prophetik music

hmm, the second Lone Trooper remix on the panel in the last month for me, neat. as expected, a ton of weird stuff from MH. this takes some time to get cooking, but it's familiar once it gets going. the link from 0:38 to about 1:09 is tenuous, but from then on it's more obvious. one thing i appreciate about michael's music is that it regularly uses lots of space to allow things to develop naturally, and that happens here quite a bit. it isn't until after 2:00 that we really get an obvious correlative melodic line, but it doesn't feel too late at that point. the section at 3:20 is really great. it's got such an odd vibe with the combination of the heavily effected guitarish synth next to the pulsing of the drums. it fading to just the pulsing synths (reminiscent to the alert sounds at the beginning of the original) is really neat too. looking at this from a content perspective is tougher than normal because there's a ton of sfx work here that i'd argue essentially shouldn't count towards the main body of the work. i'd want to toss the first 35ish seconds and the last minute or so. from there, the connection at 0:38 is recognizable but so heavily distorted it's hard to hear. from there it's clearer in the more melodic (i use that word tenuously at best) sections. i think ultimately there's enough here to count, but i recognize that other judges may timestamp this differently. this is a tough one to timestamp because of how much of the original is just unpitched stuff or sfx, too. overall this is a really interesting work. the care taken with some of the more distorted sections is clear, and there's some really unique approaches taken here that i think really dovetail well with the game. this is a pass in my book. YES

ooh, love the rhodes right at the beginning. there's a nice clear soundscape at the beginning. snare's a touch loud but it isn't overpowering. melody comes in at 0:27 and it's got a lot of personalization. the synth choice is a bit squishy and hard to hear with so many notes. there's a genre switch at 0:56 as a b-section with a more traditional jazz groove in keeping with the original, and then it goes back to the funkier layout. next section features some original solo content, but it does feel pretty inspired by the original melody. this goes back to the melody with a lighter background for a bit before going back to where it was. around here i noticed that the drums have mostly sat on the same groove for the entire song, but the personalization in the fills and the ride groove they shift to during the jazzier sections helped out. there's some more leaning on the buzzy synth's riff and then it closes up. this is a nicely-handled track in my opinion. there's some nice personalization, the solo's great, the instrumentation compliments it well, and it's well-mastered. this one's easy for me. YES

oh my gosh this is hilarious! this is immediately recognizable as haunted chase, at least to me, and the style is on point. the main representation is the noodle in the clarinet, the ascending chromatic pattern between the organ and clarinet, and the upward-rising flourishes in the clarinet. there's not much more in haunted castle honestly so this kind of motivic development is exactly how you'd have to arrange something like this. creepy castle starts at 0:55 i think, with some alternate rhythmic ideas thrown in. the artist alternates between them from there on out, and has a fairly standard ending. from an execution standpoint, the instruments sound about what i'd expect. they're not particularly good but especially the clarinet is actually pretty well handled (although it doesn't sound real, that's just a limitation of most clarinet sample sets). the low brass samples aren't great (is it a sousaphone or trombone? i honestly can't tell), but again it's not the worst. the drums are probably too loud, but polka drums are extremely simple - remember that sometimes they're played as part of a one-man suit, so the complexity is minimal at best. what is represented here is on the lower end of the complexity scale for the style but it's not bad at all, although a simple fill here or there wouldn't have been bad. i think this is great. i can see it failing on instrument quality guidelines but honestly this does a great job handling one theme and bits of another in two minutes in a creative, transformative way without making me hate it. the puppet video is hilarious too. YES

