prophetik music

intro 15 seconds sound great, and the initial groove that you hit at 0:16 sounds great. the initial melodic material at 0:31 sounds pretty weak, though, both not loud enough to draw your ear and far too sustained with nothing to hold your ear after the initial notes. they're also panned right which is weird for a lead. there's a few key changes throughout that are not really what i'd expect to hear at any point. i'm not sure what the idea was - downward key changes are generally discouraged because they reduce energy rather than adding it, and that's what they do here. i agree with kris also that having the same beat on the entire track with no break in the chorded synth isn't really a good choice. the best anthem tracks have breaks, swells, builds, and falling action, and none of that is represented here. it's just the melody in a straight line in a string/winds combo synth that never changes with a beat under it, and then it ends. there's some fun cameo ideas but overall nothing to hold your ear nor make me want to listen again. this needs more arrangement. NO

there's some playing with time in the intro which is fun. then the beat comes in, but it actually hasn't at 0:47, and is super confusing to hear what's going on! it took me several listens to get the hang of what was going on there before the 1:03 mark when the beat actually hits. there's actually not a ton happening when the melody's cooking at 1:20 or so - it's just drums, bass, and lead with no pads. it sounds surprisingly empty behind all the verb and room sound. 1:54 is a nice break and build. 2:27 has some notes that i'd call not ideal overall, but i like the idea of having a break section that's different before layering in the melodic elements again. 3:16 does a nice job mixing up what's being played without changing synths too much, and agree with larry about 3:59 - feels real old-school there, as does 4:38 when the lead's doing the melody/chording stutter pattern. the ending isn't anything special but it's fine. this is a nice take on a neat track. i agree with larry that it's certainly not mixed perfect, but it's fun and has some clever arrangement ideas that give it more staying power than i initially thought it'd have on first listen. YES

i am gonna say it - i love the idea of a super fast edm track based on this track (and most of this soundtrack). the OST's soundtrack is made for jcore or happy hardcore or something silly like that. unfortunately, the execution here is a bit lacking. there's an intro, a loop for the A theme that's about nine seconds long and a loop for the B theme that's about nine seconds long, and they are painted into the track in various places, and that's it. there's some small countermelodic elements that are brought in occasionally, but not nearly enough to save the arrangement. so this is way too repetitive for posting right now, but i think there's still great ideas here! i'd love to hear more subtractive arrangement in the melodic line, new synths brought in, and some more interpretation of the approach (new chords or doubletime melodic content or something would be really neat). right now it's just like 20s of music repeated for two minutes. NO

intro vibe is real nice. i like the EP work the most, i think. the drums are loud enough to be distorting, especially the kick, and it doesn't sound intentional. the bass feels really nice though and so does the brassy pad synths that come in halfway through the loop. this loops after about 1:15 of content, so it's nowhere near long enough for OCR, and 50%+ repeat content isn't something we can take. but the final version with voices and a bit more personalization to the second half would be a welcome addition. NO

intro is so meaty, i love it. this opening section is super metal-cinematic, like what you hear in The Astonishing or something. the section at 0:37 is a clever take on the antipyretic intro, same with the how you brought in battle on the bridge at 0:58. lead guitar work at like 1:30 is great. 1:55 brings back the antipyretic theme, but i like the reptition you use to reinforce some of the more fun rising elements of the theme. the horns at 2:25 are pretty obviously synthy, but i feel like that was at least partially intended. the 2:59 groove is probably my favorite in the track. the shift at 3:13 right after is super significant, though. i don't mind at all what's happening but the lack of prep for that shift makes it feel more like an overture to a prog album than a cohesive whole. 4:01's guitar solo is dope as expected. the first main descending riff is so good, same as 4:16 through 4:26. 4:35ish, the continued more desperate vibe of this section is really exciting and a good progression towards the ending, and the build and sustain at 5:03 is perfect. outro is pretty fast for such an epic track, but overall fine. easy to see why this won a gold medal. FFT has some excellent tracks (for such a long soundtrack, too) and this really highlights some of the excellent themes that sakamoto wrote for it. excellent work. YES

