prophetik music

first five seconds: after i heard the clarinet i went and looked who it was, and i was right! it's General Goofball back with another awesome polka. i can't wait. points off for no puppet video this time. there's a few super minor timing issues in the first 30s or so in the clarinet, and a few articulations i may have tried to do slightly differently, but honestly this is a really impressive job on a pretty tough piece for the clarinet, especially articulation-wise. there's some silly fingers around 1:17 but that's really it. i laughed out loud at 1:43. i don't know why i didn't expect it. amazing. what a great tune. i love it. it's got so much arrangement crammed into just over two minutes, it sounds great, and it's just a fun listen. YES

11 minutes? and three Ys already? this should be a treat. intro piano is pretty stilted, and the intro in general is kind of meh between the strings and the obviously fake flute. the guitars come in at 1:00 and it's clear what kind of track this'll be. the initial band sound is both lacking in low end overall (the whole first section has a bump at about 95hz and not much below it) and has a lot centered in that low-mid range which leads to a pretty narrow soundscape despite the cymbals and other high-freq instruments in the mix. a glance at the track's shape indicates that i'll be hearing a lot of this (it's essentially a solid sausage for 8:45 with two <5s breaks), so i'll echo what darksim said a few times - this is good enough for such a huge track on a macro level, but the micro certainly isn't always there. this is really too big to do my normal breakdown section by second, so i'll call out a few favorites - 4:30's break was fun, in general i liked the bass's tone (just wanted more bass presence), the minute or so starting at 6:01 was just superb as others have mentioned, and i really liked the transition from the megablast section through 7:45 into the subsequent section (volumization needs there notwithstanding). the ending overall conceptually was a nice idea, but again the lack of personalization in the piano was not a positive, and the strings were more designed to sit as a pad under a rock track than be used in an exposed fashion like this. it's not a big deal in the scope of the whole piece, just means the bookends of the work aren't as good as the solid middle. what a blow this track is. really fun. YES

intro has a lot of sfx and random-sound sounds that come together to make a rough beat under the ghost arp. we get some melody at 0:30 or so, very chopped up and strange-sounding intentionally so. layering in some plectral instrumentation as well on top obfuscates the melodic material, and the percussion is pretty loud through here. 1:16 is a big stylistic shift, both in terms of time signature and in terms of instrumentation. the heavily filtered strings here are pretty grating and really loud, and it's hard to differentiate between them, the treble content in the very weird bass synth, the ghost arp, the melodic stutter synth, and the plectral instrument that you've had going. it hits more of a groove later on, and around 2:00 has kind of settled down, but it's still confusing to listen to. 2:07 is another shift, bringing back the industrial percussion under a 7/8 groove with more of the very intentionally overtoney bass doing stuff under the stuttery synth. the hard break at 2:40 was confusing to me, as i didn't get why you'd want to just shut off the track in the middle without there being a clear resolution or build section around it. there's some more ghost castle lead played as the melodic content and then it's just done very suddenly. looking at the freq analysis confirms what i felt was confusing to me from an auditory perspective - the bass instrument (which doesn't really ever venture below about 100hz from what i can hear) is by far the loudest element in the mix, both the fundamental and the first overtone. it's fairly confusing from an auditory perspective to listen to something that features such a high fundamental, especially with the heavy variance in styles throughout the track. the section at 1:16 is a good example - there's nothing to ground the track, and so many elements are in the same aural area that it makes it hard to differentiate and really listen to them. it's very tiring on the ears. i really want to like this track. the creativity in choices of synths and approach is really neat as expected from eino, the sources are a fun combo, and the arrangement is interwoven nicely. ultimately though it just doesn't sound good - the heavy layering of instruments in the same freq range is intensely tiring. i was only able to get through two listens before my ears felt quite pressured, and the middle section is most of where that came from. the track also is meandering and lacking cohesion, which combined with the lack of real dynamics throughout makes it difficult to follow and stay with what's going on at any given time. there certainly is a ton of source used in creative ways, but the track still manages to feel inchoate. i think you need to spend some time breaking up the blocks of instruments in the same freq range, and then re-volumize everything so that the instruments that are the loudest at any given time are what you want the listener to be listening to. right now the melodic content is never the main thing, which isn't a great result. also consider adding more to the bass end of the bass instrument while still keeping the weirdness of the upper overtones so as to ground the mix more. NO

