Ghetto Lee Lewis

I haven't been reviewing songs much, but Tales of Phantasia was imo the best rpg of all time (my personal favorite at least), and needs a lot more recognition on this site. I remember the Moria tune quite vividly (after going around for hours trying to get to the 20th or so floor at the bottom ) Here's my opinion: I read Disco Dan's review on the judging forum, and I disagree with him very much. This is both close enough to the original in terms of chords and melody, I would recognize the remix without being told told where it was from. The arrangement, while encompassing many elements of the original, adds quite a distinct and original flavor to the tune. The song starts off with an extremely catchy bassline (couldn't have picked a better bass for it). It transitions with a filtered trancey synth into some thicker chords, introducing the melody with a piano. At 1:41 is a dead stop which is short enough and pulled off well enough (very nice transition, imo) to work extremely effectively in the song, bringing in the trance lead much stronger as a melody to compliment the piano. At around 3:00 another transition introduces a new submelody with filtered trance arpeggios, preparing another transition at about 3:20 to bring back the melody played very strongly with some very nice synths (along with the original piano). Around 4:40 is a nice transition to some latin percussion preparing for a quite a unique ending for trance. well, I'd like to say I think this was an outstanding remix I really enjoyed for the most part. From the moment I heard the bassline I knew it was going to be great song. I was really impressed with the transitions and structure. Even though it was a bit repetitive (not necessarily bad, especially for the genre), the transitions kept it moving to new ideas smoothly and effectively. The artist did an outstanding job of making the original fit the new theme. The synths were used really well and kept the song exciting. A lot of creative drum work also. On the other hand, I thought a better kick could have been used. Samples were pretty nice sounding for the most part. The song also sounded a bit too happy for my tastes (not neccesarily a bad thing; it fit the song title). I always thought a Moria remix would be really dark (at least, that's how I would have done it). Also, that piano lead sounded pretty out of tune (at least to me). You probably could have picked a better lead, or a better sounding piano. It didn't effect the song too negatively, but it was noticeable. Also, I think you may have mis-spelled the title. I thought it was supposed to be "Moria", but that might depend on which translation of the game you played (if you did play it). I think that's cool you did it all with Buzzmachines too. I could never really figure out that program. Fruity Loops is so much easier for me. Overall good job. A recommended listen for fans of Trance and/or Tales of Phantasia. 8.5/10

sorry, I don't usually reply to my own song reviews. The huge deal about the reverb just really bothered me. Now that you're more specific, I'm a lot happier. I was listening to this song today on my cd player and I was kind of taken aback by how unbalanced things sounded, particularly the piano. I will try to work harder on keeping things balanced (and reasonable fx added) on my future remixes. I still think it has been one of my most innovative remixes to date. I'm still happy with it overall (although I may produce a remastered version sometime in the future). and Vortex, I believe it's the Create a character theme from UO (SgtRama would know better; he remixed this same theme and plays the game quite frequently to my knowledge).

IMO, it's too much. It sounds muddy in a not good way to me. You don't need to get all angry and corrective about my opinion. If you like it, good for you. I don't. Sorry. I already heard it from 4 of the judges. Why don't you form an opinion that's original.

