prophetik music

something like 6db headroom if you let one spot clip a touch. just so consistently a problem. the orchestration is lush and rich as expected. agree with chimps that the clarinet countermelody is just so beautifully woven in. i found the original bridges to be fine - both attempt to at least keep the feeling of the original work, and the first at least uses the same chord structure. i agree that there's minimal arrangement done in the notes here, but i felt that the timbral variations for what carried the melody, harmony, and supporting parts all mixed up enough to feel ok. i do think the ending is not great and the manual fade on the flute sustain really stands out in a bad way after such a transparent and clear arrangement. from a mastering perspective, besides the issue with the headroom, this is a pretty clear and open arrangement so there's little issue with the soundscape or EQ. as a whole she did a nice job avoiding the potential problem points with high winds too. i think there's definitely enough here for a positive vote. YES

oh man, the initial hit is so good. real plini/arch echo sound right off the bat, i love it. echoing others - there's zero real arrangement here. the adaptations are real nice and i'd love to hear them all by themselves, honestly - but here at OCR we need a lot more than just a bunch of covers strung together by key and theme. which is unfortunate, because i love the sound! you've got a real fun tone throughout and i like the performance a lot. sorry mang. if you did half the tracks and wove them together, i'd be all over this. as it is right now, i can't say that it meets submission guidelines. NO

fun source. i agree that it's present throughout, and also agree that there's a lot more which could have been done with it for most of this track. it's essentially a lot of recap of the original with some more creative sections near the end (which are much needed by that point). i'll echo nuts and say that most of the sound design is either a bit vanilla or just plain sounds not great in the mix. some examples are: that saw pad at 1:31, which is so loud it crushes everything else while simultaneously not sounding like anything the distorted clap at 2:02, which sounds really dull and then persists for the next several minutes the distorted strings at 2:27, which are a cool idea but just are too grating to be real leads without being distracting (the hard panning for a melodic line is a 100% no-no as well) the left-ear nails-on-chalkboard at 3:23 is...nails on a chalkboard. just so unpleasant. there's more but that's a good representative sampling of at least the first few major sections. tyson's inclusion is a fun break for sure. i liked the funky feel of this section too (although still just couldn't stand those highly-distorted melodic synths), and it was a nice way to build for the melodic recap at 4:05. as a whole, the track feels really low/mid heavy, and near the end continues to just get louder and less balanced until 5:13 or so. some extra attention to mastering throughout would balanced the volume so that so much of the track isn't much quieter than the ending. some additional attention to the synth choices would also do wonders. NO

this has some really nice touches. i really liked the initial presentation of the theme, followed immediately by a nice dropoff at 1:04. i definitely agree that there's some robotic performances here (particularly in the marcato vins and trumpets throughout) but as a whole it's fun to listen to. i also really like the constant attention to dynamics. i would have liked it a bit more if you'd used dynamics within the instrument groupings rather than just layering instruments for an orchestral crescendo, but like i said before, it's fun and works. additionally, the solo voice part is a nice touch and does a good job adding contrast to the ensemble scoring throughout. the build into 2:55 and subsequent section of higher-energy music is a real payoff. i really enjoyed the superhero-movie vibe i got there. the really slow attack of your horns comes out a bit there, but you do a nice job hiding it by sitting on sustains as much as possible. as a whole, i really found the arrangement to be a solid reinterpretation without going too different from the source. no issues there. easy vote! YES

hey, this is a fun take! i like the idea for sure. i need to agree with the other judges however that the track just simply doesn't sound realistic at all. spacing and balance aside, the brass is velocitized strangely and written in a very unrealistic manner. there's no room for breathing, and the lead trumpet often goes too high and stays there for too long. essentially the entire section from 1:21 through 1:26 and 1:33 through 1:44 is just not possible by most lead trumpet players. maybe one of those riffs total, but that extended section is too much. the bass also sounds really, really fake since it's so repetitive and there's no variance there in the rhythm or articulation. overall, though, the track's got a ton of energy, which is fun. something that'd turn it up another notch, besides what i've mentioned so far, would be to give the drums some more love to mix it up a bit. beyond that, cleaning up the mastering would help a lot. the "Falcon Punch" line also clips to hell and back and needs to be scaled back quite a bit before it'd fit. you've got a great idea here! i think some additional attention to the realism of the entire package would do wonders to what comes out on the other side. NO

