prophetik music   Judges ⚖️

opens with that creepy arp to start in a neat bell-like synth. melodic riff is in the pads initially with some big sweeps over top. the arp starts to double up and do some delay stuff with some rising action behind to escalate, drums that come in at 0:45 are kind of weak, but i see where they're going as you use them as an escalation element. the sausage starts to get made at 0:56 as the kick and bass elements come in more regularly. this track is super slammed in the feel despite not really having a ton of super loud elements, so it feels a bit oppressive, but i recognize that's both intentional and part of the style. it's nowhere near upbeat as i expected though given the big transition drums. 1:10-1:20 for example feels really empty, as does the section immediately following. 1:52 switches to a triplet feel (among other things), so it's a lot busier, but it's still just the beat, bass, melody in the pad, and arp repeating. i feel like there's not enough going on through most of these couple of sections. there's a big drop at 2:36 in energy, and the arp element is doing some hits in here. the off-beat part that followed was a fun feel. 3:09 hits and it's the same instruments as before but now they're doing different rhythms. still using the same synths after all this is starting to be tiresome, and the overall mastering is still super heavy so it's still feeling oppressive. to be clear - the variety you've implemented on the arrangement itself is really impressive. you're doing a ton of variety considering the melody itself is like 20s long. my issue is with the instruments being reused constantly and never changing, and with how empty several of the sections feel behind the melodic representation. we get to the end and it just kind of ends, and there's a cutoff on the synth instead of a fade. i wouldn't have minded something deconstructive to end this given how much you played with these elements throughout. i'm honestly not sure about this one. i love the arrangement. i don't like that it's four instruments throughout, and i don't like that there's a ton of room throughout for other stuff that doesn't seem to be capitalized on. it feels like this is the framework and it still needs the finishing bits. ? edit 12/3: ok, i slept on it, and i still don't dig the extended sections with so little going on, and i still don't dig the limited sound palette. kris's note about sidechaining is good too - that's why it doesn't feel like it can breathe (well, one of the reasons). so i think that a NO makes sense for me.

opens with some nicely filtered synths. there's some elements of the little stepwise melodic chunk initially. the feel at 0:36 is fantastic, i love the fat sixteenth note synth. i'll admit i don't hear a ton of original in this first section with the drums, but i do get more of that descending line around the one minute mark when the second drumloop comes in. definitely an intentional but bad note choice selection at 1:48. the correlation in the later sections (around 2:00) is more subtle - maybe too subtle - and it isn't until maybe 2:39 that we more consistently get melodic material for any stretch of time. there's an outro starting at 3:25 and it's done. i love the feel, i really do. you've nailed the style you're going for and it's handled well. i just don't think there's anywhere near a preponderance of original here. there's not much in Aquas to hang your hat on, and you limited yourself to an even smaller segment of it for your feel here. i think that, unless i'm missing something significant, we're nowhere near 50%. i hear overt elements of the original from 0:15-0:36, 1:02-1:24, and 2:39-3:3:24 - about 40%. so i think that'd need to change before i'd be able to think about a yes. NO

ALBUM PROJECT TRACK (STAR FOX) Hey dudes and gal dudes, this is my submission for the Star Fox album. I'll save you some time - this track only uses the first 20 or so seconds of source. I lean heavy on the first part of the melody and that little 1-5-1 arpeggio, but I think the general reharm, melodic phrasing, and overall sound palette make this a substantial-enough reinterpretation. Not as harmonically dramatic as Aquas, but more chilled out and smooth while still being a bit mysterious. ~ The ruins slowly emerge from the void as you make the crossing; a vista nearly devoid sunlight. What was this place? Your viewport isn't nearly wide enough to see everything. The auxiliary monitors aren't much better, but - from the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of an unknowable creature on the screen. It silently retracts into the darkness. A moment passes, heard by the low rumble of the two-stroke diesel behind you. Curiosity guides your heavy hand to the throttle lever. The vessel cruises further into darkness. ~ Really I just wanted this to ooze "submarine" - without literally using sonar and water samples, I think it's pretty effective. But that reminds me - did you catch the ingame sample? I'd forgotten about it! Lol Cheers, RS LT Edit: Source usage info given 11/25 (after prophetik reached out): I guess I would make my argument that Aquas is built on 3 main components: The melodic sequence built on parallel 5ths. It continues past the first 0:20, but the melodic cadence is exactly the same. The 'chorus' section - I'm not really using this. The 1-5-1 arpeggio that plays throughout both. #1 is the hook. #3 I would attribute the group of synth layers that bind the track, the 'living arpeggio' as it were. It's not always literally 1-5-1, but IMO it serves the same role as a constant thread from start to finish, just always modulating to make it more interesting. It's simple, but I think it's worth a mention as a main characteristic of the track. As an aside - to use a visual analogy, I would also argue that musical "negative space" in general is a real and meaningful component of an arrangement. Maybe I'm on my own here, but I don't think I've ever seen the idea really presented as such on OCR. What's right for the track is not always what's right for the guidelines. Maybe I'm just becoming more at odds with the desired output. Hopefully this makes some sense. Either way, I'm past the point of doing any revisions, so I hope this will not count as a ding against the album as far as number of viable tracks is concerned. Thanks Games & Sources

