Liontamer

I get you, but there's potentially a language barrier there, and I just choose to look past that inference. I'll just assume it's plainly stated. Either way, no exceptions.

First thing that stuck out was how quiet this was. The woodwind sequencing wasn't great, but serviceable. Same with the vox (though I hated 2:13-2:19). The sequencing on both was somewhat mechanical though not the worst I've heard. The left-hand sequencing was OK enough as well. The right-hand piano work sounded much better in comparison. Good mood, and surprisingly novel use of the bells, even if they could have sounded richer. The string work at 2:50 was positioned nicely as well, and while that tremolo won't fake out a super close listen, it definitely sounded solid and added a lot of character. Pretty genteel atmosphere, but with some solid dynamic range. Arrangement-wise, this got pretty liberal, and I'm not overly familiar with the source tune. I needed 129.5 seconds of overt source usage for at least 50%. Here's what I made out: :37.5-46.25, :55-1:42, 1:46.75-1:49.5, (1.49.5-1:55?,) 2:19.5-2:36, 2:39.5-2:54, 2:59.5-3:30, 3:57.5-4:05 So I had about 118.5 seconds or 45.56% overt source use. I gave some credit to some pretty liberal sections (e.g. 3:09-3:19.5) that seemed derived from the very beginning of the theme as well, so I'm trying here. Can anyone give me some A-to-B comparisons on something I may have missed? I like the arrangement & interpretation from what I can make out of it, but I can't get behind anything where the source material use doesn't make up the majority of the arrangement. I'm particularly interested in what's used from :00-:37 and 1:49-2:19.

Yeah, you could slice those tracks into 5 minute segments, they still wouldn't get on. This stuff is awful, and what's worse is you can't tell it's awful. There's no flow to how the several themes are pieced together, there's 1 beat that just lazily changes tempo to match a song change. There's no structure, it's so sloppy and not musical. Don't take it personally, but I haven't heard of anything so ambitious, yet ultimately bad, in a long time. Don't work on that stuff any further, it will just waste your valuable time and distract you from learning how to make music. Start something else that's a much more manageable size, and focus on learning to improve a 2 or 3 minute piece of music first. If you're not easily discouraged, and stay dedicated to learning from forums such as this one, you'll look back on this Castlevania thing and just be glad you're not at that level anymore.

There's no harm or arrogance in asking. The worst that happens is we say no. And that is what I'm saying, since I can actually speak on that officially. No, that's actually not correct. There are people like Rayza who (his fingers crossed) have yet to ever hit the panel because their submission is obviously a direct post, but that's rare. Obviously some people are more consistent than others, but there's actually no preference given to someone's tenure. Generally you get a direct post if the submission is a straightforward YES, though a direct post doesn't mean it's flawless or better than a judged mix, it just may be easier to determine the level of arrangement & interpretation compared to the original. Also, djp hasn't run the inbox since I took it over in 2006. Palpable's run it for a time as well, and currently OA and DragonAvenger are the workhorses of the panel and the lead submissions evaluators. At some point, maybe we'll figure out some way to better represent who handled XYZ evaluation, whether that was djp, the judges or any of the 4 of us who have been allowed to nominate tracks for direct posts. EDIT: This isn't accurate either. We don't have an official length limit, though obviously there's a natural song length limit (which I haven't timed out) just because there's a balance between encoding quality and filesize where you basically can't go below 96kbps and still have decent enough listening quality. As it says in the standards, "a 128kbps average is suggested as a minimum," but some people are willing to make the tradeoff of encoding quality to fit under the filesize limit. Longer songs are, by their nature, more difficult to evaluate, but they're not against the rules, and we wouldn't NO anything just for being long if it otherwise passed the judging criteria (and fit under the filesize).

How dare there be lyrics in an arrangement of a song with lyrics! Definitely worthy of SuperGiantDespiseItalics!

If you don't like my opinion of your opinion, that fails to be my problem. Despise!

You shutup! You know nothing of the ways of the Madness!

Oh dayum, with italics and everything. Must be serious. When I get offended by awesome music, I'll be sure to post in italics too.

