prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

Regrettably, Undertale was one of those insanely popular games that captured the zeitgeist a few years ago but failed to fully get a hold on me when I tried to actually sit down and play it. So after a few hours of getting increasingly frustrated, I put down the controller and decided to look up some videos on YouTube and discovered what a wild, emotional journey the Undertale experience could be depending on how you played it. Regardless of my enjoyment while playing it, I was still astounded to learn that the game was conceived and developed largely (if not in some ways entirely) by one person who went by the handle TobyFox. In addition, I discovered that he single-handedly composed the entire score for the game, which would already stand alone as an achievement of incredible breadth and quality on its own. I listened to the Undertale soundtrack separately, which had many fantastic pieces on it. I came across a few tracks that I enjoyed thoroughly, but I ended up choosing the rather melancholy "Waterfall" theme as inspiration for this particular remix. The original song is a combination of ponderous, sad, and also somewhat epic at points. I decided to lean heavily on various synth sounds and textures for this remix. As well, I had trouble deciding whether I enjoyed the original's more unique timing or something more traditionally 4/4 more, so I decided to incorporate both time signatures into the song at different points. I found that it helped to increase the energy of the later part of the song, and the strong structure of the melody certainly shines when presented the way TobyFox originally composed it. As always, thanks for taking the time to listen, hope you enjoy! Games & Sources Undertale

opens with some winds and bells. has a light ballad feel when the acoustic comes in as the lead element. backing brass is a little weird from a timbre perspective, it sounds really strong but is fairly quiet. i liked the rising chord pattern through 0:35 to about 0:40. the lead acoustic immediately after this is a touch stilted in some of the moving passages - there's just a bit more space between the notes than i'd expect. the countermelodic material is great though and the backing elements just keep changing and shifting, it's great. there's a goofy synth that's sliding around back there during the pizz section that's just delightful. 2:10's a bit of a shift to more live elements (and some ennio morricone glam, thanks Tsori!). i like the percussive elements in this section (maybe just a touch dry). 2:55's a shift to a much more percussion-driven section, with some great string realization behind it. the shift to a macro beat at 3:36 is also just great, keeps it moving forward. the strings take the melody after this point, and again the realization here is great. at this point though we've heard the original melodic elements in a straight line several times. i'd really have liked to hear a more personalized version of the melody to help keep it fresh. your backing work is so good that hearing the original melody with essentially no changes for six or seven minutes in a row is jarring. you've clearly got the chops to handle personalizing the melody - that'd really take it to the next level. the last minute's guitar is a touch wheedly in tone, just a little thin. might be the backing element that doubles it. regardless, the backing elements still are exciting and enjoyable, and the final crescendo and finishing note sound great. the final trumpet tone sounded the slightest bit flat, but that might be the verb and not the fundamental. this is, of course, way over the bar. it's mixed well, mastered clearly, the arrangement is excellent, and my nitpicks aren't more than that. excellent job. YES

such an inspiring original. so much done with so little. super wide dynamic range on this one. opens with winds and rain sfx. the initial flute (?) does not sound particularly realistic initially, and sounds better when it reigns back in. whatever instrument is at 0:27 doesn't sound like much of anything either. i like the wind ensemble concept for this opening section though very much, it fits the style of the soundtrack well. the traditional percussive elements that come in at 0:50 are really nice. the motif continues to be passed around until about 1:15, when we finally get a string representation of the melody and the 3 over 2 pattern. this almost immediately turns from a light rainstorm into a mudpit at 1:27, with so many instruments competing for the space between about 60 and 250hz. way too much low mid content, mostly from the pedal bass instrument (organ? or is that a string bass?). switching the faster, rhythmic elements to a glock which can through so much is a good choice, as is moving the melodic material to brass in various ways to cut through the density. there's another terraced dynamic at 1:57, and there's the addition of choir and snare. there's some more arrangement elements through this section which is nice, but it's dense and feels repetitious as compared to the first two sections. this section loses steam as it comes to a close, and then suddenly drops off with a quick recap of the opening winds before being done. this feels incomplete with no lowering action to compliment the initial terraced crescendo. after the initial few instruments were feeling a bit exposed, i felt that the realization of the instrumentation cleaned up a lot as the track went on. notably, you avoided the tendency to just layer in sustains in every instrument, and focused more on specific elements to ensure that you didn't get the wall-of-sound mess that comes with some orchestral compositions. there's some conflicting elements in the bass at 1:27 that clear up as it goes along, and i didn't care for the arrangement's ending, but i think overall this is scored competently and realized effectively. the technical side doesn't appear to get in the way of the arrangement either, which is hard to do with orchestral samples. i think this is a solid job. nice work. YES

