Liontamer

That's flat out wrong. Stopwatch it. (1:21-3:55 is pretty much all source usage with a couple rests as gaps.) Cool intro, building similarly to the way some of the music from the Dune: Spice Opera album did until the changeup at :42. Once things kicked in at :42, the overall soundscape had too muddy and delayed of a feel, IMO. If only the delay effects were toned down just a tad. Not a dealbreaker in the big picture, but definitely something that could stand being tweaked. For people complaining about source usage, I personally wouldn't count :42-1:13 as being direct enough usage of the source, but that piano writing's clearly based off of the chord progression of "Secret of the Forest" for 40 seconds before the melody kicks in, and some of y'all are usually all over that stuff as kosher. Whatever standards you have, you've got to apply them evenly. Also, when the source material is introduced doesn't really matter to me as long as the source usage is dominant and the arrangement of it is interpretive and developed. If hypothetically, the first 2 minutes of a 5 minute piece was all original, but the latter 3 minutes used the source, was creatively arranged, and pieced together thematically with the original material before, I'd be fine with that. Otherwise, there can be a bias toward front-loading the usage of the source. Arrangement-wise, this was a fairly straightforward adaptation of "Secret of the Forest's" structure to this style, but it wasn't something that came off as lacking enough interpretive substance. It sounded pretty personalized to me. I see where OA's coming from saying the beats here were too loud compared to the melody, but I wasn't bothered by that here. I still though the leads cut through enough to where they weren't obscured, unlike two other tracks I voted on tonight. Tweaking the balance there could be worthwhile, but I can't say anything was messed up. The notes of the mallet percussion pattern at 4:02 were a bit odd, but not so off that they were a meaningful bother. Honestly, aside from the filters making this sound on the muddy side, I wasn't seeing any huge problems with anything else, whether it was notes, transitions, production or the substance of the arrangement. While I think there were a lot of good criticisms here, they didn't seem to be blowaway issues that should hold this back at all. This is expansive, interpretive, and capably put together. I see where some people could say the arrangement's too conservative, but while keeping the structure the same, Mike really worked with this one rhythmically and instrumentally to add his own flavor and offer something substantively different. It works for me. Let's rock. YES

I never heard the first version, so I'm going into this one fresh. Pretty genteel opening. The production on the piano reminded me a little bit of Hazama's Suikoden II mix. Wasn't really feeling the drum tone or the volume of the percussion compared to the leads at 1:03 (and later 4:21). The leads ended up getting noticeably obscured. Texturally, the whole piece ends up sounding a bit strange for the first 1/3rd. Good dynamic shift at 2:23, with a great combination of piano and woodwind, followed by a nice pickup in energy. Rhodes stuff at 3:01 felt strange, but that seems to be a big aspect of this one, the weird instrumentation ideas and combos introduced throughout. It's not offensive, just a bit sonically disjointed. I've heard enough instrumentally "disjointed" pieces from Shnabubula and others where I think I know when weird instrument combinations are fully clicking and when they aren't. They aren't 100% clicking here, and some leads being obscured ended up being the biggest negative for me, but the production execution was competent enough to get by and was buoyed some by the arrangement & interpretation being creative and strong. Would love to see the balance among the parts get tweaked further to make this sounds markedly better, but on the seesaw of working vs. not working, the arrangement's clearly got a lot of great ideas and the execution is solid. YES (borderline)

Pretty fucking badass source tune! Where has this been all my life? Arrangement-wise, aside from the sparse drum tone and writing being a huge weak link, it's a pretty balls-out cover. It was feeling too cover-ish for a while, but it at least ends up doing its own thing with the soloing. The percussion composition (other issues aside) also provided substance. Fleshing out and further personalizing the drum work in a way that's markedly different than the source is always an easy way to add your own unique flavor to an arrangement, for those of you keeping score at home. Now for the bad. The drums sound like you're hitting some buckets. The background sounds REALLY empty without some good drums to anchor this, and there's (practically) no bass, making this only sound like half a song. Volume and intensity nonwithstanding, it's still both empty and incomplete. See? My fellow Brown Heat team member summed it up in just a couple of lines. You know what to do. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, right off the bat, this is sounding intense. Annnnnd, immediately I see what OA's talking about with his vote. The mixing is jacked. It's always a shame when you hear a metal track where the performances are intense, yet the production makes everything sound muted and distant. Work with whoever you can that has a better ear for mixing, take your lumps and re-balance this. The performance itself is badass and a total pass as far as the arrangement, you just need to production to also bring it for the most part. This doesn't need impeccable production quality, but it does need to be more reasonably balanced/normalized. As long as you can get it improved significantly, resubmit this and we'lll very quickly fast-track a vote on this. We DEFINITELY want this posted to the site in some form, Trey, definitely do not drop this one. NO (refine/resubmit)

