I like the rhodes-ey intro.

oh.  this is THAT one.  the HOUSE one.  LOL.  Sorry, but save some rare occasions, I really don't listen to this stuff any more.  Let me just explain that I've lived in the washington DC area most of my life, and if there's one thing that we've had MORE THAN ENOUGH of for several years running, it's soulful house.  You can find a good 20 clubs 7 nights a week that play tracks that sound just like this.

That being said, it's pretty good.  My only real issue is that you didn't fix the tempo of the vocal to go with your tempo, and since I spent so much time doing my own remix, it just sounds off to me.  Only notice-able when she's in the verses though.

Honestly, this is probably the best production I've heard so far in this contest.  Mix is quality, arrangment is proper.  If I played stuff like this, I'd pick it up.

Believe me bro, it kind of pains me to say this because I'd hate to see you beat all my Drum N Bass dogs, but I gotta give you an 8.  highest score so far on this comp from me.  Nice work.

Thank god.  I was worried nobody was gonna live up to the house guy's mixing quality.

This is good work bro, and I really don't have anything bad to say about it.

this REALLY sounds good man, hats off to you.  The drums all come out well, the bass-line is solid, and the leads are nice-ly panned to the sides.

8.  If you cut it in half and morphed what you had into a dance floor crusher it would probably be a 10.  quality stuff.  I'm impressed.

I like this so far, MAYBE too much reverb, but I realize it's there on purpose.

DON'T like the phaser on the vocal.

Wow.  This is old school.  In a good way.  Something about it reminds me of Origin Unknown 'valley of the shadows' or something like that.

Don't like the melody shift so much..  the lead sounds cool, but the longer noted bassline, not so much...  It's too muddy, and I could see the track surviving mostly on the sub bass and kick drum with a lot of nice pad work on top, which you have in other parts of the track.

The sub and kick do clash in many parts.  You should probably bring the drums up a touch, the sub down a touch (both very small changes) and do some subtractive eq-ing on each.

Overall this is pretty nice.  Certainly better than a lot of what I've heard in the other remixes. 7.5

so the further I got through this track the more I realized how well it was mixed.  Might not be the top of the game, but nothing distracts my ear from anything else.. I can hear every element very clearly,  and for that you start off high, and it's the arrangment left to talk about.

1.) the vocal bits in the beginning didn't do it for me.  I like that you chopped them up and did something original with them, but the edits seemed dry and forced.  coulda used more release or reverb or something to make the cut off not so abrubt.

2.) it ends very suddenly..

3.) I can't imagine this track would be very good for general mixing because of it's format, but you may be aiming more for the arm chair than the dance floor, so I won't make to big a deal of it.  Really though, I felt like this track could have been longer to give room for the different elements to shine by themselves rather than all together at once.

I'm giving this one a 7, pretty solid, but nothing I'd pick up if I were to find it at the record store.  (hah, like I even GO to record stores anymore with online ordering being what it is..)

I like the basic build of the intro, but it sure isn't straying far from the original...  I used the same melody structure for a lead line, but I used my own sounds to do it..

your bass-line is suffocating your kick drum..  matter of fact it's suffocating almost everything..

Now I like the first shift, arrangment wise, where the half flute/half synth comes in, but it still doesn't sound very good mix wise.  Your drums in general are really quiet, and I'm sure that was semi-intentional, but bottom line is the bass is WAY too loud.  Try to remember when mixing down, that it's the SOUNDSYSTEM that makes the bass sound so huge when we go out to events, and that THAT kind of bass can only be felt, not heard.  Get it to where it sounds good to your ears, like this, and then bring the volume down.

Pretty decent track, all that being said.  I guess a 6.5 is due for you, because I do quite like the arrangement, and can't take away TOO much for your mixing issues.

this sounds almost exactly like the track I just listened too.. same 3 note bass line and timing..  do you guys know each other?

oh. once the vocal kicks in it changes it up.

this is pretty decent man, kinda bubbly bassline, almost something ram-ish about it.

I'm not sure what element is doing it, but SOMETHING in the track is making my ears hurt.

Kick drum sounds like it's peaking somewhere in the proccess, distorted in a bad way, know what I mean?  Snare sounds un-snare like..  You eq'd it wonderfully, it cuts right through, but I don't like the tone of it.  too musical..

this one also ends suddenly..  there wasn't much else to do, and I understand that, but I feel  like tracks should have a bit of no beat sound so you can mix them well into another track.

again, this is decent, but not great.  I'm giving you a 6.5, tying you with the guy who wrote almost the exact same track you did.

