[Liontamer]

Remixer Name: Prince Of Darkness
Real Name: Tony Dickinson
E-Mail Address: Basstony4813@yahoo.com
Website: www.tonydickinson.tk
Userid: 24705

Game: Final Fantasy VI
Song Name: Cyan's Theme

Information: This is only my second major video game remix released. I've always been the lurking type, developing my arranging skills deep in the shadows, and only doing something when I felt I was finally ready.

This song was my second entry into the Dwelling of Duels competition (and second victory), and I had an overwhelming response. I've always loved really emotional-sounding tunes, despite me being mostly a mechanical, precise, heavy metal robot. With this song, I brought in all of the jazz and fusion influences I could muster and pretty much slapped it together as I went through it. Normally, I would do almost all of the arranging in a notation program, but this time I used more instinct in a more real-time setting.

I love this type of genre, because it also helped me express my bass skills more, considering bass is really my primary instrument; whereas, 99% of the time the guitar would be in the spotlight. It's not entirely out of the spotlight in this, of course, as it offers some of the most emotion in the solos.

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http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Cyan" (ff6-113.spc)

Audible clicks/pops at 1:03, 2:03, 3:03 & 3:40 (among other places) but they were mostly absorbed into the background. Still gotta make sure those don't show up. Lots of good areas soloing while alluding to the original, but there was too much of that and not enough "Cyan" theme directly involved.

This was 5:05-long, so this needed more than 2:32.5 of overt source usage for me to pass it. Here's the usage breakdown I had:

:39-1:07, 1:11-1:45, 3:04.75-3:14, 3:39-3:50 (liberal, but fine IMO), 4:23-4:42 - about 101.25 seconds or 33.2% of the track

Yeah, when the source tune's overtly there less than half the time, that's when the arrangement veers too much into "inspired by" territory to me. I listened to the SPC, and all 8 individual voices on their own looking for anything I could have missed, but the breakdown is as good as it gets for me. I'm open to other info, as always. Awesome interpretation when the source tune was there and a smooth performance, though.

Things like original writing as well as soloing while backing parts allude to the chords or rhythms of the source tune are like icing on a cake. But in this case there ended up being more icing than cake. This is a great piece of music, well performed; nothing wrong with it in a vacuum, but, as far as the standards go, it needs to incorporate parts of the Cyan theme directly for the majority of the arrangement.

If you're not interested in revising this, Tony, that's cool, but I definitely look forward to your future mixes! "Zero Light" was awesome; if you're down, try to remaster it to bring out the bass more, and send it over. But that was excellent too, especially for a medley. In this case though, nothing personal, just calling it down the middle. I enjoyed the track regardless, and when you make a name for yourself in DoD as quickly as you have, that definitely means something. Hope we hear more from you!

NO (resubmit)

[Another Soundscape]

Oh god. Fantastic stuff.

(OLD VOTE, SEE BELOW

As Larry mentioned, some clicks and pops that shouldn't be there. Check your levels when recording, a safety-compressor is your friend. Really, lots of clipping, especially during the end solo section :'( Performance and arrangement is nothing short of fantastic though. This just shows an amazing ammount of skill. Nice work right there.

Then there's the issue of how liberal this is. No matter how much I want too I can't comfortably agree that Cyan's Theme is an "identifiable and dominant" source in this arrangement. The solos are dominant in this one and, even though they kick major ass, I think it conflicts with that part of the standards.

I urge you to revise this a bit to incorporate more Cyan's Theme but if that's too much of a hassle that's ok, as long as you submit stuff we can pass in the future! You are very skilled and you have a fantastic musical flair to your arrangement. When you get that to work with the standards you'll be a living legend.

NO (changed vote, see below)

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EDIT 5/9 2008: Reasoning to why a NO on this and a YES on Shinesparks is valid: Cyan's Theme relies heavily on the dominant melody while Maridia Rocky Area relies on the dominant, unusual and distinct arpeggiated chords. To arrange Maridia is to use those chords and arranging Cyan's Theme is to arrange the melody. In any case it's hard to compare the two because Shinesparks uses the maridia chords all the way through with clever alterations that classify as "arrangement" and even parts of the melody throughout but this remix has a lot of original stuff (intro, outro, first half of EP-solo etc.) which makes it a tougher call.

EDIT 6/9 2008: Reasoning to why a YES on this is indeed valid: Since the Cyan melody is introduced as the main hook in this and that it's very recognizable there's no question that this is a Cyan arrangement. The chorus chords are almost verbatim and together with the melodic arrangement they go over 50% source usage. The difference between this and for example Highwind Throwdown is that the latter doesn't use the sources chord progression to help the source use achieve "dominant" status, instead there was only the root chord. Here it's obvious that it's the same chord sequence and after repeated listens I don't doubt that anyone would think this is anything other than a great arrangement of Cyan's Theme. Beyond that there are the arranged Cyan's theme in the guitar solo at 3:39 that is identifiable. This also means this achieves 50%+ in source usage (a rule of thumb I personally like to use to settle tough calls like this) and that, imo, is safe to pass.

