Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

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We only post MP3s, so we'd prefer submissions in MP3, WAV or FLAC format. But when there are performance or music videos, we also link to those as well, on the writeup pages. We'd also prefer arrangement titles that are more personalized, just FYI. This is a great performance. Nice production to let the piano sound airy. How did I become the arbiter of medley-itis? Right, so that's what up for debate here. Well, when Vig says it's "not really an arrangement," he means it's not a cohesive, interpretive arrangement according to OCR's standards (because obviously this is an arrangement for piano). As far as the OCR arrangement standards goes, the standards are pretty clear with medleys... I'll say, many of the transitions here are actually OK, but yeah, this isn't an arrangement with a strong focus and direction, it's just snapshots of most of these themes pieced together without much interpretation. The transitions aren't all sudden; there's care put into shifting to each song, but after the first 2 minutes, it's just jumping around from theme to theme for brief looks with little interpretation, then it moves on: 3. The Great Deku Tree - 30 seconds 4. Fairy Flying - 15 seconds 5. Serenade of Water - 40 seconds 6. Song of Storms - 32 seconds 7. Link's House - 28 seconds 8. Treasure Chest Opening - 20 seconds Though it's a phenomenal medley adaptation to piano, the arrangement is super conservative and straightforward in the big picture, which makes it a NO-go vis a vis our arrangement standards. It's still a baller track, but falls outside what we're looking for - we look for focused, developed, interpretive medleys that flow more like a unified arrangement. A few abrupt transitions or brief, undeveloped theme cameos can be in there, but that can't be the meat of the structure. IMO, something like Claire's take on "Hyrule Field" is still relatively conservative but has more personalization of the theme and allows for more interpretation and focus on one idea. We're not anti-medley at all, by the way; we have lots of them posted. On the Zelda side, WillRock's "Fragments of a Legend" and Xenon Odyssey's "Royal Treasure" are examples of Ocarina of Time medleys that use several themes but are structured like one composition. Another example that's solo piano is Daybreaker's Zelda medley across multiple games, "Memories of an Ocarina." You certainly don't have to do what she did there, but we're actually pretty flexible. The takeaway is that medleys on OC ReMix need to feel like cohesive, focused compositions, not just "Theme A, then Theme B, then Theme C, then Theme D, then Theme E"... Claire, your performances rock. If you have anything else that's more interpretive or a medley that's more interpretive and cohesive, we're here. I definitely hope we hear more from you as far as submissions, as we'd clearly love to have something of yours posted. NO

Uhh... Why would you say "Perhaps make a place on the internet just for this" if you're claiming now that you already made it by starting the thread. The first sentence says that's what the topic's for. The second sentence implied a different place, not the same exact place. You set yourself up for that.

This is certainly cleaned up some, but the brass accents just mud over the leads from :49-53 & :55-:58. Same issue at 2:04-2:26 -- I get why that writing's there, but it shouldn't be that audible, IMO, and shouldn't be obscuring melodic leads. And again, brass elements from 2:28-2:37 & 2:54-3:03 are going over the top of the leads again and creating mud. Other than that issue with the supporting brass mixing, the overall mixing is certainly much better. It's not ideal, but it's also nothing holding this piece back from passing now. Nice job heading to the Workshop for feedback and taking charge of this, Jorrith! YES

I needed at least 123 seconds of overt source usage within a 4:06-long piece for the source material to be dominant. There was a lot more stuff based on the chord progressions and some liberal interpretation, but since I didn't count all of that, I had to timestamp this for more upfront connections just to be sure for myself. :07-:14.75, :56.75-1:01.5, 1:09-1:18, 1:20.75-1:27, 1:39.75-1:44.25, 1:59.75-2:24, 2:25.5-2:26.5, 2:28-2:29.5, 2:32.5-2:33.75, 2:45-3:02, 3:07-3:38.5, 3:40.25-3:42, 3:47-4:00 = 123.25 seconds or 50.1% overt source usage. Opens up hauntingly, with theme first referenced at :07. Piano first used at :26 is rigid, though that's mitigated a bit by the way it's produced. Nice increase in the intensity at 1:02 with some cinematic strings. Oh, damn. Yeah, the drums at 1:48 are pretty weak... OK, so listening through until the end, the beat repetitively drones from 1:48-3:40. The drums are simplistic, static, plodding, boring, lifeless, all of those things. They just drain energy out of the piece, and I think the YES votes are smoking something, because it's a dealbreaker flaw. Palpable's also right that the beats aren't cohesive with the other instruments. More sophisticated, varied, fitting beats would work wonders here. It's too bad, because the arrangement is otherwise creative and employs a lot of effective instrumental changes for the melody; if the same attention to detail was shown for the backing writing as was shown to the leads, this would pass with no problem. Also, from 3:07-3:41, the string articulations sound very unrealistic and exposed in places, so it's not just DragonAvenger's personal taste, it does need work. Anything you can do to give those strings more realism would be great; you may just need to make them sound less dry. Good stuff so far, Mathew. The opening scary movie stuff was epic and on point, but the presentation after 1:48 has to get more consistent; the main issue, IMO, is that the beats at 1:48 shouldn't function like a glorified metronome, and it undermines the dynamics and creativity of your foreground writing. NO (resubmit)

