prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

the original decision thread is here: source breakdown remains the same. changes for the resub: - tried to tighten the timing in general, especially in the middle section - changed some of the shaker patterns to add more dynamics, - unmuted the handclaps track i've recorded for the original version special thanks to Argle in the OCR discord for helping me fixing the timing. Games & Sources Sky Shark - Stage 2

I've been reluctant to submit anything I've worked on for my recent "Reflections" project because most of the music for that has been stripped-down piano arrangements that are fairly conservative and close to the source material in their approach. This particular project for me was much more about visuals and storytelling and nostalgia, and I've found that the more traditional piano cover approach works well for that media. While my rendition of the "Leaflands" theme from Octopath Traveler II is similarly fairly close to its source in the structure, I was happy with some of the arrangement choices I made, and it covers an absolutely beautiful original piece from a soundtrack that has as of yet received little love on OCR. This particular arrangement in the context of my project is meant to convey a feeling of remembering past holiday gatherings and the wistful realization that the family and the world of those times is in many ways lost forever. The original melody has such a feeling of childlike awe and a tinge of longing that for me it worked beautifully as a piano rendition as well. If the arrangement is too close to source for OCR standards I absolutely get it. No harsh feelings for anything that's not up to the standards set for the community. But it's such a beautiful song from a relatively under-represented OST, I figured I would sub just in case it worked out. Either way, enjoy the listen, and thanks!! -Mike Games & Sources The Leaflands Octopath Traveler II Composed by Yasunori Nishiki

i was up and down on the first version of this one for a while. i didn't like the solo but liked the concept, and wound up actually changing my vote from YES to NO at one point as other folks weighed in. opens with some light synth rolls - nothing startling here. band comes in at 0:26. percs and bass sound a lot better than it did before iirc. melody here is a little square - no timing personalization, just everything on the downbeats. tsori comes in at 0:51 and i really think he could be both louder and have more verb on his instrument. it's lower in the range for this part mostly, and it doesn't speak as well as it could. there's also a touch too much formant on his tone so it's a little sharp compared to the rest of the very lush backing elements. i like the doubling at 1:17 though with the guitar - that's a neat sound. tsori shows off a bit of range at 1:36 which is nice. the descending chromatic line in the background is right in the same range though and that conflicts and sounds confusing. there's a bit of a lick from the trumpet and then it moves to a new lead at 1:42. i wouldn't have minded a cymbal crash or sfx on that transition. this felt like more of the same by this point as we hadn't really had a significant background change in 90s. the lead's so chill that dropping the percs or switching it up there would have been a nice change. coming out of the solo section at 2:19, we get a big change in the backing elements which is nice. there's some light airy pads with the trumpet on top, and from there go to a back-and-forth section between the guitar and trumpet which is really nice. guitar in particular is great. 3:14 is a drop and we get some chorale-ish chords to play us out, and we're done. there's a lot cleaned up here. there's still some funky notes occasionally, and some of the balance isn't quite there, but what we have is a solid take on a great theme. mix is much cleaner this time around. YES

excited about this one, it's a great concept and a great list of musicians, and an outrageous track. opens with a very heavy, intense opening right away with multiple lead instruments. trumpet might be a bit buried. there's a huge fall-off at 0:40 with some interesting effects, and the keys bring us into the melodic material. i love the delay on bringing in the drums there, that's fantastic. really like the drum pattern in here, as well as passing the melodic line around. similar positives on the trumpet/guitar intro at 1:22 - and the unison section! oh, that was great. really like the pairings of acoustic and violin, and trumpet and guitar. the interplay of melodic and solo elements in this section through 2:15 are great - really enjoy the variety and the way that parts are passed between. 2:15's a big break back to the acoustic guitar for the lead. this quickly kicks it up soon afterwards. and i like the key change there to help it feel fresh and different from before. there's a huge build and even a silence break before a very appassionato chord at 3:17 - i think the silence was a bit much, but i like the focus on this section and the half-time feel to help it sink in. there's another big break and we get some keys before a big, turbulent section starting at 3:55. there's a lot of difference here than before's band sounds - lots of more rhythmic elements to help it drive forward. your storytelling here is helpful to understand what's happening. the recontextualization of 4:41's theme is really nice. the last minute or so is a pretty intense blow - really great work by minusworld to keep it so intense on the lead part. the ending hits - i wish the sustain was longer! - and then it's a few chords to finish it along the sfx from before. this is a real whirlwind. i'm so surprised it placed as low as it did in DoD - the storytelling and direction of this is fantastic. it sounds excellent and it's a tight mix overall for a variety of instruments. this is an easy vote as expected. YES

