Liontamer

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Sounds like the intro may be directly sampling the original audio, not just the melody but the ambiance. I'm definitely frowning on this so far, because this doesn't readily display enough original ideas/contributions to stand apart enough from the original song, and it's leaning on the direct audio sampling hard, but we'll see where this goes. OK, so this is definitely sampling the original audio very heavily, just with some of the SPC channels turned off and the speed slowed down. Finally at :59, we get some original instrumentation added to supplement all that. The various new parts added in at 1:00 are fighting to be heard until 1:40, so the mixing doesn't make much sense. Also, the lead from :59-1:40 is arranged, but it's repeating a lot, like there are no other ideas for the melody. Next section at 1:40's just more sampling from the original audio, plus beats. The dry kick/clap pattern quickly became monotonous, so I was glad when it dropped around 2:11. Weird, abrupt transition at 2:21, but we'll see where this goes as well. 2:50 shifted back to the source melody, finally for the first time without direct audio sampling behind it. The increase in intensity at 2:50 was noted, but the soundscape never sounds sharp and the various synths just aren't mixed well; the lead is just abrasive and loud, yet also somewhat struggling to be fully heard vs. the other parts here, just like from 1:00-1:40. The effects tended to muddy up the soundscape, and while the surrounding writing did change around the lead, the lead just repeated over and over again from :59-1:40 and 2:50-3:51, and it got old. Production-wise, clean up the soundscape some and properly balance the parts so the lead is truly the lead and the supporting writing supplements that instead of mushing together with the lead in the same frequency range. Arrangement-wise, reduce the sampling of the original audio and see if there are other ways to explore the theme, since there was too much leaning on that one 9-second loop of the melody. Interesting approach, Lion, it's just not cohesive yet. NO

In the attempt to give the piano sound some depth and room ambiance, I thought the soundscape sounded needlessly muffly; it wasn't a dealbreaker on its own. During the flourish, the higher notes from :34-:39 were the first big indication that the sequencing was too rigid. :56-1:07, 1:19-1:36 & 1:50-2:14 in particular sounded very blocky, and really exposed the sample. Actually, 2:18-2:33's exposed as well, 2:50-2:54 is egregious.... OK, so basically the entirely of the track suffers from this, as I listen on. Anything softer like 3:01-3:12 ends up sounding less exposed, but really the whole thing's way too tightly timed. Well, the arrangement is structurally conservative, but certainly interpretive; easy pass on that level. However, we'll never pass something with rigid timing like this vis a vis our current production standards. MikeDubs, my man, this sounds like a mess. Some YouTube n00b commenter with no ear could claim this sounds great, and get swept up in the nostalgia, but this sounds robotic and devoid of life, which undermines a strong arrangement. The piano lacks body and realism, the dynamics are much flatter than the writing intended. Sorry to seem curt, that's just how internet comments look when you can't hear any emotional context. The arrangement is strong, but the sequencing/timing kills this dead, and you're much more talented than that just based on the Mega Man Harry Potter-esque arrangement of yours that we approved. Like Chimpa and Emu have said, you need to adjust timings here to achieve a reasonably realistic/humanized feel to this. On the orchestration side, you've seemingly got things on lock as far as achieving a reasonably realistic sound. You're need that same standard when it comes to solo piano. It's been a while since you've submitted this, so if you haven't improved how you use these samples since then, create a thread in the Music Composition & Production forum, name it "NEED HELP: Realistic sound using Cinesamples Piano in Blue", link this arrangement as an example, and see if anyone can give you more targeted advice. NO (resubmit)

IMO, the vocal performance is solid enough; I get where Chimpa's coming from, but I didn't feel they were too pitchy or nasally in any major way. I did agree though that the vocals are just way too dry at :17. You don't have to produce your vocals like Malukah, but the vocals have no body to them, so the track sounds empty. Nice sound to the guitar at :51. The whole instrumental performance is good, and the overall interpretation of the source is fun, like a bar song (though it doesn't have that ambiance). The airier sound to the vocals at :09 & 1:34 was better, and though I hear what you're going for in terms of them sounding far away, I felt the placement was TOO distant and should have been louder there. Yeah, gotta agree with the others that the dryness leaves this feeling spartan. I don't think you necessarily need to add any other instrumentation, but you do need to fill out the soundscape fully. Good stuff so far though, Riccardo. I unfortunately don't have vocal production experience, but if you post your track at the Workshop forums, you may be able to get some more feedback and direct advice on that level. If you're willing to revisit this after so long, perhaps you can tweak this to where everything has more body to it. NO (resubmit)

