'm afraid Super Mario Odyssey may go on this list for me. One of the moons is locked behind a jump-rope minigame that I'm finding just impossible. You need to jump 100 times, and I've tried on and off for at least half an hour and my record is 56. I understand there's some sort of volleyball minigame later on that's even harder. So I may be looking at a personal maximum of 798/800 moons, and if I know for sure there's even one I can't get, I probably won't bother with some others if they start looking to be tedious.

Nice medley, flowing well between the various sources--and I come down hard on medleys. The LttP Dark World bit is easy to miss and isn't critical, I wouldn't worry about it. The choices of instruments are a little odd. The clean piano (starting at 3:00) and generic saws don't really go with the rest of the soundscape, which is almost ethereal. It's more a matter of taste than an objective criticism, though. The later saw (4:13-5:20) does have some frequency conflict with some of the backing synths, but you can still hear them. Otherwise, I don't have any major criticisms. It's fun and I'm sure folks will love it. YES

Just what we've come to expect and love from Rebecca: a conservative arrangement with lush instrumentation. Could stand to be more adventurous with such a short and repetitive source, but it gets the job done. I agree that there were a couple of unpleasant harmonies, but they were brief and bearable. Otherwise, this checks all the boxes and is yet another solid addition to her portfolio. YES

A lot of this is conservative and borders on a sound upgrade, but there's a lot of original instrumentation and some fun twists. Everything we come to expect from a Guifrog mix. I have no complaints. YES

I have purged all the claims for which I had nothing, or for which I had only a very early WIP, and no updates for several months. This leaves a total of 7 names on the board: two complete drafts which have been sent to the panel, three very strong WIP's, one early WIP, and one claim. That's enough for an OCR-I LP, so that's what I'm going to shoot for at this time, although I'd still prefer to have at least a title theme, and I'll may shelve the idea of an "event" album if the numbers don't line up to give every wrestler an opponent. I'm still committed to getting this submitted in some form, though.

If your experience is with 6, 7, and 9, 8 is the most similar to those in terms of battle mechanics and story. It's much maligned for some of the tedious aspects of the advancement system and the discouragement to actually use magic, and the last third of the story is bizarre, but it's still a solid game. If all you've seen of 7 is speedruns, though, it's well worth playing fully--although I recommend having someone give you hints about picking up the optional characters before you miss them. 10 is my favorite, but its strict turn-based combat makes it a somewhat different beast. The story is my favorite of the whole series, though, I enjoyed the voice acting, and the graphics are excellent even if you're not playing the HD remake. It's a weird but enjoyable advancement mechanic, too, especially if you can use the alternate sphere grid in the HD remake. X-2 obviously assumes you've played 10 first, so don't start there. I personally wasn't a huge fan of 12, and it's a very different kind of game, much more like the Mana series (or like soloing an MMO). But it has its fans.

Competition postponed due to lack of interest. I'll put it in the docket for January. If you've already signed up but a late January start date won't work for you, let me know.

A very simple remix of a surprisingly complex source. Unfortunately, it boils down to not a lot of content. 1:46-2:49 is a repetition of 0:03-1:03, with only a few minor elements added (a pad, a couple of effects, and a key change). 1:03-1:30 is also a repetition of the main hook, and while ordinarily I'd say it's transformed enough to not sound repetitive, the voice clips are the same, and they get fatiguing very quickly. I like some of the instrumental use, and I think that in general the combination of synths and ethnic instrumentation works quite well. However, each of the synths used are extremely vanilla, with saws, e-piano, square bleeps, and drum kit all coming straight out of the generic EDM playbook. There are some good ideas, and I do like how much it transforms the original source. But I think the final result needs both more content and more original sounds to stand on its own. NO

Pretty straightforward remix. Very few changes to the progression, mostly just a re-instrumentation to retro synths. Still, there's enough added accompaniment, padding, and effects to keep this out of too-conservative territory IMO. However, it is pretty repetitive, especially for the length, with 1:56-2:42 bearing very close similarity to 0:30-1:12. Sounds like there were some changes in the filters, the addition of a hi-hat, and maybe a couple of added effects. That's about a quarter of the arrangement that doesn't really introduce any new ideas. The sections that aren't repeated are the intro, a short bridge, and a breakdown. That's very little to hinge a remix on. I'm of two minds about this one. The repetitiveness is the only real problem I have. The instrumentation is solid and the production is very good (aside from a few brief moments when the swirling filters aren't quite ideal). And 25% is right about where my personal threshold for repetitiveness is. I'll mull this over a bit more and keep my eyes on the other votes, but for now: YES (borderline)

So, folks are sending me PM's with their source picks for some reason. The rules said to post here with your picks and your teammates, but on the other hand, I've only gotten two. I'll give it another week just in case, but unless a slew more people sign up, I'll put this on hold and try again in a few months. January worked well last year.

I agree that the orchestra is pretty clearly synthetic given the central role it plays here, but I think it's well above where our standards should be for an arrangement like this. Likewise, I think most of the vanilla synths are perfectly appropriate, although the drums do get a little grating in places (notably 1:04-1:53 and 2:56-3:44). As Gario said, there's room for improvement, but I don't come down as borderline on this one at all. Very nice work overall. YES

Yeah, I have a pair of Sennheisers for home use, but they're pretty hefty, and they provide too much sound isolation for me to use at work. That was one thing in the Amazon reviews for the HD 497's that's keeping me from figuring out what their present-day equivalent is. (Folks also mentioned that they pinch, which is a problem I have with a lot of headphones.) The Sennheiser HD 2.20s seem to have the form factor I want, but they're the successor to the HD219S, which, according to graphs.headphone.com, are really bass-heavy. Anyone have experience with those or anything like them?

Production and instrumentation are top-notch, as expected, but I'm not sold on the structure, myself. More than half of it (up to 1:56) is build-up, and then 1:56-3:08 is additive repetition of a very simple hook. All that suspense leading into a section that's so repetitive was pretty disappointing. Still, the strengths of this are way up there. I wish the main section had more in it to hold the listener's interest, both in variety and length (compared to the build-up), but I don't think it's worth sending this back over. YES

Per the rules, you both won. Simon got the "bad ending." Which is why Dracula is back again so soon!

I'm listening to music or something pretty much all day at work, and I need to be aware of what's going on around me, so I need headphones that don't shut out the world and are lightweight and comfortable enough to wear for many hours at a time. Right now I use the simple and cheap Panasonic RP-HT21's, which meet my comfort and openness requirements, but the sound is distinctly on the tinny side. I often switch to other headphones that aren't so comfortable when I'm judging, but I can't wear them all day. I'm not remixing with these, so they don't need to be high-end, but a more flat frequency response would be nice to have. Any suggestions?

It's a bizarre mix of genres, but I can't say there's anything in there that doesn't work. The melody gets a little repetitive (especially the main hook with the triplets, which is lengthy and repeats 6 times), but it's a short source, and the remix does take it in different directions. Production is on point, as expected. I don't have any significant concerns; it'll be a great addition to the album. YES