Liontamer

...the fuck???

Forgot to come back to this, but just co-signing with a YES. I was just high and neglecting the steady bassline usage, which more than put the source involvement over the top. WillRock had a good point about the nature of the source tune being standard blues, but as I mentioned in the #j chat last night, that's not really the source's fault. As long as the source wasn't flat out lifted from another non-VGM song, it's valid to arrange. I still poo on the piano here, but this rises above that.

I wish the snare patterns were a little less vanilla, but as the track hit the soloing, that part dropped and the percussion really got room to get active. The first 90 seconds were a well-personalized cover, IMO. I wouldn't pass a whole arrangement done this way, but everything after 1:28 with the integration of original writing with the original, followed by guitar and woodwind work on top of the base of the source from 2:09 until the end, made it an easy pass. The progression here was solid; it started close to the vest and steadily opened up as the level of interpretation grew. Vig's high about the intro & outro crits. I mean, sure, you COULD trim the start and add more to the end, but did that really break the track as far as what we're looking for in the big picture? Not really. Forward. YES

Good catch; you're definitely right about hearing those brief "skips." If I had to take a guess, I'd say intentional alongside the other glitching effect, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. I could ALSO see it being unintentional, but it honestly didn't make any difference to me. Still a solid YES myself.

TL;DR Undecided. For stuff like this, we cross that bridge when we get there and handle it on a case-by-case basis. For something like Sonic Before the Sequel or a similar example like Streets of Rage Remake, the game certainly looks good, but the game itself is unauthorized. That might be a call djpretzel ultimately makes, with or without thoughts from the panel. Personally, I could live with it, but the soundtracks of unauthorized fan-games possibly fall outside our scope of acceptable games. Well-made original games with some notability aren't legally nebulous. I'd rather keep my fingers crossed for more success stories like Capcom being forward-thinking and taking Street Fighter X Mega Man in-house.

comiXology pretty much runs the game. They're awesome. https://twitter.com/comiXology/statuses/218946422635106304

I actually got to hear this one in Stevo's car while visiting Maryland for a work conference, and everything sounded strong; really glad we finally got to this one. Vocals isn't a direction I would have expected to hear "Rainbow Road" in, but it works very well. Great combination of the acoustic and chip elements as well. The nasally style of the vocals will kill some haters dead, but that's about the only "issue" I hear and it's a subjective thing. Cool to hear Ben do some vocals as well. Play this for your Kart 64-lovin' lady and give her a big hug. YES

I loved the BBC series with the late Ian Richardson as Francis Urquhart. Now we hopefully get to see Kevin Spacey kick ass as Frank Underwood. In both versions, FU is the creme de la creme of douchey, scheming, underhanded politicians, and if the American version is ANYTHING like the British one, it will be awesome. Netflix is the exclusive home of show, and they've released ALL 13 episodes of season 1 TODAY. This release style may eventually blow up the television model, given the way things are going. Ars Technica has a good overview up, and I just gave props to showrunner Beau Willimon on the Tweeter as a show of support. With Kevin Spacey on board, I can't WAIT to see what kind of evil stuff he's up to here, and I know he's gonna be great. Gotta give a big recommendation to check this show out, and definitely hit the BBC trilogy as well on Netflix if you have time.

Friday, March 22 to Sunday, March 24 Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Boston, MA http://east.paxsite.com/ Time to pahk the cah in Boston again! OCR heads north to attend the 4th annual PAX East! OverClocked University will be there with an oh-so-sweet LIVE PERFORMANCE! If you promise to love video game music, we promise not to beat you up! Got swag to give away as well, so get HYPE! PANEL! OC ReMix: Punching You in the FACE with VIDEO GAME MUSIC!!! Arachnid Theatre Sunday, March 24th, 2PM Panelists: djpretzel DarkeSword Liontamer José the Bronx Rican Palpable AND OverClocked University!!! OA Level 99 diotrans DragonAvenger with special guest rumpshaking by Vilecat!!! (Stevo's going to kill me) We'll see you there! Who else is going?!

You're probably gonna die hard before that avatar gets added.

We don't offer custom stuff otherwise, because we don't want ugly images, or annoyingly stretched/animated stuff. We have over 1000 to pick from, so they're not truly limited. But if you or anyone else wants to make more according to spec (32 x 32 GIF, good quality/sharpness, not animated), I can eventually add it. But adding more avatars is admittedly a low priority. OC ReMixers and staff are allowed to have custom 32 x 32 GIF avatars.

