prophetik music

there's some really fun electronic work in the beginning of this. i liked the more muted version of the classic arpeggio, and the variety of textures and mix of electronic and acoustic instrumentation. the echoed piano at 1:16 is great, and really helps capture the feel of the original piece effectively. the volume level jumps dramatically at 1:51, and those transitional sounds are indeed really loud. this entire section is probably too loud, honestly. the soundscape is super interesting and it's doing lots of interesting things, but the transitional sounds are indeed just too loud compared to everything else. that said, the vox samples are really great, and i loved the prelude cameo around 3:13. the arrangement does a good job closing itself out as well, i thought. for a track with essentially no melody, this is immediately recognizable and very transformative. the overly loud transitions were less a critical issue for me than MW but i wouldn't mind hearing them reduced. either way, this is a great track and really an excellent job capturing an eclectic vision of a great original. nice work. YES

very quiet mastering again. beginning is a variety of orchestral percussion with some very quiet pads and a really super fake shakuhachi-style flute. there's a lot of bells being used for the melodic content where it's appearing. there's some percussion and simple strings added in at 1:15, along with some more aggressively-panned plectral instruments. there's some weird notes in this section that aren't supported if they're intended to be NCTs - 1:29, 1:36-1:38, and a few other places. the drum in the background plays for roughly a minute and a quarter without changing the pattern, and then it's done. there's some more noodling with the ascending and descending pattern from the original, and some bird and wind sfx during an extended fadeout of the bells. this is an interesting one simply because this original track has a pretty distinct melody, and it's only used in pieces in your arrangement. there's a lot of "this sounds a lot like the original" without it being necessarily the same thing, and so i'd consider the arrangement to be pretty solid even if we only get motivic representation instead of an instrument playing out a melody three times before an outro. the samples however really are not super great - there's a lot of obviously fake or synthesized sounds, especially in the pitched bowls, the string pad, and the flute that's used heavily in the opening. beyond that, there's very little reverb applied to everything, so the significant variation in fidelity of samples is more obvious than it should be. i find that even more distracting to be honest. this needs a real effects pass on it, with some clean-up of messy notes and more attention paid to the synths that are more obviously fake. the arrangement is really interesting though and i'd love to hear it realized better. NO

ost sounds great! what a fun set of tracks. intro has some fun electronic and brass stuff going on. the initial presentation of everything at 0:30 has a great feel and is easily recognizable. this continues for a bit, and then there's some really weird stuff going on at 1:16 for a while. several synth runs that just feel like they go in really weird directions, and lots of non chord tones that aren't supported enough to sound like they fit. i can't tell if it's echo from verb or if it's actually just odd notes. this goes through about 1:50. the sections after that continue with the initial vibe of pretty fun stuff, and it's got a fade-out ending that is pretty straightforward. from the mastering side, it sounds pretty solid for the first and last third, and in the middle it becomes obvious that there's two bass instruments that were playing unison and stop during that period. since those two instruments aren't playing the same stuff (in fact they play a bunch of discordant stuff) it sounds really muddy for that middle 35 seconds or so. the middle section i've talked about is enough for me to say "huh, this is weird" and not pass it. it's both muddy and i felt like the way the parts play together there's a lot of messy notes. the rest of it is great though! i really liked the energy and feel outside of that part. NO

there's my last vote (i voted on the original as well). let's see where this is. i agree that the main lead in most of the track is super blah - there's some fun sweeping synths in the background, and then the lead's just this boring hornet that doesn't really do much. i also agree that everything needs to be turned down a lot since the compressor's constantly engaged. 2:07's noodly bit is just a bit too much out of time. the hats throughout are a bit too loud which obviates anything else in that space. there's some really great stuff here! the 303 that's going during the first break around 1:00 sounds great, and there's some variety in the background which is great. i still like the arrangement and the ending sounds good. i think the drums sound a lot better overall (although the hats are essentially just static, probably due to FL's multiband pegging out on them since they're too loud), but the heavy compression used to 'fix' peaking is causing it to be pretty tiresome on the ears. turning down most of the instruments by the same amount, addressing that really blah hornet lead, and ensuring that it's not compression city will probably be enough for a yes from me. NO