A few months ago I collabed on a track that Xaleph did for his debut Dwelling of Duels entry, Cybernetic Skullstorm. Was quite a track and managed to pull in the bronze on it with his debut so that was pretty awesome. Then the twins, paramcdiddles or somethin, invited Xaleph and I to join them for another month of DoD. So we did, conjuring up the the track "Stay Away", a chaotic adventure into constantly changing complex time signatures. Sometimes you just need to feel the music instead of counting to 4. :) Anyway, I was supposed to collab with them again but decided to take my own chances heading a track for July's competition. It was a free month so I decided to finally arrange a piece of music that I've wanted to do for quite some time. Gusty Garden Galaxy's theme just slaps you in the face repeatedly with the catchy and memorable melodies. Anyway... I dove in right away, and sketched out the entire thing in a couple of days. Soft beginnings, big endings. That was the plan. And I stuck to it. As I worked on it I moved away from purely using guitar as the 'performance' part of DoD and started roping in more and more performers as I progressed. The track wouldn't be what it is without everybody that pitched in, and I can't thank the crew enough for their support and enthusiasm during the process. ZackParrish: Arrangement, Production, Keys, Guitar, Mixing, Mastering Emunator: Production, Keys, Sound Effects TSori: Trumpet Shea's Violin: Violin, Additional Parts Sean R. Hanson: Auxiliary Percussion GameroftheWinds: Flute Pearlpixel: Oboe Chromatic Apparatus: Cello Games & Sources Super Mario Galaxy - Gusty Garden Galaxy

An orchestral remix of "Freya's Theme" from Final Fantasy IX by Nobuo Uematsu. I wanted to make this mix have a huge dynamic range from whisper quiet solo winds to massive and bombastic full orchestra and back. I think I succeeded in that goal, and some real dramatic storytelling happens in the music as a result. Games & Sources Final Fantasy IX - "Freya's Theme" by Nobuo Uematsu

this is a pretty hip original. this kind of offset between the ears is something that you never want to see in a track waveform: separately this is also not good: so this is essentially a guaranteed NO right now. but i can at least review it to talk through what's good and what's not so good. the opening elements would be neat if they were balanced between ears, but the sharp tone in the left ear is far too much. overall it's panned really hard which makes it hard to hear what's going on until it comes more centerline by about 0:37. i wound up just changing it to mono to be able to hear what was going on. the various synths are doing really disjointed things for at least the first thirty seconds - i honestly don't know what's going on in there nor can i parse what each instrument is doing. if you're attempting to ape what the opening minute is in the original, i don't think it worked. by about 0:55, it's more balanced and there's a recognizable riff going on alongside the continuing sharp left-ear synth. i believe this is the bass riff from 2:43, but i didn't hear anything else that was fitting around that area - no melodic line, none of the rhythmic elements, etc. this continued until the woobly synth from the beginning came back in at 1:41 and did stuff that i didn't understand again. some other synths that were off-key came in after this (like at 1:52) - this doesn't sound like functional dissonance, it sounds like incorrect notes. this section continued for most of the track and then ended suddenly, and the track was done after 10s of silence. from an arrangement perspective, it's not super clear what you're doing here. it sounds like you're hoping to work with the track in the original that starts at 2:43, but the lack of percussive elements or other strong rhythmic elements outside the bassline and the constant dissonances alongside the very loud, sharp lead tones really make it hard to pick out anything cohesive from your arrangement. i honestly recommend stripping this one back to the bolts and building it back up one element at a time. i'm honestly curious if this is a misrender and some elements were supposed to be percussive but didn't get the instrument assignments or something. from a mastering perspective, the hard panning and wild volumization across the board makes this borderline unlistenable. you're going to want to take a lot more time with managing the individual elements before resubmitting. NO

nickel creek's one of my favorite bands, and TLT is one of my favorite songs by them. i love how each chorus builds on the prior. if folks haven't ever listened to 'progressive' bluegrass, i highly recommend it. opens with a bell arp. the arp's really loud compared to the melodic element that comes in pretty quickly after. the strings that eventually come in are also really not great - they don't feel N64 to me, they just sound fake. the 'full' band sound comes in at 0:43, and the lead feels a bit weak in this section as well as slow (the attack feels a touch behind). there's no real bass through here either, but there is a kick. the lack of beater tone on the kick makes it hard to hear except for where you can feel it. sad girl comes back at 1:43, and there's some weird mallet strike tones through here that would add realism if they weren't repeat strikes next to each other. the strings come back in, and i'm still not feeling them here. the eventual synth lead elements that come in at about 2:34 are really loud, and the lack of balance makes it hard to hear what's going on. i like the patience that comes with the chords after this section, although i think they should be a little closer together as they're encroaching on 'too long since sound' territory. at 3:07 we get copypasta from the opening 40s, and then subsequently more copy pasta from the band section from 0:43 to around 1:35. there's a repeated phrase at the end, one last arp, and a few sustains. i think that the combination of these two originals works really well together. i like the idea of focusing initially on bells and then building up to a bigger band tone, and i like the introspective approach and patience that you show. i think that your synths are letting you down throughout, and your DAW's letting you down from a mastering perspective. everything that isn't a bell sounds cheap and fake, and volumization throughout is a mixed bag. this needs a good amount of work, but there's good bones here. i think that the discord or the workshop forum would help a ton with this track. NO

