Emunator

Yep, exactly what the two gentlemen above me said. I'm not going to muddy the waters by trying to restate it, but this has a SUPER high amount of potential and reflects a really clever arrangement and some enthusiastic performances, but the level of polish makes it feel like a sketch in most regards. There's a lack of separation between the instruments in terms of stereo separation and EQ/frequency masking, the sax performance and volume is inconsistent, and some of the supporting instrumentation has moments where it's exposed and highlights the lack of realism in the programming (see: the low piano notes.) Lots of actionable advice above, hope you're able to bring this up to the bar because there's a killer arrangement in here! NO (resubmit)

I listened back to this and see the argument for the NO more strongly this time. I was obviously very borderline at first, so there's no need to hold this up - let's get this polished up and hopefully the next version will jump over the bar rather than barely eeking over it.

Time to play the game of "are the sour notes actually sour or just some weird Earthbound shit?" Hmm, yeah I don't love that alteration to the chord progression, I can see why Flexstyle decided it was a hill worth dying on. Things get way too crunchy there. I also felt the first note of that guitar solo at 2:11 in my bones, and not in a good way. The rest of the solo was good, and offered some much-needed expressiveness to the song, but man, that was a jarring start. Aside from that, the lack of groove to the drums and bassline actually bothered me more than the rest of the judges. The hi-hats are incredibly sharp and in-your-face in the mix, and they're playing a VERY static rhythm so the first thing I notice about the song is how rigid it is. That ends up drawing my attention to the fact that the rest of the drum kit, the bassline, even most of the melodic synths, have the same issue. I know that, to a degree, this is a genre convention but there's a lot you can do with simple velocity/micro-timing adjustments or even delay/effects to add some of that rhythmic life back without having to actually change your part writing dramatically. I don't think this is a massive dealbreaker relative to the sour notes mentioned above, but it impacted my listening experience a lot more than the rest of the judges thus far. At the very least, if you're not going to adjust the drum programming, that hi-hat needs to come down in volume. Sorry, but I don't think this is there yet! NO (resubmit)

As a proponent of shamelessly mashing up two extremely popular SNES source tunes myself, I tip my hat to your gumption here. There's certainly a lot about this approach that works - I do think some of that is simply the strength of the original compositions, but the blend of elements on a compositional level is pretty cohesive. I have no nits to pick with the arrangement here, and it doesn't surprise me that this was made for a composition-focused community challenge, because I think that's the strongest aspect of this piece! So the good news is that you've got a solid foundation. I hate to say this, but didn't find the sound design to be very engaging. Everything feels fine and competent, but compared to some of your other submissions where sound choice, I can't help but feel like the sound design component of this track is keeping it from being something greater. I find it very hard to quantify this feeling, so I hope you don't mind me being a little more unfiltered and subjective than I would normally be when voting. Everything feels serviceable, but nothing is really inspiring me. It's hard to say this especially because I can tell that there was a lot of work that went into fleshing out these sounds with different effects and selecting a wide range of patches - it's not like you just loaded up a couple of soundfonts and called it a day. I think this might be a level of personal preference for more unique sound design, so take it for what it's worth. All that said, I will express that I think the drums cross over from a matter of personal preference to a more quantifiable critique - these just sound bland here in terms of creative processing and programming. Trap drums live and die by unique fills and rhythms, and this feels like you leaned way too much on a single loop. It's extra-noticeable in the hi-hats because they poke through the mix so much due to their dryness, but it's basically doing the same short rhythmic pattern ad infinitum. At the very least, I think this aspect of the song needs to be reworked and expanded on in order for me to sign off on this. Brad also touched on some mixing critiques that I'll also cosign, but those never really escalated to the level of a dealbreaker in isolation. I know I'm probably putting off bad vibes with this vote, but I do think there's plenty of potential with this arrangement. If the drums were reworked to introduce more variety/fills and a processing chain that blended better with the rest of the song, I'd probably be able to sign off, but I also felt it was worth expressing the feelings that I came away with that were more subjective too, because you've submitted multiple songs that felt much more inspired and ambitious in terms of the sonic world you created with them and I'd love to see you lean more into those impulses here and on future songs. I hope this comes across in the spirit it was intended! :) NO

