prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

new version 1/21, use this please: i've had this track on my bucket list to remix ever since i first heard it come from my tv speakers. IX's commitment to return to the roots of final fantasy was obvious right from the get-go with this nostalgic, renaissance-adjacent opening theme. the entire soundtrack has incredible music, but this is the track that's always stood out to me. despite knowing the track's melody cold and needing a reference only for part of the harmonic material, it took me a while to get going on this - my project info says that it was started at the end of august - and i didn't really have a clear direction about where i wanted to go with it for a while. i had the kalimba and interesting string chunks thing going on in the background, and a harpsichord sound that eventually became the opening, but it wasn't until i rediscovered the bamblong percussion instrument that i was able to find the feel i was looking for. from there it flowed pretty naturally. right now the file's at just about 8.5hrs, so longer than usual for me, but it reflects how it took a while to get some of the sound design elements where i wanted them. Games & Sources FF9 - The Place I'll Return To Someday

this got rejected due to feeling incomplete and needing some glam. i went through and added the following. transitional elements in several locations more percs in the opening section extra drum elements to when the beat comes in after the first minute extra atmosphere in most of the second half lots more reverb more kick throughout changed the arrangement to alter a lot of the melodic and harmonic/chord structure for the second half added some changes to the first part as well (note that this no longer features a natural minor v as i described in my initial post) i ran this by kris for a second set of ears and she felt that the changes were significant, so here's hoping this has a better shot =) Games & Sources Prologue theme from Final Fantasy Legend for the Game Boy.

original's pretty upbeat in its own right. opening is very similar to the original, right down to the drum beat, tempo, and lead performance. this goes on for quite a while - i A/B'd the entire length of the original on this track and indeed it's the same across the board. so this already isn't something that we'd really have a place for given the lack of original arrangement over the first half of the track. right at 2:00 we get a new section, which is clearly inspired by but isn't really arranging the original. it's a sick synth solo though! i'd like to hear more verb on it, it's pretty dry right now. guitar has a note or two that's funky in the chord that it's over, and then hits a fun chord at 2:47 before a hard cut break to the piano playing the melodic material (in a non-idiomatic way, you really should find ways to break up the left hand's block chords and velocitize the entire thing). there's another run-through the original's last section and opening, and it's done. ending is solid. i think this is a fun listen! i'd be happy to find this on youtube somewhere, but it doesn't meet the standards for arrangement that we require here. this is more of a cover with a little new section in the middle, which is hip in and of itself, but we'd expect more adaptation of the original's melody, chords, or other elements. i don't think this track would fit here without extensive modifications, but maybe future arrangements would fit more! take a look at the submissions standards i linked above (section 4 is the big one for you, the rest aren't as applicable for this) and hopefully we'll hear from you again. NO

opens with an organ flourish that goes immediately into a funky, piano-driven beat around mettaton's intro. the melodic stuff from mettaton is in by 0:20. it's a little helter-skelter because the lead instrument is similar in timbre to the sax part, but once i got my head around it, it sounded hectic and fun. bass here is a bit buried but it's doing cool stuff. 0:46 is the B theme and it's a feel change after the opening section was all over the place - more focused. there's another shift at 1:13 and we get joe slaying it on the sax - tone fits this genre so well! there's some transitional elements and then smithy's here. bari also sounds great here. there's some comps in the saxes and then we get a synth cameo with some very familiar descending scalar work, followed by some actual solos. 3:24's sax lick is actually insane and i love it. sorry, minus, but mettaton wins this one. there's some more dueling despite us knowing who wins in the end, and then a mettaton recap. there's one more repetition of the groove and then it's done on a few hits. what a ride! this is a banger from start to finish, at no point was i feeling like something got stale. for the time frame you described, this is superb work. YES

