paradiddlesjosh   Judges ⚖️

Never gonna forget this source tune and its mouth fart snare sound. Thanks for that, Garrett! 🤣 No qualms about the arrangement; the source is recognizable via the breakdown and the genre adaptation is solid. The sampled upright bass is exposed by itself in the intro; LT's right about it being in uncanny valley territory, and that the tone of it's otherwise solid enough. It definitely becomes less noticeable once the whole band comes in. I agree with proph that the snare can come down in volume a bit, though whether it could be dirtier is a matter of taste -- I like the dry pop this one has. The auto-pan effect in the D section could be narrowed some -- even in speakers, it's disorienting -- but it's not a dealbreaker. Like proph, I really dig the scratch work. It definitely helps secure the 90s East Coast hip-hop vibe. Overall, while there is some room for improvement with some of the production elements, we don't let perfect be the enemy of the good around these parts. Let's put this one up on the site. YES

In my previous vote, I felt the production issues that proph and Chimpazilla touched on were the only elements holding this track back from being posted on the site. And it sounds like those issues have been resolved! The arrangement was never in doubt. Between the new accompaniment approaches in the keys and bells, the string elements and vocals, and the clean electric guitar, there's plenty of personalization in this to sell an otherwise straightforward take on the source material. Nice work! YES

Man, this one is a journey. What a stacked month DS/3DS Month had to be for this track to not medal! As always, jnWake, the source breakdown is greatly appreciated; no questions about source usage here. If I have one nitpick, it's that I can hear a couple of spots where Tsori isn't quite as rhythmically tight with the band (0:30-0:32, 1:36-1:38) as he could be, but this is far from a dealbreaker. As dense and tricky as the production process likely was for this one, this is a very clean mix. YES

Welcome back, Eric! My previous NO vote was ultimately based on the programming of the trumpet and flute parts, focused primarily on the overtly disconnected short articulations from the longer ones. The Addictive Keys patch I could have taken or left -- weird timbre for the texture, but not a dealbreaker -- and the vocal sampling wasn't an issue for me, either. The flute and the trumpet are much more organic this time around! I can hear that some of the melody line has changed from about 1:10 to 1:31; some of the passing tones are strange, but I like what the new approach is bringing to the piece. Sounds like some attempts at legato in the trumpet at 2:11, 2:31, and 2:40. These might still fall into the Uncanny Valley for some; overall, I think the single biggest drawback of the previous submission has been addressed for the better, and we can call this one good enough to pass. The celeste replacing the piano in the first B section is a better texture fit for sure. It's a tad plinky but not uncalled for. Semper Fi! YES

At the risk of being too glib, this is an easy lay-up. Fun arrangement, mostly clean production (synth bubble-up at the bridge around 2:50 and the wrong vocal note fix notwithstanding). Zack's guitar solo is tasty and even references the source melody. I'll echo proph's concerns about the rapid-fire lyrics at the start of the chorus lines being nigh unintelligible; still, I imagine singing that melody line from the source in this style with this attitude is going to be tricky no matter what the lyrics are and I certainly couldn't do it better. MMZX fans are gonna eat good when this hits the front page. YES

Co-signing with Chimpazilla and proph on this one. While your arrangement hews conservatively to the source material, I think the little additions like the reduction to the piano and bells at 1:20 before building back into the A section and the approaches to the melodic material on the guitar and vocals elevate this beyond a simple 1:1 cover of the tune. The production is the one big problem that's holding this one back -- too heavy in the mids, the heartbeat is eating up all your headroom, and the -2dB limiter ceiling, while maybe not causing all your production problems, only serves to clip the louder low-end elements (namely the heartbeat and the left hand of the piano). This one's ready for the front page with some tweaks on the mix, Azina! NO (resubmit)

