Liontamer

Agreed with Dave/Andrew/DA on that last held vocal note having some unexploited potential. That and the way the string decayed at the finish were probably the only two crits even worth making. As I told Kenneth at MAGFest, I absolutely loved this track, hence the DP. I liked the deliberate pacing and mood in this one. If you read the lyrics, they definitely gets the eyes CLOSE to tearing up. (I held my composure, I'm gonna cry. But I could see how someone else would. ) I really liked listening to it when I first heard it when tagging Humans + Gears, but it wasn't until reading Kenneth backstory on the imagery that the gravity of the arrangement really hit me. Very powerful lyrics, nothing but enhanced by Deia's vocal performance, which was both sad and stunning. Justin really polished this up nicely. Also, props to Kenneth for incorporating the source theme on some level at practically every point of the song. When I realized it was going on in the background during several portions of the arrangement, I was definitely impressed at how thorough and sophisticated the overall treatment of the theme was. Great job, guys!

Original Decision: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18521 1st RESUB: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22622 Contact Information ReMixer name: Suitmonster Real name: John J. Brandon Email address: jjbrandon@gmail.com Website: None at present. Userid: 24383 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged - Chrono Trigger Name of individual song(s) arranged - "Secret of the Forest", and a leg from the "Chrono Trigger" main theme. A link to the file: Additional information about game including composer, system, etc. (if it has not yet been added to the site) I'm sure sufficient information exists at OCReMix.org, but the original composer is Yasunori Mitsuda. Link to the original soundtrack (if it is not one of the sound archives already available on the site) - Available through OCReMix.org, if by some chance there are Philistines who are not already intimately, nigh-sexually familiar with it. Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.- I've always enjoy the source song, but I did not set out with intent to ReMix anything. This work started by writing an original piece, and while fiddling on the ivories I found that "Secret of the Forest" fit nicely, so I adapted, pushed and shoved until I got a terrible, horrible, stinky remix, and then asked for advice from the WiP forums. After months of reworking it and many emails from supportive ReMixers and judges who reviewed the previous versions, I managed to come up with something vastly superior to my original shameful effort. The version I now submit addresses many of the concerns originally voiced by the judges, and I hope it is found satisfactory. If not, I'd be happy to go back to the drawing board once again. ---------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Secret of the Forest" (ct-111.spc) & "Chrono Trigger" (ct-102a.spc) I believe Mustin was seeing potential this one, IIRC from the WIP boards, so I'm interested in hearing the latest cut. I still thought the mixing of the drums was a negative, and the overall mixing lacked polish. The drums just never sounded like they were in the same soundscape as the other instrumentation. There were moments where the sparse textures seemed way empty, but that wasn't a huge deal. The treble also sounded too hot, but I'd like a second opinion on that. Honestly, I'm cool with the arrangement, and I'm feeling the ideas there overall. It's a solid enough jazz-style take with pretty good dynamic, although again, some portions felt barren. The production just sounds too lo-fi for me to fully get behind it. It's slightly better than the first resubmission, but not too much. It's still lo-fi, and now there were some annoyances in the high end as well. I'll go YES (conditional) on some cleaning up of the production, but we'll see how this fares. It's definitely not something I want to NO, and I'd like to see this posted in some form. EDIT (1/16): I've relistened, and I'll go ahead and change my vote to NO (resubmit). I do think Jimmy's crit on the default FL drumloop is valid, but I've heard guys like Quinn Fox integrate presets well, so it's not an automatic DQ. It seemed to work fairly well. As far as the arrangement being weak, I thought the overall treatment of the source was still creative and thought Jimmy sold it short. I could see how someone wouldn't like the lead portasynth, but had 0 issue with it at all, and don't see what was wrong with using it. The melodic interpretation and countermelodic part-writing was pretty solid and definitely interpretive. I think the main issues are still the mixing/mastering being weak, and then the textures being empty for some sections (worst offender: 2:07-2:32). But Jimmy's ultimately made me see that this needs more than simple production clean-up for the pass. It's probably time to move on from this piece, but if you do give it one more go and really address the production and textural issues here, you could have a fair shot at a pass. Do keep at it.

Go to the contest site. This is sponsored by both us and SEGA Europe, and SEGA's generously offered up the prize. We're not just telling you about A contest, this is OUR contest. Go for the win.

Definitely feeling Zoola more, or Zoolance, but Zylance is cool with the uppercase Z. I'mma let you marinate on the name change, but I'll keep an eye out. Don't go with that logo though.

New Year's, which is what I voted. Clearly the people turned out this year. For me, it's much easier to be away from work, because everyone's in vacation mode, but I'll go whenever.