some fun originals here. intro has some fun sound design and builds really nice. the continuance of that build through 0:45s up to 1:05 is also great. there's some more building out of the main beat that calls back a bit to the intro, and then the melody comes in at 1:27. the bass is really active, the background is full and rich, and the lead is clearly audible throughout. this is really well-done. i wouldn't have minded some more personalization of the lead synth through this section, but for an initial presentation it's fine. there's a break at about 2:32, and the bass comes in and adds some fun punch to this section. there's a b section that starts at 2:53 and then has the melody come in delayed and mess around a bit which is nice. i would have loved to hear a new lead here to mix it up, but the backgrounds have continued to have some variation so it's not egregious. the main melody comes in again at 3:39 and it feels pretty similar to the first time it came in for the entire way through the melodic presentation. there's a recap of the chorus of the original and that takes us through the end of the track. the ending is simple but is clear and effective. from a mastering perspective this is mastered really loud (as expected in the style) but isn't difficult to listen to or anything. the instruments are consistently clear and nothing is overpowering. mastering is really solid, a high point for the track overall. i wasn't a huge fan of the last third of the track being at least partially copy/pasted, but overall this is well over the bar and sounds great. nice work =D YES

this starts out as mostly a sonic upgrade, with the intro being pretty similar to the original. there's some fun riffs and ensemble work in there. i didn't like the lead synth as much as i felt it's too close to a synth guitar in a bad way - something that was a little more cutting would have come across a bit clearer i think. there's a cutout at 1:13 that's got some more fun ensemble work, and eventually moves to a solo section that has some good ideas. there's not much space in there but that's not specifically a complaint as much as an observation. we get back to a recap of the second part of the A section, and it feels copied from earlier for a bit. at 2:29 there's some interesting offbeat guitar work, but the drums and bass still sound similar to the opening section. some half-time drums mix it up a bit (although there's a few snare hits that sound off-time), a bit of a bass feature, and some more ensemble work bring it back to a recap to finish it out. i don't care for the ending - unresolved chords need a reason to be unresolved or else they're trite, so it just sorta ends. overall i definitely noticed that the drums have a few nice fills and patterns but overall felt pretty much the same throughout. i don't know if it's an exact copypasta but it didn't feel like there was much variability there from bar to bar. from a production standpoint it sounds a little condensed from an EQ standpoint. the instruments are all audible but it doesn't sound like there's much in the really high or low registers. it's nice though that everything's pretty clear from start to finish, and there's never a point where it's hard to hear. another note - this kind of style i'd expect a bit more compression overall. it's got a lot of dynamic variability, and that's to the detriment of the rhythm guitars at least i think. more compression on them and a noise gate to cut the in-between fuzz will help make their articulations a lot clearer and will add more punch to what they're playing. there is very little space in this song in any instrument, and that leads to a track that has a bit of a same-y feel throughout. overall there's some really fun ideas here i think. some of the melodic expansion is neat, the band overall sounds pretty good when they're doing less rhythmic stuff, and there's a pretty nice overall shape to the track. the solo was solid as well. i think this can use a bit of love on the guitar parts to compress and gate them a bit like i mentioned, the track as a whole can use some heavier compression so it's not so dynamically variable, and the drums could use some love so they don't sound so robo. i'm pretty split on this. i want to hear what other judges think before i vote fo sho. it's competent overall but it feels pretty robotic and flat. ??? edit 12/17: going to go with my fellow judges here. i think the mastering is flat, the drums are boring, and the ending isn't there. not anything huge by itself but adds up to a NO.

really meaty band sound, tons of bass and lows. notably the bass guitar is extremely loud, almost distractingly so, but there's very little attack tone on it, just the woof from the low end. the first presentation of the melody is pretty straightforward, and it breaks up at about 1:08 for some piano that isn't particularly realistic in performance. the band comes in for some more aggressive melodic work around 1:28 and it drops off with some ensemble chugs. there's still not a ton of arrangement up to this point that's not just recapping the melody, although there's some exploration and an arp that's a callback to the original in double time in the middle of a significant break. after a build with organ there's some more guitars leading into a big last blow (and a well-timed kitty!). there's some more going on in the melody this time around. the end is a pretty aggressive blow but it's handled fine. from an arrangement perspective, there's not anything ground-breaking here, but i liked the different ways that the remixer approached it between the piano break, the main ensemble playing, and some of the synth work in the breakdown. from a mastering perspective, this sounds super low-heavy. there's an intense amount of low/low-mid in the mix. it'd be essentially unlistenable on a system with even moderate bass representation - a car would be just mud. the bass guitar needs to be turned down significantly at the least. i think the mastering pulls this one down. if it had a really transformative arrangement i'd consider it more, but this is just so bass-heavy that it sounds like it needs a few more listens on various equipment first. NO

