prophetik music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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