Liontamer

Yeah, I agree with Mattias that if it's just the production-related fix of element, that's more likely to be a conditional YES. For the ones that believe in using it, anyway.

That's all Tony fault; I'll never ask him anything on IRC again! In other words, kik Tony. (i.e. not a big deal, but I recall that's what he said) That's a pretty stupid thing to say. Exactly, the listeners generally couldn't care less about the site's guidelines or purpose as long as we posted enjoyable tracks. That underscores why it's good for the panel to scrutinize tracks; the fans generally don't. Some very enjoyable tracks just end up being outside the scope of the site. We almost passed Villainelle's Zelda 64 mix when it actually had barely anything to do with the source tune it was supposed to be arranging, until we took a closer look. A lot of people would have given it the benefit of the doubt. If we posted Hyadain's , we'd have lots of people in favor of that too, and I can't forget about the debate I had about removing Zelda 64 'Ocarina Boogie'. I r badmen's on this stuff. If it ends up that mixes are on the borderline like this one in terms of actually using the VGM, even though Joe Blow wouldn't care as long as the production was awesome, those are exactly the situations the Js will be checking out.

Just for posterity's sake: http://www.ocremix.org/info/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Why_aren.27t_the_ReMixes_ranked_by_popularity_or_numerical_ratings.3F

Oh yeah, we didn't recruit OA or anything, nice pick, Brad.

You guys never think we're trying to improve anything. OA! Voting! GO! (Welcome!)

Remixer Name: Nase Real Name: Joshu Skowronek Email: kaesomorph@hotmail.de UserID: 7599 Game: Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance Track: Successor of Fate Comments: Not a whole lot to say...it converts the original into swing, and while I was pretty conservative with the melody (I just like it so damn much), I hope there are enough other variations and additions fitting in with the different style for ya, plus some original content in the middle part. Oh, one more thing: I found this one to be way more enjoyable with the volume cranked up. -------------------------------------------------------------- The instrumentation and textures were a bit ugly in a way (some of the instrument quality could have been better), and there were also some areas where the sound was piercing. That said, this was a very fun track, with a conservative but excellently personalized interpretation. Really upbeat, dynamic, high-spirited funk arrangement of a theme Shnabubula has already taken to the cleaners. His was more a fleshing out of the original, so it was cool to hear another take on it. It's a great source tune choice. Hope we hear more from you, Joshu! YES

Song: Song Name: Symbol of Darkness Game Arranged: Dracula X: Rondo of Blood Song Arranged: Dance of Illusions Comments: Not much to say about this except its a heavily remixed version of Dance of Illusions. ReMixer Name: Corlen Belspar Real Name: Mike Crain E-Mail Address: corlenbelspar@hotmail.com Website: http://www.fifthindependent.com. UserID: 20415 ---------------------------------------------------------- Akumajo Dracula X: Rondo of Blood Original Version - 14 "Illusionary Dance" The articulations of the sampled strings were pretty fake and exposed at the beginning; the brass later on was flimsy as well. The (German?) vocals at 2:25 were mixed too low for the most part, and the overall textures were pretty empty. It was an interesting track combining orchestration with tribal drum rhythms, but unless I completely have the wrong tune, this didn't sound like the source tune at all. The linked video has the source start at :11. I didn't recognize much, but I'd love to hear from someone else more familiar with the tune. That said, the execution needed some work as well. NO

Paneling just for the comparison to the mix this was inspired by - LT CONTACT INFORMATION ReMixer name: Olarin real name: Bradley Mellen email address: olarin42@yahoo.com website: http://bradleymellen.com/ forum userid: 23257 SUBMISSION INFORMATION game: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past track: Sanctuary Dungeon COMMENTS This was recorded in January of 2007, when I got some fellow musicians together to make a short demo, and to see if I could manage a passable recording on cello (which I'd been playing less than two years at that point). I initially had little thought of submitting this to OCR, as the whole idea to record the tune had come from listening to the excellent Neskvartetten ReMix "Ganon's Temple", and I figured that track had already pretty effectively covered the idea of a euro-jazz rendition of Sanctuary Dungeon. However, after repeated listening, I've decided that although the approach was similar, our instantiation is sufficiently distinct from theirs in form, instrumentation, mood, and interpretation to be worth a submission. So I'll leave the decision to you guys as to whether this version warrants posting another jazz reading of Sanctuary Dungeon to the site. Of course, if posted, please make sure to include the names of my fellow musicians prominently in the write-up: piano: Ari Kessler bass: Marshall Skinner drums, recording/mixing: Keith Maxwell Button --------------------------------------------------------------- Just want to note that we generally co-credit performers, so I need to check with Brad how he wants to handle that. http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01231/ - "Ganon's Temple" Yeah, clearly some similarities. If you do a loose jazz arragement of the theme, that's gonna happen. But these are different animals as far as I'm concerned. I'm OK with this though, as far as the comparison to Neskvartetten's arrangement. Short and sweet, I thought the levels were a little quiet, but that's probably just a result of the positioning of some of the instruments. Otherwise, a solid, chill arrangement that works very naturally and creatively with the source tune. Nice stuff. YES

