Liontamer

You are a god among men, Polololo!

Thanks a lot for the response, guys, I appreciate it. I'm gonna have some more for you guys to do, but I just have a brief but I think fun one from an upcoming game. I'd like someone to write up a bio for the Tap Runner from Prope & Sega's Let's Tap, produced in part by Sonic creator Yuji Naka. It'll be the blue Tap Runner if you need to know. Obviously Tap Runner isn't rich with an in-universe narrative, but a summary of the various courses/obstacles he deals with and some insight as to how the character works with the game mechanics of Let's Tap will cover all bases we need. Thanks to whomever is brave enough to tackle this! Have fun! Potential Sources: http://www.sega.com/games/lets-tap/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let%27s_Tap http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/3444646805/ (Figurine pic) Google Image search http://nintendo.joystiq.com/tag/lets-tap/ http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2009/04/16/lets-learn-about-lets-tap/ http://blogs.sega.com/usa/category/lets-tap/

I know that. I ALSO know the remix title is not presented with hate, the titling IS creative, and there's absolutely no point in pressuring the artist in this manner with political correctness gone overboard. LET IT GO!

Look, as long as it's not hate speech or patently offensive, we're gonna allow it. Didn't you see djp's response? VERDICT: ALLOWED

Sounds like a good idea. I also have a character bio request that I need someone to fulfill for the site within the next couple of days. It wouldn't be anything too intensive, but would be helpful. If you're a Mascots project contributor that would be willing to help, lemme know here in the thread, please. After that, I do have some other characters that would need to be written up, again, nothing too intensive, but I'm hoping to get a couple of mascots added related to some cool contests we're planning!

http://twitter.com/ocremix/status/1993993552

UPDATED: Meeting at 4:00pm at Houlihan's for late lunch/early dinner/long island iced teas. I need to get to the concert hall early at 6, but folks are welcome to arrive later & stay later since the doors open at 7. Also, WEAR YOUR OCR SHIRTS! They won't let us sell shirts at the event but if you need one, let me know size/color in advance and I'll bring it for you, $10. We'll find a convenient back alley in Baltimore, and if you give me the cash, I'll give you the stuff, etc. It'll be just like HBO's The Wire. - djpretzel Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY - June 27, BALTIMORE, MD, Doors open 7PM Baltimore Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arnie Roth, Meyerhoff Symphony Hall Tickets: $30-60 range BSO/Distant Worlds ticket information The BSO around the web Alright, as far as I'm aware, this is Distant Worlds first trip to the MD/DC/VA area, so we've gotta represent! We've got OC ReMix, MAGFest, Firaxis Games, Big Huge Games and the Gamer Symphony Orchestra all in the general area, so clearly we're gonna do a meetup of some kind. The concert's gonna kick ass, AND both MAGFest and OC ReMix plan to be spreading the word to concert attendees in partnership with the BSO. So if you're in the area, please make sure you lock in your plans to attend the show with us! --------------------------------------------------------- CONFIRMED! binary1230 djpretzel (w/ Anna, Cara) Gamer Symphony Orchestra members Harmony Jimmy-Taru José the Bronx Rican justinj212 Level 99 lou Moguta Nick the Newbie TENTATIVE audio fidelity DrumUltimA IcedDevil q-pa Sengin

I'd definitely appreciate anyone taking a stab at this. Also, are there any other mixes where we have lyrics missing? I ask because I've since repopulated lyrics tabs for all mixes where we have them, as well as embedded them in the MP3s for my OCR retagging project (thanks to Doug for clueing me in on the existence of a lyrics field, since I didn't use iTunes). If anyone has any glaring lyrics omissions to point out other than Pac-Man 'Sinergia', SMB '8-bit Eighties' and FF8 'Eyes on Me (Obsession)', I need to know. Thanks!

I like the premise here myself, though I'd probably make the overall look darker. I know Dave wanted some sort of modifications, because he wasn't feeling this initial design, but I can't seem to get more info than that. Feel free to nag him, José, so we can move forward. Thanks a lot for coming up with a solid first cut; you did such a badass job with the YouTube video that I know official album art could be good in your hands.

My fault; I thought "Zelda Heineken" was being referred to, given SwordBreaker's original mention of it. That said, "Utopia" was very nice. And as I just said about it, I dunno if the arrangement concerns are that cut and dry, given the ideas in the second half, BUT I don't have my judging hat on. That said, I wouldn't write it off. Also, Doug's avoiding saying the obvious "I was wrong" about the judges always being meanie-faces to the submitters and implying all rejections were bad music; he STILL hasn't owned up. C'mon, I'm waiting. You didn't look at anything before you complained. He still thinks Prot's on the panel.