intro in winds is beautiful, very delicate piano work. the ensemble at 0:36 is also really delicately handled. the strings at 1:00 are a little heavy-handed compared to what we've heard up to there, but are nicely handled and fun to listen to. the flute right at about 1:34 is a bit sharp. the swell into 1:36 is great, really rich, and the addition of celli is a great pick there. there's a break right at 2:00 with tons of plectral elements which fit really well with the percussive elements that come in soon after. 2:49's the beginning of the end, with continued excellent performance elements in both the flute and vin. love the air fade in the flute to end it, very evocative. easy vote. this is a clever arrangement that does an excellent job setting up some great performers to do their thing. great concept. YES

listening to v2. opening really benefits from the live parts. 0:41's entrance of live elements sounds great, really evocative playing from GotW. the complexity of the background is really nice, especially the density of various rhythmic elements. the chopping on the arpeggio is particularly fun. melodic material hits at 1:13. the whistle lead's a little overused by this point, but luckily it's used sparingly. there's a beat break with GotW again at 1:45, and this is again really pretty. the timing is a little off at 1:59, but other than that this is an effective break. more vox parts doing their H36T sample pack imitation at 2:10, and this section noodles around for about a half-minute through some really neat textural elements. 3:02 is easily the most upbeat and energetic section of the entire song, with a long build before it really prepping your ears. there's a squelch right at 3:02 that i'm not 100% sure is intentional. GotW is going to town here though which is just awesome, and the really crunchy drums at 3:25 are perfect. 3:19 there's a big dropoff, and it's more noodles for the last minute of the track. the fadeout is super extended and winds up highlighting some kind of weird notes from sirenstar, but overall it's effective at setting you down after the intensity around like 3:20. the shape of this track is really nice, and of course there's a preponderance of the original throughout. the track sounds pretty good overall and only has that one squelch where there's anything that may be a little messy on the mastering side. this is an easy pass. YES edit 3/13: the arp at 0:41 overwhelms the live flute and i want to hear the flute more. melodic line at 1:13 is a touch quiet. it feels louder when it goes up the octave and that fits better there. live flute at 1:45 is a little quiet compared to the instrument that's mirroring it. 1:59's timing being off is still confusing...would be easy to fix in melodyne imo. the melodic line at 3:02 lacking any pitch lfo/vibrato is noticeable despite it being an intentional choice to mirror the game's iconic lead tone (tbh i have the same complaint earlier when this is used but it wasn't as noticeable there). i YES'd it before and i'll do it again here, of course - this is despite my nitpicks an incredible piece, and whatever voodoo you did on the backside of this one only made it more powerful.

intro faux strings into synths was a really nice feel. the track builds in a very exciting way through the piano, synths, guitar, then drums up until 0:45 when the beat really kicks in. the melodic content entering at 0:57 is excellent. the lead gets buried once or twice when it's doing lower stuff, but overall it soars over really excellent backgrounds, be them synth-heavy or guitar-heavy. short break at 1:43, and then we get the guitar entering with edgar's theme again. i like the articulations used here, the space added really compliments the background's staccato synths. the hit at 3:13 that brings the track to the beginning of the end was *chef's kiss*, and the overtone-heavy synths leading us out were interesting. arrangement is great - i honestly had to go back and figure out where Place of Memory was because it fit so well into the FF6 track. and from a mastering perspective, the driving, heavy, darker atmosphere of this one really works well with the more martial tone of edgar's theme. really excellent work. YES edit 10/23: i have no concerns about updated mix. still a positive vote from me.

