All Activity

You're right, I did say that I enjoyed your work in progress before, but felt like it needed more. I still feel that even though this one is pretty close right now and feeling borderline. I love the addition of the choir parts and the oboe, they sound beautiful. More adaption and parts added to this that would put this over the bar in terms of arrangement as we've had even more conservative stuff pass before. See: https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR04768 for an example of such. However, in that case there was also genre adaption going on for more personalization. This one feels almost like the same genre even though the instruments are changed. The opening is particularly very close to the original, until 1:07 when the cello enters and is giving some countermelody. The humanization and rigidity is also something needs to be brought up as well. I love Seph's suggestion of adding rubato to bring some more life to the piano part, right now it's very locked into the grid. Also the dynamic range is very small, more contrast and variation would also help the expression really shine through as well. Right now it's more robotic and not as expressive as it could be. Beautiful, but not up to par. NO

sounds good compositionally mixing is a bit loud on the high end

Excellent remix. Sounds very clear and nice hearing in Hylian.

Prayer has aged like fine wine! Jillian's vocal makes this track sound calm and relaxing.

Such a great homage to Jillian Aversa's Prayer 15 years ago. Comparing Prayer to Generations you can hear Jillian's growth in her musical talents. The remixer knew the assignment well and honored the vibes that the Prayer Remix was remixed but added more of an ethereal tribal vibe. I admit I do listen to both versions over and over. I hope that Jilian remixes more LOZ songs with her lyrical flare.

Hi Goodman! What's here is an excellent mixdown of an immaculate vibe. Nothing I'm about to write in this vote is going to alter that opinion! I agree with Liontamer that this is a much more straightforward remix of the source, where our standards look for additional rearrangement to pass the bar. Below is my stopwatch timestamps for what I feel is source usage (which the sampled audio won't count toward). With 3m:28s (208s) of runtime, I'm looking for roughly 104s of recognizable material from the source track; ideally, it's using as much meat from the source as possible. This one is relying a lot on that Intro 3-note melodic motif while never really adding in the harmony voice from the source, nor diving into the arpeggio of the A or B sections fully. Aside from the transitional tag going from the A section to B section (@ 1:48, @ 2:19, etc), there's not much else that I can directly hear as a strong enough tie. We don't typically count bass note movement or the chord progression as source usage unless they are atypical, which is not the case here. Again, the execution of this track is undeniably good and I don't doubt that it would see success outside of OCR. It just doesn't have enough juice for me to sign off on it being above the bar. NO

Hey :) thank you so much! glad you liked it. yes i am very interested in joining your album collab. do you have more informations? have a nice day :)

Hi H36T! As noted by the other Js here, this is two rounds of the A-B loop of the source with 3 bars to vamp into the second repeat around 1:26. The additional instrumentation on the second repeat is a lovely add; having it arrive earlier in the piece would be better from a personalization standpoint. The strings, choral voices, winds, and piano counterpoint line are doing some heavy lifting on that front (and the chimes!), but there's still more that can be done to bring more H36T to the table. Proph mentioned adding variation in the velocities of notes for more dynamic contrast in the writing, and I agree. Given the title of the track and the direction intended in the write-up, I agree with Wake that a more subtractive approach to your sections could improve the emotional dynamic curve. I'll add that some rubato (gentle deceleration of the tempo and holding the last note/rest a little longer than the metronome) on the ending of phrases would help break the rigidity of the structure and bring more of the emotional weight to the piece. Right now, it feels locked to the grid and mechanical. For me to sign off on this, I'd need to hear more personalization to the piece, primarily in the dynamics of voices or the dynamic curve of the piece as a whole a less locked-to-the-grid/mechanical feel to the presentation NO (resubmit)

Hey dude, if you are down maybe consider joining the Halloween album collab? Just noticed this and your ghost and ghouls mix and thought you could be interested. Anyway, I like the sound of the synths you used!

Looks like a premaster, tons of unused headroom in the waveform. This arrangement is extremely conservative, we all agree on that. But with the 100% instrumentation change, I don't find this conservatism dealbreaking. I agree that the first 80 seconds is almost too conservative, but there's a lovely turnaround 1:26, followed by fuller chords with the choir, countermelodies with the woodwinds, and an even more luscious feel. This arrangement isn't doing anything earth-shattering, but it is utterly lovely and does the job for me for sure. As per our standards I feel that enough has been done here to differentiate the remix from the source tune. If this does not pass, please find a way to add a few more original melodies or motifs or something, especially into that first half. And do some mastering, it doesn't have to be anything major but at least use a final limiter to bring up the overall volume to somewhere around -0.5db peak, hitting maybe -13 to -12db RMS. YES

Song #04 has been played on this week's workshop already. Constructive criticisms and compliments are allowed. 03 rainy night.mp3 04 catharsis.mp3

I re-listen to Threshold of a Dream from time to time and I wanted to check in and show my appreciation for this track. Does the intro take some cues from the final dungeon theme of Zelda II, or is that just me?

Fantastic.

