Liontamer

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Track 8 ("Bubbleman's Stage") Yeah, I checked this out when Frank posted it to VGMix and played it on VGF54. Nice and expansive instrumentation here alongside the various rhythmic alterations. All perfectly fair game on the arrangement side as far as I'm concerned. Track does repeat shortly at 1:31, but the melody has different instrumentation at 1:56. I agree with Vig that the track needs more harmony. Didn't bother me for the first half, but rather the second half from 2:10-onward when things became spareser and sparser. Though a bit too sparse sounding, I liked the chill section that closed things out from 2:21 until the end. Hate to do this, especially after I felt the track was borderline YES initially talking to Frank, but upon further scrutiny, it does need a bit more development from 1:31-1:56 for the track to not just loop itself, along with a bit more substance and a stronger resolution from 2:21-2:52/end. Personally, I didn't feel the track was TOO underdeveloped, rather it went for the quick and dirty arrangement approach, which is fine for me. Just need a little bit more work to nudge this over the edge, Frank. Please consider working on it a little bit more. Genuinely liked what I heard in place right now, and certainly am looking forward to the remainder of the pending MM2 project. NO (borderline/resubmit)

All of the problems Vig had were on point per the usual, so read over those again. Interesting arrsangement of "Dearly Beloved" at :33, but it indeed sounded monotone-ish. The samples sound decent I suppose, but you need a ton of work on sound balance among your instruments (like for the intro) as well as realism. The performance sounds inhuman & unexpressive and has absolutely no punch to it. In particular, your usage of "Destiny's Force", starting at 1:20, really pales in comparison to the original in terms of having a strong sound. This definitely had medley-itis. The transition into "Traverse Town" at 4:19 wasn't welcome with me actually, on account of it being so abrupt. It just changed the key and tone of the whole thing with no buildup. Then at 5:35 had an absolutely awful transition into "Blast Away!-Gummi Ship". Just no planning to structure logical changes in the transitions. Came across as sounding slapped together. Very cheesy percussion ending at 6:10. Keep at it, Niels, but get more practice at orchestration via the ReMixing forum as well as fan feedback from the Work-in-Progress boards. NO

I genuinely liked the theme and the genre adaptation, but I didn't feel this was interpretive enough of a go at remixing the Halo theme. Felt like the string work of the original was presented with some new ethnic instrumentation. 3:32-4:44 sealed it for me especially. Great for an arrangement album if the conception is conservative, but I feel the interpretation standard is a lot higher esepcially if you're not doing much to change the genre of the original. The new ideas for harmony were good, definitely the highlight of the track given the new instrumentation choices, but you didn't take enough creative liberties with the melody or the structure. I heard some good ideas where you tackled those as well, but I gotta see more interpretation or even more in the way of additive material. Reasonably well put together though the string samples lacked realism at times when they were exposed. Sorry, Kris. NO (definitely resubmit)

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff5.rsn - "Harvest" (ff5-1-16.spc) Something nagging at me at 1:37 & 1:55, because it sounds like a section taken from some other Final Fantasy track that I can't put my finger on. Maybe just because it sounds kind of battle-ish, but it's gonna bug me. In any case, really good stuff, though the source usage was too conservative. No problem with the samples at all. Geoff did a good job with the textures here and the synthetic feel of the mix wasn't a drawback at all. The usage of the source melody was verbatim which threw up a red flag pushing me towards borderline, but the instrumentation was expanded nicely, the areas of liberal arrangement that used some of the source's foundations were fine, and the compositional additions independent of the source tune were very well thought out. Keep on improving, Geoff. Very enjoyable. YES (borderline)

Nope. #58 will have last week's material, and #57 will have the material from 2 weeks back.