initial hit sounds just great. melody intros at 0:15, and is pretty straightforward the first time through. gario's right in that there's a ton of fun background content through this entire first section, and the heavy sidechain reminds me of the corel prison mix that haroon put out 20 years ago. i didn't mind the hard sidechain through this section. there's a break at 1:31, and we're back at it at 1:50. this section is very close to the first representation of the theme outside of the melodic doubling (and eventual tripling) until we get to the B section which has a direct countermelody added into the rest of the mix. this is still quite similar to the earlier section. there's a hard cut at 2:44 for a piano interlude, which was both needed at that point and unexpected. it's nicely written and builds back up nicely to a final blow through the B melodic material before toning it back at 3:53 and reducing down to a final hit. this is mastered beautifully. we rarely get tracks that have such a well-defined freq spectrum. the remix sounds awesome and the kicks are appropriate protein-rich. this is a piece of cake for me. i get not being into the heavily-sidechained sound, but the arrangement is fine and the track's overall sound is great. nice work. YES

low and slow intro, and we get some nasty bass at 0:28 contrasted against the percs and pads. beat comes in at 0:57, and there's some fun filtered patterns being played in here as well. the iconic arpeggio is up top and throughout this section. 1:40 gets us a break and some sliding synths, and then we finally get the melody at 1:54. it's heavily automated as expected, with lots of slides and volumization elements. a sustain at 2:38 finishes the first instance of the melodic material. i'm noticing at this point that the arpeggiated instrument has been hammering away for about two minutes, and it's starting to be a little much. thankfully there's some other elements coming in as we get through 3:15 to draw attention away from it. we get some violin at 3:36, and it is quite striking. very well-played. the orchestral taikos (sounds a bit like a bamboo drum actually) are pretty fierce through this and the entire soundscape is pretty dense at 4:15 - clearly a lot went into making that section not be a mess. the soundscape clears up more around 4:20, and the violins and eventually new filters escort us towards a washed ending. this is pretty superb overall. it definitely achieves something that i haven't heard before from the piles of AA remixes that are out there. excellent work. YES

what a weird-looking waveform. heavily offset. boy, what a love-it-or-hate-it sound initially. the lead's long attack is certainly a choice. i don't care for it at all, and it does sometimes get buried. the backing parts have some really neat ideas going on too. there's a lot of little blurbs and bleeps that are neat to keep discovering as i go through it. there's a bit of an sfx break in the middle at like 2:06, and then we're back at it with some squelchy bass. this section sounds very similar to the opening albeit in a higher key and with the bass synth under it. there's a short build with the B theme, and then at 3:00 we're back to the A theme but with some more countermelodic content this time. the stutter synth here sounds great to give the very verby background some structure. 4:01 is a big build that essentially goes to the end and that's it. i think i land on the other side of the fence from MW here. the rest of the mix is solid and the arrangement is great, and i don't think those leads are really enough for me to NO this. YES

boy, what a pretty piece. it's too bad i can barely hear any connection to the original. there's so much patience in the approach and so many instances of letting the music dictate the tempo and instrumentation instead of the other way around. there are certainly a lot of three-note patterns in this, unfortunately the majority of them aren't following the rough shape of the motif that is kind of the defining element of the original, making it hard to correlate elements. i think MW's point - that it's unrecognizable without knowing what the original is - is valid. it's certainly not required that the track's style or melodic representation be 1:1 with the original, but it should be pretty clear what you're going for. unfortunately that's not the case here. NO

