Liontamer

Yeah, I'm thinking more along the lines something that generally explains the next step in the waiting game for YESs, and very basic things about the reasoning for NOs, with links to read re: the standards, and also the ReMixing and Works forums. Then the only thing for the NO ones would be pasting in the Decision link. But there would have to be an general explanation of the judging process in the mail, it could just be "Hey, we finished your decision; the link is here." Differentiating a letter between NOs and NO-resubmits might be a little dicey, but we'll mull it over.

I would love to do that, and I've definitely thought about that, but have so much on my plate and have been content enough with our current system that I haven't taken the time to move an idea like this forward. Keeping mixers in the loop is one aspect where our system really has no plan other than "they should follow the site", which is definitely not conducive to getting new people to become community regulars. Admittedly, it has worked for us so far, and honestly, it would continue to as is, because enough people become regulars. But contacting people regarding acceptances and rejections would be great. That would also be yet another thing I'd have to be personally responsible for, since I maintain the inbox. IF we developed a form letter for notifying artists about acceptances and rejections, I would love to start doing that. I feel that kind of contact/updating is something that would only benefit the site, even though we'd have our share of complainers who would resent bad news.

I did have a list that the judges could view, but they don't really care too much about the DPs, or at least no one has told me, so I don't maintain it anymore. That being said, anything I flag for DP is on the judges FTP, so they can check out anything any time. Yeah I suppose de facto, I'm now single-handedly responsible for DPs. So really when it says "Evaluated by: djpretzel", it should be saying "Evaluated by: Liontamer". I've never had djp or the judges complain about what gets DPed. The judges, that could be an issue of them simply not listening to the DPs when they're posted, because maybe someone would have an issue, but I've never heard of one yet. Dave clearly hears everything, at least before doing the writeups, and I've never had him complain either. I'd argue that my DP bar is higher than djp's, but I don't think he would take offense, because he's said before on VGF #50 that he feels the site's gotten better since the panel got more influence on song selection, because they have higher collective standards. When I flag something for DP, I pretty much make sure, to the best that I can, that it's cut-and-dry YES quality.

Just following up on the original post, the identity/whereabouts of GrayLightning are the only conspiracy theory I can think of in the community. I'm not sure what other topics are out there that, without merely ROFLing and making stuff up, are actually mysterious.

Scores are due tomorrow, so sometime VERY sooner after the 16th, I gather. I've still got 10 more to score, and am working diligently. I took Valentine's Day off.

Yeah, definitely. This is for all the judges. Former judges too, whenever relevant. Yeah, following up on that, I'd quit before we posted a track with no source tune to compare. At the end of the day, I need the proof that the arrangement is interpretive enough. The video game music fan community is resourceful though. Nowadays, there's a very low likelihood that we'd get stuck with something where we definitely couldn't find the source.

Kind of a copout, but it all depends on the track. If it's hard to articulate the issues, it's also hard to articulate WHY we can't articulate the issues. Usually though, it's not too difficult to be able to say what's working and what's not. For me, a non-musician, I just stick to what I know (or purport to know). For example, with instruments, I can't tell the difference between various groups of brass, mallet percussion, woodwinds or synth techniques. Instead of trying to bullshit that, I just generalize those things when referring to the instruments. I wish I could be able to look back and just point to XYZ method as what made me improve at music critique, but I don't know of one. After listening to all the ReMixes and having a good idea of the standards in 2002-2003, I just understood where the bar generally was and what kind of creativity and production quality was being looked for here. The best thing I can say is to be detail-oriented. Have some decent headphones (I'll never judge on anything but headphones.) They don't have to be overly expensive, but some generic earbuds can't help you pick out details. GrayLightning recommended me the Sennheiser HD497s a few years ago, and while a little bit trebbly, they're nonetheless excellent. I think they were $60. But I judged for maybe 1 year and some change on some $30 ones and got by. Writing down thoughts in a stream of consciousness always helps me, especially when I'm finding it difficult to articulate issues/problems. Even if what you wrote down isn't very organized, you'll have your thoughts out in front of you. Part of the benefits of having colleagues on the panel are that they can look at what you're thinking and possibly corroborate your POV. Definitely couldn't give a percentage on that, but often enough. Many YESs, they're objectively good, but I wouldn't put them on my iPod vs. other songs out there. That's not a slight against those tracks, but not everything can be a personal favorite just because it's well made. Then again, I don't actively dislike those tracks. I don't think I've ever encountered tracks I've hated that I've YESed, but rather I'm personally indifferent to them, even though I'm impressed as a judge. That being said, I liked maybe 1/3rd of the OCR's back in the 700s. Nowadays, the proportion is higher because the consistency from mix to mix is higher. I keep about 5% of the rejections I've encountered in a folder. I like 'em, I still listen to 'em. It's definitely a perk. There are a lot of decent NOs. Ha, that's funny. Good question. Nowadays, there are a lot fewer peeves, now that we've revised the submission standards. There used to be so many MIDI rips and files that would 404 because they were hosted on Putfile or whatever and expired in 7 days, before we could get to them. MIDI rips and uncreative covers have definitely gone down since the Standards were cleaned up a couple of months ago. Maybe the only one is when submitters who have forum accounts go "I have no idea what my forum ID # is". It's not hard to get the ID #. I'm #1211. Doesn't really matter, since I handle those details for the database anyway. If I think of something else, offhand, I'll let you know.

