prophetik music

hey, if this is live, the instruments each sound great! the performances are consistent and well-recorded. i'll note that i thought the hulusi was a clarinet - usually hulusi have more of a throaty tone than a clarinet does. the writing wasn't very idiomatic so it was hard to tell the difference. i expected more of the heavy scoops, trills, and hand vibrato that you see with the instrument. from an arrangement perspective, i'll agree that it's way too repetitive for a sub-3 minute piece. there's little variation in the background, and that's more egregious because you've got two plectral instruments, which can have their strum/picking patterns varied very easily. there's also essentially no ending. i like the concept, but it doesn't sound like more than that yet. additionally, a track that's this open in arrangement just can't support descending seconds like you have at 1:34 for a few seconds. that stuck out like a sore thumb. with everything else so tonal, that kind of significant dissonance is going to be a black mark. from a mastering perspective, i agree that it's tough to differentiate the banjo and guitar sometimes. i'd also point out that the accordion could be turned down several dB and still speak just as well while allowing the background to speak a bit more. this feels unfinished. like i said before, i like the concept, but it doesn't sound like there's enough here to call it finished. flesh out your background part a bit more, make the melodic line a little more yours, and fix the descending seconds, and i think this is going to be over the bar. NO

i agree with rexy there's a ton of bass going on here. the cymbals are pretty slammed too. there's very little if any EQing going on here and it's showing in how everything's just mashed down with the compressor and sounds really dead. i like the lead sound, actually, and i don't mind the tone of the rhythm guitars, but there needs to be a serious pass on the mastering side for this to be passable. listening on other playback devices confirms my suspicions - this is essentially unlistenable on a car's sound system, for example, due to how boomy it sounds as a result. i know rexy said it looks flat across the board, but that's certainly not what it sounds like. it sounds very mid/low heavy and lacks any sparkle or brightness. from an arrangement perspective, this was a fun listen. i actually really like the contrast between the two tracks and agree that they dovetail together pretty well. i didn't mind the backing synth bits you did either, since they're there for some extra body and not much else. i don't consider the arrangement to be particularly transformative but it's enough in my book. i will note that i would call the harmonies at 1:49 to be wrong. you're using a whole tone scale from the sound of it, and does not fit the chord underneath nor the harmonies implied in the original. i don't think the mastering on this is passable in its current state. i like the performance and i like your lead sound a lot! i think it just needs more love with the EQ to get it out the door. NO

not a problem! glad that you didn't dive into something just to be in financial trouble right away after it, too. just think of how much nicer whatever you do at november will be than what you'd have afforded now, with all the deals around black friday.

hey, this is pretty energetic right off the bat. that's fun! it's definitely a close cover with some synth leads to carry the melody initially. i found that synth lead tone to be both too loud and real boring (no lfo or anything that i noticed), but it was serviceable. the track came out of a soloing section to a bridge that felt real strange since it sat on the V and vii?/V for a while. it felt very unsettled as a result of that, but it served as a bridge well enough. after that was a restatement of the theme and then an extended outro featuring a lot of soloing. i liked the solos. they were fast and fun and weren't perfect, which i appreciate quite a bit since it makes the track sound more organic and not as processed. they also were panned but not too much, which was nice. i didn't mind the end's overlapping leads. i thought everything there was clear enough to hear the individual voices. the mastering overall felt pretty clear. it's loud and in your face, but it wasn't too cluttered. i wouldn't have minded a bit more verb/room to the overall tone, as it felt real dry, but it was fine. this is a fun take on a great source. nice work everyone =) YES

agree that there's some sausage here, but while it sounds real loud it doesn't sound bad. i can hear everything and i don't hear waveform distortion that doesn't sound intentional. honestly it sounds like i'd expect something like this to sound. it is a big fatiguing but that's personal preference. i like the arrangement a lot. there's a ton of great examples of how to mix it up demonstrated here, and while the track uses a bunch of sfx, it definitely isn't leaning on them to carry the ear's interest. the breakdown and build from 2:00 to about 2:30 is great, and the subsequent melody lead does a great job taking a theme that's super common and adding some auditory interest to it without adding a ton of notes. this is a great total package. fantastic job. i'd love to hear more from you both! YES

