Liontamer

Yep. Keep your trap shut.

Shaun hooked it up with a fixed version. Please re-listen to the track, linked in the original post. I'm a solid YES on this one now, all the relevant issues holding this back have been fixed.

I thought you West Coasters supported each other. Thanks for submitting some material, guys. I'd say what it was, but don't want to spoil it. I'm looking forward to it going up on the front page soon!

Well, that's a hell of a surprise. Well, in the coming months, we likely know more than we need to know about what happened.

* Your ReMixer name: Nekofrog * Your real name : Justin Jones * Your email address : jtjones@manchester.edu * Your website : www.gamesarefun.com * Your userid : 5151 * Remix Link: * Name of game(s) arranged : Xenogears * Name of individual song(s) arranged : Awakening (with one overlapping melody from Omen -- both songs share the same melody) * Additional information about game : Composer is Yasunori Mitsuda, system is PS1, * Link to the original soundtrack: * Your own comments about the mix: I first played Xenogears in 1998 when it came out (still have my copy ) and was enthralled. As time went on I learned to recognize its obvious shortcomings, which I think led me appreciate the game differently. It's not perfect by any means -- there's a lot I'd chop out of it -- but by and large it's enjoyable. The soundtrack pretty much makes the game for me. I've always felt that "Awakening" and "Omen" were the standout tracks, so I wanted to take "Awakening" and apply to it the "this is my world, and I'm ready to take it back" feeling. The name of the remix is "Mechanical God |Create|Corrupt|Consume|" in reference to Deus (badass robot) as the creator, the corrupter, and eventually the consumer. Durrrr. Tech talk: Recorded in Steinberg Nuendo with an Ibanez SZ520 into a PodXT Live processor. Drumkit From Hell used for the drums.

Contact Information * Your ReMixer name - waffleboy5787 * Sam Antonioli * waffleboy5787@msn.com Submission Information * Super Mario Galaxy - Wii * Mix of Gusty Garden Galaxy and "Reading a Story" * Originally Composed by: Koji Kondo * Made in Acoustica Mixcraft 4 (Nice program in my opinion) all played by me... see what you think -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to CHz for the source tunes, of course. Super Mario Galaxy's a pretty deep soundtrack though, so we may need to double check the rest of the it to make sure everything checks out. Super Mario Galaxy Original Sound Track Platinum Version - 249 "The Girl's Sadness" & 117 "Wind Garden" The volume is pretty low, but upping it would intensify the light hiss. Maybe someone can offer some tips on boosting the volume yet effectively reducing the hiss, though I don't mind this as is. Good start with "The Girl's Sadness" before moving over into the 1:24 section of "Wind Garden" at :54. Very nice usage of the crystal sound effects and string work at 1:46 to bolster another iteration of "Wind Garden", before moving back into "The Girl's Sadness" at 2:30 with a bit more melodic interpretation, and closing out at 3:09 with more of "Wind Garden." Great tradeoff between the two themes. I thought the arrangement could have been more interpretive beyond the genre adaptation, but what's in place was still effective, albeit understated. Solid stuff, Sam. Very elegant. YES EDIT (2/23): With the other judges point of view, I'm definitely feeling the criticisms of the relative uniformity of the left hand performance as well as the complaints about the sound balance between the strings and piano. The left hand was more of a potential dealbreaker than the sound balance, but either way, the rejection is pretty reasonable. Without trying to overhaul the piece or change the mood you're going for (no one's saying that), see what else you can do to take this to another level.

Contact info: ReMixer Name: SirGareth Name: Gareth Ortiz-Timpson Email: sirgareth_01@hotmail.com Submission info: Game: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Song Arranged: Main Title Original Piece can be found here: Inspiration: I have to say I first got into the music for Elder Scrolls because of their most recent title: Oblivion, but the music from Morrowind, which is very similar, was a better fit for my remix ideas. I am a huge fan of a lot of the Irish sounding rock music out there, such as Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys, so I decided to redo the main Title from Morrowind as an Irish rock song. Its called Off to Morrowind, hope you like it! ------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for providing the original. Nice source tune from Soule; it's been a while since I've listened to it, but one can see why it's so popular. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - (01) "Morrowind Title" The arrangement here isn't bad. Fairly by the numbers treatment of the theme with some slight embellishments, but nothing really standing out from the original for a while. Good dropoff at 1:33 into the straight orchestration of the theme, shifting back into the rock stuff at 2:00 with some improv until 2:15 before adding more personalization to the next iteration of the theme. The percussion writing could have stood to be even more progressive and buried. It had some flair to it, but ultimately felt like a somewhat stylish, repetitive beatkeeper, particularly the cymbal pattern. I must be getting lenient in my old age, but it felt like this only gave the just above the minimum needed to make it, to the point of being fairly unremarkable. I don't mean for that to be a slight against you, Gareth. Nothing wrong with the arrangement or performance, but the arrangement could have been more interpretive and the performance could have been more exciting. Nonetheless, this seems to squeak by on me. YES (borderline)