sprechstimme is a great way to put it, and i'm surprised i didn't make that connection myself.

opens with some percussion. the loop points are pretty noticeable with the first percussive element. it's super bassy and very wet to start, and there's a few harmonics (around 3.1k) that are hard to listen to in that opening section. bass comes in with the melody at 0:20 and it's just a massive blob of mass between about 45 and 200hz: it's very dense in here, and it feels pretty slammed especially in the left ear which is louder than the left. melody's in a percussive instrument, but it honestly sounds like there's more delay or verb response than there is melody. it's hard to hear where the attack is in the melodic instrument. as i listened to this opening section a bit more, i realized that i think that the original's playing real-time behind the added elements like synth, guitar, and effecting (just start the original's youtube at like 30s in). i think it's being chopped up and looped, but i think that's why it's so dense-sounding. the instrumentation elements are playing exact matches from what i can hear. we don't disallow sampling the original in remixes that we post, but we do require arrangement that is transformative. this is quite literally just the original audio with a small number of additional elements layered on top and a really, really bass-heavy master complete with huge reverb added to the entire thing. not only does not this not pass muster on the engineering side with the mix being so dense and boomy and most attacks not being able to be heard, it also doesn't pass on the arrangement side given that the arrangement is essentially not yours throughout. this isn't something that we'd be able to accept. if you wanted to rework it to feature your own instruments, and focus more on the arrangement (since there's essentially no personalization here), then that's something that we can work with. this isn't even a cover, though, it's the original track with something on it to discourage copyright detection. NO OVERRIDE

opens with EPs and a funk bass feel. the melody comes in at 0:30. this section feels a bit thinner after the more lush EPs to start it, but it lets you focus a bit on some of the countermelodic material going on. there's a time signature shift at 0:49 to 7/8, which is an interesting idea given the original's surprising drop beats that it has throughout occasionally. there is a copypasta section from 0:30 at 1:04 (to my ears this is exact until about 1:21). i like the shift in chords at 1:21 to mix it up. we get a break at 1:52 to lighten up the shuffle - essentially the first time in two minutes without it - and i like the chord choices here. there's a bit more personalization of the melodic line after this and some more shuffling with phrase length, which is nice. 2:46 is a short recap of the B section of the theme, and this functions as an outro. the ending is a bit sudden given that it feels like it's just a repeated pattern and not really moving towards an ending. overall i think this is a fun take on a well-known theme. i like the genre shift and the added arrangement elements, and the track sounds good even despite the adaptation attempt towards original sound concepts. nice work. YES

This is a bit of a reimagining of Fei Long's theme from SSFIIT in the more sleek style of the Street Fighter Alpha 2 soundtrack. I rewrote the tune to fit more clearly into the mid-90s Casiopea-influence of the SFA2 soundtrack, and I produced the whole track using sounds/samples similar to those used in the CPS-2 arcade board. This is not a 100% faithful emulation of that sound (there are modern production techniques involved), but I wanted to try and capture the general vibe of that era of Capcom games. This is more or less what I think Fei Long's theme would sound like if he had been added to Alpha 2. Cheers! Games & Sources Super Street Fighter II Turbo - Fei Long's theme