Here's what I wrote without reading the votes: Opened up with some pretty generic saw wave stuff. :16 sounded petty swamped, but the overall mixing sounded alright. The melody at :47 being more prominent would have been nice, as it sounded kind of buried, but was creatively doubled by the synths. Some decent sonic trickery at 1:20. Definitely a welcome new addition, it just never come back. 1:36 was hitting me with a little too much raw saw. What was going on at 2:16? The synth design was definitely generic and stuck out as such, which wouldn't be such a negative if every sound wasn't so generic. The voice sampling was actually really cool as a concept, but should have been better couched in the soundscape. Right now, it just sounded pasted on top with no care. I'll also mention I didn't think there was too much usage of it. The source tune was still going on in the back, so I don't mind the voices. 3:19, back to more saws. Yeah, that definitely wore thin after a while. Honestly, I like the arrangement, even if it's pretty straightforward. But the synth design was vanilla and not varied or sophisticated enough to stand 4+ minutes. Then I read Vig's vote, and he's got it. Yep. I know Dave's leaning on the bar being lower, and there's definitely stuff to like here, an obscure game being one of them. But sonically, the palette here was definitely skimpy and bland, and that's basically the one huge thing that dragged it down. All the NOs that mentioned hesitations on the conservative arrangement laid out their concerns well. I think we could all live with what's there, but further interpretation would have really sealed the deal. Really hope to see a resubmission of this one with some minor tweaks to push it over the top if it doesn't make it. NO (resubmit)

Hi, i'm Mathieu DALI i do game remixes since long time but i never share my work. so i'd like to be juged by specialists like you thanks The Nickname i use is Flamex The track i'd like to submit is a remix of "Y's III - Wanderers from Ys" the track is called : "The Boy who had Wings" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ys_III:_Wanderers_from_Ys I hope to have a positive return !!! --------------------------------------------------------------- Ys III - Cool to hear something like Ys III get some love. We definitely need more Falcom stuff. This does get a bit more expansive with the original, but the structure is pretty verbatim, so you need even more personalization to make this arrangement stand apart as unique compared to the original. That's also hard to do when your arrangement is the same name as the original. The mixing/production also needed work. It sounds like most of the higher frequencies got cut out, and everything except for the leads sounds really far away in the soundscape. Keep at it. NO

Original Decision: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18014 My god it was a pleasure to see such positive feedback, I didn't check that till now, I hope it's not too late to submit this!! Your ReMixer name: Zardonic Your real name: Federico Agreda Your website: http://www.myspace.com/djzardonic Your userid (number, not name) on our forums, found by viewing your forum profile: 14198 Submission Information Name of game(s) arranged: Chrono Trigger Name of individual song(s) arranged: Main Theme + Guardia Forest Hope to see a YES soon man! I'm more than happy to contribute to any future projects in OCReMiX, seen a lot of albums comin out lately and I'd love to do something for that. Best regards, Federico Agreda ------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Secret of the Forest" (ct-111.spc) The groove is cool, but core beats hardly varied for nearly the whole 5 minutes, and it still drags, unfortunately. There was one good dropoff and that was basically it. Some rhythmic variations with the melody could have cool, and better dynamic contrast would have helped; just something to keep things fresh. I wouldn't have drastically altered the overall structure from the last version. What you ended up doing was cutting some stuff and replacing it with another 2-minute section that still ended up sounding extremely repetitive. 2:55-on basically sealed why the changes didn't work. There was melodic interpretation, but it wasn't melodious at all and didn't sound cohesive with the beats and "Secret of the Forest" countermelody. The track also sounded way too compressed, and nothing had room to breathe. Give the parts more room to be heard and go for subtle but more comprehensive variation of the writing and parts throughout the piece, and I think you'd have a fully realized piece. If you'd rather move onto something new, that's cool. Your track have a lot of energy and power, so I'm looking forward to hearing more from you, Federico! NO (resubmit)