tiberian sun has some really interesting tracks. you know immediately what age of pc gaming this came from as soon as you hear it, it's so late 90s. track starts off with some sfx and pads. the chord progression is from the original and the wide pads are similar to some of what's going on in the original but other than it's not a super-clear correlation. there's a tonal shift at 1:37 that brings in the familiar bass riff that's through most of the first part of the original track. the vocal pads are reminiscent of some of the instrumentation there too so that's nice. 2:12 echoes some of the original at 2:21 or so, and noodles around the updated chord progression. 3:31 picks up significantly, mirroring 3:24ish in the original. there's a lot of interesting ideas here, like adding random beats, and not as much focus on the melodic content from the original (although it's there). the synth solo is pretty fun and fits the style really well. there's a quieter section that serves to settle things down, but then it just ends rather than finishing up cleanly which is kind of bogus. overall the arrangement is pretty far-reaching, but i think that there's enough here to pass muster for content volume. the synth work and instrument choices echo the original in a lot of ways and i liked that. on the mastering side, there's not much bass and most of the pad/mid-voice synths seem pretty heavily notched into their EQ ranges so it feels a little dense EQ-wise, but that's not a deal-breaker. this is a neat arrangement that does a lot with a track that has like five notes in it. nice work. YES

yeah, the lack of room verb or body on the piano is really obvious right off the bat. there's some wrong notes in it too that can't be attributed to the style - like the second note at 0:34. this kind of burlesque playing loves purposefully incorrect notes but they've gotta be leaned into. clashing notes in the background are just wrong, not quirky. i'm at 1:20 and i still can't shake that this is the background and half the instruments are missing. i like the idea of an approach that's less a large ensemble and more a small group, but it feels very empty throughout. the ending is odd. it sounds like the instruments start to fade out, but there's a clearly defined ending that actually wraps it pretty good. i don't know if the dynamic shifts are intentional. there's some interesting ideas that can come from small-ensemble work like this, but this still feels very disjointed and like it's missing too much to string it together. a key component of small ensemble writing is that all parts need to be equal contributors, or at least roughly equal, and that doesn't feel like the case here. as a result it sounds like piano and random sfx instead. the keys sound odd, but the arrangement needs more to tie it together beyond the (admittedly pretty good outside of the unsupported wrong notes) piano writing. NO

what an interesting original. i haven't heard of this one. there's some really great stuff going on here. the original's very atmospheric, and the way that you approached this aspect and made it your own is really fun. there's some fun fm-ish bells in here, lots of swelling synths, some heavily filtered percussion in the intro, and then it fleshes out into a really fun half-synthwave feel. the concatenation of a half-time beat and 16th notes in the synths is really interesting. the piano that comes in at 2:17 is also great, it's very metallic and feels like it fits this future-retro spacey feel really well. the track develops really slowly but it doesn't feel like it's dragging. there's a break at 3:12, and the synth work here continues to be pretty nuanced and interesting. this feeds up into a heavily sfx'd version of the texture of the first section. the electro synth-guitar does a nice job singing out over the top of all of the chaos under it. the ending is sudden but not problematic. this sounds great and brings to light a great original. excellent work. YES

some fun sfx in the opening. i loved the voiceover at the beginning, actually, although it's a bit bright. the jump into 0:52 was great, and the beat is pretty fun. i agree that it's a bit lossy but it doesn't sound terrible. there's a bit of a breakdown at 1:30 that keeps the driving beat but plays with stereo, and that's a little weird but it's still clearly tied to the original's chord progression. i really liked the arpeggiated synth at 1:58 specifically, and the continued variety of percussion and synths helped keep such a fast, straightforward progression from getting to weird. by about 2:27, i started getting a bit tired of the voiceover, but that's more personal preference than it being a bad implementation. the transition into 2:52 wasn't expected - i like the needly synth there! - but the key change was really surprising. i liked the new melody handling though and the synth used was great. the transition back to the original key was bad simply because it's not set up at all. even a bit of transition in the keys or some drum stuff would have been enough. then it just sort of ends. this is great for 95% of the track, and the ending is a real let-down. overall though i love the synth choices, i like the sound of it, and there's some fun ideas that you explore. i think this is over the bar. YES

