MindWanderer

It's certainly loud. My volume was already a little low, and I had to lower it further. Sounded pretty great otherwise, except that I thought the bass and drums were a little loud and the leads a little quiet up until 1:15. After that, I thought they weren't "a little" so anymore, but much so. The leads are pretty buried, and the kicks are really loud, as are the sweeps. At 1:39 this gets even more pronounced due to the unusual kick pattern; around 1:42-1:45 I can hardly hear the lead at all; in 1:55-2:00 the kicks are the only thing I can make out distinctly. The rest of the piece is similarly balanced. The melody ranges from pushed back to completely buried, and the kicks dominate the entire soundscape. This is an entertaining arrangement, but it's muddy and headache-inducing for me. NO (resubmit)

Well... maybe not all of the fandom will be floored. Don't get me wrong, this is an absolutely epic arrangement. I absolutely love what you've done with the themes and the orchestration. This is right up my alley for stuff I get excited about. But orchestral rock is tough to mix, and I feel like this comes up short. The whole intro is quiet, and after 0:15 when everything kicks in, too busy. There's a white noise sweep that's muddying the whole soundscape and not leaving the actual (sampled) instruments enough room to breathe. Then the main section opens up at 0:48 with a bass that's shockingly loud, after which all the orchestration other than the choir and the orch hits are totally buried. All I'm getting are individual notes where I hear the squeak of a piccolo or a violin cut through for a moment. At 2:05 the brass finally takes the lead for a bit, but the rest of the orchestral instruments are still almost inaudible. The rest of the piece follows this same general trend: there's one, maybe two non-rock instruments at a time that I can hear clearly. It takes turns which instruments those are, but the rest are buried in mud. From what I can hear, the orchestration is absolutely gorgeous, layered, and complex, but I can hear like 20% of it, max. I've been accused in the past of making the job of balancing something like this sound easy. It's not remotely easy! But it is necessary. NO (for God's sake please resubmit!)

Structurally conservative, but with a ton of added textures, notably the vocals. I'm a little borderline on whether it's transformative enough, but it sounds great. The second half branches out way more than the first half; I think the last 45 seconds are actually some of the strongest of the piece. I'm happy with it overall. YES

You called it the "Nanotech Upgrade Remix," and you weren't wrong about the "upgrade" part. This is a sound upgrade, and not a particularly dramatic one except for one or two brief sections. It sounds very good for what it is, but we're looking for something much more transformative. NO

Great stuff. Epic orchestral with Celtic influence is trendy but for a good reason. Excellent violin and piano work, seamless integration of the themes, tons of variety, and excellent production. What's not to like? YES

You clearly had a lot of fun with this! It's a pretty wild trip, and it sounds great. It goes to a lot of weird places, but stays entirely coherent. Strong work. YES

This is a great performance with a great sound, but it's a cover. The entire structure is replicated almost 1:1, and while there are small differences in, e.g. percussion, it's mostly just an instrument swap. We can accept "genre transformations," but they have to be more substantial than just swapping in rock instruments for the originals, and that seems to be pretty much all that was done here. It's a fun enough listen, but we're looking for something more transformational. NO

This is a fun orchestration and re-imagining of the source tune, but I'm finding the balance to be problematic. The bass guitar is quite loud, and the percussion is a little on the loud side as well. The highs are pretty shrill across the board, most notably the celesta, but even the piano and trumpet are pretty bright to my ears, to the point of discomfort. I enjoyed the arrangement a lot overall, but I think it does need those levels tweaked. Do that and it'll be a great post. NO (resubmit) Revision 11/6: I think the revision killed a little bit too much of the shimmer, and it now sounds a little flat, but it's good enough. Definitely no pain anymore. YES

Well, I wasn't here 17 years ago, so I can't comment on how much you've improved, but production quality is pretty good, and there are a lot of good arrangement ideas. Where I have a concern is that development is very slow. The intro is a full two minutes long, with changes to the soundscape introduced glacially. The rest proceeds about the same pace, looping through the source material about once a minute and making notable changes once every couple of loops. You don't need to play an entire loop with one sound palette for the listener to get the idea, and that's especially so when the differences between two loops aren't massive, and you don't need to play through an entire loop verbatim every time. You have spans of several minutes where the drum loops or piano arps are unchanged, which causes a lot of listener fatigue. And then after all that, the ending is quite abrupt. Overall I think that's the main issue here. If you can condense this down so that you can present more ideas in a shorter period of time, and maybe mix up the composition so that it's not full loop after full loop, I think it will do wonders for listener engagement. NO

Great vocal work right off the bat here! I've been evaluating a lot of black metal lately, and nothing against the genre, but it's nice to be able to understand lyrics a little better. Yours are a little quiet in the mix, though; the harmonies, especially, are nearly inaudible, as is 2:36 onward. The lead guitar, while fine for what it is, is a little repetitive and it's sucking all the air out of the vocal space. That's my only crit, though. Otherwise this is fantastic. Let's get this a title and post it. YES P.S. There are some mistakes in the lyrics, not just typos/misspellings, but a few words are different. I'd offer corrections but I can't make them all out clearly.

