Hemophiliac   Judges ⚖️

Initially got worried by this intro because these opening vocals are delicate and don't seem to be landing directly on the note (the pitch, but you do immediately correct yourself). Fortunately this is just an understated intro to set the mood. Once we get past that, we're launched into the stratosphere in the Epoch. Gotta say, production on this one is fantastic. The balance of parts is especially well done and the drums are killer. Overall the structure is mostly the same as the original, which is fine. The devil's in the details on this one. The countermelodies and embellishments are highlights for me, such as at 1:18-1:20 (sounds like a synth panned right). Adding an extra few bars for transition at 1:01-1:04 was great. The 3:03-3:21 new material was excellent, that's the kind of stuff we love to see here. I'd like to see some more of that in the future. This is a semi-conservative but fun arrangement with some personalization. The instrumental performances are strong and the production is excellent with some of the best drum mixing I've heard in a while (live drums do wonders!). Great work Triple B and crew! YES

First off I wanted to say that I think there's a cool idea here. Translating this to piano and cello to start feels like a no-brainer, but the idea works very well. When the other parts come in (bass, drums, strings, and guitar) at 1:15 this feels more fleshed out as a potential idea for a track. The guitar in particular is the best sounding element in this track with reverb and delay on it, and has a fitting tone for the track. Where this falls is the execution of production and the closeness to the original source tune. Adding the additional band parts is a step in the right direction, but it's still just the same melody and structure around that. More expansion and development of that idea and with more of your own ideas is the way to go. Production/sequencing leaves us with something much to be desired. We're really lacking the human feel here. It's all ice-cold perfectly sequenced with repeated velocities in the piano with line-locked rigid timing early in the piece. Humans don't play the exact same dynamic/velocity from note to note. There will always be miniscule differences between them. The timing won't fall exactly on the beat every single time. The cello sample in particular sounds very low quality and cuts off suddenly when it's done at 0:41. Almost feels like there's no reverb on the piano or cello to help with realism. Drum fill on the toms at 1:41 is awkwardly out of time. There's over a minute of silence at the end. Please double check your submission before sending it in next time. Once again, would love to see further development of your own ideas and expansion upon the source and not just a conservative arrangement on new instruments. The production should also be looked at for more realism with attention paid to humanization of the parts. It's a cool vibe, but not ready for OCR. NO

Very emotive performance here. Absolutely fitting in with the rest of the "Reflections" series that you have been doing. This is a nostalgia of positive feelings. There's some interesting decision making here that was unexpected. The first is at 1:01, the chord change here is unexpected but in a good way. Deceptive cadence that extends the phrase out just a little bit more before giving a more stable resolution at 1:04. The second is the direct modulation at 2:58. This was unexpected and unprepared, but handled well. The modulation catches your ear as it signals a new section and gives a contrasting feel. Bold choices like this can be rewarding when handled well, and you absolutely handled it well. Dramatic rubato and syncopation late into the piece really energize and uplift of the climax just before the key change as well. I understand your concern for this being conservative but this does not feel that way to me at all. There's a lot of personalization in the performance and expression that's not present in the original. Not to mention the lack of orchestration around it, this is a piano reduction after all. Great evolution and storytelling over the course of the piece backs up the strong performance. YES

I do remember this track and from what I can recall this is a much better execution of the articulations and sample usage. The string arpeggios in particular are much better now, and while not perfect; are much more convincing. Still could have some greater dynamic range through the piece, but what's here is fine. Nitpick for this version: the triangle sounds very forward mixed and should be pushed to the back with the rest of the percussion so it sits behind the orchestra. Just like how the percussion is normally positioned on a stage. Arrangement is still really cool. Nice work on making improvements and giving attention to the fine details. YES