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

opening apes the intro ostinato but doesn't replicate it perfectly. really aggressive band sound right off the bat - guitars sound super huge and beefy. there's a funky note in the vocals in the second verse ("the" in "the right to choose"). we get the chorus at 1:07. the fast riff at the beginning of each line is unintelligible - i can't tell if it's due to timing from the double-tracking of the vocals or if it's just poor enunciation. the tone is fantastic though - this is 1000% the right key for your voice, and the melody line is adapted in a great way to fit what you're best at. the following bridge is a bit of a break, but there's still some flashy vox work here in the descending line. prosody in this section is real goofy in a few places ("beams reflecting" is a big one), and more importantly your pronunciation is really rough - even seeing the words, i had trouble tracking the lyrics onto what i was hearing. 1:43 is going to be divisive - doubling the line two octaves down is certainly a choice, and the significant pitchiness of the second line "test of one's resolve" is really obvious when there's nothing going on underneath it to help ground what's going on. this is something that so few singers could do, so the approach is impressive, and the transition into the following section is great. but i really don't care at all for this section. it's pitchy again after here a bit, like at 2:06 there is straight up a wrong note in the vocal line (sounds like a mistake in melodyne tbh). there's a slick guitar solo after this section and it gets a double-time intensification halfway through. 2:50 the vocals come back in for a recap of the bridge. there's a synth line that's popping out of the texture here sometimes that doesn't quite fit the rock feel. after this is a big drop and build. the vocal line comes out of here into a big final blow with some big harmonies, some big screams, and a big chord to finish it off. there's some huge positives in this. the band sound is big and beefy and great, and the guitar solo elements really are solid and fitting for the arrangement. i think the adaptation is really interesting and much broader than i'd have expected a synth rock to heavier rock transition to be. and ofc cyril's tone is spectacular - just continues to get better as he gets more experienced. on the other hand, the prosody in several sections of this is really messy, and more importantly, i can't understand 3/4 of the words. the section at 1:43 is really something i don't think works at all (but would understand if someone else was totally taken by it, as it's certainly a choice that was committed to). from a hobbyist bar perspective, i definitely think this is over the bar, personal feelings aside. so i'll give this a positive vote, and reach out to cyril to at least fix the wrong note at 2:06. YES

opens with sustains and some (kinda cheesy) descending organ blocks. this is a nice patient intro that'd be home on several of the tracks off of Systematic Chaos by DT. the bass riff into band riffage with the tight kit behind it into a more complex version of the same thing is a classic escalation mechanic. bass tone in here is excellent, really like the bite. vocals come in at 1:31. seph's clean vocals here could use more bite in the tone imo, or even possibly a touch of distortion to add some edge. the guitars are so biting here as is the backing vocals, so something with more edge would have worked really nice. the diction and pitching is great though, even through the melismatic passages. the electric squeal in the right ear at 2:13 is unsettlingly loud and hurt my ears, it's a cool idea but needed to be quieter. i did the "ooh yeah" face at 2:25 - that double-time ensemble section right there is great, and it flows well into the 7/8 section right after it. there's a slam transition at 3:04 into...more of the same band stuff, which was a little surprising - i really expected an exploratory section after such a significant transition. there's a crunch at 3:49 that i thought was clipping but was just backing vocals being fried. after 4:00ish we get the ensemble section we've been waiting for. the organ here maybe needed a touch more room sound on it as it felt pretty dry (might just be the density of the backing parts). there's another 'chorus' section and then we get into an extended break section. this starts with a Tristram-esque acoustic section around the second part of Fleeting Respite that is beautifully recorded and played. i liked the detail on the drum work here as well. there's a few weird notes that don't quite fit in the end of it, but it's mostly not a problem. there's some more of the organ stacks around the big guitar slams (organ doesn't sound 100% in time), and some classic whoa-oh cyril stuff, and the backing guitar rhythm in here sounds pretty dope. i wouldn't have minded more verb on the vocals to help them be more choral and less like Hear N' Aid. we get a guitar solo after this that is excellent, and then a sudden ending that isn't particularly prepped. ending is kind of a let-down after such a big work - i'd actually have been fine with a fade-out as it's stylistically appropriate, but even a bigger fill going into that ending would have been nice. this is a huge undertaking and it's a fantastic result. from a compositional perspective, this is superb - there's a ton of interweaving of the different elements, it's super fun without being medleyitis, there's loads of creative adaptation throughout, and the performance of it is excellent as well. the mix is overall really solid as well despite all the parts - there's a few nits here and there, but overall this sounds professionally produced. superb work. YES

