prophetik music

you're keeping the budget low so there's only so much you can do, really. i would definitely recommend a case that has front and back fans (front pull, back push) to keep air moving, but it doesn't need to be a complex decision past that. pick one with good reviews that doesn't complain about quality and you'll be fine. as for the motherboard, you need a mobo that supports your CPU and has at least one pci-express x16 3.0 slot and two fan headers. if you need wifi you'd need an uncovered pci slot as well probably (uncovered means that the gfx card isn't going to cover it up). the rest is pretty standard. in general i prefer msi motherboards these days but use asrock and gigabyte as needed based on prices and features.

correct. you'd want that cpu since it doesn't come with the motherboard. it comes with a cooler with some basic thermal paste on it so you don't have fool with your own unless you want to (it's cheap and pretty easy, but i get not wanting to do it yourself). there's a ton of great youtube tutorials on how everything plugs in together. just be careful since that cpu has pins and it's easy to bend them =)

hey jigs! so for mobo/cpu, i can't recommend the current ryzen series enough. there's a ton of talk out there but the current ryzen series is stellar and has the infrastructure to be a great cpu for a long time. i'd look in that realm. for cases, if i were you, i'd look at whatever cases have the most reviews on newegg that'll fit your motherboard you pick (likely standard atx) and that newegg actually sells. there's a ton of options out there, but if you buy one that generally has a lot of good reviews it'll be hard to go wrong. you can do similar for a mobo. expect to spend maybe a hundred USD for the motherboard. you can get a great case shipped for maybe 60 or 70 USD as well. for the ryzen, one of the mid-level options would be perfect, like the 3600.

i don't see a memberlist anymore to compare content counts. you can go through profiles by hand based on the leaderboard tab up top of the forum, though.

it's talking about post count (i believe it's listed as 'content count' under your profile).

only 1.5db headroom, but there's about ten seconds of silence at the end of the track for some reason. some interesting orchestral percussion up front, but a lot of machine-gun attacks initially in the low acoustic guitar (?) and tabla. there's some new backgrounds and textures going on, and some are pretty cool. interesting choice switching it to be entirely tonal and not really working at all with untuned pitched stuff like what's in the original. as a whole this is pretty similar in form to the original. the background arp and melody are notably exactly the same. i liked the choir that swelled up around 1:15-1:25ish, but really thought that the exposed guitar/tabla part at 1:33 showcased one of my biggest issues with the track - there's not much verb on specific instruments, which makes everything sound much less realistic and exposes the machine-gun nature of the samples. it's too bad because their interplay is real fun. after that transition around 1:45, there's essentially a repeat with some more variation in the melody but similar backgrounds. the organ taking center stage is a real nice touch, hearkening to the rest of the sound track. the ending focuses on that same low acoustic guitar. overall i'm a bit torn on this one. i don't think the acoustic guitar or tabla that play throughout sound good at all. the rest of the setting is really nice though! the arrangement is pretty straightforward, with the timestamps matching up very closely to repeat points in the original track. there's a lot of interesting timbral arrangement in here, though, and while there's not a lot of changes and updates to the melody line and countermelodies they are there. it's an appropriate final volume and the mastering is fine. there's some fun touches of sfx in there as well that add some extra flavor. i think this does get over the bar, but i'd consider it to be a closer one than others recently from rebecca. i do really enjoy the use of voices throughout, and there's some fun moments. in future submissions i'd encourage you to be more careful with the uncanny-valley attacks you're getting due to all of the notes being in similar ranges and velocities. either way i'm calling this a conditional on removing the silence left at the end. YES (conditional on removing end silence)

