prophetik music

probably the FE game i'm least familiar with (i haven't played Three Houses yet either but i know a bit abouit it). beautiful source albeit simple. opening is very quiet and simple, and the first presentation of the melody is way huge - too huge of a difference based on timbre, i'd say. there's not actually much going on in the first melodic presentation - you've got drums, a pad, an arp, a sustained bass, and the melody - and none of them really have the sound of something that's super fat or wide like you'd hear in a drop in a synthwave track for example. the difference in volume there is too much. it also sounds really dense for some reason - like several instruments have their highs filtered out. the pad that comes in at 1:25 sounds oddly muted as well, and there's some crushing going on. sounds like a very harsh limiter. the section at 1:50 starts to explore some other sfx which are interesting, and that goes into a significant break section featuring some more fire/vinyl sfx and a lot of delay/verb on the instruments. this lightens up and eventually transitions back to another big section featuring End of Despair, and then back to some work on the original. overall, from an arrangement perspective, i think that there's some good stuff that you're doing with how you've adapted the melody, and the interplay between some of the drums and the main background. i think the choice of synths you've used, and the comically large difference between the loud and soft parts, is in the negative however. your lead was fun and had some nice effecting, but the bass synth sounds very canned and missing any highs, and the pads and other synths in the louder sections also sound similarly over-filtered. for example, based on your description, you wanted your big parts to be this big wash of audio awesome. ultimately though it sounds very full of holes - you've got this bass instrument with no treble down low, a melody up way high, the (honestly really loud) drums, and then it's hard to hear any of the rest of the background instruments or sustained pad work. even later when you use a sustained instrument for the melodic content (at 3:11) it doesn't feel big, it just feels loud. i think the mastering ultimately is what kills this. without such a huge polarization of dynamics, my complaints about where the synths sit aren't as obvious. this needs some attention - turn your louder stuff down and don't rely on the limiter so much, and bring your quieter stuff up and allow the dramatically different timbres to define loud/soft more than such significant volume distributions. NO

oh, that's a gorgeous texture up front. the washes of sound are really nice, and i found the vocal 'pad' to be really nice too. there's some very fun percussion being used in here as well. i agree that the panflute isn't a great sample, but it's not egregious. the song felt like it was done at 1:40, so i was surprised to see that this was only the halfway point. it picked back up though and had more interesting exploration of the arpeggio. there's some odd notes in here (2:05, 2:07, and a few others), and the winds aren't particularly realistic in their orchestration. the outcome is interesting to listen to though, and i liked the later application of some plectral instruments to complement the ongoing harp work. the song hangs on longer than expected - there's another natural fadeout/ending and some fun double-time stuff - but overall the arrangement is really interesting and does a good job expanding on a very minimal source. nice work. YES

32-bit float?! they called him a madman... the intro is really nice. the filter on it is enough to catch it but not enough to stomp out the character. the bass swell is also well-handled and comes from absolutely nothing. the presentation of everything at 0:39 is really great - i particularly like your unfiltered bass synth. gario's right that there's a backing pitch that's not fitting everything else (seems like a minor sixth right at 0:54). the melody when it comes in is quite loud as well, at least when it's higher in the register. once it drops lower it's more balanced. the drum entrance is great, the soundscape is just very idiomatic. 2:56-3:06 (arguably 3:12) feel like 1:44-1:53ish of the original, and while they don't follow the chord structure they do follow the shape of the line (in arguably a more listenable fashion). the earlier section is also similar in its exploration of a line's shape vs. its specific melodic content. i feel this is relevant because the original's melody noodles so much that it's almost unsingable - it just keeps wandering, and the artist here did a nice job making something that is more cohesive without losing the songlike feel that made the original interesting. this is also separate from how the artist continues to use the adapted arpeggio from the original throughout the entire track as another tool to relate back to the original. the addition of even just the initial descending parts of the three passages that gario calls out make it to 50%, so i'm good there. looking at it as a whole, there's a clear and consistent relation to the original, and the soundscape like i said is great. even with that one note at 0:54 (which isn't really wrong as much as it is a dissonance that wasn't set up) this is definitely good enough to post. YES

