prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

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

starts with some wide pads and a pretty similar initial representation of the original. there's a fairly immediate transition to some phased drums, guitar, and bass at 0:56. drums are doing some neat things with time and drop out in interesting places, which is fun. there's a lot of ear candy added - the kalimba at 1:40, the synth stuff at 1:32, guitar work at 1:52 - so despite the lack of traditional arrangement, the upscaling is pretty solid. there's some push and pull to the time at 2:15, and the drums and bass kick the groove up soon after. i appreciate the wildness this brings to the table, as the parts kind of fall apart and come back together again at 2:50 or so. i can definitely hear the warmth you've attempted to infuse into this track - it's present both in the instrumentation and in the mastering. those rising synths at 3:14 are delicious. there's some strings to carry the first melodic fragment at 3:25, and those carry the rest of the track along some light accoutrement. this is delightful. uplifting, warm, a summer breeze type of track that has some really fun nooks and crannies to explore. excellent work. YES

original is just a beat with an arp and some pad chords. it's a neat idea, but man is it limited in what it has. opens with some distorted synth flourishes and pads. percussive elements and bass comes in at 0:18. i hear the first reference to the original at 0:37 in a quiet mid-range synth in the background, but it comes in more at 0:56. mix is hard-slammed up against the limiter here, but the distortion that's coming from that appears to be intentional, giving it a gritty feel that matches the game well. the sonar ping tones in the original are mirrored with some extras at 1:31. the mixing here is dense in a few ways - besides being quite loud, it's a very dark feel with little in the highs and many layered elements in the lows. the bass sits around the 30-35hz mark and there's a lot both there, at the first overtone (70-80hz), and the second overtone (~95-100hz). it's hard to tell if that's from the bass being overtone-heavy or if that's where the drum hits fit, but it's pretty thick as a result. as it is, the fundamental from the bass is hard to hear on the bass-heavy headphones i'm listening on, so i'm wondering if backing off some of the other low-end elements a bit would allow that to breathe more and not feel so crunched down low. there's a cadence at 2:08 and it keeps trucking on the groove. i like the drum work and the space in the bass instrument, but it's an intense groove and it's been going for >1:30 at this point and hasn't really changed at all - some air is needed. there's a shift at 2:44 when a new instrument is added, but it's the same groove here even when a higher rhythmic element is added at like 3:05. we do finally get a bit of a break at 3:24, but the rhythmic bass elements are still there and are back in at 3:40. given the lack of delta for minutes at a time, this definitely needs some repetitive elements cut out - even the chord progression, which is super basic, hasn't changed at all for almost four minutes at this point. 3:58 adds a higher synth which is a nice change since everything up until now's been very low and heavy. after this is some subtractive arrangement as elements drop out. we hear the sonar synth once more time before the fade starts at 5:10 and continues for >30 seconds. way too long of a fade-out. i really like this idea. the initial groove with drums and the squelchy bass synth sounds really great. it pretty much doesn't change for 4+ minutes, though, outside of a 20s break and eventually adding a higher synth to mirror some other elements. that's waaaay too long for a melody-light approach like you've done here. if there were things to draw our attention away from the basic chord progression and almost non-existent harmonic elements from the original, i'd be fine with the length, but this is too much repetition. even the final fadeout is 20s or more longer than it should have been. from a mastering perspective, it's very loud, but the distortion introduced by slamming everything into the limiter is desired, so that's not a huge deal. i'd not mind seeing a few of the backing elements turned down a touch to let the melodic material breathe when it shows up, though. i would love to hear a version of this that's maybe three minutes or so long and includes more expansion of the original. it'd be great if there was some more flex in the dynamics in the piece, as well. NO