OK, this is sounding remarkably improved from the last version I recall hearing. I think you've gotten to a point where the arrangement and creative production decisions are good to go, so I'll focus just on mixing here. I'll start by saying that I don't think this is at OCR level quite yet, and this is based on a gut feeling before I dove into any of the analysis I'm about to go into. It's close, and certainly as close as you've ever gotten with this arrangement so far, but there's a few distinct qualities that, when compared to other tracks that we've posted, sound noticeably strange and unpolished. The other judges have rightly called out the fact that everything sounds muffled, like it's coming from inside of a pillow. I'm guessing that this was done in response to previous feedback about the high end being too harsh. I think this was an overcorrection, and although it's objectively more pleasant to listen to, it leaves the clarity and crispness out of the equation that is essential for a well-balanced mix. It sounds like you might have just put a filter over the entire track, which is only very rarely a wise suggestion. I'd recommend dialing back some of those corrections and meet in the middle between this and your last mix. There is also a big dip around 200-300hz which might not seem like a big deal, but it's a very critical frequency range for giving your mix warmth and body. I found myself leaving a lot of holes in my mixes because I frequently heard advice like "cut the low end out of your non-bass/kick instruments" and applied it too broadly. If this is something you did on your mix, I'd encourage you to use a less steep slope on your filter cut, or consider layering in an instrument that plays within that frequency range to fill it out - it will have a huge impact on how the song feels. Conversely, I still think you have too much bias to the 400-1kHz range, where you have a lot of overlapping melodic elements that occupy the same frequency range. Some very subtle EQ cuts (I'm talking 1-3dB maximum) will help clean this up. Here's a screenshot from part of your track viewed through SPAN - while this is just a segment of the track, it looks like this for nearly all of the song so this should give you a nice visual idea of why the track is feeling lopsided. Moving on from EQ balance, I also agree with Larry about the stereo width of the track. I will give you credit for keeping your low-end focused and mono, which helps with stability, and there's definitely a nice wide stereo image on the rest of the track, which helps it feel lively. However, the L/R panning on certain instruments presents some curious choices - the most notable instance of this is the snare drum, which sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the drum kit because of the panning. Sometimes I'll do a ping-pong panning effect on my snare fills, but when you have it only panned to the left side, it leaves things feeling imbalanced. Overall, I think you could reduce the stereo width of many of your elements to bring some presence back to your mid-range - I tried this in my DAW by reducing the stereo image on everything above 200hz by about 25%, and it already had a notable impact. Lastly, the mastering is sounding better than previous versions, but there's still a lot of dynamic range here that is making large chunks of your song unnecessarily quiet. Again, to illustrate what I mean, I'm going to show a screenshot of your waveform: See how there's a bunch of very sharp peaks that are going way above the average loudness of the rest of the waveform? These can add a lot of unnecessary headroom during most of your track and limit the amount of loudness you can get during mastering if you're just normalizing your song's volume so that it reaches 0.0dB loudness. To counteract this, you'll want to shave off those peaks, either by reducing the volume of specific elements that might be causing those peaks (frequently, this is the result of sound effects/transitions that are too loud, or a kick drum/snare that's mixed much louder than the rest of your song, or in your case, likely both) or by applying compression/limiting to your overall song. This should usually be a pretty transparent process, so you'll want to set the ceiling of your limiter/compressor so that it's just grabbing onto those waveform peaks and reducing them, without having a noticeable effect on the overall character of the song. Once you've done that, you'll see that your waveform looks a lot "cleaner", which will give you more room to increase the loudness of the entire song without clipping. To demonstrate this, I ran your track through a limiter and set the input gain to +3dB, and this is what it looks like running through Fruity Limiter: The dips in the purple line show where volume is being reduced when it reaches above a certain threshold.There's very little being done, but if I bounce your song down with this effect applied, this is now what your waveform looks like comparatively (your original is on top, and with 3dB of limiting is on the bottom.) This is a very simplified example; in practice, it's better to do this on an individual track, or group level during the mix so that you're avoiding these peaks earlier on, but even doing this to your master track allows the volume of your song to be more consistent and bring up breakdown/outro so they're not so quiet by comparison. I think if you were to address these three issues - fine-tuning your EQ balance, reducing your stereo width, and properly mastering the track so that you don't have such a wide dynamic range - this would be good to go. Even dealing with 1 or 2 of these would probably be enough to push it over the bar, but since you're clearly willing to work through revisions and take feedback to heart, I thought I'd go into detail about each of the points. You're in the home stretch! NO (resubmit!)