lmao, this writeup is nuts! thank you for the detail, although maybe half of it belongs in a tumblr post more than here. not a big deal either way. intro is primary SFX that isn't super balanced between ears. 0:48 is where stuff starts to come in. the violin sustains feature an extremely slow attack and a weird filter on it so they don't sound particularly realistic. this section definitely feels like it's meandering a bit, and while i understand theoretically where you're going, it doesn't clearly relate to the original even from a subtractive perspective without having the actual original melody there to tie the countermelodic material. 1:28 is where we start to get some original melodic material, and the main enemy of this piece becomes clear - the super-long and obviously artificial tail length of the reverb. 2:04's backing parts are very active, and the extended verb on them alongside the melodic piano's reverb is just a total mess. it doesn't sound dreamy or ethereal, it just sounds like a kid plunking assorted notes on the piano with the pedal down perpetually (is it clear i have three? because this is every music time ever for us). there's a big shift at 2:41 to some more meaty instruments. the strings lead-in at 2:36 is a dramatically different timbre than the rest of the work at that point - more flexible dynamics would help a lot. the verby keys are still in the background to the mix's detriment here. the instrumentation is not particularly complex either. there's not any writing i hear that is utilizing different rhythms at all, meaning it's just big elephantine blocks of chords moving around. if it was all strings in unison over a backing part, i'd get the puccini influence, but that's not what's happening here - this isn't a string tune. this is not benefiting from overly simplifying the rhythmic elements. additionally, the snares are too far in the back - they'd have more snap to them if they were in a real orchestra; here you just get the room sound and no attack. 3:23 adds more rhythmic writing in the melodic writing - but again, it's all these huge blocks of tone rather than contrapunctal writing. this is more of the same of the previous section, in that the lack of interesting countermelodic or backing writing is holding it back. 3:38 shifts dramatically again to a pretty random-sounding set of instruments doing random-sounding things. i did not get 'jig' from this section at all - there were no common jig patterns used here (ie. dotted quarter three eighths, or four sixteenths eighth followed by eighth four sixteenths), although the section was indeed in 6/8. i also found the various non-chord tones used to be ill-fitting with a sustained chord pad in the background. 4:45 goes off the rails a bit more as the sfx comes back in and the music-box runs down, but it's a cute idea. this kind of keeps noodling until it's done. i think larry's complaints about it being disjointed are very fitting. there are some individual high points here, but they're not cohesively fitted together, and while it's thought-out and clever, the macro arrangement and shape isn't enough to lift the major issues (too much reverb in sections, low-quality instruments, elementary part-writing, truly incoherent arrangement in some sections) past the bar. if this was realized in a near-realistic fashion i'd still probably say it was too scattered - so that tells me that my main issue is just that while there's a lot of source available here 'on the page', an arrangement is more than a scrapbook page with assorted things glued to it. the overall disinterest in viscidity is the biggest issue. i also think some time away from this one will work wonders. i'd recommend doing some active listening of compositions that mirror what you're trying to do here. find why you like them, and what elements in them stand out as being remarkable. do your best to find examples in the modern lexicon rather than going to the far edges of the media multiverse to get them. then compare those elements that you enjoyed most with how you realized them here, and see what differences pop up. i think you'd find that the heavily scattered approach you used here is to the piece's detriment rather than it's benefit. NO edit: i received some feedback that this writeup was not-well received by the remixer. on a readthrough, i can definitely see how my writing could have been taken poorly. i wanted to address a few points that could easily be taken from it that were not intentional. please note that i haven't modified the above vote at all at the time of this edit. i think the extended writeup is fine here. my thought with the intro was that most people don't read submission emails, and so by extension all that writing wouldn't have an eventual audience. i think the writeup is detailed and very helpful to understand the admittedly complex piece, and just figured it should go in a blog too so it's not lost. my last statement, surrounding music listening, was intended to be a developmental technique for audiating and understanding what causes our own writing to sound different from accepted standards. most pro musicians have rockstar mastering and synth skills, and understanding why your track sounds different from someone doing a track in a similar style is a helpful tool that i've found to be very useful over the years. i meant nothing more by this. in general, i approached this writeup from the (apparently incorrect ) perspective that the remixer was a classically educated composer, and so i responded like i would to a compositional student. i certainly could have been far more specific in critiques rather than calling out generalities, and i separately should have highlighted some of the real positives in the track, like the complex song structure and sophisticated voice demonstrated throughout. i responded directly to the remixer on discord in more length. i'll be more careful going forward in my writing to use prose that is less likely to be perceived as denigrating. we are all here to improve and to develop our skills, and i should be helping with that and not discouraging from that.

