Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

The backing pattern is there almost the whole time (even when the melody was not), and served a foundation of the track, so I had no problem with this. The only weak part were the weird twangs at 1:39 and 1:41. The beatwork dragged after a bit, and the scraping-style sound for the beat pattern was grating, so the change at 2:07 was very welcome. Not sure the 8-bit tones from 2:07-2:27 were pleasing to listen to. They seemed to cut through too much, but that may just be me. Some comping, before the Schala backing returned to join it at 2:53. Though I wouldn't mind another pass at the production given what stuck out, the only gripes I had were minor in the big picture. Nice collab here on this laid-back take on a done-to-death source that still makes it feel fresh! YES

Yeah, short and sweet, this was more of a stylized, personalized take on it, but definitely got the job done. The piano during the chorus was a beautiful touch. I remember the mix you had on VGMix that was way more cover-ish and more of a genre adaptation. This one had a much more sinister vibe and stronger additive writing. Very nice! YES

Fixed for you. It's just a stupid opinion from purplecow that I don't respect. There's no such thing as doing an arrangement in the "wrong" genre, and I hate when people cry sacrilege about it when it's just a personal preference and not actually something more meaningful that that.

Swooping in way after the fact, but just happened to be listening and loving the crazy Katamari Damacy-style composition here. Would love to roll up some Katamaris to this awesome piece of work. Great arrangement, instrumentation, dynamics and tradeoff between the two sources, Blake, this is a huge favorite of mine. Short, sweet and awesome. YES

Yeah, it's not like VGMix 1 or 2 ever used genre labels.

I was only just finding the community when VGMix started, but lack of genre labeling had nothing to do with it. The reason I bring up ID3 tagging is because before the advent of blogs and tag clouds, when most people pushed the genre labeling idea, the central idea to do it was retagging the files, and that's always been a sticking point for the reasons I mentioned. People wanted to be able to download every file, sort the ones with a genre of say, Rock, keep those, and then throw the rest away, which we hated the notion of. Doing labeling that's not limited to 1 term and not part of the MP3s themselves avoids that possibility entirely. Yep, we had reservations, but aside from inertia/precedent, we ultimately felt the same way you do here. Some people will be picky douches about genres, but most others will explore more.

The drums were a bit weak, but OK, and the timing was a bit off to start. There was also areas of buziness almost coming off as distortion in the low-end, which is unfortunate on the production side. Due to the slow tempo, the arrangement only finally picked up around 2:00 with only 60 seconds left, so there honestly didn't feel like there was enough development here. I hate to sound like I don't like this, as it definitely has a lot of potential, but it feels half-finished, and lacked adequate polish. I like it, but I've gotta lean NO. Definitely take the good advice here to help tighten it up a bit.

Hate to cut, paste and run, but totally this. I actually could live with the level of interpretation, BUT it's still a bit underdeveloped and the clav and piano soloing needs to be more sophisticated and better articulated. But petty nice so far. You can get this passed with some more TLC, but fun track nonetheless! NO (resubmit)

Starts off pretty badass, with great interplay between the guitar and glassy lead. Kind of a strange choice to have sleigh bells in there and then... whoa. The strings at :53 sounded incredibly mechanical, too quiet, and completely off-key. Jeez... what happened?!? From 1:30-2:00, the string writing was very aimless. Yeah, that's pretty much the problem the whole way through, and I'm not sure why Chris wrote it this way. Finally at 2:44 when the string started doubling the melody with some grace notes thrown in, it worked a lot better. But as is, the strings killed this dead. Quirky as they are, I can live with the sleigh bells; they're an interesting touch. A common mistake we make on the panel is softening legit criticism with "a bit" or "a little," and I do it too. I thought Deia was WAY too forgiving for saying the strings were "a bit mechanical" when she should have said "very mechanical". I thought OA was spot on, and I don't know shit about theory like Vig does, but I know F'ed up part-writing when I hear it. I'm in agreement, the arrangement generally sounds solid. If the string had worked, it could have pulled off a really cool James Bond/spy vibe. But the strings need to be totally re-written to work with the rest of the track. Better string articulations and more presence. Sorry to lay it on you like that, Chris, but you should be capable of getting this back on track with some more focused writing that would really making everything click. DEFINITELY resub this, this is too good to leave it as is and not realize its potential. NO (resubmit)