same, larry, i love the original. such an evocative track, like so much of the soundtrack. track is extremely quiet, i'd estimate at least -6db outside of a few spikes and one 5-second section with a lot of bass. intro is pretty nice with the tempo change. there's some fun echoing of the bell parts in the bass pizz. there were some machine-gun effects in the bodhran (?) which were pretty obvious up front but weren't as obvious later. i wasn't a fan of the synth voice never taking a breath, which really hurts immersion, but i liked pairing it with the glock. there were a few nice flourishes underneath too which were nice - like at 1:34 and 1:42. the subsequent melodic handoffs were well-done and well-voiced as well. the bass at 2:45 was nice but very loud compared to everything else. around this point i noticed that the underlying string pads had been essentially the same for a while, but they changed soon after so it wasn't bothersome. the handoff in the melody to the voice at 3:44 was noticeable because that's a real chest-voice sound and the transition from head to chest there and about ten seconds later really stuck out. i also really liked the tempo shift near the end to help it move towards a more lush, passive ending. this does a lot of things pretty well and a few things not as well. i think it's over the bar by a bit. there's great balance throughout, the parts are interesting and new, and there's some fun orchestration ideas. i don't like synth voice most of the time so that's a turn-off for me but i can see most people thinking it was fine. overall, nice work, rebecca! YES

great concept for a remix. love the idea. there's definitely a lot competing in the soundscape throughout. a great example is the vocal synth (even robots need to breath, man, give her a breath here and there!). there's a ton of body to it in the lower/middle registers that totally hoses the guitar when it comes in on the solo at around 0:33, for example. boost the 2.5-3k range or so (vocal formant), roll off anything low, and scoop the mid a bit and it'll actually sound louder since the high boost will carry it better. that's one example. the snare, orchestra, and some of the guitars are all overlapping throughout most of the track and it's causing a lot of mud. notching everything into their specific shelf will really make it clearer while making it even more punchy, which is what it sounds like you're going for. also, a nitpick - you've got a cymbal ring being cut off at the end. maybe give it another second of silence after the track and fade your master to avoid that? beyond that, i agree that there's a lot of copypasta going on here. rexy nailed that there's a ton of repetition throughout, which is an aspect of this genre that can really wear you out fast. i'd heavily recommend thinking about adding rhythms that are new and different throughout to add excitement on the second and third iteration of each section. overall this is a great first effort. some cleaned-up mastering and more attention to the overall repetitive feel of the track would really improve everything dramatically. NO

i don't know what i expected, but wasn't it! i love it. it's fast and energetic and the flow's solid. there's more than enough going on in the background to count it. it's a little quiet but i don't care enough to really hold it against the track. in the immortal words of Vig... [B]YES!:"!#

wow. so, on a personal level, this track is fine. i'd have put it on a project without question. however, this is a great example of the clash between points 4.2 and 4.3 of the submission standards. i consider this arrangement to be substantial enough for the style to be easily over any bar we might set. there's variation, it's not boom-tiss-neener-neener for the entire track like some synthwave tracks are, there's a significant amount of creativity in how the different themes are applied, and there's some real advanced theory going on (paralell fourths in a melodic minor mode, shades of In a Sentimental Mood, eh?). that said, this song is unrecognizable as a BK song, which doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's too far out there for this application. the clanker's cavern riff honestly is too far away to be considered a true arrangement and not just inspired by CC. as that's what the track is based on, correlations fall apart after that. i'd put the actual source usage that's identifiable and consistent at maybe 20%, if not significantly lower. there just needs to be more source in here to really call it. the bassline is too generic to consider that enough to tie it to the original song. i love the concept and execution for what it is but i don't believe it has a home here unfortunately. NO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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