Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

I actually answered your accusation of this last time in the DarkCecil13 judgehate thread. Maybe you didn't see it (it was part of a massive response to several people), but I still have the whole thing. But indeed, we can't help that we receive more submissions from various franchises. Those are the more popular games, and, statistically, they will always receive more attention from submitting artists. I can't speak for other Js, but I know that personally, I love receiving submissions (and especially passable mixes) from games that receive little to no coverage. You'll never believe it, but I'm just as bitter as you are. I work here every day, and I see the disparity firsthand. I would love to see Sonic Spinball, and Treasure Master, and California Games, and Spider-Man & The X-Men, and Res-Q, and Breath of Fire V, and World Heroes, and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, and Duke Nukem. If we got nothing ever again from the most popular games, I'd be ok. But of course I don't truly mean that. And here's why: One great part of being on the panel is hearing even the tired and true "overdone" themes getting reimagined in ways I didn't think were possible. Shnabubula's SMB "Mario Likes Thorazine" and ambient & Skrypnyk's CT "Back 2 Skala" renew my interest in the old hat themes just when I think I've burnt out on them. They don't impress the most jaded of jaded, but I'm always amazed by what the artists here are coming up with. Keep it together, though. Some of the lesser known games/soundtracks are gonna get the treatment. We've got a Syberia mix coming up from Prasa U. that I've very glad we got. On the direct post side, Danimal Cannon of Arm Cannon has made sure that Blaster Master hasn't been forgotten around these parts. Anyone interested in Wild ARMs performed by a real, live symphony orchestra? And Top Gear 2 will be here eventually by an old school legend (you can probably guess). Every time we expand the database with a new game listing, with new composers, with new source tunes, that's meaningful progress to me. I always want to see more. Convince Ryan8bit to submit his Sierra game mixes. He's got this amazing King's Quest V mix that I've been badgering him about ever since I heard it in DoD, and even at MAGFest 5 he was talking about how unsure he was about it. And I'm a judge (and fan) asking him to send it in. There's only so much one man can do! If you really wanna help, If there's an obscure game arrangement you like, and you think it could make it, as the artist to send it. I will personally thank you for the effort.

Even though I was 99% sure of my call, Andy's running the FF7 project and perhaps could have picked up on other source material I simply wasn't familiar with that Siamey may have neglected to state in the sub letter. Any submission involving greater than 50% VGM arrangement is imperative to honoring the source material moreso than doing your own thing. I want to make it clear that while Heath's current track is not dishonoring anything, it also fails to explicitly involve the source material enough to be considered a substantive enough tribute as far as OCR's standards. The focus at this site must be on video game music first, wholly original material second. As Andy and I said, the production is all sorts of excellent, and what is directly interpreted is good. But the overall usage of the source material is lacking. If this is how you'd envisioned it, and you don't want to revise anything, more power to you, and that's cool. I definitely enjoyed the track. But if you'd like to integrate some more FF7 material directly into the arrangement and resubmit this, Heath, it would be a very welcome addition. My vote stands as a NO (resubmit).

Can we get any further follow-up on whether zircon's breakdown is satisfactory for those of you that know theory? Let's please make the rounds so that we can have a conclusive result this week if possible.

Yeah, kinda lazy, but he's implying that the feed itself wasn't displaying the usual information. Who knows, something could be functioning differently than before. I'm sure djp can check if anything's up.

David, you see this one?

As far as I'm concerned, you're early. And with a great read. I've followed up things with today's post of mine on a new piece posted up by the 8-Bit Artist, tying into the upcoming VG concert and art show, 16-Bit Genocide. Happy reading!

Periodically, I will check this out and go "Where my Spider-Manz at?" Where my Spider-Manz at?