Gonna point out the minor stuff first. The brass sample in the intro sounded ultra cheap/fake, but was handled in a decent way as to not completely expose the sample. The ending at 2:46 was too abrupt, but that wasn't much of a negative. The use of the laughing SFX (which is sampled from the game) seemed a little out of place and could have had some more effects on it to make it fit better in the soundfield, but it was still a good concept. The dynamics of the arrangement were solid, the textures weren't overly complicated but were still excellent. With that said, after getting CHz's breakdown, I'm definitely on the same page as him. If you're listening via the NotSo Fatso plug-in (and you need to be in order to easily make the connections), just pull up the "Channels" tab on the window that pops up and disable every channel you see. That leaves you with the N106 expansion channels playing. You can also disable channel 5 in the "N106" tab to further isolate what's providing the base of this arrangement. I also made the connection to the main theme CHz covered, but saw how 1) it was hugely simplified here, and 2) the progression here is too different from the source tune's bassline. At that point you've simply changed the chosen progression around too much, to the point where its too liberal an interpretation. If you had held fast to the same structure of the source tune, and the rest of the arrangement and performance style were the same, I'd pass this easily. As is though, NO. You shouldn't be discouraged from submitting something here in the future, Martin. You definitely sound like you know how to put together a good track. This here is only an issue of how your interpretation sounds too far off from the Rolling Thunder bassline.

You da man, Ty.

Source tunes? - LT Hi Overclock remix, I'm submitting my Rolling Thunder The Geldra Remix to your site. The music from Rolling Thunder was one of my favourite arcade games and I had to have a go at remixing a version of it. This version had been submitted to the C64 kwed.remix site but they thought as it was an arcade based remix, I should sent this track to you. I hope you like it and that it is worthy of this excellent site. I have some other C64 based remixes at http://kwed.remix.org under the name of Martin Dodd. Check out my Powerdrift remix on that site if you have time! Thanks, Martin Dodd.

Real name: Paul Robinson Remixer name: Ninja Bro This song is from Nightshade Platform: NES Released: 1991 Developed by Beam Software Published by Ultra Games Song's remixed name: A City in Darkness Songs I used: From darkness comes Nightshade Cancer eating through the city's heart Mark Gray is Nightshade (at the very end) You can find these songs at . Comments: I love video game music and have been an OCR fan for a while; I had to do a remix for myself. My goal is to do songs that have never been done before or not very often. As much as I love Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, I won't be doing them. Nightshade is a great game; unfortunately, it is one of those games that got overlooked. The villain in the game is Sutekh, who is Egyptian, so the instrument for the main theme in my song sounds a little Egyptian. I also wanted the song to sound dark and mysterious, yet intense. Sadly, many great songs, old and new, have never been remixed. I hope this song will help others realize that there are great songs out there that are waiting to be remixed. ----------------------------------------------------------- http://akumunsf.good-evil.net/N/Nightshade.nsf - Tracks 1, 4 and 15 On the arrangement side, I liked the style in which you interpreted the source tunes, though the execution left a lot to be desired. The percussion writing was OK, but felt too repetitive in the long run. You also had some good concepts for the sound choices, but the way everything was put together sounded pretty mechanical and sloppy, with many of the other samples being pretty low-quality. When the textures got thick (e.g. 3:01-3:33), you had a lot of instruments fighting for space, yet nothing properly supported and meshed with the lead. A decent first sub, and it's always good to see underappreciated soundtracks getting remixed. This needs lot of work to fully realize the ideas here; hopefully some other Js can provide some more detailed criticism and advice. Sorry, bro. ... ninja bro. NO