yeah, the headroom is significant. looks like near 9db if you're ignoring a few spikes from claps. i'd not call this synthwave as much as synthpop. it feels much more like a track from that era as opposed to the heavily sidechained/sweepy vibe that you get from synthwave. this excuses the pretty generic drums a bit, since that style does have pretty straightforward loopy drums, although i'd love to see some more attention to the drums so it doesn't sound like loop a/b/c with fill d/e/f used at different times. there's also some real balance issues there in the drums (and everywhere) - they really need compression.beyond that, the rest of the track sounds really thin. not having pads, countermelodies, anything else besides the (admittedly pretty fun) bassline and the bells makes it feel really plodding, like MW said. along those lines, using the same synth for the melody throughout lends to that since it feels the same throughout. varying up your lead instrument would help a lot. i liked what it was saying pretty much throughout but it needed some more variance if i wanted to feel like it was something i wanted to hear for nearly four minutes. from a mastering perspective, it's too quiet and it's totally uncompressed. the mastering at this point is volumes only. i'd love to hear a bigger, brighter version of this, since it'll have much more life in it just from opening up the dynamic range a bit. i don't think this is near where we can post it yet. you've definitely got something cool here though and i hope you continue to work on it. NO

about 4.5db headroom on this one. in reality it's more than that since outside of one section it's much quieter. i've always enjoyed how lush this specific track on the OST is. it really does a great job bringing to mind how life-filled this area is. right off the bat there's some fun Omnisphere pingpongs that crossfade into some really nice, lush tremelo strings and marcato winds. that's a nice realization of the original. the glock is real loud compared to everything, though, notably so that it doesn't feel like it's in the same sonic space. i like how it settles down at 1:35 though, maintaining the ostinado in the winds for a bit without losing the forward momentum. it felt a little meandering and lost from 1:50 to the flute coming back in at 2:05, and while i like the attention to the tempo i thought it felt pretty weird what was going on there. after that is some beautiful timbral variations and an ending that stretches on longer than expected. this isn't as egregious as the Zelda track i recently heard of yours with several minutes of aleatory, and it does feel more connected to the rest of the content. overall this is a beautiful track and you do a nice job using motifs from the original to drive the arrangement without outright copying it. nice work. YES

hey, this is a pretty charming little piece. it's a fun combo of instruments, nothing's too overpowering (although i wouldn't have minded if the flute was a little farther back in the mix), and the overall feel is really organic. i enjoyed the shout-out to the windfish. if anything, i'd love to hear even more exploration on the melody and backing parts. it does feel like it's the same thing through a few times, although there's more going on than that. nice work reuben! this is an enjoyable remix. YES

originally i NO'd this due to bad mastering. let's see how it's doing on a second take. sounds like there's some more distortion applied to several of the synths, and everything's handled a little better from a mastering perspective. there's still not a ton of bass that i can hear outside of the kick (at least on these headphones), but i'm really digging the gritty, rough approach. the detuned synth used in the last section is a little offputting but that's more personal preference than anything i think. it is mastered really loudly, but i don't think that's a negative for a track focused on a dark electronica approach. i think this is pretty meaty and i like the changes. it might be too loudly mastered for some but i didn't think it's holding this one back too much. YES

as expected there's some fun sound design here! the bells, kick, bass, and 'glitter' all were immediate reminders of the 80s, so that's fun. i was real surprised though that there's essentially nothing in the lower mids for most of the track. you've got the bass, and then the next thing up is a shimmery pad that's only there sometimes. it leaves the soundscape feeling real hollow and shallow. when you got to 1:52 there finally was something in that space. i liked the evolving concept but it felt really washed out since everything was just ringing and ringing and conflicting against itself. then 2:45 happened and i laughed out loud because it was so randomly placed compared to other stuff around it. i 100% agree that something to mix it up was needed there but it needs to be more than ten seconds of rawk =D i think overall i agree with MW's criticisms - it sounds the same the whole 4+ minutes, with a similar beat (there's some hats and a ride used but overall it's boom boom tiss for most of the time) throughout and some fun synths that are fun initially and tiresome after a few minutes. i'd love to hear more variety in this, especially given how much you like to play with creative synth choices. NO

i really liked the attention paid in the intro to spacing. the piano was also well-used to fill in the chords without making it the focus. i found the double reed with the melody around 1:45 to be a bit strident - try doubling with something else that speaks better rather than trying to just crank the volume on it in the future. i agree that it's quieter than the 2db headroom suggests. some compression would be great. this one comes and goes pretty quickly but does a nice job realizing two songs in a beautiful orchestration. a bit of compression to liven up the earlier section, or at least an overall volume increase, and i think this one's a go. CONDITIONAL (volume) edit: updated volume sounds fine. i'ma call this good. YES