this soundtrack is so much fun. props for picking a more complex track for the remix. big hit to start. the tonal shift at 0:15 is just instantly recognizable despite the new instrumentation. the guitars at 0:52 are really aggressive and i love the pitch mod on them. the build towards 1:27 is really solid, and 1:27 is also great. i like the approach of having multiple leads on the melody to simulate the original synth that played the melodic line there. 2:05 drops off in tempo and volume, and there's some fun sfx and a heavily-effected bass noodling. very atmospheric throughout here. the wooblesynth you've got doing the higher pitched parts at 3:00 is fun but it cuts itself so it sounds a little weird considering it has a longer attack. either way the rest of the background here is excellent, lots going on but still identifiable. the drop at 3:38 is very intense - there's a lot of energy there without losing the build you just did. 3:55 brings that back to the forefront. i like the focus switching between guitar and synth in this section. this took a little longer to build up to supermax than i expected, with a little more repetition than i expected, but it kept getting bigger and eventually maxed out for a big wall of sound ending. i like the ending and the repetition used there. normally i'm not for abrupt endings but this was in keeping in the rest of the track's style. excellent track. very impressive work. YES

rubber-stamping this one. everything's too loud, it's all over-compressed, and it all desperately needs EQ. also i agree that the kick drum sounds time-warped - try layering three or four different kicks in to get the sub-bass freqs and attack sound that you want. edit: emu end edit and jive laid out some great steps that will help you get going in the right direction. your arrangement is fine, which is the hard part for a lot of non-musicians! now you just need to learn a bit of mastering technique, and vary up some of your instruments attacks some, and you'll have a really nice track. i'd suggest the workshop to get some additional ears on this before your next submission. NO

great original track, one of my favorites on the ost. the intro piano sets a bad tone. there's no variation on velocity like would normally occur, the rolled chords start on the beat instead of landing on the beat with the last note, and the rolls themselves are very slow and non-idiomatic. this becomes more obvious when other instruments are playing. as soon as the piano drops, we get a typical rebecca scoring method, with harp carrying the melody with some strings and orchestral percussion. the harp realization is beautiful. i found the xylo to be a bit loud but the rest of it sounded great. the cello pizz section at 0:52 was a nice tonal shift, and hearkened elsewhere on the soundtrack which was nice. the abrupt entrance and exit of strings at 1:05 however made me realize something else that was bugging me - that there's not a shared reverb amongst the instruments. your orchestral percussion and winds and harp appear to be in a different space from your strings and piano, and it was disconcerting. 1:21's entrance of left-hand piano is surprisingly loud compared to the rest of the ensemble - i don't know that i'd have chosen that instrument for scoring that as the timbre just doesn't match. the strings and winds carrying the melody are nice however - you've got a puccini-like string theme vibe going on with some fun countermelodic content going in the bassoon and others. 2:13's section is a better and lighter use of keys to drive orchestral content. the bassoon and clarinet carrying the melody here was a nice change. the section from 2:46 onward sounds like original content based on the feel of the original, and honestly is a much more exploratory approach than you took earlier so that's nice. there's a lot more character in this section than the intro for example. this section kind of just ends, and that's the piece. overall i think this is over the bar but it's closer than normal for you. the string attacks and sustains throughout definitely don't sound as realistic as you've had in the past, and there's some weird stuff with the piano that i just didn't care for. the track is quiet but not overly so, although it could really use some compression to level it out. i think that as a whole you did a nice job realizing the theme and feel of this particular part of the game, and just had a few missteps where you went a direction that i didn't agree with as much. YES edit 12/9: that piano just sounds bad. looking back on this after seeing everyone else's vote, i think i do agree that it's not good enough. there's such fun arrangement ideas though that i think i overvalued that ultimately. so, yeah, changing my vote to a NO.

well, i love the instrumentation concepts. the guitar, piano, ep, and drums are all great sample choices (although the drums are a bit more underwater than i'd like). the soundscape build around 1:30 through 1:40 is really nice (with one caveat, see below). i agree with emu that the track sounds heavily quantized but it's not the worst thing, in my opinion. there definitely was some room there to be more flexible with your realization. there are two major issues that i see. the first is that this is super heavy in the mids. there's essentially nothing in the lows, and the highs are muted due to the style - probably too much - so everything in a tight band in the mids. it's cluttered as a result. this is really noticeable for most of the section between 1:15 and 2:10. your ep, piano, guitar, cello, strings, and choir-replacement burbles are all kind of in the same place. it would probably require some notable EQing to fix that, and also likely some rearrangement to get notes out of the same registers. my second issue is that this is really, really conservative of an arrangement. if everything was rock-solid outside of the arrangement i'd consider a borderline yes - that's how close this is to not being enough for me. there's a ton of opportunity for personalization here. the stepwise motion of the melody means that altered chords would be easy to substitute in. an altered time signature would really mix it up as well. additional countermelodies or harmonies, some more variation of instrumentation to get it away from the original, more dynamic variation...any of those would help a ton. as it is, it's so close to the original that it's hard for me to say that enough was done for it to be a transformative arrangement. NO