couple of classic tracks here. liz sounds fantastic in the intro here. i love the palm-muted guitar as well. there's some aggressively panned bells in the right ear that's a little strong around 1:30, but i think the occasional harmonies are just so well-done. the ritard going into 1:49 is really delicately handled too. 1:50's shift is great. liz's stylistic shift really fits the funk going on behind her. the band's a big loud around her when everyone's going, but overall the sound is pretty great. the whole section from 2:35 through about 2:55 has a bunch of gating on everything as well that sounds great to provide contrast. the transition to Still Alive was pretty sudden overall and not super prepared, but it's not bad, just unexpected and a bit of a tangent shift. i liked the build through this section, and at 5:00 it sounds pretty awesome with the vocals in the left ear, although the track is noticeably heavier in that ear until the end of the track. the extended chord at the end is dope and a great creative way to end the track. overall this is a great performance, and it's a really fun arrangement. i felt the snare and the kick are a bit head-heavy (notably the snare doesn't have much pop and the kick's head is pretty high), which i'm guessing was intentional, but i felt it kinda clogged the middle a bit as a result. my other complaint is that the panning in this track overall is pretty significant. the bari sax is heavy in the left ear throughout, the bells when they're playing are heavy in the right ear, and the high voice is heavy in the left ear at the end. there's significant differences in the RMS between the two ears for most of the track. if i have a suggestion for future tracks, the panning on this track could easily be cut back by half and it'd still do what it's supposed to do. ultimately the arrangement and performance pulls it up for me. like i said earlier, liz's vocals are delightful and well handled, and the band's overall sound and tight performance is great. my mastering complaints aren't enough to keep this off the front page. looking forward to more submissions from such a talented group of musicians. YES edit 11/15: same as MW, i didn't recognize the references but they break the standards. a sad NO for this one from me.

the opening of this track is so intensely quiet that it's beyond dynamic contrast level. the timbres of the instruments are more than enough to keep it feeling quiet, the track desperately needs compression just from that part. the first minute plus is nearly inaudible. this is the typical rebecca approach of interesting orchestral percussion supporting sustained strings and a well-handled melodic line. at 1:00 there's a great handoff in the low strings which i really appreciated. the melodic content gets passed to the oboe, and there's some nice mirroring in the glock and other winds. there's some real bad samples in the trombone and orchestral crash cymbal at 1:43, but i like the transition idea and the percussion again at 1:48. the piece's big moment is around that point, and it kind of just trails off from there. i liked the brass rhythmic parts around 2:00, but the bad samples are back around 2:15 in the trombones, and they're really blatty. the string chorale at 2:22 is nice, though, and resolves in an unexpected fashion. the harpsichord at the end is a little weird since it kinda wanders around, but the piece feels like it should end there so that's good. overall the track isn't super aggressive with the arrangement of the melodic content, but there's a lot of nice stuff going on around it to make it really interesting. i found the samples for the trombone and orchestral crash to be pretty bad - to the point i'd suggest finding something else for those transition points, it's quite noticeable. and the first part of the track is so quiet you almost can't hear it. it maxes at -11db for the first minute...just so quiet. the timbres of those opening strings will translate how quiet it is - it doesn't need to actually be that quiet. there's no one volume setting that's comfortable for the whole track, and it's not even that long. as a whole i believe the arrangement carries this track, but the technical issues are noticeable and i wouldn't be surprised if other judges feel it's on the other side of the line. as it is i'm borderline. YES

some really stellar originals here. also the track clips a bit, a little more than a db, but it's not audible as far as i could see. there's a ton of great stuff here. there's lots of shifts of style so it doesn't feel the same for six minutes, there's lots of use of acoustic and electric guitar alternately, there's some double time stuff, there's lots of interesting backgrounds in the synths behind the (featured) guitars, and there's no really awkward transitions where something just feels weird. there's scads of arranged melodic content, so nothing to worry about there either. the drums are a touch loud (which is a stylistic consideration for the DJ set idea, vs a standalone track, so i get that). in the first few minutes i also felt that the lead guitars were a touch loud as well, and the ending's guitar delays sound a bit weird. but the whole thing sounds so clean that i can't really complain - it's all very intentionally handled and it sounds great. easy yes by me. YES