I'm pulling from 2004 stuff from just before I got started on the panel, but it's worth pointing out: I don't think this arrangement was particularly subtractive as much as different, but subtraction (in conjunction with other things of course), is a valid form of arrangement. I also disagreed with: No, it's not exactly the same, the strings at 2:17 are definitely louder. The strings at 1:00 kind of peaked in around 1:11, but still, the later stuff was notably louder than that. Moving onto the big picture, honestly, I think it primarily boils down to needing better humanization. Some further melodic interpretation wouldn't hurt either, but what's there was solid enough. I'm not quite getting the rationale of the NOs basically saying the overall feel was too close to the original. On that level, I thought Kory personalized his approach more than well enough. The concept is actually pretty sweet. It's orchestral, but it's a distinctly softer, mellower mood than the source, which was more of militaristic electronic-orchestral hybrid. Short and sweet, if the articulations were more on point so this sounded more expressive, this arrangement style could easily hang, IMO. It certainly shouldn't be short-changed. The whole of the arrangement deals with 1:10-on of the source and basically ignores the rest, and it's just two iterations of that part of the source, so that's why the arrangement could seemingly come across as somewhat repetitive and underdeveloped. The opening seemed OK. Right from the beginning, this was a bit dynamically flat, on account of the samples needing better humanization, but I appreciated the slower approach. Once the music swelled at 1:44, the string articulations not quite sounding realistic enough was more apparent. The string articulations in particular sound flatter than the inherent energy in the writing, undermining some of the more touching sections like 2:16-2:47. Yep. Also, I can hear a lot of original writing ideas in the background, but they're pretty quiet, and, for all intents and purposes, are buried or muddied under the leads, so you can't really appreciate any of the detail work in the background. The mixing isn't horrible by any means, but something's obscruing your supporting writing. The piano's basically a non-factor from 1:10-on, and brass sounds good, but bleeds into the strings a good deal. Again, the textures already sound pretty good, but could shine with a bit of EQ love to separate the parts a bit. OA was right in that respect. Definitely. Well, as far as the usage of the source material goes, I disagree. Kory's already firmly in the right direction of making it his own. I think because the mixing makes it a bit harder to appreciate the original/additive writing, one basically walks away hearing 2 iterations of the 1:10 section of the source tune, one softer, then one louder right at the halfway point, and it seems too simple. So I think the combination of a relatively straightforward, somewhat repetitive structure and the obscruing of some detail work made it seem like the arrangement could be underdeveloped. But if you ask me, what's there is substantial enough and interpretive enough. The instrumentation, dynamics, and tempo coupled with the new supporting writing were enought to satisfy the arrangement criteria for me; it's substantial enough when you pay attention to the details. I think you could maintain this structure, Kory, but improve the mixing and sample articulations so that you fully realize the potential here. Right now, the arrangement is good, but the sound is not quite realistic and expressive enough, even though it's maybe 80% there, in my opinion. Just as important, the mixing needs to be cleaned up a bit as well. Give those parts room to breathe and shine. Also, just noting that if you do resubmit this, there's no waiting period for it to be posted to the panel to be rejudged. NO (refine/resubmit)

I think I'll take a look and also holler at Homeslice. If you're looking for the most obvious stuff, it definitely came across as light on the source usage, but we'll see what's up. On the production level, it seemed like a sure thing, but the source usage has gotta be there. I'm LOLing at Fishy though; you don't like the at least 50% source usage guidance, but you're leaning on it, so that makes me smile like the Grinch. Why would you make the source material requirement higher than that? Go eat a Digestive. EDIT (2/1): On second thought, I'm confident making a call on this without needing to ask Joshua. As everyone else has said, the production's impeccable, aside from the thin, mechanical piano sample during some exposed moments. Which leaves it down to source usage for an arrangement pass. I'm basically hearing what everyone else heard. This was a 262-second-long arrangement, so I needed at least 131 seconds of overt source usage for the source tune to be dominant in the arrangement. :46.5-1:08, 1:56-2:02.25, 2:08.5-3:19, 3:40.5-3:46.25 = 104 seconds or 39.69% If there's something that all 4 of us have somehow completely overlooked from either "One Final Effort" or maybe another Halo track was also used, it's far from obvious, but just let us know Joshua and we can revisit this decision. That said, we all know your music sounds awesome, and this was pretty polished on the production side, but the source material needs to be the dominant in the arrangement, otherwise it's a no-go. Do improve the piano too, if you can, though it's not necessary. NO (resubmit)