for the first minute plus, the track is much heavier in the left ear. a little too much panning - you could use half what you did and still get a good clarity of soundstage, i think. noticeable again around 2:30 through 3:10ish. agree with emu on the source usage. the chords are definitely the same, and that's solid, but there's simply not enough melodic source to call it the same track. unfortunately jazz combo's a tough sell for a track on the site simply because the norm is thirty seconds of the head, ten minutes of ramen, and then back to the top twice for a recap. fantastic tone on the clarinet, especially the upper left hand stuff, really stellar. i've always preferred a clarinet tone in jazz that has more pitch variation (vibrato, lipping, etc) - i can hear you doing some really fun stuff around licks, but maybe consider it on your sustains. your tone is so clear that i don't think a heavy goodman-style vibrato is a good idea consistently, but some color at the end of your sustains would add a ton of vibrancy to what you're playing. this is a rubber stamp unfortunately. there's simply not enough source to pass this. as much as i want to lean towards the "this is pretty good source for the style!" argument, the reality is that the standards are genre-agnostic, and so we need to be as well. NO

this wasn't what i expected! but it's pretty fun. the vocals are super loud compared to the background, but i'll address them later. there's some really surprisingly fun nuance in the background parts throughout. the build into 2:14 is great. gario's right with the verb issue - the backing parts and especially the voice parts feel very dry where verb isn't employed as a specific sfx. there's also very little compression throughout from the feel of it - major sections are dramatically quieter than other parts, which makes it hard to find a comfortable place to keep the volume dial. the quieter parts are quiet by nature of their timbre already - crank them up, and adjust your compressor accordingly. i love the little transition at 4:15, and the subsequent build. i'm going to spend a bunch of time on the vocals since that's the make or break part of this track. first off, i have zero clue what's being said. i'm bad with accents in general, and i recognize that it isn't your first language, and that these are fast words. that said, consonants are a must and there's essentially none throughout. it is very difficult to even tell when one word ends and another begins. there's a reason there aren't a lot of pop songs with fast piles of words - it's hard to do! so take more time with your words, and be clearer with your pronunciations. even slow parts like 2:14 are hard to understand. gario correctly pointed out some pitchiness in some areas. remember to support the low notes with a good breath, and especially the ends of phrases (when you switch to a breathier tone). that will help. don't feel bad about engaging someone to handle tuning some of your notes, either - there isn't a singer out there that doesn't use autotune at least once and a while. i'd be happy to help if you want. turn your vocals down by at least a quarter if not more. a trick i use is to turn the master down by 90% and see what i hear. if i only hear one thing, that thing is likely too loud. your vocals crush everything else in the (really interesting) background. along those lines, don't be afraid to automate volume adjustments. a great example is at 4:40 - i love the long sustain, but you've got it right in front with no vibrato or any color on the note. plan to hit that and have volume automation move it to the background by reducing the volume on it - keeping the full-voice timbre but not having as many db dedicated to it. that kind of automation will allow you to sing with your full voice while still benefitting from volume adjustments. this isn't ready yet. there's pitchiness in the vocals, everything's super dry, the vocals are way too loud and simultaneously hard to understand, and overall it feels unpolished as a result. some additional attention to your singing will help a ton and make this an easy yes. the arrangement's already there, it just needs some love on the execution side. NO

