Vig

the airy instrument that arppegiates from the beggining is really pretty. The strings are also pretty, although the instruments seem to all be cluttered in the middle. the song is 2:30 in and it's been pretty repetitive up to this point. the drums drop out but there's still nothing new going on. it's like another introduction. The instrumentation and feel are nice, but there's really little to nothing going on in terms of arrangement. it's not enough to repeat the theme and occasionally drop out an instrument or two. lets hear some more ideas. NO

the piano is the main thing that kills this remix. The sequencing is harmonically and rhytmically simple. it makes the song sound childish. the leads interact very well, but the rhythm piano needs more complexity very badly. play around with syncopated rhythms and more complex chords. NO

i didnt think the instrumentation in and of itself was particularly thin, but i definately think the rhythm section was repetitive. the 3+3+2 gets really old really fast. The dynamic contrast is certainly nice, but i dont think it's enough. the loud sections really bore me. this is a tough call but i'm going to go with my gut. NO

Like shna said, the choirs are used to fill out the sound without actually doing anything interesting or complex. the choirs and strings are painfully simple. waay too many dotted half notes. like shna says, the dynamics are created by adding volume on the lines, not by adding any harmonic complexity. too simple. NO

I don't think i'm a sample whore, but lets face it: in a solo piano piece, the sample matters significantly more than if it were part of a larger band. That said, the piano sample irritates the hell out of me. The low end bleeds, and the sample itself sounds extraordinarily tinny to me. While the arrangement is certainly an improvement over previous submissions, i frankly dont see this as anything special. It's a pretty straightforward performance. The rhythms never get too creative, nor does the harmony. the arrangement does not repeat too much, but it never goes anywhere interesting. added to that, the pacing seems akward, as though it were overquantized or just stiffly played. this is particularly apparent in the ritards. This is certainly a step up from previous material, but i see it as firmly in the "mediocre" range and it's well below the OCR bar. NO

there's nothing wrong with the pads. the slow attack works fine. what doesnt work is the weak attack on the lead instrument. the lead itself is quiet and weak. the instrument is boring. there is very little texture in most of the instruments. the pads (first minute of the track) is all this song has going for it. the atmosphere works, but aside from that there's no arrangement and most of the instruments are clunky. NO

Yeah...my opinion remains the same. there are certainly some interesting things going on, but they are few and far between...the rest just seems like chaos with no purpose. I can certainly respect the complexity of some of the ideas, but it takes a lot to make a song like this work. as it is, i think this song still needs more direction...more of a method to the madness. still a NO.

this isnt bad or unenjoyable, but i feel that the song is too reliant on the drumloops and bass. too groove-reliant. the original is kind of unimportant and it's composed weakly. dont get me wrong, there are some great bits, like the brass at the end and in other places is really cool, but the mix as a whole fails to cohereantly sustain and develop ideas related to the sonic tune. more forethought in composition, please. NO

Guys, please reconsider this. The song is goofy and fun and entertaining, but it's nowhere near the bar in terms of arrangement, elaboration or creativity. This is very little more than the original with drums over it. the groove is incredibly consistent. it never changes, save an interlude and the end breaks. There's virtually no arrangement. the melody is pretty much the only thing distinguishing the sections. (again with the exceptions of the brief interlude and the end section). There's not nearly enough variation for an OCRemix. It has been the policy of this panel that a mix being enjoyable is not alone enough for it to pass. OCR has a high expectation of creativity, innovation and artistic excellence. As cute and fun as you guys think this mix is, it's clearly and markedly below where the bar should be, and where the bar has been in the past. No. I sincerely hope you three reconsider your votes. I understand that you enjoy this remix, and i'm not saying it isnt enjoyable, but I strongly believe that it is very important to maintain OCR's standards of excellence. This mix is a big step backwards from where the bar has been in the past ~1.5-2 years.