I wanted to make it feel a little bit more like you were really in the space that the song is trying to manifest. The original drums were the only part of the song that I decided to sample and leave basically untouched. They are the core and driving force of the whole piece. They keep you wanting to move forward through this jungle of sounds that occupy the rest of the space. I feel like the US OST of Sonic CD is woefully underrepresented today. Of course the original JP soundtrack has plenty of hits and a ton of staying power, but Spencer Nilsen's work has always shined in my eyes ever since I first played the game on the Sonic Gems Collection waaaaay back in 2005. I wanted to honor his and his team's work without deriving too much from the original concepts and charm. Think of this as a sort of "Sonic Mania-ified" version of the OG track. Games & Sources This is an arrangement from Sonic CD's US Soundtrack, Palmtree Panic by Spencer Nilsen. Very specifically, I based the song progression off of the version heard in the Sonic The Hedgehog Boom CD from 1994 -

my previous vote on this primarily focused around the mastering issues and that there wasn't enough unique perspective on each track (ie. the focus was more on the original's positives instead of the arrangement's positives). i don't remember how the piece sounded though, it was too long ago. opens with filtered arps coming in - i like the wind sounds coming in here. the bass comes in with a martial feel around 0:12, and i think that the lead and countermelodic instrument have some nice movement on them. i can hear the schala arp behind it too which is a fun precursor. drums and other stuff that comes in at 0:36 is also neat. the hornet-adjacent lead add is a neat idea - having it have such a short sustain is a positive so it doesn't take up the entire soundscape. there's some subtle gating that starts 0:53 that i think is intentional and not limiter pumping - if so it should be a bit more obvious so that it's clear it's not unintentional. it's a cool effect. there's a break right at the 1:00 minute mark that functions as a nice dovetail. schala theme comes in at 1:18. the beat here is nice and reminiscent of the ethnic percs that are throughout CT's soundtrack, and the constant varying of elements helps the slower tempo and schala's slower pace of the melody. there's another cool transition involving gating, and we're into some VO stuff. 2:30 is the return of the Terra b theme, this section felt a little lacking in direction. i didn't like all of the countermelodic elements (some are not quite voiced well enough to feel normal), and the turbo-pan thing going on was a little much on headphones. i also felt it was lacking energy coming out of the VO break, at least partially because the bass was often not on the root. 3:03 brings back schala (and the iconic ascending harp scale) - initially pretty low energy still, but quickly escalating via a variety of percussive and synth elements. i don't know if stacking the bass with the melody works in this section, but it's an interesting change. after this is the outro, which wanders a bit through the schala arp until it hits the final notes, and then it's done. this is a vast improvement over the last version. there's a ton of variety and added content here from when i last heard it, and the mix is a lot better too. i think it lacks a bit of energy in the back half and wanders a bit more, but i love the feel of the first half and the overall track does a great job navigating these two monumental originals. great work. YES

previous decision I wrote this song for an 8Bit Music Theory discord weekly challenge to "make a mash-up arrangement from at least two SNES songs." I thought it would be kind of funny to go for two of the most widely-remixed SNES songs I could think of, Schala's Theme from Chrono Trigger and Terra's Theme from FFVI. Thinking about it, mashing up these songs felt appropriate—both Schala and Terra were women possessing vast magical talents, both used by powerful countries as weapons—Terra as a slave for the Gestahlian Empire, and Schala to power Zeal's Mammon Machine. I wanted each melody to get the spotlight, while still twining together underlying parts of each song throughout the piece. I transposed the songs into the same key so it would be easier to meld them together. I was feeling synths and a trap beat for this piece (idk why, vibes?), and I ended up experimenting with some new sounds and production techniques to fill out the arrangement. After a failed pass through the panel, I focused on making the piece my own, adding in some new parts and some vocals to break up the sameness. I also redid the drums to bring in more variety, and added some mechanical noises to the background. Finally, I sought out mixing and mastering feedback from the community to help polish the piece. Thanks ZackParrish, hemophiliac, and the amazing OCR discord community for ongoing feedback and support on this mix! Games & Sources Chrono Trigger: Schala's Theme by Yasunori Mitsuda. - Melody used 0:00–1:00, 2:30–3:03, 3:50–end - Accompaniment used throughout FFVI: Terra's Theme by Nobuo Uematsu. - Melody used 1:06–2:30, 3:03—3:51 - Accompaniment used throughout

