Liontamer

Very swanky mix; a real pleasure to hear. Jimmy really got things on lock here, somewhat similar to zircon's style and also to tefnek. I particularly liked when the string lead was in play; it could have cut through more of the beatwork, but it sounded very airy and sophisticated nonetheless. Great stuff, and it means a lot more that Jimmy's one of the nicest guys in the community I've interacted with back when I just started out on the judges panel. Certainly want to wish he and his wife the very best, and I'm glad he's still involved in whatever way he can be with the community. Keep 'em coming!

No worries about this week. It's looking like I'll be leaving sometime shortly after the 25th, but I haven't bought my ticket yet (that'll be before the end of this weekend). So I'll be able to say for sure in the next few days.

Hahahaha! I still have the copy somewhere in a box of Emory stuff in CT. I'll be making that video at some point. Consider it a 30th birthday present, sir! And if you can get here, you can booze it during a show, no doubt.

Looks like the studio's not free tonight, but since it's so close to Saturday, I figure I'll do a double shot of shows instead. Time to go do some situps.

http://www.pojirecords.com/djoji/ http://www.undergroundfiles.com/djoji.html http://www.pulsation.com/mixes/djoji.php If you only knew.

Email sub file Other Side of the Mountain.mp3 404 recovery: ----------------------------------------------------- http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 407 "On the Other Side of the Mountain" Well, this is a violation of the site guidelines, but I put it up here since it would have made the panel anyway. To elaborate, I thought the performance here was pretty good. It's cool that you learned how to play the song, and the recording was well-done as well. But this is nothing more than a straight playthrough of the original tune. The original tune itself is already made with a solo synthetic string instrument. So your solo acoustic guitar version with the verbatim melody and the same tempo sounds practically the same. Your title's even the same as the original. You're, more likely than not, completely new to the site, but this site is a rearrangement site. We don't accept any straightforward covers. If you want to personalize the arrangement, read the Submission Instructions & Standards linked to above and get an idea of what you need to do. Listen to the most recent Final Fantasy 7 ReMixes (or anything from any game you're familiar with) and you'll get more of an idea of the interpretation and personalization factor that's necessary to get something accepted. Put your own substantial spin and additional ideas on the source material you choose. NO OVERRIDE Feel free to post any of your work in our Works forum in order to get feedback from the community. But please submit only unique, personalized, interpretive arrangements. Your guitar skills would easily translate well to more comprehensive rearrangements, so I hope you stick around the community, Scott.

:'-( ... :'''-(

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/smrpg.rsn - "Beware the Forest's Mushrooms" (smr-128.spc) http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff6.rsn - "Gau" (ff6-118.spc) Meh. Dammit, I hate when I have to listen to stuff with gratuitous and patently cheesy usage of SFX and voice samples. Seriously, why do people think going this route sounds great? Do we even have a single mix like that here? ("Welcome to Quake 3 Arena!") Anyway, trying to mentally block that crud out, the first section's instrumentation right off the bad was lacking texture. Sounded like some of the really cruddy Genesis soundtracks that clearly didn't take full use of the sound capabilities. For all those "Figaro Chiptune"/"See Sixty Funk" haters, THIS is an example of using throwback synths to poor effect, you assholes. Segued at 1:06 to a decent piano sample with really beginner-ish, tacky lyrics sung to "Gau". At least you had some harmonization going on at 1:57 for that RAY OF LIGHT amongst the terribleness. ROOOOFL, right back into the synth crud at 2:39. You had me LOLing right there, I'll give you that. MASSIVE CLIPPING at 3:18 right before the typical "Thanka you so much for to playing my game." Wow, I mean, I'd legit critique this and all, but c'mon. NO way. You need to break this off on OverLooked instead.

You gonna cry, bro? Nah, we don't need any o' that. I should be able to have VGF81 Friday at midnight, but that's tentative in case someone actually has the timeslot. If so, I'll just do the show later, like 2 AM. VGF82 should be Saturday 10PM EST per the usual, so be sure to be there as we wind the show down.

