prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

really neat original. that short synth tone is really unique. opens with some bells and ambient synths. it doesn't sound like most of the things being played are the original, but rather following a similar structure. the beat comes in at 0:28, and the strings that eventually come in also are outlining a descending pattern that isn't the same notes or particularly close to the original. same with the eventual synth arp. beat drops around 1:22 for a bit, but comes back unchanged. there's a recap of what just happened, and the opening bells come in too, but still no source. we get something that's again reminiscent of the original at 2:03, but all that includes is movement from the 5 to the b6 and b7 - none of the 5 b6 4 5 pattern that permeates the original, and also none of the little 7-8 lick that stands out in the original as well. we get another break at 2:44 with some choral elements, but the same taiko and synth elements in the background are still there. we do get some more unique strings after this when the same beat comes back in again, but nothing from the original. there's a fun stutter effect in the strings near the end, and then it's done with the arps fading out (over a very long time, this probably should be shortened by half if not more). unfortunately this doesn't really appear to be a remix of the Cradle Under the Star theme, but rather something inspired by it or reminiscent of it. there's no actual original material that i can hear in the track you've submitted. so that's a dealbreaker right there. separately, it's really obvious in here where you copy/paste each individual element's block of material - the synth does the same thing every time it shows up, the beat is the same, the taiko element is the same, etc. even the fake scream transition sfx is used repeatedly. that much repetition becomes really noticeable really quickly when you listen to something more than once. spending the extra time to make each entrance of an instrument unique is absolutely worth it. if this was a complete arrangement of the original, i'd probably still reject it due to how muddy and overly dense the representation is, and how much repetition is used. i think that the original's neat and there's definitely legs for this style of arrangement. trimming the fat and making it more clearly related to the original will definitely help craft a better overall product. NO

the synth riff is immediately recognizable. i also like the big bass and the fun 90s synth guitar near the end. the arrangement itself is definitely nowhere near developed enough for us, unfortunately, although i like the changes you've added in the second half. an easy and quick way to expand the arrangement would be to have some chordal movement right away - going from the Fm to, say, a Db chord within the opening 30 seconds, then to a Bb or Eb would help move the progression along a lot and add a surprising amount of breadth to what you've got here. i actually don't think you need melodic material, although that's another easy way to add uniqueness to an arrangement - i think that just varying the chord progression (or, y'know, having one at all) earlier in the piece would be enough. that'd lead naturally into breaks and builds as well, and some level of added dynamics would also really help the track not feel same-y throughout. kick sounds a touch heavy next to the bass, and imo layering the bass with a less noisy version with more fundamental would help give it a bit of punch that it doesn't have. some window dressing and this is probably good enough for us. just needs more body to the arrangement and you'll be there. NO

this song again has over a minute of silence after it, similar to your Song of Storm submission. please trim the silence off of the end of your tracks before submission. opens with the original's arpeggio in the piano to open, with a slower overall tempo. 0:14 brings in the melodic line in the cello. there's a few other elements brought in at 0:28 and it gets pretty overwhelmingly loud for a bit. the piano break after is straight from the original and doesn't sound modified, and then we get a full band sound at 1:15. there's some fun elements here - the electric guitar's tone is great, and i like the downtempo feel in the bass. none of the instruments sound particularly real or balanced as everything's just layered in, but the idea is fun. the melody drops and the arpeggio is in the guitar for a bit before a sudden stop, and it's done. from an arrangement perspective, there's not a lot here that isn't in the original. i like the band feel that comes in at 1:15, but there's no new countermelodic elements, no personalization or chord changes - nothing that is Hupusu, just stuff that is Alexander Brandon but in new instrumentation. so that'd need to change before this could be considered. separately, the instruments are not particularly good - there are way more free options out there that'd really improve this, including string and piano soundfonts and VSTs - and the mix is dense because everything's just layered in with no effecting or compression or EQing. so there's a lot to work on here! but i think that the feel you get at 1:15 is great, and a good example that you know what you want to get to and it's just a matter of learning the steps along the way. i'd encourage you to take a look at the Workshop discord or forum on the site so that you can get some suggestions and start learning to improve. NO

this is 26 seconds long with 28s of silence after it. it's a neat tech demo concept but isn't close to what we could accept here unfortunately. there's nowhere near enough development of arrangement to meet our arrangement requirements, and the instrumentation isn't what we'd expect to see either. i'd encourage you to review the Standards - notably points 1.2., 4.2., and 5.2 - as they detail what we expect for our site. if you fleshed this arrangement out some more and looked into some of the free VSTs and sample packs that are available on the web, i definitely think you could turn this into something legit! but what's here isn't there yet. consider the Workshop discord or forum for additional resources. NO