immediately recognizable right off the jump. strings and choir samples aren't stunning but they're serviceable. the guitar's mixed pretty hot but i like the tone a lot for this style. first break comes in at 0:55 and it's short, but does herald a change of style. the first real change to the string parts don't show until like 1:15, which isn't great, but the updated stuff for this section do sound good and are a nice thing to emphasize. there's a change to a faster feel at 2:18 which is a cool sound. i wish there'd been a break before this, though, this is several minutes in a row of machine-gun drums and guitars, and a breather would have helped out a lot. i like the unison brass and lower guitar section at around 3:00. there's not much of an ending, just a final held chord and it's done. this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the theme. the guitar work sounds good, and after the 75-second mark i like the backing elements a lot. nice work. YES

some interesting sfx to start us off. 0:22 opens with some rolled chords in the acoustic and electric (i really like the tone of the acoustic guitar). EK comes in right away and i have to say i like her tone a lot better than the cokehead in the original. there's a melodyne artifact at 1:08 in EK's voice on that slide. some nice flute after as well, understated but effective. PF's vocals are nice and rich in this range, so that's a nice contrast to EK. drums come in at 2:07 and sound overprocessed to me, the hats sound all highs and no tone, and the snare sounds like it's over-EQed. the vocals that come in at 2:33 also sound way overprocessed, they're super notched and nowhere near as rich as they sounded earlier. formants are too boosted as are the highs. there's a break after this at 2:59 with just the electric and flute, and we're back to EK's vocals (again, this feels so much richer than the tone at 2:33) for a bit before a great solo at 3:37. love what it's saying here. at 4:03 the vocals come back in. the harmonies are way too loud here so it's hard to pick out the voice line that should be the lead voice - turning the harmonies down by a quarter or more is needed there. the second section that is mostly in unison is a bit better mixed but still needs the harmonies turned down. 4:52's backing strings and flute is a nice contrast and fitting for this style. at 5:17 we get the requisite more-technical section from PF =) it doesn't really fit everything else that's happened until this section but it's not a dealbreaker, just a little jarring of a transition. i hear a mistake in the acoustic guitar at the end of the riff at 5:26. there's some dueling solo concepts and then we get the expected instrumental bridge right after, headlined by a singing guitar line that sounds fantastic. there's a slam break and another very quiet section at 6:09 that builds quickly back into the band sound. there's a mic pop at 6:20. the vocals at 6:22 don't quite match up. the song trucks through the chorus one more time, and we move into the outro material. there's some acoustic to play us out and it's done. this is a huge undertaking! i really like the arrangement and the overall picture of the piece. i think the mastering isn't there yet - both in terms of balance for the vocal sections and in terms of the band sound when everything's in. there's some little spots here and there (expected in a work this large!) that have some technical elements that need to be fixed. but man, is this going to be cool when it's there! NO

opens with some sfx, but gets back to the melodic content right off the bat in the background in an altered fashion. some tasteful electric keys bring us to the intro of the vocals at 0:31. vocals sound untreated, but i like the variety of backing vocal elements brought in. there was some intentional wavering in the pitch, and i don't think it all quite works (1:02's just too indistinct to work imo). 1:07's a vibe shift, clearly more of an aggressive feel as it builds up towards the percussive hit at 1:36. some of the textures around the 1:45 range are pretty interesting. the live vibes add a lot. this whole section thematically fits the game but really doesn't feel tied to Starjump at all. there's another chorus where the untreated vocals seem more intense and obvious, and the vocals sound even more Lin-Manuel Miranda than they did before. there's some very nicely handled bells as it fades towards a faux ending, and then we get the intense banging chorus that we've been waiting for the whole song. this section not being swung was a little jarring to me (fitting!) and the deconstruction of the vocals over time was nice as well. i was on the fence for source usage on this one for a bit. the original's just a broken chord arpeggio for the entire track, so with the initial transformation you did to that pattern, i felt it was getting lost in some places. i think you tied it back in pretty well throughout with some of the voicings and especially the ending, however, and the whole package overall definitely feels more Starjump than individual sections do. i also was on the fence because i really didn't care for the vocal performance initially. in general i don't care for this style of spoken-word half-singing, and even after listening several times i don't think there's really a melody - learning the song and repeating it wouldn't really be singing, but more theater. i found myself being more open to it when i thought of the whole work as a performance instead of a recording. i wish the vocals were better treated - there's a lot of room sound on it which flattens the feel a lot. from a creative perspective, though, whoa. there's so much variety and clever interplay of parts over the four minutes of runtime. the vibes performance as well is perfect for this kind of quirky track. celeste continues to inspire some really creative and unique works and this is no different. nice work. YES