intro starts off lacking bass and that continues through the initial drum intro. snare especially is pretty loud. 0:37 brings in some melodic synth work, but it wasn't immediately apparent what that lead synth was doing relative to the originals. there's a break right away that does some minor enemy encounter noodling (which is all that track is anyways). when the rest of the band kicks up, the bass is way meatier and the various swells sound great. overall this section feels pretty loud and i think there's some pumping going on, which isn't ideal. i do love the space in the synths - the hard rhythmic elements really sound great. there's a break at 2:58 for some arpeggiated chords and dramatic chord blocks. 3:27 brings in some synth guitar and fun bass effects around the guardian battle theme. this section is also way blown out on the mastering side - there's some solid blue lines on the indicator here. 4:45 gets even worse, it's just nothing but mush and i can't understand anything that's going on. it does this until the end, and i honestly can't tell if the ending is coming because it's so noisy right before it. from an arrangement perspective, this works. there's some original work in here but a preponderance of the source material, and there's a lot of variety of dynamics and textures. from a mixing and mastering perspective, this needs tons of work. the entire block of content from 1:47 through 2:58 and 4:45 through the end need to be reworked entirely. one thing i noticed is that you didn't do any volume automation - when an instrument came in, it was mixed for the largest/loudest section, and there was no flexibility around that. i recommend turning everything down and then carefully bringing levels up on a per-track basis in individual sections so as to craft a more specific soundscape for each section vs. a one-size-fits-all approach. fix the levels and this is a yes from me. right now it's not there. NO

intro winds sounded fine, but the supporting strings were pretty quiet. guitar and drums enter at 0:26, and the snare's really loud (the bass is also fairly quiet given that you commented on it specifically?). orchestral parts are written in a fun and aggressive manner, which is great, but literally everything after 0:26 has no bass other than what comes in from the chugs after they hit their tone. it honestly feels like something's getting trimmed out with how it keeps peeking back in occasionally. 1:28 or so the organ lead takes over, and the orchestration shows that it's not particularly real. the solo section at 1:42 is nice, and the subsequent crazy motorcycle elements are great. the less dynamic/fast writing for the orchestral parts cover the things that your sample set isn't great at which is a positive. 3:15's brass are rough, super fake, but i like what they're doing. 3:38's ending section was very sudden. some more build to it would have been really nice. i'm not passing this specifically because the bass is inaudible for most of the track. there's no guts to anything, the distorted guitar chugs at 2:15 have more bass content than the actual bass and kick throughout. that said, there are other issues here, including the very loud snare, the orchestral sample usage being pretty consistently fake sounding, and the overly quick ending. i think however that the concept is really neat and would love to see another take on it. NO

starts off with some needly synth work and synth guitar. imitates the opening of the original surprisingly well. at 0:20 we get a heavy beat with some keys mirroring the original's melody. this is pretty cover-ish, there isn't immediately any recognizable arrangement of the original here, just palette swaps. i'm at about 2:45 and this is pretty much the original in a row. there haven't been any changes of the drums (which are still very loud and don't sound at all like the rest of the soundscape), the lead instrument, keys, and synth guitar haven't changed or had any dynamic contrast to this point, and it's not changing really at all. the drums are crushingly loud and have a ton of room sound on them, and nothing else sounds like it's even close to being in the same place as them. they're all much cleaner. drums are also very boomy, lots of low mid content that just runs over the piano and guitar among other instruments. the track kind of just does the same thing for nearly five minutes before having a fadeout outro. unfortunately this isn't the kind of arrangement we're looking for at OCR. this track does not display transformational arrangement - it's the same instrumentation as the original, about the same speed, and does the same notes pretty much across the board in the same order. i'd encourage you to review the submission standards (specifically 4.2) to see more what kind of arrangements we're going for. NO

fun chippy opening. guitar and band comes in at 0:25, and goes through the initial loop. the bass and kick are sitting in the same range, so it feels extra boomy, but the guitar sounds nice and crisp. the trumpet comes in on the melodic content at 0:54, and through here the heavy bass and kick overlap is more noticeable. trumpet is sequenced nicely. there's a break at 1:20 for some orchestral parts with more trumpet on top. this is a neat idea to try something different. after that, we're immediately back into the chiptune part on top of the band accompaniment - two simultaneous copypastas! not something i expected. there's more combinations of previously sequenced material layered in different combinations for the rest of the track, and then a filtered outro. the heavy bass overlay in the first third or so and the last minute being copypasta isn't my favorite, but it's not enough to really sink this. the middle orchestral section is great and i found myself wishing there was more of that! this certainly isn't as fresh and across-the-board high quality like your more recent works, but i think this is fine. YES

