Liontamer

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/mo2.rsn - "Sanctuary Guardian" (mo2-040.spc) & "Welcome to Your Sanctuary" (mo2-043.spc) Gonna keep it short and sweet. Played this on VGF68 as one of the lead-in tracks to Bound Together. First section starts off as basically a sound upgrade of "Sanctuary Guardian". Thicker beats and more texture. 1:05 started hitting things with a bit more interpretation to match the expansion, but was pretty brief before going back to the expansionist formula. Needs to get more interpretive quickly. Around 2:15-onward went into some noise-based transition stuff until 2:32 moved into arrangement of "Welcome to Your Sanctuary" that was a lot more interpretive and substantial as a rearrangement than the treatment of "Sanctuary Guardian". Praise the Jesus! YESing just the treatment of "Sanctuary Guardian" would prove dicey to some, as it's merely expansionist and doesn't do much to the source material IMO than add the phat beetz and some additional sounds. It sounds hawt and gr00ve-bias and all that but lacks substance. But the second half rearranging "Welcome to Your Sanctuary" completely saved it and would stand on its own as a 3-minute arrangement, so I've got no issues. Cool stuff with the SFX starting at 4:30 that later reveealed itself to be saying "Welcome to your sanctuary" when finally exposed at 5:13. Very intelligent stuff. Arrangement (treated as a whole) and production are solid. Nice contrast between the two sections as well. Sorry the AB/Irriadin project fell through, but we still get the goods anyway, so it's all good. Keep 'em coming, Martin! YES

2. As much as everyone would like to see the animation alongside the project, it just sounds like attempting to retain the animation despite the time and personnel issues will only hamper the project's completion. Unless new guys can step up out of nowhere, I'd drop it and be content with just some storyboards or something to that effect.

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/ct.rsn - "The Brink of Time" (ct-2-13.spc) & "Guardia Millenial Fair" (ct-1-06.spc) http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 26 "Zelda's Theme" I see the track is in mono off the bat, so already this isn't going to have any semblance of placement other than background/foreground, which is gonna hurt the piece. Not a huge deal, as I think there are broader issues here than simple stereo/panning. Despite being a very subdued, delicate piece, some of the instrumentation suffers from crowding during the busier sections (e.g. 1:19). There's some slight buzziness in the low end after that point as well. Decent, delicate stuff for the first minute or so, though it lacks a certain energy to it. The production on everything is very, very dull; nothing sounds rich at all here. Too bad, it has somewhat of a Jeremy Soule/Secret of Evermore type feel to it. Some Zelda reference stuff at 2:36 that started a little oddly but resolved itself nicely. Good stuff there that was only striking on the first listen. Things remained quiet until "Guardia Millennial Fair" came in at 4:00 with some fairly basic arrangement that didn't really strike me. It's not bad, just that in comparison with the earlier material, the arrangement for "The Brink of Time" was decidedly more inspired and interpretive. The material from 4:51-5:14 sounded wholly original, I believe. I think you could do more with these samples; there's no need to change anything there, Ken, but you should be working towards giving the sound much more body and depth. Do that along with some well thought-out stereo action and some further interpretation on the Guardia Fair theme and this would have a much better chance. It's fortunate, at least in my opinion, that this doesn't sound as emotionally bankrupt as the previous version, but at the same time it noticeably needs more work on the nuances. NO (refine/resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/zsnes/spc/pbdreams.rar - 16 "Nightmare Intro" & 18 "Nightmare" There's also an Amiga version soundtrack, but the Nightmare track there is 10 seconds long. Heh. Sounds are a bit dulled here, but the percussion is pretty beefy. The synth strings are kind of odd, but have that Halloween feel to them. Track really lacks on the high-end frequencies to give it some sharpness. Beef up both the low-end and the high-end for additional power and clarity in tandem. Right now, the overall sound is decent, but on the bland side. It's definitely going in more of an expansionist route, as the base of the originals (melody and beat structure) is left intact and beefed up, alongside the addition of some new melodic pieces. The arrangement seems decent and has some good ideas; Shnabubula-reminiscent with the synthetic textures of the melody and posessing potential. Personally, I'd like to see a bit less groove bias, with the actual source material being developed a bit more. The new material is a really good fit, but IMO, comes at the expense of the source material not being interpreted much. The ending fadeout was also a bit too quick. Once the source melody gets a bit more attention beyond the sound upgrade, I'd be all over this. The synth design is pretty plain, but at the same time the texture is pleasing overall; remember to beef it up a bit. I'll certainly be keeping it. Cool stuff so far, Erik. NO (refine/resubmit)