Worth noting that Zelda Heineken was an obvious pass, so that makes no sense to bring it up as an example of something that's not "OCR material"; it's posted with our current standards in mind, ergo it's "OCR material".

A remix of a ReMix is not going to pass if it's mainly directly sampling the audio of the first ReMix, which is the basically the source tune alongside whatever game theme was the original source. Basically you're doing a traditional remix, not a ReMix. There's no way this concept would be passed. Besides too much direct sampling of the source, you have sections like :36-1:25 that have nothing to do with any Super Metroid game theme just because it's sampling "Dirty Sam". Best example of arranging a previous ReMix it in a way we would pass: http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00763/ vs. http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01251/ Have fun making this remix though, and we'll see how it turns out, but just clarifying that it's outside the scope of what would be accepted. But like most ReMixes, most notably the Ziwtra example, you'd basically have to build your own ReMix from the ground up, even if it's inspired by another ReMix.

Give me moneyz. I mean, BIRFDAY!

1) Obviously there's some degree of subjectivity involved in applying the standards, because judges can have differing opinions on various mixes. No one's disputing that, and our process works that way by design, not by accident. Otherwise you wouldn't need judges, you could just use a checklist. The underlined second part of the definition is what we're concerned about eliminating on the panel. We want the first part in a sense because our ideology is our standards, and our standards are independent from our personal music preferences. Also, being fair to each track isn't just about having an earnest opinion. Look at SgtRama's & starla's quotes a couple of posts ago with their nonsense; you can be earnest and be 100% wrong. It's also about having a good grasp of the standards so that you're applying them in a reasonable, consistent way. Where you go wrong is implying we claim we don't or can't have opinions, and that having an opinion displays a "lack of control" in the context of being a critic. What I'm saying is that we aren't in the business of arbitrarily applying the standards with favoritism and bias, i.e. voting against our better judgement in spite of what we're listening to. 2) Your argument about our "bias" potentially in action is you giving negative hypotheticals on what we could say about that DoD track you linked, when a) there's no cut-and-dry arrangement call against it and the production is good, and no judge would say the production was messed up. It's a straw man argument, and I'd recommend not assuming that kind of stuff.

Clearly, they're "not part of the clique."

I don't count, but A.

Kind of letmegooglethatforyou, but how it works and what it's helping to research (in this case, protein folding): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home As far as what benefit it's provided to the scientific community, if you're willing to read those: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home#Results

Well, to be clear about most NOs, because that's what someone like Hoboka was complaining about, the fact is that most NOs are given the NO because they do need additional work on interpretation, composition and/or production to be above bar, and could use the work. Many are below average or bad pieces of music. And a decent amount of material is really promising and is narrowly rejected or rejected with lots of urges to resubmit. But that's a comparatively small amount of material. People can be upset about the quality bar all they want, but the community's reputation has grown positively on account of the raising of that bar, and the overall increase in consistency is objective not subjective. And then we get submissions of MIDIs, pure chiptunes, covers with little interpretation, traditional remixes heavily sampling original audio, mashups, mixes of game tracks not originally created for games or original songs ABOUT video games (which are all outside our scope) where rejections are independent of quality. But those are much more infrequent, probably less than 5% of all rejections. And, there is nothing inherently wrong with OCR having a focus that excludes those types of music, not because we dislike that music, but because back in 1999 OCR was created to offer something collectively different than preexisting concept websites that already offered those other types of music. Some of you are not understanding this. I also think the comment about OCR trying to institute a "facade of professionalism" is ignorant. Obviously, we like to have a high standard, and it does blur the line between fan and professional for some of our community members. How that's apparently a negative thing for a community of musicians who enjoy video game music, I have no idea. But we don't have high standards to pretend we're professionals, we do it to pay respect to the original work and encourage people to appreciate video game music more by presenting consistently creative material. And that raises the game for everyone because while standards aren't professional, they're unapologetically at a high level for a hobbyist, and it promotes musicians becoming GOOD at what they do, not just half-decent. Nah, I always do the math when there's a potential I could YES it. Not trying to pull a debate trick re: burden of proof, but you've gotta gimme some proof through linking decisions, because you're just talking out of your ass with that. No offense taken. But we don't have shadow conspiracies to pass stuff from friends and overlook the guidelines for them. If people did that, I'd want them kicked off. Of course. And that's OK, because we're not saying it is. But people with a chip on their shoulder complain AS IF we say it is. That isn't our problem. You, you're talking out of your ass too. You clearly don't read enough judges decisions. I'm not sure why you're framing it as "if they say NO, they're saying or implying it's bad music no matter the quality level", when we don't do that at all. There are enough people who have had a submission rejected who will vouch for that. Again, no offense taken, but the accusations are just silly. Maybe we can add your PC language elaborating on "it's not necessarily bad", BUT given your POV, I don't see how adding that would satisfy what you perceive as the judges being soul-crushing douches. But us offering positive feedback or saying something's good despite being outside the standards happens often when we hear promising submissions. You need to read through decisions and recognize you're wrong on that. Judges never say anything nice. And that's just page 1. I just linked all 36 NO threads on page 1 of Decisions without exception. WHEN you read through them, you will realize you're 100% wrong. Are we really having this discussion? Really? You bitch and moan about the judges being unsupportive and saying we're not clarifying to people that their work isn't necessarily bad, and YET you don't read a goddamn thing we say. You don't read shit.