NEW VOTE 6/9 2008

SO, to summarize: The question is if I accept the chord usage during the solos as source usage. In this case I think the melodic arrangement is both good and works as the major hook in the arrangement and because of this I think the chords are enough to create a cohesive arrangement with Cyan's theme feeling like the dominant source. It IS indeed a subjective opinion but it's based on reasoning that does comply with the standards so yeah.. change of hearts and a lot of headache. Before I let this on I really want you to try to sort out the clipping, especially on the toms. Phew, this was lengthy.

YES (borderline, conditional on clipping fix)

[Palpable]

Sorry to have to put the kibosh on this. Great song for sure, but too liberal. A lot of it hinges on the new chords that open the song. I'd say it's a little closer to 50% than Larry gives it credit for - 2:10-2:34 and 3:14-3:39 uses the same chord progression as the original (but no parts from the original) - but that still puts it dead near 50% with a tenuous connection to the source material for 50 seconds.

Your production is nice and clean, but you do hear pops in louder sections. Watch out for those.

Definitely want to hear more from you, Tony, cause this was pretty awesome. If you've got something closer to the source, send it in!

NO

[Liontamer]

Aight, so SnappleMan had a colonic over this rejection. Apparently, we would have passed this as is as long as it was either by 1) a friend of a judge or 2) an OC ReMix legend. Never mind that he was being a dumbass about it , and that we've rejected established mixers, friends, past judges, current judges; he insists it's nepotism. Obviously, Tony should have bribed the judges.

Besides that, Andy also said we were too focused on the melody and that the source was all up in this. I'm not sure why Andy keeps insisting we're focused on just the melody when I said "I listened to the SPC, and all 8 individual voices on their own looking for anything I could have missed", i.e. countermelody, drum patterns, all the things besides the actual melody. The lack of melody, when so many other elements could have been used, wasn't an automatic dealbreaker.

Especially when a song is good, you WANT to find legit reasons to YES it, and this didn't give 'em to me. Using a chord progression and nothing else from a source while soloing over it for the majority of the time is not using the source in an overt enough way, IMO. With that said, Tony stopped by #ocremix to argue for the track, which I'm quoting below. zircon replied on some points. Let's get some more votes and perspectives.

Originally Posted by "Prince Of Darkness (9/3)

[20:12] <PrinceOfDarkness> Now, I think it's a bit ridiculous to be asking me to recreate it with more of the melody, because then it would be an entirely different song.
[20:14] <PrinceOfDarkness> With the instrumentation I have going, just melody spread over a few different instruments is going to make the song sound terrible. And in my honest opinion, the mathematical measure of how much original source is in the song is crap. You're only looking for the obvious cues.
[20:15] <@zircon> There are other elements besides melody that can be used
[20:15] <@zircon> eg. the timpani part
[20:15] <@zircon> could be played on guitar or some other instrument as rhythmic backing
[20:16] <PrinceOfDarkness> Which I used, but other than strings and melodic instruments, there's a timpani, sleigh bells, and that's about it.
[20:17] <@zircon> In the B-section of Cyan there are also some background winds playing arpeggios, using those would qualify too
[20:17] <PrinceOfDarkness> I used those.
[20:18] <PrinceOfDarkness> Maybe you couldn't hear it because of my mixing, but I put those on synths.
[20:21] <PrinceOfDarkness> So anyway, the only sections in my whole song that are completely out-of-my-ass different-from-the-original are 3:39 - 4:04 and the outro
[20:22] <PrinceOfDarkness> I suppose you could interpret the Bass intro as having no source, since it's the only damned instrument, but it is taken from the other sections
[20:22] <@zircon> POD: Some judges don't feel that using the chord progression with no other connection to the source, at any given point, doesn't contribute towards interpretation
[20:22] <@zircon> Not everyone felt that
[20:22] <@zircon> IE. Palpable
[20:23] <@zircon> But even he thought that the amount of time where it's just the chord progression as the only element from the source was too tenuous, all things considered

[DarkeSword]

I'm gonna keep this short, but when I listened to this track, I felt like the chord progression w/ solos over it was enough to keep it grounded. There are movements in the chord progression that are characteristic of the source material, and I don't think it's a stretch to count those solo sections as source interpretations.

I like this song and I think it should be passed.

I will however yes YES CONDITIONAL based on other judges' complaints about clicks and pops. If we can get those fixed I think we're gold.