This song was originally created as a way for me to learn how to use LFOs, as I've been comfortable in DAWs for years, but never really produced anything meaningful--and if you can believe it, never knowingly used LFOs. Serum 2 had dropped a few weeks prior to me starting on this, and everyone lost their minds over the plugin, going as far as crashing the download servers. I wanted to not only familiarize myself with Serum 2, a tool that the entire amateur music industry seemed to collectively soil its pants over, but also to learn how to use LFOs in a way that is both textbook and also wide-breadth application, so that I can use them more in future projects. I also really, really like Half-Life, for all its janky glory in 2025. It's a formative game for me. The core, lead synthesizer to the remix, audible from beginning to end with very little breakage, is based on something not even the original composer created: it was a stock sample from a trance music sample disc from the mid 90s. I decided to recreate it from scratch so that I could manipulate it as I saw fit. Given the game's propensity to use samples for a large part of its soundtrack, I feel it necessary to clarify that there are no samples whatsoever from the original game song in this remix. The lead synthesizer alone utilizes six LFO channels, each on a different programming (retrigger, duration/how many bars, etc.) to automate its various textures and filters. This was the point of the exercise. Nearly every other track in the song uses 2 to 4 of their own LFO channels, and the rest is either sampled (sourced from my Splice back-catalog, 909 kits, or whatever else I had onhand) or oscillators tweaked to imitate the timbre of real instruments (the electric guitars, for example, are not sampled guitars--they're distorted and shaped sawtooth oscillators). The original song is a lot simpler, and has a more obvious A-B-C sequence of structure, like verses to a lyrical song, but not really. I decided to try and unify some of these sections together so the song sounds less like four separate ideas concatenated together, and more like a song that evolves and riffs on the same cool sequencer lick. Thus, the song is more of a buildup, reaching a bridge section which drops most of the percussion except for a Daft Punk-esque tambourine, and a crescendo climax which integrates faux electric guitar and the heavily chorused/flanged synthesizers typical of Half-Life music. Vocals are a mixture of scatting/improv vocal samples and a gospel choir thrown in there, because it's the closest in feel that I could think of to match the as-yet-unknown vocal sample of the original song. For mixing, I tried to ensure each instrument channel had an EQ register of its own, but there was always bound to be some overlap as instruments sound pretty bland and unconvincing without their harmonics. The climax of the song had to be compressed to ensure all the loudness of the various lead instruments coalescing together didn't destroy anyone's speakers. This part is the weakest part of the mix by far, but Half-Life 1 music is very in-your-face and dare I say aggressively 90s, and I don't feel bad about it being loud--I just hope it doesn't lose too much of the plot. I'm not a music producer, I just like OCR and Half-Life. I'll accept any feedback and make changes as the review staff see fit. Games & Sources Game is based on the outro/credits theme to Half-Life 1 Original song here HL2 also sampled this song for its own credits theme, but it was fairly different in that version, different enough to be its own song (and very short, only around 30 seconds) Both songs are by Kelly Bailey The main synthesizer hook, audible from the very beginning, in the original game's soundtrack was a sample from the disc entitled Trance Formation: Creative Essentials Sampling CD - Volume 6, track 19, sample 3, "Trippy Seq. 3 F 120." This sample was recreated in my own style for the remix. A large quantity of samples are used in the HL1 soundtrack, none of which are used in this remix--I tried to source my own or create my own. A list of known samples from the original song can be found here.

I just love this song and I had to do an arrangement of it Games & Sources Tyrian 2000, Composition in Q