really need compression on this track. modern classical works use compression to handle highs/lows regularly in studio recordings. the dynamic range is just too dramatic. opening is really sparse, more so than i expected. it's more cinematic than i think we've heard in the past from rebecca. when the melodic material comes in at 0:28, it felt very FFXII-esque to me - there's a few parts of that soundtrack that have similar scoring. agree with hemo the panning's too much. the sound field is way too wide. the constant running eighth notes are a nice reference, and i really like the eventual tambourine that's added in, very fitting from a scoring perspective. the outro is light and nicely handled. this is another rebecca track - similar soundscape as prior tracks, similar method of expansion of the original, similar technical issues. i liked the addition of brass this time around, and this type of original is more fitting to your scoring style, i think, than some other recent submissions. i'd have loved to see more expansion - branching into a less rhythmic direction, for example, or picking out some of the smaller elements of the track and exploring them without the running rhythmic element to pin it together. but what's here is fine and definitely above our bar. YES

i'm not voting on this because it's my project. but i never felt this was a particularly developed arrangement. the soloing sounds like it's for another song. it's cool that he found the original loop though and the track is mastered real well. it was kind of funny because i asked jordan specifically to join the project because i needed a banger track to fill out the flame side of the album and then he came back with something significantly different than what i'd expected.

opens with some big stabs and a bit orchestral crescendo. lots of shea right off the bat. i really like the more traditional-sounding tone that shea takes in here, lots of bow noise and portamento. 0:32 is where it takes off with the whole band sound. this sounds a little over-scooped and there's a few EQ spikes that are a little weird in here, but admittedly there's a lot going on! i appreciate that this is symphonic metal and not symphonic rock - there's some pretty intense drum work and rhythmic orchestral/guitar elements. the riff at 0:47 is great. there's a few stabs at 1:22 and a short flourish in the keys, and then we get into mixed meter time as only TheManPF does regularly. i think the mixed meter really helps keep it feeling like it's a shanty or something, there's a lot of added intensity just by making it not quite what you expect. theme's back at 2:07 with some crushing guitar work to help support it. 2:26's melodic representation in the bass instruments is a nice change too, and makes the subsequent guitar lead much more heroic. would have loved some supporting brass in there as well. a big sfx hit and a few more orchestral stabs, and it's done. overall the sound is slammed, but i honestly found the noisy, aggressive, brash mastering to be fitting given the approach. there's a lot down low and it does sound a bit muddy in some places where the orchestra, guitar chugs, bass, and kick are all fighting for screen time, but for the most part TheManPF does a great job keeping this listenable while still maintaining a raw edge to the track. excellent work. this is a ton of fun to listen to. YES