The orchestration was a bit stiff with the opening woodwinds. The bowed strings at :13 in particular sounded really poor. Everything's just too mechanical sounding. I mean, you can argue VHDan and bustatunez have had some issues like this, but they've never had glaringly negative instances of that in a long, long time. Awkward transition from Wave Man to Splash Woman at :41. Didn't really have much flow to it. The Splash Woman stuff sounded a bit stronger, but that was going to happen with the bowed strings not being as prominent. Basically all of the articulations need work. The militaristic stuff ended up sounding powerful because the drumwork sounded the best out of everything and filled up much of the soundscape. That said, the Splash Woman lead brass at 2:43-3:52 was too low and getting muddied & buried by what was supposed to be supporting instrumentation. Arrangement-wise, 2:43-3:52 escalates, but nonetheless feels too repetitive. This would have passed with no doubt 7 years ago, but if this were made 7 years ago, it would be showing its age 7 years later. Great start though. Aside from the repetitive second half and a questionable transition of themes to start, the interpretation was pretty creative. The execution just needs additional polish to get the levels balanced and instruments sounding more natural and less stilted. See whose sleeve you can tug on to get more advice on what you can do for this; it'll come in handy now and for the future. I'm really liking the range you're showing as an arranger. The execution's not there for this genre yet, but you could get there, and I like potential I'm hearing so far. NO (resubmit)

Pretty powerful beats to open up. Good stuff at :14. Not really getting any hint of some themes, but at least the song is gradually building with a good sounds. Solar Man's at :45 with a fairly generic-sounding lead. It sounds almost dissonant in places. I'd honestly change that up to something that isn't as harsh-sounding and also pull back the volume a bit, since right now it's almost overbearing compared to the other instruments. Reading Vig's comments after I wrote this, we're on the same page: Pretty much. I liked the crystalline counter-melody at 1:15 though; very nice choice there to add some new flavor to the soundscape. I had a hard time making the A-to-B connection of this chorus to "Spring Man." It seemed too liberal, but I'd appreciate some insight on the usage. Right now, I can't fully get behind the arrangement side as far as source usage, so I hope I'm just missing something obvious. I see where Jesse's coming from with the arrangement being straightforward, but I can't say it bothered me offhand. The dynamics being kind of flat was more of a problem for me when coupled with the lead. The dynamics were subtle, but overall it felt like the song was in basically 1 and half gears and the sonic palette lacked variation. The dynamics can work if the sound palette isn't an issue. Switching out the harsh lead for part or all of the song (you had chances at 2:01 and 2:34), and then also having some other subtle but noticeable instrumental variations could lend just the right changeups to keep this otherwise steady groove fresh. And now reading DragonAvenger's crits, she nailed it: I love when we're hitting the same points independent of one another. 3:02's change up was good as far as keeping the same tempo but changing the mood some, but again, needs some sonic variation with the lead if this beat and this groove are gonna coast on. Great stuff so far, Justin, this is clearly something you could refine and get passed with just a little extra TLC. Loving the results so far, this is some awesome potential that just needs some tweaks to get the balance among the instruments right and help this steady groove not get tired after the 4 1/2 minutes. You can definitely get it there. As long as the Spring Man stuff is overtly used, don't change the arrangement, just work on the levels and sound of the lead so it's not bland, too loud and too repetitive. NO (refine/resubmit)

It's in the torrent.

If he was talking about VGMix2, then yeah, he was doing it wrong, although the dropoff of reviewers in 2005-2006 lead to the tiers not being accurate due to too few scores. If he was talking about VGMix1 though, he would have been right. Back when I was brand new to the community, I remember hearing about VGMix on the OCR forums in early 2002, even before I registered an account. When I went VGMix1, I downloaded a ton of tracks, it turned out 95% (IMO) were garbage and I never went back. I wasn't angry about it or anything, I just thought it would be a waste of time to try to find the good stuff. Some people have the same complaint about OCR due to the lack of a scoring system. Those people would also either be closed-minded or deaf and wouldn't know what good music is.

And let's be clear, a huge failure on your part.