interesting ost choices. there's not a lot there and this is a track that's over 8:30 long. looking forward to seeing how it's applied. the first minute is great. so much creativity and goofiness noodling with the themes. the feel at 1:00 is exactly what i expected to hear in terms of effecting and style as well. nice work playing melodic content around 1:50 or so when you start to bring it back in. around 3:00 i was starting to wonder where we were going, and at 3:09 you answered with the first big breakdown. there's some fun non-traditional stuff going on here and i liked the inclusion of orchestral and choral elements. i also liked the introduction of triple meter with some of the synth work, and sticking with it - nice way to add change and a new perspective. 4:07 we get the kick back in, this time in 12/8. it again takes about minute before we get melodic content, but when it comes in it's obvious where it's from again. the continued usage of acoustic drums through this part is interesting and kinda sounds weird next to the heavy synthesized backgrounds, but i get where you were going with it. 5:50 is another break very similar to the earlier one. not as long, though, and it's got a more intense build back to the main melodic content and backing. 6:50 definitely feels like the payoff, you've got a lot of melodic content spinning around each other, and even after nearly seven minutes of "kick with spicy noodles" you're still creating interesting synth lines and a background i want to listen to. there's some natural wind-down in the background and then a nice filtered outro that's pretty clear. this is a great track. neither of these sources are very significant in terms of melodic content, and you did a nice job making an arrangement that's both recognizable and consistent. i'd say that this genre doesn't lend itself to conveying melody, so i don't mind the two or three times that there's nearly a minute without melody since that's still not close to breaking the 50% barrier. nice work. YES

oh boy, some straight sausage on the waveform here. let's see what it sounds like. interesting original to pick. starts out with some very wide-freq pads and sfx. there's a lot of rumble in this, and it doesn't sound great. the synths that come in though are pretty neat, very crisp, and the drums that come in after are also pretty good. lots of complexity which i appreciate. the lead comes in around 1:16 and it's got some fun gating and sweeps on it. around that time however the heavy emphasis on the upper bass / low mid range started to really bother my ears. this has so much clutter down low, and the really blown mastering only makes that more noticeable. there's a break around 1:55, which is nicely handled but doesn't actually really lower the RMS much since there's still so much noise down low. the arp takes the lead coming out of the break and it's nicely articulated. 2:34's a great step up in the energy too. it sounds so busy and cluttered though. there's just too much noise everywhere. 3:13's a bigger break and this is the first time without the bass booms and pads, and it's a huge relief. 3:40 or so we're back into the build, and i'm noticing that while there's some new interesting synth work going on here, it's much the same as the opening sections. around 4:30 the melody comes back in, and we start to work towards the end. this is a well-crafted track that takes a melody-light original and makes a clear connection to it throughout for over 5:30. the issue i have with it is simply that there's so much low mid clutter throughout the entire track. it's difficult to listen to. the big low sfx / pad you've got throughout needs a significant cutoff below a certain point (at least 40hz if not 100) and you need to notch in better what's going on down there. additionally, this is way blown out, as evidenced by the waveform. i'm willing to bet that if you turned every single instrument down by 3db and let your compressor actually compress rather than be triggered for the entire song that you'd see a significantly different and less uncomfortable listening experience. this is an excellent track that i'd love to see on the site. fix some of the mastering and it's an insta-yes from me. NO

yeah, the "this is terrible!1" line from you doesn't fly, mak =D this sounds pretty fun. the full band sound isn't my favorite (the synth over top is kinda grating to me) but the arrangement is fine. drums sound great tbh. there's indeed a few notes that are modally correct but aren't set up so they sound real weird where gario mentioned, but i also agree that they aren't game-breakers. one thing i will complain about is the lack of a real break anywhere. this is 3:20 of all-out, and it gets tiring after a little while. some more balance in the instrumentation and a short break in the middle would have been nice, but i get that you didn't have form on your mind when you were playing. there's some ending that needs to be trimmed. this isn't perfect overall but it's over the bar, i think. if i had my druthers, i'd want the form to be more intentional, and for the balance overall to be modified a little to make the background synths a little clearer. YES

rubber stamping this. the arrangement is pretty minimal (it's there, but i agree there's less personalization than i'd want on a track that's as remixed as this one is), the synths are not terrible but definitely need some work so they're not so "FL preset" sounding, there's some variation of drum patterns but few fills or transition sweeps so it feels very similar, and some of the synths (for example 1:41) sound almost sloppy because their sustain is just a touch too long and it doesn't cut itself. i want to call out the lack of verb specifically. this style is usually super wet, with tons of reverb filling in the backend of every synth sound. this felt very thin at first and i couldn't understand why until i realized there's essentially no verb here, just synth sustain and sample sustain. some significant attention with reverb will help this a lot. NO