Wait, your birthday was on my birthday? What the fuck??? That's not allowed, bro.

Myst ~ The Soundtrack - (22) Un-Finale Well, I can say thanks kindly for providing the source. Why would you make a 1:15-long arrangement of a 1:56-long original? You just know it's gonna be no good. Can you blame anyone for saying it ended before it started? Instrumentation was decent but clearly too synthetic. Arrangement was conservative and undeveloped, but at least had some varying instrumentation ideas, as well as ornamentation within the writing, and a performance style that made it more overtly melodic than the original. Honestly, way better than one would think given the brevity (and the typical nature of what we usually get that this long). Now try fashioning something longer, more complex and more realistic-sounding. Nothing terrible, but way below anything acceptable. Use ReMixing and Works to improve your skills and get feedback from the community. NO

Dead or Alive 2 Original Sound Trax PlayStation 2 Version - (10) "Blazed up Melpomene" Covered this way back in early July for VGF. What took you so long, bro? Synth tone opening things up was pretty generic, but I had to see where it was going to go from there. I did like the mix going right into the source tune at :13. Immediately, it proved how the original could be a good fit for the trance genre. With the original's melody being strings and the mix being nearly the same with its instrumentation, I was waiting for something else to happen. Strings also could have afforded to be a bit fuller/richer. The melody changed to some more familiar trance synths at :53, which were ok but didn't really stand out from lots of other club music I've heard. Better stuff at 1:47 going for piano on the lead to change things up followed by the woodwind style synth on support at 2:01. Around 2:23 it went into some somewhat awkward comping stuff until 2:40 that seemed REALLY out of place and adversely affected the finish. Overall the arrangement ideas were there, but the overall approach was fairly conservative and could get riskier and more interpretive. The boom-tss beats felt too straightforward and repetitive, going non-stop for a little over 2 minutes. The energy was good, but again somewhat vanilla/cookie cutter for the genre and I think it could be upped a little bit. When it comes to active listening, it's kind of a "failing" of the genre here if you can call it that. Besides zircon, I'd be most interested in bLiNd's feedback on this. If you'd be willing to tinker a little more in terms of either creating some slightly more creative processing, or providing more variation or creativity in the beatwork, or providing further interpretation of the source melody, this would sound all the more dynamic and exiciting. Right now, this is perfectly standard club trance but needs a boost to become more than that. Can you give it that nudge, Jase? I sincerely hope you're willing to revist this. It's some of the your best work ever in the community, I'll say that for sure. NO (refine/resubmit)

Xenosaga Original Soundtrack - (214) "Albedo" Heh. Certainly an interesting original. I liked it. Nice opening with the buzzy noise, lo-fi claps and crud, though the beat coming in at :10 didn't sound as good. Neither did the groaning at :21; it's a genuinely cool idea, but too lo-fi. Some decidedly naked vocals with white-boy delivery came in at :30. Beyond raising the levels on 'em, you need to do something more with the lyrical delivery to give it more of an edge. Could be as straightforward as doubling the lyrics most of the way through. It gets better with multiple listens, so I'm not shitting on you or anything. These skimpy claps and hats are no longer cutting it as well by :30. You need to layer more shit for the percussion to beef it up, and you should have done that either at :11 or :30. Some really loud guitar stuff came in at :40 and crowded the soundfield a bit, drowning down the lyrics. Watch the vocal volume at :45. Chorus at :49 was actually pretty fucking cool with the wailing vocals, but those should have stood out more vs. the other elements; needs some more separation and attention to EQing. Strings from 1:18-1:28 sounded overly defaulty and synthetic. They're not supposed to sound real in this context, but tweak those samples so they don't sound so thin and cookie-cutter, cuz right now they just sound too poorly used. Lyrical delivery/flow felt smoother at 1:28, not to mention fuller via more extensive doubling (see, there you go), but the beats were still way too sparse and continued to dramatically undermine the energy you were going for. Everything has too lo-fi/dull of a sound as well. With a cleaner overall sound, the power here would sound exceptional. Some voice sample came in at 2:41 from the close; not a bad sound; neither was the cackle at the very end for the close. Man, if this had better production and some meatier beats, this would be one of the sickest, most unique things anyone's ever heard on OCR. The arrangement here was pretty damn intelligent and surprisingly comprehensive once I made all the connections to the source material; you were definitely referencing everything from the original at one point or another. Keep working on it Vaughn, and get some serious additional feedback and criticism on how to spruce it up. I feel like zyko would be pretty high on the ideas here, but you'd have to ask him. Impressive so far; I'll be keeping this. NO (refine/resubmit)