opens with a slick bass groove. vocal elements at 0:10 are quite sharp in terms of frequency - siblants especially are quite bright. there's some Hurry in there and then it's back to the original lick. we finally get some full voice at 0:46, with some full band sound. it's surprisingly light under the voice part - there's guitar mostly in the right ear, bass and drums, but nothing that i'd call rhythm guitar or a pad that i can hear. it drops down again for a verse/spoken section at 1:00 or so, and this works through some more alternate sections of spoken word and singing. the singing is hard to hear cut through the band sound - it doesn't look like there's much formant boost on some of those sections, i'm wondering if boosting ~2200hz would help it cut. the band section after this is super technical and sounds great, i especially like the tom work. the chorus following has a lot of sections with the singer singing higher notes and not much underneath them - this doesn't sound particularly strong since there's little to connect the two elements. there's a build with some growls through 2:15 which is a transition point. the Tool influence is immediately recognizable when it comes in, hard to miss on the drum solo with repeated guitar parts over top. this is pretty darn close to the original Tool influence. the tom section ends with more call/response of singing and growls, and there's some off-signature Hurry elements as an interim section here. a bit more call and response, some rhythmic elements, and it's done. if i am honest, there are sections of this that i don't care for pretty strongly. i felt that the sections with the vocalist up high and there being little to no harmonic support underneath (like at 1:50) really felt unbalanced. from a technical standpoint, the vocal elements for the most part were executed competently, but there's a few times where approximants like the 'w' sound in "wide awake" at 2:10 or 3:16 took too long to come out and sound schmeared as a result. the band-only sections are technically proficient (3:09 is insanely flashy), extremely fun to listen to, and influenced heavily enough by the Tool source track to the point that there may be concerns from some judges. separately, from an arrangement standpoint, the arrangement is freaking nuts, guys. this is a beyond awesome adaptation of two really fun originals, and they're interwoven enough that it's not just one's the verse and the other's the chorus. i mentioned a few times that i feel that support was needed to lash everything together, but from a 500-foot level, this is bananas. lastly, from a mastering standpoint, my main complaint was the heavy siblant sound from some of the spoken word elements - beyond that, this sounds super clean and well-handled. i think there's a few missteps. but overall this is an incredible concept with some truly superlative execution on the instrumental side and overall excellent arrangement. nice work. YES

this has a lot of the themes from Earth, which is the only track from the OST i've ever remixed myself. was neat to hear the different elements from a track i haven't heard in a decade. opens with the quarter note theme from the original alongside some pads and swooshes. there's some keys, but it really hits at 0:30 with strings coming in. they're a bit muddy in the low end and repeat the same pattern for quite a bit. there's some electric guitar for a bit on the arpeggiated lead, but i also hear some clipping at 1:01, and a lot more at 1:06 and after. the additive arrangement techniques continue with a synth voice element and some cinematic strings. there's a lot overlapping by this point - maybe 1:35 or so - and it's mostly doing the same thing as the original through all this. there's a drop at 1:59 and some rhythmic elements added in, which is a nice change. a plectral instrument is added at 2:13 and again outlines the melodic material with some other light arpeggiation added in. we continue to see additive arrangement as more elements are added in, making what's effectively an additive crescendo through the next 30s or so. there's a lot of clipping around the 3:04 mark for several seconds when the bass instrument comes in. there's a big wall-of-sound transition at 3:27 with some taiko and other rhythmic elements added in. this sounds awesome but clips like nuts - the bass and the bottom end of the drums are heavily conflicting with each other until 3:56 when they drop off. there's some outro material and it's done. this needs a significant mastering pass. there's a lot of EQing and volumization that can be done especially on the low end to help with the huge clipping that's going on. i don't even really hear compression or a limiter engaging, so something that can reign in the big sections without losing the timbral contrast of the quieter parts would be critical. from an arrangement perspective, this is a fairly conservative but competent arrangement. i wouldn't have minded hearing some more creativity around the melodic line and chord progressions, given that most of the countermelodic and harmonic material you used was already present in the original. before this passes, for me, i'd need to hear a significant EQing and volumization pass made so that the mastering is much cleaner. the arrangement stuff isn't required but it'd be a stronger track if it's considered. NO

post-rock? sign me up! some really pretty flourishes to start. the bass does something really weird at 0:26 and again at 0:30 (detuned? is it scooping?). the drums start at 0:39 and it's a nice feel already. the addition of the rhythmic element at 1:04 in the acoustic is a neat feel behind the drums. we get the b content at 1:57, complete with shift in time signature. i like the lead being carried by the guitar octaves there. we finally get some real drums at 2:35 and it blows through the chords again before a big hit at 3:28, with some falling action. after a bit of a bridge, 3:52 begins the real build, and this has a suitable payoff of almost a minute of full bore material. finally hitting the electric guitar lead feels really great here. i wouldn't have minded if the guitars were more wall-of-sound here, but the band sound here is still great. 5:12 is the beginning of the end. zach's lead guitar parts here are reminiscent of some of OA's stuff over the years, so that's a fun correlation. some washes of sound and the track's done. this is a lay-up as expected based on the contributors. excellent work. YES