yeah, i agree with most all of what MW said. there's a lot of non-idiomatic writing here, and the samples are pretty limited. you are very adventurous with what you have, and that's really hard to do! i appreciate the attempts. as a whole it sounds like everything has intense compression on it to make it feel 'loud', and i think that's exacerbating the low-quality feel of the samples overall. the arrangement is pretty adventurous, which is pretty hip. i liked the unique combination of instruments, but agree with MW that it doesn't have the depth we'd assume an orchestral (or orchestral rock) concept would have. i definitely recommend spending some time in the workshop as this sounds like it'll need a few iterations to get up to the OCR bar. NO

about 3.5db headroom. feels pretty quiet too. this is a difficult vote. on one hand, i like the arrangement a lot. there's some real fun tonalizations in there with the intentional shift in modality, and i like that. the flowing piano feels nice. the instrumentation is an interesting combination as well. on the other hand, the instruments are poorly balanced - the bass is hard to hear throughout, the crotales are recorded and played in an non-optimal fashion (they need room sound and a thicker striker or else they exist solely in the higher frequencies with no actual attack tones), and the variation between the pizz and sustained tones by the nyckelharpa (i've never heard one plucked before!) were significant. notably the sustained nyckelharpa was pretty thin - thinking the mic was too far away from the bridge. lastly, it's very short - the track really starts around 0:03, and it's essentially over around 1:57 with 20+ seconds of fade-out. it's hardly longer than the youtube demo track. they get a lot of arrangement into a short package, but i don't know if it's really enough to call it substantial (to use the wording of the submission standards). i think the negatives outweigh the positives. if the levels were more even, the nyckelharpa and crotales were better recorded, and the track was another minute longer, this would be an easy yes. as it is, it feels like a first draft. NO

there's some really fun ideas in the execution of this one. there's a lot of attention paid to glissandi, fills, the articulation and length of individual notes in the lead lines, and other performance nuances that i really appreciate. this is particularly cool because the samples in question aren't very good but the extra love on them really raises the overall bar in spite of those lower-quality samples. the arrangement is pretty solid. you do a nice job bringing in each of your sources and you don't sit on any for too long. the one part that i really didn't care for was the >30s fadeout at the end. there's a ton of great standard endings for dixeland tracks - shave and a haircut comes to mind! - and i'd encourage you to look there. a fun ending to an upbeat track is the tail on the donkey to a lot of people, so sending it out with a bang is preferable to ending with a whimper. overall the samples aren't near good enough though to call this one postable. notably, the brass are very blatty when they're in the background. the off-beat trumpet stabs, the sustained trombone in the supporting parts, and a few times when the trumpet's the melody, the velocies used are just too strong and it results in a very blatty, obnoxious tone as a result. adjusting channel volume vs. instrument velocity should help correct that a lot, along with adding tiny spaces between some of the notes to imitate jazz articulation would make a big difference. i think this one is real fun to listen to! some improvements in the sample quality would make this an easy vote for me. NO

