My take on this: considering that it's a remix CONTEST. There's going to be some heavy competition. Thinking that putting the horns upfront is a winning strategy I don't think will get you anywhere near the top of the pile.

The vocal stems are excellent and the vocals should be the focus. Playing with the vocals by cutting, splitting, pasting and making a newer cooler arrangement I think would likely be a better strategy to placing higher in the finals. They need to be higher in the mix. Right now they are buried by the instruments throughout the song. I was having to listen carefully to hear the words over the music.

When was the last time I heard a clarinet in "Island Music"????? Hummmmmm...... like.... almost never. As someone else said that places it into the dixieland jazz category not the island music category. Speaking of mismatches.... do you realize you have EVEN, SWING, and WALTZ style tracks mixed together? Before I look at the details, I always listen first. I was hearing some stylistic conflicts and went back to look at the tracks list and those 3 things stood out immediately. You may want to look for tracks that will work in the song and that are ALL in the same style. Since the majority are swing, simply delete the waltz and even style tracks and replace them with swing.

Horns, could be argued, that they do fit into the whole Island music thing..... but you have to be careful to have the music as a whole fit into the proper genre. Salsa for example would use horns. Kinda fits really well into that genre.... but is Salsa really "island music"? I think of Reggae as island music predominately, and don't recall hearing a lot of horns. (Of course, that isn't the kind of music I listen to very much so I may be wrong)

Cool drums, some steel drums, guitars, bass, and vocals...... That's the basis of the island style.

In this contest... did they provide you anything besides the vocal stems? Did they include any instrument stems? If they did....(I looked at the site and it looks like that did unless I'm looking at the wrong thing) there's your clue and your guide as to what this should sound like. If you were provided with instrument stems and opt to NOT use them, understand that what you provide on your own had better be freaking amazing and totally blow their socks off if you hope to be in the top 50%. It may be better to use some of their stems (if they provided any) and add some of your own to that mix.

I've been in several mix contests. One, we were simply provided vocal stems and told to go from there. Finish the mix so to speak. In another, we were provided with ALL the tracks and told to "stick to the tracks we provide, but if you insist on using your own, be sure they are good tracks"..... the winner of that second contest didn't use a single homemade track.

So, not knowing what they provided, I can't say too much about it. But as a listener, and looking at the tracks you used,,,, There's some work to do on the mix to get it ready to be competitive. Sunday is still far enough away that you could start again from scratch and still be ready. Have a serious look at the styles in the Reggae section in BB. If you throw in a jazz track, that's going to throw you out of the island music genre you should be working in.

OK... so, that's my take on it. Ultimately, it's your mix and your call. Let us know how it turns out. I'd like to know.

Oh yeah... best of luck in the contest. That's some cool prizes they're offering.

Last edited by Guitarhacker; 06/10/14 06:00 AM.
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