DarkeSword

Here's how the selection process works. 1) The Judges identify people in the community, such as remixers or frequent reviewers, that they feel have enough talent or knowledge to be a Judge. 2) The Judges debate with each other on the viability of various persons joining the panel. How would he/she judge remixes, can we interact with him/her, is he/she articulate, is he/she friendly or helpful in other areas of the site, and most importantly does he/she understand our site's standards? 3) After preliminary discussions based on our own interactions (past and present) with the various individuals, the Judges select a group that they feel should be tested, in order to help us answer the preceding questions better. These candidates are then asked if they are interested in joining. 4) Candidates are (very) informally interviewed on a range of topics, including community interaction, musical preferences, etc. 5) Candidates are sent a test batch of remixes of varying degrees of quality in terms of arrangement and production. The candidates judge these remixes as if they were already members of the panel, and then send their writeups to us. 6) The Judges review these test-batch decisions, discuss candidates, and vote on who they would like to join the panel. 7) The selected candidates are formally invited to join the Judges Panel. That is a general overview of how the Judge selection process works. We don't include the community in our decisions, really. The Judges Panel is a varied enough fellowship to ensure that different kinds of people are selected and considered. Nominations in the inital stages are constantly shot down. Viable candidates are not overlooked. If they were overlooked, they wouldn't be viable to begin with. One of our criteria to become a judge is that you stand out to us in some way from the crowd, be it through your music, your knowledge, or your community involvement. With the way our process works right now, we're never going to pick an unknown, dark horse forum-goer who happened to join a reviewing competition and win it, because we don't know this person and how we would interact with him/her, and we don't know what kind of person they really are aside from what they've written in a review competition. We've been burned by this kind of thing before. Publically campaigning for a spot on the Judges Panel is the best way to never earn a seat. The best way to become a judge is to let your musical skillset, or your passion for the site, speak for itself.

I'm pretty sure he's just a sentient being who's grown out of the massive information exchange of the internet, similar to, but not exactly like, Jane, from the Speaker of the Dead trilogy. Or I could be wrong. We discussed this at Jill's house that one day. It was pretty funny (and freakishly possible) I doubt you made the Speaker allusion. Or you're all a bit more well read than I previously believed. *Thread Commandeered* Hey Darke! You notice anything strAaAaAaAange about the name of the characters on my new website? :3 *Thread Relinquished* Jawesome.

I'm pretty sure he's just a sentient being who's grown out of the massive information exchange of the internet, similar to, but not exactly like, Jane, from the Speaker of the Dead trilogy. Or I could be wrong. We discussed this at Jill's house that one day. It was pretty funny (and freakishly possible) I doubt you made the Speaker allusion. Or you're all a bit more well read than I previously believed.

I'm pretty sure he's just a sentient being who's grown out of the massive information exchange of the internet, similar to, but not exactly like, Jane, from the Speaker of the Dead trilogy. Or I could be wrong.

First Steve Irwin, now GrayLightning? WTF man?

Most of this is original stuff, with some Gerudo Valley making an appearance around 3:03. This section gets pretty messy with some timing issues. Drums are on autopilot the whole way through too. Not much of a remix; more of an original song with a reference to some Zelda music. NO

You'd be surprised at how much people actually aren't "in-the-know."

Ahahaha! That's awesome.

Hey man, I use FLStudio. Also: learn about writing music before you even try to produce it.

Don't even worry about your "setup" at this point. If you're going to play, get some experience playing first. Get a cheap keyboard or something so you can learn to play. Don't try to jump into "ReMixing OMG." You should learn some fundamentals of music first, like really basic theory (major/minor keys, chords, harmony, meter, that kind of stuff), and learn about what it takes to write a song. Try writing some original piece first, and get practice with how parts work together. At the age you are, composing and producing music is not as intuitive as drawing a picture or writing a story. You need some foundation before you can "remix."