this original is fantastic! i am gonna listen to this whole soundtrack now. opens with what larry will call 'stilted piano' that fits the track style really well. nice work throwing in the AA cameo, that's a clever overlap. the feel at 0:12 and then 0:20 is so good, i love the out-of-time arp. i think the chord changes really fit it well, and i really like the bass tone also. the feel steps it up at 0:54 as well, i think the faster feel fits this melodic section well. drums are a bit autopilot here. there's another bit of a break before we get the next melodic section. the DKC soundfont choice is fun, although the accordian tone is a bit shrill and loud here. i do like the feel a lot, and the subsequent break at 1:52. there's some fun rhythmic elements in here, and bit of a shift towards the funky feel as the bass steps it up a bit at 2:17 alongside the key change. there's a recap section at 2:34 and then a ton of woodshedding in the chords as jnWake discovered the circle of fifths around this time. another break at 3:12 and then some more trucking through melodic material. this section was a little less complex from a backing element perspective, which is kind of a different feel from what we've seen throughout. 4:00 brings back the AA reference, and there's some noodles to let us down softly. the track ends on a sustain and it's done. if it's not obvious, i loved the direction of this track. tons of twists and harmonic turns, lots of shifts in feel, and a lot of creativity. track sounds great and i'm never fighting the sound design (outside of that one soundfont that's a bit shrill). excellent work. YES

thanks for the resub! i really liked the arrangement concept and some of the set pieces in the original mix, but didn't like a few of the synth choices which i found bland and thought some of it needed EQing/reinforcing elements. track opens with some really big broad strings which sound very rich, so that's fun. there's some more sfx at 0:50ish as the strings glitch their way out, and we start hearing the Durandal synth with the ascending motif. the beat comes in at 1:26 and we get into the blootering of alien backsides. i admittedly like the nastiness of the Durandal synth more than the subsequent synth choices, which still feel bland and rote. there's some repetition in this section too which i still don't care for, but i like the transition at 2:43 and that section just as much as i did before. this section is great. again, the transition into the techno section is also great. this time through the techno stuff feels a little better and less rote. there's a final hit and some sfx, and it's done. i don't care for the middle minute or so - that more upbeat section just feels really dull when it should be the energy highlight of the entire track. i get that it's a 90s feel, but at least those 90s techno vibes had more verve to them - this feels more like a framework than a finished section. i'm a bit torn on if it is offset by the great opening and the section at 2:43, which feel really expansive and introspective. i think that, in the interest of not making perfect the enemy of good, this is probably above the bar. i think it sounds solid and there's no big holes in the arrangement. YES edit 2/19: we used this track for our recent judgetest, and i spent a lot of time listening to it as a result. the more i listened to it, the more i felt that the middle was just not there. there's a lot of promise in the opening, but i think that i ultimately originally settled on the wrong side of the bar (in that it was close but not there, instead of barely squeaking by). that middle section needs more verve, better guitar tracking, and stronger instrument choices. i'm changing my vote. NO

opens with that creepy arp to start in a neat bell-like synth. melodic riff is in the pads initially with some big sweeps over top. the arp starts to double up and do some delay stuff with some rising action behind to escalate, drums that come in at 0:45 are kind of weak, but i see where they're going as you use them as an escalation element. the sausage starts to get made at 0:56 as the kick and bass elements come in more regularly. this track is super slammed in the feel despite not really having a ton of super loud elements, so it feels a bit oppressive, but i recognize that's both intentional and part of the style. it's nowhere near upbeat as i expected though given the big transition drums. 1:10-1:20 for example feels really empty, as does the section immediately following. 1:52 switches to a triplet feel (among other things), so it's a lot busier, but it's still just the beat, bass, melody in the pad, and arp repeating. i feel like there's not enough going on through most of these couple of sections. there's a big drop at 2:36 in energy, and the arp element is doing some hits in here. the off-beat part that followed was a fun feel. 3:09 hits and it's the same instruments as before but now they're doing different rhythms. still using the same synths after all this is starting to be tiresome, and the overall mastering is still super heavy so it's still feeling oppressive. to be clear - the variety you've implemented on the arrangement itself is really impressive. you're doing a ton of variety considering the melody itself is like 20s long. my issue is with the instruments being reused constantly and never changing, and with how empty several of the sections feel behind the melodic representation. we get to the end and it just kind of ends, and there's a cutoff on the synth instead of a fade. i wouldn't have minded something deconstructive to end this given how much you played with these elements throughout. i'm honestly not sure about this one. i love the arrangement. i don't like that it's four instruments throughout, and i don't like that there's a ton of room throughout for other stuff that doesn't seem to be capitalized on. it feels like this is the framework and it still needs the finishing bits. ? edit 12/3: ok, i slept on it, and i still don't dig the extended sections with so little going on, and i still don't dig the limited sound palette. kris's note about sidechaining is good too - that's why it doesn't feel like it can breathe (well, one of the reasons). so i think that a NO makes sense for me.

