Liontamer

Y'all listening on headphones or...?

Ah, almost a sort of double entendre. Cool. I'll make sure it finally get updated in the next few months.

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mo2 - "A Bad Dream" (mo2-041.spc) & "Eight Melodies" (mo2-111.spc) In my opinion, the arrangement is excellent. The pace is slow, which may bore some, but deliberate given the creative theme and thereby doesn't detract from the substance. (I see what you did there.) The performance aspect of needs some finesse. Within various phrases of notes, especially the stronger ones, the velocites sound the same, making things seem needlessly robotic (e.g. :42-:47). Overall, the performance also feels too rigidly performed at times. Could be quantized too much. After a reasonably flowy part such as 1:39-1:52, the melodic part sounds more robotic. Then you get later sections, such as 3:02-3:50 where the rhythm hand is so mechanical, that the track tends to drag on that level. The note-to-note dynamics seem decent overall, but they need more work. Someone else will have to confirm or deny. The atmosphere feels a bit thin. Might need more sustain effects to fill out the soundfield a bit more, but it could also just be a taste thing. Some better performance dynamics alone would be enough to push the piece up in my estimation. The ending is also too abrupt. Create a little more build towards the notion that the piece is about to wrap up, then let the last note at 3:50 trail off longer. Good stuff so far, Charles; I'll be keeping it. Hope you continue to work on this further, and I'm looking forward to your next submission. NO (resubmit)

did you take my ones then or should I fix something? Your resizes don't look that good, bro. But perhaps try some other colors. Maybe Coop and Evilhead can also give it a try and y'all can get more of the characters from those links I gave earlier. Can anyone do some nice resizes of the Phantasy Star peeps in this animated GIF?

Agreed (i.e. y'all need something for Ken). Even if stuff takes a long time, when it's done, it's done. I'd rather feel entirely satisfied with the output than wrap it up early.

Dammit, Dj Redlight is male. He is not female. Call him Ash instead.

I subscribe to the Vigilante doctrine. If patently unremarkable, then that's not a pass.

If Matt's working on a website, wouldn't that give some people a little elbow room to finish something quickly?

I love how I completely disagreed with that back when I first heard the mix. I thought Will took a completely bleh, unmemorable original and turned in into something good. Too quiet, but otherwise a solid track.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/wizwar2.zip - Track 6 Pretty empty track to start off. Lead synth is really defaulty. So are most of the other sounds too. There also aren't really any effects used here to personalize the sounds or fill out the soundfield beyond that overused "BOOM" sound first used at :50. Texture is pretty plain as a result. Feel finally changed up at 1:35 with the introduction of some new sounds, but the texture is still relatively sparse. Sound balance could be improved too, especially after 2:04 as most of the synths just mush together indiscriminantly once you added some new stuff into the picture and started filling out the soundfield more. The track does develop over time, but the samples are weak and there's no finesse on the production side to make up for it. You've given it some good effort to personalize your arrangement approach though. You've gotta go for less defaulty, richer sounds and learn how to balance them properly to give your arrangement ideas the best treatment. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/quat-3.zip - Track 4 Word, thanks a lot for the source link, Allen. The stuff in place is ok, but I wasn't impressed with this as is and don't understand a YES. The groove is so plain and uninteresting, both in the sounds/synths chosen and the ho-hum beat patterns. Everything sounds pretty vanilla and also cookie-cutter for Allen's style. 1:11-1:39 rehashes the arrangement with some overly mechanical piano underneath. Finally something different with the lead synths at 1:39 to change up the feel, at least a little bit. Very phat & beefy "BOOM" transition at 1:56 though to the next section. Lead and supporting instrumentation shifts focus briefly from 2:05-2:43 before going back into the more saw-style lead until 3:34, and then heading for the finish. Bleh. Dynamics barely ever changed the entire time. The arrangement had a decent degree of variation, but with the saw-type lead and looped percussion patterns being used most of the way and never changing, everything dragged and sounded too samey over the long haul. Even on the arrangement side, some iterations of the stuff could either be cut out or you could have worked to change the tone of the synths you were using to provide some style changes. If you're going to keep the structure intact, then at least change up the instrumentation style so that this doesn't get boring. For that matter, work on something more sophisticated than these overly simplistic, and ultimately boring grooves. You've got good stuff in place, bro, and this sounds like you can work further on it to get it to that higher level. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, it's definitely fine with me. I defer to the "pants-crapping good" analogy that the Pretz of yore has made in the past.

