OCR04579 - *YES* Micro Mages "Valorous Heart, Onward!" *RESUB*

[Emunator]

Original Decision

Requested resubmission of Valorous Heart, Onward! Micro Mages - Heroic Remix. Judges' concerns have been addressed, and followed up with a judge to evaluate the corrected track pre-resubmission.

LT EDIT (7/10): Treyt also sent us a source breakdown in video form:

[prophetik music]

Quote

great original! love the vibe.

intro is fun, and the initial hit is a big band sound that's great. the leads feel integrated and i had no issue hearing what was background vs. lead. i especially liked the little bit of glide on the lead, a little nuance that felt great. the break at 1:13 is welcome and well-handled. i liked the verb of the main band sound tailing into a wind sfx, that's a nice touch.

half-time at 1:36 was a nice variance. i heard the arp that MW was talking about, but i'd argue that those levels were intentional - it's not supposed to be a big thing, just a filling synth. i actually liked the volumization of that ultimately. there's a build into one last blow at 2:20, and an extended outro with some string machines and pads.

production-wise, yeah, it's loud! but i really appreciated how big and aggressive the mastering was. i love the verve this gives the track. unlike MW, i never lost track of the melodic line or felt it was in the wrong place in the mix. kudos to the arranger as well to not put in three or four instances of the (awesome) full band playing the melody at the end - never quite giving us enough of the payoff is a great way to keep listeners coming back.

this is great. excellent work.

i voted YES on the original.

this still has a huge band sound when the melodic content comes in that sounds great. there's been nuance applied in various places - the kick at 2:11 is still fat, but there is some velocitization in there to prevent it from sounding like a machine gun.

i never had an issue with the arrangement and thought the mastering was good enough last time. it sounds pretty good now with the little changes that have been made, so i'm still voting yes. would love to hear from some of the NOs last time around.

 

 

YES

[MindWanderer]

I was one of the NOs, and Treyt asked me to preview his revision before he resubmitted. I did tell him he overcorrected and it's overall too quiet now, which is still the case (there's almost 2dB of headroom), but it's not horrendously so.  He also seems to have introduced a very loud machine-gun kick at 2:10-2:21, which was not the best idea.

I'm almost CONDITIONAL based on those two issues, but I can live with them. I wouldn't be upset if this got sent back to have those addressed, but I'm okay giving this a

YES

[Liontamer]

The track was 3:12-long, so I needed to overtly hear the source in play for at least 96 seconds for it to be dominant in the arrangement.

:12.25-:33, :34.75-:38.5, :40.5-:49.25, :51.5-:55.75, :57-1:15, 2:16-2:20, 2:22-2:26, 2:27.75-2:31, 2:33-2:42, 2:44.5-3:08 = 99.25 seconds or 51.69% overt source usage

Thanks a lot to Trevor for the "2-steps-removed-from-a-shitpost" explainer video! I didn't count some of the most liberal moments in my breakdown, but I wanted to stick with what stood out in a plain check first and would then dig around more if I needed to find more time after a first pass of what was more obvious. It all sounds good and with the mixing cleaned up, we're definitely in business!

YES

[Chimpazilla]

Thank you Larry for your source timestamp.  Omg that explanation video Trevor, I don't think anyone has ever done this before, and I absolutely adore you for this.

This version, while on the quiet side (you took my "reduce your limiter ceiling" comment too seriously!), addresses my concerns from the initial submission.  It now sounds exactly as I had thought it could, which is excellent.

I still love this arrangement, let's do this.

YES