What u say?>

metaphist aka Paul Ford pauleford@gmail.com Forum ID #8822 Little Nemo: The Dream Master Ending Theme Shane Barber's remix of the final battle theme got me interested in Little Nemo. When I gave the game a listen, the ending theme just spoke to me, so I had to do it ------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.zophar.net/nsf/little~1.zip - Track 19 Opened up with some fairly interesting sounds. The ceats added in at :20 were pretty tame, but OK for the purpose of a buildup as the volume on it gradually turned up. Got to the source melody at :42. The groove was good, but the overall levels were too quiet, and there was definitely something missing here to really give the piece some full-sounding energy. The textures here felt a bit sparse with no compensation on some other level. You had a good concept with the dropoff at 1:24, but it would have been all the more effective had the previous section been fuller. You also some good, gradual rebuilding starting with the return of the percussion at 1:45, but the end of the rebuilding at 2:09 still seemed on the empty side. The ambient break from 2:33-3:25 was a bit long, but a cool idea nonetheless. Definitely fitting given the game being arranged. While the general groove was good, it was a bit samey after a while. Nonetheless, I thought the arrangement was pretty solid. There needs to be some tweaking work done with making the volume louder and the dynamics more effective. Still, no issue if this passes as is; if I'm seeming too subjective on this one, this should have a shot at getting some YESs. Definitely good luck with the rest of the vote, Paul. This is some of your most solid, accessible material yet. NO (refine/resubmit)

DJ AtukoManga Corey Waldusky AtukoManga@excite.com 27186514 Terrave (Things Fall Version) Final Fantasy VI Tina's Theme Been trolling the site for a long time and decided that I'd attempt something, and since I had this song stuck in my head, I went for it. Had been listening to Paul Okenfold and DJ Irene alot, so that's where the inspiration came from. Had a few friends do the VA for it, along with myself. Hope everyone enjoys. Used Sonar 5 with Pentagon and Dimension Pro. ------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Tina" (ff6-201.spc) Solid intro. Beats and voices came in at :26. Voice-overs were...there. Not sure what the point was of having them in there, with none of them telling any sort of story or having some sort of theme to them. On the production side, some of the voices were getting drowned out, some were a lot clearer and more upfront. Repeating the voices past the halfway mark was kind of tacky, in that it seemed more like a cut-and-paste job rather than having any real reason for being structured that way. The SFX at 3:46 was also pretty n00bish. Is this supposed to be deep with the various voice clips, or is this supposed to be tongue-in-cheek? While I don't doubt one COULD find some sort of happy medium that works effectively, you haven't. You'd likely be better served to pick one motif and run with that. As for the composition, the escalation at :49 seemed to be the end of the buildup phase, leaving me pretty underwhelmed. Once everything built up, the textures were pretty basic. The interpretation of the theme at 1:12 was a very conservative genre adaptation with some VERY subtle (almost inaudible) countermelodic work underneath it. The 2:25-2:58 section was at least a more interpretive handling of that part of the source since the melody there wasn't so close to the original, but the rest (sans the voices) was a very cookie-cutter rendition of "Terra" in trance. There needs to be more interpretation here to make this a more unique arrangement. NO

With that amount of lead time, Jody, you very likely should have bought the tickets already if you actually want a good chance at group seating. I'd gather as many firm commitments as I could and purchase the tickets ASAP.

