Liontamer

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - "Chemical Plant Zone" Glad I heard some original ideas from :42-1:04, but this was pretty much a techno-ed convsersion. Nice idea for layering various lines of the original from 2:17-2:41 though. I saw you were going for a purposefully muddy feel, though the low-end was a bit cluttered. Anyway, your production isn't terrible, and you put together some decent stuff, but this was too faithful to the structure of the original from my POV. Needs to be more interpretive. Keep at it, Cooper. NO

Indeed, I heard this one over at RPGamer's Sound Test for Splendid Performance. I just don't like how some of the notes cut out unnaturally with no release, for example, :36, :54, :59, 1:03, 1:23, 1:28, 1:49, 2:38. It should really be addressed/fixed if possible. Some of those times were less prominent examples of that happening throughout the piece, as the reverb on other notes served well to cover those up. Really nags on me to hear stuff like that hurt an otherwise good attempt at realism and dynamics. The arrangement is genuinely engaging and enjoyable, as the two source tunes are stylishly given the solo piano treatment and fused together nicely, but it also should take more creative liberties with the melodies in my opinion. I'd scrutanize that more closely, but frankly I can't pass this as is regardless. If you could do this in a day, you can spend another day sprucing it up and making it even more Splendid! I'd like to see a new Zelda game added to the site, but you or Mustin need to fix it up for a solid YES from me, David. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/smw.rsn - "Map 3: Vanilla Dome" (smw-04.spc) Pretty much some voices of the SPC sped up and then a bunch of stuff added on top with no real effort given to make things sound cohesive or harmonized. Repetitive and obviously not interested in rearranging the melodic material. Poor. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/sfx2.rsn - "Surprise Attack" (sfx2-32.spc) I linked to the SNESamp SPC pack, but I'd be remiss if I didn't also link to the SPC pack that DZ indeed compiled himself over at http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/sf2zd.rar. Short and sweet. I thought the horn sequencing was done reasonably well, I liked the sheer amount of variations of the source material pulled off in the arrangement here, and the trumpet cadenza was used effectively. Good Spanish touches were here in the performance, and while I didn't think this was superlative work (as the horn work's syntheticness was exposed a number of times), the results were good here overall. Looking forward to hearing more of your work, as well as improvement in future subs. YES

Tell that to Larry. Hahaha! Got the Simpsons on loop I see.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda.zip - Track 1 Pretty cool intro; definitely nothing wrong with it. The buildup to the melody at 1:01 was alright. Dunno why the lead there was so thin-sounding and exposed. By the changeup at 1:18, the backing percussion was getting repetitive/boring and didn't substantially change until 2:39. The arrangement ideas had some decent tradeoffs between sticking verbatim to the Overworld theme and some rearranged parts. Jovette's brief lyrics from 2:44-3:01 were cluttered and undecipherable, which was a shame. Until 3:31, I generally liked what was going on, but beyond that, the source melody was flooded out, leaving the added material too dominant and, IMO, diminishing the potential for Crono's new/original instrumentation to mesh tightly with the source material. Aside from some sound balance issues, I actually thought the production was pretty good, and it definitely surpassed some of the very poorly produced stuff I've heard from Jovette in the past. Need to hear some more creative ideas with the source tune melody during some of the conservative sections, and also have the rearranged melodic material be given more prominent placement. Others might say this drags on as well at 5+ minutes and cound stand being trimmed down. Great candidate for a resubmission, so I'd like to see this again. Crono's got some stuff going on in Japan soon trying to promote his material, so best of luck to him on that as he looks to pimp that out. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/tetris.zip - Track 2 Dan pretty much summed it up. Nothing much besides trance and solo synth piano (with the same velocity on every note) adaptatios trading off for 3+ minutes. I'd say more, but we just don't want this, so read the submissions standards next time. Be more creative; no simplistic covers. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/mo2.rsn - "Battle Against a Weird Opponent" (mo2-029.spc) Cover-ish stuff with some oomp-tss and other simple stuff on top until :37-1:14 introduced some new melodic content as the lead, and went back to the cover formula. Pretty sparsely constructed, too conservative in the effort to expand the original, and not developed into anything meaningful. NO

Heh. That's a pretty naive request.