boy those pads in the original are noisy. opens with a heavily modified voice clip and some swelling noise pads. we start to get the chord structure outlined at 0:48 in the plectral bell instrument. there's a lot of sound design going on in the build that starts at 1:10 - it's mega buzzy, but there's some really neat sweeping concepts coming in there as it gets bigger and bigger. percussion doesn't have much in the way of body in this build. 1:28 it starts to feel like it's arrived and the bass switches to a more consistent rhythm. bass elements in here are pretty dense and overpopulated so it's hard to really feel a beat. there's also not really that much that's the original in this entire first two minutes that's not just the chord structure. we get a big shift at 1:47 in timbre. bass element has a ton of wooble on it so it's hard to really hear what it's playing. the timbre shifts again significantly at 2:25, including more trance hats and a big snare alongside some more heavily automated synths. i hear the first melody that i've heard in the entire thing at 2:35 in the low synth element - lots of movement on that tone which is neat. it's immediately buried under the ascending line that comes in right after that. we do get a bit more at 3:03 before another big shift to the sax. the stuff in the lower octave is a bit blatty but this setting works well for lucas's tone. i like the duet section as well as doubling his lines with the synth. the sax lines are heavily modified but do outline the melodic material roughly - it's pretty transformed however. the chorale section near the end around the 4:00 mark is a neat idea to layer into this - logical progression to get there but also very different from most tracks in a similar style. there's some gameboy stuff and then an outro with sfx. overall i think the first third is heavily disassociated with the rest of the track. everything before about 1:47 really feels like a totally different track other than the chord progression. i also wasn't really feeling the initial section at 1:47 - the bass is so hard to understand what it's doing due to all of the pitch modulation on it, and there's so many bass instruments that it all just gets lost. once we're through all that, the track really starts to find identity once it starts to get melodic material around 2:30. from there on out, i think there's a lot more cohesiveness in the approach and you scope through a bunch of different timbres without losing the voice. so i do think that more work is needing to be done on the first two plus minutes to tie it all together more. i believe that not bringing the melodic material in until well after two minutes in is part of this - you need a common thread to tie it together, and the ascending scalar riff you use mostly in the middle of the track doesn't seem to be enough. to be clear - there's not 50% source usage in this track. i am not going to count a four-bar descending chord structure as source, it's too common of a progression. i hear melody at least occasionally between 2:35-2:55, 3:04-3:33, 4:12-4:24, and 4:33-4:52 (78 out of ~304 seconds, 26%). i'd consider additional connections between 2:35 and 4:52 if i was feeling really stretchy and positive, but most of this is chord-based and not melodic or motivic. to pass, i'd want to hear at least one clear declaration of the melodic material earlier in the track. if you'd submitted just from 2:35 onward, i might consider that enough source, as a rough example. overall i also hear a ton of conflict in the lower ranges. there's a lot going on next to one another all the way through the freq spectrum, but especially down in the bass elements. i think this is a lot closer for a first shot than most of your tracks have been! but it's still not there yet. to recap - EQing, cohesiveness, melody usage. NO

COLLABORATORS: Lucas Guimaraes - *Live Saxophone Pixel Mixers - *Mastering # Head empty, brain cells few, (too many projects needing to be done soon. . .) [KISS on THIS] Done for the first Pixel Mixers album I've participated in; originally done for / in collaboration with Lucas for his Golden Sun EP (before it kinda blew up, LOL). :3 Big shout-out to my homeboy, Ridley Snipes for low-key helping me on this one--in wrangling the tracks to be more cohesive with each other. <3 Extra shout-out to Lucas for his wonderful sax takes / retakes for this. ♥ You're a star, as usual, and they were stellar and brought out a lot of the 80s Vaporwave-y feel I wanted to instill in the latter portions of this remix. :D # INSPIRATIONS: Main Theme from the Terminator by John Williams [synths & pads] Perturbator [drum work & low-end] Main Theme from Blade Runner by Vangelis [soundscaping] Vaporwave & Vaporjazz [uh...jazzy 80s bit, haha] VOICE MEDIA: INTRO: "1971 Radio Ad for Army Recruitment", heavily modified and glitched OUTRO: Quote from the movie "Black Hawk Down" turned into text-to-speak & bitcrushed Games & Sources GOLDEN SUN & GOLDEN SUN: THE LOST AGE OST (REMASTERED); Disc 4, Track 17 - Sorrow & Regret; Artist(s): Motoi Sakuraba; Release Date: 2019; Label: Camelot & Nintendo

