ella guro

Always been a real big fan of the source tune. I find the synths to be kind of bland for the most part and I also like the tune better in 3/4. There are some neat parts though. The whole mix kind of whizzes and buzzes along like a well-oiled machine with a lot of composite parts all getting their say. Even if I find the sounds kind of bland I think the arrangement does a good job of exposing and exploiting their individual character. The section at the end where things start subdued go into a synth/drum spazzfest is cool. I dunno, this isn't really my style, but I think it's pretty well done overall. I'm generally not a fan of a melody like this being so chopped up and separated into so many different compartments like it is here, but that's more of a personal preference than anything else I suppose.

This one definitely gets more interesting as it moves on. It starts out as kind of a hi-fi videogamey throwback, which is a neat idea in itself. I agree with whoever said that the sounds are very genesis-like (the system, not the band!). I think the sound design in general is very good, for what the mix is trying to accomplish. I was pretty sure it was gonna coast on its groove till the end, which would have been fine if not super memorable for me, but Rellik really picks up the slack around the time the melody comes back in for a second time (around 1:50 or so) and runs with some very cool ideas. There's some subtle variations in the melody that fall into this crazy drum part. And then the cutting up effect that comes in here was really neat too, he managed to make it sound pretty unique and not cliche at all. I would've liked it if this gone on a little bit longer and had an actual ending, but as it is I think this is pretty darn cool.

Don't be scared, Mr. Sim! That piano at 1:37 is incredibly sparkly. I don't know how I feel about things that bright and sparkly. This didn't do much for me (probably just a style thing), but I thought it was done pretty well. The guitar tone is ok and the playing is fine (there's some neat parts that deviate from the original and it sounds like a natural progression rather than something slapped on). The production could be a little better but that's not really a big deal. It works well as kind of a cheesy symphonic rock track, which I think is what it's going for. Not my thing, but not bad by any means.

I love you, K. Praslowicz! Come back! This mix is great. The sounds are just right, 'cept for maybe the drums. Most instruments are also delightfully drenched in an ethereal sounding reverb. And the high king of the mix, as always, is K's guitar tone. The way the guitars are layered in this one is real nice. The part in the middle with those melting synths is also great. And then listen in the background when the melody part comes back in and the guitar crescendos gradually upward until coming into a solo. The sounds that this man has in his mixes always have a life of their own and are morphing in and out, like they're melting into each other some kind of dark world of human suffering soup. Or something. The arrangement doesn't go to amazing places, the coolness in this mix is the sounds and how they create a kind of unique, very visual world. And no one can do that like K Praslowicz can.

1GB ram FTW! I had to go listen to the source since I'm a butthead and never played FFIV. Interesting choice of a source, it's a really simple tune. Nice sounds. I actually kinda like this, especially right before the 3 minute mark with things all kinda sad and pianoy. RIGHT after that it feels like it deviates from the source a bit (basically keeping the progression but adding a melody that wasn't there before). That section is a bit too tentative for the big buildup that it was supposed to be and the samples show some of their weakness. I think it might be better if this section pushed farther, but then the mix just ends. So I agree that this is kind of undeveloped. But there are some really cool parts in the first 3 minutes, especially 2:00-3:00, so keep at it.

LousySpy, why did you change your name? You might have been a bad spy but you were a good remixer! And why aren't you submitting mixes anymore? This was on my first OCR mix cd back when I heard it in 2002. Those simple samples make me so happy each time I hear them. This is really what OCR and videogame music is all about. You're just some person sitting at your computer who doesn't have all the great tools at your disposal, you're just working with what you got. You can't try to ascend to the heavens and solve the mysteries of the universe with your sounds, but you want to inject as much feeling as you can with the limited tools that you have available, and maybe that's better in the end. There's not the extra super mastered super reverby dressing that would be on a mix like this these days, it's just a simple little concept that he takes and expands upon and puts some emotion into his simple little steel drum and flue and trumpet samples. The mix goes where it feels like it should go and then finishes when it feels like it should finish. A good-tasting, good-for-you mix.