opens with a really peppy beat right off the bat. roughly the first minute of the track appears to be a sound upgrade off the midi, with a much better drumloop and better synths throughout. it's mastered well and i can hear a lot of the different bleeps and bloops well, so that's great. there's a build section that's original with the original's bassline at 1:01, so that's where the arrangement really gets cooking. there's a fun dubstep-like section at about 1:17, but that does seems like the majority of the arrangement for the track - about 30s out of ~135. there's a copypasta section at 1:47 of 0:32, and this continues through almost the end before we see any variation again. i think this has too much that isn't Why_ in it. most of the first minute and the last thirty seconds are all pretty much straight from the midi with new synths and a nice beat over it. there's a great break section at 1:01 and the arranged A theme at 1:17 shows that you've got the chops! so i'd say to lean into your arrangement more and don't rely so heavily on the original for what you're doing through there. more personalization can only help out! beyond that, there's too much copypasta - in a track that is only 138s long, i counted about 30s of copy, which is way too much for such a short work. this is a hip track! make it more your own and it'll definitely have a place on our site. NO

opens with a really nice pad alongside some plucks and pops until the guitar comes in at 0:35. initial pilotwings source is just the arp, but there's not much else there anyways so that's fine. i can hear a little amp noise here - couldn't noise-gate that out? it's just a little though. when the msfs lead comes in at 1:01, though, i can definitely hear amp noise that's cutting in and out, and that's really distracting. it'd actually be better if it didn't drop out at all and was just consistent - i'd attribute it to the pad if that was the case. there's another transition at 1:36 and it moves back into pilotwings. the more active synth attacks here are more noticeable and not particularly pleasant like the rest of the background has been - taming those down would be a good idea. i don't mind the movement, but they're so staticky up front. there's a nice build into 2:11, and we finally get some of the bass elements that make the msfs track so fun. it's understated, though, and the higher guitar part is really loud so it's hard to hear the balance beyond that one instrument. coming out of this, the attack of the synth at 2:46 is slightly out of time. after that big section, the rest is outro and window dressing. there's a few more chords and it's done. i wouldn't have minded a slightly less long fade - like, i think 10s is fine, but 23s is excessive. i really love this concept. there's a clear connection to the style of the track and the original sources. i also really appreciate how much you shied away from percussive elements and relied exclusively on the guitar and the synths to provide rhythmic structure. i think there's some parts that have clear issues - the amp noise on the guitar lead at 1:01, the several synth attacks in a row that are so noisy at 1:36, the volume of the upper rhythm guitar at 2:11, and trimming down the last sustain a bit - but once those are addressed this one is ready to go. NO

opens with sfx and some beautiful sustains alongside some bells. 0:23 brings in the first real melodic content of the chords from the original, but the beat doesn't drop until 0:36. the shuffle in the shaker on this track is just the perfect amount of swing, it feels very organic. the dx chords used throughout fit so well too with all the bells going on. bit of a shift at 1:21 when the fairy fountain cameo comes in. this bit felt a bit more artificial to get in there, mostly due to the chromaticism required as compared to the lack of chromaticism in zora's domain normally. the transition at 1:43 was great, and the track backs off again around 2:05 just in time to feature a bunch of vox sfx for a bit. there's a shift at 2:28 and a big change in the backing elements. there's a lot of glam on this section, it's super sparkly and shines especially in the higher freq ranges. it's a nice transitional section before reprising the original arpeggiated melodic material at 3:14 one last time. there's a somewhat out-of-time outro starting at 3:37, and this does a nice job settling down the track in prep to be done. a few times through the original arp, a filtered guitar bit, and we're done. this is gorgeous as expected. really luscious soundscape throughout, and an excellent job adding to a track that's already a highlight on the BotW soundtrack. nice work. YES