This one feels more like a riff-based approach compared to previous works I've heard from you guys. I found the approach to be very surgical in the chopped-up nature of the source usage. You might want to use some cautery on that riff, it's leaking BLOOD. 2:14 the vocal grunge held note crossing into the guitar pinch squeal was absolutely rad. My initial concern with this was the amount of source usage, but after quite a few listens and going back-and-forth between arrangement and source there's plenty. I was thrown off by taking the small bits from the source and turning them into riffs to be used. It's like Frankenstein's monster, taking the best bits from the source that you liked and pieced them back together into a new amalgam of audio. Acoustic guitar section was an awesome break and contrast from the heaviness surrounding it. Transitioning back to the heavy bits was done well and felt great to get back to them after the acoustic contrast. The ending does come out of nowhere, that was disappointing. Something about either the arrangement or mixdown made the vocals feel somewhat more isolated from the other parts and less supported. Not sure which contributed specifically to that feeling, but I wanted to point it out as it was the one thing throughout the track that did bother me some. Aside from the ending, the arrangement itself was handled masterfully, the production was clean, and the performances were very nice. YES

Oh yeah, I remember this one. I think Lucas sent me this one everyday for at least 2 weeks straight to get feedback when he was initially working on it. There was a lot of potential then but still a lot of bugs to work out. I didn't get to vote or hear how the previous submission final was. This actually turned out really nice. It's one of your best produced tracks to date. There's a lot to be proud of here. I personally really like the countermelody synths, the counterpoint on them fits in perfectly all while adding your own personal touches. This really lets the source melody play out so close to the original, but adding your own spin on it. It's frankly one of my favorite things to hear in remixes. Kudos. I also agree with Emunator in that the snare is too loud. And there's a bit of lacking in terms of expression/dynamics, but not so bad that it direly hurt the track. In turn, that does make the track feel kinda cold, and that might not be the expression you wanted to get out of it. Great to see the growth from you Lucas, and the track is quite enjoyable! YES

Sweet approach to this classic source. Piano focused rock is nice. I'm digging the arrangement as there's a lot of melodic personalization with embellishment and improvisation. Kudos there, this is the kind of melodic personalization I'd like to see more of in other submissions. The overall structure is pretty much the same as the source, but with the amount of improvisation and embellishment on the melody that can excuse the closeness to the source structure. As the others have pointed out, there is almost 6db of headroom available. 0:28 this guitar transition was really cool. The guitar soloing late into the track is awesome and really puts your own spin on it while not getting too far away from the source. This is the highlight of the track to me. The mix and production are the major issues here. There's a lofi or lossy quality to this piano sample used. The whole track sounds like it has a gentle high pass and low pass applied to the whole track. I think that's a contributing factor to making this sound muffled and lossy. There's also clutter in the 100-300Hz range that is contributing to an unclarity of sound overall. You've got low drums here, bass, and the left hand of the piano (and rhythm guitars somewhere?) fighting for space. When they're all going together it just clutters the soundscape and contributes to muddiness. It's awesome that you've spent so much time working on this over the years. There's some really sweet spots to this, but the production just isn't at the level we're looking for. If you need feedback or extra ears on mixing passes, I would highly encourage you to check out the discord workshop. NO

There's some atmosphere here that I do like. The upper FM synth bell, pads, and choir pad sound lovely. The vocal chops/sampling at 1:00 were a nice addition as well. I'm however not sold on the dnb elements to the piece. They feel pasted underneath everything else and don't have a cohesion to them. It's like there's two different soundscapes going on with a large divide between them. The ethereal and bright upper elements, and then the harsh and gritty bass and drums. These things don't really feel like they belong together. The b I have to bring up the repetition of the loops next. The overuse of the same loop is very repetitive and loses interest quickly. You do at least change the pattern to something else when the sections change, but within a given section it stays the same. You could slice it up or write microvariation within it to spice it up more. 2:36-2:55 is an example of this. Halfway through you add claps on top to build the energy but the rest of the pattern stays the same throughout. 3:06-3:07 has a note here that sounds out of place. 3:19 is a very spicy harmony choice and it doesn't feel fitting. So to recap, FM bells intro and outro sounded nice along with the upper elements (aside from a few dissonant harmonic choices). However, not digging the divide between upper parts and the dnb lower parts, these don't feel cohesive with each other. Too repetitive could use more variation, this would really keep the interest going on a 5 minute long track. NO