Hey, J's! Rom Tom here (and in real life, known as Thomas Zanay.) ...with a remix I doth have been working on for a while now. 'Tis a ReMix of Kannon's Klaim I kall "Klubbing in the Mine." But if you guys have a better idea for a title, please, do share. Anyways, as you will hear, it is of the Trance genre. The game it pertains to is the well known Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. What a great game.. I just Kouldn't resist remixing one of my 'more' favorite themes from the game, especially right after beating it in one sitting on a SNES about a month and a half back. Here is the end result of many hours of work put into 4 and a half minutes. This is my first official submission to OCRemix, and, all in all, I hope you guys enjoy! I've been following OCRemix since around 2002 when I was a mere lad of 10 years old, but decided to enter existence on the site back in '07 when I got my hands on FL Studio. And that's a basic background story about me. Quick Rundown: ReMixer: Rom Tom ReMix Title: Klubbing in the Mine Game: Donky Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest Song: Kannon's Klaim (A.K.A. Mine) Composer: Dave Wise Take Kare, Rom Tom Thomas ''and the Dancing Hoohas'' --------------------------------------------------------- Donkey Kong Country 2 - "Kannon's Klaim" Seems like the track clipped a lot just looking at Winamp's levels; even if not, the treble was blisteringly loud and forced me to turn down the volume. The melodic interpretation could have been more creative for the first 90 seconds, but the overall mood was different and interpretive. The string sequencing through needed some work; lots of unnatural sounding bow movements that need to be fine-tuned. The textures could have used a bit more meat on them. Particulatly when it turned toward to the electronic/clubby stuff at 2:42, the soundscape sounded too sparse. The key change at 3:50 was a little tacky, but at least you had some new ideas at 4:06 to close things out for the finish and not make the key change sound like you'd run out of creative gas. If you can improve the production and further flesh out the arrangement, this would have a shot. Certainly worth working on further if you have the interest. Otherwise, definitely not awful for a first sub, which put you ahead of about 75% of what we receive. Keep at it, T.J., and I hope we hear more from you! NO (resubmit)

Greetings. I present a track that was originally written (a long time ago) for Joe Cam's expansive Animal Crossing remix project... and ended up on Joe Cam's rather oddly released KK Setlist. Ah well. I like my mix and feel it a fine submission for the site. --- Remix Title: Slippery Safari Game: Animal Crossing Composers: Kenta Nagata, Shinobu Tanaka, Toru Minegishi Remixer: Mazedude File: Description: When I was approached with the notion of doing an Animal Crossing mix, of course I wanted to hear the source material, as I was completely unfamiliar with the game. After hearing I few tracks I was overcome with the sensation of "What the hell is this???" But Joe Cam explained what it was that I was hearing, and ideas started to form. I then chose the "Safari" theme, thinking "Oh boy, I'll make it all safari like, with tribal drums and chanting and who knows what else!" But... that didn't happen. Somehow, someway, I ended up going totally off the deep end into the world of synths and chopped up samplepacks on this one. And of course, the usual Mazedude tricks: odd syncopation, fun with overlapping time signatures, wild synth leads, everything ya need to give you that tingly feeling. --- Mazedude --------------------------------------------------------------- The 6-note pattern introing the arrangement (:00-:09 of the mix) seems inspired by either :12-:26 of the source's intro or 2:10-2:14's of the source's ending, but sounds too different/liberal for me to count it. That means the sections where it was alone (e.g. 1:26-2:33 of the mix) were too liberal for me. Same issue with the steady 6-note pattern running in the background first from :38-1:07 of the mix, which was the similar to the 6-note patterns of the source's chorus (1:11-1:15 of the source). So the breakdown below is basically what I could make out. :10-19, :20-:27, 1:07-1:26, 2:34-2:43, 2:44-2:51, 2:53-3:02, 3:03.5-3:09, 3:12-3:21, 3:22-3:30 That's about 83.5 seconds of a 217-second long track or about 38.48% overt source usage. As far as I'm making out, it's kind of like "Smooth Tanooki". The original writing ideas sound similar to the source, are stylistically derived from the source, and connect well with the obvious usages of the source. The track sounds strong and I like listening to it. But the overall connections to the source aren't overt enough when you listen to it. The source usage sounds too liberal for me to pass it. If someone can show me A-to-B connections that illuminate the source usage, I'm down with revisiting my vote, but I gave it a fair shake and I'm not making it out enough. NO (resubmit)

That's silly. Complaining the sequencing is stiff makes no sense; the source tune is a spoof of a baby crib's music box and so is this arrangement. The guitar sounded perfectly fine; it's grungy, and it clicks. Like I said, I don't mind being an outlier, and I realize the track could use further development (and respect any opinion saying it needs more), but it does stand apart from the original enough, and I'm not put off by the instrumentation.

Remixer Name: Willrock Real Name: William Harby Game Arranged: Pokemon Gold and Silver Songs Arranged: Azalea Town Theme Name Of Submission: Slowpoke Shuffle So, this is a track I have made for the upcoming pokemon project. I wanted to do a more easy going approach with this remix - no overblown 80's synths or crazy synth-shred solos in this one. And I came up with the name slowpoke shuffle as the town in the game was full of slowpoke Hope you guys enjoy this one. ------------------------------------------------------------- Pokémon Gold/Silver - Azalea Town ~ Blackthorn City I don't often describe music like this, but this song sounds very friendly. It's solid, but not great; maybe the relaxed pacing threw me off compared with what I would have liked to have heard, but it seemed like this could have been even more interesting. That said, there was a quasi-tropical feel to some of this, and I enjoyed the arrangement overall. Will did a nice job of keeping the foundation of the source tune constantly involved when there was original writing taking the forefront. YES

