Liontamer
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I already checked this out on June 9th, when Wes begged and pleaded for my feedback during a crisis of confidence. He's since added some more to it, but my POV's still the same:
Hell NO, we can't reject this. YES
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The "Main Theme" section felt plodding, and I think it's something having to do with the rigid timing of the synths (definitely not Siolfor's guitar performance). That's not to say the arrangement doesn't get it done, particularly with effective dynamic contrast by way of the evolving textures. But I liked more energy emerging in the piece once things transitioned to "Missing Perspective" at 2:35. Parasite Eve's been loooooooooooooooooooooooooong overdue for some good coverage around here!
YES
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- Your ReMixer name : Hemophiliac
- Your real name : Chris Roman
- Your email address :
- Your userid : 4838
- Name of game(s) arranged : Parasite Eve
- Name of arrangement : Charred and Cauterized
- Name of individual song(s) arranged : Main theme, Missing Perspective
- Featuring Siolfor the Jackal
- Userid : 34171
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Siolfor website : https://www.youtube.com/
channel/ UCUMdUmcR9O9d6u4k0lYZ3uw
So here I am again with back-to-back submissions on Yoko Shimomura sources, I did not plan that. Also a neat coincidence that my last few tracks have all been in different time signatures (6/8, 4/4, 5/4). This one starts out in 3/4 and in the final section at the end goes into 4/4. This track was a blast to work on and i'm proud of it, I would not have thought I would be able to write in this style years ago. I'm particularly proud of the part writing for the drums. Drums were something that I really struggled to understand, and over the years have been building up my confidence in working with them.Siolfor really went along with everything and just kept saying to write more, i'm so grateful that he was willing to let me experiment and try things out. Thank you so much for recording the guitars and bass.Comments from Siolfor:
"We'd been hanging out on voice chat in the OCR discord a lot recently so I've been getting to know Hemophiliac and Liontamer better. After talking about the current Pixel Mixers contest theme at the time(Generation 5 consoles) I remember getting a message from Hemo with a 20 second audio clip and the message "YOU IN?". Those 20 seconds sounded like a lot of fun for me, so I was.It was really cool seeing the track develop over the month, especially in real time when Hemo would share his screen as he worked. It's always fun when someone else writes guitars for me to play, especially when they don't play themselves.Thanks for having me on the track!" -
Definitely very noticeable hiss and also some little pops (e.g. :08, :17) with the intro, though the hiss became less in your face from :16-on. What was that part added in there from :32-:47? Man, that's some weird looseness there; brief as it was, that part didn't fit at all, plus the piano sounded odd too. At :47, the performances had no synergy.
Then at 1:02, the guitar came in (another crackle at 1:06) and muddied up the soundscape. Strange combination of the guitar work and the synth line at 1:18. The drums don't have synergy wuth the other parts either, due to very bland writing, and texture feels thin until 1:47 in spite of the volume. Then an organ lead at 1:47 (with some nice doubling by the synth), but the guitar chugs alongside it were too loud (though well-performed), IMO. Some kind of click/pop at 2:10, just noting it, then another instance from 2:20-2:55 where the drum writing again doesn't fit well with the other parts.
Lots of buzziness behind the guitar line at 2:34 that was a bad contrast with the clean, quiet texture right before it; didn't sound intentional that the guitar would be adding that much mud. Sounded like a sour note at 2:46 as well. Admittedly surprised at the lack of cohesiveness thus far.
Super fake-sounding string line at 3:07, then pivoted to an out-of-tune (with slightly lagged timing), non sequitur reference to the Back to the Future melody at 3:09. I don't know Unknown Pseudoartist at all, so their dadaist handle may just be giving me the wrong impression that they're an anonymous troll that we've all heard of under another handle.
If not, UP's probably going to hate me for saying this -- it's moments like this looseness at 3:07 that feels more like a tongue-in-cheek troll job than a sincere effort; that doesn't compute given who else is involved in this, but that's still the takeaway I was having.
I liked the acoustic guitar at 4:14, but then the wind line at 4:28 was shrill had some iffy notes (including the very last note at 4:43 for a headscratching finish), along with low-quality sounding rain SFX.
There's so much Obama-shrug GIF energy here, I genuinely dunno what to make of it. It'll sound like I'm frustrated, when really I'm just confused and disappointed that some good potential wasn't realized here. Every time an electric guitar was in play, there was a lot of mud behind it. And while I generally like the instrumentation and performances when I listen to one part at a time, there's a disjointed sound to the whole thing, so many times where timing feels loose or combinations of instruments don't fit well together.