Absolutely feels like a modern Blade Runner/Vangelis piece. Suspenseful, dark, spacy, and future-retro. With contemporary production because everything is mixed forward and huge. Sounds are analog and throwback, super rad. Once the melodic material enters at 0:37, it gets used from then on out. I wonder how much of this was sequenced and how much of it is performed because the backing to the arrangement is fairly static with subtle timbral changes throughout. The ostinato doesn't have much note variation in it other than dropping out or restarting. It's the filter opening/closing that's doing the work here. Would've liked to seen more of your own personalization in terms of changing up more than just the colors that are being painted with. But the quality here isn't supposed to be that, it's an analog jam over the top of a repeating ostinato. It's short enough that it doesn't overstay it's welcome, but a bigger contrasting B section would have benefited it greatly. I could see the repetition of the ostinato being a problem for some, but the timbral changes do enough to keep it moving/changing. The ending is a bit disappointing because it does come out of nowhere with little preparation, but it is an ending. I don't really have any major issues that knock this out of being worthy of posting, but it absolutely could be more. What's here is good enough. YES

I'm going to start out with a breakdown because this is a long piece with many different sections that are quite varied in terms of feel. 0:00 - 3:00 ambience and atmosphere 3:00-3:50 chord progression from SoH 3:50-4:14 ambience 4:14-5:48 finally some semblance of the source melodic material here. this gets developed and stretched out. 5:48-6:17 ambience 6:17-7:57 more source melody here with melodic development. 7:57-8:28 ambience 8:29-10:28 ghostly faint chimes of the SoH motif in the background while huge singing bowls guide the way. 10:29 - 10:46 ambience 10:47 - 14:22 SoH motif reappears a few more times. With a lot of space in between each phrase. There's at least 10 seconds of silence at the end. That should be trimmed. Overall the majority of the source usage is in the latter portion of the piece. Cool to actually hear wood frog guiro in here during the swamp section. The first 4 minutes really is rough, because each section is very disparate from the previous. If each section had a transition like this they would feel like 6 different songs and be more medley-like. The first four minutes were also tough to piece into being Song of Healing until the melody really comes in earnest. If those first four minutes were removed from the piece the rest of it would still probably work on it's own, and still be saying everything that it set out to. So yes, those opening minutes do align with your concept, did they really serve the greater whole as a piece of music? I'll leave that up to others to decide. Towards the end I was wishing there was more subtle things going on in the background to fill out the atmosphere more. What's here is a thought-provoking concept piece that I believe was successful in being enough interpretation for OCR. It will definitely be getting the "meditation" tag when it's posted. YES

When you say that Good Charlotte and Blink 182 were possibly influences, I agree they definitely had some factor here. This does sound like that early 2000s semi-emo rock style. I think you nailed that. It's a super fun arrangement that highlights all of the parts from the source at one time or another, and the performances are very solid. I have no issues with them. My problem is with the mix/balance. I can't understand the lyrics without following along with the written word because they are buried by the other parts. Their performance is good, no problems with any accent or enunciation issues. It's strictly balance and maybe some EQ'ing. The other parts are standing more forward to me and they cover up the vocals (except the short bit at the beginning when no guitars are playing). If the vocals were more forward featured in the mix I would likely be able to understand what is being said. Everything else in this is awesome and I wish I could give that a pass, but because the balance on the vocals effects the listening experience the whole way through I can't give it the nod. NO (resubmit)