Worth noting, since we didn't mention it here before, that we later on sent Tony a copy of the judgments so he could read the production crits brought up and make some tweaks, which he addressed nicely. He also recruited Shnabubula to add some cool original comping wankery on top of some of the mellower sections. Tony mentioned that Sam cooked up his stuff in a matter of hours after offering to do it, so definitely props to Sam for some nice additions that further fleshed out the arrangement.

Song - The Skies Hold no Angels for Us Remixer Names - Level 99 and AudioFidelity Real Names - Stevo Bortz and Jay Yaskin Email Address - level99remixteam@gmail.com ; bass10854@hotmail.com Website - None UserIDs - 13318 and 24748 Submission Information: Name of Game Arranged - Final Fantasy IV Name of Individual Song Arranged - Castle Damcyan Additional song information and original soundtrack already on OCR Comments: This is a song that was, from the get-go, envisioned to be an epic rock song. For those familiar with Final Fantasy IV's story, they know that what takes place at Castle Damcyan is a short, but pivotal and highly emotional, point in the game. I (Level 99) was already working on the Final Fantasy IV project and had finished my remix of Dancing Calcobrena, so I looked to see if any other songs were still available. Castle Damcyan was, so I started listening to the music and getting ideas in my head. Due to time and resources, I asked to have the song and asked for others to work on it with me. AudioFidelity offered to help a bit since even though he had a lot of tracks on his plate to finish but also felt that Damcyan warranted proper treatment in the project. I also asked Avaris to contribute some synth/soundscapes and make an intro to the song The result is an almost-six minute rock song containing elemental styles of classic rock, metal, acoustic, psychadelica (the intro), and a few others. It breaks down as follows: The song is introduced by a dark and heavily atmospheric synth/pad/fx composition written by Avaris, and the fx present here are sprinkled throughout the rest of the song. The intro bleeds into an interpretive A section from the original Damcyan song with a basic chord lead. After the drums kick up the A sections melody gets a little more interpretive but still hovers around the original writing. A second guitar comes in and starts to compliment the first as it goes to the B section. Following this, the drums switch to prominently syncopating the rhythm guitar as the two lead guitars duel into the second B section. A new C section arises, which is an elaboration of the original chord progression from the song, with new writing on all the guitars. Wind sweeps in at the end of the section to take us to a memory of what Damcyan once was as a piano plays a major-scale progression of section A as children play in the background. And then bomb blasts at the end of this as the guitars all come back for one last bit of battling. The final section is supposed to convey a person walking through the ruins of Damcyan while a woman cries and two acoustic guitars usher an end to the dream that was Castle Damcyan. Now, we really wanted to give feeling to the intensity of destruction at the Castle, and the broken dreams brought about by its demise. While Avaris did some FX and the intro, the majority of synths were played by AudioFidelity, along with the second lead guitar, the bass, the drums, the final mixing, the piano, and lastly adding in the ambient sounds. The song was led and arranged by me (Level 99) - providing the rhythm guitars, the first lead guitar, and the acoustic guitars later on. I hope you enjoy our remix of Castle Damcyan, and I'd like to thank OA for pushing so hard for the highest quality of mixes in the FFIV project. Thanks for listening! ~Stevo --------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - "Castle Damcyan" (ff4-16.spc) 5:46-long = >173 seconds for more than 50% source usage. :50-:55, :57-1:10, 1:12-1:17.75, 1:19-1:25, 1:26.75-1:39, 1:41-2:01, 2:03-2:06, 2:32-2:45.5, 3:15.75-3:21, 3:23-3:30, 3:31-3:35, 3:38-3:44, 3:45-3:46, 3:48.5-3:50, 4:38-4:39, 4:42-4:43.5, 4:44-4:47, 4:53-4:54, 4:56-5:04, 5:08-5:09, 5:10-5:17, 5:22-5:23, 5:25-5:32.5 Or about 134 seconds (38.73% source usage). I'm a stickler, that's my call. If you count all of the grace notes and all of the rests in tempo with the source, you have the simpler breakdown of :50-2:06, 2:32-2:45.5, 3:15.75-3:50, 4:38-5:32.5 or about 178.25 seconds. Shows the difference that counting that stuff can make. Given how long the track is, I'd rather have heard more elements used that kept the arrangement more strongly tied to the source in some way, but I can see why it would be passed if you're more relaxed (not a backhanded compliment). There were some great original ideas incorporated here, and then some super liberal backing element ideas that Steve & Jay felt were tied to the source, but IMO were not enough like the source. So ultimately, I love the track, but I'm gonna go borderline NO. That said, I'mma look at the overall execution. The opening guitar riffs at :19 were a great example of original writing that wasn't directly from the source, but was a stylistic fit with it. Just listening to it, it sounded like it was from the source, but it's actually too liberal IMO when trying to make an A-to-B connection. Source melody kicked in at :50. The mixing was on the muddy side from 1:18-2:03 once things got fuller with the backing guitars, but things were capably produced overall. 2:03 went into some extended soloing over a foundation inspired by the source, though too liberal to count as a direct connection IMO. Another chorus from 2:32-2:46 before going into more original writing. Then a pretty solid dropoff focusing on the piano at 3:16 before \m/'ing some more until the excellent acoustic guitar section at 4:38. Really strong, fluid dynamics throughout the track in this one, along with some great original part-writing that weaved together very cohesively with the source usage. Once I went into the details, I thought the overall composition could have integrated some more source elements during the soloing & original sections to keep it more grounded in the source. That's not to say that I don't like the arrangement or that I think it wouldn't pass. Solid, energetic contribution to the FF4 project that'll go over well, and shows how both artists, especially Stevo, have shown a good amount of growth. Even if they bitch about how long the judgments take.

