Liontamer

Home stretch, y'all. Now if for SOME REASON, I'm too out of it to do the finale show right after VGF84, I will come back the following night in order to do it, though it'll probably be very late like 2AM. Obviously not a preferable time there, but I'll have to make due with it. But the plan is to do the first show, MP3 it really quickly and then record the finale which is not open to any calls. This is so I can keep things done in a reasonable time and because the best of shows are about music rather than calls. Plus I'm sure VGF84 will have too many calls. Please don't be offended if I don't take your call. I hope you understand that it doesn't mean I don't appreciate your company or your support of the show. I hate to seem like I DON'T want to talk to people and talk about the show ending and all that, but my time is really limited in that I'm essentially screwed in terms of handling everything I need to do before I move if I spend more time at the station than I need to. Doing both shows will likely be in excess of 8 hours, and I'd really like to not push that amount as I have a lot of editing to so as well. Aight, we'll see you there, no? (NO!)

Nah, I would just say you don't know the standards.

Anything bashing the people instead of the song, as well as needless bitching about pixietrick's website loading blank (it has a white background and if you don't have Flash installed, the content will not display), OR begging/comforting/reassuring pixietricks in lieu of that emotional ("emo" for short) outburst of pessimism has been and will be deleted. Grow up, kids. In other places in this review thread, there have been some perfectly fine comments from people who have nothing good to say about the track. Like it or dislike it, listen to DarkeSword, just say your piece on the song and keep the comments focused on the song. If you don't like the mix, don't be a douche about it. Only the judges get to do that.

Bitch, plz. Voting auto-YES on retro sounds is just as stupid as you voting auto-NO (which you do).

Finally got it runnin'. Now getta goin'.

2:30AM it is, folks. See y'all there.

Just to let you know, I'm at Emory now. In case the 12AM show does in fact show up, I'll have my show starting around 2:20AM. If not, I'll start around 12:30AM. Happy listening.

I'll buy you some candy to make up for it. Feel free to try and get in before I start playing CS stuff, but that's about it. Not to be a douche, but I figure everyone's had a lot of opportunities to call during past shows since #61. I'm about ready to wrap the show up my way, and that way is with rather minimal talkies.

Hahaha! It is absolutely thundering and lightning...ing all over Atlanta tonight, so poor lil' ole me without an umbrella for myself or my computer is shifting the show over to tomorrow night at 2AM EST, which is the same time of week I did my last make-up show, so I know the spot is free. Hopefully the weather will actually be accomodating then, and whoever's there will be able to enjoy the show. I added a few more tracks to the VGF83 playlist that you're going to enjoy, so tune in if you can. Weather.com says: 7pm: Rain / Thunder 8pm: Rain / Thunder 9pm: Rain / Thunder 10pm: Rain / Thunder 11pm: Rain / Thunder 12am: Rain / Thunder 1am: Rain / Thunder 2am: Rain / Thunder

Monday night going into Tuesday, kids. That's why it says Monday night.

Can't deny you that.

Much <3 for you. Most instrumentals people make on OC are great. But the vocal ones, they have to be perfect or else it ruins it. I think he's saying y'all crapped up an otherwise good instrumental.

Just copying and moving the content from the other Shirts and Hoodies thread that was made for no particular reason. But in IMPORANT NEWS, leviathan announced that OCR Hoodie prices are going to go up soon, so you better get a Hoodie now if you wanna get them at the current price. Here's lev's breakdown of the impending new price, followed by other banter from that thread. I would simply adore an OCR mousepad, or maybe even that black pretzel design. Or maybe one with my own logo! But I could make that myself OH SHIT Nice Work coffee mug?

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! Way to go, radio personality of the year. -DCT You do not mock me on the way out! Aight, so some (NON-WWE) crud came up requiring me to not do a show tonight either. It looks like I'll have to do it on Monday or later in the week. Not really a big deal when as I have the actual playlist ready. In other news, VGF84 on 3/25 will be the last Saturday show and should be on schedule featuring whatever regular community music comes out followed by Crono Symphonic along with some bonus material from the upcoming Special Edition. Calls will be limited to Crono Symphonic members only in order to not bloat the show too badly. I don't mean to not let people get their calls in, but it's not a funeral so I'm not gonna play it up as one. Provided I'm still going strong after VGF84, I may try to do the VGF84.99 finale immediately after VGF84, but otherwise may do it on the night of 3/27 sometime shortly before I leave Atlanta for good. Details will be forthcoming and all that jazz. And after the show's over, the thread will continue to have informal plugs for stuff, as well as updates when I finally release more stuff from the MP3 backlog. Home stretch, people.