this really is heavily limited. it's notable right off the bat and makes my ears tired very quickly. the intro is interesting, and i like the groove. the melody intro is also interesting, and it's clear what track this is from right away. i liked the use of stereo in this section especially. there was little personalization but playing with the stereo effects were neat. the break at 1:36 was needed and well-timed. the second melody coming in at 1:45 was a lot more rigid and i felt this wasn't as well handled. there's not as much creativity in the background here and the melody is just kinda played through. 2:36 brought in some stuttered kicks to fit into the melody, and i didn't like this either. for a track that was very predicated on groove, it felt very offputting. there's a recap of the first melody and then an outro. the mastering here really was difficult. it's extremely bass-heavy and the mastering feels like it was just a matter of applying a limiter and leaving it at that. the melody is easily audible throughout, so it's volumized at least passably well, but i felt like the bass was straight-up oppressive. on a bass-heavy system like a car this will sound like mud for nearly the entire track. i like the feel a lot, but given how conservative the arrangement was (the melody lines could have been dropped into the sequencer from a midi and i wouldn't know the difference) and how messy the lower EQ is, i think this needs another pass. NO

wow, great original. agreed that the opening drone needs more depth. it's actually a lot louder than the harp which inspired the start. the bawu though is really carefully handled in a very idiomatic manner - nice work. i'd love to hear more movement in that synth drone under it. the guitars sound great. agree with emu that the drums need some verve, although i didn't mind the high EQ content in this as much as you did. i'll note that the bass especially on higher notes get some machine-gun effect - you may need to play with the velocities to get some flex there. i thought the bawu sounded fine at 1:10, but found the cello at 1.18 to be difficult to hear. i'd suggest either starting that section in a higher octave (sacrificing a little drama from a rising line to instead allow it to be clearly heard) or lightening the backing parts for the first part of the cello's line. when the guitar takes over the lead, it sounds fantastic. the break at 1:55 is great. i found the squelchy synth to be a bit too bright to start - maybe start with the filter a little tighter and make it a more gradual change? the zipper synth coming at 2:07 is an interesting stylistic choice. i like the concept - echoing another ethnic instrument - but it doesn't seem to really go anywhere (it kinda meanders) and it is fairly quiet. this is exacerbated by an aggressive background. this is an opportunity to break up the bass and drum groove and go with something different for a bit before having your lead come back in at 2:36. along those lines, the sequencing on the guitar becomes evident the last time through after it sounds essentially the exact same as the last few times it's played. since this is the penultimate phrase of the piece, go all out! making it be something more unique to send off your listeners will keep them coming back. even just a fast riff or a higher ending pitch will make a big difference. along those lines, allowing your synths to sustain a touch past the end of the last bar (or at least finishing their riff on beat 1 of the last bar, rather than an offbeat) will help make sure your ending feel like an ending, and your fadeout sound like it's on pitch...there's a bit of detuning effect right now that's a bit offputting. overall? it's a little too apparent that this is a bedroom producer track (). the drums and bass are obviously loops, the lead guitar lick is repeated in the same form too much, and the opening synths need some verve. i would suggest putting some woodshedding in on the drum track especially to mix it up here and there (grace notes and more use of varied cymbals can make a pretty good groove into an amazing track), put some movement on the early synth pad, dress up some of your other repeated patterns, and clean up the ending a bit, and you're in a better place. a bit of work on the drum EQs and you'll be even better. you have some excellent stuff here - the bawu and initial guitar programming are delightful. this definitely will get a yes from me with just a bit more dress-up. to be honest this is really close for me and i wouldn't be sad to see it get posted. there's just so much that can be gained from a few simple updates. NO