Mastered pretty loud, but definitely digging it. The fading lead abruptly cut off at 1:29 right near the end of winding down. Not a huge deal, but the devil's in the details. Very nice dropoffs and builds. 2:46 felt repetitive going back to the initial melody with the same lead, even though the backing was fuller this time around. By 3:20, I was hoping this section would wrap up and move to something fresher, but at least we got some more alterations of the melody, subtle as they were. The source was in play basically the entire time once it started at :29 and ended at 5:15. I really could have gone for more melodic interpretation and sylistic variation, but what's here was nonetheless substantive and interpretive, with a nice side of groove bias. Reading CHz's vote after writing all this, we're basically seeing it the same way. We're movin'. We're groovin'. YES

Nabeel definitely picked a very strong source tune in the Prelude where he didn't really need to alter the structure, leaving him a lot of room to go for personalization while sparing melodic interpretation. Funny to hear that bread-and-butter FL Studio warble fade in around :25. When things picked up around 1:00, the soundscape definitely sounded too cluttered/compressed, so the dropoff at 1:14 was very welcome. Things picked back up at 1:45 and sounded crowded again. At 2:40, the dance beats added in there sounded rather flimsy, and the countermelodic synth stuff seemed really aimless, capped off by a really awkward clubby lead from 2:54-3:08. It wasn't a dealbreaker, but sounded thematically out of place with the overall major key sound of the arrangement. After 3 minutes, I'm definitely sure of this sounding very lo-fi and distant despite the bitrate; this really needed to sound cleaner and brighter, and I'm not sure why you got so many props for the production, when it could stand another degree of polish. No hate, it's fairly solid and not noob-level, but it's definitely not near A-grade. The changeup at 3:36 was definitely a good move though, and I wasn't bothered by the pause. Not a fan of the awkward clubby stuff AGAIN from 4:50 for the fadeout finish, which abruptly just went to I guess a minor key deal with only a few seconds left, and pretty much no resolution. Just a weird finish. On the arrangement side, this was relatively conservative, but expanded and personalized sufficiently, JUST enough where this was just above the line even factoring in the production choices that bugged me a lot. What's funny is that when I'm just thinking about what I heard, but not listening to it, I'm gravitating towards a borderline NO, but when I actually go through and listen again, it's solid enough and substantive enough where I think it merits a weak pass. It's rough around the edges, and working with this specific source definitely made the melodic component a lot easier, but it gets'r done by hook and crook. YES (borderline)

Interesting intro with some Rayza-style sounds. Pretty solid usage of the fakey guitar with great stylistic articulations and resonance that doesn't make you complain about it being a sample, much the same as with Vurez. I could have gone without the grating synth at 1:33, which was shrill/piercing. One thing that really hit me from 1:33-2:15 was that the overall mixing should have been cleaner. right now, it's too lo-fi and supporting details like the upright bass and acoustic guitar chords are definitely getting trampled to the point of nearly being inaudible. It's not negatively impactful enough to drag this down to NO with so many other things working well here with the instrumentation and arrangement. Very silky switchup at 2:15 to the acoustic guitar. The whistling sound was a nice subtle touch as well. The trumpet sound was noticeably weaker, but it still had reasonably good body and realism. The arrangement was smooth, with generally strong sound choices. I think we should get a 192kbps encoding to heard the details a bit better, and wouldn't mind another pass at the balancing, but other than that, I was really digging this. Solid work, Mansoor! I'm feeling the Konami/Genesis love. YES

Weird balancing. The melody at :28 sounded interesting with the vibes, but was way too quiet, making the guitar seem way too loud by comparison. At 1:08, the programmed drums being so tightly timed made the looseness of the guitar and other parts sound too messy and disjointed. I wasn't majorly bothered by any of the string work until 1:49, because it was too quiet to actually contribute much to the track. The sequencing was pretty unrealistic though. Then at 1:49, I really couldn't stand the mechanically sequenced sound of the sampled strings; way too upfront and exposed. I liked the textures overall, but the balance of the guitar work was off, and the timing among all of the parts never clicked together, making the execution sound too rough. Too bad, because the arrangement itself was solid, IMO. Really gotta tighten the screws on this one, the potential is there, Brandon. NO

Doesn't sound bad. The piano articulations that sounded somewhat mechanical, but were pretty solid to me. The rim hits and light drum worm really didn't work with the piano and choir elements. No synergy with the textures. The structure seemed pretty similar about a minute in. Damn, the same exact issues at :58 with the changeup, i.e. the drumwork doesn't fit the gothy textures of the rest of the instrumentation, so there was a lot of empty space in the soundscape and the textures didn't click. You definitely added some personalization to the source with the instrumentation and additional part-writing, but the structure was still fairly close. Another changeup at 2:04, but this time doing its own thing unrelated to the source for the most part. Everything up to 2:04 really needed more creative interpretation if the last section was basically going to be original material unrelated to the source tune. The organ was too dry/clean and could have used some effects to make it sound deeper. I agreed with the others about the balance issues, but was more concerned about the really bare textures that never fully clicked, no matter what section it was. NO

http://ocremix.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=28 - Finally

