Vig

Yeah, I kind of want to punch myself.

I remember Gray when he was first up for nomination to the panel. He was always the most genuine and helpful person in the community as far as I was concerned. Regarding the search efforts: He clearly touched a lot of people in this community in a very positive way, and for that reason he holds an important place in a lot of your hearts, but I think it's worth noting and respecting that he didn't have any intention of being found. He chose to stop participating in this community, he didn't give ANYONE (as far as I know) any contact information, and he did say goodbye. He moved on. A common reaction I see is that people say "You don't just leave a community of people who care about you and sever all communication; something terrible must have happened to him, there's no reason why he should have done what he did." But it's really more accurate to say that we don't UNDERSTAND why he did what he did. Different people can have very different values and motivations and while it disappoints us not to have Gray anymore, I think we might do best to simply be thankful for the time we had with him. You may remember that he always did keep a certain degree of separation from the community that many of us do not. Some people in this community, myself included, have forged geographically distant friendships that we hold very dear and could never walk away from permanently, but every single one of us manages our own balance between the time we devote to our OCR "internet lives" and our "real lives." Gray was never particularly inclined to mix one with the other, which so many of us have difficulty accepting or understanding because for some of us there's such a great degree of overlap. Try not to feel slighted or insulted, but instead feel grateful that he chose to give us so much of his time and his art. And please try not to allow yourselves to worry about his health or safety. As hard as it is to hear this, you need to realize that abduction, terminal affliction and catatonic depression are not the only reasons why someone might decide to leave OCRemix permanently. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if at some point down the line we learned that he has devoted his life to some Tibetan monastic order and he's living in a temple on the top of a mountain somewhere. J

The bass is pretty loud, maybe just trim out some of the low end. Other than that, the two things that strike me are that the beat is quite consistent...too much so in that I'm sick of it by the end of a relatively short song. I think the real problem is that the dynamic of the tune is pretty constant. Also, you need an ending. Good stuff though, nice synths, good arrangement ideas. NO

The lead is definitely thick in the low end for this genre. Dry as a bone too. The lead is generally too loud. Serious medleytits. Every tune you do is first of all not terribly altered from the original, and second of all, there's no overall dynamic binding the tunes. NO

Bass entrance at 1:00 is really muddy. There's already a decent amount of low frequency energy when the bass comes in, so there's no room down there. In fact, for the whole song, the pads in the back kept fighting the bass for space. I think this issue is significant and worth changing. I do like the composition and feel, but as far as arrangement, I'm not thrilled..I think it generally lacks direction. Lots of repetititon without expansion. NO

I'm graduating from Berklee this May, and I think it's an amazing school with great faculty. Since the online courses are so expensive, think hard about whether or not the class you're considering is one you could teach yourself given the right literature. For instance, a pro-tools course would probably be something you could teach yourself pretty easily, whereas for something like mixing you could stand to benefit more from the interaction with qualified faculty.

No offense taken. This was the first thing I ever produced/recorded/whatever. I didn't know jack shit about...well pretty much anything. But why bother writing a review about it?

You've got a distinct Opeth-type thing going on here with the acoustic intro leading into metal. Awesome writing in terms of melodic expansion and interpretation. Right off the bat I dig that you took the melody for your own after the initial hook. The arrangement just continues up and away managing to escalate and escalate and never get boring. I'm amazed at the energy that is sustained. On the technical end, this is easily the slickest metal production we have on OCRemix. The mixing is great, the guitars sound great. If I must complain about something, the kick sounds just a bit papery, even for the genre. I'd dip out a little bit at 1kHz and maybe boost a bit around 3kHz. Sounds like you used a Beta52 perhaps just a bit too close to the head. The other thing is that I might like to hear a bit more reverb on the snare. But really these things are just nitpicks. YES

Why does the snare rattle whenever there's a kick? These are samples..oooh that's the reverb. I recommend changing that to something more natural sounding, maybe a bit darker. The guitar sounds really good, and there are some interesting production tricks..ear candy like panning a delay hard opposite the dry signal. My primary thoughts here are that the guitar is really good, but the arrangement of the track is kind of lackluster and meandering. It's a rather generic backdrop for four minutes of guitar wankery. I think you could tone down the wankery a bit and look at the track as a whole in terms of dynamics and progression. NO