I'm not mad as much as amused, because this guy doesn't know anything about our history. 1. Yes, I believe Mitsuda has listened to the album. We have a mutual friend. Even if not this particular work, he's heard our community's music. We've been around for quite a while. 2. We don't need any original composer's approval to justify interpretation. 3. We have musicians in this community who make their living writing original music. 4. We've had a AAA game publisher contract our musicians for music to a huge franchise, and obtained excellent reviews. 5. Thanks for linking to a Donkey Kong Country ReMix by one of the staffers involved in the music selection process here. 6. Thanks again for linking to a Donkey Kong Country ReMix. The original composer is a fan of OC ReMix and participating in our next album with fellow game composers who are also appreciative of what OC ReMix is doing. Didn't I tell you we win? We really win.

OCR & SEGA Europe are throwing a contest to have 1 lucky fan win an official Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games snowboard. Check it out NOW! http://ocremix.org/SonicSnowboard SEGA will announce the contest soon on their side, but right now you guys get the heads up first. The contest is open to ANYWHERE in the world, so be sure to enter before the end of Monday, January 18th! The instructions are really easy, so have fun with it, good luck, and be sure to share! http://ocremix.org/SonicSnowboard A winner is you!

I know John got a new job, but I didn't know it was doing Twitter spam with his old white business partner William G. Wentworth III. http://twitter.com/inspiring4all Stop spamming me, Wingless! :'-(

Who cares about this guy? We already won. http://twitter.com/YasunoriMitsuda/status/6323475639 Original composer likes it = we win.

The feeling is mutual! I roll my eyes at YOU as well! I kid, but in as much as we're meant to evaluate source usage, I will always "serious business" it. Anyone passing mixes with roughly 40% or LESS source usage really needs to explain how they can pass mixes for not overtly use the source material yet sounding good & stylistically similar to the source material, but then NO someone else for "not using the source enough". It's very inconsistent and unfair, and it's VERY biased toward musicality and production at the expense of observable interpretation. I'll always use a 50% guideline for "dominant" source usage as I take away from the Submissions Standards. No one can say for sure when something's at 50% usage when it's grey, but at least I actually try, and it makes my calls a lot less subjective than this huge trend I'm seeing toward giving every nice-sounding submission a pass. Again, if this has over 50% source usage, I'm just not making it out and you correct me, then I'm always down to change my vote. Some of you guys know theory; put it to work and explain it.

Hahaha, we're allowed outliers. I had fun.

http://gameindustrytweet.com/ http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=708 http://twitter.com/ocremix/lists Enjoy!

Hey, TO BE FAIR, I didn't say you'd never be ready, I just said I hadn't seen enough yet. The door's always open, Andy, you know that.

Waiting for the now-inevitable "Cock on the Mona Lisa" Photoshop. Keep it clean, y'all!

Hahahaha! I almost took him seriously.

Thanks you for bringing this to our attention. Clearly we were not aware of this until you told us, again and again and again. We're already getting to 'em. They're being got.

The percussion was a weak point here. It sounded too distant and flimsy, and really needed more power behind it. One smaller part that bothered me was the 6 note beeping countermelody (first used at :33) being constantly repeated. Geez, do something else with it, even just changing the beeping sound. Along with the source melody and pad-like stuff, there was practically no variation. Obviously you had parts dropping in and out, and the instrumentation of the lead changed as well, so I'm not discounting that. But notwithstanding the instrumental changes, the writing of both the source melody and pad countermelody was basically verbatim with 0 deviation. Yeah, there's a groove here with subtle dynamics, but some rhythmic or melodic variations would have been more substantive interpretation. I know there's only 8 seconds of source to work with, but this arrangement didn't feel expansive enough or different enough from the basic structure of the original. It's not a bad piece of music, but as a substantive enough arrangement, I can't co-sign on it. NO (resubmit)

Artist Name: Process Real Name: Mike Video Game Title: Chrono Trigger Game Track: Corridors of Time I had actually started this track years ago with the intention of submitting it to ocremix, but I never got around to finishing it. It wasn't until last night that I got the urge to finally finish this piece. This was composed entirely in FL Studio, and touched up in Cubase SX. I'm a huge fan of Yasunori Mitsuda, and his melodic style is a huge influence on me. Hope you guys enjoy. --------------------------------------------------------- http://ocremix.org/chip/6132 - "Corridors of Time" (ct-304.spc) Everything after 1:37 was essentially a cut-and-paste, which was disappointing. You had a good personalized groove going on that could have coasted to YES had it continued evolving. Vary up the beats and develop the arrangement beyond 1:37 instead of putting it in cruise control. Realize the full potential here. NO (resubmit)