Leaderboard

Sonic Advance 3 Staff Roll 2025-07-13 2157.mp3 Source:

Brandish - The Cursed King Remix

i dont want to submit my remixes, just want to share them here kindly. thx for the constructive feedback!

Co-signing with Chimpazilla and proph on this one. While your arrangement hews conservatively to the source material, I think the little additions like the reduction to the piano and bells at 1:20 before building back into the A section and the approaches to the melodic material on the guitar and vocals elevate this beyond a simple 1:1 cover of the tune. The production is the one big problem that's holding this one back -- too heavy in the mids, the heartbeat is eating up all your headroom, and the -2dB limiter ceiling, while maybe not causing all your production problems, only serves to clip the louder low-end elements (namely the heartbeat and the left hand of the piano). This one's ready for the front page with some tweaks on the mix, Azina! NO (resubmit)

"The bar was kinda crowded. Like the slave quarters of Rupture Farms. But that's a different story from another game. Couldn't even catch a glimpse of Robo Eggman and his big band through the thick clouds of smoke. Things were starting to get hot. So I went to the bar and ordered a hedgehog-friendly tuna shake. I sipped the glass slowly... ... and, of course, I reserved a pool table in the back corner of the bar to play a smooth casual game with my spiky-haired cutie and the affectionate, fluffy fox."

This is an old, old MnP track that I've resurrected (thematic pun very much intended) for the OverClocked Remix Halloween Album. This is the main melody of the source for the verses and the chords from the chorus of Bobby Pickett's - Monster Mash, but with the key adjusted to match the Psycho Pinball source. The vocals aren't final as yet, but I'd like some feedback on this advanced WIP; what works, what doesn't, music too loud, vocals too quiet etc etc. Many thanks! Sources - WIP - https://on.soundcloud.com/ZjGLbnplgjMWNT2gbC

I'm not familiar with the game or the original music in any way. But the remix sounds like a really good and humorous upgrade of the original soundtrack. The mixing also makes a really good impression. It is also something really different in terms of genre. So I would definitely submit it and give it to the judges at OCR for evaluation. ))

I saw this the other day and wanted to comment. Spread the good word, folks! AOCC is coming back again! 19 years... wow. I'm a proud papa. LOL. Good luck to everyone, do your best!

This is super conservative to the source tune, maybe almost too much so, but I appreciate the little countermelodies and additional textures added. The guitar is performed well. It's a nice, yet straightforward, arrangement. I agree with proph about the mixing, it's very dense and very low and low-mid heavy, giving the overall mix a muddy and sometimes boxy feel. I agree with him that some EQ is needed, to remove unwanted lows/low-mids and rumble from the non-bass instruments, vocals and drums, as everything is piling up and clashing in the lows and low mids. Having all these lows in everything also has the impact of stealing your mastering headroom. You'll have an easier and louder master after taming the instruments with EQ, as your limiter won't have such a huge task of smashing everything down. As it stands, this master is being pushed very hard, and also the limit of -2db seems very unnecessary. You can even see on SPAN how the frequencies are heavily skewed towards the low mids, with the high mids and highs severely rolling off by comparison. This is not a good overall balance for the track. I took this snip at exactly 2:13 in the mix. There are so many instruments playing at that point that everything sounds jumbled up and indistinct. I'm very borderline on this because part of me feels it could post like this. But on repeat listens, I feel that the mixing really does need to be addressed to make this completely passable and enjoyable to listen to. Please clean up the mixing and send it right back to us! NO (please resubmit)

track is hard-limited to -2dba and has some visible waveform clipping. opens with some very verby elements - piano, muted guitar, and electric guitar in octaves. lot of panning. a huge, heavy beat comes in at 0:39 and it clips pretty hard there. there's some other pad elements but everything feels so loud that i can't really hear what's going on. at 1:01, the texture thins out again, and there's some neat little bell elements. we get a transition into 1:35 where the melody's in the voice. there's a very loud, low piano part that's unfortunately causing more clipping here. the kick comes back in at 2:08 and exacerbates the clipping and distortion that's going on. it's unfortunate because what's here - the piano swimming in reverb, various lead elements, the bells - sounds really cool, but it's just very crunchy in a way that doesn't sound intentional. there's an outro flourish and it's done. most of your elements are not EQ'd at all, to my ear. at the very least, you're going to want to apply an EQ to each instrument that cuts unwanted frequencies. right now several instruments are pushing sound below 40hz, and it's causing everything to sound cluttered and muddy. turning everything down overall and then ensuring that instruments aren't transmitting in ranges you don't want them will help a lot. you have several competing instruments in the low range as well - stripping that back a bit will also help. this is a really, really cool arrangement, and i love the approach especially in your lead choices between the guitar and voice. if we can clean up the unintentional clipping, this could be really stellar. NO