detuned bells are immediately recognizable off the bat. melody's in right away, and it's fairly straightforward - just beat, bass, and melodic material. 0:33's a change to the B theme, and it's also pretty minimal - just an arp and beat initially, and a few detuned elements after a bit. there's a short breakdown and then we get the chords from the A theme with (eventually) a deconstructed A melody. the bass drops out in kind of a weird place - it's done at 1:26 after a little burble and is out until 1:33, when it comes back in as if nothing happened. 1:34's a reprise of the melodic representation from 0:07 with a palette swap and the drums from 0:57, to my ears, with an added countermelodic element. the B element this time around has a lot more fleshed out - loved the random amen break - and there's a lot more sound design done this time around. this part here really works and elevates the arrangement - all the little spacey burbles going on are really nice. we get a spaceships rising line before...a bass outro? there's definitely some funky notes in there, and this doesn't really feel like an ending at all. i really don't care for this ending at all. from a mastering side, there's a lot going on at any given time and it's all audible clearly. there's a nice crunch to most of the synths you chose and that adds a lot to the feel. i feel that the really clear master adds a lot to the overall package. this is a lot less arrangement depth than we usually get from you, michael, so that's nice as a palate cleanser. there's definitely some arrangement choices here that are suboptimal - the ending, the bass dropout, and some of the repeated elements like the drums, for example - but i think what's here is good enough to pass. it's definitely closer than usual though - i can easily see the ending being enough to put some judges off. YES

schala's theme is just too good. opens with some filtered arps into the terra theme at 0:12. hats here are really bright, probably too much so. bass has the martial rhythm from the original, and there's a countermelodic element but no pads or kick. 0:36's where the kick comes in, and the beat here is really nice. i think the hats are still a bit too loud - some automation on the volume may help with that? - and there's tbh not a lot of arrangement going on here, this is a lot of 1:1 translation. it's really dangerous working with top-tier originals IMO because it's so easy to just lean on what made those originals great...but then it's not your mix, it's someone else's. finding ways to make your take unique and yours is a critical aspect when you touch Mt. Rushmore tracks like this. i don't think you do that here. 1:06's a big whooshy hit transition, and we shift into schala's material. i like the layering of terra's theme on top of this, as well as using the original terra's theme synth used before for schala's material. i would like to hear more mel in the way the instruments present the material here, but the dovetailing is nice. same with the following section at 2:07. 2:30's got some weird notes in the bass (specifically at 2:42, 2:49, and 2:54). also at this point the lead's getting overused - it's been going for most of the track and it's starting to feel pretty dry. there's a shift at 3:03 to a new tempo-synced lead. this is very loud - it's way over the top of everything around it, and the tempo sync feels weird when nothing else has a rhythmic element around it. there's an outro that starts at about 3:50. the bass element through most of this sounds like it's detuned and it sounds super weird as a result. there's a bit of arps and it's done. from a synth perspective - several of your synths don't have verb on them, which sounds a bit weird to my ears when they're leads. adding some presence to them can help fit them into the mix easier and helps sand off rough edges. from a mastering perspective, this mix has a lot on the edges of the freq spectrum. there's a ton of bass and sub-bass content, so it tends to feel heavy on the low end. i believe this is due to the bass not having anything to prevent the bottom from spilling over. separately, the hats are very loud and in front of everything all the time. bringing them down a touch will help everything fit together better, i think. overall, i found the arrangement's dovetailing to be really nice. i do feel however that the mix meanders a lot in the middle two minutes or so. you've got a strong focus to start and end the track, but it kind of wanders in zero-energy territory from 1:05 through at least 3:00. finding a way to inject some extra meat into that will help a lot - this is maybe an opportunity to explore some other synth choices or feels before coming back to what worked at first in the last section. i think overall i'd like to hear more mel and less original, too. even just personalizing the melodic lines here and there can make a huge difference. that first minute for example feels word-for-word what is in the original for terra - there's a lot of synth window dressing, but it sounds a lot like a sound upgrade. making that not be the case is important, especially for an original that's so recognizable. you don't want your remix carried by the quality of the original composition - you want it to be carried by what you're doing to it. i think that this is really close. i really think the feel in that first minute is pretty well done. finding a way to add some energy in the middle, fixing some of the mastering missteps, and injecting more mel into the track will really make this a fantastic addition to the catalog. NO