BEST BEGINNING OF A MIX EVER. The beginning is maybe one of the most genius things I've ever heard in a piece of music. I'm being completely serious. Ok, you may say "what the hell are you talking about?" But bear with me for a second. I just wanna talk about the guts it takes to do what Mr. Ascher-Weiss has done in the first 20 seconds or so in this mix. You're trying to figure out how to do a cool an intro to a song, to really get people eased into what's coming up. Usually if you have lo-fi samples you try to conceal their ugliness as much as possible with reverb or other fx and having more stuff going on in the arrangement to hide some of the ugliness. There are certain standards of sound quality on OCR, and you know that people can be really ouchy about that. And at the very least you usually want to establish some kind of stable rhythmic backing so that it at least sounds like you have some skill and know what you're doing. This mix says a big "fuck you" to both of those and does the exact opposite. It isolates the two worst quality samples right at the beginning and makes them really rhythmically complex and unstable. And it's genius. It's genius because it's the best possible attention-grabbing thing that you could do, and it's also something that you would think no one in their right mind would ever do. I mean, why would you ever intentionally try to make stuff sound bad? But Sam does it here, and it works so well because he's patient. He knows what's coming and you don't, and he knows that you don't know so he exploits that as much as possible. It's tension and release, like what Vigilante said. He wants to draw people in before they get any kind of payoff. All this tension and release makes you feel like you've really gone somewhere and experienced something real and true. It may not have been the easiest experience to undertake, but you feel like you've really gone through something, and it makes you uneasy. But, as you realize later, it's a very moving sort of uneasiness. I talked to Sam about this mix recently and he told me the intro was kind of accidental. He said there was something really complicated going on in the beginning that he got so frustrated with, so he decided to take out everything except the drums and the bass. Happy accidents can be lead to genius ideas, and the beginning of this mix is a prime example. Also there is no way this would sound better with better samples. There's so much filtering and stuff going on, I don't even know what it would sound like. A lot different, that's for sure, and probably less good. Anyway...after a ton of listens this is undoubtedly one of my favorite mixes on the site. Not everyone's gonna like it, but for weird people like me, I need to hear stuff like this. It's like heroin, if heroin made me a better person after doing it. Forget about Sam's talent for a second, I wish people would take some more risks and push themselves as far as Sam has here. Cause that's what being an artist is about. Damn, that's what being a human is all about.

This track fucking rules! My favorite djp mix, even being only the 77th mix on the site. The amazing thing about this mix is that it has this really spastic percussion that's kind of this swirling industrial stew and even manages to throw in a slightly cheesy jazzy electric piano without ever taking away from the somber atmosphere. It even adds to it in a weird way! The sounds are also totally out-of-this-world great, especially that lead synth string/choir sound. DJP has done funky many times, but this is one of the times where he combines it really well with something else and it forms a crazy pseudo-genre. The production maybe isn't up to the standards of a lot of mixes today. Otherwise I got nothing else to say here 'cept this is a must hear.

I actually don't even remember this song from Banjo Kazooie, despite having played through the game twice and listening to the USF quite a bit! I don't want to sound too negative here, because I think this is well arranged and I like how the melody is dispersed through a lot of different instruments. I just don't like all that marcato violin/orchestra hit type stuff. Everything is so stiff and staccato. It feels like it lacks musicality and any kind of phrasing. Not that phrasing is really necessary for a lot of electronic music, but when you're using a lot of instrumental samples, it comes off as kinda odd, especially when the note length of a lot of the samples is so short. The combination of all these different kinds of instruments sharing the melody mixed with the very staccato in-your-face nature of this just doesn't really do it for me at all. Sorry, man

Some intonation issues with the cello like people mentioned, but those aren't really a big deal. It is a bit muffled though, and I'm not sure about the panning on it. I guess it gives it a more distanced feel, which is interesting. This sticks pretty close to the original except the section in the middle that I like a lot (especially around 1:50). I kind of wish that part was taken further, actually...the mix feels really short to me, even at 3:38. The whole thing has kind of a sparse, disjointed feeling to it that I like. I do sometimes feel like the different instruments are playing in isolation from each other (which could partially have to do with the panning) and not really feeding off each other as much as they could. I don't really think that's an intentional effect either, cause if it was it could be exploited more. I also feel like arrangement-wise could stand to do a little bit more in the parts with the melody, but at least the instrumentation is pretty well done there. I think I like this overall. I still feel like it could've done more, but it's still not bad work. I agree with what DA said about it being tentative and lacking some confidence in places, but that's something that has just more to do with having not as much experience than anything else.