intro musicbox doesn't sound a ton like it's in the same room as the piano. the trombone is indeed a little quiet for the intro, as is everything that's not the guitar. what beautiful writing, though. some more percussion come in at 0:40, and again there's an element of the percs not feeling like they're in the same space as the other instruments, especially the shaker that's used. some drumset comes in at 1:35 and the kick drum is just way loud compared to everything else. the piano and guitar take turns being more in the fore, which is nice, but in general the lead instruments are too quiet compared to the backing parts. what the drum is playing sounds stilted, too, there's not a lot of natural patterns going on back there. there's a recap of the intro as an outro, and that's that. this is a great arrangement in my opinion. the themes are combined and arranged beautifully and it sounds nice. the mix however is a mess, particularly from an EQing standpoint. there's a ton of sub-40hz content that's occupying the soundscape, and the drums overall are way too loud. some significant revolumization and EQing is needed to notch in the backing instruments so they settle next to each other without competing (the bass is especially egregious here). additionally, the entire track it sounds like there are instruments in totally different worlds. more attention to the room sound overall and application of reverb would be a very good choice. NO

the cello in the beginning is referencing source material - rather, that's what the remixer calls the source material. note, down a perfect (or augmented) fourth, up an octave, back to roughly the original note. the remixer is right in saying that there is little to the source, but reducing it down to just that specific riff is probably too reductive - there's other elements in the original that can be used, and i can't say that i hear them a ton in the first part. those first 48s or so are just the cello noodling around that pattern. some more actual instruments come in at 0:48, and they continue to reinforce that pattern on top of more sfx. 1:40 gets the pulsing bass line and more rhythmic representation of the original's chord structures and changes. so that's pretty clear. this is ultimately not really arranged - it's essentially the same as the original in the background instrumentation with some pre-recorded choir patches layered on top. at 3:19 there's a big shift to lean into those prerecorded choir samples, and then it ends. i actually don't have a problem with source usage in this track, and i'm surprised that the other j's said this was their dealbreaker. the first 48s of the cello wandering around the four-note motif is what motivic arrangement sounds like. there is more than enough source in the first 3:19 of the piece, it just isn't all a very clearly delineated and honestly pretty conservative arrangement of the original like the middle third of the piece is. given the extremely simple nature of the original, the motivic approach for the first part of the track was a great idea. i found your more overt source usage in the middle of the track actually kind of lacking in comparison - it's essentially the same as the original with a bunch of pitched sfx over it. the third act of the piece is kind of just a neat soundscape and isn't super tied to the rest of the track until you look at the usage of rubato and a rigid tempo structure vs. a nonrigid structure. from that perspective, this is an ABA structure - rubato-heavy opening section, super rigid middle section with a strong beat, rubato-heavy closing section. that said, i don't have a problem relating that initial four-note motif to source, which gives you more than enough there. the first part is great in how flexible and exploratory it is, the second part is contrastingly kind of a disappointment but serviceable, and the end is a bookend tempo-wise but doesn't really relate to the rest of the piece. looking at this track from the top down rather than by piecing it out, i think that this track is less than the sum of its parts, but it's still over the bar. it sounds good and is mastered cleanly, it features some really interesting exploration of a manufactured motif from the original piece, and it has some fun stuff to listen to. i'll admit this is pretty close to the bar overall in terms of arrangement - i'm stretching to accommodate not the motivic section but the more conservative middle section. YES