- Vs. Team England - "Get Back" - "A Hard Day's Night" I don't agree. I also hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this source is based off music not originally written for a game, not just one song, but two, and would be ineligible as a source for an OC ReMix. The source tune didn't just take from "Get Back" (:07-:16 of the source uses arranges the verse from :31-:45 of "Get Back" with some minor variation, but not enough to not sound like a pretty close take, IMO), it also took the chorus from "A Hard Day's Night" (:16-:28 of the source, arranging :44-:59 of "A Hard Day's Night"). The Team England theme does some minor variations on those Beatles songs, but it's practically (rough approx.) 3/4ths Beatles. It's literally the "Get Back" verses paired with the "Hard Day's Night" chorus. For the end of each usage of those songs, there's some brief original writing so that it doesn't quite end the same way as the mainstream songs, but the changes are fleeting. The source tune is basically a chiptune of two Beatles tracks. As much as I hate to deny Hoha, we need to be overriding this YES vote since this Beatles-based source material is ineligible. I need another J or djp to weigh in in order to confirm an override. NO Override

This isn't an official OCR album, it's just a quick side project organized by DarkeSword. We've already had 4 "EPs" as albums: Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned, Final Fantasy V: The Fabled Warriors ~I. WIND~, Teen Agent: The Root of All Evil, and Mega Man: The Robot Museum. Technically speaking though, none of those albums (nor the Concrete Man EP) are shorter than 25 minutes or less than 5 tracks like the classic definition of an EP, so we still haven't released a classically-defined EP yet, even though we've had some shorter albums.

Just mentioned to Dave that he should look at it for a potential tie-break, since it seems like no one else is re-evaluating this. Again, I also thought it might be too liberal, but stepped away from it; came back weeks later and checked the sections I wasn't sure about, and clearly heard the source in play with fresh ears. Obviously, we can collectively disagree on source usage/dominance, but I think the several NOs on arrangement for lack of source use were too kneejerk and didn't fully make out the source connections. I also thought the production issues here were complete nitpicks. The track is reasonably well-mixed. On arrangement, OA's was the only NO vote that at least clarified that while he heard the usage, he didn't feel it was a dominant enough when it was used to pass it. Pretty much everything I heard re: the source was pretty upfront, so I didn't agree with that either; and I've seen him give YESs to arrangements that overall referred to the source material less than this, but at least he's acknowledging the source was in use most of the time. Like I said, I may not be the ultimate stopwatch, but if I'm giving this a pass on source use and you're not, you're missing something.

If "Gate of Your Dream" were the only source, I'd agree with you. I forgot to also add "Dreams Dreams": "Gate of Your Dream" - 0:44-1:33, 3:33-3:58 = 72 seconds "Dreams Dreams" - 1:36.5-1:46 (liberal), 1:48-1:59 (liberal), 2:10-2:22, 2:23-2:34, 2:35-2:58, 3:01-3:08.5, 3:10-3:16 (too liberal noodling until 3:30), 3:59-4:08, 4:09.5-4:20.5 (liberal), 4:29-4:35, 4:36-4:45 (liberal), 5:33.5-5:43 = 124.5 seconds

Before 2011 is over, there will be updated torrents. I have no biases. I love stopwatches.

So even though we were both in the community by 2003, we actually didn't run into each other until I started doing VGF, so I need a refresher on this. Back in the day, before you had any OC ReMixes passed, you had a bad rep as someone who would complain about other mixes and the judging process despite being unproven. That said, I completely missed all of it. 100% of it. You've definitely mentioned years ago that you had too negative an attitude when you started posting (I think Shariq and other judges who knew you back then agreed you were too negative when y'all were reminiscing in the judges chat years later), so I'm kind of wondering what your mindset was as far as your own skills at the time and how you were perceiving other people's skills? Is there any advice or perspective you can give as to why your attitude was different in I guess 2002-early 2003 compared to when things really started clicking musically for you? I figured I'd ask here since it's along the lines of your POV of things here when you started, and it might be interesting to more people than just me.

On hold until Damon reworks some production issues he's hearing.

2027's the target date.

Hahaha! Love the pre-emptive "Don't be mad, stop flaming!" Nothing even happened yet. My lady actually called Madeline potentially winning it when we listened to all the entries, since she thought Madeline's had a good lullaby vibe to it. I thought her vocal control wasn't as strong as Jill or Laura, but no hate on her winning. Really interested to hear how a polished version of the vocals from Madeline ends up sounding.

Yeah, just want to point out that Dave's right in that I did the forum mailout around 1AM Japanese time before I crashed to sleep, so that's my fault for not coordinating anything first before sending it. The other brain fart is not realizing y'all would be awake, since it was around noon in the eastern US. Can someone link to other community people involved in the contest? I didn't even have time to look and heard katethegreat19 is also in it! You can vote your support for multiple people, so let's make sure we support everyone from OCR that submitted an entry!

Glad you know your compressed files! Your download must have corrupted somehow. When I DLed the MP3 pack here, it was all good.

Yep, always.

Correct! (But I'll nag djp.)

I think you're just n00b at ZIP files. Do like Rexy said: http://www.win-rar.com/download.html

I could argue either way on the source being eligible, but for the time being let's vote on it as if it were AND look into comparing Megadeth's "Hangar 18" with "Running from Evil."