I have to agree. The timbre of the synth choices here are pretty similar to the original, so I'm looking for ways in which the remix stands out from the original. There are a lot of little flourishes and twists, but they're not significantly transformative. The breakdown at the halfway mark is pretty good, despite still keeping to the original FM palette. On the other hand, it speaks to the length of the piece that the breakdown, which is normally a short bridge, is nearly half the length of the entire piece! After it, there's only 18 seconds left, which is a brief recap and an abrupt ending. Overall I think this needs more development and more deviation from the source material. NO

Dang, that source track sounds great for Amiga. It's a really fun, energetic arrangement as well, but production needs some work. The lead that kicks in at 0:33 is notably quiet compared to the drums and car engine noises. It's better when it returns at 1:10 because the car noise is gone, but it's still sitting too far in the back. 1:39 has the same problem: even though it's a quieter section overall, the lead doesn't cut through very well and the bass and kicks are knocking the clarity out of it. The third lead (which starts at 0:47) is better, but listen at 0:57 for an example of where you can't hear it very well at all. I'm a bit borderline about this overall, but the fact that the most unclear part is where the main melody starts really take the wind of of the remix's sails. I really love the arrangement and the energy, and I'm enjoying listening to it overall, but I think it needs that little tweak to the leads to get over the bar. NO (resubmit)

I don't have much to add to that. Great tone, really original arrangement. I'd have to timestamp to know for sure how much is derived specifically from source material, but it passes the sniff test. Excellent work. YES

Pretty good! I agree with Kris about the 1:19 synth sounding really dry and piercing, and really doesn't belong in this jazz mix. I'm not that crazy about the 2:04 one, either. On the flip side, it sounds like the brass is sometimes smushed or filtered too aggressively; the exposed trumpet at 2:29-2:52 sounds great, but the French horn, especially when "ensemble-ized," just doesn't have a good tone. Overall servicable, but I would have liked it more as a straight jazz piece without the synths, and with more open EQ work on the French horn. YES

Thanks for the comparison track. I needed it to know whether the radical swells in the sustained notes were an intentional homage to something. It seems they are not, which is an issue, because they're really unpleasant to listen to. They're also too quiet for a lead; the percussion, bass, and effects are all sitting on top of it. When the leads are in their long, quiet attack or decay phases, I sometimes can't hear them at all. The arrangement is otherwise really cool, and I really enjoyed the approach. Feels weird to be NOing a Mazedude remix, but here we are. Flatten the envelope on those leads out and push them farther into the front of the mix and this'll be in a great place. NO (resubmit)

Agreed on all points. There's definitely stuff that sounds good. The intro did grab me, despite the dry, vanilla, repetitive percussion, but it's a letdown after that for all the reasons Emu stated. You have the creative chops, but you need to learn some production techniques to showcase your vision. Please hit up our workshop forum for some more targeted advice. NO

It's as pretty as any RET mix, but I'm not hearing the connections to the source. The main identifiable theme is the opening 3-note stanza, and this arrangement changes that to the point of being unrecognizable without knowing in advance what it was supposed to be a remix of. There's not enough of the rest to hold it together. So I have to say NO

Opens up with some etherial sounds that I definitely wouldn't have pegged as "piano" if it weren't in the description. Then we get choir and snare drum, and a synth of some sort; I don't hear anything that sounds like an organ until 2:27. The big challenge with any Poison Mind remix is that it's an extremely short, repetitive tune. It's hard to make something substantial out of that. Unfortunately, I don't think this is a success on that front. The piano never lets up, and the choir rarely does. The snare dropping in and out is the only really dynamic element; otherwise it's pretty much all just that piano, usually on top of a pad of some sort. I think the tone is great, there's just not enough going on to retain the listener's interest for four and a half minutes. NO

