Looking for Opinions on MMLs

So yeah I was working on some MMLs out of boredom, and I was wondering if I could get any opinions on them. Keep in mind that they're both done from ear so they're not the best.

The first one is with a whole slew of instruments trying to be the song "Always Be" by Jimmy Eat World. It has a mandolin for the harmony, a lute for the 'vocals', and a bass and a snare drum.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/18adrmy62t04snx/Always%20Be%20Test.wav

The second is a version of the song "Flare," which is from Homestuck Volume 8, I decided to record it on the lyre because it seemed like it sounded best.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3vx3p2pty779x8f/Flare%20Shortened.wav
I'm pretty happy with this one, but I'm not sure if I want to finish the whole thing because if you've heard the song it gets pretty crazy after I stopped.

So yeah, opinions o3o?

hi i've been in orchestra for 7 years and i'm kinda okay at mabi music so now i'm going to pretend to know what i'm talking about

what i can tell you do extremely well is dynamics and balancing because that's really hard to do well and it feels like what should be highlighted is definitely highlighted, and harmonies are heard but aren't overbearing (which is one of my major problems)

i can also tell you that in trying to arrange songs by actual bands (i attempted to arrange the whole FLCL OST at one point yeah that was pretty awful) it's really hard to make it sound good as a MIDI considering you're losing the natural flow of the human voice and irl instruments but the arrangement you did is well done in that being a MIDI doesn't detract from the song at all and that's really, really good

Flare is also good, and the Lyre does sound good with it although my only complaint is that the song cuts off at an awkward part, it seems like you only did the intro? and because i haven't gotten to that part of HS yet (sob) i don't really feel all that comfortable criticizing it further than that but in the future when you make song samples, i would also include the middle and ends of a song maybe because it gives a better feel for the overall song.

Thanks for the feedback , my first song was really bad on the balancing side of things, so I was definitely trying to be conscious of it with my newer stuff.

I stopped flare basically when the percussion/beat comes in in the actual song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktuDYYtbs2s, skip to like, 0:38 if you want to hear that biz) . I was thinking of messing with some percussion instruments in game to see if I could replicate it in some way, but I think it's gonna be pretty hard. Probably bass drums for the most part, and cymbals? I really wish there were more percussion instruments.

Plus the Chorus of Always Be is proving to be somewhat annoying