the lack of verb on, like, anything really kills this right off the bat. nothing sounds like it's in the same area, and there's no volumization on any of the instruments to balance them as the ensemble changes. the guitar solo is pretty slick, but even when it's playing the band doesn't really sound 'real', mostly because the band mixing is so dry, and because the overall dynamic range of the track stays exactly the same for the entire length of the song. the drums need serious attention, as well - there's very clearly one rhythm beat with one fill beat used, and i can't even hear the hats if there are any. i can't say that i like the vocaloid application on this track. vocaloid can be remarkably convincing when used carefully, and i don't think that enough care was taken with the phonics on this instance. there's some effecting going on there as well that just sounds sloppy. the other judges seem more bullish on this than i am. i think this needs some serious work before it's ready for primetime. i think workshopping this would be a great idea. NO

evocative instrumentation up front on this one. nice work on the articulations on the lead instrument in the opening minute. there's some fun sounds being explored throughout the intro. when the drums come in, there's some really fun volumization/automation on some chirpy pads that i really liked. the guitar lead was fairly straightforward but had some good distortion on it. the break around 2:00 was well handled though in that it gave the track a bit of room to breath and did a good job of keeping up energy without a drum beat. 2:27's build to 2:43 is really fun. there's a lot of drama in that section, and the combination of guitar and brass is interesting. the part at 3:15, with a few heavily-effected leads going at it, is great, and does a great job continuing to build that energy. and of course 3:42 is fantastic. 4:41 is great. the energy is huge, the balance sounds great, and there's a ton of interesting stuff going on. i really liked the attention paid to the ending, as well, starting around 5:35 and going from there. stellar work. this is a great track. YES

oh, what a great intro. the scoop on the lead is delicious. this is a really fun vibe right away. i agree with emu that there's some r'n'b here. it's irritating to me that the dx7 and the piano is ahead of the beat almost the entire time, but that's a nitpick. feels like it got stamped in a touch earlier than it should have been. the variety of backgrounds by the two minute mark help keep it interesting. the pads at 2:15 is a nice transition too. the guitar is fun when it comes in, albeit pretty out of tune. solo was nice and does a nice job mirroring some of the melody's shape while making its own way through it. the chiptune-esque synth at 4:11 is a really fun idea, and then the exploration it does is neat. it's a little loud though. the fadeout is fine, i didn't think it was too abrupt or too early. my complaints on this track are primary in the details - the keys being ahead, the guitar being out of tune, some balance. overall though it's over the bar. nice work on a fun style. YES

elephant in the room: yes, i do think this qualifies as a remix for the site. there's recognizable TTYD content throughout, it's long enough to convincingly display that in a unique and new format, and there's no copypasta from the original. so now about execution. to start out: i can't believe we're getting a boggly tree remix that's actually reminiscent in style to the original. your technique throughout this track is really well represented. you did a great job of really exploring a ton of intensely strange timbres in ways that still allowed the listener to grab onto it and go along for the ride without having to microdose LSD to understand it. i particularly liked the parallels of the opening sounds to the original. i also really enjoyed the fluctuations in timbre used from 0:15 through 0:27 to the point that i almost wish you did more with them there so that their more spare nature didn't clash against the more complex stuff on each side of it. the bird SFX at 0:55 were cute. the block chords at 1:39 reminded me immediately of the second third of silver apples of the moon, by morton subotnick. if anything i think that comparison falls a bit flat since his stuff was much more constantly moving than at least this track is, but you've got a lot of little nuanced noodly bits that are definitely comparable. throughout this entire track, i really appreciate the continued care paid to the quality of sound. you've got a ton of examples of fluctuating between an intentionally filtered/vinyl-sounding synth that then flows into these wide, full-frequency synths that explore every bit of the audible range. using those timbres as another musical element is an excellent strategy to apply even more nuance to what you're doing and i love it. it's pretty obvious that i think this is a superb track. it will be nobody's favorite, and that's perfectly ok. art music like this has a place in the community just like every other style. YES

this is super fun! and too short. echoing what was said, this is less than half what i'd consider to be my minimum length for a remix that isn't absolutely knocking my socks off with every other aspect of it. explore it some more and i'd love to judge that. NO