big band hit sounds great, if a bit right-ear heavy. there's a weird rattle in the drums at 0:29, like a frying sound. 0:50 is indeed bach-pilled. the wind here's a bit loud in the lower ranges but luckily it goes away pretty quickly. 1:27's got some real meat in that lead guitar tone, i love it. i liked the c section's change in beat and feel, gets a little more metallica in the feel. i didn't like that rain sfx right at the end of this section though - it sounds more like frying fat than it does rain. there's a nice solo at 2:55ish and i like the emphasis on the altered scalar patterns. i also liked the heavy rhythmic elements under it that come in later on in the solo. the transition to elrond is a little surprising mostly because we've used the same riff the entire song and now we've got something else that also is naturally a different feel (more funky). but i liked how it was handled, using it as a bass riff first. i think if you'd repeated it a few times there to reinforce it it'd have been easier to grok. this whole section is fun and my only complaint is i wish the bass was louder so i could hear all the fun stuff it's doing easier. we transition (abruptly) back to Press Start as an outro, and it's mostly done. a few more sfx and drum hits and we're there. this one's easy to my ear! the breakdown is helpful as always. i think a few transitions are a little less smooth than they could be, and i think that the sfx get in the way in a few places, but overall this arrangement is fiyah despite being covered in rain sfx so i'm good with it. nice work on this one! YES

opens with some nicely filtered synths. there's some elements of the little stepwise melodic chunk initially. the feel at 0:36 is fantastic, i love the fat sixteenth note synth. i'll admit i don't hear a ton of original in this first section with the drums, but i do get more of that descending line around the one minute mark when the second drumloop comes in. definitely an intentional but bad note choice selection at 1:48. the correlation in the later sections (around 2:00) is more subtle - maybe too subtle - and it isn't until maybe 2:39 that we more consistently get melodic material for any stretch of time. there's an outro starting at 3:25 and it's done. i love the feel, i really do. you've nailed the style you're going for and it's handled well. i just don't think there's anywhere near a preponderance of original here. there's not much in Aquas to hang your hat on, and you limited yourself to an even smaller segment of it for your feel here. i think that, unless i'm missing something significant, we're nowhere near 50%. i hear overt elements of the original from 0:15-0:36, 1:02-1:24, and 2:39-3:3:24 - about 40%. so i think that'd need to change before i'd be able to think about a yes. NO