Gotta give it to you H36T this is your most developed arrangement I've heard thus far. Really nice work to take a short source and really expand on it a lot. You keep the Chrono Trigger in the forefront meanwhile including the trademark H36T sound. Vocal samples, dramatic percussion, hand percussion, and orchestra. Despite the added material, this still feels CT dominant to me and time stamping it confirms it. The ritardando just before 2:34 was a nice touch to give some contrast as you kept building energy and dynamic levels up to the climax. Also great macro-dynamics as well because everything is covered here, from whisper quiet to near bombastic levels of loud. The climax does get hefty and dense. It's pushing the edges of what you could include before being too much. I agree with prophetik here, no one part is really carrying the lead and things are trading off and stepping in front of each other for the foreground. Maybe doubling the melodic element you wanted as a focus could help with that. It would keep the energy high but also potentially keep the source melodic focus as the primary. People will dig this and it's nice to see an under appreciated source from CT being turned into a whole new thing. YES

I'm starting to think you're like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you seem to like the pump as much as he does. The pump here though is good, not too overpowering and adds to the fun and forward momentum of the track. The melodic embellishment is great, especially after 0:32. There's a lot of personalization and changing up of sound design which really makes this your own. I too, like Liontamer; really appreciated the chip inclusion as it fits in like gold. The return of the "full band" sound at 2:20 was great after the contrasting quieter section. My nitpick is the same as prophetik's, the sampled vocal clips are too loud for the rest of the track and could be reduced to fit in better. The piano at the end is slightly mechanical but it's mostly covered up by the voice clip so it didn't bother me. It could have just added to further emotional value with some more exaggerated humanization. I love that you chose to come back and revise this one after some time. Bring the pump Treyt! YES

Happy to see Gaspode back in the queue. The approach is always unique, different, and interesting. Took a few listens even with the breakdown to really put two and two together for the source usage. That source melody is kinda buried in there. With that said, it's there. The breakdown is appreciated. I really like the use of space in this. Some dramatic silence as well as vertical space is nice. Minimal without feeling sparse at all. Excellently produced track. The pause right before the bigger sound at 1:20 is a highlight for me, as well the unexpected PWM C64-esque chip sound that comes in around 2:45. Compelling and thoughtful work. Excellently done. YES

The subtle changes and execution here are awesome, Guillaume. The variation in the left hand was done to perfection, changing up the part right when it needed to happen. As you said, it has the "religious sonority" you were talking about with the parallel intervals with An Irrevocable Past. Dynamic and evoking of divinity. I also have to mention the time sig adaption, great choice to change it up. This alone contributes so much to both feeling like the original and new at the same time. So expressive, great work. YES

Whoa whoa whoa, who let the crazy CV clone out into the wild? This source is awesome, and this arrangement is equally awesome. It was not hard to imagine it in this rock/metal style at all, and you pulled it off very well. Some of the part writing does get pretty close and dense, but the mix managed to keep them separate enough to still be clear. Tip-toe that fine line of heavy without being muddy. The drums sound great. My only complaint is the bass feeling on the weaker side, it's just missing some "oomph". But frankly it's still fine where it's at. The drop at 4:05 was excellent. Perfect time to bring the energy down and provided a much needed contrast to the frenetic pace we were on thusfar. I'll take my demons shredded with a side of drums, thank you for serving it up. YES

This is some dark and heavy work, but at the same time light and bouncy. It's the epitome of a musical oxymoron. It's weird and strange altogether, but also lukewarm and comforting. The contrast between the melodic elements and the supporting and backing elements could not be more separate and eerie. The beat is great, and the arrangement is solid. No issues with source usage, once it jumps in 0:48 it's all over and clear to pick out. Production is excellent of course, I wouldn't expect anything less from the Chimpazilla. Horrifyingly terrific. YES

Later on.mp3 This would be kinda the opening bit, and then have some development and build up more to a bigger feeling later on. Definitely a small group sound to start and then expanding out to full band sound. Haven't spent much time with dynamics/humanization yet. First bit.mp3 edit: the upload put them backwards for some reason. The second audio is the beginning and the first is what would be later into the track. I have a title in mind already for the track which seems fitting for the disc as well: "Four Hearts of Fire"

Volume reduction on saxes helped quite a lot. Would've liked to see some alteration of wet/dry level on reverb to push them back in the soundscape instead of them being so "downstage", but this was definitely a step in the right direction. Nice work

