Liontamer

The key change of the intro took me a second to wrap my head around and initially just sounded pretty ugly and out of tune, but after one iteration to get used to the notes, it made sense. The chimes actually had a kind of Genesis throwback feel to me for some reason, so I didn't mind the rigid sound. It's a strange intro, to be sure, I just wasn't thrown off by it at the end of the day. The compression's definitely an issue worth pointing out, though not a huge deal. The groove DOES plod, but the melodic arrangement and personalization of the theme ended up carrying it at the end of the day. Not quite a borderline YES, but not too far above that given the autopilot beats pulling this down some. There have been more creative IceCap arrangements out there (BGC's "Eastern Ice Field" and Joshua Morse's "Ice Cold Retro come to mind). If the main beat hadn't been so repetitive and there had been some more development of the core beats, this could have been even better. But what's there gets the job done. Hopefully we can get a 192kbps copy that at least sounds a bit cleaner, but I wouldn't mind Anthony taking about pass at the mixing. That said, this was still pretty solid. YES

During the "nah-nah, nah-nah-nah" section (:51-1:16), the sampled trumpet stabs sounded completely off-key. What happened there? Just take them out, they sound silly and merely detract from the piece. Over time, the drums during the verses were veering toward being plodding and borderline metronome-ish. It's a little weak that the oooh-wahhs were too obviously copy-pasta'ed in the second half; perhaps try to produce them in a way that sounds a little bit different than the opening, so that it sounds more like a spontaneous live performance. All I really have to add is that I co-signed enough with DA & OA's POVs enough to copy-pasta them. If you get the mixing sound more cohesive, and iron out some of the other kinks, this could make it. Right now, it's still in the WIP stage, albeit pretty far along. Definitely touch this up, Brad, you generally know how to bring it. NO

If this made it, I'd have to count up seconds and figure out the game to assign it. It looks like Mighty Final Fight, but it could be Captain Tsubasa 2, because Mansoor's timestamps weren't totally precise, from what I can see. Moving onto the vote... I agreed with much of Emu's vote, except I'm not going YES. I agree that, IMO, the medley's cohesive enough and the source tunes flow together. The treatment of the themes was pretty straightforward, but personalized, and the transitions were fine on the whole, which was critical. I agreed with those who felt that if you didn't know where the themes came from, you could reasonably assume they were all from one game. Maybe Mega Man 2 stands out a lot more, but that's bound to happen. The flow IS a step down from the Sunset Riders piece, but not enough to be a dealbreaker for me. That said, the arrangement having pretty flat dynamics and an overall simplistic, plodding groove ultimately dragged this down by the end of the 4 minutes. Even within a flatter dynamic curve, you need to have more significant development and evolution of this soundscape. That was the core issue that made this a NO to me. Also, halc mentioned the soundscape feeling sparse, and I thought that spareness exacerbated unrealistic sounding parts like the exposed mechanical piano at 2:12 (worst from 2:27-2:57 for the Tecmo Bowl section). Pick something to improve, and improve it significantly, and you'd probably flip some votes here. NO (resubmit)

Larry. Send! WAVs/FLACs fine too for any and all mixes. There cannot be production changes, it has to be the exact same version as what's posted on OC ReMix if it's already posted.

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It's debatable how far solid state drives will advance in 5 years, though my speculation is there will be some pretty substantial improvements. That said, I don't mind being forward thinking and asking for WAVs or FLACs when available, but we're still going to keep MP3 as the primary format for the forseeable future. It's the 1 universally accepted standard for compressed audio. I have WAVs of only 294 mixes out of 2246 so far (mostly album project mixes). There will always be big gaps as far as what's available for lossless files, when the day comes where sharing lossless files en masse is feasible without killing our bandwidth, but MP3 is still the universal standard.

MP3 is the de facto standard for audio files and is supported by every major player and app. So any writeup about why OGG/AAC/M4A/etc is irrelevant to the average user who doesn't think twice about what format they're listening to and doesn't have ears of gold. People just wanna get the files quick and not think about the format. Unless the de facto standard was in a clear shift towards something other than MP3 as THE most widely accepted format, our standards there wouldn't change.