the opening has a real sense of something bigger. i agree a sustain pedal and some more realistic variations/playing would help a lot. similarly, the vox sample at 0:59 sounds nice, but the artificial cutoffs totally pull me out of immersion (no pun intended). i liked the vox a lot but the cutoffs are really rough, i'd almost suggest a different instrument there if that's a limitation on the synth you're using. the continued swells in the background at 1:26 are really nice. this is a low-key intense section and really does a good job keeping the same idea going without it getting stale from the opening. the flute lead was nice, and the reverb on it was great. the keys that came in after felt a bit derivative and didn't really say anything new or dramatic, but they helped fill the space. the drums at 2:41 really sound pretty bad. i get what you're looking for but they just have no guts to them at all. i initially thought it was col legno in the strings it was so thin. a bigger and better set of samples would be an incredible upgrade here. at 3:05 there's an immediate wrong note. it sounds like your strings don't quite shift to the new key appropriately. the drums are meatier here for sure but still too quiet overall. i liked the variety of lead instruments you used through this section, but did notice that the violins mirroring the melody just kept going. it's good to shift the melody around between instruments to avoid it getting tiresome, so consider leaving the vins off of some of the melodic content in this section. near the end of this section the drums started to get enough body to them - not sure if that was an EQing thing or what, but they start to sound more confident and full. the break at 4:09 was well timed. the vox samples at 4:27 sound great in a very narrow range and anything outside of that sounded really obviously pitch-shifted. i'd recommend working with someone who has melodyne or autotune and can change the formant of the lower notes so they don't sound so obviously transformed. at 5:09 when it drops off, that's a nice shift. your backing pad is slow compared to your lead here - you may want to consider doing some predelay to avoid that on that instrument alone. i personally didn't care for the bass hit at 5:30 - i find that technique to be generally overdone - but the subsequent part was nice. i think overall this ending does drag on longer than it needs to by about 45 seconds, but the parts that are here are pretty, just repetitious. the ending is surprising as well - you've been very attentive to the chord structure and pattern throughout, so just dropping off on the V feels very incomplete. a true ending would have made a big difference. this is definitely a track that isn't 100% there yet, but like emunator said there's some real awesome and ambitious ideas here that just don't quite work or need more attention. one thing that can't be overlooked is that this is over 6:30 of the same four-chord structure without even a key change to liven it up after like four minutes. i would highly recommend looking at your middle section and identifying areas where you could explore alternate chord structures - even going to the minor overall! - and the separately considering shifting up a key for the last big section at 4:30. that combined with some significant trimming on the last minute and a half would overall make for a package that is tighter, more exciting, and more exploratory, making listeners want to come back and hear more. this isn't there yet, but there's a lot of great stuff here. i'd love to hear a second version. NO

opening is suitably funky. the bass is effected such that it's hard to hear or understand what it's doing, but when the group comes in, it's pretty fat and i love it. there's some weird harmonic content going on that sounds intentional but is hard to grasp why. there's some crunch at 0:34 that appears to be an augmented fourth, followed by an odd inversion of the pad in the background. it sounds interesting but it's admittedly crunchy. the quick transition at 0:52 is nice. saxophone is quite flat when it comes in. there's some fun noodling (which continues to be flat in the upper part of the lower register, b-c# is always flat!) that flows into more melodic content at around 1:38. the strings and organ behind the sax are pretty nice here, and having the organ drop and just leave the strings is a nice choice at 1:55, although some new writing there would have been good. the sax is out of time coming in at 2:12 as well as flat, which is unfortunate because that's a pretty hip entrance there. i like the zipper synth playing the melody in the back behind the sax part. the track suddenly ends with a musicbox-like section that's not very long. from an arrangement perspective, there's a lot of great stuff going on here. this is a repetitive melody that could easily get really boring really fast, and it stays pretty fresh throughout with a lot of changes to the background and harmonic content. i don't like the sax's tone (it's quite sharp and very forward in the mix) nor the pitchiness of it, but what it's playing usually is pretty good and does a nice job framing the melody while doing its own thing. ultimately i don't think the sax pulls this down enough that this is below the bar. this is a fun track and i think a lot of people will like it. i'd love to hear a re-record of the sax part though, or at least some pitch and time fixes in post. YES