I've actually never heard Phantasmagoria before, so I don't know what to expect. Some people have said they're underwhelmed by Uematsu's anime scores, so maybe he doesn't have the touch outside games, but who knows what that's based on. Either way, I'm obviously interested to hear something original by Uematsu, so let's get it going...

Since the thread's basically about the musical evolution of the site, I pretty much agree with what ZealPath said above. As far as Hoboka's complaints about my judging, "meh." Obviously, a few people would think that a non-musician's critique is invalid, but that's an ignorant POV that I don't take personally. The only complaint I ever take personally is accusations of bias or favoritism, which I've never done. Also, how would he know my taste in music at all? I didn't realize Tim Follin was so bad for me. Also to Epitaph, not that I'm mad about the inference at all, but I don't "lack the imagination to compose original melodies", I just lack the ability to implement any ideas I have. Also, while I'm sure we have some people who don't resubmit promising submissions because they're upset, I'd wager the majority of people unfamiliar with the submission system simply aren't aware of the status of their song. While I'd personally love to contact everyone on the status of their subs, that's only something that'll come with 1) me catching up on the submissions inbox and 2) having the additional free time to then mail everyone on whether their mix passed/didn't pass/was chosen for direct posted. That'll be a great perk that will increase communication with the artists, and we already have form letters for all those circumstances, so just cross your fingers I can catch up again. But it won't be for a while.

Remixer & real name: Nathan Rich Email address: vanishdoom@gmail.com Website: http://myspace.com/nrichmusic Forum userid: 25305 Game: Final Fantasy IV Songs remixed: The Airship Composer: Nobuo Uematsu System: SNES Comments: Tackling a composition that is essentially only 30 seconds long and arranging it into a worthwhile, interesting tune for the FFIV album project only became a daunting task when the deadline inched closer and closer. I had given a couple botched attempts at the Airship theme until I stumbled onto a bouncy, euro-dance style that meshed incredibly well with the flighty, repetitive melody we've all come to know and love. Notably, I opted out the "uhn tiss" style drumtrack for something you'd more likely hear on a hard rock song, giving the remix a unique flair. Because of this, guitar tracks were definitely in the blueprints to help bring out the heavier edge, but never seemed to present itself in a way that wasn't fairly obvious and in bad taste. My only gripe with this arrangement was the lack of source material at my disposal, leaving me to experiment a lot with some original melodies and hooks to help fill out the song. Despite this, I'm extremely pleased with how the production came out and am deeply honored to have been a part of the FFIV project to begin with. -------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - "The Airship" (ff4-29.spc) Opened up pretty interesting, so I was intrigued with where it would go. :15-:19 started getting dissonant, though, which had me wondering what was up, then BAM :20 hit me in the face with some chorused (but vanilla) synths and even more dissonance with some phasing sounds. What in the world...? A lot of those sound choices from :20-1:44 were brutal. That burst of synths from :24-:26 (repeated :34-:37, :46-:49, :56-:59) sounded dissonant, 1:17-1:20 also IMO. 1:50 had an EarthBound vibe that Andy pointed out with cooler sounds, but then back to that ugly synth stuff at 2:10 along with some fakey guitar plucks. Yeah, the synth design here is a huge downside to this. There was no synergy with the parts at all, and the electronic stuff sounded generic with overboard effects. Can someone else explain to me what happened here? I'm sorry but, besides a couple of brief sections, there was no subtlely at all with this. The synth choices were generic, the mixing was grating & unbalanced, and there was more than one's fair share of dissonance in the opening minute. Sections like :00-:19, 1:44-2:10, 2:30-2:50 & 4:18-4:43 had potential as far as textures, but it was difficult to focus on any strengths of the arrangement when the execution was so whacked out. In the meantime, you can work on gaining more experience with the synth sounds. For this, I'd potentially take the more laid back sections of the arrangement and build the rest of the track around that mood & style, Nathan, where it seemed like your ideas were clicking more. NO