harp opening is beautiful, if a little skewed off-center to the right. the initial strings aren't particularly realistic. after the swell at 0:33, though, there's a lot more richness in their tone and it sounds a lot better. there's some really nice swells and interplay in the harp parts in here. at 1:21 the cello comes in, and the audio is still skewed to the right ear a lot. it's much louder and clearly is hitting a limiter gate on that side several times. i also wouldn't have realized this was a live cello due to the doubling in the tone. there's a great brass swell going into 1:59, and the addition of percussion there was a great addition. the vocals sound great too, although the lower part occasionally has some pitchiness on a few of the sustains. there's a sustained diminuendo that's a great setup for the final big push starting at 3:14. i appreciated psamanthes's chest voice through here, it's really rich and fills in the overall timbre nicely. there's a short outro in the harp and it's done. this is beautiful! there's a few nits here and there, but my only real complaint is the heavy emphasis on the right ear through maybe 1:59. despite that complaint, it's definitely above the bar and is worth posting. there's a richness to this orchestration that's just so evocative. YES

fade-in to start. tempo is up a bit, and the intro hits are adapted to fit into a 4x4 beat. the galaxy theme comes in right away after that, and the hit at 0:57 is the first real instance of the melodic content in a row. it's pretty straightforward, and there's some overlap of synths so it's a little tough to hear what's going on where. there's also no real pad in the middle - there's the higher string synth with the melodic material, and the bass and drums under. this changes at 1:44 for a bit, and then there's a tempo change to fit the three-note motif. this picks back up again, and bounces its way through the galaxy theme in a straightforward manner again. there's not much difference from this section and what was happening earlier, to the point i'd call this second section a copy/paste of the earlier section around 1:15 to 1:55. there's a fadeout with the three-note motif and that's it. this is a neat idea! the B material in the original has always been an interesting one, since most people tend to focus on the initial hits of the theme. i like the bouncier, string-based approach here. there's just not much interpretation yet. adding in some more material or moving things around to better fit your vision will let the best parts of the track be what you've added, rather than just the original with some new synths. right now it's too conservative of an arrangement, and the synth choices are a bit homogenous and boring. NO

waveform sausage right off the bat. the mastering is way slammed, with the kick causing compressor ducking. it's hard to hear much nuance in any of the instruments. so this is an instant no without turning literally every element down by half, turning off all master lane limiters and compression, and then slowly balancing it more appropriately. i think that it'd make a lot of sense to look into EQ work as well to get the bass/pad and the kick out of the same ranges. so, looking past that, let's go through the arrangement. the intro build towards the dovahkiin melodic line is certainly exciting. the arpeggiating synth doesn't sound like it's got any verb on it so it's a little out of sorts there. it also sounds like the chord it's arpeggiating at 0:43 is wrong, unless you're supposed to be arpeggiating the ii chord there starting in first inversion (i think, didn't sit down to figure it out). the melodic content blows through continuously until the 'break' at 1:23, which is a lot for such blown-out mastering. the break is about five seconds, and then we're into a solo section that somehow also doesn't have a clear beat despite having four on the floor. the solo started out pretty neat, but the pitch-bends at like 1:42 really make it lose energy. the lack of movement on the synth tone used is also a missed opportunity for something neat to emphasize those sustains that you're using - they sound pretty boring by themselves, but a neat LFO or filter gate would do some fun stuff there. after the solo, the melodic material blows through again in a straight line with no changes from how it was done before, except this time the synth solo is doing some stuff on top and noodling around (mostly off-pitch, from the sound of it). this switches to the handdrum beat instead of finishing strong, and does this for a while before inexplicably taking a one-second fadeout rather than a finishing chord. i would say that the underlying idea - big in-your-face synthy version of the very exciting dovahkiin theme - is a neat one. the mastering is really rough and needs a ton of work. the synth ideas are standard but effective, but they stay the same throughout a 3+ minute piece that also has essentially no dynamics, so they get tiring quick. some more variation of synth choices would help immensely, as would some more personalization of the melodic material and your approach. right now this is not passable. NO