opens with some synths before the guitar and some really buzzy stuff comes in. percussion in the intro seem pretty muted. there's a bit of a drop at 0:31, and the guitar here is really dense and muddy, and then the chord at 0:40 continues that. it's a neat fuzz tone for the guitar but it's very low-heavy and hard to really make out. drums come in soon after and really lack punch. there's virtually no kick, although i can hear a bass instrument. the track's got a lot of energy, which is fun - the pinch harmonics and weird stuff in the side ears are neat, but it's over-panned so it's hard to break stuff out. there's an escalating section at 1:15 that's got some crazy bass sfx in it. the drums here are playing interesting things, but it's still hard to hear and they're really weak. a big break hits at 1:57 - this is a neat idea, it's a bunch of big block chords with the guitar doing stuff exclusively in the right ear - but the execution again lacks verve and the pan is so wide that it is hard to listen to on headphones. we get back to the rhythmic pattern at 2:37, and it's a big escalating pattern again. the synth at 3:05 combined with the flanging on the drums causes some clipping there. i like that you keep mixing things up with what's going on - the shift at 3:35 for example was just the right time to do something different and not repeat the bass pattern again. there's a bit of riffage at 4:00, and it's done after that. this is a really interesting idea - i love the energy throughout, i love the attention to the drums, and i love the concept of synth-driven rock with lots of guitar to add intensity. the execution is lacking though. the drums have no punch and that really is holding it back initially. there's no bass in the kick at all from what i can hear - the main bass peak is in the 90hz range most sections, which is nuts! it should be half that! - and adding in something to give it some punch would help so much. separately, the guitar overall is very dark and lacking in highs, and has way too much mid in the mix, which clogs the middle of the road so the synths and snare have to be really loud to compensate. overall, fixing the drums and associated EQing, and fixing the guitar tone and overall mixdown would help a ton. right now it still has a grungy feel that i think is intentional, and i like that - finding a way to better handle your drums and guitar without losing that should be a goal. NO

opens with some sfx from jurassic park, and a beat drops at 0:14. we start to get some harmonic material at 0:37, but it's not recognizable as anything until at least 1:02. there i started to catch the chord patterns of the original. from there, it appears that the primary method for realizing the arrangement was in chopping up and splicing together original audio from Yoshi's Song in SSB. there's also a number of times that riffs from the Benny Goodman song poke up their heads, which by itself isn't an issue but the more extended cribbing that occurs at 3:19 is long enough to be problematic. we strongly advise against the extent of original sampling demonstrated here of game music, and the 30+ seconds of sampled BG audio throughout is also a significant no-no. there's no ending. i also believe that >50% of the track uses some form of Yoshi's Song, but it's close - there's a lot of time spent with just a drum loop or sfx. from a production standpoint, as an aside, the loop was so loud throughout that it was difficult to pick out the actual harmonic material. one of the key elements of kid koala's track is that the loop's very slim in terms of frequency usage, so the music is always at the fore. in your track, the ambiance sfx and the very broad freq range taken by your kick and snare especially cover up a lot of the actual music going on. a tighter kick with less room tone would help a ton in opening that up. this is a cute take, and i honestly really like the way that you worked the sfx into the track. i just don't believe that this has a place here due to the extensive use of original sampling - both of Benny Goodman and of the original game audio. we don't have a clear no in the submission standards, but enough sections dovetail together between 3.3, 4.2, and 5.2 that i believe this is something that has a great chance at being successful on the internet somewhere, but probably is too fundamentally different from what we do here to fit in here. NO

original has some pretty interesting timing issues. was it recorded live? no surprise, a cj track is lots of weird stuff happening right off the bat. individual elements don't sound particularly real (like that guitar) but alongside the super-panned leads and the other goofy stuff happening, it fits more than i'd expect. there's a break right away at 0:25, and it builds up again over time before another drop at 0:53. there's some synth guitar with some issues with sample retriggering in a build until we get to 1:23 when it's paintballs to the wall for a bit. the guitar does not sound good unfortunately, which stinks because this would be an absolutely killer payoff section. the drums lack punch in this section as well - i would really love to hear some straight-up metal drums in this section along the buttrock guitar part, as the drum part felt pretty stale by this point. there's another drop at 1:51 and build through the brickwall at 2:20. i loved the edm shift here - what a great way to keep the energy going but change it up! - but was disappointed to hear another repetitive drum beat with no variation again. it hits a few more times and it's done. my big issues here are the quality of the guitar in the middle and the very, very repetitive drums. when you're working with a shorter track, it's critical to make sure nothing is too repetitive - because on subsequent relistens, you're going to catch that repeated element every time, and it's going to wear the track out for you quickly. there's a lot of ways to mix up the drums under the every-beat snare you've got going on. as for the guitar, the repetitive nature of each hit makes it so obvious so quickly that it's fake, and it really draws away from the energy there. i know you're active in the discord - recruiting a guitarist for something this simple should be cake! it'd add so much to get live guitar through the build and rock section in the middle. ima no this, but honestly it's pretty close for me. as with several of your tracks, a few tweaks and it'll be an instant favorite of so many. NO