Well to clarify, the main issues with genre labeling in the past have typically been based on tagging the mixes with specific genres instead of "Game:" * In an MP3, you basically can tag a song as only 1 genre; for a lot of songs, that wouldn't be specific enough * If you list more than 1 genre in the Genre field of an MP3, it's not standardized, and it looks clunky and inconsistent * We have too many mixes with no primary or easy to classify genre, so within a framework designed to only show 1 genre, trying to address that for mixes with multiple genres was not worth the hassle The focus of these suggestions had always been about re-doing the files and dropping Game as a genre, which we're never going to do. But when it dawned on djp that we could use a more robust blog-like tagging system to not have to be limited to only 1 description word/genre, we could use other descriptors that had absolutely nothing to do with genre (e.g. instrumentation, mood), and also NOT tie it to the MP3s themselves (eliminating the need to frequently revise the files), he was on board. And it took some convincing for other judges to be in favor of it, but the consensus was there that a classification system that wasn't limited would end up being beneficial. The tags themselves are nowhere near done. When they are though, djp's plan is to integrate into the actual database so we can search mixes that way as well.

I had a non-final set I was showing off to a few people who were interested, but I keep working on it every day to finish the last piece of the puzzle, which is the URL field now being OCR artist pages.

Never. I've decided not to since people keep asking.

We'll eventually end up better integrating this into our site database (i.e. not just show on the forums), but we've already been working on it for quite a while now. http://ocremix.org/forums/tags.php

Anyone hating on this game is silly. The high-level matches I've seen have been amazing, and I'm still VERY hyped after having played the game for 7 hours last night. AWESOME game, can't wait to see it broken down!

Of course you can.

Interesting. Can anyone else detail that issue? Given what happened, I'm surprised that 1. iTunes did that in the first place (programmed an invalid directory), and 2. No one else has brought that up before. Not implying it's untrue, just surprised this is the first I've heard of it. You don't sound mean. It'll be several months before the torrent's updated, because the plan is to re-release all of the mixes, including the older stuff, with proper tagging (detailed here & here). There's no point in updating a torrent only to replace it relatively soon after (resulting in losing all the seeders). So you can grab the current torrent and single mixes, or just wait it out for the updated versions of everything.

From what I can find, it looks like WMP and many other burners just suck and can't handle some VBR files. You may want to DL MediaCoder or Winamp 2.95, reencode the files as WAVs, then burn with those WAVs.

What program (and what version of said program) are you using?

Just received this info about a new charity album project involving a ton of VGM composers. Looks like names will be out later, and so many games there that had multiple composers, so you can't infer everything. But with the game credits listed, it looks like some big names are involved! Video pimpage thing: ---------------------------------------------------------- February 17th, 2011: The Game Music Initiative, in collaboration with OneBigGame, Inc., today announce its exciting new charity project dubbed OneBigAlbum. This project, one of the biggest game musician collaborations in history, involves the pending digital release of a unique music album created by many contributing game music composers. OneBigAlbum will have over a dozen never before heard tracks especially created for this album by a range of talented and well known composers. Currently the OneBigAlbum project will feature music written by composers that worked on titles such as Dead Space 2, Alien Breed, Deus Ex, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, God of War, Brütal Legend, and Fairytale Fights. A list of contributing composers will be announced at a later date. The Game Music Initiative will act as the overseeing and coordinating body for the project, whereas OneBigGame, Inc. will act as publisher and distributor of the album. OneBigGame, Inc. will donate 80% of all proceeds made from sales of this unique fan-service album to two charity foundations: The Starlight Children's Foundation and Save the Children. A release date for the album has not yet been determined and is likely to be announced in the near future. Ruud van de Moosdijk, founder and project coordinator of the Game Music Initiative explains: “I always felt that game music composers often do not get the appreciation that they deserve. I wanted to do something to increase the general awareness for the talent of these composers and put them in the spotlight more. When I talked about my ideas with Martin de Ronde from OneBigGame, Inc., one thing led to another and the OneBigAlbum project was born. The opportunity to realize some of my ideas and support charity at the same time is amazing and the support from the composers has been incredible.” For more information: The Game Music Initiative: Ruud van de Moosdijk Project Coordinator ruud@engine-software.com OneBigGame, Inc.: Martin de Ronde Managing Director martin.de.ronde@onebiggame.org The Game Music Initiative - www.GameMusicInitiative.com / Facebook / LinkedIn