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Nice sound to start; good guitar tone, and good pads. Kick drums at :19 certainly have a lot of punch; maybe too much. Really loving the relaxed feel of this genre adaptation already. Texture got cluttered at :57 with the electric guitar coming in. IMO, the guitar from :57-1:34 (while it's performed excellently) was mixed too loudly when it was clearly a supporting item that was adding body and should have played second fiddle to the melody. The mixing made more sense when the lead guitar actually took over as lead at 1:34 for the wholly original section. I wrote these criticisms before reading Chimpa's comments, so I'm glad we're on the same page. It's nothing that put the piece in any danger of not passing, so it's just an observation. The energy and soloing from 1:33-2:18 was beast, and it could be a lot of folks favorite part within an abundance of great sections. Nice dropoff at 2:12 back to the more ethereal soundscape; the transitions flow so smoothly and click so well here. I thought around 2:40 things should have started picking up a little quicker, but it's certainly no big deal; I see exactly how James is working this, giving the sparse section room to breathe and enough time to create dynamic contrast with the rebuild after it. Same mixing issue as :57-1:34 from 3:46-4:24 where the backing guitar is too upfront and creates mud/clutter; everything would have been clicking on all cylinders if that aspect was tweaked. Also, some more high-end clarity across the piece would have let this shine more, so that's unfortunate. Otherwise, good intensity, dynamic contrast, and performances! Like Chimpa, I would have like some mixing adjustments to this, but it's solid nonetheless; just an excellent, personalized rock cover. I know that Ben Prunty's wanted someone to get FTL represented here for a while, so after all of the awesome things Ben said about OCR with his Metroid Prime submission, I'm glad we could finally have his original work represented on the site. I'm sure he's heard & enjoyed this great piece from the great music video, so it's fitting to have him represented as a composer with an excellent interpretation like Little V's. Welcome aboard, James! YES

Life does not work that way. Anyway, folks, definitely feel free to help out Air3s, he's extremely talented. If he doesn't deserve your vote, just don't give it to him, but show some love if he deserves it within the pool of what you're voting on.

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Just sanity-checking the source tune usage: 04.5-:44.5, 1:29.5-2:09.5 = 80 seconds or 54.4% overt source usage The mixing's rough in that you can't distinguish much of the supporting instrumentation (except the percussion, which sounds solid). There's string writing in there... somewhere... in the background, but it's trampled on by the guitar chugs. The string articulations sounded pretty unrealistic from what I could make out, so it's possble cleaning this up would expose the samples more, but you're going to have to improve the string realism if that's the case. When the source melody arrived again at 1:29, I wish the presentation had been more differentiated from the first time around; for example, the (extremely muddy, barely audible) string accents were exactly the same. Regardless though, even though the track was short, the treatment of the source tune was personalized well enough with the added part-writing and live guitar performance. Even if more melodic interpretation could have been included, the expansion of the parts surrounding the melody helped, plus the original sections connected seamlessly with the Wily theme. You just need to reduce the background clutter here while preserving the power, so that this isn't mainly just the lead guitar and background chugs. And just noting I didn't even read the other votes until I wrote everything above, so we're all hearing the same issues and praising the same things. Hopefully, you choose to come back to this one and give it the production tweaks it needs so we can post it. Great start, Juha! Even if this mix doesn't go up in some form, you definitely have what it takes to get a piece approved, so don't give up! NO (resubmit)

With the new forums in place, I updated the forum links and also clarified the statement on how voting works: Decisions on submissions forwarded to the panel are reached by a majority of a panel quorum; a unanimous vote will be closed after three negative votes or four positive votes. A split decision will be closed after a difference of three votes (e.g. 5 YES's vs. 2 NO's), or extended to a majority vote at the request of a judge. In addition to his power to veto any submission regardless of the panel's decision, djpretzel may also serve as a tiebreaker during particularly divisive decisions. Generally speaking, the order in which the panel hears a piece shouldn't matter too much, because There have been times where decisions initially going one way have flipped to the other result, but usually by the time 3 judges have heard something, if someone was going to dissent, they would have. For some unanimous decisions, I've sometimes asked for an extra vote due to not being sure if someone else would dissent or not. If a vote is very close, we can have most or all of the judges vote, in case there are enough votes remaining to change the decision; If an artist or the community strongly disagrees with a NO decision and feels it went the wrong way, we'll revisit it. By being willing to take all of those steps, we try to have a system where the order of voting shouldn't affect the outcome, and if a mistake appears to be made, we'll re-assess it.