what an interesting idea for a remix. the vocals sound like you're worried someone's going to wake up if you give them more air. they sound really unsupported. more air wouldn't dramatically change the volume or quiet timbre you're looking for, but it would make it so it doesn't sound like you're whispering. that would also allow you to turn down your overall gain, so that it fits into the track a little more comfortably. right now they're much louder than what's around them and so it's hard to hear the background around you or the ocarina playing (the ocarina really cuts through a lot). all that said i love the duet between you and the ocarina, with you two trading off back and forth. it's a very thematic concept, allowing the game to inform the music, and i thought it was really clever. i didn't have any issues with the lyrical content (or lack thereof). speaking of the background, it's notably minimalistic. there's some very light harp, some aleatoric bamboo chimes, some glock, and the harmonizing instruments. i found it to be really well-realized apart from a few of the violin runs, and i enjoyed the interplay between the parts. i also found the ending to be long (albeit interesting). the song essentially ends at about 3:47, and then noodles for over two minutes after that. the ambiance that you create here is really pretty interesting, and i liked to listen to it, but it didn't make much sense to be in the track for more than maybe 30 seconds at most since past that you're really losing what it was that you were listening to. i think i get what you're going for - "have you lost your way?" as it fades to nothing implying that we're lost in the forest - but it's a little tedious. maybe if you put some of this in the beginning to help frame the track more? as a whole this one's a tough vote. i think the vocal parts aren't well-supported or particularly well-recorded, and the lower-quality recording grates against a really very accurate background. there's no compression or limiting applied that i can hear so the whole thing is super quiet except a few specific parts. however the total package is pretty nice to listen to. i wasn't a huge fan of the ending but i also didn't think it was wrong from an arrangement perspective, i just wasn't into such a long tail on the mix. i think as a whole i have more negatives than positives about this one. if the ending hadn't been so long, or the voice and ocarina so much louder than the background, maybe this is good enough. As it is right now I think that there's more on the negative side of the scale, but it's a very creative and original take on a really, really commonly remixed track, and i love that. if you were to condense the ending a bit and clean up the volume issues i would love to vote yes on this. NO

hey, this has some real fun parts in it! i agree with MW that as a whole it's real thin from an arrangement side, but there's some really fun ideas going on throughout. i enjoyed the initial presentation of the melody at 0:32. for an intro section i thought it did a good job laying out the initial melody. i also found the section at 1:25 to be pretty crazy but i didn't not like it, just thought it was in the wrong place in the mix. when that section ends we're nearly two minutes into the mix and have heard the melody once through for about thirty seconds, which means that the mix feels pretty distant from the source at that point. going back to the melody after that was a good refresher, but then it's into another (really cool!) original section that is fun but isn't obviously tied to the source. the restatement of the melody at 2:30 or so is nice but it's the same articulations as it was the last time we heard it, which was a little disappointing. it's also still feeling hollow at that point. the build after this is a nice change from what we've heard, and goes into another chillstep-like set of wubs which is a great contrast to what we heard before. it's also too thin here in terms of frequency range, and then it goes to a filtered piano for an outro which is fine. there's a long block of silence at the end that could easily be trimmed there as well. overall i found the arrangement to be decent but really lacking in bass throughout. i think MW nailed it that it's essentially thin everywhere - there always seems to be at least one instrument missing. the drum programming is fun, the synths you've chosen are enjoyable to listen to, and the melodic content is (barely) enough overall. i think though that it's sounding unfinished next to other tracks in similar styles that we've passed in the past. i think this one is close! some pads and a bit of additive arrangement will really improve this significantly. NO

almost 2db of headroom. right off the bat, there's some real weird EQing on everything, notably the drums. it sounds really, really clogged up, like i'm hearing it through a pillow. there's no highs in it at all, even in the cymbals. beyond that, from a technical perspective, both saxes are pretty out of tune and need to at least be run through some autotune software if not re-recorded entirely. soprano sax is very difficult to play in tune to begin with, more so if it's a straight horn (which this sounds like), more so if it's on an open-chamber mouthpiece (which this sounds like), more so if it's in the lower ranges. neither horn sounds like it has any verb applied either. some room reverb - just a little! - will help them not sound so dry and exposed like they do here. another thing that's a little odd is the guitar - it sounds extra-compressed. are you compressing that significantly and then applying one overall that's also significant? the combination might be why it sounds so pumpy. from an arrangement perspective, i thought that this is a fun concept. there's some variance in the melody and in how you've realized it. i did notice that you play that opening riff with the piano and horns a total of four times essentially the same every time, and there's two sections that follow that opening riff in order without much change at least twice if not three times. while i like the idea of the arrangement, i think that creating a bridge section would help avoid that samey feel, as well as varying up a bit how each section sounds. a common technique in similar songs is to allow one of the lead horns to glam up the sustains with riffs, and that helps with interest during sustained notes (you don't listen to great sax players because their sustains are beautiful!). overall this is a great first run at the track. there's a lot of little things you can do arrangement-wise to really flesh out your ideas and make it more engaging throughout. i'd say also you need another pass with the EQ, compression, and limiter to make sure you're not over-shaping the sound. NO