Fusion2004 is "Oh, hush you" in RayzaMix. Aurora is "Oh God, yeah" in AuroraMix. Good stuff on pixieMix, Dan. Now we just need a female to mix Wing, and you and her will eventually be the new co-hosts.

Look, this was sent in December, and this wait time for Mike (or anyone else) is ridiculous. The vote's split, you're gonna have to weigh in anyway. The guy's been waiting for over 3 months since he sent it in. He's not God or anything, but he's a regular. We shouldn't be treating our regulars like this. What's the holdup, kids? Get your votes in.

ROFL Man, I wasn't expecting that.

As far as I know, we're sticking with the current avatar structure when the forums are migrated to vBulletin. Same size restrictions and limited only to the avatars that are available on-site rather than any custom avatars. I've added instructions/background to the beginning of Joyzilla's post up top and Stickied the thread. This is basically a non-music Site Project. I leave it up to DarkeSword to determine what forum the thread will go in, but for now it'll remain in GD where it'll get the most attention. Thanks for getting this started again, Joyzilla.

We can't add song titles for every mix. Some games have no soundtracks and no official basis for naming the game's music. If a recent ReMix has a judges decision, read the decision. Nowadays, I say what the source tune every time I vote. AND GOOD MIX Y'ALL, STAYING ON TOPIC. I VOTED NO, BUT I WAS IMMUNE TO THE INTENSENESS AT THE TIME. BUT SINCE I'M COLORED, I SWITCHED TO YES.

Yeah, how about some more information; cover date, issue number, page, what did the review/plug say.

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff4.rsn - "The Lunarians" (ff4-41.spc) Aside from the bass kicks and hats, everything seemed too low in volume. Anyway, I liked the intro cutting the bullshit and OMFG getting str8 into the action. Good stuff for relatively simple sounds. Nice texture from :27-:54 when things focused on the piano. Crazy hats were a bit too trebly and loud at from :54-1:22. Too bad that pad dropped out from 1:22-1:49, as that left the track feeling empty despite all the manic activity going on, but I nonetheless appreciated the contrast. Pretty much more slight variations in the groove moving on into 2:17-3:11 while using more of the source melody, though the beats were gradually wear thin through this section, as the beats never dropped out like the other two times earlier in the track to give them a rest. Some swirly pad stuff came in from 3:08-4:05 for a nice touch, but simply felt like 2:17 being retread, only now with the pad on top. If you don't want to consider cutting the length, create more contrast with the percussion pattern earlier by changing it more dramatically or stopping it again for a while. Thus when you reach 3:08, the addition of the pad (along with some other changes in the percussion or other instrumentation) would seem like a more dramatic and creative move. 3:53 finally started winding things down, before 4:06's piano duet provided a fadeout close that others may be annoyed by. It worked well enough for me. Up the overall volume, tone down the treble, and create some more contrast throughout the second half of the piece so it doesn't needlessly wear the listener down and you'd be all set with me. Dunno how much luck you're gonna have the other groove-hating judges! Nice stuff so far, Gerald. I'll be keeping it. Use the ReMixing and Works forums here to further improve your skills and gain feedback from the people. NO (rework/resubmit)