http://exotica.fix.no/tunes/archive/Authors/Game/Iveson_Martin/Wolfchild.lha - mod.WOLFCHILD1 - Level 1 The original's pretty sparse and basic; 1:04 long, so we'll see what you did with the 5 minutes you had. Opens up in a different key with melody intact and a decent sound upgrade. Beats are pretty basic. Basically the same texture only with a little more body and some gated stuff. Essentially repeats itself about 2 1/2 minutes in, before heading home at 4:09. The groove is decent, and it's a plain but pleasant update, but it needs a lot more reinterpretation and substance. analoq might dismiss this one pretty quickly, as there just isn't much going for it beyond the bare essentials as it were. Keep submitting your stuff to AMIGAremix in order to gain some more exposure for it. NO

HALO 2 Original Soundtrack and New Music Volume One - 01 "Halo Theme Mjolnir Mix" Intro is pretty weak, with some fakey piano and VERY tepid drumloops being brought in. Everything sounds too quiet and flat. Track lacks energy, even when things are first supposed to get "heavy" at :53, as there's no real texture, body or realism with the instrumentation. Not a bad idea for the vox at 1:09, before briefly going for a gentler atmosphere from 1:19-1:30. Another guitar section until 1:52, with drums and acoustic guitar and strings joining in at 2:02 for a fairly decent idea on paper. The arrangement is fairly good and shows promise, but the instrumentation isn't up to the task. There's no energy here and tons of empty space. You really need a lot more practice and experience under your belt to fully realize an idea like this, but I like the direction you're going in, Joe. Keep using the ReMixing & Works forum to get more criticism and suggestions on how to improve. NO

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FF7_psf.rar - 114 "Underneath the Rotting Pizza" Just posting real quickly that I agree with this one, since no one confirmed the N.O. by T.O. Pretty sad, considering you once subbed a solid Xenogears mix back in the day and got that posted. How are you gonna submit a 2:30-long MIDI rip and expect it to get posted now? Extremely lazy and very disappointing.

Metroid Prime & Fusion Original Soundtracks - (01) "Title" http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/sm.rsn - "Brinstar Red Soil Swampy Area" (sm-20.spc) I'm just kind of guessing at the source tunes offhand, since I'm not as familiar with the various Brinstar themes as I should be, but I certainly recognize the melodies here. Texture is really thin, though DS has a good point about it working (a little bit) in that nostalgic MD-DOS way. In any case, the texture is dry, the sounds are thin and annoying, and the arrangement is underdeveloped. Not even anything to add here. NO

See, you totally missed the point. To my understanding it's now a crime to talk about the game the project was derived from. Deleted posts because apparently they were irrelevant. Same could be said for a quite a few other posts in this thread. But i'm not going to touch base on this topic no longer. Nazi modding is nazi modding, i can't do anything about that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law (DS knows) Wonder when the project will officially be out though? Christmas wouldn't be a bad date, and many would be around to get it and enjoy it during the holiday! Then Andrew gets loads of PayPal donations to either fund the actual movie or line his pockets.

Paige will be here to delight you with sexy, tantalizing...hatred...of video game music. Much hatred. Aurora should plan to not watch.

Pow-Pow-Power Wheels (Congrats on the plug, I added the review reference to the Wiki page.)

I KILL U for leading me down the path to destrucity, DS! My earz wuz not broke!

As promised for this week, we have 2 project shows for the people. Pick 'em up while you can! Duck Hunt: Repercussions of Fowl Lamentation - Wikipedia entry VG Frequency #55 MP3 (188MB/4hr23min) VG Frequency #55 Playlist: http://oc.ormgas.com/forum_viewtopic.php?18.10742 VG Frequency #55 Chat Transcript BONUS: Repercussions of Fowl Lamentation: Plutonium Edition RAR Bound Together - Wikipedia entry VG Frequency #68 MP3 (164MB/3hr59min) VG Frequency #68 Playlist: http://oc.ormgas.com/forum_viewtopic.php?18.12794 VG Frequency #68 Chat Transcript

I never said it wasn't. My point is, if one wishes to present the site as professional, then keep it that way. Mixing in unnecessary personal comments can cause problems. Believe me, I know. This is an amateur site. And when you run the site, you run it the way you want. Sticking with the mix itself, I was looking forward to it since Jordan let me check out one of the VERY early WIPs. I was really impressed buy the arrangement here, which sounded so natural here and downplays some nice liberties taken with the original melody. Great energy per the usual, and a great addition to an otherwise strong project. Looking forward to White Skies later for the huge smash! Judges hate club music!