i didn't vote on the original, so i'm coming in clean. it's so mushy. the opening 25 seconds are some fun chippy stuff over a bucket of guacamole. it seriously sounds like the bass is next door and it's being recorded through the wall. the chips have some really fun performance parts, and there's some really fun ideas with the arrangement chirping up here and there. but the guitars are very lossy (and panned pretty far left), and the bass is just very low-heavy. the drums suffer a lot because you can't hear the kick or head impacts hardly at all, and the high end seems to be pretty cut out. i'm echoing the others here. this needs to be brighter by a lot. some serious notching to shelf in your different non-chip instruments will help a lot too so there's not so much in the same area. NO

really interesting use of effects on various plectral instruments. the shifting perspectives between heavy filter, big reverb, and fading out is really interesting. the voice sound effect is really odd and unexpected, i guess i don't get that connection. the originals come through pretty clearly where they're just arpeggiated notes, but admittedly the breakdown helps a lot - this is pretty out there. the track goes more off the rails the nearer to the end that you get, and the vocal clips don't make more sense as we go along. the huge washes of sound though continue to be so interesting and gorgeous, especially the ending one. there's some time at the end that can be trimmed, i think. this one's weird! weirder than most of your other ones. i love the parts that aren't the vocal samples, and don't like the vocal samples the more into the song we got. that said, it's over the bar - it's transformative, well-mastered, intentionally arranged, and executed in a clearly competent manner. YES

this is a great original track! i've never even heard of this game. lots of playing with time and downbeats, and a big scalar run which i love in chiptune tracks. sfx opening into the traditional slammed keys and kit sound of lofi. the melody's obvious right away, and i like the chopping done to it. the full melody comes in at 0:30, and sounds great. i like the addition of strings to the big ascending scalar run. beat and bass are good too and the vocal sample isn't obnoxious (i don't like vocal samples in downtempo and lofi but i get it's part of the style). there's a break at 1:23, and when the drums come back in they're doing something new, which is nice. at 1:47 we get a new runthrough of the melodic content, and there's some new synths and a countermelody being used, which is great. there's an outro around 2:40. this sounds great, has a lot of melodic content that's mixed up in different ways, and does a good job adapting the track to the genre. nice work. YES

track is very short, about 2:05 in total. opening is marcato strings, flowing into the melody in winds with harmonies in the strings. the background is pretty static. there are some crunchy notes in here (the quintal harmony in the brass (?) at 0:29, the ascending harmony has a wrong note in it right after that as well), and it's fairly simple backgrounds. there's a significant tonal shift and a really fun/funky breakdown of the background at about 0:54. it's much less blocks-of-sound here but i like a lot of the interesting sound design going on here, especially the sliding plectral instrument. this kinda just keeps repeating, though - at 1:27 i expected something to happen, and it kinda just keeps grooving along. there's a bit more at 1:44, but it feels just layered on top and not properly balanced into the rest of the mix. then the track ends with a flourish. from a mastering perspective, the middle has a much lower RMS than the rest of the track and it felt pretty light. also whatever instrument comes in at 1:44 is not really fit into the soundscape, but just put on top of it, so it sounds very crowded suddenly. this is a tale of two halves. the orchestral opening is pretty boring, honestly, and the non-chord tones don't sound intentional. the melody's very static and plodding with no real humanization in there, so it sounds pretty fake. the second part, with the drumkit and stuttered guitar parts, is way more cool and does some fun stuff. it definitely sounds underdeveloped though - even going through the melodic content again at 1:27 and then doing your section from 1:45ish out would have added enough content that i'd call it good. but as is, it's a tech demo that's barely two minutes long. this needs more content, and more attention to the orchestral opening section and the last 20 seconds. NO