Pimped (and great jorb as usual), but you NEVER put the URLs in the actual YouTube descriptions. Why are you never doing this? It's like you don't want the traffic. Both your URL & Leigh's should have been at the top of the video description, e.g.

Uh, just because someone's very good, they shouldn't be allowed to compete? No reason to psyche yourself out. Anyway, everyone is eligible. The only people ineligible are the contest judges, i.e. Seth, Michelle, djp and myself.

We may be doing PAX, otherwise I might have tried this.

Both bands are excellent. You don't have to like Armcannon, but you don't need to hyperbolically shit on them in order to make your point. You've clearly never heard Armcannon's stuff, including their latest album, if you're claiming they never use interpretation in their arrangements. We're not gonna get into a big dramarama over which band is better or the best.

Dedicated thread! http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24134

Founded in 2006, Kongregate is a place where independent game developers, artists and musicians collaborate to create great new Flash games, upload them to the site and then share in the ad revenue. For example, Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix lead designer David Sirlin also designed Kongregate's first premium game, Kongai, which has over 6 million plays since being released last year. Kongregate is now teaming up with Scion for their Artistic Intersection Contest to offer talented musicians the chance to win BIG, including a US$5000 grand prize of a digital music studio, just for exercising their creativity! Join the hunt now by heading to Kongregate's Sound Collabs contest page, powered by Scion: http://www.kongregate.com/collabs/sounds Many of OC ReMix's musicians are professional-grade artists or industry professionals, so you guys are a great fit with Kongregate Collabs' goal of bringing people together to create games! Upload & submit your own original tracks meant for games and through Tuesday, July 28th, FIVE musicians EVERY WEEK will take home a US$100 cash prize for having the highest rated tracks and will also be entered into the grand prize round, where Kongregate's expert panelists will select one lucky winner of a brand new home studio setup! Take a look at what you can walk away with: Artistic Intersection Contest: Sounds Category Grand Prize! (US$5000 value!) Apple 15in MacBook Pro (including 4GB RAM, 320GB hard drive and Apple Care support) Ableton Suite 8 Akai APC40 Akai MPK25 Presonus Firebox AKG K240 MKII headphones Kongregate and Scion also have a corresponding Art Collabs contest for visual artists with more huge prizes, so be sure to spread the word to every creative mind you know today! Good luck, everyone! Links Kongregate Sound Collabs, powered by Scion: http://www.kongregate.com/collabs/sounds The Artistic Intersection Contest, for both musical and visual artists: http://www.kongregate.com/pages/scions-artistic-intersection Kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com Scion: http://www.scion.com Kongai: http://www.kongregate.com/cards

You buy! You buy!