ALBUM PROJECT TRACK (STAR FOX) Hey dudes and gal dudes, this is my submission for the Star Fox album. I'll save you some time - this track only uses the first 20 or so seconds of source. I lean heavy on the first part of the melody and that little 1-5-1 arpeggio, but I think the general reharm, melodic phrasing, and overall sound palette make this a substantial-enough reinterpretation. Not as harmonically dramatic as Aquas, but more chilled out and smooth while still being a bit mysterious. ~ The ruins slowly emerge from the void as you make the crossing; a vista nearly devoid sunlight. What was this place? Your viewport isn't nearly wide enough to see everything. The auxiliary monitors aren't much better, but - from the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of an unknowable creature on the screen. It silently retracts into the darkness. A moment passes, heard by the low rumble of the two-stroke diesel behind you. Curiosity guides your heavy hand to the throttle lever. The vessel cruises further into darkness. ~ Really I just wanted this to ooze "submarine" - without literally using sonar and water samples, I think it's pretty effective. But that reminds me - did you catch the ingame sample? I'd forgotten about it! Lol Cheers, RS LT Edit: Source usage info given 11/25 (after prophetik reached out): I guess I would make my argument that Aquas is built on 3 main components: The melodic sequence built on parallel 5ths. It continues past the first 0:20, but the melodic cadence is exactly the same. The 'chorus' section - I'm not really using this. The 1-5-1 arpeggio that plays throughout both. #1 is the hook. #3 I would attribute the group of synth layers that bind the track, the 'living arpeggio' as it were. It's not always literally 1-5-1, but IMO it serves the same role as a constant thread from start to finish, just always modulating to make it more interesting. It's simple, but I think it's worth a mention as a main characteristic of the track. As an aside - to use a visual analogy, I would also argue that musical "negative space" in general is a real and meaningful component of an arrangement. Maybe I'm on my own here, but I don't think I've ever seen the idea really presented as such on OCR. What's right for the track is not always what's right for the guidelines. Maybe I'm just becoming more at odds with the desired output. Hopefully this makes some sense. Either way, I'm past the point of doing any revisions, so I hope this will not count as a ding against the album as far as number of viable tracks is concerned. Thanks Games & Sources

sprechstimme is a great way to put it, and i'm surprised i didn't make that connection myself.

opens with some percussion. the loop points are pretty noticeable with the first percussive element. it's super bassy and very wet to start, and there's a few harmonics (around 3.1k) that are hard to listen to in that opening section. bass comes in with the melody at 0:20 and it's just a massive blob of mass between about 45 and 200hz: it's very dense in here, and it feels pretty slammed especially in the left ear which is louder than the left. melody's in a percussive instrument, but it honestly sounds like there's more delay or verb response than there is melody. it's hard to hear where the attack is in the melodic instrument. as i listened to this opening section a bit more, i realized that i think that the original's playing real-time behind the added elements like synth, guitar, and effecting (just start the original's youtube at like 30s in). i think it's being chopped up and looped, but i think that's why it's so dense-sounding. the instrumentation elements are playing exact matches from what i can hear. we don't disallow sampling the original in remixes that we post, but we do require arrangement that is transformative. this is quite literally just the original audio with a small number of additional elements layered on top and a really, really bass-heavy master complete with huge reverb added to the entire thing. not only does not this not pass muster on the engineering side with the mix being so dense and boomy and most attacks not being able to be heard, it also doesn't pass on the arrangement side given that the arrangement is essentially not yours throughout. this isn't something that we'd be able to accept. if you wanted to rework it to feature your own instruments, and focus more on the arrangement (since there's essentially no personalization here), then that's something that we can work with. this isn't even a cover, though, it's the original track with something on it to discourage copyright detection. NO OVERRIDE

opens with EPs and a funk bass feel. the melody comes in at 0:30. this section feels a bit thinner after the more lush EPs to start it, but it lets you focus a bit on some of the countermelodic material going on. there's a time signature shift at 0:49 to 7/8, which is an interesting idea given the original's surprising drop beats that it has throughout occasionally. there is a copypasta section from 0:30 at 1:04 (to my ears this is exact until about 1:21). i like the shift in chords at 1:21 to mix it up. we get a break at 1:52 to lighten up the shuffle - essentially the first time in two minutes without it - and i like the chord choices here. there's a bit more personalization of the melodic line after this and some more shuffling with phrase length, which is nice. 2:46 is a short recap of the B section of the theme, and this functions as an outro. the ending is a bit sudden given that it feels like it's just a repeated pattern and not really moving towards an ending. overall i think this is a fun take on a well-known theme. i like the genre shift and the added arrangement elements, and the track sounds good even despite the adaptation attempt towards original sound concepts. nice work. YES