high rms and pretty loud mastering overall right off the bat. melody is apparent right from the beginning. there's some playiing with the B theme to mix it up (and some interesting chord choices to make it work). the A theme comes back pretty quickly and we get a little expansion with new instrumentation. there's a switch to triple meter right where it was starting to get a little static at 1:06, and some FF7 battle theme-esque riffs with a distorted synth. there's a bit of a break at about 1:48 and it comes back to duple for a recap that's very similar in instrumentation to the opening A/B section. this is honestly a pretty decent attempt using a not-DAW to make music. the mastering is pretty blown out, there's some funky notes in a few places (you settle on some non-chord tones around 0:26-0:30, and there's a reliance on a b7 between 2:06-2:14 that sounds odd), and the static nature of the synths throughout starts to get repetitive pretty quickly. i don't know what kind of flexibility you have in the app you're using, but if you're able to make it sound not so over-compressed and mix up your synth usage a bit more so it doesn't feel copy/paste from section to section, you'd have a pretty fun little track on your hands i think. right now i think there's too much repetitive texture usage and it's too blown out to consider. NO

i didn't remember the original from the FF9 OST at all. been too long since i've played it apparently. great initial hit with the full band sound. the original is clear right away, and it translates to this style really well. there's some choir and instrumentation adds beyond the standard band sound, and it's all clear and able to be heard without too much silliness, although there's some boom in the low end around 1:32 to the drop. the initial breakdown with orchestral instrumentation and choir is well-handled, and has some neat ideas with the strings. there's another big band section at 2:27, and the presentation of the A section is layered with some additional stuff this time around, which is great. the section from 3:29 onward is hugely meaty and sounds great. the end has some theatrical elements that are a bit more Trans-Siberian Orchestra than i expected, but it's a fun rising tone to end it. this is an easy one. the band sounds great, there's lots of new stuff in here, it's clearly over half for the arrangement...nice work on this one jean. YES

initial groove is fun, feels very acoustic rock. there's not much in terms of compression on the track that i can hear and it's pretty drum-heavy. the melodic content is competently performed but the guitar tone could really use some verb - it feels pretty dry. i liked the lower counterpoint however it sounds just slightly behind the beat. there's a significant and unprepared transition to a new groove at 1:04, and the strummed guitar seems very out of time through parts of that. it goes back to roughly where we started in terms of band sound at 1:30, and there's some more exploration at 1:47 which is nice. there's a third section at about 2:05 that's featuring a classic guitar sound, which is a fun change. the solo in the electric has some sour notes. then we're back to the electro groove to finish it out in a very abrupt ending that features the strummed guitar hanging on a bit longer than everything else. this feels pretty disjointed overall. i think you've got some fun ideas here - the initial acoustirock sound is nice and sounds really early-aughts to me, the electro beat is an interesting counterpoint, and the classical section has a nice sound of its own. i think that you need to spend some time making the parts more cohesive - that is, rather than switching to an idea for 30 seconds, then going to a new style, then going to a new style soon afterwards, focus on really developing an idea, and then making a transition that feels both rational (ie. why am i going here) and smooth (ie. not sudden and dramatic shifts). beyond that, there's some mastering attention that's needed - the drums are too loud and overall the track needs compression to avoid how quiet it feels throughout. this is a fun start! i think it needs some additional workshopping to make it onto OCR. NO

a quick intro leads into the first source track. the band sound is solid and i like the organ work. there's good variety in the groove and it's well-performed. clear transition at 1:25 into the next track, and again it's well-handled. i like the technical approach to the melodic content. the breakdown at 2:33 and subsequent slow build is great. especially around 4:00 i really started to groove with it. the last track at about 4:25 doesn't even really sound like a new track, it's just natural progression. the last minute's octave melodic parts are just great. ending was a tiny bit weak after such aggressive riffs but it's not a problem. i'm really impressed. never lost the melody, never thought the approach was overly cover-ish or too disparate from the original, and the band sounds great. excellent job. easy vote. YES