i'm going to preface this by saying that i really am not into lofi despite liking downtempo and other styles. i find the reduced freq range to be tiresome. that said, i think this is a fairly good adaptation of the original into this style. the beat sounds consistent with the genre, and the bass is interesting and adds some fun to the track. that said, i'd consider this to be more of a cover than an arrangement. there's essentially no adaptation of the melody or chords throughout at all, no personalization. the bass groove is fun and the few synths used are thematic and fit, but i'm landing on the not-enough-arrangement side of the line by just a little. maybe if it was longer and could explore the ideas laid out here more i'd be ok with it, but the melodic content occupies less than a minute and a half of the track. it's just too short to really explore anything. if it was a minute longer (with a minute's worth of exploration and development) i'd be cool with it, i think, since it sounds good. it's just too close to being a straight cover in a new style otherwise. NO

kick has a lot of reverb. i'm guessing that'll cause issues later in the track. opening synths are interesting but quiet. already by 0:28 there's a lot of heaviness in the lower mids because of how oofy the bass is and the amount of sustain on the kick. the melody coming in at 0:55 is nice, though, and i like the handoff between the two synths to make that initial arpeggiated line. the melodic content is definitely pretty repetitive, and that's just the nature of the original here. that said, there's a lot you can do to expand it out, with one really obvious idea being updated chords. a fun thing is that when the melodic content is highly repetitive, you can essentially put whatever chords you want under it and it'll still sound right (within reason). i'd recommend looking into some easy progressions like I-vi-IV-V or I-bVI-bVII-IV to get some movement out of the second half of the track. the break at 1:49 was needed. i think you had a chance to branch out more in your sound design here, also, to make it even more separated from the main section. the ending drop to just synths is a nice idea to help wrap it up. needs some extra blank space at the end to allow your ending hit to fade naturally, it's clipped now. overall the bigger issue here wasn't the repetitiveness, as emu said (although it's definitely repetitive and should get some more body to the arrangement itself), it's the mastering. it's very boomy because of the bass and kick both having long sustains that aren't trimmed, and because both clearly have a ton of spare freqs flying around. an EQ pass and trimming down the envelope for both the bass and kick will help immensely, and open up a lot of room for some of your more interesting mid parts to speak easier. NO

some fun fm-style synths to start out the track. the melody is recognizable right away, and the drums are nice and tight early on. the first presentation of the melody is a bit weird, because there's this huge sub-bass, the drums, a melody, and a moving countermelody, but no real obvious pad or anything to help hold it together. it feels a bit empty as a result. also at this point it becomes obvious that there's only really one drum loop being used and then a different one for fills, and that's it. there's a break that's needed and we get back into it at 1:40 or so. there's some more complexity in the mids here which helps. 1:56 is the melodic content again, and again this is very 'hollow'-feeling, with no supporting pads in the mids and the melody several octaves above most of the other synths. there's another break at 2:54 for a while, and there's a bit more exploration here before it comes back up for a final bit at 3:15 that sounds more like a transition to a new song in a set more than anything else, and then a fadeout. this ending is pretty not-great for a standalone track. from a mastering side, the cymbals and highs especially in the drumset are very bright compared to the rest of it. the bass is also very present, but it's worth noting most of the beef is in what i'd call sub-bass frequency so it might not speak on everyone's headphones or speakers. overall i think this one needs a bit of workshopping. i liked what it was doing - there's some fun countermelodies going on, i liked the feel of the drum groove initially, and the synth choice is fun. there's a bunch of simple-to-fix missteps, though, like not scooping the mastering so hard, or filling out the middle of the frequency range a bit with some pads, updating the drums so they're not the same loop for 3.5 minutes, and adding some body to the lead synth so it's not quite so thin up high where it is (or dropping it an octave). this has some fun ideas but it's not there yet. NO

i found the stilted samples to be much more irritating, notably in passages with thinner instrumentation or solo leads. however, the arrangement was very well handled from an instrumentation standpoint. there's a lot of passing the melody around, there's a variety of orchestral timbres explored, and as expected from Rebecca the OST is represented strongly. i do think there was more room to do some more varied textures - most of the middle section is just string sustains under some more interesting wind writing - but you mixed it up a bit more near the end with some pizz and then some much lighter instrumentation to finish it out. this is closer than i would have expected mainly due to the handling of some of the not-great sample choices, but overall this is over the bar. YES

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