I like the intro bits.

I was expecting a break before the first verse vocals came in...  but that's my problem.

the lead/bass are really cool, but I do think they get lost behind the vocal.  I don't know if it's a volume or an eq issue, but it's an issue.  Honestly, I just don't think they work together well.. almost like you had the track written before you had the vocal and you just threw the vocal on it cause it mostly worked..  Not saying that's what you did, just saying that's kinda what it sounds like.

And uh... where'd the rest of the track go?  cuts off after about 2 and a half minutes.  DOH!!

this is the first track I'm reviewing for this comp, so I don't know what to give it yet as far as judging you against your peers goes, so 1 being the worst crap I've heard and 10 being the biggest DnB anthem of all time, I gotta give this a 5, right in the middle.  Not really bad, not really good either.  just my opinions though.  Don't mean anything anyway.

so first problem:

the track isn't in the same key as the vocal during the beginning of the track.  Not till the main part kicks in.  Yuck.  Key matters people.  Love it or hate it, it still matters.

This is another one that has a decent arrangment (besides the key issue in the intro) but is mixed pretty badly.

There are some guidlines to follow.  Your kick shouldn't be competing for the same frequency your bass is in.  Your snare shouldn't be competing with your leads or your cymbals, or.. ANYTHING really.  Everything needs to have it's own place.

I don't even know how to break this down for you man.  The bottom line is there are a lot of great ideas in this track, but a lot of them were either lost or subdued in the execution.

5.  Not the worst of the bunch, but in the same league as the top either.

you'll probably hate me, but this track REALLY didn't do it for me.

1.) too repetetive.  waaaaay too repetetive.

2.) a lot of the samples (first and foremost the 'everybody get buck!' shout) just sound bad.  They sound like one channel old school cassette recorder.  I'm not saying this to make you feel bad, I just want you to develop your ear to catch these things.  Sometimes you can have a sample that totally works arrangment wise, (i.e, I like the idea of some dude shouting everybody get buck,) but the sample is just poor quality, and you have to let it go, or find a better recording of the same sample.  Also, don't forget that everything you sample in your track you're gonna have to pay for if you ever get it signed.  Don't misunderstand me, cause I definitely use samples a lot, and most of them I'll probably NEVER get cleared, but I also know the tracks I use them in can work just as well without them.  Anyway, the point is, whatever sample you're using, be it for drums, bass, guitar, vocal, whatever the fuck, make sure it sounds good, doesn't have a bunch of air in it, or distortion..  A great example of me making the same mistake is in my track 'Dark Apprentice'.  I just couldn't find a better sample, so I did my best to hide it.  When you hear Darth Vader say 'join us or die', you'll also hear some staticy noise behind his voice.  it's a bad sample.

The reason I went on such a long stretch about it is that it's really what kills your track.  Everything just sounds low quality.

My other main complaint is the 3 note lead line that goes through most of the track.  I got it after 10 seconds, and it ran for a couple of minutes at least.

4.  sorry bro.

first thing I noticed: that bass drum in the beginning is way too loud, and too long, it's release makes it sound off beat.

woah.. (forgive me, I'm typing as it's playing..)  okay...  this is interesting, but noisy and crowded...  I like that you tried using a harmonied reese, but it doesn't work very well.  I feel like everything is fighting for frequency space...  And honestly, the vocal edits don't really work..  You can tell it was timestretched because the volume is up so high and you get that stuttery sound in Essence's voice, and since I  know from doing my own version that her vocal sounds really wonderful, I don't like that this messed with that.  I timestretched it too bro, but not to the point where anyone could actually hear the program's chop points to timestretch from.

god.. I gotta say man, and forgive me for this, I CRINGE every time the reese-ey sounds play that awful chord at the beginning of every couple of bars..

I'm really sorry bro, but I gave a better track than this a 5, and so in fairness I have to give you a 4.  Decent drum edits, but that was the only redeemable quality for me.

know that I really don't like saying bad things about other people's stuff because I have plenty of my own issues, but critiquing is what we're all here for, right?  So, here's my .02 cents.

1. really didn't sound very different from the original, exept that in this version the mix is really bad.

2. the mix is really bad.    your track is about 75% quieter than everyone else's, and when brought up to proper volume sounds fuzzy and thin.  I don't really know what you did.. maybe it's a bad MP3 or something.

The arrangment is okay, despite it's lack of very much originality, but there really just isn't much going for this one.

again, sorry bro. 3.5.  that mix...  *cringes*