This is really hard to judge. First, percussion is awesome throughout the entire piece, but moreso near the end. Okay good that's out of the way. My main issue is with most of the first part of the song. It follows the original theme pretty closely; not just the melody, but the accompniment as well. But then 1:06 hits and we get some cool variation over the chord progression of the original, then go into an extended solo section with some jawesome guitar playing. 3:04's percussion rocks out, and the trade with the guitar is really effective. What I really like about this piece is that the percussion really integrates well with what the guitars are doing; 3:51 in particular illustrates the excellent writing. I think that while this piece is fairly straight-forward and conservative, it's got enough interpretation in the middle section to push it over. i liek it YES

Cute little arrangement, but you've gotta have more variety in your soundscape than a bunch of saw waves. This also ends up having a really BGM feel to it. It's not much of a standalone piece; its arrangement pretty much just goes through the overworld theme a few times, without any changes between the iterations. That ending is terrible. Needs more varied sounds and some actual arrangement, rather than just repeated 8-bar phrases. NO

All of the background stuff sounds muffled and lo-fi, with overused delay effects on everything. Try to open up your soundscape more; everything sounds crowded. However, at the same time, you've got some pretty sparse instrumentation here too. You could really benefit from some more bass (not the instrument, the range), as well as stronger percussive lines. The arrangement isn't bad, but you could benefit from utilizing dynamics more. NO

The piano sounds too dry in the soundscape, like it's in a completely different song. This song sounds like it's holding back for the entire piece. There's never any kind of strong statement of any melody. It feels like its building up to something, but it never makes it there. The arrangement meanders. It sounds like background music some kind of karaoke song without anyone singing. Try to find places where instruments can lock together to make a stronger melodic statement. NO

A terribly simplistic arrangement. There's not much going on here. Long sustained notes with a melody on top is pretty boring. The second half of this song is pretty much the same as the first except with some percussion underneath. Sounds like you discovered the chopper in FLStudio. This is really repetitive. You need to come up with ways of creating a more dynamic arrangement. At the very least, that boring intro before the percussion comes in has to go. The general sound of this piece isn't bad, but you need more variation, especially in your percussive patterns. NO

Larry's right. This is repetitive and boring. It's the same five notes over and over again, with little going on in the background to really keep things interesting. Needs way more. NO

Mechanical, muddy, and boring. The sounds are pretty amateurish, and the percussion sticks out poorly. NO

Yeah, that lead doesn't work well against the crowded soundscape. Needs something with more definition. Also, the arrangement is way too BGM-like. You just looped the same thing twice. You need actual song structure. A beginning, a middle, an end. NO edit: Just for the record guys, this is an arrangement of a song from the DS version of Advance Wars, which is an entirely separate game from the two GBA titles.

That's your problem right there. You said you've been a fan of the site for four years. You should know by now that an "enhancement" won't fly. It's essentially an upgrade of the original, with some interesting effects. Not interpretive enough. Sorry. NO

Pretty much in agreement with Larry and Andy. Opening 'old-school' sound is way off; go for closer-to-authentic NES sound. Great guitar work, but the production could be better, as per zircon's suggestions. Also, we're not looking for straight up covers here; we want reinterpretations. Play with rhythm, meter, tempo, etc. That ending is also pretty cheap. Hope to hear more from you soon. NO

Jeez man, your beats are too loud and really ruin the whole piece. Turn that shit down. The whole thing ends up sounding really empty. All you have is piano, some chromatic percussion, beats, and that lead synth. Where's the bassline? Beats like this demand a bassline working in tandem. Pads with more presence throughout the piece would be nice too. You need to bring a lot more to the table than loud beats. Arrange the music more than playing continuo lines over a chord progression. NO

It'd be nice if you actually used more of the actual Crashman theme in this song, rather than just one of the 8-bar phrases from the original with its notes altered so only the rhythm really remains. That snare is also too loud. The section in the middle with the e-piano has jack shit to do with anything and sounds like gratuitous "variation." Needs more Crashman and less repeating. NO

Piano is dry. Why? Yeah, FL defaults certainly aren't helping this piece. Slayer especially should only be used in emergencies, and only with parental supervision. Seriously though, Slayer doesn't work here, stay away from it. Arrangement is pretty repetitive and it flies right by. Needs more dynamics and varying ideas than Slayer playing a syncopated pattern ad infinitum. NO

It's odd that this piece is pretty much the same four note pattern repeating over and over again. I guess that counts as the melody? In any case, it's arranged surprisingly well. Lots of embellishements and a changing soundscape really help this piece along, especially the amazingly groovy bassline and brass countermelody that comes in after the initial brass lead-in. i liek it YES