Donald in Cold Shadow (PC) - "Dance like Popcorn"

[Guifrog]

It's been a while from my last posted mix and I haven't been making new music ever since, so I thought I'd give you a glance of what I'm currently cooking here.
Tip: it's popcorn, inside a volcano, with some help from the muddrakes. :}
Here's the main source.
Here's the secondary source.

Totally random timbale sounds <-> corns, the marimba attempts to play like corn, the glock is like the metal from the pan (or so), etc etc.
Might sound a bit conservative for now, but I plan to expand on it lots more as I plan to submit it. What do you think?

Edited October 3, 2017 by Guifrog
Tweaked and submitted. Thanks a lot, Gario!

[Guifrog]

Changing this to Mod Review as I'm not sure where the current OCR bar is, and here's the complete track. I've also put a few parts from this other source to the mix, and you can dance more now. o/
 

 

[Gario]

EVAL

Oh my, this is bouncy and fun. The addition of the kick gives this a different energy, which does help separate this from the source material quite a bit. That being said, I do understand your concern with this being conservative - the instruments are often a higher quality of what the source used prior and the structure is similar - but there are some departures from the source material that help give this some new life (like using a different source like a bridge toward the end - very nice touch). It might've been a safer choice to utilize some different instrument choices, but I think this would still be okay on that front.

The production of this is pretty slick. The whole thing sounds like there's a considerable amount of stereo spread over the whole thing, which for headphone users (like myself) is quite distracting. Spread isn't bad, and on speakers it would sound fine, but centering the spread of your reverb and/or instruments would give this track a more defined sound overall.

The instruments could use some TLC to the humanization. The levels and phrasing sound good on them overall, but the articulations for the brass are stiff when repeating the same note. Normally performers would have more deadspace/silence between quickly repeating notes in order for the listener to hearthem as more than one note being played out (like at 0:58, for example). There are some moments when the instruments repeat phrases or notes where the dynamics have no variation between iterations (like at 2:38 - 2:45 on the guitar). It's not an extreme issue, but it's something you'll probably be called out for.

Overall, between the conservative instrumentation & first half of the arrangement, as well as the humanization issues I'd say this would be a pass, but not a strong pass. Pending on how much the stereo spread affects the other judges, I'd argue that should be toned down, as well. If you want a more secure pass, tweaking the articulations where they get stale, adjusting your stereo spread and changing up the instrumentation a bit here and there would help make this an easy pass. Regardless, nice work on this!