Fixed.

So aside from the most important stuff like the job/career hunt and working during early evenings, I've been busy with using my free time doing OCR related stuff like judging dem mixes, writing reviews (gotta catch up) and working on updating the site's database with many new source tunes (in-progress). But I'm proud to say that my life's goal of getting a remix past the judges panel has truly arrived. That's right, the fine judging lads over at OverLooked ReMiX have enthusiastically passed the superlative Gran Turismo (Japanese Soundtrack) mix "Toyota Disco", and I encourage you, the unwashed masses, to register there and VOTE Toyota Disco to da top o' da OverLooked ReMiX charts! I count on your support to put money in my mouth and food in my wallet! So vote early and vote OFTEN (i.e. once)!

Ohhh shit! For real? Any way I can check that out? (Wish I knew if they re-ran that stuff).

Swedish you fool! SWEDISH!

Yeesh, had to move my vote to a new post just to separate from the bible of information about it. The time breakdown though from ktrition was much appreciated. This was pretty catchy stuff, and I liked it as a casual listener. I thought the production could have sounded sharper and more lively, plus I don't understand why this was presented so quietly. Had to raise the Winamp preEQ 6db just to hear things. Also need to obtain a <6MB copy of the mix. I was pretty borderline on the track. Not that this has to echo a more active, progressive approach the whole way through, 'cuz the rather minimalistic instrumentation approach for the first few minutes works for the most part, but the track felt too empty at points. The first minute or so was excellent, but when Christian entered in with the bass at 1:25, it sounded like it was just drums, perc and the harp there and things felt sparse to me. Once you hit 1:56, the organ on lead plus just the bass and drums felt a bit too empty in tandem, though I liked the harp-style activity. Nice fluttery sound at 2:26 for the ear candy. I wish Christian's bass work was a little more pronounced here, especially since there weren't too many things going on yet. The section starting from 3:47-4:02 and then 4:02-4:22 with all the SFX was a pretty WTF transition. The static was fine, but some of the other soundclips came across as cheesy/unnecessary beyond the static itself. Call me a wet blanket, but I don't really see the point of that part at all. Nonetheless, we got some of the good stuff at 4:22 and things picked up nicely and filled up the soundfield with some laid back, but strongly performed material. This is more of the vibe I was anticipating from the get-go. Nice transition at 5:17 into some nice hand-drum & piano stuff, but then at 5:35 some odd-sounding notes came in. I wasn't really phased by it too badly, but 5:50-6:10 was just...what's going on there? I was feeling the material after 6:10 though, and I liked the static coming back in for the finish. EDIT: I may sound close-minded, but I really initially thought the ideas from 3:47-4:22 & 5:50-6:10 threw monkeywrenches in an otherwise solid arrangement. They didn't impact me enough to NO, even though I initially disliked the specific ideas there, and felt they disrupted things. Otherwise, the arrangement was fine, and didn't suffer from straight medley-itis the way mixes with this many source tunes are prone to do. I'm fairly sure some will dislike how certain sections transitioned though, but over time, those sections worked fine on an artistic level as well as for switching up the flow here. And, no, that's not a free pass for anyone trying to do something strange. Not really gonna try to dissect this with so many source tunes though, so thanks to Kunal for breaking it down for us. I'd really prefer the levels raised up a bit without clipping, and those (in my opinion) out-of-place sections refined a little bit, but otherwise have a YES, with the arrangement carrying my vote.

HAHAHAHA! Awesome.

Bah. No need to hate on the old school stuff, even if it's FL-default or whatever the case may be. It's an weird piece, has some odd harmonies in spots, and the last section was bad, but I thought this was actually pretty catchy in places, and I enjoyed some parts of it 3 years ago when I first heard it.

"What seems to be the problem, sir?"

GOOD LUCK, HOMEY! JUDGEZ ON STRIKE 0R SOMETHIN'! Seriously though, apologies to Mike for this being held over so long waiting for votes that frankly just aren't gonna show up. The panel has made a decisive conclusion and, as there have not been further votes recently, the voting is closed. I hope the already provided criticisms and suggestions are beneficial, and encourage a possible resubmission down the line.

