Liontamer

It's so obvious we'll never, ever do official album art or wallpapers given how often this comes up. We really need to do a contest.

Yeah, direct post from half a decade ago. Just not representative of what's acceptable now, just in case anyone would interpret it that way.

Limiting direct sampling isn't strictly to avoid legal problems, it stressing that the most critical parts of source usage and interpretation have to be built from the ground up, not sampled. In this case, most of the connection to the source track is the vocals, not the music, which was mostly (not completely) unconnected to the source melodies. Taking an a capella and structuring a brand new original song around it that fits like a glove is outside the scope of what we're aiming to do. That doesn't make it bad music (wouldn't be pimping it if it did), it just means it wouldn't be posted.

Thanks to Jimmy for providing YouTubes of the sources. HALO Original Soundtrack - (26) "Halo" HALO 2 Original Soundtrack Vol. 2 - (06) "Unforgotten" HALO 3 Original Soundtrack - (215) "Never Forget" Opening drums sounded weak. Plus, they didn't mesh with the guitar that came in the later, and the pattern was placeholder-ish and on complete cruise control for 6 1/2 minutes. Sorry, but it sounded lazy as hell, and you can hook it up better. Make it more varied, progressive and interactive with the rest of the music. :22-:57 arranged the classic "Halo" theme on geetar, and I agreed with Palp that the lead was way too quiet and really needed to be brought into the foreground. Was feeling the guitar tone at 1:28 for a liberal usage of "Unforgotten" (the piano at 1:02 of the source again) from 1:28-1:32, 1:37-1:42 and 1:46-1:51, conncted with some original ideas of yours. "Unforgotten" more overtly from 2:15-2:51, followed by the "Halo" chorus showing up from 2:51-3:28, all with the guitars way too quiet again. 3:37-4:13 switched back over to "Unforgotten", then 4:13-4:18, 4:22-4:27, 4:31-4:36 arranged a different portion of "Unforgotten" (the piano at 1:02 of the source again), with more liberal stuff connecting things together until 5:10. For the other judges, there's plenty of Halo source material, more than 50% even being skimpy with the credit like I've been. For John, we can usually pick stuff out, but the onus is on you to provide info on the connections, because we'll generally won't give the benefit of the doubt. You really have to give more specifics on how you used the themes throughout the track. There was nothing inherently wrong with 5:10's original section winding things down, BUT...not for a minute and a half. The track could have easily faded out by about 5:37 and that would have been better than the needlessly drawn out ending here. The use of the sampled voices was cheesy, but didn't kill anything IMO. The drawn out ending could have been trimmed down quite a bit though. The main things needed, IMO, to get this up to snuff are to bring out the guitar work more when it's the lead, don't get lazy with the percussion patterns, and make the ending more concise. While the other Js weren't sure on the source usage, this needs more polish on the production side, so my third vote will wrap this up. Keep at it, bro, your subs show a lot of potential, but you need to continue fine tuning your work. NO

Hahaha! Of course Cain wouldn't know what was up with it. Neither would 'Ili. You guys are the last two, so get your votes in, beyotches.

Might as well throw away your gamer membership card.

One of the reasons I miss being in DC is not being able to make it to events like these. How was it? I'm excited to know what was on the setlist this go.

Because I have to repeat myself...

Some fans only download singles mixes, some grab entire albums. We post individual mixes created for our albums all the time. Nothing precludes an arrangement from an album being posted to the site just because it was on an album. Otherwise, no tracks from our other 11 albums would be posted as individual mixes. Albums aren't required to meet individual OC ReMix standards for interpretation or production, so being posted as a solo mix is another matter entirely.

Already mentioned to Paul that it's outside of the submission standards. He'd have to make the music arrange the source (which it generally doesn't). Right now the only connection to the source tune is the vocals directly sampled from the original, which is also a no-go. Great remix, just not a ReMix.

Still an awesome track, doing what great mixes do: generating interest in the original soundtrack. I'd never heard of Landstalker before this one, but I became a big fan of the source tune after this one. Sam can pretty much secure my interest in any piece of video game music based on his ReMixes. He picks his tributes well.

As the risk of looking like a lazy judgefgt, this has been the only song I've been listening to in the past 24 hours.

I imagine he's keeping busy with Eyecatcher Films. He put up that letter a while back in his homepage saying that he was available for freelance work again, but I haven't heard anything involving specifics. You could always friend him on Facebook and take the chance of asking him yourself. I dunno if you'll get anything out of him though.

Yeah, Gambit's got no love! As far as release this, before the end of the year would be nice, but that would have to compete with Summoning of Spirits, so perhaps after MAGFest in January. I could always aim for a March release and call it a day after that, as I have about 10 tracks so far, and love what's been made so far.