I remember hearing this a while ago, but for some reason I never had a copy for myself to release. TO recorded the VGF40 aftershow before I managed to lose that episode to Cool Edit crashing. Had to rerecord that episode after swearing a lot, but anyway, this ended up technically being a preshow to me recording things again. Myself and the lovely lady Paige are on the air while I act as an intermediary between her and Bladiator's suave advances. Also, proving 4 months in the past that it's not that hard to do a funny parody of me, Paige decides to mock me in her special way. For the record, I am NOT whipped. Clocks in a mere 8.9MB/9min46sec. Search near the end of the chat transcript to follow along with the channel as the wooing unfolded. Thanks very much to TO for coming through with this one, since he HAD to record Karl with a K attempting to put the moves on the ladies. Enjoy.

Fuck yeah, this guy's the dawg. Heard the first 30 seconds and was immediately impressed. Great work again, Brandon.

Look in the FTP, you cotton pickin' varmint.

Just got a letter from Ms. Red this morning: "Ugh, finals" is right, that's for damn sure. Susie's requesting we hold off until she can resample the piece properly, so let's freeze it up. Anyone else feel free to comment on how we can handle this thread. I'm guessing we make it public and freeze it. Dave? Anyone else? EDIT: Dave's down with locking it and leaving it here on the panel until it's revised. It's not getting in the way, and it'll be fixed/posted sometime after Bogus finishes finals.

ye ye, I probably should have gotten more feedback then just my own opinion, but I feel (well, I know) that it's much better then the one I submitted originally. Let's list the what I did --> Different drum samples (most aren't FL defaults now =D) --> Some Notch filtering --> Different Synth Samples --> A little change up at 3:0X --> Different synth at 4:00 --> Outtro is longer --> Panning!!! --> Stereo Seperation!!! --> Beefed up the lead bell --> uhhh....I think I added 1 or 2 more synth strings --> Bitrate 160!!! --> Got rid of that other scratchy synth That's all I can think of now =\ So yes, this is a pretty big improvment over the original I submitted. All my original information can be found here. I ask that the new title be From A Dream (OCR Edit) or something like that. My original one has been around for a while now and it's appearently quite popular O_o . and, as a final comment, I'm pretty proud of this mix, and if it doesn't make it, I'll continue submitting it untill the judges break down and accept it .

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/kss.rsn Decent orchestration effort, though it needs refinement and you'll be better with further experience under your belt. Arrangement was alright based on what I remember from the original (well, I've played Smash Brothers...). Nothing particularly daring, but you did farily well embellishing the source material. Being half-Russian myself, I don't think the Russian feel was captured incredibly well, but I certainly heard the influence and it's not a bad try. The arrangement was already retreading itself at 2:15 of your 4:18 track, though the support instrumentation was different the second time around. Take more liberties with the source material beyond adding more instruments. Any further personal/unique touches would be to your benefit. 3:08-3:17 really exposed the artificial texture of your strings; tended to drag the piece down. Other parts of the samples you used were also exposed at times, but that was a particularly glaring example. Interested in commentary from the orchestral Js, but not a bad effort. Keep improving. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/zelda2.zip I became a fan of this theme from Pixelated's Zelda 2 remix of it, "Crying Alone in the Darkness". Pretty basic/beginner synth orchestration effort. Not very realistic and doesn't possess much depth, but it's certainly not bad for someone learning the ropes and developing their skills. Needs a lot of work to really realize the potential, in terms of just the instrumentation/sound quality. The arrangement was pretty straightforward, and somewhat repetitive. Some decent additive ideas were certainly there in terms of the instrumentation, but the mix still could have afforded to take some more liberites with the actual source melody. There was a brief original section from 1:50-2:14, but that was about it. The ending was really flat and was a poor resolution. Looking forward to Gray or Dan B offering some specific tips that can help you improve your work. Aside from that, you gotta get more creative compositionally and showcase your own ideas. Please keep at it. NO

http://www.snesmusic.org/spcsets/ff6.rsn - "Shadow" (ff6-111.spc) Ah man, why'd it have to be a looping cover? Really enjoyed this a hell of lot based on the sounds and the relaxed feel. Pretty wild western; I've heard K. Pras do some really cool original material in the same vein. Some of the woodwind synths were a bit piercing, but damned if I didn't enjoy this one. Fadeout was really abrupt. Not to accuse, but it almost sounded like the track was stolen; why the track faded out in about a second and a half when another section was clearly getting started was beyond me. In any case, dammit too conservative. You gotta be more. Like Izz said, develop the composition and put your own ideas in there. Not much else to say. NO

http://www.zophar.net/vgm/alexkimw.zip Probably the same track based off of Binnie's description. I miss that guy. He smelled like curry. But yeah, this is crud. Either way, totally cutting and pasting Shariq's last sentence, I vote NO, for the reasons Binnie stated in the vote for the last one.