you may wish to avoid the term "official" in your song title. would you call this 'movement 1' based on your writeup? it's quite short to be a movement. opens with sustained choir and swelling orchestral elements. we first get real elements from the original at 0:45, but there's no real melody until 1:15 or so. it quickly moves through the dovahkiin theme before a significant dropoff at 1:35. there's a lot of gregson-williams from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in this scoring, mostly in the reliance on the choir to support the strings instead of vice versa. this is very short and has a lot of unique material. i recognized source from 0:08-0:25, 0:45-1:02, 1:17-1:36, and 1:39-2:16. that 90s, which is well over >50% of the piece, so that's good. it's just so unfortunate that you're not bringing in other elements of this original because there's so much good material in the track. i think these samples are right on the border of being not good enough - they're exposed with the strong brass at 0:17 for example - but there's some genuinely nice combinations that are happening here as-is. i think the muddy section from 1:20-1:30 kind of sinks it though and makes it extra obvious. it's sustain-itis through there and i can't really hear the melody much. i think this arrangement is really interesting outside of a few specific areas where the scoring is too dense. i'd love to hear this with much better samples, but this is, i think, good enough to pass muster on this site. i can't help but wonder if you'd prefer to submit a full version of your entire thing. YES

word for word same submission email as the other one, lol :< opens with a wide-panning bass with a ton of overtones on it. kick comes in at 0:10 that is essentially just sub material with no beater tone. lead's in at 0:20 and cuts through really hard. more additive elements come in over time until we get to some riffs at 0:51 and the main body of instruments at 1:11. the snare is both super loud and super staticky, which is really irritating quickly. additionally, there's a ton of sub-bass content which makes it sound very muddy and dense, and there's a very specific spike around 500hz that's so sharp it's hard to listen to. both your other track and this one make me wonder what monitoring setup you're using. i like some of the arrangement ideas, but the mix is all over the place. the bubbly synth that comes in at 1:32 (and the lead here) are both tough to listen to - most of the synth choice on this track is subpar in that it's either so pointed it's hard to listen to it for a while or it's super oofy with no attack and hard to tell what note it's playing. the track continues to truck through the melodic content in order pretty much as it says on the box. there's not a ton of unique or original content to my ears outside of occasionally using the chord progression only as a transitional element. there's a ton of source throughout so the influence is obvious. if anything, i'd have rather that you had more Heel Tactics and less original in here - mixing up the melodic material a bit and personalizing it would have been really nice. i also think the track goes on too long given how much you're relaying on that same A material from the original over and over. i think this one's arrangement is a lot more conservative than your other mix, and the top man influence is immediately clear. i didn't care at all for most of your sound choices though - i found the lead to be super sharp, several of the other synths to be lacking in attack, and your drums overall were super scooped with either no attack note (kick) or were so sharp and loud that i couldn't hear much else (snare, hats, crash). lastly, i wouldn't mind if there was more personalization of the melodic or harmonic elements as compared to the original. a rockstar arrangement with these instruments still wouldn't pass, though, whereas this arrangement with much better instrumentation and mastering would be over the bar. so i'd say to focus on improving your sample/synth selection and then go from there. NO

submission email game is on point. opens with some glittery sfx that is high enough to make my ears hurt a bit, and eventually some arpy filtered synths. kick comes in soon after, around 0:35, and it's super high, like over an octave higher than i'd expect. more of the beat comes in at 0:52, and there's a panning bass that's very active. the bass is actually playing lower than the sub portion of the kick. at 1:15 we finally get more fleshing out of the harmonic elements so it's not just the bass and the lead synth. i think what that lead is playing is a bastardized version of the A theme from the original, but it's honestly not very clear to me where spark man comes in during these first two minutes or so. 1:42's a 'break' with the synth bass and kick, and it builds back up at 2:09 to be the A theme like it is in the original, and then the B theme. most of this is just a lead, bass, and maybe a single sustained pitch as a pad. it sounds very thin through here, and the fast pan on the bass emphasizes how thin it is. 2:59's another break, again focused on the bass, and there's some sfx this time in there also. this is a single note for nearly 30s until a running synth comes in at 3:26. the snare that's used in this section is also pretty grating by itself vs in the mix with lots of other elements. we finally get more harmonic elements at 3:49 in the form of a nice sweepy pad, and then some melodic material soon after. my primary critique of this track is the choice of drums. i found the snare to be very sharp and hard to listen to for five minutes, and more importantly the kick is well over 100hz and is so high that it's conflicting with pitches the bass is playing despite the bass not being particularly low. i'd love to hear a more appropriate kick that isn't so high in the frequency spectrum. beyond that, i found the arrangement to often be lacking body - there's a lot of the track that's only a bass, or bass and lead, with nothing between the two. the bass panning was super strong and disconcerting on headphones - i like the concept, but pulling back the max bounds of the pan lfo would be great so it wasn't so wide. lastly, there were really long sections where nothing was really going on - 2:59's a single note for 30s, that's probably 15s too long, for example. and the opening took over a third of the piece to get to the actual source material, meaning we wandered around for a third of the piece before getting to some meat. adding some snippets into the opening section will help tie that first part to the rest of the work. you've got some great ideas here! i love the energy. there's a lot of nitpicks that need to be cleaned up right now. NO

