prophetik music

what an original! super fun. i've never heard it. very slow opening. most of the first 25s are empty, which is certainly a choice. 0:17 has some synths come in that feel a touch out of tune with the piano - sounds like their overtones are a little funky. they set my teeth on edge a bit. there's some nice rolled piano chords at 0:33, and then a shakuhachi comes in with the main melodic material. this is super breathy and doesn't mesh with the clean tone of the piano much at all - i think the tone'd work better with a much bigger section. there's some fm-y plucks that come in at 0:59 along some strings, and again those plucks are very loud and have a lot of high-pitched overtones that are hard to listen to. this section is over quickly and we're into a more rhythmically oriented section, at least in the bass, at 1:37. the chord progression here is driven by fifths in the string pad, and we get some drums and a lead tone coming in eventually as well. there's a lot of patience in this build which is nice, but the instruments lack punch and so the intensity isn't really there. there's a lot of dynamic elements though which i like a lot. after a big build and a fun reversed piano drop, we finally get the big kick/beat pattern at 3:06. this section is audio sausage and is mashed against the limiter. the bass notably isn't really audible. it doesn't sound like there's much sidechaining - i recommend sidechaining at least the bass if not also the string pads to help the mix breathe. the lead through here has some parts that sound out of tune again, and in general isn't always clearly audible over the string pad which seems backwards. we get an intensified section at 4:30, with the violin as the lead. this is well automated, but it's so dense in here that it's hard to hear a lot of the countermelodic elements you've got going on. there's a bit of a drop around 5:35, and another key change (and time change!) at 5:57, which is good since we had like two minutes straight of 4x4 and it was getting repetitive. this section is more intense still and has more complexity in the kick, and then we get an amen cadence and it's done. this entire last section - from maybe 3:06 onward - really meanders. it's hard keeping track of where we are at all - there's little clarity or phrasing, so it kind of just mushes together, and then suddenly it's done. this is a pretty audacious attempt at a banger original. you've got a lot going on from the arrangement perspective - but essentially you've got two songs here. i'd recommend finding a better way to integrate them to each other. beyond that, most of your synths or instruments lack punch - especially the percussive elements - and the instruments that are intended to be realistic are mostly not particularly realistically used, especially the string pads that are so loud throughout. i think this track has legs! there's a lot of work to do to mix everything better, get away from brickwalling the last half of the song, and making the arrangement flow together better instead of being disjointed or mushy. NO

fun vibe at the start of this one. track feels like it's missing some compression and i don't hear a pad either, so the electric guitar's carrying the chord work. civla's voice fits the original's style really well. it's a touch ahead of the beat most of the time, and there's a bit of mid that could be scooped out, but i love the slow vibrato on some of the words like 'style', and the backing chord work in the vocals is perfect. coming back to the backing elements, i noticed that the electric guitar's a bit bland in tone. i would have liked to have a bit more verve on the tone. separately, there are several transitions that i felt didn't have much in the way of fills or anything (like between the first two verses). the second chorus's solo vocal part (the one doing fills, not the one doing the melody) was pretty hard to differentiate in situ. i think overall the vocals in this song are a bit loud, and there's not much you can hear there besides voices with three distinct parts going on. 2:51's a bridge section with guitar solo and some scratching. there's some fun ideas in the guitar solo, like for example the descending diminished chord riff. there's a chorus recap and then a fadeout, which normally i don't like but in this case really fits the style and how similar songs often end. this has a fun feel throughout! from an arrangement perspective this is very conservative. it's essentially the same song in an adjacent style with the same melody and several of the same major arrangement elements like the backing vocals. the best things about this remix are the vocals (which are note for note the same despite a great performance) and the melody (which is note for note the same). same chords, similar instrumentation, similar genre, somewhat lacking in a chorded element for some of the song (pad, comping piano, etc), less interesting drums and backing elements. it also has less dynamic range than the original, and feels pretty similar from start to end. from a mixing perspective, i called out a few of the issues with the vocals earlier (they're a bit dense in the mids, a bit loud as well). beyond that i think the track is mixed fairly well in that it's pretty easy to hear everything that's going on once it gets going. the first verse or two is a little thin. from a mastering perspective, the track is undercompressed to my ears and there's some density in the low mids (probably from the voice) that makes the bass not speak as well as you'd want. i might be picking here, but i feel like the lack of arrangement combined with a lot of disparate little elements on the technical side are pulling this down. if it was righteously mastered and sounded super good i'd still complain about the arrangement being so conservative, though, so i think my main concern is just that this is more of a cover than an arrangement. it's just too similar. i'd need to have seen more variation in melodic material, harmonic backing, or structure to say that this is more than that. it's still a fun song to listen! but all of the best parts are Bust-A-Move. NO