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 310 "Frozen Flame" Been expecting this one for a bit, since I ran this one back on VGF49. Gotta go the glib route and agree with Shariq as well. Much of the left-hand activity sounded a bit too simplistic, even for someone as relatively undemanding on those sorts of things. The resolution provided by the ending was very underwhelming and seemingly came out of nowhere, as the track sounded as if it had basically run out of gas. Fixy fixy! Still the same types of issues here as were present in Tomorrow's Wake v1, only this actually sounds a bit less polished. Nothing wrong with the sample itself, though the atmosphere is kind of thin. But the main issues remain: the sample usage and lack of attention to velocites hurts any realism and potential expressiveness the track has. The timing issues on the performance made things sound hesistant and unsure. Same exact issues. Honestly, and this is not to crap on your talents as is, but as long as you have time available and keep up your progress, you'll look back on tracks like this and realize that this needs a bunch of improvement. Again, the arrangement sounds good from what I can gather, yet the performance and production lack very badly. Work on it for the resubmission if you'd like to Bev, but that would be a more involved effort than Tomorrow's Wake v2, I can tell you that. NO (resubmit)

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn Nothing against the genre, but if the construction is always like this, I have a hard time seeing how ANY Goa Trance would make it onto OCR. Intro stays minimal and repetitive up until 1:20, which I'm willing to take at face value waiting for things to pick up. But as soon as more generic-sounding electrosynths layered on top at 1:21, this descended into the poor category. No sound balance at all in the track, and it took until 3:18 to get to somewhere melodic. Everything sounds cluttered together and terrible. Definitely dragged on. Chrono's theme sealed things at 4:13. Now Zeality has to have this mix no matter how poorly made it is. Truly the epitome of a track dragging on aimlessly for 5:54. Wish I had the 6 mins back. Needs severe improvement. I'd be interested in Xelebes take on this one, if he's familiar at all with the stated genre, but I've got no love for poorly done generic electronica. NO

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/lag.rsn Played this one back on VGF45, so it was cool to see it now. Unfortunately though, I've gonna take the consensus route with Stephen & Mike. I agree with everything they said. The storm sample was cool for sounding a bit different than the usual fare, but almost sounded like something else entirely. The lo-fi drums aren't too much of an issue, but the clapping samples sound really pasted on. Indeed, the synth joining in at 2:28 was too loud in my opinion. Nothing hugely abrasive, but it could have afforded to be toned down. The synth piano close was nice, but maybe would have sounded better with richer sounding notes. Those are just production-related comments/suggestions. From what I remember of the source as well, this goes a bit too far off the beaten path doing your own thing composition-wise. Considering Izz was also a participant in PRCv2-6, he knows the source material as well. If I had the SPC in front of me, I'd point out certain more overt spots. In any case, Lee, feel free to work on this further if you're interested. Still a very cool/enjoyable piece, in my opinion. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF8_minipsf.rar Can't match up the name of the source tune right now, but it's pretty likely that it's "The Successor". Tone sounded like it wanted to be a bit more powerful, but there was some good energy here. The lazy drumloop that kept repeating ad nauseum really killed the mix. It's creates bordem for the listener and stagnation in the foundation of the mix. Can't stress this enough: don't bring it on every other level and then just loop up the same perc work practically the whole way through. It looks really lazy and uncreative. Arrangement could stand to have a bit more forward direction at some points. You other judges will likely hear what I mean. I thought the production and sound balance among the instruments was actually done pretty well. Gonna have to pull an Ari and request a resubmit. The arrangement takes a bit getting used to for me, since it's not TOO exiciting (again, the drums really undercut a lot of that energy). Mix kinda drags a bit by going past 4 minutes, but from what i recall of the source material involved, everything sounded kosher and pretty creative on the whole. I may like this one significantly more than others. Don't believe I've heard of you from Dwelling of Duels at all, so be sure to check that out as well, for a high quality rock/metal game arrangement community that'll really encourage you enthusiastically to take your work to the next level. Very promising stuff, Bill. Definitely look forward to hearing more of your work. NO (definitely resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/gbs/sml1.zip As I decide to judge a few tracks sans my own computer, listening to source tunes is out of the question for now, so I'll just have to judge on the finished product. Only really recognized the Ending theme at 1:14, but I'm hoping it was used elsewhere. Pretty much the thing this needs is more processing and effects on the sounds to beef the sound up. Right now, the sounds are very generic and a bit too thin, despite setting up a laid-back vibe. Stuff from 1:35-1:50 had seemingly random note patterns that didn't sound right at all. Unfortunately can't compare it to the source, but in any case I felt the composition as presented here didn't have much in the way of note patterns that came across as sounding purposeful. Everything just meandered around a lot. Wouldn't mind hearing this one retoooled further for a resub, and the ending was decent (though it cut out abruptly), but 3:45 was way too much length with too little substance. Keep at it, bro. NO