just rubber-stamping this one. it's a sound upgrade with essentially no arrangement. it really does sounds great! but it doesn't meet our criteria unfortunately. NO

really fun original. it feels so alive. 5.1db headroom =( boy, the first statement of the melody is real fun. i love the lightness of the arrangement, and i love your continued attention to orchestral percussion (which no one uses enough!). the string swell under the flute at :30 or so is just a delightful transition. the harp (i believe? it's pretty metallic) is brighter and lacking room sound which is weird, but it is better later when it goes farther down the instrument. things get a little questionable around 1:20. there's something in the background (i can't tell if it's an oboe or a soprano sax) that has some crazy vibrato on it, causing it to have some really weird pitch tendencies. the men's choir is silly as MW said - it's not close to sounding real, and the significant jumps in volume that randomly occur just make it more obvious. the chord walk at 1:57 isn't wrong per se, but it sounds so strange (due to emphasizing the 1 and 5 vs. the 3/7, i think?) that it may as well have been. the part at 2:05 is also silly in that it's creative and fun and interesting writing! and it's stuck being 'sung' by a robo-choir voice instead of something that i actually wanted to hear. it completely eclipses the interesting counterpoint going on around it. things get back to normal after that around 2:15ish, and it's a pretty clear recap of the first section without being the same. i liked the handoff between picc, flute, and clarinet, but still didn't care for the clumsy men's choir doing the chords. the change to using the marimba and bass clarinet to carry the melodic content and harmony was real nice, but it definitely gets muddy here as there's a lot going on in the same range. 2:57 definitely sounded wrong until i realized it's a borrowed chord that's just voiced real poorly so you can't hear what's what in the middle of the mush. after that clears up real nice however, and it goes back to the more nuanced body of the beginning. the overall writing here is really nice, but the bass clarinet kinda honks over it and took me out of the mood almost immediately. that's a timbral issue, not a volume one. the rest of the ending was solid here. overall, i really loved the concept of the piece, but there was a few parts like the male choir and some of the live performances that just totally stuck out. correcting those missteps from an arrangement perspective and applying a bit of light compression to make the track more consistent from a volume standpoint will really improve the overall product. as it is, though, this doesn't meet the bar. NO

i heard the inspiration of the two songs you mentioned right away. i think you did a nice job adapting the original to this kinda-newagey jazz style. i really appreciated the attention paid to dynamics in each instrument, and additionally in how you let each instrument have their own place in the track. i do feel that it's a bit loud at times (the bass and drums are well-done but sometimes seem too loud compared to other instruments or parts), but overall i thought that you really nailed the vibe of the track well. this is an easy vote. YES

what a great original track. never heard it before. the background you gave as well is real nice. as for source: 0:00-1:08 or so: arpeggiated form of the chords in the opening, say around 0:16 or so of the youtube 1:08 synth stabs: EP at about 0:23 EP at 1:14: sounds like the original arpeggio reversed 1:34: the changes to the arpeggio appear to follow the actual chord progression slowly represented from 1:26-2:35ish (this isn't a formal analysis of it) i'd also note that you don't really have content until 0:05 (before that's too quiet for normal speakers), and it's essentially done at 2:52. so, out of 2:47 worth of content, roughly 1:08 is a clear depiction of harmonic content, and another 1:39 is a much less clear depiction of similar harmonic content. it's arguable if the last 60% can be considered actual melodic material, so i'd say that from a source perspective, there's not enough here. this is a unique case though in that you mentioned that this is a reduction of a much longer work. personally - i'd love to hear the entire 8m thing, along with a breakdown of what's where to make sure i'm not missing anything! i think that'd be a much better listening experience. this is frankly too short for what you're trying to accomplish. now, from a musical perspective, this is a fascinating evocation of the harshness of a winter landscape, represented by what i feel is the first part as an allegory for the blinding light that permeates such snowscapes and the second part as a reference to the shifting deepness of glaciers and ice floes (which resound with low, arresting cracks and grinding sounds constantly). recital notes aside, i think this is a fascinating work that'd be real fun to have in full in the community. i think it'd be divisive and generate a lot of discussion, and i think anyone that's heard anything by reich would find it fascinating as well. there's a ton of recognized examples of like music out there by really big-name composers and i feel that this absolutely has enough material to classify as similar. for our purposes, though, there's just not enough here of the source to make it fit. give me my 50% and i'll happily bang the drum for this having a place on this site. NO