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Dark Mountain" (loz3-13.spc) If you're interested in knowing how much you fall short, I'm willing to oblige. Oh wait, that sounds really mean. No, we <3 here. First thing that struck me immediately was how lossy this sounded for some reason. There's a lot of fuzz and lo-fi residue here that shouldn't be; it's not nearly that bad, but it sounds like when you're listening to a low bitrate webstream; dunno what you call that warbly crud, but that's what it is. Otherwise though, I liked the intro. The low strings and bells sounded pretty good; the pizz strings were a little too quiet, but were alright. The brass lead though coming in at :21 had no life to it and dragged things down a bit, and the strings first used at :32 sounded a artificial with the bow movements (exposed at :50 when the source usage started, but not a huge negative). On the whole, some fairly solid usage of what you had. The transition into the rock section at 1:26 didn't quite work to me. Maybe it's just me, but having the rock part sound like it was in a completely different place that the orchestra felt kind of jarring; not a big deal. Decent stuff with the rock section all things considered. Guitar tone sounded reasonably alright. The power the track was trying to give off was there in spades, and the arrangement was pretty interesting. The segue back into orchestration at 3:24 brought back that lo-fi warbling, but worked better than the transition at 1:26. Heh, "Overworld" reference at 4:00 that just had to show up sooner or later. 4:14 went for a rock-based close, though there was that one synth on lead that IMO really didn't gel well with the other sounds; I'd say scrap that synth for something else and maybe try not to let the soundscape get quite this cluttered. After all that grandiose-style building to a climax, the ending at 4:53 was awfully anti-climactic; ALMOST sounded I-give-up-ish, but I'm gambling that you thought it sounded ok. Felt like a poor attempt at a resolution to me, and probably should be reworked. Pretty close, bro. The arrangement was pretty stylish; good set of arrangement ideas that fit very naturally with your original writing. Some doofus at VGMix didn't like the constant tradeoffs, but he doesn't know a damn thing. Plus most of the instrumentation was good. Definitely refine the production, perhaps look into tinkering with the tone and realism of some of your sounds, and get the ending working, and you'd be all set. Have faith in your abilites, bro; you're doing pretty well so far. NO (refine/resubmit)

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "Sara's Theme" (ct-3-06.spc) Yeah, Schala's theme mix, this should be the right one. Interesting opening; drums sounded pretty damn thick, maybe a little overbearing, but nothing bad; interesting synths. Source melody was introduced at :21; good alteration of the rhythm there. String synths brought in from :49-1:03 didn't really have a pleasing tone to them; just sounded shrill/grating. Something less piercing would probably work better. Cooler stuff going on here after 1:03, though the track was a bit loud and didn't really have any direction or focus on arranging Schala for quite a while, due to the synths and beats going over the top of the liberally arranged melody. Maybe have something where the warbling-type synth and beats go over the top of the arranged melody just from 1:03-1:32, then pull the volume that stuff back and focus on the Schala arrangement from 1:32-2:00 to create direction and contrast. The arranged Schala progression you had going on in the back was also too repetitive and needed to go somewhere new sooner. Right now you have 1:03-2:00 meandering around for too long without much direction or contrast. 2:22 started taking things home, but I wasn't quite feeling the lead synth's tone from 2:22-2:36. Back to those shrill string synths from 2:36-2:50 (though I liked some of the modulation or whatever you have going on there for the last few seconds of that. The foundation here is pretty sweet; I particularly thought the drumwork was complex and well-written, with nice realistic sounds. I felt like there needs to be more tinkering with sound balance, the tone of some of the synths, and working in more overt and varied arrangement of the Schala them mid-way through to not let things potentially drag out. Nice stuff so far, Steve, definitely keep at it on this one. NO (rework/resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/superm~1.zip - Track 3 ("Overworld BGM") The hiss wasn't a dealbreaker, but I wish it could have been eliminated. Pretty brief, and there was at least a decent amount of personalization with the source tune even if the interpretation wasn't unique enough on its own to pass the bar. Gotta roll with the post-Mid Night/Protricity line of thinking here. I'm feeling the original/improvised material over the backing "Overworld BGM" chords from 1:08-2:01. But (especially for such a brief mix), I gotta hear more of the actual melody being interpreted rather than you going off on your own thing for such a lengthy period of time. Nonetheless, props for making a 2:26-long piece of work seem more like 3:30, and doing so with pretty simple instrumentation. If you're willing to involve more of the actual Overworld BGM melody in the arrangement (percentage-wise, or by simply adding more to the track) and trying to improve the recording, I'd feel more confident in supporting this as a more substantial arrangement. NO (rework/resubmit)