the intro has some fun delay effects but the drums sound pretty robotic. i agree with emu that the opening synths are real loud - sounds like they are volumized for later in the track and the remixer just didn't adjust them in the beginning. the choir sample is also pretty robovox. when the guitars first really come in at about 1:10 though it sounds pretty great. layering strings with the lead synth helped that a lot too (although i admittedly wanted to hear complexity there). around 2:05 i noticed that the lead synth didn't have any real personalization to it - no lfo change, no vibrato, nothing to keep the attention on these sustained tones. some variety or change would have really helped. there is also very little personal influence into the melodic line here and it really could have used it to keep it moving. the guitar solos start out fun although they could have used a bit of verb to fit them into the soundscape. the one at 2:47 was in the wrong key - sounds like the adjacent melodic minor, or more likely lydian (based around the 4th note)? it worked but there's a lot of odd notes there. same thing happened at 3:19, you sit on a G over a Bb chord (6s never sound right), and then step in a scalar fashion to an Ab when the Bb's the root key and not the V. would have worked if you were in lydian or something but sounds odd here. the part at 3:40 where it's trucking through the chords is pretty nice. i like the simple movement in the guitar to keep it moving at about 4:15. the ending was great until the last note - i think i get what you were going for but it's a real letdown after a piece that was pretty low-key intense the whole way through. i think ultimately i'm on the other side of the line as emu. i think this one is real close, but there's too many little things that came together to make me want to say no. opening synth volumes being so strangely loud, several solos in the wrong key, some real boring melodic programming in the first half, the letdown ending...none of them are dealbreakers by themselves but together i think pull this down just a little too much. i think this is a great track that could easily get posted if there's a few more changes made. NO

i agree with emu that the first main section, starting at 0:30, sounds pretty hollow - the snare's real loud, the lead's kinda out there by itself, and there's not much behind it. it works because it's clearly a build-up to the big dub hit at 1:32 but it's not ideal. it's also fairly short, really, it's essentially a little less than two minutes of music. it still sounds pretty good across the board, and i like the sound design especially. overall i'm probably not as high on this as gario is but it's solid and over the bar. YES

the original is one of my favorites from an album of favorites. the opening strings are surprisingly unrealistic. the attacks sound super off and the gap between notes reminds me of one of those synthy pads. really stuck out to me for some reason. tiggs has a great voice. i can't understand half of these vocals, though - there's very little enunciation and she scoops a ton (a stylistic choice, but it buries her consonants). she demonstrates the ability to control her vibrato as well (for example, 0:57 is beautiful) but then weaponizes it in other spots (1:13). i think at least part of that is on the odd way that some of the lyrics sit. for example, "can you remember, the things you taught me" has -ber and me being the high notes in the phrase - which totally throws off the line's phrasing. the background for this entire first section is pretty simple, but it's pretty. the strings in the background feel pretty slow as well - i like the idea of the vins supporting the singer in unison, but they're a bit behind and aren't rhythmically as close as i'd expect. at 1:55 we get a more fleshed-out backing part that still feels a little slow moving between notes. the vibes at 2:17 were really nice. the non-transition at 2:30 was so sudden however though that i thought my audio was messed up - it's dramatic, it's not supported by the backing parts, and the part is obviously a separate take that was not dovetailed in cleanly. plus, from a technical standpoint, it sounds like she's trying to use her breath to control some of the attacks, which is a big no-no and reinforces what sounds like a significant lack of air support. i think a big part of this is that it's super high, probably at the top of tiggs' performance range or just above, and there's at least a little trepidation that i can hear. tiggs, if you're gonna sing something super high, go for it! get a good room, turn down the mic gain, and go after it. it sounds like you're trying to fit your voice into the backing track rather than rebecca fitting the backing track around your voice. prepare your body to sing high, get a good breath, and focus on letting those higher notes soar out of you instead of worrying about intonation and perfectly setting each pitch on the shelf. you can fix the intonation in post, you can't fix a weak- or nervous-sounding timbre. this whole thing is also undermined by a total lack of support in the ensemble at this part. this should be the high-point of the track compositionally in terms of breadth of backing, and it's just the piano, strings, and some mallets. if your singer's going to jump an octave and be singing some big airy passage on top, she is going to need support. this needs significantly more going on behind it to fill up the space left by tiggs leaving that frequency range, or else it's going to sound unbalanced and unprepared. that's a lot of words about like fifteen seconds, but it's the most important fifteen seconds of the track, and it's indicative of a bigger issue, which is that rebecca hangs tiggs out to dry for like half the track. several times i can hear where the background part is mirroring tiggs' voice but it's not in time, or where she's being asked to sing long sustained notes with super minimal background behind her. these are minor by themselves but add up too quickly. as if on cue, rebecca really starts to fill out the backing part after 2:47, with lots of moving backgrounds and a focus on tiggs' beautiful mid-range tone. there's a nice outro that features flute and harp, and it ends after that with a little prelude callout. i wrote a lot of stuff and it probably sounds like i hate this track. i don't! i think there's some beautiful parts in here, and as a vehicle to show off tiggs' voice this is effective and pretty. i think that tiggs needs to use some more consonants throughout, and i think that there's some lyric jank that makes it hard to follow and understand the words. for her part, i think that rebecca needs to take another look at the leadup to 2:30 through about 2:50 and figure out what she wants to do there - either beef up the part writing significantly (which probably will allow a re-record by tiggs to let her take another shot at that higher material with more support), or keep tiggs down an octave and generate interest through more exploratory melodic writing instead. the middle section is difficult to hear. i found the lyrics overall hard to understand. the writing for the first half is effective but pretty simple, and it's only really in the second half we get a significant amount of composition happening. for this to get a YES vote from me, 2:30 needs to get ironed out, the slow vins need to be un-slowed (probably by some level of early triggers) and mapped more convincingly to the singer's voice, and not required but highly encouraged would be another take by tiggs with a heavier focus on consonants and clarity of words. this is a great concept but it's being held back right now. NO