Contact info: o0ghost0o David Rodríguez - Bermejo Rodríguez acid.synergy@gmail.com Remix info: Donkey Kong Country Life In The Mines The song's in the website, but the link's broken. Anyway here's the song I was playing life in the mines level of Donkey Kong Country game and suddenly the idea of making some kind of techno remix of It, became to my mind. This is the first remix I send to this website, but Isn't the first remix I do. I must confess wasn't going to do it, I thought It wasn't good enough, but friends helped me to make the decision, so there is it. I made the introduction of the song trying to give some kind of nostalgic feeling like in movies when someone Is looking to an old photograph. I wanted to do a techno remix, but with my own style, merging orchestral instruments, standar techno drums, and others drums which gives variety to the percussion. I guess you enjoy the remix as I did making it. Note: sorry for my bad english.

Nice save! Thinking outside the box.

Thanks, Shariq! I blog about it!

How do you know he's bald?

I'll pimp y'all, Audun. Before this thread even happened! Really loving that Norrin Radd album art.

http://project2612.org/download.php?id=53 - "The Street of Rage" Yeah, bro, you already did the legwork on this one. There's lot of bells and whistles here, but the structure, tempo and instrumentation are too close to the original. Yeah, directly sampling the piano from the original means you take a hit there. That's just another area where you could have introduced your own composition ideas to make the arrangement more interpretive. You're no stranger to making a passable rearrangement where you really go above and beyond to make it a standalone track, Trevin, so I look forward to your next submission. NO

We're UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ 4 ON TEH FLOOR E GLOWSTIKCZ ; need an actual title if this passes - LT Dear OC remixers, Here's a submission of a audiotrack I made. I don't know if it qualifies as a remix. But it's at least arranged by me. Though maybe too "classic" for your website , I don't know. Here's my track. Original game is Starcraft, the theme is the Terran main Theme. Here's the nessesairy personal info Remixer name: Skrie Real name: Ernst Jan Verbree E-mail: e_verbree@hotmail.com Website: www.skrie.com Forum User-ID= 21354 Since this is my first submit, forgive me if I'm at the wrong place for this kind of track ! (because I kinda got the impression that you only take rhytmic dance mixxes and stuff like that) Skrie ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those of you following along, the 8:53-long source track is made up of several parts. The section you're looking for starts at 3:54, and identifies itself at 4:30. Source has some pretty cool moments, but this sub deals mostly with that melodic hook at 4:30. StarCraft (Game Rip) - (03) "Terran 1" Nah, you're in the right place, bro. We take all genres. Pretty good expansionist material, getting more interpretive with the quieter section at 1:06. That was definitely not something I was expecting. Given the length, I was expecting more repetition, and was pleasantly surprised that you didn't take the lazy way out. The instrumentation of the loudest section at 1:39 didn't carry the oomph it was intended to, which was pretty disappointing. Still though, some solid variations in there to keep the arrangement going, in lieu of this weaker production. Sounds like there's a pop at the end that would need to be fixed, but this was fine otherwise. Took a very brief section of the original and was able to run with it. YES

When abouts is that? I only ask because it's been 4 months already.

Hello, This is a remix that I did using Ableton Live 5, ProTools, and my Korg MS2000B. Here is the link: http://www.kingtigermusic.com/music/eggman.mp3 Here is all my info: ReMixer Name: KingTiger Real Name: Corey Oltman E-Mail Address: kingtigermusic@gmail.com Website Address: kingtigermusic.com UserID: 13997 Game: Sonic & Knuckles Song: Death Egg Zone System: Sega Genesis Composer: Howard Drossin Comments: What I said at the top. I'd also like to say that I had a lot of fun and explored some areas of music and sound recording that I had not visited before. The in-game sound effects were tricky, because I had to run an emulator and record my computer's audio output into my MBOX...The bad thing was, the emulator didn't like running at the same time as ProTools, so some of the sound effects came out rather glitchy, and I had to edit them a bunch to fix it. Also, all of the sound effects except for one are from Sonic games...although some of them are severely processed If you can guess which one isn't from Sonic I'll give you a cookie. Another comment I'd like to make is that the most common remark I hear about this ReMix is that it's very "groovy." Take that how you want Would it be possible to leave the link to my remix in the rejection post? I'd like people to still be able to download it, even it's not a great number of people. Many thanks, not only for listening to my remix, but also for hosting such an awesome site! Regards, R. Corey Oltman aka KingTiger -- www.coreyoltman.com "This process of the good life is not, I am convinced, a life for the faint-hearted. It involves the stretching and growing of becoming more and more of one's potentialities. It involves the courage to be. It means launching oneself fully into the stream of life." -- Carl Rogers