opening is very similar to standoff, but quickly shifts to an acoustic-driven psytrance groove. this progresses through the chord progression before getting to the first break at 0:54. audiomint comes in here - it's not super clear what she's singing at first, as the pronunciation isn't super clear. open your mouth when you sing! that'll fix most of that right away without changing anything else. a bit more emphasis on the consonants will help too. there's some rising action with the strings around 1:10 and at 1:24 it really kicks it up. vocals are still clear in the mix, although i wouldn't have minded a little more formant boost around 2.5k-3k to bring her voice out more as opposed to just cranking it up. some sfx and the beat hits at 1:58. there's a really nice lfo distorted synth doing some fun stuff in the background here. this headbobs through the chord progression some more until we get to a string-driven section at 3:53. this is pretty dense in here with the low strings and some of the synth pads in the same area. there's a drop at 3:22 and a shift back to 12/8. kick has a ton of click on it which is a neat feel. some acoustic makes it back in which is nice - i was starting to lose the plot through some of the chord work without melodic backing. the mesh of acoustic and electronic at 4:02 is really nice. the gating effects applied once a while are fun too. it goes through the chord progression one more time and it's done. this is a pretty hip track as expected from a xaleph-fronted project. the beat is immaculate throughout. i would have liked to hear a bit of a clearer singing section, and separately i didn't connect a lot of the more beat-driven sections directly to Standoff's recognizable elements. i believe we're still >50%, but would have liked more overall correlation. this is still way over the bar though, excellent work as always. YES

my original vote criticized the instrumentation but loved the arrangement and concept. this has 4.6db of headroom. opens with piano (straight from the Siege track, to my ears) with some nice light strings over top. cello carries the melody after that and sounds great, really rich tone. it might be a touch loud, and the vibrato's a little aggressive in parts. 0:59's strings sound better than last time for sure. 1:32's change is still abrupt but not quite as weird as it was before, i think. cello and subsequent vocals sound a lot better. there's a highly artificial artifact in the waveform through this section that i don't know is intentional - it looks like you managed a volume shift by the gain knob on your limiter, which is kind of wild. it coincides with the entry of the choirs. this section with the two choirs sounds good, but i think the men's choir is a bit loud as it's hard to hear things beyond it when it's going full-on. 2:57's idea is super fun. from an execution standpoint, there's nothing in the middle of the chord stack besides some flute runs. there needs to be something supporting the higher strings so that the bass doesn't feel disconnected. when the brass drums come in, it fleshes out a lot. the drums really run over a lot in the mix though, so some more EQing may be needed there. the ending is a call-back to the Siege track, and feels pretty similar to the opening. from an execution standpoint, this is a lot better than last time. the strings overall are gobs better, the instrumentation has a lot more individuality to it, and the choirs sound great. i think right now though that the overall instrumentation and use of samples is right on the edge of where i'd consider it to need to be to be posted. there's some missteps in the mastering (like the density of the end section around 3:25) that i think keep it on the NO side for me, but i'm honestly going to wait on a few more votes before i make my decision. i think this is pretty borderline but the arrangement is really fun. ? edit 10/8: i am going to NO this. i believe the execution ultimately falls down in too many places. some major elements that come to mind is the rigid piano scoring, hard vibrato on the cello, 2:20ish's seemingly disparate elements, 2:57's emptiness under the string tune (just the cello and flute runs, but nothing supporting the melodic line strongly enough to count), and the compressor engaging at 3:21ish thanks to the drums having no room tone to them and the emptiness in the scoring at that same section. again, i love the idea - it's just not there on the execution side. NO