Oh don't get me wrong, I knew OF it, but did I remember it was tonight? Nah. I thought it was closer to WrestleMania, like A1.

I <3. But wrestling, not you.

I forgot about WWE Saturday Night's Main Event tonight on NBC at 8PM. No way I'm gonna make tonight's VGF now, but there's actually not enough new material from the community this week to actually do something this week. So I hope to be able to spend the extra time getting some appropriate additional material I may have missed in order to provide at least a 2-hour show. It's tentatively scheduled at 6PM Sunday night, but may be earlier or later depending on when I can get to the studio and finish up some editing of older episodes.

Like I said, the KiC show was a like a regular show followed by the second half dedicated to the album, so it's still a dedicated show. I never did a DSoP show as that came out during the summer. Hook me up with any SE material you want me to play ASAP. As far as definite date & time, it's either tonight or next Saturday; take your pick and tell me ASAP on that as well. In terms of reaching Andrew, AFAIK from the Summoning of Sprits thread, he's been MIA for a little while so I wouldn't necessarily bank on him being around tonight. I honestly don't know what his availability is, but I hope to do right by him with the CS show nonetheless.

I've had to put that show off since New Year's/VGF75, more than enough time for at least some SE stuff to be done. I'd like to get this show done before I leave, and it's not a big deal to just use the RE material. Roland or anyone else involved needs to let me know what SE material is available and get it to me before VGF83 as teaser material for SE's eventual release. Because I have my own more pressing and inflexible deadlines to think about, that's pretty much how I'd prefer to do it at this point. I can hold off for next week if it's really really necessary, but I'd likely hold the same format as the Kong in Concert & Hedgehog Heaven shows, where I play regular stuff first, then spotlight the album during the rest of the show.

I plan on doing a simple CS show on Sunday sometime shortly after VGF83 on Saturday night, so gimme the stuff. And if it's not then, it'll have to be VGF83 itself (as there's not much music out this week) or after next week's show with no calls. That's about all I have time for until I'm done.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/ff3.zip - Tracks 5 "Lute of Noah" (:00-:43, 3:57-4:47), 42 "The Dark Crystals" (:43-1:15), 43 "Battle 2" (1:15-2:04), 36 "The Invincible" (2:29-3:12) & 49 "The Everlasting World" (3:12-3:57) Thanks for listing some sort of information on the source tunes this time. Well I dunno about the rest of these lazies, but I waited for a while on this one because the question here was really whether such a relatively conservative arrangement should be a pass in lieu of the new writing here. Bothering with the question is mitigated by the sound quality needing improvement unfortunately. For the improvements made in not having the soundscape so sparse by having more sounds in play, the sampled instruments here still lacked some richness though the improvement is there. Some sort of velocity/volume flub on the strings at :26 that needs to be fixed. Again, I liked the tempo shift at :52 during "The Dark Crystals", but again I would have liked it more had that idea not been lifted verbatim from the source. Yes, "making brass samples sound good is tough". Nonetheless, when they sound really really poor and fake (1:15-1:28) in contrast to the other sounds being used, you're gonna need IMO a stellar arrangement to make up for it (see: StarFox 2 "Mercenarios de Lobo"). The performance there has to sound less rigid/more human to downplay how glaringly fake the samples sound. Section from 1:39-2:03 sounded awkward due to whatever was handling the low notes. Plus, whatever string instruments were in front just sounded too synthetic. Same for the piano from 2:04-2:29, which was trying to sound rich but didn't pull it off. Same for that harp-like deal at 2:29. Like I've mentioned before, and I believe Gray had similar views, orchestral music is a genre where IMO medleyitis is not as negatively impactful as it can be for other types of music. It really depends how the transitions sound to someone, but abrupt ones tend to work ok here. 1:16 didn't work so well, probably on account of the brass sample, though you can hear how the xylos stayed around in an effort to not make things too jarring. Same with 1:40, which was still "Battle 2" but where the instrument change was a good idea that didn't work IMO. Still, you get props for some of the transitions being pretty good, like at :44, 3:12, and 3:57. That being said, you still could have developed these themes more. Practically all of them had their structures and tempo kept verbatim with the source. You worked in some additional instrumentation ideas and those were definitely going in the right direction. If the sounds were more richer/realistic sounding and some of the performance less rigid, this would fit well on an FF3 arrange album let alone here. But that refinement definitely isn't there, so I've gotta say NO once again. The execution's simply not matching the ambition.