http://project2612.org/download.php?id=95 - 01 "Magical Sound Shower" From now on, nearly all Genesis soundtracks will be linked from Project 2612. Use the VGM input plug-in with Winamp to listen. Much better than using GYMs/YMs. The source tune was surprising in that at the 2 minute mark there was a ton of additional comping-style ideas in there that I didn't know were coming. If I hadn't have known better, I might have attributed that kind of stuff to someone else's ideas, rather than the original composers. Whole tune is 3:32-long. Shows you just how much OutRun I played as a kid. Opening sounds like some ultra-tame DDR intro only to settle into a barren playthrough of the source material by a delayed keyboard. Beats FINALLY kicked in at :40 to start filling out the soundfield, but everything sounds muddy and lacks punch. The bassline of the mix is pretty obscured by the beatwork, and the piano even struggles to establish itself as the primary foreground player. Eeeeew, some HORRIBLE sample for the sampled steel pan at 1:44; sounds absolutely awful and clearly wasn't meant to be sequenced with these ugly machine-gun style attacks. Some other scratching thing (I guess the braking noise sampled from the game) briefly made an appearance at 2:38. What was the point? 2:50 goes right back into the same stuff at the intro, except it says "Checkpoint!" instead of "Get Ready!". Lame recycling of the previous material to drag the song out. 3:24 adds some sort of poor woodwind sample (or whatever it was) as an additional layer on top of the recycled arrangement from the beginning to provide the most minor of minor instances of dynamics and development. I get to 4:26 with a little less than a minute left wondering if it's literally gonna keep plodding along with the theme, and it sure does. Start at ReMixing and learn more about the programs and sounds involved in the hobby, ask people for feedback at Works: OCR (they're always willing to help a lady), and continue working from there. This suffers from poor sounds, poorly-USED sounds, and a boring, repetitive, and needlessly drawn-out arrangement. That's about as basic as I can put it. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/dragonsl.zip - Track 5 Not to poo on the original track, but I didn't see what was so hot about it. Only about 33 seconds long, not really catchy. Then again, people in the community make great arrangements from bleh stuff all the time. Opened up with some quick chiptune homage, I guess direct-sampled, before bringing in some very flimsy beats and bass at :06. Source melody arrives at :21 along with a woodwind on counterpoint. The instrumentation is so lacking of energy. The percussion patterns are way too simple and plodding. The 1:43-2:03 section has the woodwind and bass taking the lion's share to change things up briefly, but the overall energy level and plodding beats meant that the dynamics didn't really change. The last section from 2:03-2:50/end was another iteration of the first part with no meaningful changes. Top off with an aburpt, non-satisfying ending and it's an easy call. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda2.zip - Track 8 Nothing really more than an overly conservative arrangement with decent instrumentation. Soundfield felt a little murky, but that was the least of the mix's problems. Instrumentation did little to vary over time. Hit another chorus at 1:18 and I was hoping it would go somewhere new... 1:30, nope. Another verbatim iteration of the theme. Finally something slightly different at 1:55 to provide some contrast. Before I could even officially bet myself that it would swing right back into the same older stuff, there it went right back into the exact same chorus at 2:21, basically rehashing everything until the end/3:31. Will he go for the abrupt ending or the fadeout...??? Abrupt ending it was. Cookie cutter, repetitive, uninterpretive arrangement approach; ho-hum sounds and processing. NO

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff6 - "Tina" (ff6-201.spc) http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFXI_psf2.rar - 102 "Vana'diel March" Fighting a losing battle at this rate, but I played this on VGF83, so I'll bite. The arrangement was simply great. Kind of funny how "Dueling Consoles", though a great track and arrangement IMO, really suffered from some excessively crowded sections, whereas the simpler construction of this allowed the typical Shna tricks to be in play without seeming too disjoining or cluttered. I still don't reconcile a sophisticated 2A03 chiptune approach with being a guidelines violation. If production somehow leaves "much to be desired" (which I don't even remotely agree with here as it is), then a stellar arrangement should be able to get by regardless and that's what this is. Nothing but wonderful variations on a theme that I don't even like. This stupid bitch actually makes me like Terra's theme, can you believe it? I almost refuse to, but as always, there's no bias. Good dynamics like the softer sounds of 2:20 served well to provide a nice break from all the beatwork. I think the beatwork could have been more active in spots so that the track didn't feel a little empty at times, but it was a minor issue. Might has missed a theme at 2:56, but I do believe that was some FF11 snuck in there from 3:16-4:07 for the people with good ears. 3:39-4:07, I felt the volume should have been pulled back a bit, as some of it was piercing, but otherwise good stuff. Even going NO on "Dueling Consoles", I'm glad it passed in order to offer something different that the unwashed masses out there normally wouldn't have access to. It's a shame IMO that the mere base sound choices here somehow hold this back when the arrangement is nothing but interpretive, sophisticated, and accessible. YES