intro takes a minute to get there, but we get melodic material at 0>36 with a beat eventually. there's not much going on here - just the bass the drums, and the melodic synth. no pads or countermelodic material. this goes through what i'd call one iteration of the melodic material before dropping back to just the bass and lead, although we start to get occasional side content. there's a shift at 1:58 (the drum fill before this is oddly out of time) to the B content of the original. there's some more expansive interpretation first, then the descending line. the doubled bass/melody line at 2:43 was nice, but then we're back to the melody over the drums and bass for about 40s before the track uses the B melodic content as an outro. there isn't enough here ultimately from an arrangement perspective - the melodic content is pretty straightforward, but specifically there's just not enough going on behind it to constitute a completed track. there's no countermelodic content, no pads, no fleshing out of the textures at all, and it feels incomplete as a result. additionally, i like the concepts behind the synth choices, but ultimately agree as well that the synth tone choices are pretty basic. i'd love to hear this have an expanded sound palette and some other stuff happening outside the bass and lead. it's just too simple right now. NO

what strikingly emotive originals. i've never heard of this composer at all - clearly my loss. remix starts with block chords and gradually fills out the progression. 0:48 is the first section i'd call melodic content, and the characteristic ascending line comes in soon after. i appreciate the way you've picked up gao's use of grace notes and octave jumps and integrated those into this arrangement. the wider voicings you use at 2:01 really flesh out the beautiful progression the originals are based around as well, and i appreciate the space that those voicings give it. 2:42 is a break of sorts, and i felt this section was a let-down after the rich voicings of the earlier section. i felt there could have much more use of dynamics and some push-pull of tempi to replicate some of what makes the originals so striking. the intensity build here is still notable even despite the messy low end in this section, and it keeps driving towards a peak at 3:32. your wide voicings here actually play against you a bit as the low end of this piano is a bit growly, and keeping your hands 2+ octaves apart loses the richness of those middle tones that you utilized more effectively earlier. 4:01 is another shift, and functions well as a way to bring down the energy and move us towards an ending. i admit i expected a final chord in there somewhere. this is a beautiful arrangement overall. some elements - like the overly-wide voicings at 3:30ish, and an overall lack of significant dynamic contrast outside the very beginning and end - act as detractors, but they don't take away from the simple pleasures of the original, and your arrangement is transparent enough to not get in the way of that. nice work. YES

memories in green is such a timeless track. some sfx and detuned pads before we get the intiial beat at 0:16. snares feel a touch loud here even considering where they're coming from (ie. the shinra track), and the long tail is covering what else is going on. it's a super wet sound especially in the backing pads. 0:55 we get some saxccents, and we finally get some melodic content at 1:39. the subtle gated synths here are so good, and i love the heavily filtered pingpong echoes. 2:22 really feels like a big shift despite there not being a ton of changes. the choir and addition of other sustained content fills out the soundscape a lot more here. the ending is sudden - i felt it to be too much so, the track just kind of ends. the interweaving of these two tracks is excellent. my only complaint is the ending, which it certainly isn't enough for me to say no just for that. YES