It seems like as far as this track goes, the cake is baked, as I don't know how easy it would be to revise this given the amount of performers. I've seen so many artists over the years in a similar spot. The arrangement concept itself is strong, the theme's arranged in very interpretive and creative way, there's lots of good moments of dynamic contrast that keep the presentation interesting and ambitious. It's rare to see a unanimous NO decision have lengthy commentary from the judges, and that speaks to a meaningful level of promise here. However, there's lots (and lots) of smaller issues of writing, performance, and mixing that added up to an overall lack of cohesion.
Keep up the good work; your arrangement quality already shows you can put together something creative, UP, so I would love to hear another pass to see how far you can bring it along though. Or, at the very least hear strong efforts at cohesion applied to different, future subs.
We'd love to have you use the Workshop forums and #workshop Discord channel for some additonal sets of ears and feedback on your work. Even if you don't become an OCR community regular (which you're always welcome to become, we're here for you), please keep solicitng tons of feedback on your DoD subs & other work and keep striving for more polish and improvement.
NO (resubmit)
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The track was 4:40-long, so I needed to hear the source tune in effect for at least 140 seconds for the source material to be dominant.
:00-1:49, 2:33-2:54, 3:39-4:27 = 178 seconds or 63.57% overt source usage
Such a weird story of accidentally backwards parking into realizing you made a VGM arrangement, which is fun!
Started getting cramped at :33, then really cramped at :44 when some sort of sustained string line was thrown in, then some thick bass was added at :54... alright, everything dropped out to give the bass some space at 1:04, and that was much better.
Source melody arrived at 1:16, surrounded by the heavy bass drops and some breakbeats until 1:49, then the source references disappeared for now. Good energy and clarity with the sounds around the 2-minute mark.
The supporting line from the source was brought back in from 2:33 to 2:54; it's more a quieter component of an otherwise original track with all of the other writing, though that's a valid approach.
Source melody returned at 3:39 and had good presence once again. Man, those bass drops never get old; always a good, weighty sound.
Cool to hear the source's final section referenced at 4:01 to provide a fresh idea toward the close; though the dissonance with the string sustains was odd, it didn't sound jacked up, and was brief enough to give some tension for a few brief moments before a nice close at 4:24 with the fade out providing a bookened similar to the intro.
Thanks a lot for telling me about this one; I'm very glad you sent this over! Good old gold from EAR with big early 2000s energy that packs a lot of power!
YES
EDIT (6/21): I can see why MW was disoriented by the intro, though I didn't have a problem with the stereo effects/panning when listening on my headphones. Did take another listen though to be sure I didn't gloss over that point. My original vote qualified when the source tune started and stopped, but I've added in a source breakdown up top to make it clearer.
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Nice fusion of the style of "The Secret Song" with "Zelda's Lullaby". Was a bit worried the lyrics would stick more with the actual melody of "The Secret Song", but that worry was quickly put to rest, and 2:17's section even offered a sound that was simply its own thing, not a sendup of Frost, which was unexpected but cool just the same.
No need to belabor the point, it's fun stuff here! It didn't end up being baby lullaby album material, but we're proud to have planted the seeds for this track's eventual growth as well.
YES
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Not sure if it's because it's a relatively recent track or because James C. Hoffman mastered it, but the mixing was better than many of the older submissions y'all have sent. I'd argue the soundscape should have been clearer, but I can live with this.
I really enjoyed the rhythmic changes you've employed on the theme, and the way the leads, textures, and overall energy level were handled also sounded more varied and creative. At 2:24 though, areas were being recycled, so I would have liked to have heard a more overt difference, but there was a different lead at 2:55, and the overall repetition wasn't a dealbreaker. Something about the beats from 2:24-on didn't really drive this forward in the best way, but it was solid enough; again, likely another area where I felt writing ideas were getting recycled in a way where there could have been more variation.
Regardless, the arrangement was very transformative, so, while I had some critiques, this was still well on the right side of the line in terms of the creativity and development, IMO.
YES
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Opening sounded lossy, and when I looked at WinAmp's spectral analyzer, there was nothing on the high end, but that at least changed at :41.
The core beat at :56 had some of that tepid "sounds like hitting a plastic bucket" feel, but it's serviceable. I was definitely getting lead fatigue by 1:42, which I'm sure someone else can better explain why that was. Interesting that prophetik also invoked the word "fatigue" in another context as I hadn't read his vote before using the word myself; given the intensity of the saw lead, I think my usage of it is a fair point.