http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/archive/C64Music/Brennan_Neil/Samurai_Warrior.sid - Subtune 2/3 For the record, this game is called Samurai Warrior: The Battles of Usagi Yojimbo, not just Usagi Yojimbo. Well, checking out this SID, the arrangement certainly has a LOT of creative freedom in terms of where to go, since this source is only 10-seconds long. Man, this is expanded upon nicely. With something so minimal to arrange, this somewhat liberal approach building off of the original's melody works so well. Too bad these beats and lil' bells and whistles repeat ad nauseum. "You can fly-y-y-y!" Can I? CAN I???!!! Choir sampling from 1:46-2:07 sounded really cheap, before going right back into the same groove as before. Ah man, lame. This could have gone in some other direction to keep the arrangement ideas fresh, either by writing more rearrangement or changing up some of the instrumentation. Then there's no meaningful ending either? Damn. Scrap the cruddy sampled choir and introduce more variation and dynamics into the piece and you have an easy winner. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/sectionz.zip - Track 25 Yeah, some pretty fake guitar opening things up here. Voice stuff coming in at :13 sounds so lo-fi and loops for way way way too long. Everything already sounds really lossy. Nonetheless, some decent concept for your intro based off the intro of the source tune. Source melody finally comes in at :54 working in tandem with the lil' fluttery counterpoint or whatever you'd call that second part of the source. Synth design is way too plain. Beatwork is coo in principle, but needs more power, plus it's repetitive/recycled like a motherfucker. Overall, there really aren't too many things going on at once to create a genuinely complex piece of music. As such the piece feels really underwhelming, like there's a lot of untapped potential in both the sound choices, and especially the arrangement, which didn't really develop much over the course of the 3 minutes. Cool ideas so far, but they could really be taken to another level IMO, Jesse. I'll be keeping this, as I like what you had in place so far. Perhaps keep working on it. NO

Not softer. Simply more balanced. Right now, it's too difficult to distinguish among the sounds during the loud portions of the track, with the drums in particular crowding out the rest of the instruments while sounding loud and indistinct themselves. That's pretty much my call on it.

Turrican Original Video Game Soundtrack - 06 "The Great Bath" I can see TO's not familiar with the original, cuz what's listed in that Mirsoft archive definitely isn't it. I can see why he didn't make the connection though. For some reason, UnExotica's .LHA archive doesn't have "The Great Bath" in it either. This is a pretty popular source tune though in the Amiga arrangement scene. Pretty conservative take on the source, with the most noticeable interpretation being the drums, and everything pretty much being left intact with this overly simplistic and muddy atmosphere. Once stuff wasn't played by glassier leads and shifted to the synthier lead at 1:11, this sounded way way worse. There's no sense of judiciousness in terms of crafting the soundscape here. I think the piano and drums barely have any delay on them, making the muddier stuff on top seem really out of place. Murky. Muddy. Messy. NO

Loudness isn't necessarily a bad thing. Roe's naturally leaning towards a louder sound. He's done this mix in a way that it's loud, while still being technically efficient. As long as it doesn't clip and fits the genre, I don't see how you can reject it based on that. I don't think it fits this genre at all. I think a somewhat less compressed sound would sound powerful without making the loudest sections sound imbalanced and indistinct.