an aggressive intro featuring some really raucous synths leads into a pretty noisy initial presentation of the groove. the guitars are heavily effected and the drums are really clean, so there's a bit of cognitive dissonance between the soundscapes there. the stuff being played is fun though and it's definitely recognizable as the stalker theme. the bass synth that comes in at 1:10 is just a great encapsulation of american game music in the 90s for me, so that's a really fun add. the power chords that come in after that are very ominous and sound great as well. we get a breakdown that starts around 1:45 and explores some more interesting synthesis, and then it's back into a simlar groove as the opening - nearly the same. that's followed by that same bass groove from 1:10 with some orchestral elements layered on top. i don't feel this is much of a change and this is essentially copypasta for here. the additional of the orchestral stabs around 2:35ish are odd because the hard limiter on the track is showing there, and there's some obvious limiting going on as more is layered in. the track continues to get louder as more elements are layered in until 3:20 when the outro starts. there's some sfx at the end and then it's over. this is an interesting case. on one hand, this is a super fun groove, there's some fun synthesis in here, the guitars sound great, and overall i thought the track had a good sound when it wasn't getting super loud near the end. however there's some obvious technical issues - the drums aren't really in the same soundscape as the guitars and synths, the last half of the track needs a volumization pass to make room for the orchestral parts (and probably some EQing to make them fit better), and there is a lot of repetition. beyond that, there's a lot of re-instrumentation, but i'd argue that there's very little personalization here - the melodic content is super minimal in the original, and it's mostly repeated either the same or so close to the original it doesn't matter. there are definitely background parts added, but the primary focus of the piece is on stuff that is essentially the same as the original. i don't hear chord changes, tempo or time changes, personalization of the melodic content, rhythmic variations...it's much more a cover than it is a true arrangement. i think ultimately that's the real reason i can't pass this - i do not believe it represents enough arrangement to pass our submission standards. that's a pity because it sounds awesome, but it's also one that's fairly easy to fix. NO

this is a really fun take on the original! there's definitely some nitpicks here but this is honestly pretty close, i think. the half-time melody in the beginning with the spacey bass is great, and definitely felt like a totally different track right away. the whooshing pad you use often (for example, 0:21) is really odd-sounding - it sounds like there's some mic pressure there, as if it was being recorded from the wind instead of being synthesized - but ultimately it's too much in the low-mid register and the mix feels really cluttered as a result every time it comes in. i like the idea but don't like the execution. the switch in the bass link at 0:57 to a fake sidechain was great. i loved that such a simple change made such a difference in the feel of the track. there's a short breakdown and then we're back at standard speed. this half of the track is more homogenous like gario said. i wouldn't have minded some more variation in the countermelody, and maybe a bit more work done on the melody to make it more your thing there. the fadeout isn't my favorite ending but this one is quick and is more endemic to this style so i won't fault that. this one is interesting. i like the track, and it's really feeling OCR 2002-like, in a good way. there's definitely issues, but i don't feel they're as pressing as what gario mentioned - for example, i never have an issue hearing the melody in any part of the track, and i didn't find the second half's repetition to be particularly frustrating (it's a short track, sure, but the repetition in question is less than a minute of content). i think this is over the bar. it's pretty close but i like it. YES