Dear djpretzel, It is with great satisfaction that I submit a recording of my arrangement of the Chrono Trigger tune "Undersea Palace," called "Lit by Anglerfish," to OC ReMix. This project has entailed a great deal of labor, frustration, and learning; to hear its complete end product and share it with you gives me a wonderful feeling of closure and accomplishment. The piece is a heavy metal version of "Undersea Palace." The original idea came to me as I imagined an electric bassist playing the distinctive, piercing synthesizer part that underlies much of the original piece. In my mind I sped the part up, and I added an electric guitarist playing power chords that followed the main harmony that the strings play in Mitsuda's tune. The idea sounded cool in my head, so those were the first parts that I wrote and I built the rest of the piece from them. "Undersea Palace" is a big, dark, foreboding piece, so it lent itself to the idea of metal. Strangely, my arrangement sounds more lighthearted than the original to me. The two electric guitar parts and the electric organ part were played live by me, and the drums and bass were programmed using soundfonts. Making a five-part record single-handedly is one hell of a method of recording music; I don't think that I could recommend it to anyone. Better to have five real players, a recording engineer, and a studio. Unfortunately Tohru Iwao and Motoi Sakuraba were busy when I called them. Here is the link to my MP3: Sincerely, Alex Stuart (remixer name: Linearity) linforthewin@gmail.com OCR forum member #9791 ---------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Undersea Palace" (ct-308.spc) Dunno if that's supposed to be some sort of mallet percussion in the background, first used at :45, but it sounds like an ultra-muffly Windows sound. Which one, lemme look. ... "Ding." It sounds like you machined-gunned the "Ding" sound effect. In other words, it can't get any more bootleg than that. Let's never speak of this again. In any case, not bad. The lead tone is kind of weak; couple of the notes felt odd (around :35 and :37, but everything resolved fine). The way this is produced, the lead guitar, rhythm guitars and organ bled into each other, with the rhythm sounding pretty drowned out. Up until 1:16, (though the non-stop hats were annoying) the percussion writing was serviceable but flimsy-sounding and plodding in some ways, doing a poor job of driving the song forward. Plus it wasn't very audible. Sections like 2:19-2:34 and 3:05-3:57 felt empty as the textures got fuller, in part due to the percussion not getting the job done. For the latter section, you're relying too much on the rhythm guitar to fill out the soundfield. Everything needs some EQ love to better separate and balance the parts. The guitar Js would have some better crits on the electric guitar performance. Balance the parts better and strengthen some of the weaker aspects of the percussion and this would be in a lot better shape. The arrangement was ok, but it definitely overstayed it's welcome, with the sounds, textures and production techniques not really evolving in any way and repetition dragging things out. A lot of fat could have been trimmed off this. Beyond using the WIP resources here, you should have also given something like this a shot in Dwelling of Duels, since you played most of the parts live. As long as you ask for feedback there, you could get some from guys with a ton of experience making rock arrangements. With all that said, Alex, this was a pretty decent base that shows that you have the right ideas about interpretation. You've gotta get the energy level and dynamics working more in your favor, as well as the production, though the performances and/or multitracking could have also been tighter. Lots to work on for the future in terms of building up your core skills, but this is also a lot better than the typical first/beginner sub. You may want to see what criticism and advice you could incorporate into improving this track, but may want to move onto other work. In either case, keep improving and stay hungry for learning more. NO

Nah, it's not Chipamp. Chipamp doesn't even interact with Winamp recognizing the MP3 extension, just chiptune formats. I did a clean install of Chipamp on another computer just last night and everything was cool, as usual.

CHz reviewed the album last night over at VGF. Check it out and drop comments if you want. I've yet to check it out myself, but am going to pretty soon. This is definitely a unique album here in the Western side of the scene!

Memories... Here, there's all my MAGFest 6 news stories: http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=178 http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=236 http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=403 Never pimped my own thoughts on MAG, but here you go: http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=421 http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=432 http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=433 http://www.vgfrequency.com/?p=436 Enjoy.

Definitely stopping by to LOL at piration. LOAL.

I think a minor part of the reason the names are generally visible are to make it easier for people interested in the artists to learn a bit more about them, but I could just be looking at it through my own prism. It's an interesting proposition, actually. I could see why you'd want that feature. I'll holler at djp about it. Dunno if it could be done, but it sounds like something vBulletin might be capable of. EDIT: Asked djp and the short of it is that it's doable but would require a fair amount of work. Probably not a priority at this point, but it's something to potentially keep in mind. if anyone has any more input on why we should or shouldn't implement this, please post your thoughts.

Can't speak for Tim, but I'd believe so. All part of the aspect of using more than one person potentially being viewed as an unfair advantage.

Well, the site is djp's creation and it means something for him to sit down to listen to every approved track and give his thoughts on it. It's almost a rite of passage, and a way to personally thank everyone who contributes. If your mix is approved, it will be on the front page and djpretzel will be the one commenting on it. If If I'm making that up, djp will ban me soon enough.

