1. The Rush'n Waltz on Captain Morrow's Grave
   TheVodouQueen
2. Live for Another Day
   TheVideoGamer
3. 
   

You all did great. Never thought that I'd be the shortest entry at 5 minutes, ya'll making slowed down songs XD.

TVG: You impress again with a stylistically bold and innovative approach. Rich, sweeping texture and massively vast atmosphere. It's an entirely new piece, and nicely done too. Very good background stuff.

TheVodouQueen: Another bold and innovative approach! Nice work with the dancing instrumentation keeping things interesting and flowing. I think the crashes were a bit too loud, but well placed. A very elegant air to the whole, with plenty of melancholy.

And Wassup T: Heroic and valorous, very nice percussion. Has a very warm soundscape, I'd only suggest making the higher frequency stuff (violins, flutes) stand out a bit better to smooth it out. But I am duly impressed with the air of cinematic glory. The choirs are an excellent touch. I think my favorite parts were in the second half, well done.

1. This I'll Defend
   Souperion
2. The Rush'n Waltz on Captain Morrow's Grave
   TheVodouQueen
3. Live for Another Day
   TheVideoGamer

Amazing work everyone, y'all made so much from such a short source!

Souperion gots my first vote. I think your EQ efforts were paying off, the instruments were sounding pretty clear to me! I loved the various rises and falls in the composition, the intensity flowed quite well into different scenes. I think you succeeded at getting the dramatic vibe you were shooting for. I feel the solo violin might benefit from some EQ to bring it out a little bit more, at times it sounded close to fading to the other instruments. Shouldn't be a difficult fix. Something I loved was the various punctuations, staccato trumpet or string notes. Great work all over.

TheVodouQueen gets my 2nd vote. An amazing transformation of the source, you made something so serenely playful yet stern! Nice effect with the orchestral sounds, I loved the soundscape of tuned percussion, strings, and that harpsichord sounding thing. The gentle percussion of timpani and snares was an excellent touch. All the melodic variations were quite beautiful, all the work you put into this one really shows! And pays off. Keep it up!

TheVideogamer as my 3rd vote. You nailed the wiiiide, flowy vibe, those 80's drums have fantastic reverb. You made something amazingly chill and atmospheric from the source, and I dig it. It's recognizable, but so very unique. Excellent work.

1. This I'll Defend
   Souperion
2. The Rush'n Waltz on Captain Morrow's Grave
   TheVodouQueen
3. Live for Another Day
   TheVideoGamer

Soup - Very enjoyable take on the source. Great job!

TVQ - Lots of interesting ideas going on here. My biggest nitpick is that the instruments you have don't sound like they're in the same room. Realism isn't always important, but I think with what you were going for here it would be better to try to make the instruments sound like they're in the same room. For example, at 0:30, there are plucks and a cello. The plucks are quieter than the cello, indicating that they are further back in the room. However, the cello has a lot more reverb on it, indicating that it's further back in the room. Which one is it? The brain can't tell, so the instruments don't sound like they belong together. This happens a few other times in the piece with other instruments as well. Using amounts of reverb that are coherent with your volume levels (and doing other little things like low pass = further away) will help things sound more realistic.

TVG - I like the triplets. The amount you slowed it down makes it difficult to recognize the source, though. Not sure about the speaking samples.

WT - Very cool take on the piece. I agree, with all the variations it doesn't get old. I didn't like the siren at the beginning, though.

1. This I'll Defend
   Souperion
2. Live for Another Day
   TheVideoGamer
3. Pledge of Valor (Bonus Entry)
   Wassup Thunder

:)

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1) 'This I'll Defend' � Souperion

Pros:

• * Ooo, I love me some symphonic metal! Very much akin to Within Temptation, and kind of reminds me of a few others like Nightwish, Epica, Lacuna Coil and Ne Obliviscaris. A European soprano would definitely light this song afire, but it's pretty groovy as is! The speed-up in tempo is fantastic, and you blended the heavy guitar, thumping drum rhythm and solo violin awesomely. One can tell you really pulled all the punches on the EQ for this one after other previous attempts at meshing metal with ambience or orchestra, and you're defo getting better. :D
• * The 1:30 to 2:00 build-up to the epic string fanfare sent shivers down my spine, in a good way! I'm glad that you didn't shy away from anything that is the staple of symphonic metal in this; you went balls to the wall, cranked it to 11�and it worked!
• * I'm very, very impressed with this, TBH. Any one thing could've gone horribly wrong with as much as you put into it. There's a lot of instruments. There's a lot of background ambience. There's woodwinds. There's strings. There's heavy metal. And any one of it could've easily overwhelmed or underwhelmed anything else, and surprisingly nothing did. At least to my ears, it was wonderful. Keep up the fantastic work, my dude!