The song name being "Bionic Commando Theme" doesn't mean it's wrong and/or not the Area 2 theme in the Game Boy version. If someone can verify which levels the theme is used in for the Game Boy game, that can be added as alias information. It's basically the same theme as the NES version, so (in terms of a relationship) it's like a child version of the parent NES theme.

But you can unsticky our HEARTS! Peeps, THANK YOU for all your help, y'all are awesome. We got some badass stuff waiting to (hopefully) be unlocked this year!

Awwwww... Nice work, Jordan & Ashleigh! And more Hamauzu OC ReMixes are a GREAT thing!

Pops/encoding glitches: :01, :04, :31 (very light), :35, :37, :41-:42 (distortion), :46, :49 (possibly), 4:19, 4:32 (minor bass distortion?) The sleigh bell timing was briefly off at 4:18, followed by what sounded like an encoding glitch at 4:19. Not a huge deal, just worth pointing out. Would love to get an encoding free of those issues, as well as at a higher bitrate, but if it's not possible, I'm OK enough with this, warts and all. "Drifting away" motif or not, there were definitely some wonky balance issues here, already covered in more depth by the others. Not a huge deal to me, though there were parts where the source melody got swamped/obscured more than necessary. That said, I was OK with the production overall, and it didn't both me as much as some others. Arrangement-wise, this did a great job of following the original's structure, but personalizing the instrumentation and performance, as well as weaving it some smooth original material. Compositionally, the drops and swells all worked nicely, and I appreciated the dynamic range here. The imagery of drifting was, for the most part, conveyed nicely in the production, and one could argue that nearly everything besides the more obvious glitch noises had purpose to it. Let's try to get a cleaned up encoding, but otherwise, I was digging it and you brought it enough on the arrangement & production levels. Good deal, Jordan, welcome aboard! YES

One girl's VERY interpretive dance to Yoshi's Island & Insert Rupee's new OC ReMix! She's possessed by 16 bits! You rock, Fwifl! MIX: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR02239/

Happy firing!

At 3:32, noooooooooooooooooooo. Bah, sour note, I keel! But halc summed it up well: you're thinking it's just going to be a straightforward piano cover to start, but the additional elements of interpretation flow in as time goes by and it all develops nicely. Not that I actually expected an uniterpretive cover from Doug, but it was nice to get taken on that ride. Solid work, and nice to hear you on the keys again, Doug! Come back out east when you can. YES

There was a sour note at 1:34 that should have been auto-tuned and ended up breaking the immersion of the listen. Lesser case of this at 2:00, not with a bad note, but not the smoothest vocal modulation there. 2:22's note also could have been tweaked or rebalanced; maybe a different voice among the chorused vocals should have been upfront in that moment. Not a huge deal. That said, this was otherwise really well put together. The piano sequencing could have sounded more natural, but it was solid enough, and had just enough delay and body to help rather than hinder the soundscape. The woodwind sequencing was also not blowaway, but capable/solid. The drums introduced at 1:39 were positioned & produced very nicely. The vocals in particular were mostly on point and produced very well, really doing a great job of filling up the soundscape despite the minimalist texture on the other instrumentation, and preventing the inorganic-ness of the samples from being too exposed. This was a great example of how to do it right, making a few instruments create a full presence. Ideal collab. The whole's greater than the sum of the parts. Nice synergy here, bros. YES

I'm fine with the panning. It's kind of like Marc Star's Super Metroid "Dirty Sam" that had a pretty loud, pulsating sound panned pretty hard left. Ideally, it would be more centered, but it still wasn't a dealbreaker. The arrangement was fine overall, IMO. I agree that once the vocals came in, the source felt pushed back a bit too much, but the patterns were always there during the verses, and used interpretively in adapting the theme to this style. The long intro wasn't a bother at all, especially when the intro's based on the source. It could have been an issue if the overall arrangement was underdeveloped, but that wasn't a problem. There were some flat notes with Marcus's vocals that were unfortunate (e.g. 1:33 "skies", 2:23), but overall the performance was capable enough. The vocals were too dry though, and it would have been great to muddy them a bit for a more legitimate throwback sound that, in turn, wouldn't expose the vocals as much. I liked the Doors style here, though I felt the bass work sounded too rigid, which was a bigger issue than usual given how sparse the soundscape was. 2:35's section was definitely a bigger example of the timing being too tight re: the lead. That said, this was otherwise clicking solidly, even if various tweaks would really put it over the top. VERY glad to hear more from Marcus submitted to OCR, he's a creative beast. YES