unmistakeably shnabubula. sam takes what is already a somewhat unusual song and turns it inside out. i dont know what to say specifically about this remix other than it's well-concieved, well executed, and quite powerful. Sam is doing a great service to the community by serving up such unconventional yet entertaining tracks. He challenges listeners to think about music in new ways, using near chaos to hilight convergent harmony. Great stuff. YES

this is an important mix in terms of the current position of the bar. There's nothing about this piece that is particularly ugly. the arrangement is in fact chock full of transitions and variation. However looking at the whole, this is not a strong remix. The instrumentation is quite bland. the groove is consistent. it's upbeat, but there's no hook, nothing catching my interest. Instrumental and key changes help it keep from getting repetitive, but there's no direction. in a 4 minute remix the melody plays what, twice? the rest is filled by a meandering rhythm section that has little, if anything to do with the original song, and certainly has no direction. Skip to any section of the song and it will be nice enough, but the track as a whole lacks direction and relevance. It's like a mazda miata or that blond chick you meet at the bar: Sure she's pretty, but there's nothing under the hood. add to this an incredibly weak ending and this seems like an obvious NO

The biggest problem with this mix is that the recording is really ungood. you used a mic and didnt maintain constant distance and yourvolume ranged greatly. This results in lots of bloom and crunch. it sounds really sloppy. Secondary to this problem is the fact that the arrangement is straightforward and sparse. NO

the first minute or so is strong but quite repetitive and dynamically flat. The second minute has the same problems. it's repetitive. and what do you know, the same problems exist in the third minute. there just isnt much going on here dynamically. I think a good start would be not relying on that african drum loop so much. You want your song to have lots of different colors. as it is, the whole track is pretty uniform. start with the drumloop. NO

Shna nailed it when he said that if your arrangement is going to be so sparse, you need rich sounds to make up for it. what's here is sparse, the instruments are unimpressive, and the arrangement barely exists, weighing in at a waifish 1:53. NO

This song is...hectic. the problem is the ryu theme is pretty irrelevant, and it makes the piece drag, in fact. The melody plays slowly over a frantic breakbeat. It actually gets pretty irritating. the mix is short, it doest have time to develop the multitude of ideas that are presented, and none of them feel relevant to the source tune. NO

Holy mother of cow. this is really messy. SPC with some aharmonic repetitive synthy stuff. This is just really sloppy and should have got the form letter. NO OVERRIDE

First of all, this mix is most definately different enough from his other mix of the same tune. I acknowledge Larry's reservations; indeed this song does more or less follow an ABA structure. There certainly could be more ideas being expressed in the song. However I disagree that the song is too repetitive. It's a straightforward pop song. There are three sections, and the first is similar to the third, but i think the short length of the track allows it to get away with this simple structure without being really repetitive. The arrangement is not well developed enough for this to be considered a really strong YES, and it would certainly be a NO if the production and execution werent so slick. but it's just good enough for me. YES

Now the kids today they listen to the rap music which gives them the brain damage. They're a hippin' and a hoppin' and a bippin' and a boppin', and they dont know what the jazz, is all about, ya see!?

drowning in reverb. the wierdness in the bass...so your polyphony is set to 1, and you're holding one note then hitting and releasing another one. it sounds reallly crappy because you didnt quantize it. The composition is missing chunks here and there...the arrangement is slapped together. the track is a mess. try to build a more solid foundation and do more than just repeat sections. NO

Fairly slick synthpop. good concise arrangement, not long enough to get boring. Pretty good production, nothing really obviously sloppy standing out. my gripe is that the vocoder and some of the leads sound a bit crunchy. this may be intentional, or it may not be. i think it's detrimental. but regardless, YES

maybe it's just my speakers, but the mix didnt sound muddy at all to me. The biggest problem with this mix in my opinion is that it's only 3:xx long, and it's just barely getting started by the time it ends. The song is somewhat repetitive, but it slowly builds through the whole song, so i dont hold the repetition against it in and of itself. unfortunately the mix ends way too soon. it ought to be twice as long. otherwise i dont see how any of these ideas could be developed adequately. NO

this is incredibly slick. There's a lot going on without the song getting too dense, there's dynamic variation, the instruments all sound beautiful. very solid stuff. This is a YES as soon as we get a reencode that is under the 6 meg limit.

There's very little to this remix. It's the wily theme. with drums and bass. for 2 minutes. No

i'm not down on the source as much as weed. i do tend to think the remix is more of an upgrade than any kind of interpretation. the horn hits are fucking hideous. ugh i can barely listen anymore. NO

The string attack really does hurt the mix...the dynamics are pretty well-done. however the strings on the whole arent used very well...lots of single-note longtones, not tons of harmony more complecated than triads. The result of this is that the song is somewhat harmonically dull...it plods along and there isnt too much color. i'd like to hear more interesting harmonies and the strings a bit better used. NO