This is one of my favorite vg tunes. This obviously sounds real good and I think the instrumentation is great. I have no complaints about the style either. I think the arrangement is kind of lazy though. The first phrase of the melody is repeated way way too often, especially in the second section. It's just the same phrase over and over with some soloing interspersed. It gets really tiring and makes the mix feel kinda empty and unfinished, like Josh was on autopilot. After some cool things going on in the first couple parts of the mix, it kind of floats into directionlessness for too long without accomplishing anything. These ideas have a lot of potential and I know Josh is perfectly capable of pushing them lot farther too, which is what makes it so disappointing.

Ok, this is one of those mixes that would be easily rejected these days. Barely anything is done to the source at all aside from adding a drumloop and maybe a few other minor things. The sounds are well chosen, but other than that this really is just a slightly updated version of the source tune. But I will say that back when I first came to this site in 2002, I was so thrilled to hear this song. Lemmings is one of my favorite game soundtracks ever and this just happened to be my favorite tune from it. I nearly wet myself when I heard the first notes of this. That source tune makes me feel 300 kinds of good and this mix only enhanced that effect. It doesn't do anything creative with the source, sure, but it does manage to keep the spirit of the game 100% intact, which is admirable in its own way. Sometimes I feel like mixers these days (in an effort to be creative) kind of chop-up the source tunes to the point where it takes away some of its uniqueness and spirit that made it appealing in the first place. Obviously you shouldn't have to do next to no arrangement to keep the spirit of the original, I just think that there is merit in capturing the feeling of the game that you're mixing (which is the one thing this mix does well). But anyway, this is a happy mix and I'm glad it's still on here even if it's not close to what the standards are these days.

This theme was the only thing I liked about Super Ghouls and Ghosts. That game was beyond impossible. I've had this mix since way back when. The screaming lead is really cool and there are some great filtering fx on the drums. I wish there was a bit more going on arrangement-wise when the main part of the melody is playing, but I think the b-section with the organ and keyboard is great and the sudden turn towards the somber at the end is probably my favorite part of the mix (I especially love that weird conveyor belt sound in the background). It's not a mindblowing opus, but it's a fun mix anyway and worth a listen like most of djp's earlier mixes.

This sounds like a lot of fun. I'll give it a shot and see if I can't at least get to 50 this month.

CONGRATS to Neko and Ash! Have fun, kids! SRY I can't come

That's when I thought when I first heard this. I doubt it's intentional (I don't think Sam is really a fan of Vince Guaraldi), but it's still cool. This may not have the depth of some of Sam's other stuff, but it's a very satisfying and nostalgic mix and I still like it a lot 4 years after the first time I heard it. He also recorded some other little Earthbound snippets on piano the day he recorded this mix that I don't think are available anywhere. I'm gonna ask him if it's ok if I upload them so people can hear them. EDIT: here's the link: http://www.divshare.com/download/9461711-78c

This is one of my favorite Mazedude mixes. I love how it starts out pretty dark and freaky, with things kind of all over the place and out of tune and then they just kinda of falls into place gradually. By the time you get to the second part of the melody, things have turned pretty upbeat (thankfully still keeping their super weirdness intact) and somehow he manages to use some of the most ultra-cheesy sax riffs I've ever heard and make them work. It's kind of uplifting in a strange way. Also I love those continuous wobbly percussive sounds, makes it sound like you're constantly bouncing off something rubbery. Great stuff. We could use more Mario Kart remixes.