opens with some tambourine and strings. there's some little wind perks here and there as well to provide some texture. there's an ascending line at 0:27 that sounds like it is being layered and sounds discordant as a result, lots of major seconds next to each other. this progresses for about 40s in a continuing, overlapping, rising motion, alongside some orchestral percussion. there's a shift at 1:10 and the samples being used (which up to now have been not great but OK) are really exposed. the super-long attack on the strings and significant swell sounds pretty rough and unrealistic. there's also not a lot up to this point that i am associating with the original. there's another break at 1:45 and some pipes are added in. the original's material is behind the pipes solo, and it's a neat vibe. i like the tone of the guitar used. when the flute came in around 2:50, i'm finding myself wondering if that's the original audio with other stuff layered on top (we don't accept original audio here essentially at all). right after that there's some really atonal stuff that wasn't clear if it was intentional. 3:41's a rising action and clearly the start of something else from a feel perspective. this is mostly original to my ear but demonstrates better usage (for the most part) of the samples than earlier at 1:10. 4:15's return of the melody alongside some more cinematic strings is nice, although it's quite muddy as the low strings are just crushing the sonic space - the spectrum analysis of here has some really unique peaks as compared to a normal track. this kind of noodles through a lot of mud as the mid range gets overwhelmed by a choir sample, and then it's done. there is virtually no ending to speak of - not even ending on a chord, really, it just sounds unfinished. i think the mood you attained for the first several minutes is definitely in keeping with the original. you mentioned that as a goal and it's definitely accomplished. overall the usage of the strings - specifically in several of the sustains where they swell out of control, and in the low strings where it just dominates the texture - needs a lot of work. i thought the pipes stuff was really interesting actually and well-done. you'd want to confirm if you're using the original audio, as we don't accept original audio in most cases. the arrangement was quite meandering and didn't have a clear focus on a melodic line throughout. this is a technique that can definitely work in the right setting, but i found most of the meandering to be forgettable and not taking me along on a journey. there was no goal for most of the track. it'd be difficult to identify 50% of the track as having VtM:R source to my ears due to this. separately, there's no ending, and there was a lot of atonality that didn't seem to be prepared or set up in a way that i'd expect something like that to be - it didn't seem intentional, which is bad when it comes to tonal writing. overall i think this needs more attention on the strings usage throughout, some focus on the atonal elements where you've got long tails from notes overlapping other sustains, and some time spent paring down the arrangement to be less noodly and more focused. NO

i would never have thought of this in 3/4 tbh, given the strong emphasis towards the first beat in the measure (as opposed to 1 and 3, often used in 3/4 to keep it moving forward) and the flowing feel of the piece. i feel this in 6/8 more. opens with strings and keys in a cinematic crescendo. adaptation to 7/8 is done using a standard 2/2/3 pattern. nice flourish into the first presentation of the melody at 0:10. there's a big crescendo and shout at 0:22 that doesn't sound particularly realistic - i think it's the brass - but the following section is really nicely done with the sudden reduction in volume. vin runs at 0:32 pop in and out of the texture nicely as well. instrumental stacks at 0:43 do a good job coming out of the texture as well above the choral elements. there's a significant decrescendo and reduction of energy through 0:54 into 0:58. choral elements are starting to feel a bit overused here. 1:27's a reset, sort of, and there's another crescendo to a dropoff - really liking that effect. 1:47's where the trumpet leads the charge into another significant crescendo through 2:06's break. from there, it's a little bit of piano noodling and it's done. the piano here's saying some nice stuff but it's a little robotic. and then it's done. the bosendorfer's a great choice for this kind of music, given that it's so warm and rich without giving up the ability to cut through big orchestral stacks. this is a fun romp through one of the better Dark Souls themes. i particularly liked the swells into drops - you did a good job subverting what could have been otherwise a very bog-standard cinematic orchestral adaptation. excellent work. YES