Ghouls ’n Ghosts - Title Theme Remix

Starts with some pretty piano and strings. As a random comment, the style here reminds me a lot of an artist from Dwelling of Duels called valence (https://www.dwellingofduels.net/artists/valence/). The strings sound very washed out, it fits the mood you went for but it may be a little too much. Regarding the samples themselves, there's times when the attack between notes sounds odd and unnatural (0:19 for example), I'm not sure if there's much you can do about it but I wanted to point it out. Anyway, the arrangement for the first minute or so is very conservative, as far as I can tell it's identical to the source (with the exception of the added strings), even if played slower. Around 1:20 we get a choir added and you added some nice extra melodies for the loop transition. At 1:37 we get a repeat of the loop, now with the extra choir, wind lines on top and some modifications on the piano line. At 2:20 we get the B theme from the source again and a lot of the personalization is gone since it's back to being a very straight cover. There's some cool counterpoints on the strings though. After this second loop is done the track ends. K, so arrangement will be the main thing here. You noted it on the write-up and both me and prophetik above noted it on the reviews... this is very conservative. You changed the instrumentation, which is always nice, but the melodies, chords and structure are almost untouched (except for the transition between loops). I think there is definitely space to differentiate this more, you did a nice job in the section between 1:37 and 2:20 but I don't feel that's enough to clear OCR's bar. Personally, I'd recommend you to work on the structure of the track, right now it's "just" 2 loops of the source that don't really go anywhere. Try to imagine the track having a direction with build-ups and breaks, maybe the piano stops for a section and that changes the dynamics, I dunno, there's many things you could do without changing the soul of the remix. On production this is fine, the piano sounds pretty and everything is easy to hear but the orchestral samples are only passable. If there's any chance to get collabers on board it'd be awesome but, of course, that isn't a dealbreaker. That said, I'd take a look at how you're processing reverb, some samples sound very washed out and unnatural, like the strings and choir. Overall, while this is a pretty take on the source and has some nice sounding additional elements it's too conservative for OCR at the moment. I'd love to hear a new take with extra personalization or a more original structure. NO

Really something beautiful; I was smiling the whole time listening. I love how the essence of EarthBound is captured, whilst transforming it at the same time into something completely new and fresh.

I would also be down to help

Really liking this. Let’s call these done!

That's an intense source to do a remix of! Very hectic and wild. The remix is much tamer. I like the idea of doing this as an EDM or trance mix. Right away I can tell that this artist is fairly new at producing. But, everyone starts somewhere! I remember being at this stage myself, very well. I'm not going to go into an extensive critique; this track as the other two judges have mentioned will do better by going through our workshop process either on OCR's forum or in our Discord server workshop channels. There's a lot to learn here. The guys above me have given some great advice already, and you'll get more of that in the workshop and they can give you feedback in realtime as you progress, without having to wait through our judging queue. Good luck, keep at it and hang in there! NO

Fantastic remix, but something's up with the MP3 download - at 0:50 it skips ahead a few seconds.

I'd love to help if possible.

Begins with a few percussion hits and then comes the source's intro. Right away this sounds a little off, the bass is playing static E notes while the melody (covering the higher guitar part from the source) is on C# minor. Now, E is part of the C# minor scale so it's not like it's dissonant but it sounds odd, you'd generally have the bass on the root for a riff like this (like the source does). It's of course valid to have a different approach but it needs to lead somewhere otherwise it just feels wrong. The percussion pattern is also fairly strange, with "snare" hits on 2-3-4 but not on 1, creating a beat that's not easy to follow. At 0:27 we move into a higher pace for the second part of the initial melody. The percussion pattern is even weirder than before, it's not really fitting for any kind of EDM mood. This section continues for a bit, following the source's melodies until we reach the next part of the source at 1:01. Similarly to the intro, the bass is playing D# notes that don't really fit the melodies on top. At 1:05 we get a few melodies from the source but one of them seems to have wrong notes (the one starting at 1:08 features a regular D which doesn't fit the key this cover has attempted to be in). 1:11 has the arpeggio section of the source, which inexplicably keeps the upbeat rhytm. Finally, we move to the last section from the source. The note at 1:29 (A#) seems unfitting. Finally, at 1:49 the track simply cuts-off, without a real ending. I don't want to sound mean while saying this but this cover is way below the bar at the moment. On production, the synth samples used are all very simplistic, we usually ask for a more modern sound. Percussion samples are also simplistic but, more importantly, unfitting. The "clap" you used for snare won't really work on a proper arrangement. On arrangement there are several issues. First is the fact that the bass and melodies rarely fit well together. Second is the fact that there's several wrong notes in the arrangement. I get the feeling you got hold of some MIDI files of the original and kinda slapped them together haphazardly, not taking proper care of keeping everything on the same key, which is why the move to C# minor caught me off guard at the intro, since the original is on F minor. Third is the percussion writing, if you want to make trance or any form of EDM you need a beat that's steady and easy to follow, a snare hitting on basically every quarter or 8th note is not that. Finally, for OCR standards we ask for more interpretation, this track was very conservative in regards to source usage. As prophetik said, you should give the Discord workshop a go and ask for help there, especially regarding basic arranging and production tips. NO

Should we like keep you updated on progress or tell you what we are going to do at some point? Or is it like, once your finished just send it your way? I know we also need to get all the tracks mastered too...