>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

opens with a bass riff, and we get some difficult-to-consume riffs until we hear the electric guitar play something that's a little more recognizable. there's a bit of melody at 0:35, but the lead guitar is overwhelmingly loud compared to the other elements so it's kind of hard to tell what's melody snippets and what isn't. there's a phase section right after, and we get some of the ascending riff from the original in the 1:13 section and a few times after. i hear the half-step line at 1:40 as well. there's a transition into an extended bass solo. it's impressively performed and - if indeed fully improvised, really impressively created - and it has, to my ears nothing to clearly tie it to the source, which is going to make recognizable source usage tough. there's a fun transition out of the bass solo that's very In The Presence Of Enemies by DT, and more of the half-step noodles. we get some reinforced melodic elements, and then a not-ending. so, for source - there's a ton of adapted references to the source material in the band sections - it's just very highly adapted. the bass solo doesn't have any source to my ears, so of the remaining ~3 minutes, we'd need about 2:20 of that to be playing Kalle Demos. taking out the transition sections that are just original, I'm pretty sure we're close enough, but timestamping this would be rough given that i don't hear all of the correlations (for example, i can't map the bass to anything). from a mix perspective, there's parts of this that really sparkle - the bass tone and the solo, for example - and there's parts where the lead guitar just totally takes over and the mix doesn't work at all (like at 1:40, where the lead is 2x as loud as it should be). i think the drums throughout are too quiet except the bass beater tone, and the pads in general are too loud. i didn't prefer the band sound as a whole very much actually. reining in the edge of the lead guitar might have helped with that. from a holistic perspective, there's a clear direction for the entire track throughout, and i think that the overall progression is indeed accessible to a degree. i think the solo goes a bit long and the ending is a disappointment (something you corrected in Lost in the Woods!), and i think that a firmer grounding at the beginning of the elements you're going to use would have helped a lot. this is a highly cerebral piece as expected, but once you understand the elements and how they're being used, there's a really clear concept that's being defined and approached here. it's probably too complex for its own good - as expected given the arranger! - but your friendly local alphabet-heavy bass soloist does seem to have done something here that isn't too sideways to fit on the site. YES

i listened to the other source reference that was here and then listened to all nearly 10 minutes of the remix, and was completely confounded by how wildly different they were. lo and behold, wrong source mix =) that makes more sense! opens with a vocal ascending line that fits the theme really well. a beat starts to develop over the next 30s, and around 0:38 we settle into something that is recognizable. there's an intentional lo-fi feel to this throughout - the percussion and keys especially are very low-poly and take a bit of getting used to. the track is way too long to really do a play-by-play, but essentially it's a wide exploration of the ascending riff that starts fairly early on in the source, with an occasional use of the opening descending lick as a break. from an arrangement perspective, there's an impressively broad use of that ascending riff and it's immediately apparent once you actually know what you're looking for. around the middle of the piece, there's some really exploratory outlining of that same riff while keeping it fresh, which is a pretty neat job. similar action at 5:40 or so. around 7:40 or so i started to get a little tired of the variety of repetition (bravo for keeping it unique for that long!) but then we suddenly got some interesting arpeggiated elements. the end is the middle of a phrase though and that was super bogus, i really wanted more there. i desperately want this track in our backlog. there's certainly room to improve the production of this by miles, but dang if this isn't one of the more unique tracks we've had in our inbox at any point. the ending stinks and i wish the kick was meatier, but what's here is so interesting. YES edit 9/15: if this is AI it's a 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