The song is a very short arrangement of the Song of Storms from Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, it's abou 54 seconds long, I chose to make it short so it can be used maybe as a ringtone or a short background song Games & Sources Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time, Song of Storms

such a goofy soundtrack. the melodic line is so angular, all the ascending fourths are an inverse of the bassline so that's really fun. opens with detuned, crispy chords that echo the flute element in the original. 0:17 is where the percussive elements come in, and i agree, they are drowning in reverb. it's a lot lot. bass and melody come in together at 0:32. the lead instrument is a really unique sound with the detuning on it. the vocal clips are real interesting too. there's a guitar that comes in around 1:05 and noodles through the melody, and soon after we get what sounds like an accordion or organ with vocal clips on top. this is another interesting sound profile, but admittedly the feel is getting tired by here after 90+ seconds of the same thing. there's mercifully a break right after this at around 2:10 - this would have been a good time to do a different drum pattern for a bit to give it a break before going back to the original feel at 2:26 when the bass comes back in. the track keeps the same feel with a recap of the original synth lead before a sudden stop for an ending, and then it's done. i really don't care for ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣＳ that much so this genre isn't one i'm super familiar with. overall i feel that the track is pretty stilted and repetitive, although the concept is neat initially. the effects work on the vocals and leads is pretty impressive. the reverb that's washing the whole track does feel less like the lush, rich reverb i've come to associate with synthwave and other microgenres around it and more like playing a speaker in a bathroom - it's a lot colder and harsher than i'd have expected. so i guess i'm not sure if my thoughts are appropriate here or not. i'll wait to get some perspective from other judges. ??? edit 7/31: i listened to a pile of stuff that emu wrote, and read through the other judge writeups. i need to state that i think that this genre is nonsense and the genre norms that it encourages sound wretched, way more so than sludge rock or crunkcore or other similarly niche concepts, so that's the context of this vote. but comparing lucas's track to his reference track, lucas's verb is far more present (and metallic, it does sound like spring verb, good call kris) than the other examples provided. comparing it to most of the 'chillwave' and 'vaporwave' tracks on emu's reference vid, the reverb is again more metallic - and, more importantly, the instrumentation feels far more separated. the percussion for example feels like it's a totally different song's percs layered in, same with the bass. i agree that the vocal clips are handled really well, and the obviousness of the low-poly approach is clear. but man, this just sounds like something that comes from a kid's electronic toy that took a dive at bath time. the reverb just feels too much. and that's aside from how angular and stiff the actual arrangement feels. NO

not quite 4db of headroom. this is a bop of an original, never heard it before. opens with some keys playing some chord blocks that are really, really loud compared to what's going on in the background. there's some heavily filtered riffage in the background, and eventually we get a bass element at 0:23 that's playing some of the bass riff from 0:13 in the original. there's the melodic element brought in at 0:57, and it's in a traditional detuned piano. there's a bit of harmony after a while, and then the melody gets passed to a new instrument at 1:36. the keys at this part are again really loud compared to everything else. there's a shift at 2:15 to reduce the instrumentation and drop the drums and to layer the lead with a buzzy pad that's much lower. it does this a second time, and then it's done. i'll be the first to note that lo-fi doesn't mean put a lowpass at 3khz on the entire track, which is what's happened here as far as i can see. so from a mix perspective, this needs some definite assistance. i'll page resident lofi expert @Emunator to suggest some more applicable production techniques since he'll be 1000% more detailed than i could be. in terms of the arrangement, what's here is very straightforward and simple. lo-fi doesn't mean that you can't still have a creative adaptation, and what's here is pretty much just a transcription. adding more LTH to it and not leaning so heavily on what made the original track great would be a great choice here. i think the workshop discord can definitely assist with giving some additional feedback and perspective on how to make the arrangement more personalized. this isn't there yet, but it's a neat idea and i think it has legs. i'd love to hear it with a better mix and more personalization. NO

>5db of headroom. opens with a straightforward version of the original in piano, which quickly adds some band stuff at 0:13. mix is very dense in the low mids especially and is very muddy. sounds pretty low-poly too, like it's been downsampled at some point - it feels like when i used to run 64kbps on my 256mb mp3 player so i had enough room for all my songs =D 0:29, a guitar lead comes in. it's fantastically handled and sounds great. the arrangement up through here is doing a good job of letting the fun parts of the original come through and not getting in its own way. there's a break at 1:24, again with the keys. we get an electro build-up (i really expected edm after that), and then we get another guitar solo that again is great and well-handled. another electro break and there's a recap at 2:08 with the guitar leading again. one more lick in the piano, and it's done. this is a really fun arrangement! it's nothing over the top or complex, but it does a great job highlighting the reasons this is such a heavily covered theme. the lead guitar does a fantastic job especially with the solos. my main issue is the mastering sounds pretty rough. there's a ton of sub-40hz content which is gumming things up, as is a very broad and dense freq package between like 100-300hz. you have a ton of fundamental and not much in the mid to high mid space, which makes it sound really heavy and cluttered. cleaning that up is just a matter of pulling back some of the filtering on the lead elements (the keys sound like they've got a significant low-pass on them for example) and notching in the EQ on some of the other instruments to avoid conflicts between, say, the rhythm guitar and kick. this is really close to being super fun! just adjust some of the mix and we'll be there. NO