opening is a touch off in timing, which was a bit jarring for the first bit of a piece. violin has a ton of bow noise, which is a neat way to make it feel very organic and nearby. the 3 vs 4 feel of the vin against the piano is nice. a few of the vin attacks are questionable, but the sustained tone is beautiful. rest of the band comes in at 1:06, and this entrance is also a little shady. guitar work is just beautiful. violin sustains sounded a touch loud, and the bass doesn't quite fit the rest of the acoustic instruments, but does a nice job keeping the track moving in a rhythmic fashion. subsequent solo section at 2:14 is more muted, and again i appreciate the earthiness of the violin playing style. there's one more recap of the B theme and then the A melodic material with some new chords, and it's done. from an arrangement perspective, this is a fun, languid take on an iconic theme. there's actually more soloing (and less source) than i originally thought on my first playthrough, but certainly a preponderance of it. from a mastering perspective, i think that it felt louder than it needed to be, and that the guitar especially had more highs than i wanted given the amount of hard attacks you had with it. overall, though, this is well over the bar. it's a strong addition to the catalog despite a few issues with mastering and performance. YES

sir this is a wendy's hearing these side-by-side makes the inspiration super clear. opens with some very quiet pads and some arps that are reminiscent of both sources, and a few carmina burana hits. percussion and orchestral elements are in at 0:36, and i really like the running lines in the strings right off the bat. guitar's in soon after with a highly technical set of runs, and we get some Ys right off the bat before the iconic FF7 run. there's a break at 1:36 with a shift to acoustic/celtic, and i love the whistle here! it fits the concept so well. we're back to wendy's soon after though with a guitar-led romp through the Ys material accompanied by orchestral stabs and some rolling rhythm guitar. 2:25's ensemble riffing is really fun, and the section right after with the melodic material in the backing orchestral elements is a nice little shift. 2:43's a great showcase of your guitar skill and tone - love the high note to finish it - and we're back to some rhythmic elements before the FF7 riff is back. this has been a few minutes of balls-to-the-wall and i wouldn't have minded a break right before this section, but we're pell-mell back into another solo and this is also super technically proficient. there's a short break at 4:05 with some extreme riffage in the keys and bass under some not-particularly-realistic sounding horns, and a half-time section with the choir is soon after. 4:54's the final payoff chorus with everything going. something's added in super-panned at 5:06 that sounds both out of time and really strangely not part of the ensemble - i really didn't care for that. everything else here is pretty fun though. it does maybe one time through the riff pattern too many, and then has an outro starting at 5:45. this is an obvious win. the arrangement is great, the mastering is superb throughout outside of a few specific nits, and the energy is unmatched as is expected from a hakštok track. great job. YES

opens with a fun soundtest-style chord resolution, and then quickly gets into the groove. initial melodic presentation is really dense - everything's very close in both sound style and register, and i wasn't a huge fan of how dense it was. i get wanting to save the fun stuff for later, but this is nearly a quarter of the piece and it is pretty tight together. there's some new flutters and bass elements added at 0:47, which is very helpful, and then we get the entire big hit at 1:01 which is awesome as expected. 1:12 is where we get the full band sound for the first time, and it's a lot more fleshed out. i also thought that the lead at 1:25 was both too loud and kind of boring what it was doing - i wanted to hear the backing elements a lot more. this trucks through some repeated material with a few intensifiers, and then it's done. i think overall there's a lot of missed opportunity in this one. with a reduction of quality and breadth of instrumentation, we in general require more on the arrangement side to balance that (for example, see small ensemble or piano solo works that we post). there are a lot of elements of this arrangement that are on autopilot to my ears - the drums essentially don't change for a minute plus in the middle after not changing for 40s earlier, there's the same flutter backing synths used to provide chordal elements, the melody's played with the same flips and changed elements every time that it comes back...there's a lot more copied material in here than you'd expect for a track that relies on arrangement to carry it over instrumentation or synth design. i think there's too much repetition. there's several novel ideas in here - like i loved the little HEY shout, i like the initial presentation of the melody and the section at 1:01, etc. - but there's so many track elements just doing the same thing for 16 or 32 bars in a row that they did before. hearing the drums do the same thing for a minute when there's so many ways to mix them up and personalize them (especially with a melody line that has a lot of offbeat stuff!) is such a letdown. NO