opens with a sustained version of the descending riff that's the the original throughout. there's some bass elements coming in eventually as well. 0:36 is where the melodic material comes in. there's some timing funness in here which is a neat thing. it's very Final Frontier-ish for a bit there until the descending arp comes back in with a beat. i like the bass automation bringing those tones in and out. it does this for about two minutes, and then there's a bit of a break for a few seconds before it gets back into it. i wouldn't have minded more of a shift there at 2:49. we do finally get a bit of a shift in the timbres at 3:39. one more languid melodic line, and then it fades out very suddenly in a detuned manner. so i really was digging this at first. when the beat finally comes in and it's trucking along, i thought that was really solid, through about 2:30 or so. after that it was over a minute before we really got a change from that same thing, and the change was minimal (just some timbral elements) before a non-ending, which is a real bummer. i think the concept is really neat and i really like the instrument choice. i wish that it'd mixed things up more in the second half, but what's here is probably enough. if this doesn't pass, adding some more progression to the track after the 2:45 mark would be an easy win, as would adding an ending at all. YES

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

my vote on the resub focused mostly on the vocal sample not really fitting the progression, the trumpet really needing humanization, and a few other smaller tweaks that were mentioned. long sustained strings to open the track, and a persian scale vocal sample for a bit. we get into the melodic material at 0:32, and some horns reinforce things at 0:48. there's one more vocal sustain before the main melody comes in at 1:02. 1:42's another transitional element featuring the vocal line, and we're into a chorale section at 1:47 that is mostly brass driven. there's some percussion and a harpsichord at 2:13, and the trumpet's the lead here. there's a few notes that are a bit funky - not wrong, but just odd choices in here. the flute takes the lead for one last run through the B side of the theme, and it's done. i need to admit that i really don't think the vocal patches fit at all. there's no foundation for them harmonically as they're in a different tonal structure, they're stapled into a few transitional sections and never touched anywhere else, and they're quite loud in the mix relative to other instruments. i think you could remove them entirely, just mute the channel, and the track wouldn't suffer at all. but it's definitely possible this is a personal feeling about vocal samples in mixes in general, and not specific to your track. i don't think i'm ever going to be in a place where the uncanny-valley effect of the flute doesn't bother me. but as a whole, i think that this is finally where it needs to be. personalization doesn't need to always be a significant amount of altered chords, time sigs, or expansion. what's done here to personalize the melodic line and backing elements is enough for me. YES

my original vote loved the concept, but had issues with several elements including amp sim noise and synth attacks. still really like the opening pads and swells alongside the delayed plucked tones. the kalimba elements are really nice. at 0:35 there is a distinct shelf with a lot of pressure in the low mids, around 200hz, and that was unexpected. the guitar sounds a lot better and no longer has the amp tone that was so distracting. the sixteenths that come in around 1:15 are so good - i love how they're able to fade in so carefully and never get too big. backing synths at 1:36 are much more tame without losing their attack entirely, so that's nice. 2:11's more constrained as well, and we can still hear the bass movement that was so interesting in the msfs track. from there, it's a smooth flight out to the ending. the last fade's been trimmed which i think is a good choice. this improved a lot since the last take. the new additions to help flesh out the arrangement are welcome, and i think that taming down some of the edges on the synths is a huge positive. i think this one arrived at the destination just fine. YES