[big giant circles]

There's buzzing on the chord at the very beginning, right at 0:02, both channels. Is that supposed to be there? Doesn't sound like a guitar string buzz, sounds like a recording glitch. Minor thing, but it's a smidge bothersome.

Pop at 1:03 is debatable. I listened and if that's indeed a pop, it's not noticeable enough to cause any gripes, but the ultra faint click I heard is in the left channel. The one at 2:03 is legit, though. It actually occurs at 2:04.491 if you want to get extremely specific - it's also left channel. Two more in a row at 2:30 & 2:32. 3:03 is covered up by the chorus'd electric guitar, so I'd say we can let it slide, but again, left channel. The pop at 3:41.215 - yet again, left channel. The entire solo section is too loud, there's quite a bit of clipping. The volume on the toms is unacceptably loud, and were that the only problem the song had, I'd make it a conditional vote and require those to be toned down before this went up. There's another left pop at 4:48.504 which is fairly obvious like the one at 2:04.

Not trying to throw it under a microscope, but I like to look at stuff in Soundforge whenever there's questions/concerns/issues with pops, clicks, clipping, etc. I'm just validating that the issues are not made up.

At any rate, if the pops can be fixed, that'd be swell. If they can't, they're minor enough that I can let them slide - Larry's right, they're pretty well covered up by the rest of the music. Volume needs to come down during the solo section. That's a must for me. The toms seem panned too far left, they make it from far left to maybe center during those runs, and it drives my left ear crazy, especially since they're so loud towards the end.

Scrutinies aside, this is a pretty great track - I love the bass work, and the EP. Electric guitar solo at 2:34 reminds me of some of Satriani's older stuff, that's pretty cool.

Honestly, I'm too tired and/or lazy to get into the whole measuring-to-the-split-second of source tune usage to remix usage, but I'll say after listening to the track for the past half hour straight, I feel like the connections between chord progressions & source are strong enough to sustain it. And granted the style it's been remixed in, I don't see how there's much else/better way to do it, I suppose. I'm going to say that arrangement and performance-wise, this get's a thumbs up from me. However, production-wise, it currently does not. It would be GREAT if we could get a couple of those pops fixed, but my absolute rock-solid not-gonna-budge complaint is the volume during the solo section and the awful clipping on the toms.

I'm not sure if this is a RESUBMIT or a YES CONDITIONAL.

ALMOST/MAYBE?

I suppose if you can quick-fix those things, then you've got my vote. If it's gonna take a bit of time/work on your end to get said issue(s) fixed, then just RESUB it when you're done.

All in all, nice track!

Gonna go ahead and say YES on the condition that the clipping in the end solo section is addressed.

[Liontamer]

IMO the backing writing from 2:09-2:34 is too different from the source. Compare it to :39-1:05 of "Cyan," just voices 6 & 8 of the SPC, the low strings and drums. Saying it's acceptable source usage just because of the chord connection is too dicey. Listening again, I'll totally give it up to 3:14-3:34, as it's the string & drum notes without the stutter, so that's a lot more direct. My fault for missing those. But even claiming both sections were OK and adding the additional time Palp could have handed out, this track still wouldn't be over 50% source usage by a couple seconds. And I'll go more liberal for the riff at 4:15-4:20, which puts it up to about 41.4% overt source usage.

Not to insult, but when you go YES and shrug it off with "I don't specifically care what's there or for how long, it sounds similar, so I feel it's OK," it's not objective enough or displaying any kind of consistency that can be carried from vote to vote. Most of the soloing (1:45-2:09, 2:34-3:02) happens over the writing from the mix's intro, which isn't from the source at all. How is that even connected enough?

Someone needs to justify, in terms of theory and A-to-B connections from source to original, how the Cyan theme is used here the majority of the mix. This case isn't identical, but this seems like a similar situation to Villainelle's mix. There's a reason I stick to 50% overt source usage as a cutoff point, and it's because 1) the source music being tributed the majority of the time needs to be paramount and 2) not declaring a cutoff point and allowing feelings, whims and personal preference to justify anything from 33%-49% adds too much subjectivity and bias to the process. We need to be fair not just to one submitter, but, by extension, to everyone else who submits their music. I'd rather argue around whether or not something makes the 50% mark than trivialize how much actual VGM needs to be involved.

[Fishy]

Ok so, without a doubt this is a great track in itself. Great playing, really full sound, a few minor pops or whatever but they weren't much of an issue for me. Even up loud they didn't get annoying or anything. Awesome solos and all that jazz, no disputes that it sounds gorgeous.