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I would call your track an original piece with a similar style and instrumentation to "Europe" from Terranigma. A "remix" typically samples the audio of the original song. An "arrangement" or "cover" are the same thing, which is an adaptation of a composition to new instrumentation and/or a new genre, regardless of the level of interpretation, and typically does not rely upon the use of the original song's audio. Arrangements/covers can be conservative OR liberal. Very conservative arrangements retain the notes, tempo, rhythm, key and/or mood as the original song. Arrangements that are more liberal/transformative change several or all of those aspects, often drastically, and also can include new original part-writing not found in the original composition. e.g. Coldplay's "Talk" (2005) ...is an arrangement of... Kraftwerk's "Computer Love" (1981) When we say "OC ReMix", they're actually not "remixes" (lowercase), it's just a brand name for "transformative video game music arrangement". Some OC ReMixes are more conservative than others when it comes to the level of interpretation, but many OC ReMixes are liberal arrangements, which is on purpose. We don't require our arrangements to be "true to the original"; they can be, but it's not necessary, and we feel it's creatively limiting. Nowadays, "remix" has incorrectly become shorthand for any different version of a song, so most people just call anything that is an arrangement/cover a "remix". Even here, we do it. (Capitalizing "ReMix" takes effort we're not all willing to give. ) But if there's no original audio being sampled, it's actually an arrangement and not a remix.

No need for a source breakdown on this, it's all very straightforward usage of the two themes, with "Waterfall" basically everywhere except "Jungle" used from 1:42-2:21. Soundscape was already pretty cluttered at :11, but little did I know... I'll just be honest, a lot of this sounded like mud. For example, the accenting string work got buried in the background from :37-:47 & 1:06-1:39; it might as well have not been there. I can pick out the bassline, but that's also pretty buried. The lead brass from 1:17-1:37 should have stood out more, but it's competing with the strings, electric guitar, and bassline, and nothing stands out as a result. Nice "Jungle" theme usage from 1:42-2:21 to change the tone and energy level of the piece, before going back to "Waterfall" at 2:21. What can you say, the arrangement is intense, the instrumentation was very expansive, and the delivery was very personalized. Small detail but the way the final note faded out at 3:11 was WAY TOO FAST, c'mon. I literally said "What are you doing?" at my screen. Bah. :-/ If you can fix that, do it. OK, so when I walked into this decision thread, this had a lot of things going for it. Not that I'm walking into with bias, but just acknowledging that this had... 1) one YES vote already laid down 2) Hakštok and Sixto involved 3) it's Contra ... I was primed to think this was a pass. If this were JUST about arrangement and not about reasonable production, I would have went YES. But this mixing is definitely very muddy, with 1:17-1:37 & 2:13-3:10 being the worst offenders. There's just too many areas where instruments bleed together and wash out. Basically, you need to go back to this, rework every section that has electric guitar in it and clean up the densest sections. Awesome arrangement that needs another pass at the mixing. I may be the outlier, but if it passes as is, it'll definitely be something where Jorrith looks back later on and realizes this mixing job underminded this otherwise-impressive, hard-hitting collaboration. NO (refine/resubmit)

Nearly the entire piece refers to the source, so no source usage tracking was needed. Yay for me! Opens pretty similar in structure to the original, though personalized with the instrumentation. 1:37.5-3:31 has some very liberal treatment of the source over top of an ever-present beat pattern taken directly from the original bassline of 1:37-1:52. Luckily, that bassline pattern Joe mirrored wasn't heavily changed, so I didn't need to stopwatch the leading stuff on top of it. I thought the ending section at 3:31 lacked focus, so I would have liked a stronger resolution, but it was fine, and this was pretty smart stuff all around, arrangement-wise. I do like that Joe's all about working with what he's got. Though I'd love to hear some more realistic samples & articulations for all of the string work, this is a lot of fun nonetheless, and the percussion alone makes it for me. Great use of the tools, and such an energetic take on Windmill Hills that moves it from laid-back to energetic. Nice job personalizing this take on the theme, Joe! YES

Mostly looking for feedback/crits on how well the samples were used, and any advice, if necessary. Fun stuff! -LT Remixer Name: Pumpkin King Real name: Joe Dumpe Website: youtube.com/pumpkinking872 facebook.com/pumpkinking872 soundcloud.com/pumpkin-king User ID: 48065 Name of Game: Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze Name of Arrangement: Windmill Advisory Name of song arranged: Windmill Hills Original Composer: David Wise Link to source track: My arrangement is included in the attachment. I was very happy to hear that David Wise was coming back to compose for Tropical Freeze. He is one my favorite video game composers out there. So, I decided to try out an orchestral arrangement for one of his tracks. Windmill Hills immediately stood out to me, because it closely resembled some of his earlier works for DKC, such as Stickerbrush Symphony in particular. In the beginning, I wanted to keep fairly true to the source material, while adding my own orchestral touch. I started to really have fun with the arrangement as I went on throughout the second half. The repetitious melodies I arranged do spawn from ideas in the source, it just might be hard to tell at first. As far as the production, I tend to stray away from realism (when it comes to orchestrations). Some of the samples I use can be very synthetic sounding, so I embrace that fact.

'Bout to be on talking about various site stuff.