The additive piano writing, first brought in at :38 & which was well-written, was basically the only thing significantly different from the source tune, which is a huge favorite of mine. Otherwise, this arrangement was basically just a (well done) sound upgrade of the original; same structure, same tempo, same mood, basically the same feel. There were some brief sections where other things happened, like liberally using the beginning buildup part of the source from 1:55-2:14 and the original dropoff writing from 2:43-3:01, but those were 15 seconds a pop. The original section on top of the source backing from 4:19-4:47 followed by the dropoff and original piano & keyboard writing from 4:48 into the finish were cool (though the piano was exposed as mechanical-sounding). But those felt like too little too late in the big picture of a 5 1/2 minute piece. It's OK to have a cover-ish arrangement, but you've really got to do more to personalize this arrangement. Alter some rhythms, change the structure or tempo. Right now it's original piano on top of a super-close sound upgrade with some brief cameos of different ideas. It's definitely cool and well-made, Greg, but it's falling outside of our scope on account of the arrangement approach. NO (resubmit)

Starting with the negative first, the layering of Ken's theme over the Cammy theme from :41-1:05 had little, if any, synergy and just seemed to be drowning Cammy's theme out. Also, the notes from 2:09-2:10 & 2:23-2:24 were intended to be stylistic, but just sounded like a mistake. I'd love to hear those sour notes altered, and it would improve the track, but I'll live. Aside from those two issues and some the non-dubstep sound design feeling bland for the first minute's buildup, I thought this was solidly put together. The sections with dubstep elements had a good deal of power behind 'em. Props too on the usage of the heavy damage version of Cammy's theme for a big portion of the track, a theme I loved back in the days when I played it on the arcade. Short and sweet, it gets it done. YES

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1175 If someone doesn't want to use lyrics for a source tune with lyrics, some just play the vocal melody on an instrument instead of singing it. You also could change the vocal part entirely, or just arrange the instrumental parts of a source tune and disregard the vocals. As long as the end result sounds like a fully fleshed out piece of music, we're open-minded to whatever direction someone wants to take a source with lyrics.

Man, once the instruments started getting busier at :17, the soundscape became very muddy lossy-sounding, moreso when the guitars came in at :33. The individual parts sound great, but everything just bleeds into each other until 1:23 and it sounds like you had to settle for a 112 or 128kbps encoding. It still sounded lossy, buy we had better stuff at 1:32 once there was less going on and things had room to breathe. The transition to the "Dwelling of Doom" cameo at 2:38 was pretty abrupt, but the move back into "Silence" was smooth. Honestly, this arrangement is nothing short of awesome, but the mixing's putting me off. I'd LIKE to YES it along the lines of Mega Man 3 'Intro Jazz', and seriously thought about it, but that one was a much more delicate track without too many elements obscuring one another. The arrangement is direct post-worthy, and the instrumental combinations here were unique. But the production needs another pass to tighten things up. No hate if this passes as is, but I think it desperately needs more clarity. NO (refine/resubmit)

The brass sounded out of place with the other instrumentation, but it's not a huge deal for me. I hated the fake drums, but I'm always nitpicky about drumtone. I've heard that sample too many times, and while it's not bad, it can sound pretty out of place amongst other live instrumentation or more realistic samples. For the most part, this follows the source's structure pretty closely, but this is nonetheless a pretty personalized and expressive cover that stands apart from the source nicely. The more improvosational-style section on top of the source backing from 2:20-3:18 was definitely needed to show off some original writing ideas and present some new material, though again, I thought the instrumental changes and performance flourishes helped the cover section go in the right interpretive direction. Solid work! YES

Ah, I remember this from the World Warrior compo. The sound design was cool, though sometimes I felt the interplay among the various synth lines was muddy (e.g. 1:51-2:24, 3:21-3:43), and the source tunes were unintentionally marginalized, making the arrangement seem busy yet unfocused. Particularly with Oni's theme though, there were moments where you had two distinct parts of it going on at once, yet they'd both still seem pretty downplayed. It's not a huge problem in the big picture, and I could hear all the source material in play for both themes. Dynamically, there's subtle stuff going on, but definitely nothing dramatic as far as some sort of lengthy dropoff and rebuilding (which is a fine approach, I'm just noting it). Rather, there's several textural variations of instruments weaving in and out to keep things fresh while everything stays upbeat. If Capcom ever wanted to add a serious cyber-Akuma character into the Street Fighter series (i.e. not the Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter one), a lot of the ideas would serve as a great foundation. Great energy, and solid meshing of these two themes, Greg, keep 'em coming! YES