Golden Sun Anthology OSV - 81 "The Elemental Stars" I just contacted Phil about what Golden Sun material was referenced in this mix, since the VGMix description had that game listed alongside Zelda 3. I didn't remember that until recently and wanted to verify there would be 0 issues with the usage. It's the same source tune used in EgM's latest ReMix "Sol Sanctum Guitar", and Phil pointed out that he briefly referenced material from 1:00 of the original there. Everything checks out, so we're good to go. Congratulations on the debut, Phil!

Too bad I can't contribute in any meaningful fashion, but I can try to keep y'all ROFLed and motivated:

Aight, so it's up to me to make the tough choice on this one, since I had the idea of paneling this as a Halloween mix. I have to apologize to Lars because I felt this had a good chance, but it looks like I'm gonna have to be the bad guy. Personally, I really like the mix. It's certainly a highlight for a lot of people on The Dark Side of Phobos. It functions admirably in an expansive sense, primarily through Elsa's lyrics. Plus in the second half, Lars does some alterations of the source tune's rhythm with the synth guitar that are worthwhile, but the arrangement ultimately could be better. The instrumentation ultimately isn't much different from the source in the first half and could take more liberties with things; again, it's expanded well, but still very similar. I think the guitar synth at 2:49 for the second half of the track needs to be heavier to match the rough vibe you're going for. The supporting guitars are awesome and are a lot meatier than the lead, but that in turn also makes the lead look weak. Right now it's being overshadowed a bit, unfortunately, and is also fairly robotic sounding, so it needs a more nuanced, human sound if possible. The instrumentation is generally good, but the tempo is still basically the same, which makes it seem like too straightforward of an upgrade. The arrangement needs to do more with the melody to distinguish itself from the source as a stand-alone piece, which I'd love to see through a collaboration with someone else, or simply more ideas added to the picture, particularly the second half. Sorry, Lars. I'm sure I got your hopes up with this idea, which is my fault, but I have to vote honestly at all times, and this is ultimately no exception. :'-( NO (resubmit)

It's completely sequenced by hand actually. Good stuff, eh?

Larry has been bugging me to submit this remix for some time and even though Navid said he would take care of it Larry ordered me to do it now. Something to do with Halloween, I dunno (crazy americans)... I cc'ed this mail to him at his request... Contact Info ReMixer name: Larsec, Elsa Persson Real name: Lars Erhardt Christensen, Elsa Persson E-mail address: Larsec@mail.dk Website: http://larsec.net , http://www.livet.se/visa Forum userid: 4104 (Larsec) ReMix Info Game ReMixed: Doom System: PC Tune: d_victory.mid (Text Music) I did this arrangment or the DooM Remix Project (Dark Side of Phobos). I almost didn't make this mix in the first place. I really really wanted to do it but something weird happened on the meassageboard so my post claiming the track "vanished" somehow and it seemed no one was really sure what track was what, and which had been taken. I started working on Slough of Despair instead (which I later had to drop due to lack of time). I decided to pick up the d_victory as well. I was told that if several mixes were made of the same file the "best" one would be used. The ideas for the d_victory midi came in fast so I decided to just go with it and see what happened. My first impression of the track was that it was an "ending credits" track, meant to play as a movie had faded to black (in this case seeing the game as having been a movie). The idea of having actual lyrics sung to the track came rather quickly and I discussed the idea with Mythril Nazgul (Leader of DooM Remix Project). He was easily sold and I started to plan it out. Having the themes played twice, once softly and then once hard. Having the piano play the parts it does seemed rather obvious to me; it fit perfectly. Strings usually go well with piano for these kind of tracks, then just a little percussion and there you go; Part one done. I was very fond of doing metal and metal-ish tracks at the time (still am, I guess). The track also seemed to be good material for this style. I had some farily good guitar samples to use in Rex2 format (from a Clawfinger track made in Reason), good bass samples (also from the Clawfinger track, multisampled), nice drums (Drumkit from Hell). The lead guitar was a multisampled guitar soundfont; Some rythmic work on the guitar, a little bass, a beat for the drums, fills and variation, some detail work on the lead guitar, variation, and then the second half was done. Next thing to do was to write the lyrics. Writing the lyrics was a somewhat tough job. English is not my first language and I am kind of picky when it comes to making lyrics; it has to "flow", the words need to have "magic". It's hard to explain. I go to great lengths to get all the details right (I am a detail freak). The idea was to tell a story and with this being Doom the story had to be dark and disturbing. The story evolves. It starts out kind of general dark and then grows more specific and more dark throughout. By the time the line "Through the flames I see them coming" is sung, the listener learns that the woman telling the story is actually a part of this very story. She tells of creatures that comes to kill everything. Then the listner learns that he/she, too, is part of the story, and just as all hope seems to be gone the storyteller promises to save the listener... But once the listener is within reach of the woman she reveals herself to one of the creatures of Darkness and there is nothing but Doom and death left for the listener... That was the idea, anyway... How it turned out is up to you Next, I needed to find a singer, preferably female. I knew that a couple of the girls from the vocal group Visa Rösta had done some singing for a couple of Commodore 64 remixes (besides their singing in Visa Rösta), so I contacted Pex Mahoney and he arranged for Elsa to sing the lyric (her voice was perfect for this project). After the recording had been done he did a fast mixdown and the result was great indeed. He additionally recorded some choir voices for the background. It was beautiful:) I then recieved all the wav files and did a lot of sorting and cutting and pasting and mixing and what have we... I added some "spooky" effects to make things even more disturbing and clear to the story. I am happy with the result. Things and ideas changed along the way to fit new things and ideas and it all came together great I think... So enjoy it all you can and go crazy Oh, and the "DOOM I'M BRINGING!!!" that is yelled as the last thing lyrical in the song is actually me shouting through a bullhorn --- There we go, I think that's it... Hope you enjoy... /Larsec

