prophetik music

ooh, there's some really great themes in this arrangement. overall i agree with the other judges that this sounds like a great first pass, but not finished. a great example is the section at 2:18. this is such a great build, and it's a fun take on it, but the leads sound dull, the organ synth is kind of shrill, and the backing parts need like ten more takes to get that wall-of-sound at 2:47 that you're going for and really do that part justice. the riff at 3:03 and backing entrance at 3:08 gave me chills. there's so many fun ideas in this arrangement, it's just not really done to the same level throughout. something that'd help throughout would be beefing up your backgrounds so it's not just clearly a guitar in each ear and the bass/drums/synth combo. some more body and double-tracking will help a lot with keeping it feel as big and epic as you want it to. a critical aspect of medleys like this is that they need to feel organically combined, and that's not always the case here. something that'll help a lot is a total mastering pass to get some serious compression on the track as a whole. the bass tone is ok but it feels pretty small and dull. guitars all feel really scooped out of the highs so there's no sparkle to them. drums sound decent but i wouldn't mind some more attention paid to the kick especially. overall this track needs some significant EQ and mastering love to bring out the best of what you've got going on, and some more body to most of the backing parts. it is a great first take though and i can't wait to hear a bigger, badder, meaner, more complete shot at this. NO

a jazz piano look at this is a fun idea. i feel the whole FF7 soundtrack is real funky, especially early on, so it's a nice concept. just up front, this is a really, really loud mastering job on this mix. the drums are very much in the forefront, and with such a wet piano and very indistinct bass, everything gets cluttered quickly. i feel like if everything was turned down 3db and the compressor's ratio set to something less tight that it'd suddenly make a lot more sense and the overall volume wouldn't change much due to the compressor having some room to do what it's supposed to be doing. the arrangement here is primarily based around a runthrough of the original theme's arpeggio, and then followed by some pretty simple but enjoyable guitar soloing. i liked the interplay between the backing piano and OST arpeggio, and except for a few notes that were close to questionable the guitar soloing helps keep it interesting. the drum parts are well-designed and feel interesting without featuring a ton of polyrhythms or significant fills. there's some looping in there but it isn't egregious. i thought the guitar got exposed as not real when it started mirroring the arpeggio at the end, around 3:55ish, but other than that was well-realized. the ending is disappointing as there's no real transition other than suddenly everything stops. there's a significant amount of the track devoted to the original content the guitar's playing, but this song has a unique enough chord progression (and it was stuck to and reinforced by the piano) that i don't have a problem saying that it's clear what the original is. my biggest concern is more that the arrangement is static for roughly the last three minutes outside of a single 5-second break. there's not much in the way of dynamic contrast or truly transformative adaptation to keep it from getting a bit repetitive. this is a difficult vote. the track's arrangement is enjoyable if fairly minimal and relying on original content, and it does get a bit stale by the end. the mastering is listenable but loud and gets tiring. i like the instrumentation choices, however there's definitely room for improving the overall sound with some balancing. ultimately with another mastering pass i think this one would be OK. i don't know rukunetsu enough to know if this could be handled via a conditional or if he'd be willing to do so, so i'm going to vote a soft NO right now. i'm very willing to change that if there are conditionals coming from the other judges. NO

what a great original track. never heard it before. lush and vibrant. i love the vibe and arrangement through the entire first half. it's also very lush, there's a bunch of stuff going on, and it's very verby, but it doesn't get overly complex or hard to understand what's going on. the slower tempo gives it all a lot of weight which i really like. the build through 2:30 is fantastic and really brings to mind most of covet's effloresce album. when the recap of the melody hits with everything under it, it's got a ton of body and really sings out well. if anything i was expecting to be even heavier there, but keeping it moving and pretty light underneath kept it moving forward, which was great. the spring effect at the end was fun too. i wouldn't mind seeing the last five seconds of silence cut, but other than that this is a great track that is well-mastered and really well performed. excellent job. YES

yeah, this should be a DP =) it's liberal but not overly so, well-performed, and well-produced. the shift in backing parts at the 2:02 mark was perfectly timed and well handled. i liked the inclusion and mixing of the vocal parts as well, they stood out in that they were set into the mix really well and didn't overpower anything while adding a great change of pace when they appeared. easy vote. YES

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).

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