name means roughly "on the other side of the mirror". loved the bass in the intro, although i wish it was clearer. keys at 0:40 were nice. whole opening reminded me of Evanescence's second album a bit. it really gets going at 1:00, with 1:20's aggressive in-your-face action being really fun. drum fills were really solid. there is indeed a render glitch at 2:07.5 or so. 2:37 was really gripping to me, nice work with the ascending chord work there. 3:15 is a 'break', for probably the first time in the track, and it's needed by that point. 3:44 kicks it back up and it's real mean for a bit before the keys come back for a little while. at 4:23 we get the last big blow for the last 40s or so, and it's done. 4:51 has another render blat. there's a lot of silence to trim from the render, both at the beginning and end. this is an aggressive, intense take on a great original track. nice work! i love how in-your-face it is throughout without ever being overwhelming. YES

what a unique submission email. i'll say that ori lost in the storm is IMO such an iconic track for this game, just love it. intro is beautiful. lots of playing with duple vs. triple, excellently handled dynamics and soundscape. the violin part was pretty but a bit high-heavy, which caused it to sound a little thin. i'd have preferred to hear more low/mid in the EQing of that instrument. 0:59 brings in more consistent drums, and the soundscape shifts to accommodate the cello is well-handled. love the violin pizz in this section. i think the cello could have definitely been much louder through this however. 1:46's change again has the leads a little quiet, but the scoring here sounds great and is appropriately epic. the flute and bells at 2:02 are great. there's some soloing and the a beautiful duet at 2:35. one last big crescendo, and it's done. this sounds great! the orchestral parts are really subdued, more than i'd have expected based on the description, but it lets the live instruments carry the track. enjoyable listen. YES

ok, a little different! the lush string pads (which are obv not intended to be realistic, they're a keyboard) swelling in the intro is a nice touch. drums at 0:19 are super present with a lot of room tone, which is a neat contrast to the tone of the bass and trumpet. the track feels really in touch with the DS roots in the instrumentation and style. we get a break at 0:59 or so with some swells that stays pretty small for a while until after the 2:00 mark. the continued contrast of textures is just great, lots of different little ensembles within the overall work. there's some copy at 2:30 or so, but it doesn't last too long. this part is particularly loud, and there definitely is some clipping in here that's being hidden by your limiter in post. we get one more break at 3:14 and then it's a short romp to the ending. this is really fun overall. i certainly wouldn't complain if you went through the entire track and turned everything down 10% to avoid the clipping, but the arrangement is just stellar and carries the few mastering mistakes over the bar, i think. tons of clever integration of the source into a variety of timbres is a great way to get posted YES edit 11/7: no change to my vote here.

very clanky piano for the intro, doing lots of block chords. synth lead that comes in is pretty bland and not particularly pleasant to listen to. the left hand of the initial piano really keeps hammering for a while, and it is not a great sound - it crushes most of what else is going on when it hits, not that there's much there. this goes on for almost two minutes and i'm already really tired of the theme. the soaring elements of the melodic line that are so interesting are really flattened by the synth choices and the hammering of the keys. we get a very significant shift in style with rhythmic synths and percussion coming in at about 1:46. the drums are pretty loud initially, but fit in later - consider taking some time to volumize what you're playing so that the fills aren't huge and the initial groove isn't so loud compared to what's going on in the melody line. i'm at three minutes and each time the first loop of melodic material ends, it starts over again immediately following the next measure. there's no breaks to the material or pauses or dynamic contrast added, just an immediate shift between the A and B material. consider giving your listeners some breaks between what you're saying so that they can absorb it before diving into the same melodic content in the same instruments at the same tempo and the same dynamic level for the fifth time when we haven't even gotten halfway through the piece. we get some age of fables at 3:47, which is a nice shift. again there's no hesitation before diving into the next set of themes, which i really do think is a mistake. this section uses similar percussion, dynamics, and lead tones as the first section, which also is a concern given that we're 4-5 minutes into the track and it's been a lot of the same. my ears are certainly getting tired of the same thing for such a long time, and there's another two minutes in the track. around the 6:00 mark, you start to reduce the textural elements playing, which is a good choice to allow the track to naturally shift somewhere else from an instrumentation perspective. unfortunately, the next minute or so is just the same progression over and over with little difference, and then suddenly it shifts to an ending that resolves a 7+ minute piece in about six seconds. and it's done. i would strongly encourage you to consider cutting half of the piece's repetition out. this is, maybe, a 3.5-4 minute pat of butter scraped over 7+ minutes of bread. there simply isn't enough unique content here to last 7 minutes without repeating yourself ad nauseum, which is what you've done. i'd also ask you to consider doubling - truly, doubling - the number of unique synths, percs, whatever that you're using throughout. the amount of same-ness is not a positive, and my ear was tired of the same six synths by the three minute mark. lastly, re-evaluate the song structure and identify more clear areas to provide breaks - both in the dynamic content, and in the melodic content. the track is roughly the same volume throughout after the intro right now and that's not a great song structure. beyond that, it's worth it to have breaks in the melodic material that you're continually throwing at the listener. rather than repeating each melody line ten times in a song, use it maybe three or four times total, and make those three or four times more awesome - make the listener want to re-listen to the entire song rather than just hearing it once and saying "that's good for a while". reducing the overall usage will make the track much more approachable and listenable. NO