ok, I'm going to try and forget my differences with PxFury right now (although I still think he is an arrogant, immature, ignorant, stupid fag) and try to write an objective review of this song. As I listened to this I thought it had a pretty nice intro with the synth with the reverb and delay, although I thought it could have sounded a lot nicer and fuller if it were backed up by a couple of pads. After the synth ended I was expecting a prompt entry into the main part of the song. However, what I got instead was a SECOND intro, which was barely less minimal than the first. The piano plays a few notes accompanied by ocean and seagull sound effects. After 50 seconds into the song, the long awaited pads finally come in, although they seemed far too loud for my tastes and the overall mood of the song. At 1:12 the music sort of cuts off with a falling synth sound effect (which sounded nearly identical to the sound effect in Final Fantasy 2/4j where you fall down a hole). It seemed rather out of place for the rest of the atmosphere PxFury seemed to by trying to create. At 1:16 the song resumes at a faster pace with the pads (which are still way too loud), a very quiet lead synth, another synth in the background, some light synth effects, and a simple drumbeat. At 1:40, everything drops off and a harsher distorted synth takes the place of the entire melody that was playing (along with some really light hi hats). A lighter drum beat kicks back in with some sparce piano notes and more synth effects. At 2:25 is another one of those pitch bended synths, except bending up instead of down. At 2:30, the melody resumes once again at its fast pace with the synths, pads, etc. At 2:57, everything drops off with some piano notes playing, backed by waves and seagulls. The song finishes with a really loud (annoying) synth effect playing. This song seemed to be somewhat of an attempt at Ambient/New Age. The samples seemed pretty high quality for the most part (although it was hard to tell because they were so swamped with delay and reverb effects; the effects more than likely covered up for bad samples). I haven't heard the original to compare it to, so I don't know whether it is an improvement or anything. Were this an original song, I might say it had some nice melodies and arranging that seemed to flow ok and it was alright to listen to. A lot of the arranging and style seemed pretty predictable. Transitions seemed to be pretty poor or nonextistant keeping the song moving. Inserting a random sound or dropping notes off with reverb doesn't necessarily prepare the listener for new ideas. Putting two intros into a song one after the other isn't exactly the greatest idea. It's like you're trying too hard to get attention and aren't even preparing for the actualy melody. The drums don't seem to add anything besides keeping rhythm in this song. They have so much reverb on them the song doesn't groove or anything. They might have helped with transitions somewhat had they been used more effectively. Overall, the song didn't seem to flow very well at all. The ending could have done without the little effect and it would have worked fine. I wouldn't really recommend this song, unless you're looking for a mediocre ambient song and enjoy the tune.

Please go back a few pages in this thread and read my other posts.

Sorry about that. My friend "Prophecy" types using two fingers, so his spelling and capitalization are probably off most of the time. However, this guy knows more about electronic music than anyone I've ever met. I think his review was a bit harsh. I thought the song had some good ideas and stuff, interesting samples, and nice drum fills. However, the drums were way too loud and seemed to clip a whole lot. It does get a bit repetitive. The instruments could have been changed up a whole lot more. Some new pads and leads would have made the whole song a lot more interesting. After like the first 2 minutes or so, it's way too repetive. The transitions and fills in the beginning were pretty good, but more should have been done with the rest of the song. Overall, the song just didn't send me. I like Haroon's upbeat stuff a lot better. Prophecy, maybe you could try not to be such a dick next time. I appreciate your honesty though. I know Haroon can do a hellava lot better than this.

um, there's really a lot easier way to do automation than recording and trying to do stuff live (especially if your computer is unresponsive or you don't have a really decent mouse). If you right click on the tempo bar and select "edit events", you can control the tempo as precisely as you want. From the event editor, select "init current position" and events will automatically be placed at the current tempo position. Now, whenever the playlist comes across that pattern (make sure you place at least one of them in the song view), it will read the events in that pattern to control the tempo. The neat thing is, you can right click in almost any of the knobs in most of the editors, including the VST/VSTi plugins that come with Fruity Loops, including the Buzz adapter plugins, and edit events for almost anything. Just edit events for them in the same way as the tempo, and you have yourself custom made envelopes for cutoff, attack, sustain, reverb depth, or whatever else you need to modify. The drawback is, and you must be careful, is that any changes you make to events will actually control the corresponding knobs. That is, changes in the event editor will stay in the song permanently. Therefore, if you want changes to be reset to how they were before changes were modified, you must make corresponding changes in the even editor (I've had this problem with some songs, when playing through or rendering a song and when playing it again the cutoff for a pattern start too high. This however, can be fixed, either by playing the pattern with events modified where they should start or making the changes back to how they were in the right pattern). The event editor can make Fruity Loops an incredibly powerful piece of software. Just figure out how to use it right.

That really depends what you want to do with the sine wave oscillator. You can use the sine wave to make portamento lines (for hip hop and stuff), basses (for hip hop, trance, and lots of other stuff), and even pads. If you want to use it for pads, you probably want to refer to the other post I wrote on making pads (like a couple pages before this one). You probably want to tweak the tuning all to the same or an octave apart (when I make basses, I usually turn the high oscillator all the way down from the default setting and it works). Really though, you need to be specific with your questions, because each different kind of oscillator can have multiple uses, and you can blend them together. I like the sine wave because it has a really pure mellow sound. Probably the best thing you can do is experiment and find out how it works.

You can actually make the C_Kick sound really nice if you layer a bunch of them together and add some effects to it. Try adding some distortion and really tweak the parametric equalizer for a start (the effects are really good to learn because they can totally change the sounds of different samples)

The hand clap can actually sound really awesome if you add about 50 % reverb and some other effects (try playing with the parametric equalizer A LOT). The default samples really aren't that bad depending what you do with them. It usually takes a lot of playing with envelopes, lfo's and the different VST effects to get them to sound really good.

meaning you couldn't figure out how to make pads?