at least 5db of headroom, realistically, probably more. opens with some clavinet, and we get some bass guitar and percussive elements pretty quickly before a full band sound at 0:15. nothing really sounds like there's been a mixing pass done on it - the snare's got a lot of fundamental, the kick is hard to hear, the bass is very fundamental as well and boomy, and it sounds like there's no room sound on most of the instruments that play notes. but the band sound is neat - i like the lead tone, and the keys in the background are nice as is the ensemble horns. the arrangement is surprisingly similar to the original given that they have very different feels. most of the burbles and accent elements are from the original. but the solos are really nice - there's some really solid playing there. several elements are reused a lot - the transition radio effect is used several times. the ending doesn't really exist, either, which is a bummer. adding a single rolled chord at the end would have been an easy way to end it. this is a fun, quick ride through a neat theme. the mix isn't near showtime, but the performance is. get some EQ on these instruments and some proper compression, and get the gain up, and this'll be good enough for me. but what i really want to hear is for that repeated transitional element to be switched out, add a bit more drizzle to the arrangement so the countermelodic elements aren't so similar to the original, and to get a real ending that isn't just layering in the previously-used clip. NO

track is hard-limited to -2dba and has some visible waveform clipping. opens with some very verby elements - piano, muted guitar, and electric guitar in octaves. lot of panning. a huge, heavy beat comes in at 0:39 and it clips pretty hard there. there's some other pad elements but everything feels so loud that i can't really hear what's going on. at 1:01, the texture thins out again, and there's some neat little bell elements. we get a transition into 1:35 where the melody's in the voice. there's a very loud, low piano part that's unfortunately causing more clipping here. the kick comes back in at 2:08 and exacerbates the clipping and distortion that's going on. it's unfortunate because what's here - the piano swimming in reverb, various lead elements, the bells - sounds really cool, but it's just very crunchy in a way that doesn't sound intentional. there's an outro flourish and it's done. most of your elements are not EQ'd at all, to my ear. at the very least, you're going to want to apply an EQ to each instrument that cuts unwanted frequencies. right now several instruments are pushing sound below 40hz, and it's causing everything to sound cluttered and muddy. turning everything down overall and then ensuring that instruments aren't transmitting in ranges you don't want them will help a lot. you have several competing instruments in the low range as well - stripping that back a bit will also help. this is a really, really cool arrangement, and i love the approach especially in your lead choices between the guitar and voice. if we can clean up the unintentional clipping, this could be really stellar. NO

intense open. that synth in the opening is really fun. and the fading in guitar is great. drums come in with bass at 0:23 and it sounds way, way, overcompressed. drums have zero punch, especially the kick, and they've been scooped pretty hard to my ears. there's an enormous peak in this opening section where the bass is, at about 80hz, and it's a lot of pressure in my ears. everything sounds hyper-notched and heavily boosted within that notch. EK's voice is really loud without any formant boost which is part of the issue - she takes up a lot of the freq range - and also her voice's reverb is really present and loud, which is also occupying freq range. gregorio's growls are pretty deep, and that might be affecting it a bit too - some formant boost in the low 2k range would help him to pop without being so loud. the chorus really highlights some of what i called out. ek's reverb on her voice is louder than the drums - cutting that back a bit, turning down her voice a decent amount, and pushing her formant a bit will allow you to get the band sound more balanced. the kick is all beater and no beef - the drum patterns sound really cool, but i just can't hear what they're doing. the beater tone is louder than the overheads for example. bass is pretty loud for not having a very bright attack tone - again, most of this track, the bass peaks at 80hz or so and i'd expect it to be an octave below that, at 40hz (edit: this is apparently unfamiliarity with the genre, my mistake). the rhythm guitar parts feel very noisy and not particularly meaty - that might be with how they're tracked, i am not as good at that stuff. but i'll note that the lead guitar part that comes in right after feels thin. that might be due to the choice of distortion and amping, or due to the EQing. gonna page @pixelseph for more specific recs around that. the chorus with harmonies, at 2:40, feels good and aggressive from an arrangement perspective. ek's harmony voice needs to be heavily EQ'd down to be a lot thinner, and again formant boosted so it pops. that'll help it not press back so much on the guitar elements in the same range. it's not super clear why her harmony part isn't in the same rhythm as the melodic line - that'd be easy to fix in melodyne if you wanted to. there's a big break at 3:18, and i think this emphasizes how loud everything is. there's just the lead guitar by itself and it's loud loud, and then everything else comes in and it's so present. the bass is way, way too loud here, especially under the growls that come in right after. i like this section as a break section though - it's intense and a fun idea. the unison section right after this at 4:14 is something i didn't care for at all. unison singing is one of the hardest things to do in a way that 'feels' right because our ears so naturally identify phasing and intonation issues at the unison. ek does an admirable job, but the reinforcement of the two parts makes it way louder than everything else. we go through another chorus - this might be five times? and they all sound the same, at least mixing up rhythmic elements would be a huge improvement - and hit the last big chord to fade it out. so, yes, i agree that there's a lot to be done on the production side here before this is really there. something this big is always such an undertaking. i think the performances are great! and i like the approach a lot. i wouldn't have minded more personalization throughout, but the big dealbreaker for me is the mastering. crank the bass back, fix ek's effects chain and formant/eqing, and spend some time getting the drums to be punchier and the overall mix to not have such a huge peak at 80hz, and you're going to have a much more enjoyable experience overall. NO