some 2spoopy4u flutters on the opening, alongside some cello and filtered percussion. there's a bassy drop and the primary chord progression comes in alongside a half-time beat. i actually liked the bass here, it feels similar to the original's bass elements. melodic material comes in at 1:01. i love the idea of having it playing ahead of the beat and letting the echo/antecedent be where it's supposed to be, really adds to the disconcerting nature alongside the wooble synth you're using for a lead. there's a drop at 1:43 and we get a dose of a freaky ghost beat right after. the melodic material here gets lost a bit initially behind all the ear candy, but honestly the ear candy's cool enough i don't mind. the claps are pretty loud too. 2:42's a beat drop and transition section into another funky beat at 3:05. i like the attention on the lead here a lot, the subtle swells are really nice, and the continuing changes to the beat and lead elements help keep me locked in despite the melody being so simple. 3:49 kind of feels like the start of an outro, and after some pageantry between the lead and bass, we get one last big chord and some flutters on the way out the door. this has a really lush, interesting feel throughout. there's always something more to find when you dig in. as usual, superb job. YES

yeah, i hear the high focus right away. there's no beef - the kick, bass synth, etc. all have very little low presence. it sounds like you've EQed the booty off of everything that's supposed to be low and then boosted the highs further. this would have been fine on the site in 2002, but expectations have risen a lot since then. this is honestly pretty close. the arrangement is solid and i like what the instruments are doing. the bass peak is nearly 70hz, though - there's just no bottom end. there's a huge peak at 145hz too which is roughly that bass instrument you're using - which tells me that a lot of the potential is being used up getting a very vanilla bass synth to cut through a lot of stuff. a bass synth with more edge to the attack may cut better, allowing you to drop off the overall volume. taking that entire bassline down an octave would help a lot too. combined with getting more sub presence from your kick, that'd fix the bass issue, and i think this'd be good. for your kick, i think the clicky attack works great, you just need more bottom end - ensure you're not trimming out via EQ the low end of the kick, like 30-40hz. that'll give it more presence. you could also layer in another kick that's all sub-bass tone and EQ out the really low stuff there. chimp's right about the RMS as well. turning everything down a bit so it's not so blown (or even just reducing the gain on whatever limiter you're using) would help consolidate the volume a bit. NO

Final Fantasy Legend was one of the first games I ever played. The simple soundtrack to this GB classic was the target of one of my first VG arrangements I ever did, as well - I 'transcribed' the three melodic channels to saxophone parts and got some friends from my school's band to play it =) I haven't listened to this track in over a decade, but I only needed to check one or two notes against the original vs. my memory, surprisingly. My focus here was to take the original theme (which I always felt was very mournful) and do what i could to keep it in natural minor (as opposed to harmonic minor, with a major V chord) while enjoying the beautiful melodic elements alongside this slightly-altered chord pattern. i got a little bored and switched to a shuffle to give it some more verve halfway through. I used Omnisphere almost exclusively for this, with some elements coming from Elastik. Thanks to Hemo and ParadiddlesJosh for letting me bounce this off of them and for the actionable feedback where provided. Games & Sources Prologue theme from Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy. YT is here:

i object! there is no proof! opens with a wall of acquatic ambiance pads, but quickly hits the secret of the forest melody with AA behind it. lead is appropriately rudess-y with the scoops and subtle vibrato. it's notably louder than everything else after it though. the AA melody's in by 1:00 with a descending pattern to it under the SotF chords. i love how you're passing the melodic material around between such old-style instruments. 1:34 is a new vibe, much more low-end body. the drive here alongside the SotF arp is so immediately inspiring. the adaptation of AA's melody here as well is so good - this is an excellent job making it fit without making it feel like it's a clear mashup. the solo that follows it is fun, but it does feel slightly ahead of the beat throughout. i'm wondering if delaying it by a few ms would make it settle back into the groove a bit better. 3:01's chord progression through the bVI-bVIII-i-V is so fitting given that it's half of the chrono cross soundtrack. and then we get double time with the melodies alongside each other! what a climax this is. this isn't chill at all but i don't care. the extended climax at 3:52 was excellent, i loved that you tripled down on it and then didn't even immediately resolve it, but waited a second. what a payoff. we get a last wash of color and arps and it's done. i struggle with remixes of AA specifically because Beneath the Surface was my first exposure to the theme and that's a Mt Rushmore OCR for me, so everything else always seems to be lacking in comparison. this is easily one of the only remixes i've ever heard of this way-overdone theme that truly brings tons of originality and creativity in the arrangement alongside superb execution to a similar level. and you managed to do it via alchemy with another rockstar track from another rockstar game, instead of just relying on AA's incredible foundation by itself. superlative job. WOW