That said, cool usage of the piano at 1:56 and interplay of the saw lead with other original writing bursts starting at 1:58 to finally vary up those sounds.
Sharper mixing and some more variations/changes to the beats from 2:25-on would have lifted this up for me. Stuff like 2:56-3:10's section also felt too repetitive with 1:27's section before it; there was new writing added in for the latter, but there's other ways the textures could have been tweaked to not seem so cut-and-pasted, as the new writing didn't do enough in that respect.
Even the YESs have "I wish" items for improvement, and I can definitely hear why this split the panel. The arrangement's a fairly solid concept, but the execution has just enough smaller issues adding up with the mixing, sound design and feelings of cut-and-paste repetition where it's not unreasonable to say this isn't quite ready. I'm in the NO (resubmit) camp, but desperately want this arrangement be posted in some form.
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Sounded like the SMB2 ending theme chord progression being alluded to from :12-:24, which was a fun coincidence, though the timing of everything sounded clunky and mismatched until righting itself with the "Overworld" theme taking the foreground.
Mixing seems jacked up to start, unfortunately, not just the panning Emu brought up. The bassline is too buzzy and was utimately louder than the melody and supporting faux-guitar line as well; it all just steps on each other instead of having synergy and sounding like they're sharing the same space. I liked initial the arrangement treatment though.
By about 1:15, I was wondering when the rest of the track would arrive, because the textures were so basic and relatively empty. The sampled pizz strings sound so bad in terms of the fakeness of the sound being so exposed and the writing being too repetitive.
Poor transition into the "Underground" theme at 2:25, and then arranged in a way that didn't feel melodious because of the original writing by the lead that was filling the gaps in between the pauses of the original theme. Then another abrupt theme transition back to the "Overworld" theme at 3:26 and it's all the same writing ideas as before just being repeated again aside from different bass and drum writing, albeit about the same level of intensity and complexity.
There's so many different directions you could take this in to better develop this, and there's definitely nothing that could be done as it to pull it up above the bar here. I'd try though to apply whatever takeaways you can regarding mixing & textures, variations, and transitions. Some decent initial ideas -- and that shows promise in and of itself -- but there's 0 cohesion here right now.
NO (resubmit)
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Opening sounds lush, I dig it. At :20, a more distorted/overdriven guitar faded in, and I had to prepare myself, since I'm not a fan of this flooded style and don't feel it's pleasent to listen to. Yep, at 1:06, there it is. Everything's super crowded and turns into a wall of sound until 2:43. Arrangement-wise, I love it; great transformation of the theme, strong instrumentation as well as sound design choices for the clearer sections.
The flooded sections (e.g. 1:06-2:43, 3:47-6:30, 7:02-9:46) all have the supporting instrumentation sounding overdriven, which is obscuring the leads and detracting from the composition. I don't mind being in the minority, but at some point, I'll be viewed as being in the anti-black metal camp or biased against the genre. From what I've heard thus far, I currently can't get behind this style from Black SeeD as having reasonable/listenable enough production quality despite this being a known & intentional aesthetic. Perhaps that needs a broader discussion, perhaps not, though I'm open to it.
Decluttering the denser sections would be great, IMO. I genuinely appreciate the arrangement, but feel the style of production hurts rather than helps.
NO (resubmit)
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What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
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Hmmm… I’m currently undecided while leaning towards a borderline YES. Though some of the sounds felt dated, the composition is fairly energetic, and the source usage and transformation aren’t in question.
Somehow though, the textures felt too empty and like the proper components weren’t in place to drive this track forward. With the track not going past 2:15, it’s important to me that nearly everything is cohesive and clicking together. Would love to get other Js insights on whether this one didn’t sound fully baked just yet.
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EDIT (10/10): Listening again, I'm gonna go NO on account of this not feeling filled in enough. For example, the bass guitar registers, but the part's so subdued, it might as well not be there. I'm sorry that I don't have any suggestions to at least offer something more constructive, but I'm humble enough to know that, if others agree with me, they're equipped to better articulate what's missing and how that could be addressed. If this didn't make it as it and he were open to revisiting this, I have full confidence in Eino's musicianship.
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What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.