truly a seminal original. opening has some nice glam on the lead's octaves. swelling pads have some nice movement too. beat hits at 0:41 with the iconic arpeggio line initially. i agree that it's very fast and feels really frenetic. there's no real melodic material here, it's just the arp. a bit of a build into 1:39 where the melody line shows up for the first time. the kick here is interesting, and the backing elements being stripped so far back to really just the down-flam of the piano rolled chords is an interesting idea. there's some crunchy notes in here (notably 2:05). 2:17's a recap of the original arp with some very simple elements from the B section, and there's some more percs added in over time. there's a recap of 1:39's melody line, and there continue to be some crunchy notes (i think that the bass and drum line are repeated completely as well). 3:34 is a break with a recap of the opening glammy line. there's a build at 3:53 to get it moving again for one last blow through the A theme, again repeated from earlier. this isn't 1:1 to 1:39, but it's very clear where each chunk was copied and pasted into this section. there's no real ending, just a final line from the opening section. this feels a little too boxed up for me, i think. it's very clear where the 90s or so of material you arranged originally ends, and then it's just repeated in various combinations for the next three or so minutes. there really should be significant variation in the big chorus sections with the drums going, and i don't hear that at all - it really just sounds like the same thing each time. i think the sonic palette sounds great, and i like the approach overall a lot. i think there needs to be more detail on the individual sections so they're not just repeated blocks from earlier in different combinations. there's also some real crunch in several points that should be addressed. it's a cool concept! i think it needs less repetition. you could probably knock a minute plus off of the overall length without losing anything. NO

low opening. intro bass has some movement on it and seems like a dressed-up version of the original. beat and lead start at 0:17. the static tone to the countermelodic material is a bit tiresome - i'd love to hear some decay or movement on it. kick is also kind of blah - i don't hear sidechain, so it doesn't really pop as much as i'd expect for something like this. short break and a loop comes in for the drums at 0:59. again the kick doesn't pop, and the loop itself is kind of obvious, but there's some movement after about 30s which is needed. there's no pad through here either so the arrangement doesn't feel like it's progressing - it's the same as before, with different drums added in. the lack of change to the main instruments, like LT talks about, is also a factor here. 1:27 adds more drums but nothing else changes. same same, we need some progression to the track. even breaks in between the melodic representation can help with that - this is just hammering the melody over and over. 2:00ish is just the countermelodic instrument, and again, this is needing to be mixed up. there's a few different things in the drums but overall this is oatmeal. there's more of the same for a while, with different combinations of the same instruments doing the same thing. so a key problem here is that nothing changes. we don't get personalized melody, altered chords, new keys, new countermelodic material after the initial representation, not anything. this is a sub-one minute loop that's been stretched to over five minutes by way, way too much repetition. i'd seriously consider stripping it back to a minute at most, and then finding new ways to represent the general synthwave idea (which i think works really well, to be fair) in more unique ways. this is just too much repetition, and too much of a static nature. NO