the opening is pretty rough. the snare sample is super electric and sounds pretty weird being machine-gunned like it is. the bass has a fun tone but it's panned and also has a ton of sub-bass, which makes it sound muddy (and it'll sound worse on a big-sub system). the kick is also panned oddly and is mostly beater sound without any bass, which is an odd sound. the pitch-shifting of the snares is an interesting idea, but not shifting the formants as well makes them sound kinda odd when they get farther from their natural pitch. at 0:41, there's some of the melodic content coming in. the synth work here still features too much bass, but i liked the block chords idea (they're still a little spare and an octave too low IMO). the lead synth is a fun tone and clearly delineates the melodic content, so that's good. there's an obvious loop point, and we go through the build-up to the melody again, which comes in at 2:20. i did like the glide synth for the arp, and that was a neat change, but other than that it felt pretty much the same as the first time through the same material with no break in between. at 2:55, there's a synth-only part that noodles around some bits of melody that builds back up into the rest of the groove. it was a nice break from the original idea, but i started to get tired of the lead at this point. the song noodled some more around the initial riff of the melodic content and then sorta ended. overall this one needs a lot of workshopping from the synth and instrument choice side, i think. the drums sound strange - they feel like they're in an electronic song but you're using them in a classical fashion, and it doesn't do them any favors i don't think. the synths are mostly static throughout - some shifting timbres and new instruments part-way through would help relieve some of the oppressiveness of the repetition. beyond that, i'd think hard about putting a hard EQ on most of your synths so they don't sound so muddy and bleed into sub-bass range. this one isn't there yet. NO

hey bloominglate! you're right in that staff have lives too, and stuff happens or doesn't happen in those lives occasionally ? we're still voting away busily over here! and dave keeps going through his checklist of site updates when he has time.

you...rearranged a track titled "fall & roll"...after falling off your skateboard and busting your arm? melodic content is ready apparent right off the bat. there's some variety in the drum patterns, and the guitars are clear and mastered fine. there's an A/B feel to the first half of the track, and right when it started getting a little repetitive at 2:09, there's a bit of a break and a solo section - which i wasn't expecting based on the writeup! the chant/cheer section at 2:47 is fun, and not annoying like i kind of expected after listening to the original. there's a big recap at 3:30 or so, and that takes the track to the conclusion. overall there's not a ton of arrangement outside of the genre conversion, but what's there is enough to keep it moving and distinct. i thought the mastering was fine with no big issues. this is a pretty competent track from start to finish for a dude who just got his hands back a week before. nice work! YES

significant stylistic variation from the original with this one. the original has minimal content at best so it'll be interesting to see how the artist ties it over. the intro has some long-envelope synths and some interesting buzzy synth design. the chord structure is similar but not the same as the menu music from Amnesia, so it doesn't relate without a few listens. there's a higher-pitched synth that comes in and again plays something similar to the menu theme, but i still wouldn't count it as very obvious that it's from Amnesia. at 1:08 there's a background synth that's clearly playing the few notes from the title theme, and that's the first time i can definitely say that i recognize the theme. at 1:38, the bass synth appears to be playing the B section of the melody as well, but it's a fairly generic set of notes. at 2:12 there's a great change of pace with the addition of the higher string pad, and that's a nice shift. i don't recognize what it's playing, however, and it doesn't seem like it's part of the menu theme from what i can hear. there's a break at 3:19 and then the melodic content comes back in in the bass under some other sfx-like synths. there's a fadeout ending that plays with some more sfx and it's done. this is close enough that it needs a timestamp. so from 1:08 to 1:31 there's the A section in the bass, then the B section from 1:37 to 2:05 in the bass, then the A section from 3:24 to 4:08. the entire opening section is more difficult to say. the added chords aren't in the first chord's key which makes it really confusing to map out and in turn it sounds odd, but there's definitely the Ebm - EM - Ebm - Fm pattern in there, so i'll count that despite it being pretty stretchy to me. so that makes it enough total time if you include the opening. overall this does what i think it's supposed to do, which is represent a track with minimal original melodic material in a melodic-driven style that's totally different. some of the references are understandably minimal or stretches but it sounds good and has solid energy throughout. i think this is over the bar. YES