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Opened with an extended intro with simplified progression until the arranged melody arrived at 1:08. Nice meat to the beats, and good energy and drive with their composition. It's a fun take where the melody's not leaned on, but the writing from the source is still present. Nice spin on the chorus at 2:09.
It can feel like the seesaw's tilted toward the production side because the emphasis isn't on the source melody being loud, proud, and upfront, but there's nothing saying that's the way you have to treat a melody; it's totally fine and cool that it's not prominent the whole way. Great sound design with a lush result. Could have even had more ideas brought in rather than what's a semi-abrupt finish, but what's there is still a fun end result. Very nice job, Ly!
YES
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Interesting interplay of fragments!
What are you doing here?
YES
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Solid arrangement of the theme; I enjoyed the rhythmic changes. The textures could have been denser, but served the piece just fine. The SFX as ear candy was also a nice touch.
There were moments when I felt this was dragging out, but ultimately there were enough ear candy moments sprinkled in through the second half to give you a feeling of something slightly different that would help out. The drop off at 3:53 was a fun idea that offered something new for the last moments. Could be more, but it has its groove and plays in that space well.
YES
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First little note thrown in at :03 seems sour but resolves OK enough; still, that definitely didn't start things off on the right foot. Very audible pop at :41 that can hopefully be fixed. Ooh, nice changeup at 1:02; very different character from the source tune, so that was cool and helped it stand apart from the original on a level besides adding in vocals.
The vocals until 1:50 were mixed too quitely relative to the instrumental; not the easiest to understand, though there's no ding for that, since it's a style thing. Note from 2:01-2:02 was flat and should be autotuned, IMO, and probably could tweak some moments at 1:50 & 2:00.
Great energy for the performances overall; I enjoyed Connor's vocal chorusing, and the higher notes in particular (e.g. 2:11) are so much fun. Loved the energy of 2:22's final chorus leading into the final big finish of wailing vocals.
There are some moments where Connor could tweak some things to leave no holes in his game, and I'm sure other Js will have more insight on that front, but overall strong and fun stuff!
YES
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My wife loves K-soaps, so I can say without hesitation that this source tune indeed sounds like a song for the tender moments of a Korean drama. Loved the shift into the guitar as lead at 1:24, with nice violin backing. When the flugelhorn came back in at 1:55, I'm glad Logan went for more interpretation; it could have easily just retread the same performance dynamics as before and came off disinteresting, so it was good to hear the arrangement continue to develop rather than rest on its laurels. Awesome ornamentation provided by the string plucks toward at 3:10 the finish. Lovely performances, y'all!
YES
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The opening piano's serviceable though exposed; the timing's rigid enough where it was noticeable, including when it comes back at 9:18. "Suck a Sage" arrived at :59 and the mixing was lossy-sounding and messy, with the stabs from 1:06-1:15 sounding like they were distorting; solid enough power with this section; the performance felt somewhat stilted until 1:52, though certainly not anything where it would be below OCR's bar.
TMNT "Going Up" was thrown in from 2:18-2:34 with a pretty shrill synth. "Star Base" theme was also in there at 3:03, with some more interplay from the shrill synths; part of the issue with those synths was them sounding so much sharper than the guitar, which was a weird contrast where they didn't sound like they occupied the same room. The Goemon source at 5:23 felt like a jumpier transition;
at the "Ninja Rap"-style cameo at 5:47.
There's "The Parasprinter" at 6:01 with a seamless transition, and I dug the brief doubling of the melody with the chiptune line at 6:37; nice touch! Organ's piercing, mostly around 8:05, along with the Eastern wind instrument at 8:50, some more examples of an imbalance with some of the sounds.
So yeah, almost everything's lacking high-end sharpness, and some of the synths had too bright and/or shrill of a presense in contrast, but it's an otherwise solid presentation. Would love another mixing pass to smooth some of this out if at all possible, yet the arrangement & performance are enough to carry it.
YES (borderline)
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There's a more serious tone to the arrangement, but does so without making the theme feel dark. Some nice weight to the bass writing, which established a nice groove. Good depth to the soundscape; everything sounds full, and I enjoyed how various lines would trail off. Oooh, nice ending too; it can come off as too sudden, but I dug that last set of stabs, as it were, which was a nice surprise. Glad you picked this one back up; I always trust your work, Eino, so I'm glad you found the creativity and confidence to get this to a point where you were happy with it.
CHOO CHOO
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I'll need to time this out later to figure out what primary game this piece would be classified under. There was a moment around 1:49 where the theme interplay was clunky for a segment, but overall it's a solid arrangement and flows pretty nicely between the themes. The bowed strings could use an upgrade, but overall solid performances and nice textures between the live and sampled instruments.