This is a bit of a reimagining of Fei Long's theme from SSFIIT in the more sleek style of the Street Fighter Alpha 2 soundtrack. I rewrote the tune to fit more clearly into the mid-90s Casiopea-influence of the SFA2 soundtrack, and I produced the whole track using sounds/samples similar to those used in the CPS-2 arcade board. This is not a 100% faithful emulation of that sound (there are modern production techniques involved), but I wanted to try and capture the general vibe of that era of Capcom games. This is more or less what I think Fei Long's theme would sound like if he had been added to Alpha 2. Cheers! Games & Sources Super Street Fighter II Turbo - Fei Long's theme

I wanted to make it feel a little bit more like you were really in the space that the song is trying to manifest. The original drums were the only part of the song that I decided to sample and leave basically untouched. They are the core and driving force of the whole piece. They keep you wanting to move forward through this jungle of sounds that occupy the rest of the space. I feel like the US OST of Sonic CD is woefully underrepresented today. Of course the original JP soundtrack has plenty of hits and a ton of staying power, but Spencer Nilsen's work has always shined in my eyes ever since I first played the game on the Sonic Gems Collection waaaaay back in 2005. I wanted to honor his and his team's work without deriving too much from the original concepts and charm. Think of this as a sort of "Sonic Mania-ified" version of the OG track. Games & Sources This is an arrangement from Sonic CD's US Soundtrack, Palmtree Panic by Spencer Nilsen. Very specifically, I based the song progression off of the version heard in the Sonic The Hedgehog Boom CD from 1994 -

my previous vote on this primarily focused around the mastering issues and that there wasn't enough unique perspective on each track (ie. the focus was more on the original's positives instead of the arrangement's positives). i don't remember how the piece sounded though, it was too long ago. opens with filtered arps coming in - i like the wind sounds coming in here. the bass comes in with a martial feel around 0:12, and i think that the lead and countermelodic instrument have some nice movement on them. i can hear the schala arp behind it too which is a fun precursor. drums and other stuff that comes in at 0:36 is also neat. the hornet-adjacent lead add is a neat idea - having it have such a short sustain is a positive so it doesn't take up the entire soundscape. there's some subtle gating that starts 0:53 that i think is intentional and not limiter pumping - if so it should be a bit more obvious so that it's clear it's not unintentional. it's a cool effect. there's a break right at the 1:00 minute mark that functions as a nice dovetail. schala theme comes in at 1:18. the beat here is nice and reminiscent of the ethnic percs that are throughout CT's soundtrack, and the constant varying of elements helps the slower tempo and schala's slower pace of the melody. there's another cool transition involving gating, and we're into some VO stuff. 2:30 is the return of the Terra b theme, this section felt a little lacking in direction. i didn't like all of the countermelodic elements (some are not quite voiced well enough to feel normal), and the turbo-pan thing going on was a little much on headphones. i also felt it was lacking energy coming out of the VO break, at least partially because the bass was often not on the root. 3:03 brings back schala (and the iconic ascending harp scale) - initially pretty low energy still, but quickly escalating via a variety of percussive and synth elements. i don't know if stacking the bass with the melody works in this section, but it's an interesting change. after this is the outro, which wanders a bit through the schala arp until it hits the final notes, and then it's done. this is a vast improvement over the last version. there's a ton of variety and added content here from when i last heard it, and the mix is a lot better too. i think it lacks a bit of energy in the back half and wanders a bit more, but i love the feel of the first half and the overall track does a great job navigating these two monumental originals. great work. YES