Well ain't that a bitch! Laptop's broken AGAIN, and I've gotta get it fixed. Well...let's take a raincheck folks. Hope to be back next Saturday, the 23rd. Please check out VGF50 with djp & VGF56 with the top Dwelling of Duels: Free Month (March 2005) entries for radio goodness, and push the gears on down.

DS EDIT: APPARENTLY SOME PEOPLE DON'T REALIZE THIS IS A JOKE MIX; I SHALL CLARIFY FOR YOU RIGHT NOW; THIS IS A JOKE MIX; IT WAS NOT REALLY PASSED BY THE PANEL. JEEZ. Well, I've been in the remixing community for over 3 years and have steadily improved enough to the point where I feel comfortable releasing my work. Notes on the creative process and additional details are featured in the MP3, and I hope you enjoy. This'll be the first decision in a while where I don't actually vote on it. Gran Turismo Toyota Disco OC ReMix (4:45, 160kbps CBR, 5.44MB) * Contact Info o Your ReMixer name: Liontamer o Your real name: Larry Oji o Your email address: Liontamer@ormgas.com o Your website: http://oc.ormgas.com/links.php?18 o Your userid on our forums: 1553 * ReMix Info o Name of game(s) ReMixed: Gran Turismo o Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: "Toyota" o Additional information about game including composer, system, etc.: Composer - Isamu Ohira, System - Playstation, Year - 1997 o Your own comments about the mix: So, let's do Toyota real quick or something. I heard that people wanted it, so... ----------------------- Lyrics "Toyota Disco" original song "Toyota" by Isamu Ohira (Gran Turismo OST) lyrics written/performed by Larry Oji (Liontamer) Lyrics be edited by Larry for completeness! (Nice job on these!) (spoken) Yeah, you know, I be groovin' with the Toyota, Toyota. (sung) Drivin' in a Toyota, Oh, that rhymes with Yoda. Toyota car, I be drivin'. Toyota car, I be drivin'. BOOM... cha cha cha, ZOOM... cha cha cha, MEW... cha cha cha, VROOM... cha cha cha. You press the gears on down, And the car be movin' around. You be ridin' dat car; And you go far. Yeah, Toyota! Ooh, matza-mata-Toyota, Woona-mana-mana-na-Toyota, Ma-<unintelligible attempt to sound Asian>. (spoken) I'm driving in a Toyota, Toyota... jrb... what's a Toyota car? Toyota... Celica... Toyota... da-uhh... I'm in a Toyota 4x4, and I, f... Damn, I'm drivin' over the mountains and shit. Yeah. Yeah! (sung) Drivin' a Toyota! Vroom vroom, I be drivin' a Toyota! Aaaaaaah, doo doo doo doo doo doo da doo. I be drivin' Gran Turismo style; I be drivin' for a mile! Whoa, whoa whoa whoa. Whoo-hoo-hoo Gran Turismo, You be drivin' that car. Gran Turismo, You be a star. Mmm... chh chh chh, Oom... chh chh chh, Boom... chh chh chh, Oom... chh chh, Ooh... chh chh chh, Ohh... chh chh, Umm... cha cha cha, Ahh... cha cha. Ha cha cha cha cha cha cha cha. Ha ha... <unintelligible guttural and screeching noises>. Drivin' a car, ... and, then, something... Let's eat some stuff, And uh, something... (spoken) Let's do a Terra mix in the middle of the song! (sung?) <worst rendition of Terra imaginable> Woo... chh chh, Ooh... wah wah, Ooh... vroom vroom, Ooooooh. ... doo doo doo, That make me drivin' in dat car, And I be... doo doo doo doo, Doo doo wah doo doo... (spoken) Oh, I, *ahem*, *ahem*, vroom, vroom vroom vroom, all right, uh, It's time to take the keys out of the ignition on that one. Oh my God, <gibberish>. All right, let's go for the fade out, man, Let's go for the real classy fade out, Yeah, I'm tellin' you man, ooh. (sung) Yeah, Toyota. Uhh, Toyota. Ooh, wasabi. <unintelligible rodent noises> ----------------------------------- I vote YES on my magnum opus.