2.5db headroom. realistically more like 4 or 5 outside of a spike or two. this is another original track with minimal melody. it's essentially a noodle on a sustained pad bass. the primary motifs are the initial movement on the following tones [0-2----0-2-5-----], where 0 is the root and each subsequent number is a half step. i'll be looking for those, as well as the consistent movement to the flat 7 (tone 11), and utilization of tone 1 for contrast. this starts out with some attention paid to the consonants that the synth choir is singing, which is a welcome change from past submissions. it's real loud though, drowning out the other more interesting parts, so it's nice that it moves more to the background around 1:15 before coming back more set back in the mix. the echoing melodic content here is pretty clear and cribbed almost directly from the original, but it's recognizable despite the instrumentation changes, and the significant variation in the background from the original's simple one-note pad is nice. at 2:18 we see the sitar take the lead more. the vox pad is still real loud in the background but it's nice to see some other instruments taking the lead. here rebecca shifts away from the original echoing concept and focuses more on the unique timbre of the instrument, which is a welcome change. as the song went on i started to notice that the echoing, panning background woodblock hadn't really changed throughout, and the other sounds (the sleighbell, the string pad, and a few others) really weren't changing much at all. this highlighted to me that for a track that is over five minutes long there's very little different between the beginning, middle, and end. it's essentially the same instrumentation doing the same thing at 0:30, 2:30, and 4:30. the static nature of the scoring and arrangement, combined with the heavy reliance on an average-at-best choir synth, the lack of compression, significant headroom, and an overall lack of personalization on the melodic side of the house make this barely below the bar for me. i would need to see more arrangement in the melody and some more varied background before i'd consider this one 'enough'. NO

yeah, i agree this is a pretty loud track. the drums are real loud throughout (especially the kick is just huge), and the sidechaining at 1:00 is also really distracting. there's some fun things going on though, between comping over the chord patterns, some of the subtractive stuff around 1:30, and the soloing on the melody at around 2:13. i do think it's tiring to listen to however due to that kick being so huge. the ending is just kinda there. everything sort of just stops at 3:00, and what's left is not an ending as much as a rendered tail. outside of that, though, the arrangement is great. my main concerns are with the mastering, and after a few listens on a few sets of headphones i think it's not enough to reject based on that. i think this does clear the bar. YES

yeah, the initial presentation of the melody just sounds so good in this style. nice work realizing it. i really like the meatiness of your kick particularly. there's some good personalization of the leads throughout and there's some nuance in the background so it's not just supaslammed sidechain the whole time. i like the lfo synth at 2:04 a lot since it's a good example of that kind of variation. the drop at 2:32 was well-timed and does a good job setting up the meter change for that section. it's a nice change of pace and allows the last recap section to feel more frenetic since it's back into duple meter. overall the arrangement is great, and while there's some heavy sidechain on this i didn't feel like it was too much or over the top throughout. i also didn't think the mids or leads were congested or buried at any point - i was able to track the melody without too much trouble. it's certainly a bit quieter at 2:06 compared to other sections but it wasn't nearly enough to prevent it being passed. this certainly feels like something from 2002 (in a good way!). my biggest nitpick is the ~10s of silence at the end, which is an easy fix. i can't wait to see it on the site. YES