Oof. Disliked the lead at :01 immediately. It was such a generic sounding saw, and was just unpleasant to listen to. I can't stress enough that this isn't a personal affront, but this was horrible, imbalanced mixing here. This was a cluttered mess that completely undermined the energy laid out in the arrangement. There were too many generic, untreated electrosynths, a super-fake FL Slayer guitar cameo at 1:53, off-key melodies, and generally indistinct instrumentation. Mixing-wise, the saw lead (didn't like it) and rhythm guitars (good power and energy there though) were simply buried, and the only reason the background was filled out was because the cymbal crashes were steamrolling over everything else in back. None of the parts were properly EQed to separate anything, so all of the instruments were just bleeding into each other and sound muddy and lossy. The overall levels were too low as well. I hate to be so negative, but this was a cluttered, messy production nightmare. One of the few things that sounded pleasant were the belltones, but they're supposed to just be an accent, yet they're the loudest thing in the track by far. Other parts that were too loud compared to everything else were the Emerald Hill lead at 1:28, and the screechy synth brought in at :56 & 2:20, which was just abrasive and annoying. You have some positive comments on YouTube that don't have an ear for polished work. Don't let those people with no critical ear hype you up and make you think you don't have anything left to learn. Park yourself HERE and HERE, ask a LOT of questions and get better at choosing cohesive sounds and giving your instruments an appropriate sense of space. This place isn't the be-all-end-all for creating music, but if you stick around here, you'll become a better hobbyist musician in time. You have decent ideas for this arrangement, Mark, and it's clear you're attempting to create your own approach to these themes. Although the usage of the Green Hill and Emerald Hill themes was pretty cover-ish and could use some more melodic interpretation, you definitely added that Generations-style rock flavor to it and tried to personalize the approach through the overall energy, the instrumentation choices and cohesively-written original sections. But none of that potential matters when the mixing is jacked up. That said, according to WillRock, you could be the next OCR all-star. That's nice coming from an all-star like Will, who ALSO used to not be able to make cohesive music, despite getting lots of praise on YouTube. So be like Will, channel this criticism towards improvement and keep at it! NO

Pretty much this. The source was very repetitive, and this did a great job of putting your own spin on it with evolving variations that, while somewhat repetitive, were unique and clearly substantive and interpretive enough to get by. I wasn't put off at all by that one synth Vinnie mentioned. The main thing I was put off by was the overly lossy-sounding mixing. I thought the 160kbps encoding hurt this some. This sounded too lossy and lacked high-end. Normally this kind of lossy sound would be too jacked for me to pass, but this was carried by the arrangement, IMO. All things considered, good enough to get the nod. Good stuff, Joshua, and looking forward to the next sub! YES (borderline)

Definitely a weird intro there, panned hard right momentarily. The mixing was a bit odd to start (before the vocals entered), as the lead synth was too dry and upfront compared to the other instrumentation. The vocals are OK; the treatment on them's not bad, though they still sound too dry, which doesn't help when the pitchiness is exposed like this. It's mostly when you're modulating your voice on the last syllables of each line. That said, this was better than a lot of rejections, you just need more control or some pitch correction applied after the fact. The drumwork felt very flimsy during the verses, definitely flat like OA said. The overall mixing sounded unintentionally lo-fi; it's not horrible, but tweak the things OA and DA brought up. Decent start, Jake; polish it up and try again; you have a decent shot at lifting the execution up to where it needs to be. NO

Oof. If the arrangement's basically being true to form for this style by bascially having only one tempo, Christian, then the production really needs to be on point. The rigid piano articulations are definitely the obvious weak spot and affected the dynamics. Yeah, the little pause at 1:55 was kind of sloppy. Palpable also made a great point about the dynamic range of the piano sounding extremely compressed. Everything's basically at the same intensity, which doesn't make sense. I thought the arrangement was on the conservative side, but I can live with it. But the articulations and dynamic range simply need to be improved. Passing this would be pretty lopsided towards the arrangement. This isn't horrible, but the production needs more attention to detail. Use the Workshop forums, tug a few sleeves, and tweak a few details for the win. NO (refine/resubmit)

