Liontamer

Hate to buzzkill, but it's still a "best 10"/"top 10 of OC ReMix" list, which we discourage. When we come out with blogs, I'm pretty sure we're gonna find some way to relax that issue and allow for some more formalized discussion on top lists, but until the staff has more time to think through the implications, we continue to discourage "best" lists. Recommendation threads (e.g. "What are good piano mixes?") that aren't geared towards denoting the "best" are still OK.

Ladies and gents of the panel, I realize that my submission is bound to induce nausea in some of you, being a Chrono Trigger remix and a remix of Corridors of Time on top of that. But I assure you, you need not prepare yourselves to run to the bathroom or reach for your barf bags, because this mix presents a rather different take on the source from what is currently posted on the site. The majority of the Zeal remixes can be described as dreamy, chill, and containing ethnic elements, and therefore stay true to the emotions evoked by both the source material and the setting of the game. Perhaps I am committing a sacrilege here by making my mix dancy and groovy, and I anticipate that it might disappoint some listeners because of that. But I am sure that many will find it fun and enjoyable. I originally envisioned a trance remix of this theme, and put together a short WIP that was more trancey. However, since I've been mostly listening to house and electro, those influences soon took over. Then one day I was chatting with DA, and it just so happened that she already had done some vocals for a Zeal remix, and she very kindly allowed me to incorporate her vocal work into my mix. It is safe to say that without her vocals this remix would have never sounded like a complete track, as is the case with our earlier collaboration "Elevation". I really hope that we can work together again soon. Once the vocals were in, I really wanted to have a bridge/breakdown section that was different from the rest of the track. Initially, I wanted to have a piano section, but it didn't seem to work. This is when I heard Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me", which had a nice dubstep breakdown and served as an inspiration for one in this mix. I know, some people will frown at the mention of Britney, but hey, that track was very catchy and danceable. Anyhow, once the basic structure of the remix was in place, it took a lot of tweaking to get it to the stage when it is finally ready for your enjoyment. I am also hoping that the "90's will not be calling to ask for their production back this time." Once again, I would like to thank zircon for his feedback and especially for introducing me to Paulstretch, which I used to create vocal textures in the intro. Also, thanks to beatdrop for his input. In conclusion, I want to give a shout-out to other mixers of this theme who came before me. Especially mv, Unipulator, Joren de Bruin and Tweek, and Vagrance. Till next time! Remixer: ambient, Dragon Avenger Name: Alex Gventsadze Game: Chrono Trigger Song arranged: Corridors of Time Remix title: Lucid States -------------------------------------------------------------

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=32717 Hi, Attached is a resub of my Ufouria remix, titled "Above the Clouds." I've made a ton of additions and changes since it was rejected back in early May, and I feel like it's a much better, fuller song now, without sacrificing the floaty feel I was going for. I'd list all the changes, but I don't want to spoil everything. They should be pretty self-evident when compared to the original sub. Below you'll find the original submission email, for reference. Thanks, Josh Freund (Drakken) ------------------------------ The sequencing/timing was still a little stiff, but clearly improved. The strings at :32 sounded somewhat pasted on top of the soundscape; once could argue that for much of the new part-writing introduced here, but I thought it was solid enough. I still thought this did a great job adding some more personalized writing ideas to the arrangement, giving it a bit more character and substance, while not disturbing the overall mood of the previous version. And with some of the left-hand writing spiced up and the timing not sounding as robotic, I really thought this clicked that much better. Very glad you were willing to take another shot at this one Josh, you really did a good job of better realizing the potential here. Nice. YES

I WANTED A WOAH-MUN!

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=33686 We don't have much dubstep, but given how many people love the wub-wub, I'll see if the staff wants to add that kind of tag.

The "Set Subtitle" field of the tags (not visible in most applications, unfortunately) has had the OCR ID # I believe for pretty much the entire time.

Recently overheard from Liontamer: I tricked Paige, and she said YES, hahaha!

NICE! There might be a little detail missing from Ken's face, but I realize the faraway perspective makes it a little difficult. I trust you, especially seeing these inked. WOW, phenomenal so far, I'm hyped! This is totally what we're going with.

Leaving a note for myself to get back to this: http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR01161/ I sent Jaron a message, hopefully I get some clarification. EDIT: Confirmed! Lyrics: [x8] You can't stop [x8] You can't stop [x2] (You can't stop - stop) You can't fade the beat (You can't stop - stop, stop) You can't stop the rhythm, my rhymes are concrete (You can't stop - stop) You can't fade the beat (You can't stop - stop, stop) You can't fade the beat, beat You can't fade the beat [x24] You can't stop

Yeah, that's looks like a great concept, Denny!

Nice. Happy 9th birthday!

I might be there. And by might, I mean maybe. And by maybe, I mean I'm gonna be up in your panel.

Otakon 2011 July 29-31, 2011 Baltimore, MD http://www.otakon.com OC ReMix PANEL! Panel 6 Friday, July 29, 6PM Hilton Baltimore hotel (across the skybridge connected to the Baltimore Convention Center) We will be there! What should we do for our panel? If you're gonna be there, give us suggestions! Distant Worlds: music from Final Fantasy will also be in town that weekend with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and that means Nobuo Uematsu & Arnie Roth will be there! And WE will be there! OC ReMix at Distant Worlds! Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Saturday, July 30, 7:30PM 1212 Cathedral St., Baltimore, MD 21201 It's gonna be VGM in abundance that weekend, make sure you're here for both Otakon & Distant Worlds!

Yes, the interweb is so srs business, please don't bother reading and post everything you think right when you think it. See you in a week. Shut the fuck up next time. /back to thread

Just ignore giving him feedback from now on. Problem solved. [/kidding... partially]

Yeah, the vocals are too dry and upfront. There's also some light but pronounced lisping going on, IMO, though it makes the performance sound kind of Euro. That said, this was still put together well enough production-wise to be passable. The arrangement was pretty solid. Cool shot going for the PlayStation soundtrack instead of the NES one; you can definitely hear the influence of that. However, the source check didn't work out. There's a lot of Final Fantasy in this, just not enough to make the source material the dominant aspect of the track. The track was 4:17-long, so I needed 128.5 seconds of overt source use for the source material to be dominant: 31.5-1:01, 1:03.5-1:21.5, 1:22.75-1:25.75, 1:26.75-1:34, 2:07.5-2:25.5, 2:27-2:29.75, 2:31-2:37, 3:11-3:41 = 105.5 seconds or 41% source usage. So basically, there's an extended original intro (31.5 sec), 2 extended original choruses (33.5sec & 34sec) and an extended outro (36sec) that add up to more than half the track. You should find a way to incorporate some supporting writing from the source into some of the wholly original sections you have. "There was nothing left to use in the source" is not a valid explanation. You could easily take the riff at :12 of the source, slow it down and use it in the background of your chorus vocals, or any number of other options. Good track, Brandon, it just needs more source usage woven in during the original sections to put it over the top. NO (resubmit)

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.