fun SMG track - really energetic. never heard it before. up front - there's a few seconds of silence at the start, 15 seconds at the end, and it's got about 6.5db of headroom. so some simple fixes would need to be made if this passes. after a brash intro, the track is an adaptation to a bossa or big-band style. there's some nuance in the melodic content and the backing tracks are pretty well-done for the style. melody passes around between instruments. i like continued attention to variation in the level and complexity of the background parts, and the mastering is realistic in terms of pan and verb for a live performance. at about 2:04 we see the shift over to the DK64 track. i'll be real honest - i didn't see how this wouldn't be a jarring change when looking at the submission, and yet i didn't notice the change between sections for almost a minute until i realized that the melody wasn't SMG anymore. bravo. talk about an organic transition. this is a great downtempo section contrasting the opening blow. the sax swell into a fuller rendition was excellent as well, although i was expecting more variation to the melody from the original based on how you'd done the first part. the tempo change into 3:56 was nicely handled. the change in style continued to keep it fresh, and the addition of ensemble stops was a nice way to freshen up the smoother writing you'd used in the previous section. the part at 4:44 where you've got each major section and the keys all doing something different is fantastic. i can clearly hear each section by themselves and it's well-handled to allow each their little snippet. it's a little heavy in the left ear but not overly so, and it's an appropriate thing considering the simulated-live layout of the group on the sound stage. if the trombones were more middle it'd balance out a little better, but that may mess with the stereo separation depending on how you implement it. the final blow at 6:27 is great. love the trumpet flip and the also sprach zarathustra-esque brass chords under the pinned trumpet note at the end. this is a superlative arrangement. what few technical issues i had with it are minimal at best. if we remove the silence on each side and amplify it (a touch of compression to bring up the quieter middle section wouldn't be amiss either) this is easily postable. YES (conditional on levels and silence removal) update: the new version is great. consider this a YES now.

what an interesting source choice. after listening to it, i'm going to say that there's little here to actually call melodic content. there's a consistent use of the #4 in passing, there's a few specific rhythmic elements, and there's what passes for chordal movement around 2:30, but that's about it. the intro section, through about 0:45, i'm not a huge fan of. it's essentially just orchestral flourishes over a few sustained chords that aren't particularly idiomatic for the track. the section after that though has a lot more recognizable parts - the three-note rhythmic motif, some of the extended arpeggios, and the chordal shifts between a I and bVI are nice. i also appreciate the attention paid to varying the leads. along those lines, there's a lot of variation in the instruments burbling up in the background, which is also nice. i wasn't a huge fan of the tremelo string pad that was used throughout, though, i felt it was pretty overused by about halfway through. i didn't think the piano was particularly well-realized. most of the flourishes were too mechanical and didn't have enough nuance to the variations you'd see in the velocities on the interstitial notes. it also didn't sound like the keys were in the same space as the rest of the instruments. the arrangement wraps up pretty nicely overall, continuing to play with tonality and still emphasizing that #4 that was predominantly featured throughout. the arrangement is pretty well-done considering the nature of the original track. i consider it to be transformative, substantial, and original enough that it's standing apart from the original without being unrecognizable. if it wasn't so comically quiet, this would be a clear yes. as it is, i am going to mark this as conditional on levels. YES (conditional on levels) 6/10 edit: the updates to volumes are fine. this is now a YES.

hey, the initial presentation and melody sound pretty good! there's not much arrangement, but i think you did a nice job making it listenable with a limited sound palette. i agree with MW that it's limited arrangement at best through that entire first presentation of the original. 1:33 is where it starts to get some original content, primarily through some much more creative interpretations of the melodic content. i appreciate how you add in a lot of flourishes without losing what made the original good. overall, i do also think that this isn't there yet. more than half the song is essentially cribbed straight from the original, and that's going to make this need to be rejected right there. there needs to be your own spin on this. we both agree that the original track's great, so make that shine by bringing out the parts you like the most. i'd recommend starting with the background, which you don't really change much at all. toby's background is real funky and fun, but i'm willing to bet with more attention you can make something that's more you and isn't a direct copy. a real ending is another thing that'd help a lot. more arrangement will do wonders on this one. NO

well, the beat itself sounds fun for a few seconds, but the hard pumping is so tiring to my ears that i'm done with it after maybe 30 or 40 seconds. i liked your samples, and there's some cool concepts in there, but the really heavy compression is hard to listen to. there's a fun change at 0:50 to bring in a B section, but then it...just sorta repeats three times and ends? if there'd been just the A/B section with a refreshed and more unique A section at the end, and it was 2:15 long, i'd have considered it. but this is essentially a minute of music scraped over three and a half minutes of bread, and that's not enough. the synth voice at the end was also surprisingly and uncannily not-good. the pitch fluctuation in there is not something i wanted to hear, let alone hear multiple times. i think you've got a great initial groove if you tone down the hard compression on it. i also think your b section was pretty fun. if you dress this up some more - mix up subsequent sections, make the melody more your own, and figure out a better ending - this is a significantly better effort. NO