The issues and merits of this track have been covered pretty well, so this is going to be mostly a recap from me. There is a lot of promise to the concept of a super mellow, soft electronic take on this source material, but the sounds being used are fairly basic, with the exception of some occasional vibrato effects on the lead synth, there's not a lot of effects or development happening on the sound design front. The sounds themselves are well selected and pleasant on the ears, but there's not much happening with them. When you start to explore automation of the various parameters in your synths and effects, you can do a lot to keep even the chillest arrangement engaging by gradually evolving and varying your sounds. The Workshop would be a great place to learn about some of the techniques you can use to spice up your sounds and arrangement. I also would suggest experimenting with different percussion sounds and layering different loops throughout the track, rather than relying on the same core beat unchanged for the entirety of the song. Using organic or unconventional sounds as a percussive element can bring your grooves to life and make them sound more unique. For lo-fi/chillout genres, this is especially important to find ways to keep your percussion interesting even if the beat itself is uncomplicated and slower. There's definitely a vision here and you can totally get to a point where you can execute on that vision, but I'm afraid this would require a lot of work to bring it to that point here. Keep at it and use the resources that the community has, and you'll get there! :) NO

Jewbeiiii, it's so good to see you back in the fold and hear that you're doing well man <3 Life is good. This truly feels like you haven't missed a beat since your last trance submission. It's got all the things I love about your mixes - the production is rich and punchy, and you've got a great ear for pulling little melodic hooks out of a source and building off of that. That said, the runtime on this piece is pretty long and I think you've overstretched some of these ideas and sounds past their breaking point. I'm less of a stickler on repetition than most judges, I feel, but even this one felt like it was dragging toward the end. Without any chageups to the way the melody was presented, or any substantial breakdowns or changes in the arrangement structure, it's just trying to make too much. I'd consider approaching the OCR submission as a Radio Edit, or if you do want to keep it at more of a club edit length, the other judges have brought up a ton of great approaches that could add some spice without having to stray away from what you expect from trance music. Real close, I don't think this would require any major changes to reach the bar, but just a bit of fine tuning and variation will go a long way in keeping the song engaging all the way through. You got this! NO (resubmit)

LOL, I never thought I'd hear a Youtube Poop sentence mix in an OCR submission, but there's a first time for everything. I just played Wand of Gamelon for the first time this weekend... man, that is a bad game. As much as I appreciate the concept here, this feels sadly underbaked to my ears. The percussion lives on auto-pilot, and isn't a terribly compelling groove or set of sounds for most of the arrangement. The first half of the arrangement is highly simplistic, which is unfortunate because the back end of the arrangement proves that you do have some sauce, it's just that everything comes together far too late in the game for it to feel complete. If more of the arrangement felt like the last 30 seconds, this would be a slam dunk for me, because I really love the brass and synth noodling and the richness that they add, but it takes too long to get there. If you could beef up the first half of the arrangement, I'd love to see this on the site, but we're not quite there yet. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, super strong vibe from the rip. There's a ton of energy present here, I feel the Babymetal influence even though this is definitely more synth heavy. I don't think this necessarily needs to be reinventing the wheel with the backing track but I don't disagree that it feels autopiloty all the same. The lead guitar ramps up the energy significantly when it's present, and those moments are definitely a highlight for me. It does, however, feel jarring because it highlights how much is missing from the other parts of the arrangement. I wish there was more variety and ear candy during the bulk of the arrangement to make the disparity between the guitar solo and the rest of the song less staggering. Vocally, I don't have any gripes with the concept, but the mixing isn't really bringing them front and center, but also has them too prominent to pass as a backing element. They're existing in limbo that feels more distracting, so I would recommend either carving out some space in the backing elements so that the vocal can be more present, via EQ cuts or sidechain ducking, or embrace the vocals as more of a rhythmic textural element and mix accordingly. Right now it's in a weird middle ground that's not entirely working. Echoing the drum critique too - it's not terrible but a touch more presence and punch would help this feel more balanced. I appreciate the concept of the gating at 2:37/3:04, but I do hear a bit of a pop as it disengages on the last beat... it doesn't feel like it's quite timed right and maybe needs the slightest fade out on the volume envelope, or a timing adjustment. I don't disagree with Chimpazilla about using something different for the ending transition. There's a lot to like here, and it's definitely put together competently but there's a bit of a "death by a thousand cuts" feeling where a number of elements that only feel 75-80% locked in are adding up to a result that's not reaching its full potential yet. It can definitely get there, though! NO (resub)

What's there to say here? It's absolutely stunning - CA has become one of the most reliable collaborators in the community by delivering tight, well-recorded, and emotive cello performances, so it's no surprise that his solo work is held to an even higher standard of quality. The performance and technical engineering quality is unimpeachable. The entire mix and master sounds warm and present, with just the right amount of reverb. The arrangement, although fairly safe, clearly surpasses the bar for creative interpretation just due to the expressiveness of the performances, not to mention a myriad of other fills, dynamic changes, and harmonies that elevate it even further. YES