Metal Slug 2 Original Soundtracks - (04) "Judgement" Played this back on VGF83, so I've had a chance to hear this before. What a crappy source tune though. Those voices bug the crap out of me, and it's such a lame track in the first place. It does spell "Judgement" with an E though, so props for that. GODDAMN son, this is way too loud. Bah, it's a Roetaka piece, so it's always gonna be needlessly loud, I dunno why. Guitar at :39 went for the source chorus and sounded absolutely buried under the drums. HAHAHAHA! Comparing this to SSH is way out there, I'm sorry. Not that I'm looking for SSH-quality sequencing, as I don't mean to diss Alex, but this isn't as sophisticated and, when used without doubling, doesn't sound very good. I thought the guitar tone in places was awfully flat (e.g. :39-58). Doubling them at :59 helped alleviate some of the issues I had there. Whenever the drums are in play though, like with :59-1:12, they're just dominating over the top of the guitars and bassline and making the soundfield sound like a cluttered mess. 1:39-1:52 is just so loud and poorly balanced, I can't imagine why anyone would think it sounds ok with this ridiculous amount of sizzle. The bass sequencing done at 1:59 is alright, but isn't ridiculously strong. 2:12, again with these loud, washed out drums. Jesus, the cymbals were sizzling so loud there. I can't believe no one else is complaining about this stuff. Tons more clutter and sheer volume from 2:39-3:08 leading toward the end. Like everyone else, I feel like the overall texture and sound selection was better than most of Alex's previous pieces. But the production is still holding this back substantially. It's just way too loud, abrasive and overcompressed. Personally, I didn't feel the arrangement was strong enough or cohesive enough to make up for this kind of overly swamped, cluttered sound. I don't see why such a problematic production approach that has hurt other subs in the past seems hunky-dory in this instance when it's causing the same old problems. Even though the track's probably not clipping, that's clearly not the problem here. NO (resubmit)

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkq - "In a Snow-Bound Land" (dkq-25.spc) I'll admit, I thought the source sounded cool for the first few seconds, then it just hit a spot where the rest was no good. Disappointing original. Melody's completely unmemorable, so I had to let it marinate for a while. What a strange intro. I liked the string lead at :07, but the rest of the instrumentation didn't seem to really gel. You had some straight up MIDI-grade keyboard crud interspersed in their for a TERRIBLE sound quality disparity. The tone of the drums just don't fit at all, and their pattern is way too basic and repetitive. Then all of a sudden at :47 you have these gross, ultra-fake MIDIish string runs where the notes are playing too fast. Vox used briefly in the background was too subtle to play any meaning part and fill out the soundfield. Soundscape was very cluttered and imbalanced the whole way through, plus there was a distinct lack of dynamics. Too bad, because the overall energy was admirable. At 2:44 when you started another loop of the arrangement, I was like "BAH, not again", until I realized you were going for the (weak) fadeout close. Poor textures and sound balance the whole way through, plus undeveloped arrangement ideas and cruise control dynamics means NO. Definitely keep at it though, like zircon mentioned, as I'll be holding onto this piece. You show promise behind the surface, so hang around the ReMixing & Works: OCR forums to learn more about whatever programs and samples you're using and follow that up by getting feedback from the community on your next piece of music.

http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 68 "Gerudo Valley" Damn, that intro was hot. Why did it have to go downhill from there? Agreed with DarkeSword that the contrabass sounds really SOOOOO mechanical. Belltones later on helped, but the track was so robotically sequenced and barren. You went from hot to not in about 37 seconds with this one. It's like reading an issue of Teen People. Finally faded some supporting strings in at 1:47, but this bass sucks, I'm sorry. Even if it sounded perfect, I don't see how one instrument would be able to fill out the soundfield well enough. You need to bring in the various other instruments/elements way sooner, especially because those ideas showed a lot of promise. The vox-focused section from 2:45-3:43 was a very nice concept, but could still use something to fill it out a bit more. Plus everything there sounded pretty lo-fi. Transition to some electronic stuff which started picking up at 3:59 and gradually built up. Didn't quite seem like things were even matching up with the beats up from 4:07-4:37, and the soundfield got flooded as you threw more and more stuff in. Pretty sloppy execution of a potentially good idea. Some thin (I guess) Middle Eastern-type lead at 4:37 came in, before gradually being swamped by more and more stuff at 4:52. Beats are off again, and everything's just too cramped and busy. Hahaha. Some SID-level synths at 5:38 for that "low-quality" retro flava. Man, this entire arrangement got so disjointed. I'm not even gonna attempt to say how it needs to be improved other than be more judicious with everything and learn to focus. Man, that intro was hot... NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman6.zip - Track 14 ("Opening Demo") & Track 26 ("Title") Admirable going for a more tense feel for the intro. That's about where the positives end. :12-:47 felt like a conservative playthrough of the "Opening Demo" with weak sounds. Segued into some very basic, repetitive claps before recycling the idea over again with some slightly different sounds with cruddy effects on them. 1:36 brings in the title and repeats the same flimsy, conservative formula. At least it ended the way it started to come "full circle." The construction is way too simple, the interpretation way too limited. NO