really extended, atmospheric intro. loads of rings and sweeps in there. the panning elements were a little disconcerting on headphones at first. the strings emerging from the distortion mess around 0:45 was a really neat idea, reminded me of some of the electrorchestral stuff on the Matrix soundtracks. there's a big build in the keys and beat into 1:24, which is a great payoff section. there's a lot going on in the low mids with all those buzzy elements, and as a result there's not really any bass presence on the initial pop there. it doesn't sound like there's any sidechaining on the pads (although i can hear their retrigger points, which is disconcerting), and that might open up some more room for the kick and bass elements if that was there. after the initial first blow of the melodic material, there's a follow-on section that's a little less intense before a full drop at 2:13. this goes right back into the melody during that quieter section - a break before hitting that melodic line the third time in a row may have been a nice thing to have there. there is indeed a break starting at 2:36, and the track's in a bit of a holding pattern for a bit to let the build work, which is a nice pause from the melodic material. we get one more filtered break, and then 3:00 is the first time we don't have a beat. this is more cinematic, and feels like it's building back up to a big blow - but doesn't quite ever get there. this is a nice way to get people to want to listen again. there's a bunch of sound design on the way out and it's done after some more growls and booms. fun idea. i appreciate the restraint at the end to not do a victory lap on the same chorus you'd already hit a few times. i wouldn't have minded some more intentional pacing in the middle and a cleaner mix around 1:24, but what's here is a lot of fun. nice work. YES

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

opening's got some really wild effecting on it to give it atmosphere. 0:25's a similarly significant change. the panning in the lead is a little disconcerting on headphones. 0:51's beat is where it kind of kicks off and gets moving. it's a little weird hearing the heavily filtered kit and piano, and then hear the very crisp, unfiltered snap. i didn't have any problems with the 1:20 section, although i agree it's loose to the point of the parts not really doing much with each other. the use of the kick as a heartbeat later around the 1:50 mark is interesting. the wide swing and spacey approach is a feature here, not a bug, but i can definitely see how it'd get on someone's nerves. as for the ending, the track kind of vibes out the door a little more sudden than i'd have expected. production is what i'd expect for the genre. this is a pretty easy vote. the arrangement is refreshingly different from the other nine hundred FF arrangements i've ever heard. the emunification of it is expected - if anything, the over-reliance on sound design for transitions is almost too much - and interestingly handled. it's a neat compliment to the other one. YES

yeah, there wasn't really a doubt on this one. the landing at 0:51 is very nice and the variety of sound design elements after that are superb as expected. the break at 1:30 was less expected, and changing the key downward - something i've seen very rarely - works really well each time you do it. really interesting concept. the payoff chorus at 2:11 is great, although i'll agree with wake that most of the arrangement seems keyed off of the same little element of the original. this is a layup. YES

opening guitar is excellent. opening drums were kind of blah. the hats have some weird cuts to them (like at 1:04), and the cymbal crash at 0:42 is notably different than the rest of the kit as well. lead acoustic though is outrageously good as expected from the artist. chorus at 1:18 has a nice glidey synth as the lead that's a bit too quiet, and there's a lot of that crash being used through here and it gets obvious that it's the same sample. it's really grating on me - in fact, most of the drums are, they're really basic and use lots of repeated passages. 2:45 is a straight repeat of 1:18 with the only difference being the acoustic coming in at 2:58 to mirror the lead, until the chord difference at the end. the section after this, at 3:24, features some GotW, and the flute's excellent but too quiet in the mix - it quickly gets overwhelmed. there's a third play-through of the chorus with the same lead articulated nearly the same way again, and once more with some guitar soloing over the top. i think there's a lot of repetition, and i didn't care for the blandness of the drums or most of their sample usage. but i think that the overall approach is great, and it's a low-key but enjoyable arrangement. i think that some more dynamics and more personalization to elements that weren't the guitar would have been a meaningful and significant improvement, but we don't judge based on potential - just results. YES

Pipko posted a slight mixing update in the comments of the submission form.

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

opens with a ringy version of the opening riff, and we get a slam transition into a big hit right at 0:11. this is right on the line of clipping, straight gigasausage, and it's very old-school in the sound to me. there's an immediate fade-down to a break for a short period before another big hit at 0:34. this flaps back and forth a bunch over the next 30s, but it adds a ton of extra sfx and supporting elements in here - the adaptation to the genre is fantastic. i'd call 1:07 a payoff chorus in that it's longer than 10s, and again sounds good. the breakdown at 1:40 is longer than i expected given the length of the track, but the transition at 2:04 is great and i loved the stutter focus at the end. lots of variety throughout. i wouldn't have minded letting the end hang instead of cut, but it's a functional ending. this is fun! i wasn't sure at first because it felt pretty true to the midi at first, but there's loads of supporting material. fun track. YES