We've also just got too many songs to post. Some songs wait because they have issues that need to be addressed before they're posted. Which reminds me, I have about 5 people I need to contact on stuff like that. I don't think the wait time for posting to the front page should be as long as it is. I think we could even have something inside a month of total wait time and still have a very steady flow of songs given the percentage of acceptable songs. The main reason why stuff doesn't move faster. 1) The judges have lives. We have to have time to do this work on the side. We evaluate the songs in our spare time for free. The only incentive we have to evaluate material is because we want to. 2) I have a life. I mention myself separately because I'm in charge of the inbox that all of the songs are sent to. I basically took a 3 week vacation from Christmas Eve to yesterday, to work on other areas of the site, spend more time at my real job and just take some time off from judging. 3 1/2 years of it is plenty without a break. 3) djpretzel has a life. Normally he jokes that I don't have much of one, but lately that describes him. He's been busy for months working on improving the core of the site, plus he's overseeing most of the details of OCR's first professional game soundtrack. With that said, he always working on his real job as well as site stuff behind that scenes outside of posting ReMixes. We'll always get flack for it, because it's not visible to the casual goer. /shrugs Him being the only one that posts the material (which no one's thinking about changing, so it's not a suggestion that's ever gonna be considered. All boils down to, yes we all want things to work faster, but we're not getting paid, so pay us millions of dollars and then we'll post things the day we receive them. Maybe.

Original Decision: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=13594 * Your ReMixer name: Kautzman * Your real name: Michael Kautzman * Your email address: MKautzm@gmail.com * Your website: N/A * Your userid: 22695 * Name of game(s) arranged: N64 - Super Mario 64 * Name of individual song(s) arranged: Dire Dire Docks. * Your own comments about the mix, for example the inspiration behind it, how it was made, etc.: Since the last time you've seen this it has gone through a ton of changes and the production quality is quite a bit better. Layering has been improved upon. Included a bit of panning to separate the melody lines from background. I've added a little more of something new and removed excessive repetition. Velocity has been normalized, something which should have been done from the get go and the piano has been sharpened. It's quite a bit better this time around and I look forward to your comments and opinions. One thing that I noticed a few people mentioned was the lack of bass. I tried to strengthen the support by bringing out the moving synth line starting at 0:08 and articulate it more in places (But I made sure it never comes over the top of what needs to be heard). I've experimented with adding additional support and it seems to clutter it but that may be showing my lack of experience with the production of something like this. Another aspect I worked on was being less conservative with the mix. A unique bridge was added and repetition was cut in it's favor. I messed around a bit with the drums to make things different, interesting and to put a bit of "spice" into the mess but the piece still remains relatively conservative (Same tempo, same ambiance etc.) For the sake of easy reference, if it matters, the original I submitted last time can still be found here: Enjoy, and once again, thanks for your time. Michael Kautzman ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The production was definitely a lot better balanced, though the overall soundfield still sounded a bit too murky here, IMO. The delay overcompensated for the relatively sparse textures. http://www.zophar.net/usf/sm64usf.rar - 09 "Dire, Dire Docks" Still the same e-piano intro. Percussion was different, with some kicks now. CHz mentioned them being panned pretty hard to the left and not being a much better percussion choice, and I've gotta agree. They didn't adequately fill out the background at all and seemed out of place with the overall mood of the song. Switching up the kick rhythm at 1:16 was a good idea, but still a poor choice of sound. "Huh?" at 2:05; that definitely came out of nowhere and didn't piece together well with the material that came before it. The interpretive take on the theme from 2:21-2:35 didn't harmonize well with the countermelody in the background. The original countermelody from 2:36-2:51 was actually pretty good; definitely clicking there. The tone of the countermelody brought in at 3:14 still didn't fit the mood of the track to me, but the writing there was good at least. I wouldn't have ended the track with that synth leading the way. It sounds too syrupy, not really fitting in the watery, ambient mood you tried to retain by sticking to the feel of the source so closely. It seems that the only effective harmonizations of your original ideas with the source tune came when you used the melody near-verbatim; however, it also made that melodic aspect of the arrangement boring. The verses were a little different just with how you repeated the partial melody before repeating with the full phrase, but the chorus was even more straightforward than that. Quoting myself from last time: I see how you tried to do more this time around, Michael, but I'm still left with the same overall impression. When you changed things up more substantively, the supporting elements tended to clash with the altered melodies. So you still have a ways to go in terms of experimenting and learning in order to get your part-writing and sound choices to be more cohesive when you take more creative liberties. Definitely keep at it in the community. This was a marked improvement versus the previous submission, mostly on the production side, but some on the arrangement side as well. You nonetheless still have a ways to go, and this likely isn't going be the track that takes you there. I'd call this one a wrap and continue moving forward with new ideas as you use the resources here and on other sites to continue improving your game. NO