That last section isn't quite copy-pasta, and even if the backing wasn't different across the four loops, they're short enough that it could be forgiven anyway. It's a bit mid-light there, but otherwise it sounds great. The only thing I really dislike is the ending, because there isn't one. The last sounds are literally cut off. It does wind down, so you can tell an ending is coming, but it's still too sudden. Some of the transitions are also a little sudden and substantial, but they're clearly intentional and work for what they are, I have no problems giving this a YES

Starts off with a nice simple choir backing. At 0:35 a celesta joins, but it's kind of thin and thwacky, and seems to change key at random on occasion. At 1:12 we get a flute, which is extremely thin and doesn't always seem to be in the same key as everything else. 1:30 introduces a weird synth which is just kind of doing its own thing. The rest of the remix is pretty much the same thing. Thin instruments, a thin soundscape, instruments that aren't in the same key and don't mesh with each other. No ending to speak of. I'm afraid we're looking for something richer and more cohesive. NO

MkVaff submitting a Journey to Silius mix? What decade are we in? Well, apparently the right one, at least for music. Mike's lost none of his touch; this is the same sort of EDM goodness that brought so many of us onto this site in the first place, nearly 23 years ago. Classic sounds, but some sounds are classic for a reason. Production is crisp and clean. The kicks are pounding perhaps a little too much for my taste, but otherwise everything is firing on all four cylinders, just as it should be. YES (This could stand to have a better title, though.)

I'm not picking up a lot of source usage here. It might be more subtle than I can make out, but I hear nothing until 1:41, which is nearly halfway into the track, and then no more after 3:19. The composition and production are very pretty. It sounds great on its own. But with only the middle 1:38 of a 4:03 piece being a remix, as far as I can hear, I can't give it an affirmative vote. A shorter intro or more overt connections to this (or any other) source and I'll happily vote in its favor, but as things stand I have to vote NO Edit 8/11: OK, so now I know the 4-note sequence I'm supposed to be listening for. It's slowed way down in the remix, so it was hard to make the connection. I hear it played by the cello at 0:07-0:20, by the piano (in the background) at 0:49-0:57, then the cello again at 1:00-1:10 and 1:22-1:30. Technically that's another 39 seconds, which would be 56%. There are other times in there where the cello, and sometimes piano, are riffing on that 4-note theme, but when it's only 4 notes, you can't really change much before it's just not "source" anymore. Eh, I'll give it credit. It's not totally unrecognizable, and it didn't need much to get it over the bar. It's borderline, but I'd rather encourage creative interpretation than stifle it. YES

Very nice chill arrangement. Clearly based on the source, cleanly produced. A little monotonous for my tastes, but this sort of piece is going to be tonally repetitive, and there's little if any actual copy-pasta. Does everything it needs to do. YES

Wow, that's a... detailed explanation. I don't think that much was needed for us to understand what you were getting at! There's clearly enough source material even without every little connection being spelled out, even though the opening is a very slow burn. When the main melody does kick in at 1:28, the background is very wet. I couldn't even tell what instrument it was at first, because each note is blending into the next. At 2:04 you can finally tell it's pizzicato strings, but that section also introduces some very wet pads of some sort which get very muddy in their own right. At 2:41 the backing is a positive wall of sound: I can hear the lead and percussion clearly, the brass less clearly, and everything else is a wash. After that comes the epode, which I had to look up. Thanks for the vocabulary word! It's an interesting take on the idea: an epode usually takes a different meter from the rest of the poem, and it's usually an irregular meter, which you interpreted here as a change in tone and some random-seeming note choices. As with a poetic epode, all the main themes are present here, in condensed form. It's very weird to modern ears, but makes sense in context. Unfortunately is still has that morass of instruments serving as a backing, which is at this point quite loud and distracting. I really enjoy the arrangement here. It's very unique and fun. But I can't get over the backing, which is just echoes on top of long tails on top of white noise. Clean that up so I can hear actual notes and you'll have my vote. NO (resubmit)

Great stuff. Album evaluators Fishy and Hemophiliac immediately identified the homage to Morricone's "For a Few Dollars More." The vocals are a little thin; before seeing the credits, I actually thought it was just one person layered on themselves. Highs are a little sharp; the whistling needs to be to convey the intended tone, but the strings are quite bright, and the flute, guitar, and even trumpet don't need to be quite so piercing, either. Those are nitpicks, though. Otherwise this sounds great, and nails the intent. It's long but extremely dynamic in a holistic way; not something I mind listening to repeatedly. Great job, especially for your debut submission. YES