My ears have always been the greatest. But then again "that's a slap bass" and "those strings are fake". Hahaha, that TGIF commment is so true now that I think about it! Nice analogy, Blacky McBlackerton.

BAH, U THINK I'M NOT WATCHING U! GRRRRR! Karl with a K, I'm watching u. U2, Bev with a B.

Guy apparently wants more Zelda mixes from you instead.

Yeah, I remember this one from VGF59, since it won PRCv2-14. Very cool track, and I had no particular problem with the way the track was produced. The panning was pretty distinct, which I liked, although I felt this could have sounded crisper/sharper without undermining the piece. Also remember, we have a 192kbps encoding limit. In any case, the first 32 seconds featured some arranged CV material, mostly heard in the plucked strings. :33-:51 went into full MIB remixing mode. :54 seemed wholly original; couldn't tell ya where it's from. Then 1:14-1:38 went into some other section that I vaguely recognize, but I don't believe that's CastleVania; maybe it's another section of MIB score material? I definitely recognize the source tune being arranged at 1:39, and it's even more recognizable from 1:51-2:03, but then you just went back into the MIB material at 2:03 and closed with that. Why would you submit this here expecting it to pass OCR? Start up "Moo-vee ReMix" and submit it there. WAY more Men in Black score used here than Aria of Sorrow, and I didn't even recognize all the parts you used. Cool stuff for Mother Russia, but no dice. Thanks go out to Shnabubula for providing the clip of the MIB score to check out as well. NO Just a side thought, Dmitry, but have you ever tried to do a Tetris mix? I'd really like to see you submit one here, so I could show my mother some Russian folk music remixed by a fellow Russian!

I PMed Kunal over at the OneUp Studios' forums to find out more about the source material, and he got back to me in just a couple of hours. Don't worry about it. Part of the reason I did the mix is so that people check the soundtrack out. I personally adore it, but it was such a poor game that relatively no one noticed the kickass celtic soundtrack behind it

Didn't someone already say that about me and Rayza, for which there is none? Hey lets not jump to conclusions here.. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Toronto HEAT!

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/scv4.rsn - "Dracula's Theme" (scv4-02.spc) I checked this one out in late May for VGF, so I check back on what I had to say. I thought the arrangement of the source material was pretty good which is why I genuinely felt the job done here was solid, although being perfectly honest I didn't find the track too engaging myself. I felt the lead strings in the first third of Nix's mix up until 1:12 were smartly arranged from the strings appearing from :58-onward of the source tune. Still, the first half of the track until 1:46 dragged after a while. The familiar melody was used with some more active work from 1:47-2:10. Pretty brief, all things considered. The strings and brass at 2:10 were at a pretty low volume and sounded incredibly muddy, and there was an annoying low droning sound that ended up cluttering the low-end. I may take a hit for my other issue being a personal preference thing, but I'm not a fan of overly muddy or washed-out sounding pieces and I felt this wasn't an exception. Pretty much the whole time, the soundscape was very muffly and the track lacked a great degree of clarity due to a lack of higher frequencies. Especially encoded at 160kbps, to me this just came across as sounding dull, hastily-made, and lossy. I'm really lukewarm on the piece as a personal perference (outside of my vote), and I think a lot of people would actually end up disliking this, despite me liking the rather unorthodox compositional approach. In any case, I felt the arrangement was there in spades. However, the production choices were a huge negative to me. And I apologize for not being able to articulate it better, but I also felt that the performance aspects of this synth orchestration were lacking on some level. Gray or Dan may completely disagree; frankly I don't know if they would, but I felt some of the note-to-note movements with the strings and vox were just nagging at me by not sounding as believeable and human as they should have. Damn, I said pretty recently that I don't feel I'd have to suggest to Nicolas anything on how to make his mixes work, but I gotta say I was really underwhelmed here. I really think this could be re-EQed to provide more clarity and not subsequently undermine the texture of the piece, which is the only major thing I'd say really needed adjusting in order to get a pass from me. NO (resubmit)