Vig

I'm hearing more than enough of the source here. The mix is clear, crisp, and beautiful. The interpretation is creative but organic. The only complaint I have is that the ending is a little bit quick. Beautiful YES

Really too washy. The lead is buried. Gotta bring some brightness and personality into the leads. Those pads are taking too much space. Aside from that, try not to repeat things quite so much. NO

Wow that bus compression is out of control. Larry's right; there's just too much fighting for space. The arrangement is cool if not particularly unique, but the sound choice and mixing need some help. NO

The only word I understand in this thread title is "Jetman," and even that's kinda iffy. The source is pretty cool. Ah wow ballsy guitars. The arrangement is pretty conservative, but it's tight. I really can't say too much. Not many risks taken, but solid execution. YES

Very groovy and atmospheric. The string gets a bit washy, but I like the tone of it. Maybe just pull it down a bit. Huh. The beginning was definitely reminiscent of the source, though I really don't hear the melody until 2:30. am I missing it? The leads are pretty flat and unmoving. The groove and atmosphere are great, but the melodic elements just aren't there. NO

One of my favorite remixes is of this source. There's a lot of room for interpretation. The interpretation here is pretty good, but the mixing is really bad. I think I'm hearing 60Hz guitar hum through the whole song. The intro is extremely quiet. I like the vocal tone, but the vocal manages to be loud without being understandable. Cool arrangement for sure, but it needs lots of cleanup. NO

Now featuring bullets! -I like the track's energy. -Those chord stabs really need some delay. -The bridge is lacking in energy, maybe just bring up the leads. -Cool that you programmed the drop, but it's a bit tangential, add some transitions! As is, it doesn't fit into the track very well. -You don't really have an ending. You kind of just got tired of making song. Solid start! NO

When this game was being marketed I believed the title was "Salsa Frontier." True story. Anyway, this remix is pretty smooth, but it lacks a central idea or concept that makes it unique and interesting. It's pretty chill. Aside from that that, it doesn't take any particular strides away from the source. NO

Wow that groove comes in so sweet, why did you then bring in trombone, and strings? They don't fit the groove at all, they just sound awkward. The intro is very moody. but everything else is i'm sorry to say extremely clumsy. Scrap all that stuff and start again focusing on the atmosphere. NO

I don't think the samples were the biggest problem here. I think bland part writing is a bigger fault. The source you're working with is hardly riveting or memorable, so why remix this track at all? The point is to inject some life into it, and this remix is way too straightforward to prop up a weak source. NO

Awfully sparse. I don't think the drums are too loud so much as there's really nothing else to fill up the space. Then it goes from chill to comatose at 2:15. I think the final section is the absolute minimum energy level you should have in this track. So far this track needs a direction. Keep at it. NO

Amon Tobin is a beast, but when I checked out the sources I was like "nah, you can't remix this stuff.." But I think I've been pleasantly surprised. For the record, I don't think that a drum beat alone is adequate to be the lone source for an OCRemix. However, this track brings in other albeit minimal harmonic sources, to which the drum groove adds a bit of complimentary familiarity. I'm satisfied by the source usage here. Aside from that semantic argument, this is obviously a really cool track, great processing, great atmosphere. Plenty to like, and well-integrated source usage. YES

Some cool energy here in the bass. Sometimes however this gets in the way of the melody. I'm finding the melody extremely unmemorable and this may be in part because the bass is pretty consistently stepping on the toes of the lead. Could be the writing, or the sound design. The pads, while they add atmosphere, they create a lot of wash and take away the mix's focus. Harmonically what's going on at 1:21? It sounds like either the chord held too long, or is wrong, or the lead was just noodling a bit too much. Some cool elements, but you need to address the sonic clarity and focus of the track. NO

Cool sonics, you do lo-fi pretty well. The arrangement is pretty conservative. Much of the time it sounds like what the original would have sounded like without the 8-bit limitation. However, the adaptation is done very well, and various melodic flourishes do push it out of the range of what I would call a straight-up cover. The organic elements (piano, guitar) are pretty well implemented, though they seem out of place and unnecessary within the context of the track. They aren't terrible or anything, but I don't think they need to be there. Pretty solid mix though overall. YES

The main problem with this track is that it's rhythmically plodding. Bass and chords hitting only on the 1 is not very interesting, especially at this tempo. And the tempo is way too slow for the melody. There's just no groove and no movement. Sorry, but you gotta crank it up. NO

The intro's pretty long, and it really doesn't do too much to draw me in. The source doesn't come in till 1:30, nearly halfway through, and there's just nothing interesting enough going on before then to keep me listening. The first "drop" is hard to figure out. The sidechaining is drastic, but the synths are never really that dense, big, or interesting. Part of the problem is that on the 4th beat of the measure they drop out in favor of the snare hit, which I think hurts the momentum of the track. This track is definitely not a bad house entry, but I feel like it doesn't have competitive enough sounds or unique enough writing to bring it over the top. NO