Hey! Your nickname sounds familiar. I especially remember you from your stuff in Vampire Variations. Nice to see you back :) Also this track sounds nice. MIDI Metal FTW! Simple and raw, just what sometimes we need. I can see that fitting pretty well in an early 90s shooter game like Doom or Duke Nukem.

Oh wow, this is definitely super indulgent. I was already impressed enough with the idea of putting DDD in a minor key, and bringing in a nod to "Piranha Plant's Lullaby" had me sold - but three movements of the source, in three completely different emotional packages, contextualising the development of a relationship whether romantic or even platonic? Now, THAT hits deep. From the lively treatment of the source in the initial build and two-step section, to the more intimate-sounding EDM second section, to the outright broken nature of the heavy metal section with eventual blast beats and quadruple kick pedal (!!), there's so much contextually that has something that a listener can easily interpret this ride of an emotional bond in their own way. With that ambition also comes its way of being placed together. Obviously the tones are all well put together, whether it be synths, guitars, percussion or various other effects. Brad can say what he wants about the transitions being jank, or disjointed, but that's part of the anticipating of seeing where the direction would go next. The only thing that stuck out as concerning for me was the un-synergized tonality between the lead guitar shredding and the more minimalist chords, which makes sense concerning the different tuning put in play. It's no irk for me, as at the end of the day, timings and performances are tight enough to let the section run through in its intended (chaotic) format. It's a very easy vote - super ambitious, obvious use of the source BGM albeit twisted in more ways than one, all wrapped up in a powerful package. Let's get this on board. YES

Loved this theme as a kid, so always glad to hear someone transform it. The sound design's pretty cool, and I appreciate giving this a not-dour-yet-darker edge; very exploratory, and I didn't expect the... let's say indulgent... rock turn 4 minutes in. :-) Dayum, son, where’d you musically incubate? Arriving here all fully formed and shit… :-P YES

opens with some heavily filtered arpeggiated elements and pads, and some really ringy vocals. the big hit at 0:31 reminds me of another remixer's penchant for huge transitional synths. there's some trancey keys doing the arpeggio and eventual melody line, although they're not particularly idiomatic. i found the wide spacey synth with the long delay on the attack to be a little too fast for how slow it was, but i liked the vibe for sure. there's a big transitional element into 1:39, and there's some really wild sound design here that's fun. i appreciate that it never quite settles down to a normal - it's constantly changing and evolving. 2:10's a hard drop in style, and the keys here sound like they're releasing early which is interesting. the lack of sustain compared to earlier feels is unsettling. another big build into 2:44, and there's a particularly filthy bassline synth that i really like here. there's also a lot of rumble which i'm not as big a fan of. the lead here is outrageously mean and over-the-top extreme, and the transitions are all really janky, so this is very intense. 3:30's long falling action functions as a great palate-cleanser to that intensity, and we hear the docks come back much clearer this time around. the sfx in here on the vocal clips is enough that i couldn't tell at all what was going on in them. i don't know if that was intentional or not. the piano in here is a little too high and piercing for me, and combined with the overtones from the vocal clips, this was kind of uncomfortable to listen. we finally reach the third section, and it's a much more straightforward, heavy feel. most of this didn't seem to be clearly able to be mapped to the original in any way, but there was some clear intentionality at 5:11, and later when the keys come in at 5:41. the intensity of the drums especially is nuts through this whole section. i found myself liking the setting more than everything that the lead was playing - especially initially, that low bend sounded nowhere near the key that was being played. 5:41's a significant falling action, and this is clearly the end of the road here. there's some sfx to end it, and we're done. what a ride! this is so broad from start to finish, showing a ton of versatility and stylistic influences. i certainly don't think it's perfect, but what a broad spectrum of approaches and concepts. i certainly don't know of another DDD concept that comes at the original from so many different directions. it's easy to nitpick something so broad, so i'll just say that i really enjoyed it, there's more than enough source for it to count, and the perspective here is intense. nice work. YES