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What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

The torrents list indicates there are at least 11 seeders for every torrent. Zelda: 25YEARLEGEND has 65 seeders, while FF6: Balance and Ruin shows 98 seeders. If anyone else can seed, feel free, but that issue's definitely strange, given that information. What torrent client are you using, and who's your internet provider? It's possible the issue isn't our torrents.

Your English was actually great, at least in that first post. I wanted to affirm that for you so that you know it's good. Good criticisms here; I agreed with Moseph for the most part, though I don't feel you need to replace the dulcimer-style lead. Still, adjusting the balance in the first minute so that the melody doesn't get drowned out would feel more appropriate. Some sort of build-up or dropoff that took out the marching style drums and slowed things down could be interesting, but that may not work with the overall feeling you're going for, which is just a more expansive sound that keeps the feel of the original track. In any case, this was a pretty solid arrangement despite it being so short. You did a good job varying the instruments so that the overall presentation didn't feel too repetitive.

There is no one person standing in the way of this album, so if that's the conclusion people are making because of the tracklist, that's wrong. Lots of other things get coordinated before an album comes out (trailer/website/artwork/file prep). I agree you shouldn't be waiting for years, but you can take it up with Fishy. It's probably a reason why people shouldn't necessarily do mega ambitious projects and instead keep the scale more manageable. All that said, it's not a matter of not caring about you or anyone else involved or anyone else waiting, but we don't force anyone directing a project to wrap it up; it's all on them. At least by planning for it to come out for the game's 15th anniversary, we can put it on more people's radar when it finally does come out.

I definitely encouraged Chimpa to panel this due to her wanting extra help with the source verification, so, Brandon, don't bug the judges about being paneled. Sometimes more obscure game themes aren't as catchy/memorable, so we'll panel stuff to prove due diligence on a source check. Trust but verify. We'll get through this. Like Palpable, I DEFINITELY don't notice that melodic line in the Game Over source because it's so buried, and I'd also argue the Prologue portion from 1:23 of the source referenced around 2:18 in the mix was also something that was easy to miss due to the balance of the source. Anyway, for a 4:36-long piece, I needed at least 138 seconds of overt source usage for it to be dominant in the arrangement. :00-1:07, 1:37-2:08, 2:56-3:02.75, 3:04.75-3:10, 3:44-4:17.75 = 143.75 seconds or 52% overt source usage I thought that some of Brandon's treatment of the sources was more "inspired by" than following the melodies, but that was more during leadups to the main melodies of each of the 3 themes, so I'm sure there's more source usage than what I ID'ed here. That said, I agreed with Palp that when you are able to hear what parts of themes are being used, the overall source usage is certainly dominant. As far as the piece in a vacuum, I loved the transitions and changes in the dynamics and instrumentation; typical Brandon excellence with his rock pieces, full of great instruments. Anytime he goes with both acoustic and electric guitar, he nails it and weaves together something that flows very naturally. Nice touches with the woodwinds and mallet percussion for the final "Solemn Moment" section, with the mallet percussion coming full circle with the intro. The final portion at 3:27 was great. Pretty progressive yet mellow structure for the 4 1/2 minutes, and an awesome contribution to Legacy. YES

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Jeez, put your gun back in the holster. I didn't get to vote on this, but Neifion's criticisms are perfectly fine, and come from experience. As far as the praise vs. criticism being "imbalanced", you need to read what he said. The very first thing was "The orchestration and arrangement is good...", so it's clear the post isn't some attack. It reads to me like you're the one needlessly causing the friction. There really shouldn't be any problem here. For Alex, if you ever have a mix waiting to be posted, but want to revise it before it goes up, just contact me or another judge and ask for us to wait until you create a revised version. We've definitely had people ask to do that before. Actually, the next mix to be posted did just that...