If your driver's license says male, I'm gonna kick your ass.

Love that song. Glad he can't touch the kids anymore. Sorry, MJ, not your fault your were mentally gone.

http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 416 "One-Winged Angel" Ohhhhh. OK, NOW I get the usage on this; thanks a lot, Cain. That 8-note melody at :54-1:10 of the source is also used beyond the intro as the light vox backing pattern from :45-1:06 (would have made that louder) and the backing tone from 1:07-1:29, so there was always something connecting this to the source while the more overt OWA interpretation was going on. As soon as you make out that connection above along with Cain's other comparisons, the source usage is obvious. OWA's such a long track, it was hard to get a bead on it. Meanwhile, the latter half of the arrangement had a lot of very brief source references and chopped up usages of the source. The guitar work was liberal, but generally connected, moreso than what I felt Palp gave credit for, but it's not really a big deal to me, as there's more than enough source usage combining the foreground and background usage. I had no problem with the volume. It was loud, but it's meant to hit you in the face. Really glad to sign off on this one. Keep kicking ass, Jack. YES

Really smart arrangement. It really expands on the source nicely and is a great example of doing a lot with a little. Excellent ideas on the whole; welcome, Dennis!

Marathon - "Flowers in Heaven" HALO Original Soundtrack - (06) & (17) First things first, my source usage breakdown. The track was 3:41-long, so I needed 110.5 seconds of source usage for the arrangement pass: (:07, :09, :12, :15, :17, :20, :23, :25, :28, :31, :33, :36, :39, :41, :44, :47 - "Flowers in Heaven" dum-dum-dum string pattern adapted to drums) x ~.75 seconds for duration = ~12 seconds :49.75-1:32 ("Flowers in Heaven" melody) 1:49-2:33 (:00-:15 of "A Walk in the Woods" - e.g. 1:49-2:00 simplifies :00-:08 of the source, then 2:00-2:11 uses :08-:15) 2:44-3:00 (:42-1:03 of "The Maw") By my count, that's about 114.25 seconds of source usage. I'm not counting the "Flowers in Heaven" reference after 3:00, because it's way too liberal and just not overt enough in the slightest. That said, the arrangement is still an easy pass for me once I (finally) made the A-to-B connections. Thanks to Nick for providing his breakdown. He didn't give me ALL the information I needed, especially for isolating usage of "The Maw", but once I did my own checking, it was fine. Really intelligent interpretation with a great mood and a solid weaving of the themes. The thing to keep in mind, NONE of these source themes are super memorable or possessing big hooks and Nick's style is subtle, so it's easy to not make the connections. I certainly didn't and that's part of why this track languished on the panel. But the connections are there and are actually very direct. I really don't think this merits a NO on lack of source usage or lack of overt source usage. On the production side, I'm sure there could be some tweaks as suggested, but this was definitely fine as is. The textures were excellent, and I'm loving it. I definitely encourage NOs based on arrangement to do another check against the sources and reconsider their votes. YES

The structure definitely doesn't pull off the "Far and Away" style completely effectively, but I can live with it. I don't think that's the main problem, and the arrangement is fine. I also kick Jesse in the face for not realizing the entire break section is the second source that I linked. But yeah, while I don't agree with Jesse's arrangement reasons for going NO, I'm not feeling as generous any longer with the conditional YES. I'm taking another listen and there's just too much wrong with the production where it would take too much effort to lift it over the bar, rather than some straightforward tweaks that could be implemented to get the balance & mixing sounding right. I think it's a solid enough idea that's just not executed to it's best, and as long as you continue to learn & improve, you'll look back on this in a year or two and wonder how you thought this mixing sounded OK. If this doesn't make it, move on. It's just not working right now for reasons previously stated by the other NOs. Very sorry to drag this out, but when something is middle of the road or a close call, that's means it winds up on the panel for a long time. NO

I do like that too, as far as the color scheme goes, but Jose's hit you with the info a lot better. Getting Dave to give me feedback on what he would tweak with José's art is like pulling teeth (i.e. he's busy and this, understandably, isn't a top priority). That said, I'mm nag Dave though so we can move fwd with something this summer.