Wonderful to hear this submission, Paul! It was great meeting you too, and I'm glad you got some inspiration! I agreed with the other Js that something about the mixing was off, so I'll just throw in my 2 cents and hope it helps. I'm not sure why there are complaints that there's not enough bass. The bassline IS there, but the notes are muddy and just not distinct enough. I think Vig's right on how to handle it, because the bassline itself really doesn't need more low-end, it just needs a more solid sound. Emu's right that your leads should cut through more, and IMO they need more high-end clarity. The way the soundscape seems to lack high-end makes the piece sound like it's a much lower bitrate. halc's also right about the overall levels being a bit too soft. Everyone, YESes and NOs, had some worthwhile comments on the production. If the mixing were a little more properly balanced, I could go YES on this even though the mixing wasn't perfect, because everyone agrees the arrangement is hot. However, the mixing is off just enough where I'm not quite there to sign off on it as is. I say, take another pass at this with fresh ears and some help from the Workshop forum to achieve a better balance. The arrangement's definitely where it needs to be, so there's nothing to be discouraged over, you're 90% of the way there. Just tweak it up and this'll defnitely make it. NO (refine/resubmit)

Rock. Thanks, man! HalcyonSpirit and Stevo both had revised editions that weren't what I was looking for, but thanks to them for looking as well. Gotta wonder if Dan ever kept a WAV of the OCR version, but that's pretty unlikely.

Anyone got a higher quality copy of Disco Dan's MM3 mix "Blue Lightning?" I'm not sure if there was ever a revised version, but I'm not looking for that, I'm just looking for the same version as the one on OCR, just the higher bitrate. IIRC, Dan at least released a 128kbps version. Thanks for anyone who can help!

You're not speaking for the staff.

He's gotta be now. He's movin' on up yet again! https://www.facebook.com/TheWingless/posts/10150541019450880 , John! Yet again! Everyone tell him to use Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheWingless

Fixed. Maybe when $100 thumb drives are 5TB.

Nice work, Tony! For anyone who missed it, PRINCE OF DARKNESS won the grand prize and will appear on the Earthbound Papas next album! Announcement: http://www.dogearrecords.com/Earthbound_Papas/arrange_eng.html Winning Response Video:

My stab at Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix '4F73R M3' http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01114/ I've got it all, don't stop me now SuperGreenX won't make ya frown Check my sounds, 'cuz you know they can't be dissed There aren't too many that can flow like this It's thumpin', jumpin' at you And the rhythm is gonna get through Do I need to say any more? Tell me what you're feelin', yo, here I go Jump, jump, jump, DDR Yo, everybody feel the beat with DDR Jam, jam, jam, DDR Everybody dance, let's get down S-G-X, X, X MC Everybody feel the beat, feel the beat (Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go) Every-every-everybody feel the beat (Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go) Get down! S-G-X, X, X (Everybody feel the beat Get down!) Everybody feel the beat, feel the beat (Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go) Every-every-everybody feel the beat Could it be that you wanna be more like me No shame, I brought my game, it's just me you please Now I'm gonna punch this bad amount (?) Put your hands in the air, move 'em all around Can you feel the beat down in your soul? Don't fight the feeling, just let it go SGX is bringin' it down Wanna see you move when you hear my sound... Jump, jump, jump, DDR Yo, everybody feel the beat with DDR Jam, jam, jam, DDR Everybody dance, let's get down ...R! Jump, jump, jump, DDR Yo, everybody feel the beat with DDR Jam, jam, jam, DDR Everybody dance, let's get down