the original is about 2:34 long and this remix is only about 2:05. the initial presentation of the winds isn't bad, but they're not played particularly idiomatically - there's a lot of space between the notes in a way that doesn't come across as intentional, and some of the instrument choices are not particularly cohesive. in the section at 0:22, for example, the vibe (?) usage is extra clanky and doesn't fit against the natural timbre of the oboe, bassoon, or strings. the section starting at 0:58 with the flutes was a great chance to mix up your backing parts. with a track this short, you need to take advantage of every possible chance to show arrangement and nuance in your approach. similarly, 1:19 is arguably the biggest part of the original, and here you're sticking with the boom-pop background, sustained strings, and the same few lead instruments you had before. there is a lot you can do here with orchestral percussion and a bigger full-ensemble sound, but you chose to again keep it conservative. 1:48 brings back the (unwelcome) vibraphone and features what i believe are some incorrect or unsupported harmonic choices in the supporting instruments. please plan to take another look at the harmonic choices through this last 20s stretch to ensure that you're not competing with the arpeggiated chords the vibe is playing, even in passing. similarly, mirroring at the fourth is not a pleasing harmonic choice for the last few riffs - perfect fourths and fifths mirroring for harmonies sound robotic, and that boosts the overall uncanny valley of most of the instrumentation. unfortunately the best parts of this track are toby fox's, not yours, gabriel. the instrumentation is lacking (there are much better free options available in 2023), the arrangement is pretty lackluster throughout, and there is no verve or dynamic shape to the track the way the original swells and drops down. please consider adding more dynamics throughout, work on flexing some part-writing muscle and not just layering in sustains on a pad, and identify more idiomatic ways to 'perform' each instrument. NO

the intro's chill vibe is great. there is the right balance of verby tones next to crisp percussion. the melodic material comes in at 0:51, and it is indeed heavily reverbed but not so much that i can't hear what's happening. there's a lot of subtlety with the various synths and getting just the right amount of bite to their tone. there's a break at 1:42, focusing more on the glassy bells and some lighter instances of elements we've heard up to this point. the groove is back in at 2:09, and we get a more involved recap of the melodic material at about 2:57. this is very similar to what's happening earlier - in fact i think it's the same material as at 0:51 just with bigger drums. similar to before, there's a break at 3:50 that's almost the same as before but slightly bigger, and this kind of suddenly ends, not even on the root. i did not like the ending's sudden end (it just sounds like the end of a loop) or the copypasta from 2:57 to the end, which is not quite a third of the piece. however, the arrangement is clever, the synth work is nuanced, and i felt the mastering was pretty good throughout and didn't have too much reverb. there's a lot of sub-40hz content that didn't get rolled off but that's my only real complaint in that area. this is a neat idea that's executed pretty well. in the future, i'd encourage you to always make your recapitulation section more different - particularly in the handling of the melodic material, which at that point has usually already been repeated several times. the last time through is a great chance to leave a mark in the listener. YES

took a while to wrap my ears around the intro which does indeed feel quite disjointed. almost feels more in a slow triple meter vs. 3/4. there's a heavy, plodding feel to the guitars in this opening section, with a ton of space in the rhythm guitars. i don't particularly care for the lead synth, which combined with the very loud delay makes it hard to focus on where the beat is underneath it. the farther along in this opening section we get, the more i'm reminded of the very dramatic, lush style of peruvian tango music. obviously a dramatically different instrumentation throughout, but the slow 3 beat and wide instrumentation with tons of verb made me think of it. there are some odd timing artifacts at 2:02, 2:09, and 2:17 where it sounds like the track is missing a sixteenth note. at roughly 2:20 there's a significant shift in tone as the piano is more in the fore, then at 2:50 the tempo slows a bit but keeps the 16th note roughly the same while transitioning to a more piano-driven groove. this isn't the best transition i've ever heard but it's certainly not terrible. this is pretty straightforward and uses Missing Perspective as a base to jam a bit on, and then the track's done. i think this is a perfectly serviceable remix of these two themes. i think that the track is a bit less with jamming in Missing Perspective than it could have been using the Main Theme track as the basis for the solo section, but that isn't enough to demote it to a NO in my mind. the track doesn't have any mixing concerns and the overall product is certainly above our bar. YES