I see a lot of potential in you from this track. The arrangement shows a lot of creativity and taste. The structure of the track is awesome, the dynamics are great, you've got fantastic melodic and harmonic ideas. Unfortunately there are three issues with this track that bring it down a lot. 1. The rhythm section writing is seriously lacking in energy. The bass does almost nothing other than sustained whole notes. Same issue with the chordal instruments. This seriously drains the track of momentum and rhythmic energy. 2. Perhaps as a function of the above, the sections can become quite repetitive. In a given section, the melody tends to be the only thing changing over a looped rhythm section, which just isn't interesting. 3. your sounds are uninspired. Not a whole lot of personality in the sounds you're using. I forsee great things from you in the future. NO

Okay, looking back at my prior vote, I thought you needed a better recording, and a more interesting middle section. Lets hear it. Um...Your track is completely out of phase. Sum to mono. it's almost completely gone. Easily fixed, but definitely needs to be fixed.

Nice. Great concept and arrangement. The biggest flaw in this track is the performance. More precisely, the timing...the rhythm guitars are WAY ahead of the beat at :30 and various sections thereafter. It's not constant, but on two or three sections it's extremely noticeable. The only other issue I have is a mixing problem: the strings are extremely shrill on the higher notes. Check out 2:05. That violin passage has some frequencies poking out at what turns out to be about 12kHz and above. It sounds first of all unnatural, but more importantly at least to me, it's pretty painful. I'm so tempted to pass it because don't get me wrong, this track IS sick, but those two issues are to me so glaring, and also so easy to fix, that I couldn't just let it slide. NO (resub)

I'm not super crazy about the hi hat patterns. Throws me off. I'd love a simpler beat in general. The lead at 2:00 is flat. Everything else about the track is pretty tight, so I'm not too mad. YES

What he said. It's short. The whole track sounds like an intro. On the technical end, I'd suggest cleaning up the strings a bit; they step on themselves a lot and create a bit of a mess. Shorter release, faster attack? Try some stuff. NO

The intro is a bit slow but once the groove picks up it's pretty cool. I think sonically you manage to leave space without it sounding too empty. The groove is pretty choppy and busy at times, I think you could have benefitted from simplifying it, maybe a four on floor kick accentuated by syncopated rhythms on a snare which are currently played by the kick. The rhythm just gets a bit lost and I can't follow along that easily. The main issue I have is all the tempo changes just don't work for this piece. It wants to be a groovy dance sort of track, but when the tempo keeps jumping around it messes with the energy. NO

Larry what exactly is a "phasing electrosynth"? I'll agree the lead is a bit generic and unpleasant. The mix is quite muddy, the pads, bass and leads all take up lots of lowmidrange, so the track is muddy. On the arrangement side there are some reharmonization choices which while cool on their own, are not consistent with what's going on in the leads. NO

Thoughts on the mix: I think the guitars sound pretty good, and the drums sit pretty nicely. I think the lead guitar is a bit buried, and given the loudness of the rhythm guitars, it gets a bit cluttered when you have a lead and countermelody going on simultaneously. They just get lost in the rhythm guitars. Arrangement wise, I really like the second half of the track better. In the first half it seems like you came up with the chord progression randomly. You switch chords at strange times, and there doesn't seem to be any particular reason behind the reharmonization. A perfect example of this would be the verse at around 1:00. Some of the leads are a bit out of place. I like the shamisen or whatever it is, but it's a bit dry and transient. Could use some limiting and reverb. The synth lead around 2:30 is similarly too dry. However on the whole the track has a lot of great energy, and for some reason all the stuff that bugs me in the first half isn't a problem in the second half. Close. YES

YES. The source is as follows. E/B, B+7, B-7, B+7. This ultimately can be boiled down to I - V repeating where the dominant is embellished for an extra bar. The remix focuses on E-, B+7, B-7, B7. For those counting, that's exactly two notes changed between the original and the remix. Harmonically speaking. The trick here is that there's no melody in the original, so how do we decide if this is actually based off the original, or just uses similar rhythmic and melodic motives. In my opinion there is no doubt that this track is of the source. The half-step motive which more or less defines the source is present throughout. The only real melodic difference is that the remixer discarded the top voice from the original (G#, G, F#, G) and has instead focused on the inner voice (E, D#, D, D#) which WAS present in the source, verbatim. The source is there. It's there throughout. He just altered two chords ever so slightly, and didn't use the same voicings as the source. We generally agree that this particular source should be eligible for OCRemix, but if that is so, how else would we expect someone to remix it within our guidelines? If you think about it, in spite of excessive instrumentation, he really doesn't even introduce very much new melodic or harmonic content. It's all just extrapolation. There's no new B section or anything that he tacked on, there's maybe a countermelody and a solo. It's all just the source. Well done making something out of nothing without turning it into an original composition.