Easy to make the Blade Runner/Vangelis connections on this one. I'm reminded of "Island Spinning" by Rich O'Meara (yes, this is a percussion ensemble piece and yes, it's notably missing lots of synth elements) thanks to the polymeter and the idea of lots of elements -- even the melody line -- orbiting one ostinato for the duration. There's also something fun about the additional samples (the gong, the water droplet) as transitional elements, like some sonic easter eggs. In the broad strokes, this track feels repetitive -- once that three-note ostinato from 0:09-0:36 returns at 0:55, it trucks through until the outro at 4:12. Having said that, there's an appreciable amount of filter movement and unless I'm mistaken, I can hear notable pitch shifts in this ostinato. I would absolutely be on board with another no-arp segment like 0:36-0:55 -- maybe right before the key change at around 2:49 -- as well as more setup on that sudden outro. The addition of the detuning pad at 3:35 seems to be the harbinger for the end on repeat listens -- there's probably a way to make this clearer to the audience on a first-time listen, but I don't think I could communicate that myself. No arguments about source material usage here; if anything, this arrangement's fairly conservative, particularly regarding the presentation of the melody line. But the intro, the no-arp segment, the filtering on the arp, and the key shift at 2:49 are, I feel, enough personalization to put this over the bar. I agree with Chimpazilla that the mix is on the border of muddy with the low-mid presence, but I haven't heard anything that I'd consider a dealbreaker in terms of production. There's certainly potential for better but what's been submitted is good enough for OCR. YES

I'm with proph and Hemo on this one. This track feels too repetitive within each section to justify the 5-minute runtime, particularly the drums. Like jnWake and Hemo, I also agree about the lack of cohesion between the elements. While I'm certainly no expert on DnB, I found myself expecting -- wanting -- more bass than we've been given here; I think the wobbly bass starting at 1:40 is an interesting choice (though it lacks power and presence) and without other bass elements, the arrangement goes beyond feeling weightless to feeling ungrounded. Like Hemo, I dig the atmospheric elements and the sampling; I also love the drum patterns (especially the double-tresillo segment at 3:37 with the "weird snare sound" according to jnWake -- maybe it's weird to you, but to me, it's got a nice ring to it that's a change of pace from the tighter, snappier snares we've gotten to up that point😜). The problem for me, ultimately, is that the overly repetitive elements and the lack of low-end are enough to keep me from signing off on this one, Nobel. With some more variation on the individual patterns (or the removal of some repetitive segments) and the addition of another bass element, I'd be on board! NO

This is like Marcin Przybyłowicz, Jesper Kyd, and Darren Korb distilled and aged in an oak barrel, served neat in a Moroccan old-fashioned glass: texturally rich, addictively rhythmic, and well balanced. The groove established by the vamp at 1:23 has an undulating, organic feel to it. The strings and the guitar fuse this engine to agile, playful, and conversational ney and organ melodies. Love the shift at 3:30-3:48 before pushing right back into the dance. The bookend of "El Helwa Di" at the intro and the "Oil Ocean Zone" quote at the outro wrap the whole thing in a cinematic bow. My only criticism is that it's loud, and even then, it's not even close to being a dealbreaker. Nice work, zyk0. YES

"Krook's March" in a major key? Sign me up! Piggybacking off of Hemo for a second, this arrangement is indeed super fun. I'm personally not bothered by the vocal delivery on this track. While I can certainly point out some phrases that stick out oddly as a native English speaker (e.g. "Promised to not leave you there" is usually said by native English speakers as "promised not to leave you there" because it doesn't split the infinitive and for this song, flipping the positions of "to" and "not" improves the prosody), I'm happy to have lyrics and vocals in the one language I can read, write, and kinda sorta speak well. 😄 It seems like we're all in agreement here that the mixdown is far from ideal. The vocals compete for clarity at 0:45-1:01, the chorus at 1:36-1:52, again at 2:14-2:22, and leading into the second chorus starting from "For myself..." at 2:45-3:05. The biggest contributors to the clarity bottleneck are the cymbals (especially those open hi-hats) at 0:45-1:01 and 2:14-2:22 and the synth lead in the left channel in the choruses (1:36-1:52 and 2:45-3:05), with the lead guitar doubling the melody on the last one from 2:45-2:48 also obscuring the vocal line. I think these non-vocal elements can come down 1.5-2dB to make space for the vocals without negatively impacting the rest of the mix. The same can be said for the tick-tock clock. With that being said, I'm siding with the Ys. While there is definitely potential for a cleaner mixdown, this is above our bar. YES