This starts off super heavy on the ambiance before jumping into some Noisia-esque bass swells that feel incredibly cinematic. I admittedly had high hopes for how this would progress, and to your credit, I think you've brought some excellent sounds and ideas to the table. For a lot of the track, it works well, but Brad correctly identified that there are some production choices on the beat-driven parts that are holding this back. The lack of sidechaining from your kick drum to the secondary elements is preventing this from truly locking into a groove, and also contributes a tremendous amount of mud. Whenever you have your kick going, you need to be doing some level of ducking on your pads, strings, bass, and even a little bit to your leads - otherwise, there's simply too much going on in the frequency spectrum. There's also a noise layer that appears to be present in the background for those sections that I would back off on significantly - at the very least, throw a high pass filter on it so it's not competing with the bass/kick so much, but ideally that should also be receiving some sidechain treatment. The guitar sounds fine to me but is also VERY loud - I think you need to be more surgical with the volume level adjustments on each element in the mix. Be deliberate with which instruments you want to be front and center in each section and back off on the gain for the other parts. I actually don't really have an issue with the sound choices overall - I think with the right mixing treatment, this could absolutely work as-is. Although I don't think the synth elements are necessarily more engaging than the original, you do substantially differentiate your arrangement through texture, orchestration, and atmosphere. It feels very ambitious and cinematic and I enjoy the concept tremendously. At its core though, the mixing needs work so that the sounds gel with each other and contribute to the groove, rather than stepping on each others toes. NO (resubmit!)

Artist Name: tibonev This was arranged for Pixel Mixers's Earthbound Album "PM Rocking", my idea behind the arrangement was to make it a fun, bouncy, clearly 80s inspired version, but implementing different elements, like clean electric guitars, distorted lead guitars, lots of synths (backing and bass, for instance), basically making something that on parts would be out of place in a club in europe in 1987, but also, sounding unique enough to be completely out of place in that same enviroment. The name means: "For Sale", because i always found it funny that you can buy a "for sale" sign in the town of Twoson, also, it ends up being a shallow reference to The Beatles, which influenced the original OST. Breakdown: 0:00-0:33 - slightly changed version of chord progression from source 0:41-1:22 - original source melody 1:22-1:30 - altered chord progression 1:30-2:02 - new arpeggios with different backing and variation bassline 2:02-2:11 - original source melody 2:12-2:26 - new guitar solo 2:26-2:42 - original melody 2:42-2:50 - altered chord progression from source 2:50-2:59 - new guitar 2:59-3:06 - original melody 3:06-3:31 - new arpeggios over the original chord progression 3:31-3:50 - slightly changed version of chord progression from source

Artist Name: MET∆TRON I was set to perform for the first time ever at VGMCon 2023, but my car broke down on the way there and I was forced to go home. The theme of that year was Zelda and I thought it would be fun to do something from the dreaded CD-i games. I wanted it to sound like something that would have been made around that time, so it's got a lot of Korg M1 in it for maximum 90's cheesy goodness.

I couldn't have said it better than Prophetik did, so I'll keep this brief in agreement. There's some lovely synth tones and a solid foundation here. When you got more expressive with your solo around the 3 minute mark, things really came alive! It's abundantly clear that you've got the chops to make a bangin' synth ballad based on that section alone, but I think this track needs some trimming for length, and further development on the backing elements that make up the bulk of the song. When you're working at such a slow tempo, you've got to find smaller ways to add that flair through drum fills, texture, or one-off riffs that keep things engaging throughout the duration. There's absolutely a passable track here, but it's not there yet! NO

Ah man, here we go again. I've been making the case emphatically for this type of music before, and this feels like it boils down to the same philosophical debate. For me, the beauty of this track is in the feeling of it - I don't think that trying to approach this genre from an academic perspective or through the lens of a traditionally "clean" mix is appropriate here. The climaxes are intense and visceral without becoming colorless - the chord progressions maintain the source connection and carry the emotional weight of the track, even if the individual elements are indistinct. (I don't even think this is THAT out there compared to other bands I've listened to. I think there's a lot further that this could go toward a true black metal wall of sound, whereas this arrangement skews more to the atmospheric side.) I will say that, in general, the programming felt pretty rigid and locked to the grid in a way that wasn't entirely convincing. I could stand to hear more variance in the velocity and performance of the synth leads especially - they feel relentless in a very different way than I described above, where one might use the word "plodding" to describe the feeling. The sonar ping synth is also mixed quite loudly compared to everything else, so it feels pasted on top of the mix rather than living in it. That element is probably my biggest gripe. Additionally, the transitions between sections occasionally felt sloppy. For example, the drop off at the end didn't really have a smooth buildup or fade at 7:13. It sounds like you just cut the audio tracks arbitrarily, which I found disappointing. Kris also alluded to this with the lack of transition or buildup to the heavy sections, and while I understand that can be a valid approach, it's not exactly suited to my tastes either. Overall, still a very compelling arrangement with wonderful macrodynamics and tones throughout. I don't think it's your strongest piece, some of the details just felt sloppier than usual but it's well above my bar, personally! YES