Re: the art for future album projects, we'll make sure formatting preference are made clear before anyone gets started. That said, Game-Art-HQ's community really came through with good work, so we're looking forward to including all their great artwork in the album bundle, and hopefully working with GBK666 and G-A-HQ in the future. Re: the album not being out yet, sorry, but this isn't a speedrun, so folks are just going to have to wait. Everyone's doing this in their spare time for 0 compensation, juggling real life and other responsibilities. Sometimes that means the final 15% takes practically forever. Much like any album that takes years to release, when the album's out, it's out. We'll get there. See you in July (MAYBE).

Gotta agree all the way with Emu. The choir patch is pretty bleh; that should have been made to sound less robotic. Arrangement-wise, there's not much difference with the original music, besides the different beat underneath and less spooky sound. It's barely 2 minutes and just ends with a loop and a fade. Emu's right that it's laid out like in-game music, rather than a standalone piece. It's a perfectly fine cover, and would be OK for a remake of the game if you're just looking for a very close arrangement, but we lean towards more interpretive approaches. Even when an arrangement is melodically conservative, we're also looking for a different approach with the instrumentation, mood, tone, or some additive writing -- some combination of factors that help the track stand apart more from the original song as its own version. Check out Big Giant Circles' "The Clubbing of Isaac" as an example of an arrangement that's more interpretive. NO

Whether an artist thinks the music untouchable or they can't hope to rise to the challenge of competently interpreting it, I love hearing artists compelled into arranging music that's seemingly sacrosanct. It's music and it's art, so it's not sacred. Dive in! Excellent job at changing the rhythms and mood of Delita's theme; very, very nice. The changeup at 1:58 to the world map theme was abrupt IMO, but the flow isn't badly broken. I agreed with Chimpazilla that more dynamic contrast somewhere would have been cool; for me, it's not even pointing out a flaw, rather just expressing a preference. I love how the tone and rhythms of this remind me a lot of Final Fantasy X's "Silence Before the Storm." Stevo's really grown since his more leathery [ ] attempts at music back in the day, and he's been killing it with his work for years now. That said, hearing him present this excellent 12-string arrangement, it's always great to hear him add new wrinkles to his game. Very nice work. YES

I'm glad you came around to reworking this after the decision, Austin. As we like to say, we're not here to tear you down, only build you up. No need to call this "v2," since we don't name files with revision numbers, and, like you said, this isn't much different from the structure of the first version, just tweaked and enhanced. The arrangement was generally good before, so I'm glad you didn't try to overhaul it, because you didn't need to do much to get this above the bar. Glad to hear the volume increased as well, all without harming the overall clarity of the piece. Nice work there. I still felt some of the synths used were plain (only some though), but it's not just about those sound choices, but how they're used. Now all of the textures click better and sound fuller in the middle, which also enhances everything else. This original version was already well on the way to passing but now the overall sound design is markedly more creative, and the middle section sounds excellent. With the middle section filled out and made more varied and interesting (e.g. 2:31-3:13), now you're playing with power. Good tasteful usage of SFX and pads; the dropoff still contrasts well from the beat-driven sections, but now the piece isn't too empty in the effort to create that dynamic shift. Also, using the phasing SFX only one time at 3:52 instead of multiple times was a good move; now it really serves as a strong transition point for the piece ramping back up. If you were going to keep it in one place, that was the right spot. I love mixes from games that haven't been represented on OCR before, so thank you also for bringing in the Lawnmower Man soundtrack to our attention. What else can I say? Excellent revisions. Welcome aboard, Austin! YES