Always good to hear the birds let loose in terms of the SFX; long may they continue.
YES
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I'm so thankful people in the community love these themes. I was initially scared to dig in, just because it's so many source tunes, but I actually recognized all but the MvCI theme, since I played MMX1 and the community's arranged all of the other themes at some point. Veni's video is also extremely helpful in showing the timing of all of the source tune references, and there's no major melody changes, so everything's straightforward as far as observing the source usage.
Opens up with some fakey, but serviceable piano. Transition around :35 to MMX5 was fine, but there were some lines with a lot of unpleasent buzziness. The structure's not feeling interpretive with MMX5, so it's more about enhancing the textures. Good transition into the MMX1 Zero theme, and then into MMX5's X vs. Zero theme. I also liked the smooth change in the drumming with the brief change into the MMX3 theme before going back to MMX5 and then switching out to the MvCI theme. All good attention being paid to making these transitions feel smooth by keeping the backing instrumentation consistant.
Another cool change around 5:23 to the MMX1 Demo theme followed by the MMX4 theme. The transition to the MMX7 theme felt abrupt, but not by much. If you'd told me this was all one extensive, proggy composition, I'd believe it, so kudos for gluing it all together in a cohesive way!
The mixing could be clearer, and I don't like the underlying buzziness at all, so I'd love for it to be tweaked, but it's not bothering me enough to NO this or go conditional YES. The strength of the arrangement carries it.
YES
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ReMixer & real name: Eino Keskitalo
e-mail:Names of games arranged: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's TrapName of Arrangement: Vastentahtoisia muodonmuutoksiaNames of individual songs arranged: Vs. Dragon, The Dragon's TrapSources:MP3 link:FLAC link:Hello dear panel!I'm continuing my journey of polishing up my old work in progress arrangements for submission. This one dates all the way back from 2009, from People's Remix Competition round 156! https://compo.thasauce.net/rounds/view/PRC156 It was always a fun track I was pretty pleased with. I recorded live bass, guitar and keyboard on top of a non-standard sequenced drum kit. The recording quality was bad, playing was out of time, and the keyboard sounded atrocious! Regardless, the result was a fun short jam, based on music from a game from my childhood, with lots of fond memories of friendship and family attached to it. And the game is still pretty great to play, and the music is still an example of eight bit gold.For the polishing work, I mostly replaced the synth jamming with a couple of synth presets that come with Renoise. I did leave the original playing as a quiet layer in there. As far as the guitar goes, I "reamped" it to give it a lot more brightness, then pushed it to the background in the mix as it was both hissy and lacking in high frequencies. I also doctored the timing quite a bit and completely dropped it for some parts. It's there for colour and a bit of rhythm - I don't have a guitar to re-record at the moment. The bass playing however I was reasonably happy with - I just EQ'd it, fixed some of the worst timing issues (but not all, so it's organic and garage-y) and added a bit of distortion here and there.I was actually pretty pleased and surprised I was able to "rescue" the track up to this level of quality! I hope it's good enough. I also hope you don't mind it being so short - to me, it doesn't need to be any longer. It's a good homage to a game I actually have played substantially! (That's the case for only less than half of my OCR tracks still.)Big thanks to the Workshop hero Hemophiliac for a couple of listens and good comments, which pushed me to do a couple of extra rounds of mixing tweaks.. for example, one of the synths got some chorus effect automation added, which was a very nice additional touch to the track overall and gave it some variety that makes the overall impression nicer.cheers--Eino -
I watched through a pair of the most recent videos back in 2019, and it didn't sound like Kegy was using other OC ReMixes beyond "Gypsy Jazz". But I'm happy to look through any other specific Kegy videos that you offer up; if there are other OC ReMixes they used, we should be able to identify them, I'm just not sure if he any others.
OCR04570 - *YES* Pokémon Scarlet, PMD: Red Rescue Team & PMD: Explorers of Sky "The Art of Zoning Out"
in Judges Decisions
Posted
Always a pleasure to hear from timaeus, the only person more meticulous with source usage timestamping than I am (which is always very appreciated, thanks!).
Everything was clean, clear, and lush. The time sig changes were nice, and this had a mature and expanded sound palette, while still having some bright sounds that didn't feel inauthentic to the energy and imagery of Pokémon. Let's go!
YES