opens with sfx and rhythmic elements. opening section is very quiet, maybe too quiet based on the breadth of dynamics in the piece. there's some string sweeps and bells far off, and these continue to accompany foley work until we get to the 1:00 mark when we start to get more instruments. i'm not hearing a ton of source in this opening section, but there's some very tenuous links to the bells and some melodic content. there are definitely nontonal elements around 1:26 which is an issue due to the very long reverb. 1:39 is kind of where things get going. this is very meandering. i can hear the B section of the melody in here, underneath some of the wandering ideas. there's some really odd note choices though (plucked/filtered bell instrument...is that a piano? at 1:50, 2:03, 2:08), and the verb tail is still really long which makes it even more dense. the low mids through here are very dense as well - the fundamental of the aforementioned bell/piano instrument is right next to the bass, and it's pretty muddy here as a result even before the low sweep synth comes. 2:16's a big shift. there's a significant reduction of backing elements in here so it's immediately less dense, but you've still got low strings, the piano instrument, and a bass instrument next to each other in the same range, and a distorted synth comes in later in the same range, so it's still dense. the melody's clearer here, which is good, and there's some fun ideas in the percussion and in the pizz strings that aren't in the basement. the piano gets more noodly as this section goes on, and the lack of clarity on the attack as a result makes it difficult to hear what's going on. 2:53's a shift to orchestral instrumentation. there's a lot of sustains here in the brass especially - it feels very over-orchestrated as a result. this is a super common mistake among people using orchestrated elements in edm and rock, and it's amazing how much body a piece gets by removing elements. cutting out a lot of the instruments sustaining notes would make it feel less mid-heavy and let the melody and percussion soar over the top. the big, blocky melody works really well with orchestral instrumentation, though, and this is a great transitional section to pin together the section before and after it. this would be a great opportunity to get after modifying the melody a bit if you wanted to. there's a tambourine that's used earlier but more heavily at 3:35, and it's very resonant and ringy - it'd be great if we could tone that back. the drop at 3:50 is a neat idea to change the feel a bit and mix it up. i think it could have been prepared a bit better so that it's not just a knee-jerk change. there's a note issue at 4:05.5 in whatever bell instrument comes in there, and it happens again a few seconds later. the additive crescendo from the pads and other instruments coming in sounds neat, but they are in general all lower instruments and it means that again it gets very dense very quickly. there's a bell instrument used at 4:27 in a percussive manner that is very piercing and was hard to hear. there's an ascending pattern to build tension - and then the instrument fades into a more meandering thing alongside more foley. there's some musicbox elements, and it's done. i know this track has been a journey! it certainly has changed a ton for the better since the last time i heard it. in general, it's still too low-mid dense (this is an instrumentation issue, not a mastering issue), and there's a lot of leaning on instruments with long tails (either by reverb or by design) that result in clashing tonalities. i think both can be mitigated by taking a surgical approach to each instrument and carefully either adjusting the range it's playing in (for pads, plectral instruments, and pianos) or trimming the long sustains and resonant freqs (on bell instruments). i personally didn't care for or get the first minute plus or the last 30s, but that's neither here nor there. i do think that having a clearer ending statement that's more rooted in the original and less interpretive might be a more effective way to close out the arrangement, but that might be personal preference from me. keep at it! you can do this =) NO

you stole my thunder with the play-by-play, so now i'm stuck writing actual notes. bah! opening piano is beautiful. it's a bit hammer-heavy of a tone but it's surprisingly organic as a result. opening cello work is, as you described it, pretty raw and emotive - there's a lot of bow sound/fuzz in the tone, but it feels very adjacent as a result. there's a few scoops which fit the style very well. the next section starting at 1:16 is a little slow to get going, but the sustains in the cello sound really nice when they come. there's a big shift at 2:22 for the 'big crash' section. i don't feel this is quite as well-handled and integrated as the equivalent part in the original. there's a lot of left hand in the piano so it sounds a bit dense, but that's more a recording issue than it is an arrangement element. the next section with the repeated ascending motif and slow decrescendo is really nice, though, and when it goes to the harmonized riff, the delicate backing in the keys is really pretty. there's some noodling through some chord progressions after that section, and a fade that i think probably could have been the end of the track comfortably. a few more times through the initial guitar arp in the keys and it's done. this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the original. there's a lot of neat little things done to keep it from being a straight cover, and i appreciate those little bits and bobs here and there. i think that the transition in the middle to the bigger section could have been handled in a less angular fashion, and the end drags a bit, but overall this is a great arrangement with a lot to like. the realization of it is also superb - it feels very close to my ears and the recording is done in a very transparent manner. nice work. YES