Song Name: Twilight Dreams: Memories of the True Rune Genre: Instrumental Easy Remixers: Gyrick and Novalon Game Origin: Suikoden II (with some elements from I) by Konami Songs Used: 1.) Moonlit Night Theme (I & II) (0:00 - 4:02) and (5:58 - 6:25) 2.) McDohl's Manor / Annalee's Lost Song (I / II) (0:11 - 1:07), (1:44 - 2:40), (3:17 - 3:50) 3.) Heart Softening BGM 1 & 2 (II) (1:44 - 2:07), (3:17 - 3:50) and (4:02 - 5:16) 4.) Nanami's Theme (Beautiful Morning) (II) (3:17 - 3:50) 5.) Gremio's Theme (Tragic Version) (I) (5:16 - 6:01) File Information: (Obtained using Winamp) Size: 6164480 bytes Header found at: 2090 bytes Length: 385 seconds (6min 25sec) MPEG-1 layer 3 128kbit, approx. 14777 frames 44100Hz Joint Stereo CRCs: Yes, Copyrighted: Yes Original: Yes, Emphasis: None New Remixers: Gyrick E-Mail: gyrick@gmail.com Novalon E-Mail: vanloone@gmail.com Comments: Gyrick: "Both Novalon and I had done a few remixes on our own, but had never submitted anything to any site. A few years ago, we decided that we'd work together to create a remix that would be worthy of posting on the internet. It didn't take us long to decide that we wanted to do a remix from the Suikoden series, not only because we like it, but we also felt it was under appreciated. We chose to have the main theme of the remix be "Moonlit Night", mixed with various songs from the series we liked. As it turned out, we mostly used songs from Suikoden II (with the exceptions of McDohl's Manor and Gremio's Tragic Theme, but it turns out that McDohl's theme was also used in Suikoden II as the song that Annalee is supposed to sing but doesn't due to a programming error) (*phew*, that was a long aside). This song took several months to complete, and it was edited for sound quality a few years later. We hope you enjoy our remix, "Twilight Dreams: Memories of the True Rune"

Those tracks don't count as precedent for this situation. Those tracks are precedents for dealing with liberal arrangements discovered during a lockdown, not on where the cutoff is for accepting new submissions. That difference is critical here. Keeping something too liberal but already posted during a lockdown vs. YESing a new track on the panel are two different bags. Dave can hand down his own stance when he comments. For very liberal arrangements arranging obscure source tunes, we need to be doing the legwork, which we're coming off as averse to. No matter how Wing's stuff is, you can take it and go "Here's part A from the original. Here's how he used it for part B in the arrangement," and it can be done for more than half the arrangement. I did that on my own with Wing's mixes for lockdown. I've heard several submissions recently where extremely liberal arrangement and original parts/sections added in sound so seamless and natural, you could easily think it was a more conservative arrangement of a VGM melody. It's too easy to give something the benefit of the doubt. Generally, we don't actively do that. It's more subconscious. But we've got an extremely liberal arrangement, with a source where it's really easy to go off the rails. "I'll recognize a note here and there" doesn't show anything. Ok, we're claiming we hear it, but where exactly? It's my fault too, but 9 votes later, no one showed anything. We're not forced to be meticulous with every submission, but some require it and we haven't come through yet on this one. This is reasonable criticism. If no one can elaborate how this got from point A to B and show that there are a lot of direct connections, how are we supposed to sign off on this? It's not just about this track in a vacuum, but somehow justifying it versus other acceptances and rejections made. I'm just keeping perspective on those old liberal mixes. My word isn't law, but in order to have better balance against me being the most vocal, it helps if other people actively participate, which has been like pulling teeth lately. Get in here and mix it up!