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - Boss (Robotnik Theme.gym) Played this on VGF64 to help open things up. The piano intro is good, but muddy in the low end and very mechanical-sounding. Cool stuff at :29 warming up to the source material. Cool stuff with the organ, which sounded nice and flowy. The percussion was a little overbearing and low-energy considering how relatively sparse the atmosphere was. Some very GMish sounding stuff on support that I could hear the most at :57, 1:20, 1:28 etc. More good stuff at 1:45 with the bass along with the record player SFX along with the sax axxtion from Brad at 1:57, though the sequenced and MIDI keyboard stuff doesn't sound as good as it could and only gets maybe halfway there at having some very infectious energy. The arrangement is where it needs to be, and Brad performance is a good contribution. The soundfield needs a bit more depth to it, and the instrumentation needs more realism and polish. I'd love to see some good tips from other Js on that level. I know this has been a long time in the making, Matt, but I'd like to see this worked on further for the YES. NO (resubmit)

http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozmmusf.rar - 124 "Final Hours", 230 "Evan's Piano Solo" & 253 "Staff Roll" Thanks for laying out the source tunes in my style. Things opened up arranging "Final Hours" though I didn't really make the connection until :39. Immediately starting out, the atmosphere was somewhat dull and lo-fi; the sounds tended to mud together in the low-end, and the lead string was somewhat flat, IMO. Production issues aside, I liked the buildup from :59-1:02. 1:02-1:07 was a non sequitur transition idea. Not that you should scrap it, I just couldn't tell what it was supposed to be. I loved the vibe at 1:16; the writing was really cool and has some good energy in principle, even though the instrumentation was flat once again. Again though, everything's still bleeding into each other in the soundfield. Some odd stuff though after 1:49, seemed like a whole host of notes were wrong, and the timing was getting sloppy from 2:02-2:13. Yeesh, this track fell apart pretty fucking fast. Ugliness continues all the way until 2:53 switches the genre entirely to some loud beats and a generic electrosynth. Strange move to be sure. Some lame beats joined in at 3:29, and I can hear a very light e-piano until 3:42 where the notes were all wrong as well, and didn't work in conjunction with the lead. Finally switched to a new section at 4:07 that's decidedly more coherent, though the instrumentation was all very basic and didn't have a good texture at all. Pretty disappointed in this. It went from at least decent/promising orchestration ideas to haphazard orchestration, followed by this very barebones and basic electronic stuff. The presentation overall was very incoherent and disjointed and had a lot of problematic writing. The atmosphere was exceedingly dull, which limited any enjoyment. Needs a ton of work, bro. I'd suggest scrapping it and moving onto the next work. Keep practicing and making substantial use of the ReMixing and Works forums to keep improving and get more feedback. NO

Time changes always happen on 2AM of the designated day.