Tetanus is the title of the remix, and this is a project remix. Please hold until project release if accepted, thanks! Contact Information * Your ReMixer name : Hemophiliac * Your userid (number, not name) on our forums : http://www.ocremix.org/forums/member.php?u=4862 Submission Information * Name of game(s) arranged : Donkey Kong Country 2 * Name of individual song(s) arranged : Lockjaw's Saga * Your own comments about the mix: For this remix, I was heavily inspired by a track from the anime Gurren Lagann called "Baf baf! Sonna ni moeru no ga...Suki kai?" I used a similar style and structure to the piece. Orchestral opening building to a break into a gated synth/more percussion driven section. Along with my own flavors added piano and orchestral based percussion rather then electronic based. Getting some of the parts to work right really had me pulling my hair out at times. Enjoy. -------------------------------------------------------------- I'd trim a couple seconds of the silence off at the beginning. http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkq - "Lockjaw's Saga" (dkq-07.spc) The sample quality wasn't bad, but the articulations generally didn't sound realistic. The woodwinds at :26 & 1:09 sounded like they needed the most work out of anything. The piano at 1:30 & 3:23 also sounded very thin & mechanical. No offense, but I'm a little surprised you could be satisfied with execution like that. The military drums at :46 sounded very strong though, and brought lots of power to the picture; those sounded realistic. The strings could have been tweaked a bit, but those sounded good overall as well. Good transitions at 1:28 & 1:58. I was feeling the pacing and dynamics of this one overall, which felt pretty cinematic. On the flip side though, I was caught off-guard by the synth at 2:05, though it has a cool sound to it. At the same time though, I was waiting for other electronic elements to eventually be introduced and we never got any, so the synth ultimately came off as out of place. Am I the only one that expected more electronic elements to become involved after that perceived setup? Smaller issue, the decay of the piano at 3:44 was way too fast and weakened the ending a bit, and again, the piano sounded very unrealistic to begin with. The devil's in the details. I can live with that synth usage, and the arrangement is definitely on point, Chris, so this is really just a case where you need to refine the sample articulations and get those key elements sounding richer and more realistic. NO (refine/resubmit)

Hey judges, It's been awhile - this is your friend and pal PrototypeRaptor aka Jonathan Paulsen here. I'm kind of surprised that nobody has done this source yet; Kirby 64's "final" boss, Miracle Matter, had one of my most favorite fight themes ever. I always have wanted to do that crazy boss justice - so here I am. This is a pretty hardcore DnB tune influenced heavily by Prodigy, Crystal Method, Dieselboy, Noisia, etc etc. As such, it has obnoxiously loud drums, lotsa distortion, grating leads, glitching, evil laughing, and, most importantly, loud, ridiculous drops. I wanted to capture the essence of Miracle Matter in this mix - he was a crazy, psychotic boss that switched between several forms so quickly that you were at the game over screen before you knew what happened. I picture poor kirby walking into the boss room expecting a nice, easy fight with Dedede and his useless hammer only to be confronted by the one and only Hannibal Lector. With the ability to change shape. And superpowers. He never stood a chance.....:'( Hope you like it, and thanks for listening! PrototypeRaptor (Jonathan Paulsen) (here's the source: )-------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/download_file/12189 - "Miracle Matter" Hahaha, you've got the obnoxiously loud part down. Nailed it. The source's backing patterns from :05-:16 and then expanded from :16-:26 form the primary connection to the source. Considering that there's not much there with the source, going the expansive route with the arrangement was sensible way to go. It's worth noting that what little melodic content was in the source (1:09-1:31 of the source) was used as well. Dynamically, this clearly has breakdowns that varied up the intensity of the piece. I just ended up recalling the in-your-face stuff the most due to the volume. So just keep in mind that this does have some worthwhile dynamic contrast, as I almost painted this with too broad a brushstroke after the first cursory listen. As far as synth design & writing goes, I would have loved to have heard more bells & whistles, but that's not really the point of this one. Nice approach, Jon! YES

Watch the bitrate, as we have a 192kbps bitrate ceiling. Pretty much in league with these guys. I can hear how it's a liberal take on "Finish the Fight", but I'd also say make the source tune melody more integrated with the rest of the arrangement. Most of the middle sounded unconnected to the source, so aside from some supporting instrumentation outlining the main Halo theme, I didn't hear too many overt connections. The sample realism was OK for the most part. Nothing awesome, but OK in getting the job done, with the exception of the synth guitar, which was definitely very bad and, as I mentioned, created a quality disparity with the rest of the instrumentation. If you're willing to work the arrangement further and can find a suitable upgrade as far as the guitar, I'd certainly like to see what you could do. NO (resubmit)

Old fogey!