On the arrangement side though, I agree with Larry, whats there just doesn't link to the source significantly enough. I listened to it before I had checked the source, because I assumed being an FF6 fan I would recognize it, and I didn't. Even after I knew what the source was, it still took a while to place the parts of source. The standards state submissions should be "identifiable and dominant", and imo it failed both. This isn't an issue of judge bias or who subbed it as Snapple would have you believe, its just far too liberal. I would expect a remix to feature the source, but as Mr Oji pointed out, its crossing the line into "inspired by". It's great stuff, really, just needs to be more recognizable.

NO too liberal

If you do more vg remixes, for the love of god submit them because your style is fantastic. If you submitted something much closer to the original with melodies in tact and then solo's as additions, it would be approaching direct post stuff. As a judge, there's nothing more better then hearing a new guy bring something fresh like this to the table; I'd much rather hear stuff like this then something a little more cookie cutter from one of the veterans.

[zyko]

since the very first submission that i voted on years ago, i have only encountered a handful of tracks that were great pieces of music but had to be rejected. i am firm on the notion that good music is good music and that when evaluating something, a big picture approach is a pretty safe way to assess something until the smaller picture becomes a problem. this is no different. the macroperspective yields a phenomenally clever arrangement and an excellent performances all around. the microperspective tends to be a little more problematic, however... for example there's this silly issue of a couple of pops. i'm no more a fan of a pop than anyone else but come on, are we sure that isn't the pop of a bass string? this isn't good enough to overlook a single POP? or two?

more importantly, there is the issue of the source material. now, i'm not a big fan of larry's 50% standard on source because i don't think that time quantifies the contribution of "source" to a piece of music but i'm not saying that it isn't a valid standard to have... just not for me and that is why we have different judges on the panel and not just one. i know from how i write my music that i don't and never really have perceived music as a function of time (this might seem counterintuitive to you as it is definitely, in theory, a function of time) and that is probably why most of my tracks are well too long to be submitted to OCRemix. this also means that i consider interpretation to be in terms of a whole complex web of variables that are not limited to time... in other words, a 6 minute track doesn't necessarily have to have 3 minutes of "source" for me to think of it as a valid arrangement

that said, i'm also not a fan of loopy, intentionally-griefing jazz pieces (i'm a huge fan of jazz and probably know more about it than most) that argue "BUYT THE SOURCE IS THERE! YOU DON'G KNWO JAZZ" either because it is so scrambled and jumbled that it takes a well trained ear to hear it all.

this is not one of those. this takes the strengths of the original and builds on it. the source is very clear when it is meant to be clear and while it has a bit too much soloing for the overall length of the track, it never strays too far from the core of the track... there are parts of this that, like BGC suggested, remind me of ol school satch and the delayed effect on the distorted guitar when it first comes in is very Chris DeGarmo formerly of Queensryche, actually. as much as the solo work is great, it does take up a lot of space and might be what is throwing off some of the judges

ok, enough dilly dallying on my part. the real issue here is clearly the source. in my mind, there is plenty of it there. there's definitely more soloing going on here but let's face it, this was a DoD song and everybody in their right mind knows that if you want to do well at DoD, you have to solo a lot haha. still, there is so much cyan here that its ridiculous not to pass it. chord progression or not, just the fact that the piece stays consistent to its theme, consistent to its vibe, consistent to its presentation gives the impression of continuity. when cyan is quoted several times later on in the track, it never feels out of place. i wonder why. even without noticing or acknowledging that the track is anchored in most parts by the same chord progression that the lead melody was perfomed over earlier on, the listener never feels as though they've been left out to dry.

in the end, the track is fairly straight to the point and even with all the crazy soloing, isn't really deviating much from the core of THIS SONG. i thoroughly understand the things that the other js are saying, no doubt, but why are we not hearing this in relation to itself? it may seem to deviate from the source at times (to some of the judges, more often than not) but never deviates from itself.

it is entirely coherent.

ugh. i think the bass needs to be pulled out just a bit since you're an incredible bassist but otherwise, this doesn't have any issues as far as i'm concerned. i'm not a fan of the 50% standard and don't apply it as religously although i do understand why it's there. this, however, needs to be released on this site. if not, we're making a big mistake


YES

[big giant circles]

Just to reiterate/summarize my vote thus far:

Re: Pops:

If they can't [be taken out], they're minor enough that I can let them slide

Re: Production:

Volume needs to come down during the solo section. That's a must for me. The toms seem panned too far left, they make it from far left to maybe center during those runs, and it drives my left ear crazy, especially since they're so loud towards the end.

Clipping on the toms needs to be addressed. It's pretty harsh at the end.

Re: Arrangement:

I feel like the connections between chord progressions & source are strong enough to sustain it. And granted the style it's been remixed in, I don't see how there's much else/better way to do it, I suppose

So yeah. Anyway, other than the pops, I've not heard anyone else chime in on the topic of the clipping during the end solo section. Is no one else paying attention there?