I have lost on Easy mode, but I still beat it with both Dee Jay and E. Honda tonight. Considering I've never seriously played Street Fighter on a PlayStation controller (no diagonal inputs), I did pretty well. You need some skills.

Hey guys, Paul "nervous_testpilot" Taylor, friend of Binster, richBRF and A Scholar & A Physician, mailed for some support on this Mirror's Edge remix contest:

I prefer "bromancers".

Hahaha! We need some Mega Duck/Cougar Boy game ReMixes NOW! C'mon, c'mon, what's the holdup?!?!? EDIT: Twitter shittered! - http://twitter.com/LiontamerVGF/status/1034257001

1) Hedgehog Heaven had "Sonikku Ganbatte." You're not getting MY point. You don't have to like Blood on the Asphalt, but, completely contrary to what you said, our so-called "worst" still attracted the publisher and secured us the job. You can't claim that album is too poor to land a game deal with, when it's specifically what landed the game deal. 2) What's your point about Street Fighter not being FF7-level in terms of popularity among the game music community? It's still extremely popular among game fans. That's like complaining Soul Calibur IV isn't as popular as Super Mario World here. It doesn't have anything to do with anything. We'll have to score Final Fantasy VII HD Remix next time so that you can give us the all-important OK. 3) What's your point about Capcom not holding a contest for musicians? "It would have been nice..."? When weighing deadlines and budgets, why would they use valuable time and energy with a contest when they found a strong talent pool of musicians that even had a centralized figure to streamline communication? Should we have had an inferiority complex over not being the first choice to handle the soundtrack? No, and why would we? Al Pacino didn't cry that he wasn't the first choice to play Michael Corleone in The Godfather. We were smart enough to simply knock it out of the park with the opportunity we had. 4) What's your point about why we were hired? Let's even assume it was a pure marketing stunt. A huge portion of the game development was done by fans (gameplay rebalancing, art, music, playtesting, quotes, achievements) and resulted in a stellar, major-scale product that, unless you're living in a bubble, is doing extremely well right now. And Capcom SHOULDN'T promote the level of fan involvement as part of their marketing strategy for the game? "I can't believe Capcom used the fan angle to appeal the game to more gamers, that's just unconscionable!" You're simply brushstroking the marketing as bad and used to obscure a lack of substance & quality. I don't see any problem whatsoever in OCR delivering substance AND fitting the company's marketing plans. They're not mutually exclusive.

ROFL! Who pissed in your drink? 1) SwordBreaker was just being encouraging with a good-natured hypothetical re: FF7 that you've proceeded to "serious business". Rerax. 2) Capcom made HD Remix, not Konami. 3) Sure hiring us may have been cheap as free, but the whole story behind us getting the job was that BotA was good enough to attract the attention of the developer. As zircon said, we got the skills to pay the bills. 4)

Finally took some time out to answer it. Good luck getting responses!

I think Aubrey's been trying to fix it, as he was aware of whatever the problem was when it first happened last night, but no doubt about it, something got extremely funked up.

Well, honestly, I've been doing this for 4 years, others longer, and we tend to police ourselves. Vig took me to task on this mix of a racing game that escapes me right now, but man, I just blasted the shit out of it with harsh commentary. Once he said "WTF was that?", I tempered the comments, which originally looked like I was mad at the track or submitter, even though I wasn't. It definitely happens, but stuff that even potentially comes off as being overly harsh or hateful doesn't happen often. It's pretty isolated as it is. So it's not to be dismissive, but I just don't see it occurring on anything remotely resembling a regular basis, so I think we're OK. I know for a fact that BGC's swamped at work next week, but if you had posted this maybe an hour earlier, he would have seen it. But he'll probably reply.

Well, to be honest, I thought it was out of line too back when I read it, and not just because I went YES in this case. I just thought it came off as needlessly harsh. Note "came off as", not "was". Besides being too "serious business" about it, I didn't disagree with the post, but only because the comments weren't tactful, so they were easily construed as crapping all over the track. zircon did a good job explaining the context. But I've made that mistake too, so from my experience I wouldn't have said those quotes in the first place, because it comes off as shitting on the track too hard and gets misconstrued. Some of the comments the original poster made like BGC "looked like he had a vested interest in the mix not passing" or whatever it was, were just offbase. We don't play that game. But yeah, the 3 parts Jimmy wrote that were quoted, I thought were in bad taste and set himself up for a reaction like the original post. Again, to me it's not serious biz, or I would have taken it up with Jimmy had I felt more strongly, but I probably should have, anticipating a reaction like that. Otherwise, you get posts like this, where people THINK we're just hating on something beyond a level of reasonable criticism.

Amber from Nerve.com was feeling this one: http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/61fps/archive/2008/11/26/what-s-in-my-mp3-player-shadow-s-theme.aspx