i appreciate the artist's attention to events surrounding the game. i'd also encourage them to recognize and separate the art that was created from the actions of the creator. i went through this with lostprophets years ago when their lead singer went to jail for some particularly heinous crimes, and ultimately decided that i was willing and able to separate the created from the creator. this might be partially due to my classical background (goodness, wagner's even got a part of his wiki entry devoted to his anti-semitism), but ultimately i am not willing to draw the line from material to actions. i recognize fully that others don't feel like this, but (to borrow a popular phrase) cancelling something because the creator did bad things - or even if the material contained that! - hides that, rather than recognizes that it was something that happened, and that we changed and moved on from it. in an attempt to not get into the crazy amount of drama that surrounds the entire situation, i choose to see holowka as a sad reminder and warning at the importance and seriousness of mental illness and mental abuse, not as someone to be hidden, forgotten, or sanctioned. vilify him if you will, but don't vilify it. bardicknowledge has a lot of good things to say about this (why he still teaches 'cancelled' composers in his game music class, for example). /opinion right off the first minute or two, there's a great ear for tension and release shown in the strings. i really like the integration of the electronic vs. 'acoustic' instrumentation, as well. your writeup really helps me understand what you're going for, and i do feel like you did a great job capturing that. i can't help but wonder what some of this would sound like with the attention of someone with more orchestra part-writing chops - your writing is beautiful but admittedly fairly tutti throughout (sounds like patches of string ensembles vs. unique parts). i appreciate your willingness to get into some funky chords to help convey what you're going for. 5:02 and 5:06 stood out to me as being really well-executed. your combinations of synth and orchestra parts are real fun later on too - like 6:17, which is superb despite essentially being like four lines going on total. i agree that the balance here gets a little out of whack. i'd say that's the only time i really had an issue with that. if i wanted to complain about anything specific - i'd say that overall the song is actually more cheery (to steal your word) than i expected based on the subject matter and what i've heard about the game. i have never played it, but your track really consistently feels very uplifting and forward-focused, which is a real trick to do with an 8+-minute track. overall i think this is superb. and, to inject my earlier opinion again - we need stuff like this in the community. we need music that generates discussion and drives attention to both great, genre-defining, generational composers, and to the people we don't ever want to deify or lift up (or even meet). hiding them only encourages the narrative that broken people deserve to be hidden for being broken, which is likely a part of why what happened happened. i can't accept or encourage that. the composer clearly had serious issues and did stuff that's unconscionable, but it was out of that troubled mind that made some music that inspired and moved people. those can both be true statements, and we don't have to hide from that. as a community, we can do our part in spotlighting both the beautiful music and in turn the truly sad outcome of the situation. we have a voice.

this starts off sounding like the original track was from a mega man game. right off the bat, you can hear the vision you had for this, and it's fun! you did the same thing as a background for nearly two minutes, though. the 7/8 section was really fun from a technical perspective and a welcome break, but it definitely is feeling samey by the 2-minute mark. i dug the solo for sure, but would have loved to hear more flexibility with the articulations (you used some, but there's a lot more room to mix it up so it's not note salad!) and with the envelope filter. live synth solos usually are going nuts on the x/y knob and it adds a lot of character to what's otherwise a fairly static sound. excellent work using extensions around 1:38 - you had a ton of room to keep doing it, too! don't shy away from the crunchy notes, even in the melodic recaps, since that's what this kind of electro fusion sound lives on. the breakdown at 2:00 is welcome and needed, and introducing another theme is a great idea. it's a good contrast, too - it's a very rhythmic and downbeat-oriented option. MW, what you're hearing is just the quintal harmony on the melody line. the chords themselves are fine, and the melody is just paired fifths nearly the whole way through that part. it sounds weird but is consistent with this style (fusion) because those strange-sounding notes are extensions up the chord tree. most of them are ninths, which sounds odd when unsupported by a 7th and also on the top of the chord, but there's nothing technically wrong with them. i think it adds a great quirky sound to the middle section that helps distinguish it. also there's precedence: they used it back at 0:50 as well. i'd argue that the thinner-sounding soundscape works throughout due to the style shift. the original's more this noisy jazz/acoustic rock hybrid, and it relies on that fat piano sound to carry most of the presence since the drums are splats. fusion is notoriously more wide in range, and so the brighter, more treble-heavy instruments carry that sound well i think. i didn't feel it was too empty. if anything it's too busy in a few places (right at 3:35 for example). i do agree that the 3:35 lead is fun, and weird, and works there but doesn't later since it's kind of blatty. when you used it like a synth horn section back at 1:07, you used it more idiomatically, and that was ok. at 4:23ish, it's not as carefully used. i liked the ABA format overall, and i thought that the soloing and humanization that was done was enough to distinguish it enough on the arrangement front. i think it sounds pretty good too. YES