neat idea shifting the engine purr into the initial synth line. the track really starts around 0:33 and features some (super hot) engine sfx throughout the first ten seconds at least. i don't hear the issue with the lead being hard to hear at 0:33 at all, same at 1:10. the faster tempo really works for this melodic material too since it's so fitting for the theme of the game. there's a 'break' at 1:39, and certainly what source material is being represented here is quieter, and doesn't speak much at the beginning. the energy kicks at 2:05 and it goes pretty good to the end when we get more engine sfx. this has a ton of energy! i don't think that the quieter leads at 1:39 are enough to sink it. it sounds great overall and i especially liked the synth guitar lead. nice work. YES

fun idea for a remix. the fade-in wasn't my favorite and the initial piano is indeed blocky (try reducing the sustain on faster passages to get a cleaner and tighter sound). flute sounds fantastic, the off-beat stuff at 0:47 is great. some nice drum fills around the 1:10 mark. the original's melody isn't particularly over-memorable but you do a nice job of picking up what makes it unique and relaying it. i certainly wasn't a huge fan of the fadeout with all the clear rhythmic content you had going on. the overblown sections sound fine. i think at least in the later one there's some vocal content in the flute tone or at least some flutter, which is why it sounds a little weird. it's just because the sound comes out of the instrument differently when you don't focus the airstream at the tone hole the same way. this is a neat idea, subpar start/end aside. great playing. YES

neat original, haven't ever heard it. the opening chords are neat, but the artificial cut on the tremolo strings is an immediate turnoff. the bells at 0:35 do indeed have a tone of attack bass tone, and they're also heavily in the right ear. there's some neat stuff they're saying but there are indeed some notes that don't appear to be represented in the adjacent chords in the choir. the flute does a similar thing. the chords under it are at least initially in a minor (with some very interesting borrowed tones later that i don't believe are 100% intentional), and the flute melody is in what sounds like B major. a guitar (?) comes in at 1:35, and is also very clicky on the attack. after some more reserved elements noodle, there's a very treble-heavy bell doing stuff at 2:17 that's just not clearly in any key again. it's also about two octaves above everything else so it's totally unrelated to anything happening around it. there is a lot going on here that is problematic. the start is simply that everything's panned so heavily - this leads to a difficult-to-listen-to mix on headphones especially. the instruments themselves don't appear to be working together, but rather doing their own thing throughout pretty much across the board. most of them also have heavy bass thumps in their attacks, which leads to a clicky, punchy tone that is not pleasing. beyond that, most of them don't appear to be playing music in the same key, which leads to it overall being pretty incoherent. i didn't get much melodic material from the original at all in this. i think this needs the drawing board. identify more clearly how you're going to relay the original's melodic and harmonic components that you're hoping to show, and craft a soundscape around that material that is both key-specific and intentional with your instrument choices. right now this is pretty far from the bar. NO