OZ Original Soundtrack - 201 "Overcoming Sadness ~Beginning the Journey~" Bleh. First off, this is way too conservative. There is near-0 meaningful interpretation of the material here, IMO. While it didn't strike me quite as a rip, the original is basically left as is and the instruments are more defaulty electronic-sounding. If it's NO Override, someone else can get rid of it. Not to mention this is a downgrade in sound quality and design compared to the original as soon as things get going at :08. There was some terrible, flat brass in the background from 1:05-1:18 that was all wrong notes and didn't complement the melody correctly. The groove continued ad nauseum throughout the track, never providing any contrast/dynamics to keep things interesting. That's not to shit on this entirely. Despite the cluttered sound and occasionally abrasive instrumentation, this already sounds better than most submissions we get, so you obviously have some degree of skill at this. Hang at the ReMixing forum here to learn how to work with your sounds better and further develop those skills, and get fan feedback for future submissions at the Works forum. The is predominantly a rearrangement site, so go for much more interpretation please. NO

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/kage.zip - Tracks 7 & 4 On man, this soundtrack is sweet. These guys wrote the Shatterhand soundtrack later on as well. I keep saying, I LOVE the '90s NES stuff that really took advantage of the system's capabilites to produce some very polished chiptunes with a lot of layers and density. This soundtrack joins the ranks of other gold like Treasure Master, Shatterhand, and Megaman VI. Played this on VGF65 when I had the lady, ThatPaige, as my guest host. She hates rock & metal, so I made sure to turn this up in the studio for some extra beefy ear assault. That'll teach her, you know what I'm sayin'? Good expansive cover-style arrangement with tons of personal flair and expansion. I'm generally pretty short on words with Marcos's stuff, because he never leaves any doubt as to whether there's creativity and interpretation brought to the table. Great power, great energy. If you like it loud... YES

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/loz3.rsn - "Overworld" (loz3-04.spc), "Dark World" (loz3-12.spc), "The Goddess Appears" (loz3-24.spc) [also as OoT "Great Fairy's Fountain"], "Title" (loz3-01.spc) http://www.zophar.net/usf/lozusf.rar - 35 "Lost Woods", 40 "Great Fairy's Fountain" [also as LttP "The Goddess Appears"], 57 "Windmill Hut", 03 "Deku Tree" Frankly, I felt this was a relatively tough call, as I can't judge this piece independantly of other orchestrated Zelda pieces. I'll be straight up with you when I say I feel the bar for those type of pieces is really high. Right now, I thought the arrangement was pretty good; it manages to have many good parts where themes are given some good interpretation and even areas where two source tunes combine into one via melody/counterpoint (most noticeable, for example, at 1:53). One thing that's generally unavoidable given this track's format, was that drasted medleyitis, which was here in pretty full force. If you encoded this in a VBR format averaged at around 100kbps, you'd be able to actually add up to a minute and a half of material and flesh out your arrangements of the source tunes a bit further. While I felt the various tunes were ultimately underdevelop as a whole, this was decidedly more interpretive than the major majority of huge medleys we get, so it could feasibly gain some backing on that level. Though I felt the performance aspect of the sounds was fairly realistically handled, another issue I had was with the instrumentation not being quite expressive enough. It's not bad at all, and I'd defer to the opinions of our experienced orchestrators on that issue, but personally, I thought there was a little room for improvement. That doesn't mean you need der ubersamples or even different samples at all, IMO. Frankly, this sub already shows off the great results that can be gained from exclusively using free samples, which so many haters nonetheless insist is a bane of the panel. There were also some areas where I felt sounds clashed, most notably at 2:36 when the Fairy theme is supplemented by some oddly written strings. Then around 3:06, the crossfade used in order to shift from 4/4 to 3/4 was REALLY awkward and disjointed. The strings brought in at 3:47 under the Windmill Hut/Song of Storms theme also weren't in the same key, so the gradual transition from major to minor by 4:24 also felt poorly done. Other Js' comments on those areas, and whether or not they actually function properly, would be informative for both myself and the submitter. Overall, a cool, but slightly underdeveloped medley that I feel could use a bit of polish. Addressing some of the seemingly glaring issues in the previous paragraph might iron out some of the more overt/rougher kinks that are holding me back from the YES. I think this needs a bit more, but congratulate you on a very good first submission, Paul. Best of luck on the rest of the vote, bro. NO (refine/resubmit)