i remember this one from the album. i believe simultaneously that i thought this was a fun listen and that it had some real problems in the mastering department, and MW hit them on the head. even i think it's cluttered, and i think it's way too long as well. that lead at 2:42 is so surprising because there's a lot of pretty interesting sounds that i've heard up to this point, and then you bring in something that sounds like the actual VST didn't load, and double down on it at 3:09. it just is so much louder than everything else, and it demolishes some really fun sound design behind it. i think that this needs to be a few minutes shorter, and it needs to have some of the mid-level noise removed and the rest slotted in better so it doesn't sound so muddled. some simple updates and this will be a much more cohesive and coordinated track. NO

right off the bat, i noticed that there's quite a bit of headroom on this track. the glitches and electronics are fun, but they're much louder than everything else and cause the overall track's balance to be thrown off. a compression pass would really help this without requiring significant changes to the silly synths you're experimenting with. from a scoring and implementation perspective, there's a lot of really interesting instrument choices - purposefully, i think - and they make for some interesting soundscapes throughout. i'd say that i think your samples are really holding you back here - you've got a really cool cinematic harpsichord (it's almost a cimbalom sound which is really a clever choice here), and the cinematic toms, some fun phased electronics, and a ton of orchestral pad samples that seem to be from an orchestral hits pack. the pad strings have such a long swell that they really preclude use in any upbeat track like this, and while the pizz are fun and sound good, the constantly-repeated horn rips and the really not-great trumpet lead pull down what could be pretty fun. some simple humanization on the trumpet - adding in some spaces where a player'd breath, for example - really would help a lot. from an arrangement perspective, this is a pretty safe arrangement. you're essentially restating the original tracks a few times with different instrumentation. i would want to see a lot more creativity applied to the melody - maybe passing it around, some variation to the notes or rhythms, something to make it yours! - before i'd say that it's enough. beyond that, the synths that are fun early on are just constantly reused without volumization, in dramatically different dynamic situations, until they're irritating. lastly, the drum kit never changes, and doesn't sound great to begin with, so it also becomes something i'm not a fan of. from an execution standpoint, your arpeggiating synth keeps going after the last horn rip, which seems like an oversight. you'd want to have some automation to silence that channel at the end to avoid that. overall this is a great first pass! i might sound like i really don't like it, but i think there's some really fun soundscapes here that need some more touchup to make them really solid before i'd want to pass it. NO

what a fun track! i disagree that there's dragging - the variations in the backgrounds (1:01 where it widens, and the various dropouts) do more than enough to carry the very well-done soloing over the top. i'd argue that if this was a rock track with a guitar lead and no electronics, or a jazz track with a straightforward accompaniment, we'd not really comment on the background more than "eh, it's a bit bland". like larry said, the lead is just so fun and does a great job of exploring the melody via polyphony and riffs that it more than handles a straightforward background. i agree that there's not much going on aside from the melody, but the mid-range bloops that are in there either filling in the melody's gaps or appearing in pad form are more than enough for me given the consistency of polyphony in the lead. it's definitely bright mastering, but the bass has quite a bit of beef on it. i agree that it's overcompressed but it doesn't get in the way, and it's not ugly. i think this is a good pass. YES

the addition of classic battle mode allayed the one real fear i had about this release. i'm not preordering it, but i'm certainly willing to pay full price after it's out if the reviews aren't a mess.