Howdy, Worlder! I didn't have a chance to get to this one the first time 'round, so let's have a few listens. Oof, proph and Emu weren't kidding about the extra low-frequency content -- specifically in the side channels (content happening in the left or right channel that is different from the content in the opposite channel). While most producers aren't pressing their works to vinyl records these days, keeping the low-end stuff (bass, kick drum) as mono as possible can help maintain mix headroom and give those elements a strong presence -- especially on systems with subwoofers. Now, I could be wrong about this: it sounds to me like the low-freq side channel content is mostly reverb and the bottom end of the chippy arp from the intro (maybe some of the rhythm guitars too, but it's a much lesser extent). If it's reverb, a high-pass filter will clean this right up (and don't be afraid to take the filter up to 400-500 Hz; reverb is great for giving a sense of space in a track but it muddies a mix up really fast), and the same can work with your rhythm guitars to a lesser extent (80-120Hz). If there's some other instrument generating low-end content (like that chippy arp synth in the intro), that should get high-passed to just below the fundamental frequency of the lowest notes it plays; this'll give your kick and bass the space they need. Separately, I'm with proph that the drums in particular are lacking punch. Some of this is the "internal mix" of the drumkit -- hi-hats and crash cymbals are louder than the kick and snare (e.g. the bomb blast pattern from 0:58-1:12ish, the half-time breakdowns at 1:15-1:27) due to either velocity or volume balance, maybe both -- some of it is sample selection, and some of it is a lack of compression and saturation. The extra club kick layer at 3:10 helps that segment compared to the first half-time breakdown at 1:15, but the snare is still anemic. It's unfortunate that we're being so hard on the production elements of your track, because the arrangement is well above the bar. The writing has good energy management and interesting twists on the source material -- the build at 0:58-1:14 and the evolution of that bassline from 2:38-4:00 are some highlights for me. And although I agree with proph that the guitar intonation issues detract from the experience at 1:58-2:35, the part itself provides a refreshing break from the frenetic passages that come before and afterward. This one's still not quite there yet, Worlder; please keep cooking on this one! You're closer than you think. NO (resubmit)

I'm siding with the other Js on this one, tibonev: the timing is too loose on this track to ignore, particularly in the arpeggios from 1:27 into the guitar solo at 1:39 and the quick shaker hits at around 2:13. I'm on board with your arrangement of the source material and there are some segments like your solo and the octave arpeggio runs (2:26-end) that are well executed; this one could be a slam dunk with the timing adjustments or re-takes in place. NO (resubmit)

Howdy, Jonathon! I'm gonna give a quick so-sign with proph and LT: you've got a good production here; it's just not what OCR's looking for. This'll definitely have a fanbase among VGM enthusiasts on YouTube and likely Twitch as well! NO

Adding a quick so-sign with my fellow Js. One thing I'll point out as what I see as a detriment to this track: as well-established as the synthwave vibe is, there's a noticeable amount of repetition in each segment. Let's take the double-time at 1:26-2:05 for example: outside of a very subtle filter shift on the lead instrument, this whole segment sounds to me like four repeats of a four-bar phrase. Without fills or variations, these phrases grow stale quickly. And considering the melody line is carrying over from the build of the previous section, it's already worn out its welcome before the section is over. When LT is talking about the relative lack of complexity and sophistication, this is a big part of it. And I agree wholeheartedly with proph: the lack of a definitive ending is a big dealbreaker. There's a strong start here, Noga Project; this track needs focus on the fine details and trim before it's ready for the front page. I second LT's suggestion about joining the OCR Discord server or checking out the Workshop forum if you're looking for advice or more options about finishing this one or making your next big track. NO (resubmit)