Glad you like the topic. I know Vigilante doesn't pay attention to names much, but it's specifically an effort to make himself more impartial. I'd be foolish to say that in the 6 years of the panel that not a single vote by a judge has gone one way or the other based on name. When you say "subconsciously" though, by definition, that's something we wouldn't pick up on. At the same time though, I don't feel like I've seen it in my 3 1/2 years on board. Honestly, if I could think of one where I really felt someone was biased, I'd point it out to you right now and link it. For me, I always look at the author. To me, it doesn't have any affect on my voting. At the end of the day, I pride myself on my objectivity. I've been in plenty of cases where I'm sure I've lost goodwill with people because I've NOed their material. Not that every group I'm gonna mention has had someone complain, but I've NOed past judges, future judges, current judges, old-school legends, music majors, and artists with professional music, film and game credits. You've just gotta go with your honest take on everything, I think that's much easier at the end of the day. I dunno how others feel, and can't speak for them, but I feel great knowing that I've been around so long and never been close to compromising my standards. It's also good to have colleagues where, if we disagree, they want to change your convictions, instead of wanting you to vote against your convictions. I've definitely felt conflicted before, certainly on name. I think NOing Mazedude and Mustin were some of the more difficult ones for me, in the sense that I'd hope they wouldn't get angry and not want to be involved in OCR, submitting, the community, etc. But I've never actually had it come down to actually going "well, I don't truly think it's a YES, but should I YES it?" I'm thankful I don't have those kind of moral dilemmas. When it comes to integrity vs. Hands Across America, I'd rather keep my integrity. Nah. If anything, NOing new/unposted artists that are close to passing should feel more difficult, in the sense that maybe they'll get frustrated and not stay involved in the community. But for me, it's not difficult. Much like dealing with established ReMixers, you just gotta vote even-handed and hope for the best in terms of the person's attitude. To get judged? Right now, it would vary from 2 weeks to 3 months. Just like in the Judge FAQ, it depends on a myriad of reasons. As soon as we hit Christmas last year, we all basically went on hiatus, and we're back to where were at before in terms of judging wait time. Even now, I haven't had the time to get back into it as much. That being said, I think we can pick it back up. When we have momentum, we start going through a lot of submissions at once. Wait time after acceptance? It's all on djp's schedule. It's a packed schedule. 2-3 months at least, AFAIK. We've got a pretty big posting queue of stuff ready and waiting to go up. Number of mixes waiting? Currently 24 that definitely could be posted any time right now, around 12 that are part of unreleased album projects and about 12 that need to be tweaked a bit before they're ready to be posted. Life. There's always going to be an excuse/reason why. Nowadays, djp's got so many irons in the fire, with the planning of the Street Fighter II HD Remix soundtrack, conventions, contests, interviews and real life with a girlfriend and job. So djp's gotta fit the posting of mixes into all that. That's really the only reason. Like Rama mentioned, song writeups aren't as easy as it looks, and stuff needs to get the proper spotlight time on the front page. But yeah, life. I would really love a streamlined enough system where we had stuff from the inbox to the frontpage in 2-3 weeks.