oh man, i played this game so many times! the entire soundtrack is dope. and the game came with a limited edition card in it! that meowth was great for scraping clean an opponent's bench of injured pokes. the book on this one is pretty straightforward. the mastering is really clean (i wouldn't have minded a touch more compression, but that's me). the recording is really well-done, and is very clean and light - almost too much so, the lack of a pad or something in the middle to maintain the chords makes it feel pretty hollow throughout. the performance is note for note solid - but, that's the rub, in that there' essentially no arrangement here. it's a cover. the guitar parts are recorded to be exactly as the melody was in the original (even the harmony parts), and there's no altered chords, rhythms, or anything that could be called arrangement in there. the blues riffs were nice, and the vox parts at the end were cute, but realistically this is a cover, nothing more. i expected a lot more arrangement from the high-flying description. i love the track, but it doesn't fit the arrangement criteria even a little unfortunately. this is a great cover, but we can't accept covers at OCR. playing with some altered chords, mixing up the rhythms to make the melody more your own, or adding some new moving voices behind the melody would really transform this a lot and add a ton of interest. right now, though, this can't pass. NO

for context for other judges, this is when yuna reaches the calm lands and sees where her father defeated sin before. she lays down and takes in the scene, and steels her resolve to continue on, having made her decision to sacrifice herself when the time came. this is a beautiful rendition. i found your choice to use the tritone harmonies in the intro and outro intriguing, reinforcing the eerieness/wrongness that pervades a lot of FFX's plot once you know what's going on. your initial presentation of the melody is simple yet effective, and the consistent arpeggios remind me of a breeze flowing over the calm lands in this section. the harmonized melody at about 0:53 was real nice. 1:17 was a nice contrast to the initial melodic content, and the flourish at 1:35 was beautifully done. 1:54's reprise of the melody was nice, albeit a bit off in that you rushed some through this section. 2:29's ending is really nicely handled, with beautiful dynamics and a nice recapitulation of the intro. from a mastering perspective, i heard some pumping at 0:59, 1:10, and the section at 1:29, but it was minimal. beyond that, i really liked the warmth of the piano tone. this one's pretty easy. there's some rushing in the presentation, but as a whole it's a short-yet-sweet journey back to a really memorable part of the game. YES

i heard this one a while ago when the spring break set was released, so it's fun to see this enter the queue for me now. andrew's come so far as an artist since i got to know him on the Radical Dreamers project. he's always been a superb guitarist - as shown here! and i'll never forget him shredding anything that was thrown at him at jamspace every time i was at magfest - but the progression he's made as an arranger showcases his work ethic as well as anything. i love the melding of styles here - you've got some clear jazz elements represented in the chords and articulations at :39, there's the fusion of edm and rock at 1:30 when he brings in the lead on his guitar, and a real pop ballad feel at 1:44 when he brings the dotted quarter pads. the whole package is superb. my complaints are minimal. on an execution standpoint, at 0:39, the first one or two chords meld together a bit, and sound funky until i've found my footing there. it happens once or twice elsewhere, and i think it's at least partly due to the pad that's playing them not speaking right away and then moving stepwise to a new chord. a bit of an earlier release might have helped there. beyond that, i did notice that the kit has some fun fills and humanization in the hats, but as a whole the main snare that's on two and four feels loud even for edm standards by the end. i think the mix would sit easier with that being just a bit lower. lastly - and this is the one that will really matter - the ending for this version goes into the next track, and we'd need one that actually ends so it doesn't sound like it's missing content. that's an easy fix, no doubt - the song has an ending with an extended fill layered over it, so removing that fill is all that's needed. this is a fun and energetic mix that combines some great themes in a fun way that features some of the best aspects of OA's style. with a proper ending instead of the extended fill into the next song, this is an easy vote. Conditional (on the ending)

so, that's the gist of my original NO vote. let's see how this has been updated. i need to admit - it's nice to see that so many of my initial criticisms were taken to heart! you clearly adjusted the headroom, you reduced the beginning, gave it more of an ending, focused on bringing out the high end in the drums...all major points i brought up. i like the ending and the beginning a lot more now, which essentially addressed my major concerns on the arrangement side, so that's great to see. the production is still sub-par. the kit still sounds like it isn't real, but now it sounds like there's a highpass on it, cutting out all mids whatsoever. the snare is essentially a hat due to there being zero head sound, and the toms sound filtered as well. i don't hear a kick at all outside of some sub-freqs that are speaking - no beater sound whatsoever until 1:40 - and that lack really hurts the overall sound since there's nothing anchoring it. beyond that, the bass is much less quack-y, now, which is great - but it's almost unable to be heard since it's so far in the back. it needs more presence in the upper frequencies - or some adjustment to the EQ - to really speak where it is now. the whole thing is turbo-scooped too - there's nothing in the mids, it seems. there's also still what sounds like some level of distortion due to high signal at 1:30-1:31, which looks roughly like what i called out at 1:45 last time around. i definitely think this is closer. i think if you're able to square up those drums so they sound more like a dance kit and less like the drums you use in an intro before the real kit comes in, it'll fix the issue it has right now where the EQ is really mid-lacking. cleaning up that and that spot of peaking at 1:30 will really make for a much stronger overall track. NO