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/eq.rsn - "Atlena" (eq-06.spc) Strange original, to be sure. It ends by 1:49, but then an entirely new section comes in from 2:05-3:47. Then that ended and another new section came in from 4:01-5:30. So the source is really three different pieces in one; not hugely different, but different enough. Yeah, it's really too bad that there's not much substance to the track as an arrangement. As a chillout style piece, this is great stuff. I disagreed with TO on the second McKenna sample not fitting well. I thought everything worked really well on that level; very relaxing. Vigilante and I were talking about McKenna a few days ago when I told him about this track. McKenna's says some absolutely hilarious bullshit. "Nature is hyperdimensional in its architectonics..." He was clearly on the good shit. Died of brain cancer, you say? I've gotta wonder if he was halfway there by that point. But in terms of the arrangement, it's just a piano and woodwind with some nice effects basically covering the source with some chill beatwork surrounded by weird effects. Then yeah, there's really nothing much I hear going on from 2:48-5:20/end but a heartbeat + various other SFX. This arrangement really just tackles the first section of "Atlena". If it involves anything else from Equinox being arranged after 2:48, I certainly can't tell from trying to listen to all of the game's other tracks. At 3:32, a wind instrument comes in doing something vaguely melodic, along with a woodwind at 3:52, but I couldn't tell you what it's supposed to be from. That's why the burden of proof is on the submitter to provide all of the information we need. In any case, the arrangement is chill, but unfortunately isn't interpretive enough or expansive enough in a way that builds directly from the composition of the original. There's SOME rearrangement going on, but not enough to get it done. I love the track (definitely keeping it), but it just doesn't meet any arrangement standards here. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/StarOceanSS_psf.rar - 225 "Mighty Blow" I have to say, listing an entirely wrong source tune in the submission letter is annoying. Just means I had to sift through most of the soundtrack to find the right original. As you can see, it's pretty far down the list. Anyway forgetting all that, the track opened with an arrangement of the source's chorus as the intro before going into the source melody at :12. As for the rest of the arrangement, I can sum it up generally. There's really not much complexity in the construction of the track. While the synths and effects you used were decent enough to not make the track seem completely empty, there were usually not more than 1-3 different sounds in play during the whole thing, usually just a lone synth line plus some beats. Basically nothing more to the arrangement than 4+ minutes of repeating the melody and chorus of the original with different synths and throwing in different beat patterns & other random sounds. There loads of variety on that level, but none in terms of the arrangement. Plus, there's not really much to be praised regarding all of the varying sound choices when there's really no rhyme or reason behind it all. Those super clippy drums from 3:23-3:43 definitely didn't wind down the track in a good way. You forgot the substance and texture amidst fucking around with as many sounds as you possibly could. NO

Chrono Cross Original Soundtrack - 101 Chrono Cross ~Time's Scar~ Had this on my show way back on VGF51; kind of surprised to see this now. When you don't hear of a song for a year, you certainly don't expect to see it sitting here. Nonetheless I'm glad to see another sub from Joseph. Decent idea for the retro synth opening, which half of us here hate. Panned too much to the right and, if I'm noticing that, it's gotta be drastic as my hearing is worse in that ear. Moved over into the simple beats at :18 and I'm interested to see where it'll go. 8-bit synth comes in at :34, soon doubled along with some very light pizz string type support. Followed by the arranged melody on 8-bit lead at :51. The thick beat at 1:10 was way too simplistic and felt tacked on; didn't create a good texture for the piece when it was in play IMO, but I may be alone on that. I liked things much better when you brought in the synth strings at 1:39 to add a bit more depth to the arrangement. Decent breakdown from 2:03-2:21 before really upping the strings for a nice, more noticeable harmonization from 2:21-2:38. Wish the arrangement had more to say from 2:38 until 3:16/the end as opposed to basically retreading the already existing arrangement ideas. The minimalistic atmosphere here is ok, but I think it's shortchanging the track. Aside from the thicker beats, the subtleties in the countermelodic writing and other support instrumentation were often so quiet and understated that it made the arrangement seem too simple and not fleshed out. After 1:26 except for the brief breakdown, one could argue that they've heard all the melodic arrangement you have to offer and that the supporting instrumentation doesn't seem like enough of a presence to make up for that level of repetition. I feel bad, as I'd like to see something like this on the site, but need to have the writing under the melody have more presence so it sounds more contributory and integrated with the melody, plus the arranged melody itself could use some further variation from iteration to iteration to keep things fresh. Sorry, man. It's certainly not for a lack of appreciation for what you've done with this, but it needs to have (and subsequently show off) more substance IMO. Best of luck on the rest of the vote. NO (rework/resubmit)

It's Shake 'N' Bake, and I helped!