previous decision I wrote this song for an 8Bit Music Theory discord weekly challenge to "make a mash-up arrangement from at least two SNES songs." I thought it would be kind of funny to go for two of the most widely-remixed SNES songs I could think of, Schala's Theme from Chrono Trigger and Terra's Theme from FFVI. Thinking about it, mashing up these songs felt appropriate—both Schala and Terra were women possessing vast magical talents, both used by powerful countries as weapons—Terra as a slave for the Gestahlian Empire, and Schala to power Zeal's Mammon Machine. I wanted each melody to get the spotlight, while still twining together underlying parts of each song throughout the piece. I transposed the songs into the same key so it would be easier to meld them together. I was feeling synths and a trap beat for this piece (idk why, vibes?), and I ended up experimenting with some new sounds and production techniques to fill out the arrangement. After a failed pass through the panel, I focused on making the piece my own, adding in some new parts and some vocals to break up the sameness. I also redid the drums to bring in more variety, and added some mechanical noises to the background. Finally, I sought out mixing and mastering feedback from the community to help polish the piece. Thanks ZackParrish, hemophiliac, and the amazing OCR discord community for ongoing feedback and support on this mix! Games & Sources Chrono Trigger: Schala's Theme by Yasunori Mitsuda. - Melody used 0:00–1:00, 2:30–3:03, 3:50–end - Accompaniment used throughout FFVI: Terra's Theme by Nobuo Uematsu. - Melody used 1:06–2:30, 3:03—3:51 - Accompaniment used throughout

immediately recognizable right off the jump. strings and choir samples aren't stunning but they're serviceable. the guitar's mixed pretty hot but i like the tone a lot for this style. first break comes in at 0:55 and it's short, but does herald a change of style. the first real change to the string parts don't show until like 1:15, which isn't great, but the updated stuff for this section do sound good and are a nice thing to emphasize. there's a change to a faster feel at 2:18 which is a cool sound. i wish there'd been a break before this, though, this is several minutes in a row of machine-gun drums and guitars, and a breather would have helped out a lot. i like the unison brass and lower guitar section at around 3:00. there's not much of an ending, just a final held chord and it's done. this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the theme. the guitar work sounds good, and after the 75-second mark i like the backing elements a lot. nice work. YES

some interesting sfx to start us off. 0:22 opens with some rolled chords in the acoustic and electric (i really like the tone of the acoustic guitar). EK comes in right away and i have to say i like her tone a lot better than the cokehead in the original. there's a melodyne artifact at 1:08 in EK's voice on that slide. some nice flute after as well, understated but effective. PF's vocals are nice and rich in this range, so that's a nice contrast to EK. drums come in at 2:07 and sound overprocessed to me, the hats sound all highs and no tone, and the snare sounds like it's over-EQed. the vocals that come in at 2:33 also sound way overprocessed, they're super notched and nowhere near as rich as they sounded earlier. formants are too boosted as are the highs. there's a break after this at 2:59 with just the electric and flute, and we're back to EK's vocals (again, this feels so much richer than the tone at 2:33) for a bit before a great solo at 3:37. love what it's saying here. at 4:03 the vocals come back in. the harmonies are way too loud here so it's hard to pick out the voice line that should be the lead voice - turning the harmonies down by a quarter or more is needed there. the second section that is mostly in unison is a bit better mixed but still needs the harmonies turned down. 4:52's backing strings and flute is a nice contrast and fitting for this style. at 5:17 we get the requisite more-technical section from PF =) it doesn't really fit everything else that's happened until this section but it's not a dealbreaker, just a little jarring of a transition. i hear a mistake in the acoustic guitar at the end of the riff at 5:26. there's some dueling solo concepts and then we get the expected instrumental bridge right after, headlined by a singing guitar line that sounds fantastic. there's a slam break and another very quiet section at 6:09 that builds quickly back into the band sound. there's a mic pop at 6:20. the vocals at 6:22 don't quite match up. the song trucks through the chorus one more time, and we move into the outro material. there's some acoustic to play us out and it's done. this is a huge undertaking! i really like the arrangement and the overall picture of the piece. i think the mastering isn't there yet - both in terms of balance for the vocal sections and in terms of the band sound when everything's in. there's some little spots here and there (expected in a work this large!) that have some technical elements that need to be fixed. but man, is this going to be cool when it's there! NO