8db headroom on this one, lol. that's silly. proper compression is really, really needed on this track. there's way too much dynamic contrast overall once you get it loud enough too. let's take a minute and talk about pronunciation, especially considering how many versions there are out there of this song for reference. there is a significant difference in how you pronounce your vowels especially as compared to every other game-audio version out there. as a whole, your e is too wide, your u is too closed, and you sit on your nonpitched consonants (like g) too long, causing them to disrupt the flow a bit. this isn't enough to make me fail it on that alone - they're still clear, your tone is nice, and i like the characterization you give it (for example, on the first syllable of 'renmiri') - but it's indicative of not a ton of time studying the source and preparing to say these words. go and check out the comments to "the place we knew" sometime and see how people react to even a really solid presentation of japanese lyrics and you'll understand why i think it's critical to really do your best to nail this for the best reception. from a technique side, focus on keeping your teeth apart and generating a round, open sound. singing with your first knuckle on each first finger a bit between your teeth from the outside (fish mouth!) and trying to keep your mouth open (maybe not quite a perfect 'O' the whole time, but as much as you can!) will dramatically improve the roundness of your tone, since it prevents you from closing up mouth and collapsing your throat. you do a much better job with support on this track than others i've heard from you, so you've definitely got the air to really make the vocals something special. back to the arrangement: i really enjoy the attention paid to the backing track throughout. it'd be easy to write it off as minimal, but there's a lot of nuance here. plus, how often do you get to really play around with all those interesting and well-sampled percussion instruments? i liked the crotales at 2:02 especially. the pad that was added around 2:10 is nice too. i wasn't as interested in the loss of attention to the text at 2:20 however - your pronunciation was consistent until then, which matters when it's so exposed. another misstep is the flat note on the major 6th at 2:37 - that needed some lift in post (or a more confident attempt punched in). the ending is really nice - i really liked the last "Hasatekanae". there's some resonance on the first syllable of the last word ("kutamae") causing it to spike up, but the rest is a very atmospheric and nuanced fade. overall - the arrangement really is fun to listen to, and you do a great job in terms of pitch and flow. i wasn't a fan of the exacerbated vowels, as i mentioned, and i found your tone to be clear but tight. the performance is likely passable however if it wasn't for the mastering issues. even beyond the huge headroom, the utter lack of compression really, really hurts this track as it prevents any of the nuance from shining through without a hand on the speaker volume to allow you to hear the whole thing. fix the mastering (which i think will require more work than a conditional would cover for rebecca) and this is above the bar. another take on the vox and this is an insta-yes from me. NO 1/27 edit: because some other judges brought it up, i thought i'd clarify. i don't speak japanese, and i don't know the words over-well. what i do know is that many basic rules of 'how to sing letters' aren't being followed, and i found it grating. stuff like vowels being the wrong shape or dwelling on non-pitched consonants are often the result of not concentrating on a good sound and letting regional accents take over more than anything. all that said, though, i am not failing this because she isn't a classically-trained singer, although the lack of technique i felt hurt the piece. i no'd it because it's a quiet track that has zero compression and is begging for some post, and i don't think that rebecca has demonstrated enough mastering technique on her own to be able to handle it via conditional. 6/10 edit: this was brightened up considerably and the dynamic contrast isn't nearly so troublesome. the voice is probably too loud over the background right now, but this feels much more like a live performance in person and i like it. call this a YES from me.