Gotta vote as is then. Conditionals, re-evaluate where you stand. I disagreed with making this a conditional YES because of the positioning of the leads. The soundscape's murky, but I didn't feel it was over the top or a dealbreaker. Jamison's stance on this did not affect my vote, as I only read it after I'd laid out my vote. I don't agree with the stronger production crits at all. None of the mixing bothered me personally, and (much more importantly) I made out the themes just fine. That's the case, because they sit far enough upfront to be made out. If the soundscape were so washed out that the themes were being obscured, then there would have been a problem. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater on this, when the production's perfectly fine in the big picture. You count your seconds strangely, Jamison. Every part of your breakdown added 1 second to the measurement for some reason. Basically, you treated :00-:02 as meaning :00.00-:02.99, and thus 3 seconds. That kind of fuzzy math isn't how I'd count anything. That said, I appreciated your breakdown and did my own. Everything Jamison said was right, except 2 things: 1) The Plug Man, Section A arpeggios, which he (thankfully) didn't give himself any credit for, as they were too liberal. 2) Plug Man, Section B didn't come in at 3:39 as you stated, it came in at 3:49, so you inadvertently gave yourself 10 seconds. The piece was 4:57.25-long, so I needed more than 148.625 seconds of overt source usage for the pass on arrangement, with the source tunes truly being dominant in the piece. Normally, I don't count this closely, but you were cutting it close and I took your breakdown as a fun challenge. "Trust, yet verify." While you lost the phantom 10 seconds you credited yourself with (the result of a typo?), you didn't give yourself quite enough credit for some things, such as notes trailing off, and the way several of the theme transitions blended. Let's take a closer look: Bubble Man, Section A [:00-:04] - :46-:51.25, :52.75-:58.75, 3:02.25-3:09 Bubble Man, Section B [:11-:21] - 1:09-1:14.5, 1:15.5-1:22.5 Bubble Man, Section C [:22-:32] - 1:26.5-1:36, 1:39.75-1:49.5, 2:20-2:28, 2:33-2:48 Bubble Man, Section D [:33-:37] - 3:19-3:23, 3:56-4:07 Plug Man, Section B [:14-:26] - 1:53-2:00, 2:06-2:13, 3:09-3:18, 3:49.5-3:56, 4:07-4:12 Plug Man, Section C [:27-:39] - 2:00-2:06, 2:13-2:20, 3:18-3:25.75 Plug Man, Section D [:40-:53] - 2:27-2:39, 4:26.75-4:33.75 When you stitch everything back together and time out when either Bubble Man or Plug Man was in play: :46-:51.25, :52.5-:58.75, 1:09-1:14.5, 1:15.5-1:22.5, 1:26.5-1:36, 1:39.75-1:49.5, 1:53-2:48, 3:02.25-3:25.75, 3:49.5-4:12, 4:26.75-4:33.75 = 151 seconds or 50.799% source usage The source usage just barely came up as dominant, but it's over the line, so count it! The arrangement was definitely very creative and well-handled overall. It could have went either way on the arrangement, which I would have had no problem unmercifully rejecting if there was 1 second less of source use, but I enjoyed the piece in a vacuum nonetheless. The arrangement won't be something people who can't stand liberal arrangement can wrap there heads around, as the 7/4 time signature, murky soundscape, Plug Man's theme being more obscure, and the two themes constantly weaving in and out is a lot to make sense of. Those with a smart ear and an open mind, however, should love it. This, I love. Nice work here, Jamison, this is good to go! YES

Ribbit! Guifrog here! GAME ARRANGED: Super Mario Bros. SOURCE: The classic one. Or -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiAxiGZKpGQ REMIX NAME: Super Mario Nightclub REMIX LINK: a) (secret url) if one doesn't work, the other will I think breakdown won't be necessary this time, rite? >P So, let's keep our trip around the world. When I initially thought of having my own take on Mario's so well known (and overremixed, if that's even a word) tune, Italy came to mind. But. Mario's tunes have such a latin vibe, and I wanted to create a mix that loyally had Mario in its core. Which means, classic square waves getting along with steel drums, a few simple and generic instrumentation choices, plus my own world-electronic touch. The idea came out as a latin house of some sort, and it's exactly how I imagine a nightclub in Mario's world. We're in the BAHAMAS, baby! P.s.: Thanks to mods Flexstyle and Gario for their excellent advice on the WIP forums! *untz untz untz* ---------------------------------------------------------- The brass was still pretty weak, something that always negatively stands out in Guilherme's stuff. The piano and disco strings also sounded super fake. The extreme simplicity of the core UNT-TSS beat also dragged this down. There were pretty bland, default-sounding lead synths at 1:32 as well. Too many of these sounds really need some polish. The organic-sounding percussion at 2:18 was super sweet and spicy, very well done, but then the bridge section from 2:25 came off VERY boring in contrast, just note-for-note like the original with no real uniqueness or interpretation. The same is true for the source tune chorus first used at 1:01; just a pretty straightforward cover of the theme that didn't really stand apart in a meaningful enough way from the original. Usually, I'll bring something up as a quality disparity, but this was a case of a creativity disparity. This is going in the right direction, clearly, this just needs more creativity in the treatment of the theme to match the creativity of the other instrumentation surrounding it. Stepping up the sample quality or learning to better mask the limitations of the exposed brass, piano and strings would also help a great deal as well, and it's about time you reach for some improvement there also. NO (resubmit)

Your poop is ugly.

There was no mistake on our side, so we can forget that "everyone's kind of at fault" nonsense.

Or yellow light reflecting on the monitor that makes the gray look like it has a pink tint. We've never needed any.

Correctz! I love the concept. Just polish up the instrumental part. Probably the singing too, but definitely the instrumentation. And that's all she wrote. NO (resub)