Delightful. Very groovy, with the source in play for most of the track. The arrangement felt like something of Mattias's with the halc 9-bit spices added in, with the groove really feeling like a signature of Mattias's. Excellent work! YES

That's awesome too! I bought something a lot smaller (some new earbuds & a comic book) through the aStore yesterday, and every bit counts!

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=33178 Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfH9QAGi0sk I'm just gonna channel my inner Wingless and say "Easy. Breezy. Beautiful. Cover Girl." YES

Opened up pretty close to the intro for a while. Weird production choices. I liked the effects on the intro, but when the bowed strings came in at :24, the strings were too far in the back, and it seemed like a whole slew of frequencies was missing from the soundscape, and all I was hearing were highs that were bordering on grating. Wasn't really feeling how the vocal stuff starting at :26 was produced. There was some delay on it, but it still was very dry and wasn't positioned properly in the soundscape. Yeah, something's totally off with the production. Once the vocals came in at 1:03, it was obvious. Lots of issues with the recording (e.g. obvious pop at 1:22), there's apparently no real low-end, and lots of areas need to be de-essed. Weird, akward key change at 1:53. The bass abruptly dropping out at 1:54 also was very careless/sloppy. Honestly, there was a surprising lack of attention to detail. Tambourine seemed to be lightly clipping as well, at last until 2:05. I respect you playing several parts in live, but this needed some quantizing; the timing was too loose to the point of being completely unacceptable for your skill level. 2:19-2:43 was an egregious example where the piano ended up behind, there was some sort of glitch at 2:23 where the vocal timing got throw way off by some sort of hiccup in the instrumental. But even before-hand, the piano was lagging behind and didn't sound right as a result, both here and again at 3:10. Gotta say though, very creative usage of the arranged Veldt chorus as the piano backing, first at 2:19. Totally changed the feel and mood of that theme and caught me off guard in a good way. Again, the transitions into and out of that theme didn't flow at all, but, in a vacuum, I really appreciated the unique spin you gave "Wild West." The key change at 2:44 moving back into Gau's theme wasn't smooth at all. These transitions really needed work. It could just be bias from the sections not really piecing together well, but the arrangement felt overlong and you could have cut easily 3:10's & 3:35's sections since it was just clunky and repetitive at that point. 4:22 brought back the la-la's of the intro, going for the parabolic structure as the track wound down. Very drawn out ending, again, much like the intro. The attempt's ambitious, Mike, but there's a lack of attention paid to details in the production, timing, and transitions that killed this dead. You heard from 3 nice judges, but, despite going NO, they were all way too nice and weren't critical enough with a bunch of glaring, dealbreaking issues. It's not that the ideas are crappy, but the execution was so rough that this wasn't anywhere near a pass as is, and several other judges who are more blunt would tell you the same thing. This would really need a lot of work (not a little) on tightening up on the timing, more sensible mixing/balance among the parts, and better thought out transitions between the two themes that actually flow together. The vocals themselves weren't horrible, but working the intonation issues that were also brought up would also be a plus, though that would be last on my list compared to everything else that stuck out. Don't be discouraged though. It's definitely awesome to see you back in the game and hopefully continue taking your work to the next level. I know you don't like resubmissions if you feel like you're compromising your original vision for the song, so definitely do not do that on this one if you work on it further. This was a risky arrangement that didn't pay off in the execution, but you can (and should) learn from this one. NO

Don't forget Support OCR Month! But seriously, win that cheddar and pay off some student loans! Fingers crossed FTW for you, Luke! Get it, get it!

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Cowon+J3+flac+problems Seeing some other issues come up with this player & FLACs, but I'll see if I can find a common thread. The e with the acute on top (é) could be one issue, but doesn't explain everything.

Praise the Lord, djp finally added an instruction on it.

OCR jumped the shark after http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00001/ I don't listen anymore.