Original Decision Remixer Name: APZX Real Name: Austin Simons User ID: 30429 Game Arranged: The Lawnmower Man (SNES) Song Arranged: The Streets/Suburbia Additional Game Information: The SNES version of the game, which is where I pulled the original composition from, had Allister Brimble as the composer. However, there are other versions of the game: DOS/Composer: Fergus McNeill, Sega CD/Composer: Unable to locate, Gameboy/Composer: Teque London (not able to find a specific person), and Genesis/Composer: Allister Brimble. Original Soundtrack for the SNES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoxiH0fOTu4&list=PLAED9ADB3D10DCC4B The specific track for the remix can be found at the following link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJP_IswK4p4 Comments: Right so I'm resubmitting this under the ever so slightly different title of "Cyber Mower v2" because I feel it differs too much from my original vision of the track, which the panel had picked up on, but did not feel it worked for OCR. I completely understood where the panel was coming from honestly, and while originally irate I thought about it and ended up agreeing the with panel in the end. Now, the track is still very much Cyber Mower, just with "enhancements" (I hope). Other than revisiting the mix, which I always had personal complaints about, the primary focus was on the middle of the track. I spent a lot of time deliberating on how best to keep a nebulous middle that was more interesting to listen to. To that end I reworked the macro dynamics of that portion of the track quite a lot. Added in some more instrumentation primarily in the form of another layered pad, a lead that borrows mostly verbatim from the source, and some drums that while short lived I can only describe as cyber meets ambient, which really doesn't make any sense. Overall I have to say that I think the track is more energetic now with a more complex flow. Don't know what else to say.

Try to come up with an actual creative title for your arrangement, just to have it stand apart a little from the original song. The opening was cool. Lead synths at :12 were vanilla despite the effects surrounding it. The arrangement's pretty plain aside from the adaptation to this instrument set & genre. Already at :47, the verses are being looped wholesale. By 1:05, the beatwork was getting pretty boring. There needs to be more interesting, varied things going on with it; offbeats, rhythmic or sound changeups. Geez, then a simple key change at 1:27, but the same overall writing ideas being repeated. 1:44 did change the instruments for the chorus and not just the key, but the arrangement remained very straightforward. Mixing-wise though, this sounded pretty solid. Everything was at reasonable levels, and I could hear all the parts clearly. Good job there! Overall though, this is just very underdeveloped & repetitive, both in the arrangement of the source tune itself, and the drum writing, which needed variation to keep things evolving and interesting. Decent start, but it's only at a work-in-progress level of development, not a fully fleshed out concept. NO

Yeah, immediately on starting this track, the level of white noise disqualifies this on account of poor production. Props for doing something outside of your usual zone, but the execution still needs to be of a reasonably good quality. Arrangement-wise, the interpretation was good. Loved the slowed down introduction and flourishes here to start things off. The transition at :50 was awkward, I'll agree, but it was nothing to stop the show over. At 1:29, when the piano became more forceful, it seemed like it should have been even more powerful. The left-hand timing from 2:05-2:12 was pretty stiff, even for a live performance; not a big deal, just noting it. Even within a more minimalist piece with less pronounced peaks & valleys, I felt the writing implied more power and dynamic contrast than what was presented here after 1:29. It basically peaked at 1:53, with some very brief intense moments, but that was it. So consider 1) tweaking the structure, if you think it could improve the presentation, and 2) and tightening up the performance, but I agreed with the others that 3) the white noise was the big issue. In any case, you're an awesome musician, so hopefully you don't let this piece not making it get you down. You get our respect for sure in doing a piano piece, and I hope you send more arrangements like this in the future. NO (resubmit)

Not a perfect production revision, but 90% of the way there. The important thing was that now you can actually hear the parts distinctly. The mixing could have used some more sharpness and higher frequencies; right now, it feels like all the highs got cut. The overall volume now seemed below other songs I compared it with, so there's too much empty space despite the power of the performance. That said, nothing was mudding together anymore, and this is MUCH better as far as being able to hear the various parts. Great job on cutting the "frequency fat," so to speak, and finally letting the part-writing breathe here. Arrangement was strong stuff to begin with, so I'm still on board with that. Very nice job pulling this back from the brink, Mak! YES EDIT (8/14): Just adding a note that Mak was able to bump up the volume after his last set of touch-ups, so everything's firing on all cylinders now.

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Just linking this information on the CU Amiga magazine coverdisk release of the game where the source is used, verifying that it's a piece of music composed for the game, even though it did not get used in the final commercial version: http://amr.abime.net/issue_595 https://archive.org/stream/cuamiga-magazine-029/CUAmiga_029_Jul_1992#page/n21/mode/2up

BTW, Wes, the ending cuts off abruptly. Need a fix for that with a new WAV.

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