I also missed out on this track on its first time 'round the panel. Thanks for sticking with it, Eric! The string build in the intro is quite long, but I'll live. I agree with proph, XPRT, Seph, and Hemo regarding the articulations on the flute and the trumpet holding back the humanization of those two instruments. I wouldn't mind the approach so much if the shorter notes weren't so short and detached: the stop-tongue marcato is so short, it's practically staccatissimo. The piano from 1:04-1:30 sounds timbrally more appropriate for a dance tune than the orchestral piece you've made, though the part is brief and in the background. I could see a world where this part is covered by the harpsichord instead, especially since that instrument appears in the recap of this section later on underneath the trumpet. The triplet descent in the pizz strings at 1:32 is the worst offender for the part in terms of realism, but otherwise seems serviceable. I agree with LT on the brass being anemic at first; overall, the second half of this track feels stronger in execution than the first half. I'm very borderline on this one. The arrangement's conservative but offers embellishments and personal touches. The mixdown and master are appropriate for the style. Really, the flute and trumpet programming are the only real downsides here. Ultimately, I gotta come down with the other NOs, but this one is really close! NO (resubmit)

It's pretty clear this one's well above the bar. Source usage seems to check out, performances are superb -- Xander's flute solo at 1:31 is a real treat, Roland has a showcase of textural approaches to the bass part throughout, minus's guitar work is on point as usual, and Cyril and Unfocused in IA brought some lovely vocal takes to bear -- and the mix is tight. I think we can all agree the ending is weaker than we'd like, but it's a nitpick. NIce work, y'all. YES

@Liontamer Larry, it sounds like you feel that way about the drums because the parts have no transitional markings. No fills, nothing so much as a crash cymbal on beat 1 to mark the new segment like a capital letter marks the start of a new sentence. There's no connective tissue joining the segments together. We gave you more depth on this one during the NO SHOW, H36T. The biggest drawbacks of this track are that the back two-thirds are too repetitive, the vocals don't feel integrated enough into the arrangement, the drumkit on the back two-thirds has internal mix issues (hi-hats are way too loud and forward for the context) and isn't humanized, and the piece as a whole isn't interpretive enough by the standards. This track needs more H36T! NO (resubmit)

I voiced my agreement with Hemo and LT during the NO SHOW. I do agree that the tenor sax is mixed too far forward and that the alto sounds much thinner. That said, I think what we've been presented is above bar from a production perspective -- especially considering the quality of the arrangement is so high. I doubt any of us would say no to another take of the tenor solo with the same vibes and fewer dissonant notes, but the take we have is more than good enough to my ears. The programmed elements (drums, bass) are solid, tasteful, and genre-appropriate. Kupos--I mean, kudos y'all! YES

We said a lot during the NO SHOW, so my vote here is going to read a lot like proph's. I also thought the guitars coming in at 1:00 were a massive highlight, as well as the bass at the end. The EP running the ostinato sounds great and the drum parts themselves are fantastic in a vacuum. Unfortunately, the arrangement's repetitiveness and the inhuman, all-heavy-hits-all-the-time drum programming are massively holding this one back. There's a good bit of work to do to take this one to the next level, but it's a really good start. We encourage you to hit up the #workshop in the OCR Discord -- lots of helpful folks in there who can help you find your way. NO (resubmit)