Well, I had this sitting for a while and Vigilante asked me how this could escape my "big production cock" (it is pretty big), so I'm finally relistening on my normal setup now that I've voted on everything else. When I listened to this before, the increased volume on that setup covered up a lot of the problems. It was like bumping up the volume +5db, and indeed it sounds a lot better that way. Vig also had some big issues with the arrangement, saying that it sounded like it has little-to-no structure, but that's completely offbase IMO. The arrangement is pretty cohesive. The way gonzo and Cedric went for several variations here was well-done for the most part. Unfortunately, the production is in fact a very substantial hit. Some old criticisms, some new: The opening piano's pretty muddy and could use some more clarity (though not a dealbreaker). The lead string at :22 needs to sound like it's in the same hall as the piano if the piano's gonna be kept this muddy for the gloomy mood. Transition at 1:05 to the rock section sounded too abrupt now that I hear it again; you gotta introduce some rock instrumentation or something a little earlier to make the transition more fluid. The worst offender on relisten was the percussion from 1:05-2:20. "Slightly off", geez. Too lenient. The writing/patterns were good, but the sound was incredibly lo-fi & tame and the performance sounded REALLY rigid. You just gotta fix it all up. The wailing guitar, you really gotta punch that WAY up and fill up the soundfield to really make it work. It sounded way more emotive when it was louder. During 1:05-2:20 especially (less so for :00-1:05), some EQing work is really needed to spread the sounds out and achieve a better balance. There was also a light pop at 2:02 that needed to be fixed. Remember to fix that hanging string at 3:28 and the fadeout cutting off at 3:25. Smaller but very amateur issues which add up. The last piano/string section was still pretty strong and a great way to end the track. This really does need a production overhaul though. Keep in mind that you guys were doing a lot of good things right which I mentioned in the old vote. But you definitely need to refine the sounds here to really get this sounding good. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/castle~1.zip - Track 2 ("Bloody Tears") Decent organ intro, but sounds a bit too muddy when the strings were underneath it. Decent strings coming in at :45 for the source melody. I actually liked the tone on them a lot. Organ coming in again from 1:09-1:18 didn't really sound right to me, but it was brief, and I wouldn't know how realisitically that was handled. Brief piano/string combo of another verse from 1:35-2:11. Piano sounded a bit thin, and slightly too synthetic, but not bad. 2:11 rehashed the organ playing the source intro again, and things were staring to feel like a retread. Luckily 2:46 at least presented some new writing, even if the organ didn't sound very strong and the writing was very plain/uninteresting. Bringing back the source intro on top of that from 3:28-3:46 only sounded messy, before going back to the string/piano/organ combo at 3:50 seemingly cut/pasted right from 1:53, which was a weak idea heading toward the finish. Interesting instrumentation ideas, but the arrangement definitely lost steam before it was halfway over. Would have liked to have heard more intepretation of the melody as well, since that was rather minimal. Nonetheless, you show some legitimate skill bro, so keep at it. NO