http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=302151&postcount=7

djp's had 2 tracks removed. As for pixie: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2612

Due to the sheer length of time this evaluation has taken, Leah's been pretty discouraged and has basically thrown her hands in the air as to the state of the submission, going so far as to say we should just NO it. It ran pretty contrary to her attitude before where she seemed OK with however long it would take, since she couldn't give me arrangement timestamps yet, but that's neither here nor there. There's no reason to reject the submission because the artist goes "poo", but since no one else has stepped up in light of djp's arrangement concerns, I'm going to give my POV. First off, my vote up top is not thorough enough regarding the arrangement, which I'm sorry for. Inasmuch as initial votes can let other Js know about strong concerns, I flat out didn't analyze the arrangement enough. In merely commenting on the production and not concerning myself with the arrangement, I ended up not having a knowledgeable opinion on the whether this was too liberal or not. If I had known, I would have asked for arrangement information from the artist much sooner Lately, I've been disappointed in the panel in terms of actually doing their homework and actively recognizing source tunes in liberal situations. I've seen a number of close calls that have so far luckily all gone to NO where I felt arrangement value was glossed over in favor of musicality and enjoyability. So far, everyone, even some NOs, have "all gotten the feeling" or whatever that the arrangement is viable. No details. Just "it works". What's up with all this benefit of the doubt stuff? There's a collective laziness in place for situations like these when we really need to be working harder to understand exactly what we're hearing. For the record, Rellik's EarthBound "Dreaming on Distant Shores" is not, nor has it ever been, a viable comparison. Same with pixietricks' Zelda 64 "Prayer" and Jared Hudson's Final Fantasy X "The Final Summoning". Know your history. Those mixes were direct posted without proper oversight, and were saved from lockdowns because they had at least something observable arrangement value. The panels at those times collectively agreed during those lockdowns that none of the 3 would have or should have passed a strict panel vote as new submissions. If this submission had DPed somehow, I argue that it would end up the same way. Now, as a piece of music, this is fairly well-written. It's really enjoyable, and while some of the sounds and production techniques are lacking, there are a lot of other catchy areas and examples of sophisticated writing and programming. That's the crappy part of this job. Having to make a value judgement on stuff relative to the standards and ending up turning down creative, otherwise good music. However, in trying to work with Leah's rough comments quoted above, I'm still not coming up with enough overt or otherwise discernible connections. It doesn't help that the source is so difficult to internalize, but I've had a number of months and I'm not meaningfully hearing it in enough places for this sub. I can't timestamp much here, which is why I'm disappointed Leah didn't want to elaborate with any timestamps of her own. 1:08-1:21 and 1:36-2:18 are the most overt connections I can make out, from :30 and :56 of "Spirit Temple" are my best observation. The flourish at 2:08 is from 1:02 of the original. Even the "Requiem of Spirit" portions from 2:58-3:24 are extremely liberal, and "Requiem of Spirit" is a very straightforward source tune. I've been wrong myself, even recently with AeroZ's recent FF5 submission in fact not being too liberal for the bar. So don't take this disrespectfully. But honestly guys, how many times are we gonna go down this road where a submission sounds cool but barely recognizable, so we get within a breath of letting it through? We have enough liberal arrangements that actually follow the standards that people complain about to then start adding ones that where the connections aren't even tangibly observable to us. If you can't make specific A-to-B associations between the source material and the submission, then look deeper or ask one another for help. My recommendation for djpretzel's tiebreak vote is that this mix not pass. It's unfortunate that because of events we may never receive a resubmission, but the artist's demeanor is irrelevant.