i agree with rexy that the source fits this style really well. the original was already kind of doing that funk-house style, with a really present kit and a bop band behind it, and this definitely takes it farther down the euro road with the chord extensions you're hinting at in the guitar, combined with the acoustic bass and disco vibe. i also agree that there's just way too much sampled content in here. it's so busy, and that's saying something coming from me! the sampled sections clearly aren't in the same level of swing so there's conflicting off-beats, and the sampled content drags the overall fidelity of the track. i did like what the bass was playing, and felt that helped move it along. i'd recommend some space in there to let the instrument 'breathe' a bit. your groove got pretty dry pretty quick when it essentially played the same pattern for three minutes, so starting somewhere less full of notes and expanding throughout the track will help quite a bit, i think. lastly, while i really liked what the acoustic guitar was playing, it was so choppy due to whatever slicer you used to adjust the tempo that it sounds really disjointed. i really wanted it to speak cleaner and it just wouldn't. speaking of mastering, i found the kit as a whole to sound like it was in an entirely different soundscape than the rest of the track. it was very present and wide (the shaker in the right ear was really irritating maybe halfway through), and the continued shifting of the rest of the track's level of fidelity as compared to the static drums was really distracting. you can definitely do some work to volumize the rest of the instruments to level them out. there's definitely some fun moments in here. i'd love to hear more of the EP solo at 2:00, and i enjoyed the panned EP solos before that. i also overall enjoyed the presentation of the melody, and while more variation there would have been good, it was fun. i just can't however get past the constant sampling and lackluster mastering. part of french house is that the mastering really sparkles, which helps the common phaser effects and sampled old disco track bits shine through in spite of their age. i don't get that feeling here and it really makes for a track that isn't where it needs to be to pass. NO

ok, i love your concept. super creative idea and i like the touches of how it influenced your remixing (like the sweeper wave you've got throughout). i also like that you just went for some interesting ways to keep it different, like bringing in the dance piano and going HAM on it in the second half (especially from 3:39 onward). i think that you ran into some limitations of the synth in that section in the piano since there's some machine-gun effect going on there, but it's still fun. i found the drum fills notably to be pretty similar throughout, which was offputting when there wasn't consistently a cymbal crash or some other beat-1 terminator at the end (like 3:25). that emphasized the drum-machine aspect of your sound software. working around that somehow would have been a positive. from the mastering side, the track was cranked pretty hard (i saw it clipping by nearly 1.5db in some places). i did like the meaty kick throughout. there was definitely some weird balance however. the keys really dominated when they came in in stacked chords at 3:40, for example, and through most of the middle of the track, the middle synths are louder than the melodic content. this is, honestly, a pretty good job considering the software limitations. if it's possible to export stems of this, having someone on a real machine (or even yourself!) mastering this in a DAW that allows for more flexibility would be a huge win. there's a few times i really wasn't into the arrangement here or there, but really the main thing influencing my vote is the mastering. i'd say that this is pretty close as-is, and a bit of attention to the details in the arrangement and mastering will really make for a great, fun, front-page track. NO

this track feels like something out of stellaris to me. the wide pads and light arpeggiated synths are so endemic to that soundtrack. arrangement-wise, i liked how you expanded the initial guitar arpeggiated chord and explored that some more. switching the time signature gave you a lot more room to explore some of those sustained tones and i like that you did. i was surprised though that at 2:24 that you chose to keep the instrumentation the same going into the double-time section, as that was a perfect opportunity to mix it up a bit. i thought the same drums/arp/bass sounds there started to get stale (drums most of all). i also wasn't a fan of the end of the track, since it just sort of ended without any real process there. from a mastering perspective, i thought that the drums overall were pretty loud - the snare snap was just really bright the whole way through in a fairly dull soundscape - and the bass was overly muddled. that made it hard to hear what was going on at 3:13. beyond that, the entire track was quiet - i show nearly 2db of headroom throughout. as a whole, i might sound like i disliked the track a lot, but that's not the case. i actually really liked the vibe of it, which was very spacey and featured those fun wide pads i mentioned earlier. i think there's some simple fixes that'd really improve the overall product here - a better ending, some cleaner and louder mastering, and maybe adjusting some of the instrumentation in the double-time section would all really help the overall feel of the track. NO

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source was not in the slightest what i expected drums feel a bit dry (the whole thing feels a touch dry), and the bass is quiet. production critiques done. arrangement comments: the primary form of arrangement done here is what's done to replicate the melody in the strings and keys. some of what worked in a chippy format doesn't work here (2:25 shows that pretty well, what worked with limited chord background doesn't work with a full band behind you every time), but as a whole this is a solid arrangement that is interesting and passes the melody around consistently while keeping the feel going. it isn't repetitive or long enough to get boring. the drum fills are uninspired but enough to keep things moving along. this one's easy. YES