When I heard this one before the DoD Live Play, I had no idea that there were two sources involved. Using the guitar ostinato from "Somewhere in the Woods" to thread into "Snow, Lots of Snow" made for a seamless transition. Speaking of sources, no question about source usage: we largely get a straight playthrough of source A and source B, but you've transformed the first source tune from 4/4 into 6/8 and explored new textural approaches on top of a genre transformation. Acoustic guitar enters at 0:28 with the piano ostinato from the intro of "Somewhere in the Woods," and we get the upper register chord movement from that source's A section when the toms enter at 0:36. Another guitar provides the B section melody (done by a layer of piano and a synth with some lovely portamento in the original) at 0:53, leading into the source's C section melody at 1:27 after bringing the sparse bottle blow + claps texture from the intro along with restrained drumkit. The guitar ostinato from "Somewhere in the Woods" then becomes the ostinato for "Snow, Lots of Snow," highlighting a clear connection point between these two tracks. Heading right into the second source at 2:35, more guitar gives us the upper piano and bell melody of "Snow's" intro (the slides on the guitar are a nice touch!). At 3:03, we get the piano melody of "Snow's" A section in the guitar in a texture very reminiscent to me of one of the "Main Theme" variations from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth with the reverb-sploshed tremolo in the background. Another round of the A section with the Sigur Rós toms at 3:14 builds into a cathartic B section at 3:31, ending in a climax of guitar and drum stings of the motif from the intro and B section at 4:00. The guitar ostinato returns at 4:13 to bring the whole thing home with sparse chords and birbs. It goes without saying that the live-tracked parts are well executed. The guitar and bass parts are a perfect fit for the genre and the tones are immaculate. And textural shifts like the claps in the intro, the marimba in the "Woods" C section, and the tremolo in the "Snow" A section help tie the piece together. The drums also do a phenomenal job of guiding the arrangement, maintaining restraint through the C section of "Woods" at 1:27 and opening up in the payoff of "Snow" at 3:31. We Js mentioned it during the NO Show: the blown bottles seem to have a slow attack and drag against the claps at 0:10, also against the guitar and bass at 0:35. It comes with the territory for the instrument, though you can nudge your tracks forward slightly or use negative track delay to compensate if everything's otherwise in time. Not a dealbreaker in any case. Seconding Hemo on the Sigur Rós-coded toms at 0:36 being too loud -- "Gobbledigook" has the same idea, but the drums are pulled further back in the soundscape. When they return at 1:11 and 3:14, they're in better balance with the rest of the track; this is probably more to do with the texture being thicker than any change in volume. At the end of the day, this is a nitpick. Nice work! YES

Hey there, Matt! I'm going to co-sign with proph and Emu. The production on this track is the largest contributor to its shortcomings. The drums lack punch and are just buried under the synths and, to a lesser extent, the guitars. There's a massive buildup in the low mids (around 300 Hz) that makes the whole track sound muddy and the lead guitar and synths are competing for the mids bandwidth around 1-3 kHz. There's also that sudden drop in guitar volume in the left channel around 1:02 that proph mentioned. Sounds like a floor tom is causing clipping in the first B section (1:06-1:41), then another peak clip at 2:28 from the entrance of the reverb-heavy synth lead for the solo and more clipping at 2:58 on the fill heading into the final B section. Speaking of that synth lead, it utterly dominates the mix for the entire solo. Simply put, I'd need to hear more attention paid to volume balancing, EQ, and compression for this track to be ready to post. It's worth pointing out that your arrangement's quite good! While the structure is conservative, I think your solos keep things interesting and let your voice shine through. To echo proph again, your sound palette works great for the style. The vibes are right, so let's fix the mix! I recommend joining the OCR Discord and looking for feedback in the #workshop channel and/or the Office Hours Weekly WIP Review on most Wednesday evenings. NO (resubmit)

Oh, I remember an earlier version of this sub! My only critique of the arrangement is the ending -- something doesn't sit right with me about the falloff into the tremolo string crescendo. Apropos of a synthwave track, I get a chill night-time drive vibe throughout the piece. Drum and bass part writing are solid, and I appreciated both the piano break at 0:57 and bass breakdown at 1:56 for their changes of pace. I also want to shout out the melody line trade between the trumpet and synths at 2:30-3:15. The ending is less than ideal, but in my opinion, the personalization and flow of this piece is above board. I disagree with the NOs on the production aspects, particularly regarding Tsori's trumpet in the mix. I had little trouble making out the trumpet's melody line at any point, even when there's line interplay (0:43-0:45 between the trumpet and synth, the trumpet dovetailing into the right hand of the piano at 0:57, trumpet and synth again at 2:54-2:57). If anything, the worst offender of this line balance is 2:16-2:30 and even here, stacked with the piano and synth for a new texture, I don't find this egregious enough to say NO to it. Beyond the trumpet's place in the mix, I can hear lots of reverb, but not so much that it detracts from the listening experience. Nothing screams "dealbreaker" to me about this track; what's here is good enough. Nice work, Hemo. YES

Howdy, RHYTH_TWISTED! Closing this one out by adding a quick co-sign with XPRT and proph. Really solid production and vibes, just need to hear more of your personal touches on the arrangement of things. We'd love to hear some more from you soon! NO