Hi OCRemix, this is MickMad...it's my first submission here, hope u'll like it... Remixer: MickMad Real Name: Michele Perla Email: mick1080dgmad@hotmail.com WebSite: http://mickmad.deviantart.com userid: 21346 Game: Zelda OoT Song remixed: OoT's Final Cutscene Theme (Zelda's song, Lost Woods theme, Main Screen Theme) Link to my song: Comments: When I was a child and i finished Zelda OoT, this song touched my heart...I still remember it, it's like I always hear that song again and again in my head...Since i love that song, i wanted to give my tribute to Zelda and Koji Kondo with this work...i made this in Reason and played everything with a Virtual Midi controller (that is to say, whit my qwerty keyboard :S) and it was painful but it was worth it...it's a work i'm very proud of...hope u'll like it ------------------------------------------------------------ http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 26 "Zelda's Theme" & 35 "Lost Woods" There are some observable additive part-writing and some interpretive transitions, but aside from that this is a glorified cover. Especially "Zelda's Theme", even the left hand portion is verbatim. The sound quality and performance are nice though. You really need to do a lot more in terms of altering the melodies, rhythms, etc in order to personalize the arrangement more. Check out recent Zelda: OoT ReMixes on OCR to get a better idea. Not really much else to be said, but I hope we hear from you again, Michele. NO

O yah nigga my bad u rite!

This isn't a site for "common interest listeners." Haven't you figured that out yet? The other Js wouldn't know about Chris because his submission was never paneled. For the record, Chris was a pretty cool guy when I talked to him via the Shizz forums. He submitted his mix back on June 16th, 2006. This was back before I was given responsibility for following up with form rejections, so it took until January to reply back to a slew of people within a week, including this sub. Nowadays, people receive form letters usually within hours, and usually 48 hours tops. That's because he submitted this. Textures aren't fleshed out, partly due to the percussion not filling out the space in the back and the perc writing being too simple. Arrangement-wise, mostly a cover but with some excellent soloing though over the chords of the original later on. And yes, 51kbps. I agreed with Cain that the FF2 (FF4?) Prelude was enjoyable but too much of a cover for the standards. David was too optomistic saying that it might have a shot when this plays it so straight. That just gives off the wrong idea. There's not enough original or interpretive material in here. The same principles apply for some of the other good covers available on Chris's site, like "Double Dragon Theme" and "Double Dragon M1 Jam", which are just short. Before someone goes into how we hate people simply doing covers. We don't hate conservative covers at OCR, but we don't accept 'em. We're specifically going for something different. If Chris wanted to get something on OCR, he should add more original and interpretive ideas and integrate them into the source material. Some people think the notion of doing that is stupid, but we've got rock arrangers doing this everyday, and no one's telling goat or housethegrate or ilp0 that they're asswipes for doing interpretive arrangements that aren't 1-for-1 covers. And recruit Shawn Phase to perform the drums! The guy's amazing.

Your ReMixer name: Fishy Your real name: Cain McCormack Your email address: Fishy1618@gmail.com Your userid: 15862 [ edit] Name of game(s) ReMixed: Final Fantasy 7 Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: Hurry Faster! This started off with a Dream Theater influence, but who knows what the crap it turned into. I just wanted to sneak on to the FF7 project, so I made most of this ReMix in a week, which is an improvement on my normal remixing time by around 8 months. In event of pass, don't post til project out yada yada. Yes the name is crap. Bet you guys are getting sick of FF7 by now. Fishy :3 --------------------------------------------------------------- http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 408 "Hurry, Faster!" Too loud. Too compressed. Blehz. Moving on. Starts off pretty cover-ish, but some cooler sounds at :20 helped personalized the delivery. Up with swirly pads and warbly synths. 1:22 and I was still waiting for things to move beyond the cover. Whoa, 1:33-1:48 is just a mess. zirc says it's fine for modern rock, but the thickest, loudest parts just end up sounding too cluttered and indistinct, particularly 1:41-1:48. Similar issue from 2:06-2:13 once those drums start banging away. On the arrangement side though, kicking some ass. Finally moved past the cover territory from 1:26 on, and 2:22 was great dynamic contrast. Things speak for themselves here, so I'll wrap it up with a YES.