If it's soundfonts you want, go here: www.thesoundsite.net (I'd recommend the "uncompressed section) The soundfont I've been using for choir has been the "Florestan Choir" soundfont

I don't know about vocal sounds, but there are ways to make all sorts of neat sounding pads. You can use simsynth to make them, but I prefer 3x oscillator. To make pads with the 3x oscillator, first select your waveforms. I prefer to use saw waves for all three, but there are variations that can give you different sounds that may sound better. Adjust the tuning either all to zero semitones or all to -12 semitones for each oscillator (so they're all the same). Set the fine tune on one oscillator down to -35 cents, and the fine tune to another to +35 cents. This will give them a very thick sound. If you prefer, you don't have to detune them as much, or even at all. You can leave all 3 at 0 cents, if you prefer. Now for envelopes: Under the volume envelop, turn the attack knob slightly up, and the sustain knob all the way up. Make sure the cutoff knob is turned way down. If you want you can turn up the resonance up also (up to halfway is probably good). There, now you have some OK sounding pads. However, they probably still sound a bit cheesy. You want to add some effects to make them sound a lot richer. For effects, you should add some reverb (the default preset should be fine, although you may want to add more). Also add a flanger effect for some fun. I normally use the "Ultra Fat Chorus" preset so it sounds like it takes up more space (and sounds a lot richer). If you want, you can also add a phaser effect. I'd suggest experimenting with the different phaser presets until you find one that suits you, or you can play around with it yourself to get the effect you want. Now that you have your sound, you want to make it work. Go to the piano roll view and build your chords and stuff. If you want, you can play around with channel panning in the piano roll. You can also give it some more phasing qualities by going back to the envelopes section of the sample, rigth clicking the "cutoff" knob, and selecting "edit events". Now you can draw a bunch of stuff on the graph to control the sounds cutoff. I'd suggest first selecting from the top left corner, Init events (to put the graph at the current cutoff position), and selecting ("use smooth transitions", or whatever it says). Now you can draw curves on the graph for some cool cutoff effects. Hope that makes some sense or helps. Now go out there and make some badass pads.

Well, I was a bit dissapointed with the reviews this song has received. I think it's really a great song. It's much slower paced than most of the songs on this site, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This song conveys sadness, and yet a deep dark intensity, like an ominous dark foreboding on what's to come. This version of the song turns the world map theme into more of a prologue-type theme. In terms of sampling, arranging, etc., Oceanfire does quite a fantastic job. The samples may not be gigastudio quality, but they are good enough to get the job done. They don't distract from the overall character of the song. The arrangement is technacally close to perfect in terms of harmony, transitioning, etc. It is very cleverly arranged so that it carries a great deal of emotion. orchestral/electronic music (synths for sound effects and such) Overall, I really liked it. It's a great change from the usual upbeat music that's posted on this sitel. 9.6/10

Honestly, I'd like to say that while my Dragon Warrior mix had it's own personality and such, I prefer to listen to this version. I absolutely love how you used the harp. The samples are simply gorgeous, and it was pretty amazing how it all came together. The way Russell uses different combinations of instruments and transitions into different keys and sub-themes gives the whole song a great deal of character. A brilliant piece of work. An amazing arrangement. Awesome high quality, life-like instruments. It would be hard to believe the author wasn't actually conducting a live orchestra. The mastering was even exceptional. Listening on my studio-quality headphones with the whole surround sound effect was almost like being at live concert. Like almost any well done Romantic era symphony or concerto, this song tells a story, one filled with action, adventure, drama, and sadness. This rendition of the song probably captures more emotion than any 8-bit RPG could possibly hope for. 3 cheers for Mr. Cox. I hope to hear more like this from him in the future.

I was kind of getting the song to tell a story. The first part, you're kind of walking aimlessly around the forest all scared and stuff. The second part you run into Jason, and he's out for blood. The song ends abruptly cause it never took long to trip and fall and Jason would murdera ya. (if that helps at all; I really made this song like 6 months ago or something, I could of done better probably)

Congratulations Spekko!! In contrabution to this magnificent achievement, I'm posting my review I wrote on vgmix.com a few weeks ago (also in one take). Of course, the quality of the vgmix.com version would be better because of the higher bitrate. It's barely noticeable though. I'm just glad you posted the whole thing instead of just half of the song like you said you were going to. Well, here is the review in its entirety. Keep in mind, however, even a review such as this can't possibly do justice to this song. This review and others can be found at vgmix.com http://www.vgmix.com/songview.php?songid=896

w00t!!