That's an interesting one, in that we really don't catalog what rejections get a more positive response or seem really close to passing. I've got no idea of a solid percentage where we have a consensus that things are pretty good, even though it's not a YES yet. Conservatively, I'd say maybe 5-7% of rejections, you either get a mix of YESs and the rest are positive NOs, or all of the NOs react encouragingly towards the track. Way fewer than I would like to see. In terms of resubs that pass, I'm fairly sure those make up less than 5% of all submissions. If anything, I'd love to know how many submitting artists actually read their decision threads. Out of 1800+ subs that I've voted on, I'm again just taking a stab, but I'm sure I've heard maybe 50 where IMO the artist only had to do pretty minor stuff, could have tweaked it, and it would have made it to the front page. I think the best example I can think of is way back when I started, we got a mix from Kailem: Tetris Attack "Poochy Meets Froggy DX". Kind of an unwieldy title, but the arrangement was excellent. Assuming you've now had a chance to read that decision, when we get situations like that, as much as some people like to claim we're production whores, we've been pretty lenient on stuff. (Zoltan Vegvari's Mega Man 3 "Intro Jazz" is the best example on that level.) But the mixing/balance was so terrible on "Poochy" that it got rejected. I really thought Kailem would work on it some more and send it back, but it never happened. A good example of someone actually following through would be Navij11's Kirby & The Amazing Mirror "Kirby's Mystical Mirror", the resub of which has yet to go up. Personally, I have 0 idea whether Jacob was mad at the initial rejection or whatever, but he did a great job of running with the criticisms and revising the arrangement to give it more substance while not needlessly overhauling it. We've had plenty of close ones where the artist, instead of just tweaking a couple of things, majorly changed what was there, and ended up moving backwards. Anyway, for me, I tend to say "resubmit" when a concept is promising but could use further development, even if I don't think the artist could easily get it to pass; there could certainly be a lot of issues. I'd rather see how much they can improve an already solid concept. "refine/resubmit", I'll use for stuff that I feel doesn't need too much more work to pass. The real gold to me though, I'll use "borderline". Any time I use that in any context, that's a pretty close one, and I would hope the artist didn't choose to call it a day.

Yeah, an arrangement of The Tick wouldn't be fair game for OCR, but as a Follin composition, of course it's bueno for this project.

"The Tick" is an unused track from the game, not even in the game data.

As a means of supplementing my blog, VG Frequency, I'm throwing this thread out there for questions towards myself and the other judges. Any legit questions on our thoughts on arranging/judging/the community/music recommendations/site stuff, I'm willing to answer; maybe some others will chime in, but when I've got the free time, I'll try to answer as much as I can for the peoples. I'll also answer relationship questions, because some of you guys need a shitload of help.

If Gray was a woman, then Gray was a lesbian who had a major crush on Elsa from Visa Röster.

Nope. Nice try, though! There's your answer. Extremely limited seems to be more like 10% or less, not 50%. Even 20% might be too much. Yes. Not anymore. We wouldn't accept that nowadays, but we're not going to remove it, because we had no rule against the inclusion of substantial non-VGM arrangement.

Gotta lighten many of these up; too dark as is.

Nice work!

Check out the front he put up at this other mix (openly credited to OC ReMix): http://profile.imeem.com/mCucTb/music/55WpoTq0/saiko_chrono_trigger_crying_mountain_oc_remix/ Hahaha, the kid is delusional!

So...http://podtacular.com/node/5972 #1: ROFL. #2: This never got subbed. Why are we getting flack for rejecting it?

Offhand, bustatunez, Vampire Hunter Dan and Edgen Animations come to mind. That's about 5 seconds' worth of thinking. EDIT: Another 5 seconds yields Tyler Heath and Jared Hudson.

Just some super high-quality business over here. Impeccably good stuff.

Hahahaha! Indeed. And that's why artists should ALWAYS encourage people to jump from option 2 to option 1 around here.

To 'Ili, with ze funny Hawai'ian name, and fellow listener judgefgt, who turns a sickly 22 today! He's olllllllld. Keep handing out them NOs, bro, and making those VG Frequency posts, you're doing a great jorb! HAPPY BIRFDAY!

1, but that almost goes without saying. I feel anyone who has any other listening habit at OCR other than option 1 misses out on a lot of good, free stuff.

I've already reported each instance of plagiarism to imeem, that's about all that can be done at this point.

Note to myself to comment on Justin's Silver Surfer revisions. AnSo and Mazedude are on board with multiple WIPs, so hopefully the creative juices result in some tracks that can be added. Both of these guys are some of the best in the community, so I've got my fingers crossed!