Critique:

• * I think the saddest point for me throughout the song was that the heavy metal guitar, although rocking my Goddamned socks off, sounded very synthetic. You can easily tell it's �not a real guitar,� and it just might be the VST you used rather than any bad points on your EQ technique. I say that because the guitar is well-balanced with the rest of the instrumentation going on, especially given the �busy background�, as you put it. So maybe a different VST for the main guitar would've done wonders (the bass guitar, FWIW, sounds lovely.)
• * I think the beginning chorus was too soft, and too high in pitch. It worked, but I think deepening the octave (or having both high and low), and it come out a little louder would've been better.
• * Just as a point, for some reason your remix reminded me of Nightwish's Ghost Love Score, from their album Once... Other than that, I don't think there's much more I can give it on critique without nitpicking. But I will say that maybe give this song another shot / do-over with a better electric guitar VST (or maybe even a REAL one, if anybody is willing to team-up and thrash it out), and this could become an even truer banger. Have a good one. <3

2) 'Live for Another Day' � TheVideoGamer

Pros:

• * Ahhhh, gotta love those Arnie one-liners and catchphrases in his 80's-90's action blockbusters. Your composition perfectly encapsulates the 1980's synthwave-y aesthetic, and kind of reminds me of the music from the first Terminator movie, in that nightclub Kyle Reese finds Sarah Connor in, just as the T-800 comes crashing in on the party. This is the kind of stuff you'd find at the end of a Rush'n Attack movie, as the hero rides off into the sunset on the helicopter or boat after blowing up the bad guys... Maybe starring Jean-Claude Van Damme... *thinks*
• * The lines from Commando gave me a chuckle! I really liked that.
• * As usual, your percussion and drums are spot on. Loved it and the airy, deep synths.

Critique:

• * I'm kinda disappointed you ended up using the same Commando voice clips twice, considering there's about 3-4 pretty well-known scenes from that movie besides what you used. I half expected the �why don't you let off some steam, Bennett?!� line to come up at some point. Was sad it didn't. :( I understand why you used what you did, ties in with the title, but I think hamming it up a bit more with other great Arnie-liners from the movie would've been great.
• * In looking at the length of the song, (and yeah I did notice in some spots like around 5:25 where you added a bit of whiny arps to the song), I think it was either too spacious or too slow. I think if you either added a bit more to the composition landscape or sped it up a wee bit, it would've helped the song. I also, at least personally, would've either cut the song at the last voice clip, or before the voice clip, with a fade-out. The last minute and a half or so, for me, didn't really add much to this already cool piece of work.
• * Hope that helps! Great job on the song. :D

--BONUS--

+ 'Pledge of Valor' � Wassup Thunder

Pros:

• * Glad you found that cool siren you wanted to use! XD Fantastic marching drums used. It really amped up that epic film score feel, (and damn did I feel it throughout the entire song)! Everyone had such unique spins on this fairly simple tune, and although yours is the most on-par with the premise of the game and its tonal inspiration, I didn't feel bored or uninspired in listening to it. Some might say it's �typical march / war fanfare�, but this feels like it could've been ripped straight out of Saving Private Ryan, Captain America or Tora! Tora! Tora!
• * I'm not the most patriotic American out of the lot, but this was pretty damned patriotic, in a good way. Jesus, man, this is some great stuff and I'm not saying that to blow smoke your way. I'm not a huge fan of standard marches, but from that standpoint, I'd listen to this all day long.
• * On the film score standpoint? Spot on. A huge well-done on my part. :D Also, I don't know if this was done on purpose or not, but I noticed the heavier cadence of your snare drumming with taps @ about 3:20 made the snaps on the skin sound like rapid machine gun fire. Was real neat, even if it was a complete happen-stance!

Critique:

• * At about 0:56 � 1:05 (and possibly at other points) your flutes were a little sharp. Only say that because I had a similar issue with mine in my remix too, if I went too high up on the scale. Unsure how to fix that, but it's not a big deal.
• * Everything else was smooth and creamy to listen to, like butter. I didn't pick up on anything glaring that was an issue, other than some of the woodwinds (and maybe the violins) being a bit sharpish at times...
• * This was an absolute treat to listen to. Thanks for slotting in the bonus. <3

1. The Rush'n Waltz on Captain Morrow's Grave
   TheVodouQueen
2. This I'll Defend
   Souperion
3. 
   

No time for feedback unfortunately, i'll have to do it on OCRemix, but these are 100 percent guaranteed my final choices, so i don't need to backtrack or anything.