Barbie should have been Chuckie's bride.

Great stuff from someone else from my hometown (Vegas has some talented people it seems). I recognize a couple of those samples from Reason (maybe because I've used some of them), i.e. the hip hop drum sample. This is really good stuff. Downbeat/electronica/ambient. Highly recommended. However, I like some of your original Trance stuff a lot better. I was downloading from you on mp3.com before I realized you were on OCR. If only I didn't suck so bad at Reason. I'll probably just stick to Fruity Loops for Trance. I hope you remix some more for OCR in the future. Keep it up! ~Ghetto Lee Lewis (stay tuned for my Breath of Fire song when it comes out. It'll should be posted on OC Remix before too long. If not, then follow the link (right click, save target as or paste into address bar) http://www.angelfire.com/music4/t_diddy/BoF_Save_Your_Game_Club_mix_2002_OC_Remix.mp3 If you wait a few days, it should show up on mp3.com shortly. www.mp3.com/Ghetto_Lee_Lewis note: I don't normally advertise my music with reviews, but I thought you might be interested, seeing as you're from Vegas and all, and into making Trance like I am. Maybe you could offer suggestions for some of my music, or whatever. Keep up the great work!! w00t!!

w00t!! I looove the intro. It's so beautiful. The way it builds to something completely different is amazing. The techno part is very dancy, yet atmospheric as well; it's very enjoyable. The little breaks into sub-themes from other stages of Megaman 2 are amazing. Megaman 2 was one of my AlL-tImE-fAvoRiTE NES games, and this tune reminds me of the great times I had with that game. *applauds Yay, Starla!! 10/10

A solid arrangement overall, great intro, good samples. From the excellent introduction, I was expecting a fun happy hardcore piece. However, something quite different came instead. A much more relaxed style of techno came instead. The good qualities were there, but parts of the song seemed a bit too repetitive. The piece was nothing like the high energy, fun, dancy tune I was expecting, but it was still enjoyable to listen to. Recommended for fans of downbeat electronica/techno. 7.8/10

While it's a great song, the arrangement and structure are incredible, it lacks a bit in terms of atmosphere. Proffesional Trance songs usually make use of a lot of reverb, something this piece seems to lack. I'm sure however, that it would sound much better played in a club or open setting than through a pair of headphones. It was mentioned some of the sounds are "cute". Not really a bad description, since this song comes from Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm sure it's far better than the original, and even captures the mood of the original song. It's still very fun to listen to, however. Lots of variation on the drums are used to keep the piece moving. The arrangement is extra-ordinary. The samples are very good also. However, maybe next time some extra effects can be added to give that extra touch of realism. Great job!! 8.4/10

Well, I heard part of this song quite a long time ago I don't know from where. Overall, I think the song's pretty cool. I really liked the style, the instrumentation, and the awesome work on the drums. However, there were some qualities I thought were serious weak points. Many of the notes and chords seemed to be completely wrong. I don't know whether or not it was intended, but I think it would have sounded much better if it were kept closer to the original. That's only the second rendition of the Atma song I've heard. I think Mustin did the other one. Many of these "medley" songs could have easily been expanded into a full length rendition, but they're still cool as a medley. The atma song especially falls into that catagory. I have yet to hear a remix of "The Dreadful Battle" from FF4, which could become a huge sort of production along with the Atma song. I've actually thought of doing it myself. I'm a bit suprised you did Atma and not the other cool battle song. Not that it matters much. The guitar and bass work were both really exceptional, like all the little effects and transitions. I really liked the battle ending with the groove and everything. The only problem I have with medleys is that they may contain many parts that carry potential to evolve into a full blown kick ass song, but instead soon switch to a different melody. Anyways, great work to everyone who participated in this song. You guys really seemed to flow together. I know it can be a serious problem when musicians clash and they can't seem to play anything together, but you guys did an excellent job. As to the arrangement, I think it should have been closer to the original, especially when it comes to playing the right chords and melody. The bass, and especially the drums should be allowed the most freedom when it comes to arranging, unless you decide to do solos and stuff. Hope you guys keep doing more stuff like this in the future.