Well this one has come a long way since it's initial rough sketches I heard in the workshop. The arrangement is great and follows the typical "head > solos > head/tag" jazz form. The source was adapted to that well, I do like the reharmonization in places and color added to the chords. Lampie's additions on the piano are excellent, keeps it in the right vibe the whole way through. Production could be sharper, particularly with the tenor sax being so forward and close. Pushing it back with the wet/dry blend on reverb to give it some distance would probably help that. I think the alto would probably benefit from that as well, but doesn't need it as much as the tenor. During the tenor solo, there's a few notes that don't sit within the chord perfectly. When those dissonant notes sit held out for longer values and aren't passing they stand out and feel wrong. If improvising isn't something April is very comfortable with, I would recommend writing out the solo or at least putting some "guidepost notes" in there to help. I felt the vibe and phrasing of the sax solo was fitting, just a couple notes that didn't agree. Is this perfect? It isn't, but that shouldn't stop it from being good enough. YES

0:36 Big drums in the beginning a touch too loud, nitpick. Not a problem. Ostinato repetition is ok, change comes when it's needed. Change to second source was excellent, not abrupt; but felt as if it should have always been there. Source is dominant well throughout the piece, no issues with it's usage. Love the dynamic changes in the piece. Great contrast between the soft and loud. I would've liked to see more percussive change within a given section to prevent it from feeling static, but the overall changes between each structure do keep things moving forward along with the tiny ear-candy moments. The big payoff section does give us more changes with the percussion in this section, but outside of it more tiny variation would be appreciated. All those are nitpicks and don't impact the decision for me. This is great, highly expressive and an awesome track. YES

This is a strong example of something mixed very well that it makes you want to turn up the volume. It's full enough, but not so full that it's overly dense. The arrangement is solid as this crazy source is well represented and there's little tiny additions throughout the piece. My only thought is that there could have been more development with further expansion and soloing, I honestly thought this was going to happen after the vocal clip. Blink and you miss it, strong performances, great mix, sweet genre adaption. Welcome to the club UPA! YES

My complain with the first version was that the balance between parts was off and the humanization of the samples was not ideal. The flute has been improved some by removing some of the chromatic runs, but it still needs improvement on it's humanization. The same goes for the new trumpet lead. Individual notes are static and don't have movement, as well as the line being detached and not legato. Legato samples are not a requirement to get passed, but more attention to their humanization will go a long way in improving the realism. The balance between parts is much better this time around. At 1:04 there's a piano supporting underneath, I don't recall it being in the first version. The part sounds ok, but the piano sample itself does not feel fitting for the style. This version is closer, but still not there as it's being held back by the uncanny valley. Some improvements made, but now other issues have appeared in their place. NO

When this was being worked on during the second round of GSM, I kept hearing it in bits and pieces along with various WIPS. I was very confused as to how it was going to come together because everything was so different out of context in disparate parts. To me this feels like a very multifaceted precious stone. One side is dirty and the other side is clean. So much different stuff going on when you look at it in different ways. That's the difference between the Streets of Rage parts and the Etrian Odyssey parts. I'm less clear on where the SoR stuff is in the final third of the track, but I can clearly hear the EO melody in CW's vocals. Speaking of CW's vocals, absolutely incredible! There's real power in your dark-low chest voice. I personally like the straighter tone and less vibrato, it's a more pure sound that gives me chills. I also have heard both versions of this mix and I agree the new one is improved in the balance in the back half of the song with the vocals compared to the other parts. The only disappointing thing is the ending, it's just a cut. Stunning work. Clean production, strong arrangement. YES

We were there! Sweet to hear this one live on the day, and really cool to see it now as a submission. The live recording came out really well. The drums in particular are crystal clear. Endless is invisible in the best way possible, supporting without overpowering. My only nitpick is the guitar could be louder, but really this not a problem. Fun performance, absolutely fresh take. Easy vote. YES