I really dig the highly processed brass around 1:40. Wasn't expecting that, and it added some really memorable texture. The most important comment I have is that arrangement-wise, the second half of the tune is much more interesting than the first. I'm not the first to mention that the first half is pretty conservative, but It sounds to me like the second half of the song is just the beginning of what it should be. You start picking up steam and then it's over. Any intention of elaborating on what you have here? NO

The instruments you use are very harsh. The saw lead with the heavy-handed reverb should really be toned down. The pads are similarly bright and lack subtlety. Try some intervals besides perfect fifths. Aside from that, the bass plays some really sour notes, and you really need an ending. NO

Some nice textures, but there really isnt enough attention paid to instrument ranges and harmonies. On the former, There's a lot of mud in the upper low end (think bass drum over low strings). This is exacerbated by the latter, in that fairly often there are clashing notes played which create a sonic and harmonic smear. (i.e. 1:13) Aside from that I agree with Shariq that the harmonic rhythm is awfully plodding and consistent. NO

You're right. Edited.

In my opinion, there isn't a single song on the Pokemon soundtrack that's any good. The pokecenter theme is no exception. You were wise to try to change it up and make it unrecognizable, but when you're doing that, you might as well write a better melody and make it your own song. So the major issue with this tune is that it is..laid back. The problem with this is that it's pretty consistently laid back, and there's really no dynamic progression. When you consider that there's nothing memorable about the source, you're making it really hard for yourself to make a memorable remix. The vocoding was cool; maybe do more with that. NO

If you were going to take this in an ambient direction, I'd say you need more atmosphere and fewer perfect fifths. If you were going to take it in any other direction, I'd mention that perfect fifths are the ONLY harmonies you have in here. the textures are pretty cool, but you really need more going on one way or the other. NO

Well conceived, but I don't think the performance is really up to it. You use a lot of closed voicings and arpeggios, which makes the harmonies sound kind of muddy. Aside from that, there's really not enough rhythmic complexity here to make it interesting. You play almost all the chords on the 1 and maybe the 3 if we're lucky. Not bad, and it's nice, but you need to do a bit more to get the performance there. NO

There's really no arrangement here. It's just the original with string samples with some mistakes thrown in here and there. NO

Au contraire! Chastity and virginity are not one and the same! One may choose to become chaste at any point in time (e.g. a newly-anointed priest upon graduating from seminary). Your mother has notably and spectacularly opted out of such a choice.

Thus proving my point. It is not just idle speculation or hearsay on my part to furthermore assert that she has been unusually prolific in her horizontal exploits from that point up to as recently as last night.

I call into question both the validity of your conclusions and the chastity of your mother.

Are you sure?

I was ready to not like this mix listening to the intro, but I was pleasantly surprised at all the really interesting and unexpected turns this mix took. Not at all what I was expecting. Great juxtaposition of hard rock guitars and more spacey electronic elements. Well conceived and well executed. YES

NOTE: In spite of my reactionary hyperbole, I don't actually think this is a terrible piece by any stretch. I just don't think it's nearly as good as everyone else does. Please don't take it the wrong way. Groove bias, anyone? The first minute is repetitive and boring..very little going on besides the groove, and that clap is really...tiresome. 1:00 to 1:30 is much better than the first minute. Some actual ideas introduced, although I can't identify their relationship to the original. Once the melody comes in at 1:45, I'm bored again. There's nothing going on besides a bare-bones interpretation of the source. Finally at 2:10 we have some creative interpretation of the bridge. Thirty seconds of real,respectable arrangement. Come to think of it, the other interesting part of this song is the other bridge at around 3:00. So I'm counting two 20-second bridges and an unrelated section towards the beginning that I count as good arrangement, punctuating 2:30 of groove plus little else. The production here is definitely solid, and the bridges introduce some really interesting ideas that I wish were better contextualized, but a majority of the track (~65%) is devoid of anything remotely interesting going on. I have no idea what you guys are all creaming your pants about. "Instant Classic?" are you kidding me? NO

I love the low string entrance at around :40. very dramatic. I feel like the first minute and a half of this tune would be a great intro to a more developed song. I'm thinking percussion of some kind. As it is, it never really picks up steam. There's no beat anywhere, and there needs to be. Keep the first minute and a half, ditch everything else, and create a more exciting body. NO

Simplicity is not in and of itself a bad thing. Trouble with simplicity is that when there isn't a lot going on, what's there needs to be that much better. I think the second half of this remix is substantially more interesting than the first. It starts to get interesting. I'd make the first part of the mix shorter and develop the second more. You also really need a bass instrument here to fill it out. NO