for whatever reason i never think of this when i think of the best FF7 tracks, but it's such a great original. just comes along too late in the OST, i guess. opens with a huge blurb of non-tonal sound. slowly some spacey bells and a pitchy arp come in. the noise persists underneath as other elements come in to fill in the soundscape. there's a mic pop or rendering error at 1:01. there's an interesting element of time being tenuous through most of this section from 1:30-1:50 as the rumble comes back in a bit. we start to hear some more sustained elements around 2:00 coming in - the phasing on the choir element was neat. there's a string element that comes in around 2:30 that feels out of time because the lower note of the dyad speaks slower - a bit unsettling to me at least. arrangement starts to fill in a bit around the 2:50-2:55 area just in time for the rumble to come back. there's some atonal elements and sfx of celebration here too for a moment before they fade out. the arrangement gets very simple for a while around 3:55, as the rumble comes back and becomes the main thing we can hear. there's another mic pop at 4:46. the track fades out on the non-pitched rumble sfx. this is a really interesting approach, not just because it's so far outside your normal style but also because of the focus on the rumble sfx throughout. i am historically not someone who is super into tracks that feature non-musical elements, and also this original has some really interesting compositional elements that you just toss out the window because they don't quite fit into your scope (and i think that was a good choice here, to be clear). but i really find myself taken with the direct comparison of such a romantic, nostalgic melody line mashed up against an sfx that is clearly intended to be a manifestation of nothingness. i think without your writeup i wouldn't have gotten what's going on. but since i do, i like this one a lot as an art-piece approach to an underappreciated part of a killer soundtrack. YES but i'd love those render pops to be taken care of edit 11/8: mic pops are taken care of, i'm unreservedly a yes now.

really beautiful original. it's so simple but it's such a timeless melody. very long sustained strings to open it. some vocal elements and percussive elements as well. flute part is an interesting case - the tone is great, but there's definitely an uncanny valley in how it's being added into the track. some of the in-between non-chord tones are a little odd and take me out a bit (0:39 is one), and most of those little bits and bobs aren't really in time either which emphasizes them - a more consistent timing would help there. there's a few places where your attacks don't sound realistic (1:18, 1:22 are two), but man that real vibrato is doing work to cover up some of the parts where you don't quite stick the landing. backing elements are simple but work. they don't sound super realistic but they also aren't egregious. there's a transitional section at 1:34, and i don't know if the vocal element really fits the rest of what's going on so far there. this is followed by some brass. this section is just too loud - everything's getting squashed quickly. i love low trombone as much as everything but the blats are taking over. 2:03's a great example - everything's just too loud despite only playing sustains. the organ's low elements are probably a big part of what's causing that to get too big, as it's even a bit louder than the flute in some places. questionable note in the flute at 2:43. there's one more time through the end of the melodic line, and it resolves on a major chord. it's not obvious to me why you didn't play the part if you've got such a beautiful tone - you've clearly got some chops! i think this would be right by the passing line if the flute was actually live instead of, like, half-alive half-robot. there's still some notes to clean up and more importantly some dynamic elements to rebalance so that you're not clipping or overwhelming the limiter, but then i think this is there. the arrangement is certainly good enough. NO edit 3/17: the bar isn't where it was 20 years ago, so referencing that is a confusing statement. i listened again on fresh ears today and really am surprised that the flute's uncanny valley representation isn't bothering the other Js as much as me. the beautiful vibrato on the sustains doesn't matter if the other notes are either not in the key or sound robotic. even if it was live, the balance at the end is overwhelmingly off. so i'm sticking with my vote for now.

opens with wide pads, a growling bass, and some bell-like instruments. whatever instruments are playing up high are doing something that consistently clashes with what's below it, and similarly there's occasionally a growl down low (like at 0:21 and 0:28) that's colliding with the bass. the texture clears up a bit at 0:44 or so, and then moves to the b theme at about 0:59. 1:27's a recap of the original melodic material. this is probably the first time we don't essentially have what's in the original relayed directly with slightly new instruments. the mix is still cluttered and over-dense, but at least it's different. 2:26 starts an outro section. this progresses towards an unresolved bVI chord and then it's done. there's very little arrangement going on here that's not just replacement of the original instruments. separately, the mix itself is pretty dense, with a lot of audible limiter engages and several elements that run into each other. this needs a lot more attention in the arrangement department before it'd be above the bar there, and separately needs some more focus and EQing in the mix to prevent it from being so messy-sounding. NO