Pretty straightforward genre adaptation, plus occasional yelling SFX. It's definitely a cool electronic cover so far, but there's not too much going on beyond the dance beat and chip lead. 1:34 sounded like a retread of :52, before finally having a dropoff at 1:48 with some ambient pads. Theme returns with the bridge at 2:00, then the first use of the chorus at 2:14, and the verse again at 2:42. So this is a cool cover, with reasonable mixing and solid sound choices. At the end of the day, there needs to be more variation of the beat pattern or even more changeups in the instrumentation and textures to create more dynamics in the piece. The 1:48-2:15 dropoff was a creative break, but the rest of the track basically coasts on top of the same beats for the other 3 minutes. Again though, really cool start here and you could definitely get something passed provided the arrangement develops & varies more. NO (resubmit)

Your ReMixer name: MechaSpider Your real name Your email address: Your website : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGls2rVsGY94x9J3jFAToSA Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Ninja Gaiden Name of arrangement: Itsy's Determination Name of individual song(s) arranged: Ninja gaiden for the NES - Ryu's Determination Preview+Download: ----------------------------------------------------------

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Well played. /slow clap

I saw you get mad about the previous rejection on the Tweeter. The wait time is definitely too long, we all agree. But as for WHY we rejected that arrangement, don't get mad about getting rejected! It's nothing personal, and we're here to be honest, not "not get" your style. We're looking for the overall level of interpretation, and this arrangement demonstrated that a lot more interpretation than your Sonic 2 sub. Cool, airy opening synths. Melody came in at :15. The beats added at :30 were thin but had personality, and the track fills out more later. So far, this is faring better than Ace's previous submission as far as the interpretation, because there's a lot more personality to his presentation of this theme compared to his Sonic 2 sub that more closely matched the mood & tone of the original source most of the way. Because Ace set the loops and played the other lines in live, there were some minor moments where the timing felt loose, but it was nothing major. At 2:03-2:31, the soundscape got pretty cluttered and you had different parts competing for the same frequencies. Nice subtle difference at 2:48 with the click, thinner perc, and more delayed sound to the melody. Ace is basically playing the same melody the same way again, but the surrounding part-writing and padding all changes and swirls around so that the track doesn't feel like it just retreading the melody, but trying to build and evolve the music around that melody, which is a cool approach, something that's both expansive and valid. I'd say with the bassy synth added in at 3:00, things were getting muddy & cluttered again from 3:04 all the way to 4:23. Arrangement-wise, I like the writing and structure for that final section, and you have a nice build with the increasing density and energy, so let's not mistake that that's there. However, even though the track getting thick is intentional, it's not mixed well after the fact, and the track is just too indistinct as a result; you can reduce the overlapping frequencies to gain some clarity, all without losing any of the power and effect you're going for. Hopefully, some of the musician Js can give some targeted advice there. Like the last submission, the track cuts off before the fadeout finishes, which doesn't affect the decision but IS sloppy; make sure you're checking that your track fully tails off so we hear all of the final seconds. Even in your YouTube video, it just cuts off abruptly. :-/ I'm speculating, but IMO it may take some other Js time to warm up to this, but definitely listen to this a ton of times and get used to the instrumentation and textures of it. It can possibly feel choppy (not because of the time signatures, but because of some looseness in the live parts vs. the rigidity of the beats). It also could be perceived as not interpreting the source tune enough because of the melodic repetition, but I wouldn't agree with that. I think there's a lot of more subtle dynamic changes going on that offset the melody being played pretty similarly through the 4 1/2 minutes. The main issue I have is just clearing up the densest parts to preserve the energy that's intended, but prevent the track from sounding TOO indistinct & washed out. Cool arrangement, and you could definitely get this to a place where it can pass just from some mixing/EQ adjustments. It's 85% of the way there, IMO. Good stuff so far! NO (refine/resubmit)

Hello again. Here is my second remix submission. I hope that you enjoy it. Remixer Name: Motive Makes a Man Real Name: Email: website: http://youtube.com/acewatersthe3rd Name of game arranged: Mega Man X2 - Crystal Snail Name of arrangement: Chilled Energen ORIGINAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlUAOrYqy94 MY REMIX: This song has a killer groove, and an awesome set of time signatures (13/8 - 6/8 - 6/8+2/8 - 4/4) and I have always been a huge fan of time craziness, so I knew it was a song I had to do an arrangement for. The original, in my opinion, is a bit fast, a bit tinny, and a bit mechanical. It loses some of its groove. So, my goal was to chill out the song, give it some of its groove back, and play off of the awesome 13/8 sections. As with my last submission, this song was orignally composed for a video.

That Kickstarter's crushing it on Day 1. Good for them!

That definitely did NOT happen, that is not the case. I think djp would be flattered you said that, but had to clarify he didn't invent the notion of arranging video game music. He did build a community around arranging VGM across all styles/genres/gaming systems though. Turned out pretty good!