i am going to echo MW and DarkSim here - this is very much what i'd consider to be a cover. the important bits that define the original are replicated throughout, with little to originality in how it's represented. you definitely nailed the style you were going for, it's just too close overall. from a mastering perspective, i think the guitars sound great, but do wish that the bass had a clearer tone and was more present in the mix. drums sound fine, nothing stood out there. sorry to vote no on a fun mix, but unfortunately there's just not enough arrangement elements being used that aren't directly from the original. NO

rubber stamp here. it just sounds so messy. it's certainly got some more going on, but you can't hear anything over the cymbals specifically. NO

really neat intro, and the first minute or so before the glossolalia sounds super good. layering sustains against the iconic tritone pattern really emphasizes how strange that pattern is. the initial presentation of the ?lyrics? is a really interesting concatenation of your intentionally un-classical vocal tone (which to me sounds more folky, that is less rigid/within strictures) against the backing style, which to me presents as more rigid and constrained. the slight glides between the upper and lower pitches on the bigger jumps, the very wide vowel tones, and the ethnic choir sound of your voice harmonizing with itself really is a significant juxtaposition against buzz synths and FM bells. i think it's really neat. 2:15 kind of finishes the first part, and starts a different approach for vocals as well. you use a more closed vowel tone here alongside a more traditionally classical approach to your vibrato. there's a few more obvious pitch issues here (understandably, it's harder to pitch-shift tones that are richer in overtones and have heavier vibrato over a very thin pitch with no vibrato). the slide where you stop your vibrato and try to gliss down is probably my least favorite part of the song actually, it is hard to hear that as anything other than just out of tune. i understand the intent behind the glitching effects - at that point, the track has been doing the same thing for over three minutes with essentially no break in the backing part whatsoever, and the vocal parts although interesting have been doing the same thing too. as a method of mixing it up, this is certainly effective at shifting the style. i don't mind it as strongly as the other judges. i do think though that it exposes just how little there is behind the arrangement overall - there's essentially two chords, and you're either not singing, singing the invented stuff, or singing ahh tones that do roughly the same thing across the board. sometimes a track just needs a cool idea to get it from point A to point B. i found myself wishing this track had more there from an arrangement standpoint ultimately, rather than just being about the same volume with the same backing parts and roughly the same ideas in the melodic content for >4 minutes. to be clear, this is definitely over the bar. it's a creative approach to a weird source and has some great ideas. i wouldn't have minded it being a minute shorter, or having more development to stop it feeling so samey across the board. YES

i can't believe that a saxophone quartet - truly my favorite medium to work in - came through the queue and managed to get three votes to close it out while i was on vacation. what are the odds?

i got the same vibe right away, MW - definitely feels like a TSO song. intro is very evocative between the guitar, cello, and chimes. big hit at 0:40 to build up a very full band sound. the adaptation to 6/8 - and particularly the inspiration to alternate your measure groupings between triple and duple - is great, really adds a ton of energy. there's a drop around 1:32 that brings it back to focus on the orchestral elements with some drums helping to amp the energy over time. this builds for close to a minute before finally really hitting hard at 2:14. i really liked the harmonized lead guitars here over the top of the very active bassline. this section felt heavy in the right ear, almost certainly driven by the lead guitar. there's another break and another big band section starting around 2:58. there's a few bass runs in here that don't feel 100% in the right key, but they don't sound like wrong notes, just key choices that i don't think are as supported as they could be. there's one big blow through the main motif and then some keys bring us home. i don't really have any major complaints. this is yet another great ZP track from this album. excellent work. YES

i always found this original to just be so odd. more musicbox (just listened to the stage is set remix) to start alongside sweeping pads gives a very pastoral feel to the opening. there's a shift as we get to the Motion part of the original, and the addition of muted distortion sustains/washes is a big change from the opening. the repetitive melodic material is immediately recognizable. this is extended, and eventually we get something new at 2:48. this is indeed slowed way down, almost to the point of not being recognizable, and continues with the very spare soundscape that was defined earlier. the track is extremely simple, more of a backing element to a scene than something you'd seek out to listen to regularly. still it fits our guidelines. YES

