Liontamer

* Kaijin * Tim Sheehy * tim@timsheehy.com * www.timsheehy.com * userid #1665 Chrono Trigger "To Faraway Times" This was originally arranged for the album "SquareDance" from OneUp Studios and KFSS back in 2002. It marks my last collaboration with my good friend Patrick. Though he doesn't arrange game music like the rest of us old school kids anymore, he still manages to reserve tables for Dale, Mustin and me, anytime we go to restaurants. Believe me if you want,but it's totally true. Despite his untimely departure from the scene, Jaxx would've happy to know that even more people are getting to hear our work, and this time free of charge at that. Please enjoy the music from this album that served to launch the greatest American dojin label around. ----------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "To Far Away Times" (ct-317.spc) The soundscape sounded a little too wet and murky for some of the fuller parts, and the beatwork felt a bit thin sometimes, but the end result was successfully enveloping and solidly produced. The instrumentation and structure being close in many ways to the SNES original, especially for the intro, was very off-putting at first, but there were a lot of new ideas in the big picture to add a personalized flavor, particularly the instrumentation and textural changes from section to section. Being a 2002 arrangement, the style of it is definitely a lot more old-school compared to the material we get nowadays, but what this lacks in melodic interpretation, it makes up for with changes to the genre, instrumentation, dynamics, tempo and overall composition. Perhaps I'm seeming too lenient; I'm certainly interested to see how the other Js feel about it, but I'm ultimately cool with it. YES

http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Xenogears_psf.rar - 216 "Awakening" I was good on this last time. I'm good on it this time. I definitely feel the criticism on the highs and overall volume level. SnappleMan would have some good tips on how to more properly produce something like this for your future works. Also, the copy I DLed from Putfile cuts off a bit abruptly during the fadeout of the last note, so maybe we can get a fix on that. Otherwise, awesome arrangement, Justin! Never knew you could bring it musically until this sub, but keep bringing it. YES

My real name: Alexander the Great...er Alex Remixer Name: HoboKa song remixed: WaterFall Area (Stage 3-2) Game: Castlevania IV Remix name: Cascading Falls style: Orchestral Link: Quoted by the great Darkesword in regards to my Maridia remix. And so I've learnt from SOME of these fatal mistakes Mr. Darkesword and I've integrated them into this orchestration. Sorry to dissapoint you JJT, but you won't be able to predict how this composition goes this time :3 *Ahem*, anyways, enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------ http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=scv4 - "The Waterfalls" (scv4-06b.spc) The phrasing from :12-:14 was decidedly awkward, but resolved OK. Source kicked in at :14, going for a lot more ethereal feel than the original. The piano could have used more realism in the tone, but there were some good ideas there in having it get louder and softer during each verse. The composition felt a lot more cohesive than your usual material, Alex, but to be honest, it's because it mostly held to the structure of the original. Nonetheless, a lot of the instrumentation ideas and new supporting writing seems to have clicked well. The pads and mechanical-ish vox reminded me of Israfel and GrayLightning's old material. You definitely were a lot more successful with this piece than any of your previous material. But while the mood of the piece was new, the overall structure was pretty close with the source. Though some of the instrumentation was similar to the style of the original, I'm a big fan of cover-ish pieces effectively changing the mood of an original piece into something new as long as some new supporting writing is there, and this was definitely positive on that level. And while the cohesiveness of this compared to your other work is helped by the structure of the original, you've still done some creative things in interpreting it. If you get the piano tone sounding more natural and introduce maybe one more concept to further add your own flair to the arrangement, it would push this over the line. Definitely resub this, I felt it was close and did a good job adding a more mysterious feel to an already cool track. Good luck with the rest of the vote! NO (refine/resubmit)

Sorry for not catching this on the 14th when it was announced. This is co-sponsored by Capcom and DeviantArt: http://news.deviantart.com/article/46598/

Shawn, the Nostalgiaholic, conducted an interview with me at Nostalgiaholic.com, and I really enjoyed it! I poop on Captain N?!? Let's get nostalgic, y'all. http://www.nostalgiaholic.com/wp/309/overclocked-oji-qa/

Of course it is. It's DoD for God's sake.

Yeah, it sucks that there were so many good ideas in there.

Ha! Now zircon somehow has to make a Bejeweled ReMix with a marriage proposal in there. Poor bastard. Better bust out the vocoder.

Open ur eyez, there's only 1!

Nah, no problem. I know you're talking about that chime part as being used in the background of the sub. I took "chucked in the background" as a implication that, by being in the background, you felt the usage was just too marginalized or otherwise not the focus, and thus the arrangement ties didn't feel strong enough. And you're certainly allowed to feel that way; I'd just disagree.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24126242//wid/11915829 I laffed!!!

We're going to be doing more mailouts in the future on interviews convention appearences, etc. Use your forum account to turn off admin emails if you don't want them. Otherwise, shaddaps. Also, we now have Happy birfday EXTRAVAGANZA, led off by Suzu B-day 2007. So make a new thread, it's fine. I'll just merge 'em into the big thread as they get old.