opens with some sfx, but gets back to the melodic content right off the bat in the background in an altered fashion. some tasteful electric keys bring us to the intro of the vocals at 0:31. vocals sound untreated, but i like the variety of backing vocal elements brought in. there was some intentional wavering in the pitch, and i don't think it all quite works (1:02's just too indistinct to work imo). 1:07's a vibe shift, clearly more of an aggressive feel as it builds up towards the percussive hit at 1:36. some of the textures around the 1:45 range are pretty interesting. the live vibes add a lot. this whole section thematically fits the game but really doesn't feel tied to Starjump at all. there's another chorus where the untreated vocals seem more intense and obvious, and the vocals sound even more Lin-Manuel Miranda than they did before. there's some very nicely handled bells as it fades towards a faux ending, and then we get the intense banging chorus that we've been waiting for the whole song. this section not being swung was a little jarring to me (fitting!) and the deconstruction of the vocals over time was nice as well. i was on the fence for source usage on this one for a bit. the original's just a broken chord arpeggio for the entire track, so with the initial transformation you did to that pattern, i felt it was getting lost in some places. i think you tied it back in pretty well throughout with some of the voicings and especially the ending, however, and the whole package overall definitely feels more Starjump than individual sections do. i also was on the fence because i really didn't care for the vocal performance initially. in general i don't care for this style of spoken-word half-singing, and even after listening several times i don't think there's really a melody - learning the song and repeating it wouldn't really be singing, but more theater. i found myself being more open to it when i thought of the whole work as a performance instead of a recording. i wish the vocals were better treated - there's a lot of room sound on it which flattens the feel a lot. from a creative perspective, though, whoa. there's so much variety and clever interplay of parts over the four minutes of runtime. the vibes performance as well is perfect for this kind of quirky track. celeste continues to inspire some really creative and unique works and this is no different. nice work. YES

really need compression on this track. modern classical works use compression to handle highs/lows regularly in studio recordings. the dynamic range is just too dramatic. opening is really sparse, more so than i expected. it's more cinematic than i think we've heard in the past from rebecca. when the melodic material comes in at 0:28, it felt very FFXII-esque to me - there's a few parts of that soundtrack that have similar scoring. agree with hemo the panning's too much. the sound field is way too wide. the constant running eighth notes are a nice reference, and i really like the eventual tambourine that's added in, very fitting from a scoring perspective. the outro is light and nicely handled. this is another rebecca track - similar soundscape as prior tracks, similar method of expansion of the original, similar technical issues. i liked the addition of brass this time around, and this type of original is more fitting to your scoring style, i think, than some other recent submissions. i'd have loved to see more expansion - branching into a less rhythmic direction, for example, or picking out some of the smaller elements of the track and exploring them without the running rhythmic element to pin it together. but what's here is fine and definitely above our bar. YES

i'm not voting on this because it's my project. but i never felt this was a particularly developed arrangement. the soloing sounds like it's for another song. it's cool that he found the original loop though and the track is mastered real well. it was kind of funny because i asked jordan specifically to join the project because i needed a banger track to fill out the flame side of the album and then he came back with something significantly different than what i'd expected.

this is a really surprising and weird original. fade-in with some arcade cabinet samples alongside the saxes and kit. sax parts sound straight out of a 50s floor band, love the tone. 0:30 the guitar comes in (feels a bit loud) and the main melodic concepts make their first appearance. i get what's going on, but 0:58 felt a little disjointed. 1:15's a bit of a shift to provide some contrast. i didn't like the stutters at 1:21 despite usually liking that kind of thing given how verby everything else was - really sounds forced in there. 1:25's break with the keys and smooth synth is really nice, you nailed the style there. there's a build into some solo content, and i love aarek's tone on this solo. i also appreciate how much they lean into the wonkiness available in the chords - it's very angular and fits surprisingly well. section after this at 2:25 is again a bit heavy on guitar, but i like the continuing focus on goofing with the background chords to mix it up. great solo at 3:20. this whole section feels a lot more fusion with the guitar and synth bass, so the really aggressive sax tone fits super well. ending squares up the beat and melody, and there's one last big fall before it's done. this is a slam dunk. i love the mix of genres, the approach with the live instruments alongside the obvious synth elements, and the shape of the arrangement overall. excellent work. YES