the intro is appropriately creepy between the detuned music box and the distorted synths. there's a great build into 0:44 where the main melodic material shows up. 1:17 drops off and we get more of the marcato melodic material from the beginning of the source. there's a nice piano arpeggiation behind this that fades in and out, and sets the stage for a half-time section led by guitars at 1:47. the sweeping, sustained theme is just perfect for such an active background. there's a big transition at 2:21 with some significant pumping from the main compressor (it's even visible in the waveform). this part shifts the marcato intro melodic material to some lower strings doubled with choir, which is kind of muddy but sounds great the few times there's a thinner soundscape. this builds up with more of the musicbox stuff into another drop, and the track builds for another 20s until the ending big hit. there's some pumping but that's really my only complaint. the rest of this is just great pacing and scaling. nice work. YES

the first part of the arrangement is primarily a specific representation of the boogie riff in the right hand, with open fifths in the left hand. there's variation in how the left hand plays those fifths, but that doesn't change for about 1:17, after which the left hand switches to a common bass/chord pattern for a short period before going back to the fifths. the right hand sounds mostly like what i'd call noodling - as in, what i do when i sit down at the piano to goof around before dinner (important note: i am not a pianist outside of a few semesters of class piano in college). there's no particular direction in what's going on, there's not really a ton of arrangement of the themes as we'd expect in a piano remix outside of just playing them one after another, and it's honestly not played at a high level either. i like the way you push and pull the tempo at a macro level, but the constant timing issues at the micro level are distracting just as much as the (i believe unintentional) significant variances in velocity from note to note. i think the recording of the piano sounds fine - it sounds like a direct-in from a digital piano rather than the midi being captured, right? i'd assume if you have the midi data that you'd fix the missed notes that occasionally occur. the tone is fine, and the bass isn't too loud which can happen when the hands are so far apart. piano remixes are probably the single most difficult genre to get onto the site. the lack of variety in synth choice, ensemble involvement, tonal variation, or breadth of soundscape means that the focus is exclusively on the performance quality and on the quality of the arrangement. this arrangement is unfortunately uninspiring and the performance quality isn't at the level we'd expect a performer to be at. ultimately, recording the midi data of this (to get the push-pull timing you display) and then correction of velocity, incorrect timing elements, and pitches would be a good idea. beyond that, i'd encourage you to expand your exploration of the two primary themes of this track beyond just an initial riff-based reinterpretation, especially in the left hand. NO

initial hit is appropriately epic. the guitars are way louder than everything else until the vocals come in and are way louder than that. there's some balancing that could definitely be done there. 0:34 is the initial string riff, and this is realized almost exactly as it is in the original initially. there's more of the super-loud vox and then a really intense section around the melodic material at like 1:01 that sounds absolutely incredible. that short 20-second section is just nuts, so well orchestrated and put together. the intensity continues at 1:28, and this also sounds great but has a bit of jank from the orchestral samples. around here i noticed how much this feels like one of my favorite remixes, Ein Anderer Abschied by PriZm. the intense rhythmic guitar elements, focus on a single chord for extended periods of time, and the orchestral elements laid against the female vocals all are very reminiscent of that remix. the vocal break at 2:25 is a neat idea. it's clear both very high for (i'm assuming) EK and doesn't have any vibrato which makes it not as pleasing a sound to hear as it could be there. the layered laughing and subsequent statements starting at different times is a fun effect considering the element of time in this game, but again it eventually is too loud over the top. the guitar stuff at 3:35 sounds great, although the lead is too loud again and crushes what's going on alongside it. there's some ridiculous riffs at like 4:05, just awesome stuff, and cutting to the acoustic right after it is a great idea. after that is an outro with some acoustic guitar noodles, and it's done. i didn't have an issue with the white-noise synth, again equating it to PriZm's track if not other similarly-styled tracks. i don't have the high-end on my ears like MW does however so it's certainly possible i'm missing something he's hearing. i'll ask my wife to listen later when she's home. regarding the vox, i didn't think that they sounded odd or different - i think the distortion was an intentional effect. i didn't have an issue with the reverb either, just the overall peak volume of them. this was clearly a huge undertaking and it's super intense throughout. there's a ton of elements that i did not expect to like but ultimately came together into a greater whole. i certainly think there are things that could have been done differently or objectively better - specifically the volumization across the track - but what's here is excellent and i heard no dealbreakers for me. excellent work. YES edit 11/7: the better-balanced vocals against the backing parts at 1:00 literally raise the hair on my arms. i hate vocal sfx in a mix and this is still bonkers good. the volumization was my big issue and it's a lot better throughout, so this is still a yes.