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=sd3 - "Female Turbulence" (sd3-2-05.spc) I'm actually going to go against the grain on this. Sebastian mentioned was the usage of the drums derived from the source tune drums. Isolate voice #5 of the SPC to check them out, though they're audible in the tune as-is. That's subtle but valid source usage from :00-:20 that's in direct homage to the original. I love going stopwatch just to annoy Vigilante. Source usage (needs 201 seconds to pass): :00-:20, 2:13-2:14 - drum pattern usage (SPC Voice #5) :48-1:08, 1:20-1:28, 2:50-3:36, 4:21-4:32, 5:51-6:11, 6:23-6:31 - main melody variation 1:52-1:56, 2:29-2:31.5, 2:40-2:44.5, 4:00-4:21, 4:32-4:59, 5:09-5:40 (quietly), 5:40-5:43, 5:46-5:48 - chimes from countermelody (SPC Voice #1) 2:03-2:12, 2:15-2:26 - two very liberal variations on :41-:52 of source 5:10-5:31 - variations on 2:05 from the original - couldn't make anything out on that level, did not count Aside from those areas where it's essentially inaudible (e.g. 1:36-2:03), when it was in play, the chime pattern was overtly audible and still very valid source usage to me. So I disagreed with it being "chucked in the background most of the time." IMO, that biases an arrangement toward arranging the source melody at the expense of using or interpreting other portions of the source material. For me, I can't hinge my view of acceptable source usage on whether the portions of the source being used are the melody or not. Otherwise an artist would get little-to-no credit for creatively using other parts besides the most obvious one. Just to clarify how I reach my source usage timestamping, all I care about is that at one point during the mix, 1 element from the source is overtly and audibly being used, no matter how much other non-related writing is going on at the same time. For example, those drums in the intro based off the source tune were used and audible in there from :00-:20, so that's 20 seconds worth of usage. Same line of reasoning applies to most of the background chime countermelody usage. It's a pretty lenient system. With that said, even if you disregarded 2:03-2:12 & 2:15-2:26 as too liberal, my timestamps still add up to more than 201 seconds, so this passes the arrangement bar in my book. The devil's in the details, and I like these details! Palp and CHz, y'all should take another look and see if my breakdown and reasoning seems kosher. If not, no big deal, but I think it's worth the look. As for the overall composition and quality, it's Sebastian, and he's an ass-kicker. I loved the energy throughout, and he's always bringing his A-game. Arrangement-wise I'd prefer something more reigned in and less unorthodox, but to me usage is usage is usage. As a track, the composition is brilliant. Keep 'em coming, and good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

Remember when I mega-bullshitted you a few years ago about hating "Cursed Bloodline" and hating metal, then you thought I was serious posted it on The Shizz, and a bunch of people there hated me and OCR! GOOD TIMES! Happy birthday, EdgeCrunker \m/!

Sub something, you Swedish bastard! Make sure it's solidly over the bar so that we don't take 19 months to decide whether to post it or not and change our minds 19 times. Or just post some more to R:K:O. Do somethingz! Happy birthday, Dan!

All that needs to be said is "I love you, Tim."

Unrelated, but posting this in case some of you art types are reading about this Square Enix/DeviantArt contest, ending in about a week. Sorry I didn't notice this sooner: http://news.deviantart.com/article/45697/

Hahahaha!

Those demos featured some pretty cool work. Some of the production could have been more polished, but that's nothing some additional post work couldn't have taken care of on many levels. Good stuff, Key Jay.

CPac is one of the top names in the scene. The guy rocks, he prog rocks, he piano'z, he jazzes it with your friends. He does it all. Ubisoft's lucky to have him. Let's get him on there scoring some AAA titles! Happy Birthday to Christian, representing the maple leafs.

You rock, Liz!

I'd rather do a CD if we could work something out down the line with Capcom. It's physical/tangible, something you can show to people, the contributors could have copies, plus we could give it away as prizes, and sales could help fund the site since we're hurting for $.

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff5 - "Ahead on Our Way" (ff5-1-01.spc) & "Four Valiant Hearts" (ff5-1-03.spc) From my comments back when I judged this for SquareSound's Nobuo Uematsu tribute competition: I'm still looking forward to when Justin's production matches his arrangement game, because the disparity is still there, and consistently prevents his material from connecting with me all the way. The production could be stronger; as Palpable said, right now the sax lead doesn't quite site right in the track. The other instruments could also sound a bit more upfront. At the end of the day though, this gets the nod. The arrangement was definitely handled nicely, and this deserved its high placing in SquareSound's Uematsu compo in a pretty packed field of entries. YES

Fair enough. I'll give it the nod. YES

http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 44 "Temple of Time" & 57 "Windmill Hut" The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Game Rip) - 02 "Intro" Palpable pretty much covered all of the details and criticisms that stuck out. The sample quality and articulations on the strings hurt the piece. The brass usage was brief and contained to the intro, but some of that also hurt pretty badly in terms of realism. The timing of some of the accordion notes during the "Windmill Hut" portion was slightly off-time on a few occasions. The textures and overall writing were pretty simplistic and straightforward. I also wasn't a fan of the style of "Windmill Hut" being aped so closely at 2:45 and felt your take didn't do enough to stand apart from the original as a creative interpretation, which didn't help at all when keeping our arrangement standards in mind. A decent piece, but lacks a lot of polish. The writing itself deserves something more sophisticated and complex; right now things are too basic as the others have pointed out. Keep working on developing your skills however you can, Michele. For all its flaws, the piece still sounded musical and the potential is clearly there for improvement! NO