well, ok then. opening is definitely a stylistic mashup. love the way you took metallica's vibe and make it work with these tracks so well. at 0:46, though, this is almost straight Metallica for like 30s straight. the melodic adaptation is indeed tenuous, especially when you consider it's two bars out of hundreds in the original (admittedly they are very recognizable bars). at least the chorus is more from the Rival track. the singing works great, it's realized well, and seph does a good job with it. i'm just not sure it's not too much metallica. the transition riff is back to the final battle riff, and then another verse (same caveats as before). the bridge works well to bring together the style and original into a better combination that's more in balance of the original. there's then 30 seconds of insane solo battle, because that's literally what the originals are about, and a bunch more instrumental sections that go through various elements of the sources. the end of the false chorus section at like 3:50 was pretty hip. the track cycles back to one more verse and chorus dyad, a quick riff, and it's done. the performances here are nuts, as expected. the three main performers are among the best in the local community at doing this kind of stuff, and it shows. there's a ton of synergy in the performance, it's intense and complex without being overly meandering or relying on tropes to make it work, and it's mixed very well by xaleph as well. the arrangement concept is also great. my concern is just that the verse's connection to the original works is essentially academic. it's tough to map the vocal lines to the original, although your timestamps make it clear once you've A/B'd it. i think what's here overall is probably distinct enough from Metallica to be ok. but this is the second really fun track from you guys that's come through recently that's been very, very close to a mainstream original. you need to be careful as you're treading a line here that we (the judges) don't want to more clearly define because of how subjective it can be. YES (borderline) edit 10/25: larry's numbers make it clearer than i originally thought that this is not 'probably too much Metallica', it's just plain too much. i didn't realize it was over a quarter of the track. sorry guys, sick track, but not for here. NO

Background: This one started as a random, half-joking idea in late March or early April: what if the final battle from Pokémon Gen 1 (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow) was done like "Damage, Inc" by Metallica? In my (ParadiddlesJosh) head, this is a slam-dunk arrangement: Seph and I listened to a lot of Metallica growing up and put close to a combined 300 hours in Pokémon Red and Blue, with a considerable amount of that time overlapping. Some of the riffs are kinda similar and the vibe for the source is frenetic enough. Matt (Xaleph) asked me to collab on a Mega Man arrangement he'd put together with Ryan8bit and Zack Parrish for DOD's Mega Man month (May 2024) and I'd heard the Rocket Knights do "Flash Man" from Mega Man 2 but it's "Seek and Destroy" from Metallica's debut record, Kill 'Em All. And I won't sugarcoat it: "Flash and Destroy" sounded like a very fun shitpost. I thought, "If there's a free month, a Pokémon month, or a Game Boy month coming up, I'm pitching this bonkers Gen 1/Metallica mashup." All I needed were willing co-conspirators collaborators and some lyrics. Lo and behold, July was a free month for DOD. Seph (PixelSeph) was on board to do guitars and, with some back and forth on the lyrics, vocals. Zack was on board to do bass. Matt suggested laying in some organ to pad in behind the guitar lines. But Zack had his own main arrangement commanding most of his attention and another duelist pulled him away for a collab, so he suggested a replacement: enter Cyril the Wolf. Cyril nailed the basslines. Continuing a trend of OCR heads diving into DOD, this was submitted to Dwelling of Duels during the free month in July, where it placed 12th out of 32 entries. Credits: ParadiddlesJosh (arrangement, drum programming, add. organ programming, VST guitar programming, mixing, lyrics) PixelSeph (guitars, vocals, lyrics) Cyril the Wolf (bass) Xaleph (organ, mastering) Joo *Johnnyz* Buaes on VG Music (MIDI transcriptions) Source Usage Breakdown: Lyrics: Games & Sources Pokémon Red Version: "Final Battle! (Rival)" by Junichi Masuda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgAj5KdAC0 "Battle! (Gym Leader)" by Junichi Masuda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJKIrqO1Zas Pokémon Gold Version: "Battle! (Gym Leader - Kanto)" by Junichi Masuda; arr. Go Ichinose. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJZBLs0-mEE Inspiration: "Damage, Inc" by Metallica. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdekZoYoamE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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