First thing's first. LOUD. Moving on, I needed at least 125.5 seconds of source tune usage to qualify on arrangement. Stopwatch time: "Rocket Hideout" - :10.75-:22, :33.25-:44, :46-:54, :55.5-:58.5, :59.5-1:04, 1:06.5-1:15, 2:30.5-2:36, 2:58.5-3:19, 3:20.5-3:23.5, 3:25-3:29, 3:31.75-3:33.5, 3:34.5-3:36, 3:37-3:38.5 "Generic Legendary" - 1:17.75-1:51, 1:57-2:02.5, 2:08-2:13.75 128.25 seconds or 51.1% source usage, though I could have missed something. The arrangement certainly doesn't come across as very liberal; there just happened to be some large pockets where no source material was in play. As far as the arrangement, Palpable nailed it, i.e. you did a lot with a little, and I also really loved the intensity and detail work here. The way you traded off between different part-writing from 'Rocket Hideout" was pretty sweet for those of us that enjoy comparing OC ReMixes to source tunes. Just touching on one of DragonAvenger's crits, I didn't notice any meaningful issue with the beats and felt the groove here was tight and fast-paced throughout. If you folks want some beefy music, this serves it right up with plenty of A1 sauce. Great work, Jamison! YES

Gotta copy-pasta this outright. The piano is horrible, and I'm not quite on the train with OA about old-school charm. While the more electronic sounds have that throwback OCR style, the piano is garbagio, and that prevents me from getting into it. You've really got to NOT settle for that going forward. The ethereal belltone-type sounds first brought in at 2:44 were a highlight though, and your instruments aren't terrible so much as disparate as far the sound quality. Some sound good, others sound super generic. You clearly put work into creating full textures, especially from 2:44-3:10 with the padding, but generally the instruments sounded thin and dry until then, meaning your textures were generally leaving a lot of empty space. Still waiting for you to hit that tipping point on your sounds so that your otherwise creative arrangements can sound more expressive and dynamic, Ben. Raise your sample or production game and keep at it. NO

Well, what sticks out immediately are that the first verse vocals are too loud on top of the music. Meanwhile from :59-1:34, the source tune's pretty obscured by the screaming. While it was clearly an artistic, purposeful choice, the mixing there was just obliterating the source tune for way too long. 1:17-1:34 was like a contest to see how many screams could be layered to finally snuff out the theme. As far as the lyrics mentioning rape and whatnot at 1:59, I'll live. Stupid as hell, in poor taste, and just out for shock factor, but that's all just on a personal level and nothing that would make me reject the track. If you wanna go \m/, who am I to complain? The ending wasn't horrible, but it sounded like the track just ended when there could have been a minute or two more of development. Yep, while I don't agree with all of her vote, I'm in total agreement here. Listen, you guys are actually pretty good, so a NO here ISN'T an indictment of you two as artists, and the seeming focus only on what may not be clicking doesn't mean a lot of this doesn't work. The talk about how the lyrics need to go and how this needs a lot of production work aren't really something I agree with, but DA and OA have valid crits as well. I feel that just by developing the arrangement ideas a bit further (instead of ending the track so abruptly) and by tweaking the mixing during the screamo section, that may be enough to better realize the potential of this. I think what's here MOSTLY works, it's a unique & creative take, but it just needs some additional development and mixing tweaks. Definitely don't be discouraged and see if you can enhance this a little further for the win. NO (resubmit)

Like 'Singing Mountain' from Chrono Trigger or "Little Money Avenue" from Streets of Rage 2, if it's in the game data, it's valid to arrange. However, I haven't seen any confirmation that this song is hidden in the game data based on the NSF and NSFe available, and (unlike FF2's unsued Dungeon theme) it hasn't been used in any subsequent game. I'd put it down as ineligible unless some other information turns up.

No problem, Dan. If you want to reach out to individuals who contributed and see if they'll provide their arrangements to the series on an independent basis, that's OK. Beyond the forums, the Artist pages on the site provide social media links so that you can contact artists on Twitter, Facebook, their personal homepages, or whenever we know about.

That's a good point, I do hate that man. Fixed.