fantastic original track. a lot to live up to. there's an opening arp with some sfx around it to get it started, and then around 0:30 there's a very minimal drumbeat that comes in. this repeated arpeggio quickly gets annoying - while there's some variation in octaves, it's essentially the same sound for 1:11 with no LFO or change over time in the timbre of the synth. there's a break at 1:12 with some organy sounds, but we're quickly back to the same arp tone quickly. at 1:31 there's melodic content behind the arp, but the arp's still very much in front. there's a more intense section with the bass playing the arp as well at 1:46, and then a fairly sudden end. i think there's the start of a decent track here, but it's not there yet. first of all, if you want the arp to be the focus of your track, you need to mix it up more. 90% of this is one of two static timbres. shifting the arp between synths, adding changes to the tone via LFO'd filters or effects, or even just picking a tone that isn't so grating and in-your-face with no verb presence would help a lot. i will note that the arp is very much a background part of the original track, and you've got it as the primary thing that's in your face throughout - this really should be volumized down a lot, to let the actual melodic content shine out more. lastly, along those lines, the melodic content is really quite minimal in your version - you start it in the organ at 1:11, and the track plays this melodic content for less than a minute before going back to the arp exclusively. the choice to highlight the repetitive arp rather than the melody is clearly intentional but i'd say it's not to the benefit of your arrangement. this is a start but it's not there yet. NO

some interesting techniques described here. i hear the 80s dance concept right away. the intro's got some fun synth work where time's just a suggestion, and while that's not my favorite i get what the remixer was going for. the heavily explained bass arp comes in at 0:42 and has some really fun FM-y vibes on it. the melodic content is pretty clear, and the tom fill at 1:22 is a great mixup. the original is really interesting because the melody isn't in the most prominent instrument (the arp), it's in the sustained lower chords. that trend is repeated here, and the transition to 4/4 is solidly done overall. there's a guitar-ish synth at 1:50 that sounds like the b section of the original's melody - i can't say i liked this synth sound that much, this felt really bland compared to the heavy sound design applied to most of the other synths in the track. this is followed by a nice bell tone during a break, with a big recap at 2:35 that sounds really fat. there's a big blow at 3:00 and the aforementioned 'real guitar' chugging towards a very relaxed ending. the bass seems to end on a non-chord tone, but that might just be because so much of it is in the sub at that point and it's hard to hear the pitch. this is pretty fun. it's a much more straightforward arrangement than i expected but it's very listenable. i really enjoyed the design and attention paid to most of the synths. the original track is in this pretty clearly, even if the 'melody' of that track isn't always clear. nice work. YES

classic tune here. also, you went with polygonjohn instead of polyjohn? missed opportunity filtered drums and some sfx start this track off, along a very bass-heavy bass and some quiet bells. the melody comes in at 0:35 with some nicely-sequenced gliding synth. this does a nice job sitting back on the beat which fits the background well. there's a silence break at 1:22, and a fade-out for the last 25 seconds of the song featuring a bit of noodling on the A section of the melody. aaaaaaaand...that's it. the melodic content takes up less than a minute by itself. so this isn't going to pass since there's nowhere near enough development here to call it. things that i liked included the general vibe of the drumloop (more creativity and fill use there would help a lot as the track's duration progresses past where it is now), the automation on the melody (i'm a sucker for glides), and the approach overall of a more relaxed version of the original track. i did not care for how bass-heavy this is. there's a lot of overlap between the bass synth and the chorded bell tones - those need to be squared off with an EQ so there's not so much mud in the low end. adding a bit more highs overall to both instruments would actually help i think - it's very low/low-mid focused, and while that can help it feel relaxed it also makes it harder to tell what's what. i also don't understand not including the B section of the melody on a track that is so short. even just a single run-through of that bit would have helped lengthen the track by 20 or 30 seconds, which is approaching what i'd consider the minimum. on the topic of arrangement, this definitely feels like a demo. mixing it up in instrumentation, chords, or style with a second run-through of the (entire) melody would add a lot to the track and help wrap it up into less of a demo and more of a finished duration. overall this is too short to really consider. there's some really nice ideas but it needs more content. NO