i disagree that the first part of this is a sound upgrade. the original is superior in every aspect - the backing pad is richer and the original's plectral instrument is more evocative. there are some added percussive elements at 0:55, but they're almost nonexistent. the doubling of the lead is nice but again not as evocative as the original's instrumentation. the cello at 1:22 is certainly nice, but i don't think i'd call it particularly realistic with the machine-gun vibrato (if you can modify the depth, reduce it! it's very wide). i particularly like the slides added between notes, they're not idiomatic but help give it a folky feel that counteracts the very wide romantic-era vibrato. there's a clear shift at about 2:44 to start bringing in a lot more countermelodic and backing content. the original plectral instrument is lost in the mix (i hear snippets here and there) but the rest of the writing is rich and broad. i wouldn't call what is being played particularly groundbreaking, and the melodic line regularly gets lost, but it's nice to listen to and feels good until the fadeout which is a super buzzkill. i'm one of those people, larry, i feel it just drains any energy or emotion built up in that section. and it's lazy, especially on a melodic line with a clear ending point like this one has. the fadeout loop starts at 4:06. the cello comes in at 1:22. that means that 34% of the track is the original but less, another 34% is original with a cello doing sustains, and the remaining 32% is a solid arrangement of the theme. i would argue that we wouldn't ever think of even coming close to passing the first 68% of the track, so a minute and a half of orchestral remix work isn't enough to balance it. i'd possibly consider it if it didn't have the first 1:22 of less-than-original, and was 1.5 minutes of original with cello and 1.5 minutes of orchestra. the extra cruft on the beginning is too much for me. edit: to clarify my vote, my issue is not with the remixer writing boring music or something. it's that the vast majority of the first three minutes wasn't written by the remixer at all, it was written by marcin przybyłowicz & friends, and the remixer put some (simple but well-handled and carefully animated) cello sustains in there on the second half. that's not arrangement, that's realization or transcription, and we don't accept either here normally. the last minute and a half is immaterial at that point; way too much of the track isn't arrangement. NO

i don't remember this original at all. i haven't played FF8 since probably 2002 so that's likely on me. the original's simplicity is a strength, so i'm hoping that's what we hear here. the intro is stylistically very similar to the original, but has some really neat ideas to stretch the composition so it's not just a cover. it actually reminds me a lot of remixes of the map theme from the mass effect series or the Earth theme from assassin's creed 2 - starts with just an arpeggio, but eventually gets fleshed out more. the vox is beautiful and meandering. there's a neat rhythmic synth into 2:16 and the time changes. the connections to the original here are a little thinner as more stuff is going on, but it's still recognizable. i appreciate the consistent 3 vs 2 patterns that are throughout. after a bit, the rhythmic elements drop and it's just the rain, the voices, and the strings and arp. this is simple but effective, just like the original. nice work. YES

stylistic influences are immediately recognizable. what a fun idea. interesting time signature choice initially - sounds like 9+10. adding in extra eighths to make it feel like a wobbly dance. the subsequent bigger orchestrated section uses this regularly to keep the listener off-balance - very fitting considering the context (the Gold Saucer). after the larger orchestrated section, there's a much more patient and quiet setion from 1:29 onward. the flute notably has a lot of air tone - consider a high-freq filter to remove the air noise, like 6-8k. 2:50 features a bit of a shift where the orchestration is a little more goofy than before and feature some fun side-by-side harmonies and intentional dissonances. 3:37 is essentially an outro and it's done. this is an intentionally silly version of a neat track on the ost. it's well-performed and well-orchestrated. nice work. YES