Collabers: Jabo (on guitar), Newmajoe (on sax ensemble), AarekMG (on trumpet). Yet another DoD month, yet another submission. Hot from Alien month in october 2024, the theme was to pick a source/game related to aliens. I picked "Aurum Island" from Kid Icarus: Uprising, a game (and soundtrack) very underrated by the general videogame crowd. This theme plays in a random alien invasion arc in the game so it was eligible! I've loved it since I played the game, since it's a random smooth jazz track in what's (generally) a soundtrack composed of bombastic orchestral arrangements. For my take on the track I decided to keep part of the original's instrumentation, recruiting Joe and Nathan to make a fun ensemble. I added, as usual, electric guitars in the form of frequent collaber Jabo. Since the DoD theme was "Alien" I decided to pick some less expected sounds to finish the soundscape, like a synth bass instead of a real bass, electronic toms on the drums and several random SFX like weird sounds and glitches. I think the arrangement came out with a fun and fresh sounds because of that. In terms of arrangement, outside of chord changes here and there the main variation I did over the original was switching some parts from 4/4 to 7/8, but I'll detail that later. Track ended up coming 4th, a good result in what was a very stacked competition! Breakdown: 0:00-00:30: Intro, the goal here was to introduce the main elements of the soundscape. It's kinda based on the source intro's buildup but I added an original chord progression. 00:30-1:15: Main melody of the source. Here I switched the main arpeggio to 7/8 for the fun aspect, although there's some bars that return to 4/4. 1:15-1:25: Original riff based on the main arpeggio. 1:25-1:46: Based on the second main melody of the source (played by the synth lead). 1:46-2:05: Another buildup with toms and fun chords! 2:05-2:24: Just like in Waka Waka, Aarek gets to shine with a jazzy solo! 2:25-2:38: Saxes and guitar play the main melody over a constantly moving chord progression. 2:38-2:49: This riff closes each loop in the source, I made it more metal here and it sounds really cool IMO. 2:58-3:38: Repeat of the second main melody but now much more similar to the source. Followed by a sax solo on a transposed version of the same chord progression. 3:38-end: Metal riff returns but now with awesome sax over it! Makes for a powerful ending! Hope you enjoy! Games & Sources Game: Kid Icarus: Uprising Source: Aurum Island

opens with some big stabs and a bit orchestral crescendo. lots of shea right off the bat. i really like the more traditional-sounding tone that shea takes in here, lots of bow noise and portamento. 0:32 is where it takes off with the whole band sound. this sounds a little over-scooped and there's a few EQ spikes that are a little weird in here, but admittedly there's a lot going on! i appreciate that this is symphonic metal and not symphonic rock - there's some pretty intense drum work and rhythmic orchestral/guitar elements. the riff at 0:47 is great. there's a few stabs at 1:22 and a short flourish in the keys, and then we get into mixed meter time as only TheManPF does regularly. i think the mixed meter really helps keep it feeling like it's a shanty or something, there's a lot of added intensity just by making it not quite what you expect. theme's back at 2:07 with some crushing guitar work to help support it. 2:26's melodic representation in the bass instruments is a nice change too, and makes the subsequent guitar lead much more heroic. would have loved some supporting brass in there as well. a big sfx hit and a few more orchestral stabs, and it's done. overall the sound is slammed, but i honestly found the noisy, aggressive, brash mastering to be fitting given the approach. there's a lot down low and it does sound a bit muddy in some places where the orchestra, guitar chugs, bass, and kick are all fighting for screen time, but for the most part TheManPF does a great job keeping this listenable while still maintaining a raw edge to the track. excellent work. this is a ton of fun to listen to. YES