The part at around 3:45 where everything sounds like it's gonna fall apart and then sort of falls back in place is really, really cool. I feel like a lot of mixes are so tightly controlled that they give up the ability to ebb and flow like that. Moments like that make the whole mix a lot more affecting in the end. I also can't say why the kinda cheesy and unprocessed music box and pan flute samples work, but I think they do. Putting lots of reverb or other kind processing on them might take away from the kind of ramshackle vibe created by the detuned guitar. I think Nobbynob is right that they could probably use a little volume fluctuation, though. Great mix! I hope the controversy about this mix in the panel hasn't discouraged zyko or others from submitting more stuff like this.

I just wanna clarify that I think this is a good idea too, and I'm all for it getting implemented in some way. And I agree 100% about being open for improvement and being open-minded as possible. I mainly just wanted to point out that OCR can't fulfill every need of the community, nor should it have to. I think it's better to work in conjunction with other places that can fulfill those other needs instead of trying to have this site do everything.

I feel like if VGMix or another site could accomplish what VGMix2 originally set out to do, it would be doing something that maybe OCR isn't capable of doing for a couple of reasons: 1) There's a certain subset of people in the community who, (like you said) for whatever reason, aren't involved in OCR and it brings those people on board. It also makes them more accessible to the rest of the community, especially people who haven't been around as long. I think that's important because it introduces more variety of points of view into the community, variety which might not be coming into the mix otherwise. 2) The way VGMix2 was set up (or at least supposed to be set up) was specifically on the artist and gave little more incentive for people to give/get feedback and improve their mixes. OCR has always seemed a bit more organized and listener-oriented. The Workshop forums can do that over here, but there isn't an incentive built into to the way the site works, and there are a lot of mixes posted there so there's still limited amount of people who read and comment on them. Also, by limiting it so that you could only post 1 mix every two weeks, VGMix gave each individual mix a little bit more of a spotlight. OCR could certainly have an incentive system like that and find a way to get more people checking the Workshop forums. And it could find a way to more greatly separate and spotlight completed mixes from the works and progress, it's just that it might be hard to have all that exist without fundamentally altering the site. Now I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any improvements made to the site or that they wouldn't work, just that it might not be realistic to assume that OCR could meet all the expectations of the things a site like VGMix used to do. I think it's very reasonable to try to weigh in what OCR is capable of doing well ("doing well" is the key phrase here) and stay true to that as much as possible. Also as a side note 'cause a few people in the thread talked about this: I don't think that a lot of additional remix sites will split the community. Certainly when VgMix1/VgMix2 was around there were people who only went there and people who only came here, but my impression is that many many people used both sites. If someone can create a site that has an interesting idea behind it and a solid base of users, I think that only helps the community. Maybe, like djp said, if they work well they can be integrated into OCR in some way? And even if not it's good for the community to have them around. But either way, OCR is plenty established already for something to steal its thunder.

I uploaded the expanded version to some temporary webspace if you wanna hear it: http://www.mediafire.com/?6s69h6mu2k9m2xv It should be up there for awhile, at least. edit: link should be working now.

The Magic of Scheherezade for the NES.

I was unsuprisingly way off for the quarter finals this month, but I have something uploaded in the "experimental" section for next month. My artist name is "The Unidentified Flavors".

I don't know if any other remixers feel this way about their stuff, but I personally object to the classification of any of my mixes under a specific genre. A lot of the reason I make music is to get a sound I find interesting or unusual, the purpose being to not conform to the rules of any set genre. The idea of someone else putting a label on it makes me really uncomfortable and seems like it might encourage more remixers to conform to a specific genre instead of developing their own ideas, which I think is very counterproductive. I know this thing is just a supplement to make it easier for listeners, but I still find it unsettling as an artist and therefore I can't say that support it at all.

This is the most retarded thread I have ever read (no offense to retarded people, they don't deserve to be lumped in with this thread). Maybe it's just me, I find it highly improbably that a very popular "indie" band would enlist someone to advertise for them on the OCR forums.