opening is heavily filtered. bell instrument that comes in has a ton of automation on it which is pretty neat, although it's a touch loud initially. same with the subsequent chord stack arp. there's a shift at 0:58 that cleans up the soundscape and has some interesting swells under it too. the melody at 1:11 is a bit buried by the arpeggio in the front, and also that instrument just doesn't carry like the arp's synth. there's some neat verb effects at 1:40 under the bell and backing elements. the section after this has a lot of washes of sound - it almost wanders but doesn't quite get lost in there. things start to fade down around 2:45, and we get a transition into a more angular feel at 2:51. this really reminded me of some mass effect soundscapes initially. it noodles through some more expansive synth elements before hitting a hard transition at 4:18 and then slowly dissipating. there's not a ton of source in the second half, so i did a quick review. i hear melodic material from 0:04-0:57, 1:11-2:09, 2:22-2:45, 3:06-3:20, and 4:32-4:35. that is just barely over the 50% line for a track that's 4:47 long - 145s out of 287s. there's a lot more here though since the chord progression is used a lot, so i don't mind that it's so close - the rest of the track is clearly derived from the source, so no concerns there. this is a pretty understated track overall. the subtle variations in backing elements are pretty neat once you pick up on them, and the more ambient approach is refreshing when presented alongside a consistent beat like this one has. it's certainly nothing hugely groundbreaking or wild like some of the stuff michael's submitted in the past, but it's definitely over our bar. YES

version without mic pops in the submission thread comments I think this song might have been the only way I could really communicate something that's been trapped inside me throughout much of my life. There's this impenetrable loneliness that I think we all experience, at least some of the time. For many, human companionship just seems so far away, and all too often that same feeling of isolation heightens during moments of celebration. I believe I composed this song simply to acknowledge that part within myself, who has always wanted to be seen, and yet the emotion was just too "big" to express in words. Almost nothing quite captures it for me like FF7 (particularly this song), and I tried my best to use the components of the remix to explain this "big" feeling: the isolation, the hope, the faith, a distant awareness of community and a simple desire for them (whoever they are) to be loved, and of course grief, tender memories of joy, the suddenness of separation and promise of death, and ultimately the vastness of eternity. Games & Sources Final Fantasy 7 - Interrupted By Fireworks

A haunting melody, the SNES really was ahead of it's time for music. The flute is myself sampled in Directwave for FL studio. I used automation of saturation, volume, and transient processing to fake the "articulations" I wish I could use Kontakt to do this, but I cannot get the root key proper at all, and internet searching has proved fruitless. I chose the name Temporary Tina, as I believe the Terra character is named Tina in the Japanese release. Remix again, in case it didn't insert properly above after the failure of the file upload. Again, the consideration is appreciated. Games & Sources The source tune is Forever Rachel from FF6....and we all know who composed it;)

Arrangement wise, I wanted to make a techno song with sounds that were overall less synth-y and more organic. There's a kick drum throughout, so I obviously couldn't make the whole track into some found sound, ambient adventure, but I do like the extended section in the middle where things start to sound extra incidental. The main lead is just a simple monophonic piano sound with a lot of deep reverb. The bass kind of wobbles back and forth in the stereo field, and also up and down in level, which is maybe a risky approach, but I don't think it's distracting as much as it is interesting. It has a granular send set an octave up to simulate low strings, and that same send effect is also on a few midrange instruments, simulating a middle strings section. I made these strings swell by ramping the send volume up using automation. Lot's of LFOs connected to all kinds of things via (virtual) CV, making constant (sometimes barely audible) changes to timbre and pitch. Different sounds coming and going. 134 BPM. 0:00 - 0:49 in source is 0:00 - 1:11 and 2:59 - 3:50 in mix. 0:49 - 1:47 in source is 1:11 - 2:44 in mix (some of which is the Bond theme but the arpeggios et al. are still there) The last 35 seconds of my mix have some subtle callbacks to earlier in the track as well. Big thanks to everyone who continue to keep OCR going strong. - Mike Games & Sources The source tune here is the Caverns theme from GoldenEye 007, by Graeme Norgate. I always wanted to do something from GoldenEye, and Caverns might feature the most melodic content that isn't the Bond theme - though that song is featured in the source and in my version - making it a suitable candidate for an OCR ReMix. The game's OST is kind of like the original game remix album: Graeme and Grant Kirkhope reinterpreted Monty Norman's classic theme in so many distinct, different styles, and even toward the end of the game, the music never felt repetitive despite the player hearing the same few motifs over and over.