http://www.dongrays.com/midi/archive/game/d2/d2map18.mid - Map 18 ("The Courtyard") Not a bad effort bro. Fairly conservative take on the material to be honest. In any case unfortunately, the source tune is actually derived from Pantera's "This Love" and is therefore ineligible for the site. Thanks very much to Doom expert TO for the hookup on that information. Better luck next time, bro. NO OVERRIDE Edit: Second Opinion needed. Larry/others, for the record, djp said there is no litmus test on derived/inspired from material. It's way too subjective. Unless the composer has admitted it was directly lifted from another composer, it's hard to make such assumptions. To be edited later on. - Gray

I could literally cut and paste my vote from Zelda 3 "Ordeal" and it would basically work for this. The samples are used very poorly and robotically; there's no appealing texture and/or humanization, and if you don't progress forward experimenting with and learning those things, your work will never get better that what it is right now. The production & sound balance among your synths & instruments are poor as well. The arrangement is alright but finds itself meandering and retreading in many places, and the track is way too long and underdeveloped to deserve 6:10. Scale down the track and learn the intricacies of refining your material. I'd give further details, but it's just that this was such a similar case of why this sub was way below the bar, that I'm not gonna spend a lot of time repeating myself. Still loving the GoldenEye mix. Keep learning at the ReMixing forum, Alex, that's all I can really say. NO

Thanks a lot for the source tune, Malc. Ok, so the source tune's pretty short from the clip that Stephen provided. The arrangement was relatively basic in that it involved the chords from the original being altered in feel and other ideas were introduced on top. The robo-vox that first arrived at 1:24 was really cheesy. Much more importantly though, the drums were the main offender here, as they sounded very pasted on top. The same with the cymbal work that showed up at 1:07. The faux electric guitar at 1:52 sounded really cheesy, not to mention robotic and distant. A lot of the sounds were very default-ish and dry. The various sfx clips & robo vox being used so repeatedly came off as tacky rather than bolstering the piece. The percussion continued to sit very poorly in the track, and the ambiance was decent but sparsely constructed on the whole. From 2:34 onward, and especially at 3:00 when you layered what sort of sounded like male choir vox, the background was especially loud and muffly. Alongside with the percussion problems, sound balance and processing/effects work are two important things you need to focus on. The arrangement wasn't a violation to me. Though it didn't function well on the interpretive side, Retro actually did a decent job with it in an additive sense. But the sounds are really flimsy, and any thickness in the sounds the track had came from a uh..."less than conservative" use of reverb and delay. Visit the WIP forum for more feedback on future submissions and consult the ReMixing forum to learn how to make better use of your sounds. NO