track is at least -4db from 0 if not more. the original is essentially Zanarkand with some slightly altered chords and some different instrumentation. i thought the name was 'movement in green', the name was confusing to me until i saw that it just had two ways to translate the name. there's some sustained strings in the opening, and then a very open and light transcription of the Zanarkand melody. more comes in at 0:43, but the background until 1:04 is primarily sustains with (IMO non-idiomatic) pizz for the melodic content. at 1:04 we get a more traditional presentation of the melody, and the balance and orchestration is more reactive and vibrant. the bass pizz is still not very realistic in its usage, but there's some nice instrumentation choices aside from that. the glock (or tuned glass? can't really tell) is quite piercing in this context however and i found it to be offputting in some places. the paralleled lines between glock and harp though were clever and nicely framed. at 2:32 the melody shifts to more pizz in the cellos and bass, and it sounds odd since it's so artificially prominent due to volumization. there's a nice recap of the later part of the original melody at 3:05ish, and then an outro. overall i thought the arrangement itself was great. there's tons of variety in how the melodic content is approached, and while i really didn't like the loud pizz of the cello and bass being used to carry the melody, that was minor compared to the overall scoring. zanarkand's melody is just so rich and the track really allowed that to shine through. mastering sounded fine as well aside from it being very quiet - there's some specific instruments that stick out and could use a bit of trimming, like the glock, but that's it. overall this is really solid. the arrangement is transformative, there's a lot of creativity in the approach, and the realization is capable. nice work. YES

some interesting instrumentation to start this one off, with some equally interesting sound design choices. there's a fun groove though once everything comes in at 0:14. i like the synth bass's attention to articulation and the really nice automation on the guitar. the percussion is fun as well although i'd like to hear more consistent fills around transition points. speaking of that, the overall track just keeps evolving which is really neat. there's some downtempo break sections, there's some fun string pizz stuff and a flexible flute, and some fun harmon-muted trumpet with some backing organ that's real understated and nice. there's another not-transition at 2:54 to a pretty robotic section driven by what's supposed to be like an upright bass but just comes across as feeling too automated (i have the same gripe for the earlier part that featured this, but it wasn't as obvious there due to more going on, but it's sounding really similar outside of the percussion), and then a pretty nice ritard into a very chill ending. from an arrangement perspective. the opening section is clearly derived from the chords in the intro of the original, and the initial slide guitar around 0:35 is definitely a dressed-up version of the original's melody for the first section. that initial ascending and descending riff shows up in several other instruments throughout as well. overall there's some filler and groove sections but i think that there's enough here to call it enough source. i will say that i didn't like the walking bass sections at all, and thought not only did they sound extremely similar in the bass and strings but also the bass just sounded bad. there's so much rhythmic variation and articulation used throughout the rest of the track that a bunch of eighth notes strung together (in non-idiomatic ways, i feel) with no flips or occasional rhythmic variation sounds weird. overall though this one hits enough points to pass. i like the percussion throughout, i like the variety in lead instruments, and i like the attention to detail most of the time. this has a great vibe. YES

starts off real peaceful with some pretty piano and strings. from there the flute and strings pick up the main melodic section over some rhythmic strings. this is fairly straightforward writing but it's competent and sounds nice. there's a break for the piano at about 1:04, and this is really well played/sequenced again. we get back into the full group at 1:47, and the arrangement is again in the flute and then strings. this is very similar to the earlier section from 0:25-1:04, nearly copy/paste territory. there's a fun brass chorale at 2:32, and some string ensemble work to follow that up. the solo violin isn't great quality but it's passable. a light flourish in the bells and we're done. this feels very pokemon, which is pretty nice. the copy/paste section though is pretty egregious. the intro, piano solo section, and ensemble section at the end is really nice, however, and throughout the ensemble writing is pretty solid. this could probably go either way for me, but some more creativity in that second copy/paste section and this is an easy pass in my book. NO